The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

A soft chuckle. Would you rather I coddle you with lies?

I watched as a pair of stiff, straight-backed Knights in crisp, crimson uniforms strode by, heading toward the building. Everything about the place was so rigid. So stiff. Was this really all there was to life? Rules, and grappling with your own brain out of the terror of ever, even for a moment, thinking something bad?

“What’s it like, working for the Eyes?” I asked, partially to distract myself.

Alex sighed. Work, work, and more work, he admitted. But it’s fascinating. The sheer amount of data we have access to, you wouldn’t believe it.

Data, he’d said. People’s emotions screened and compiled into a revolting blob of data.

Did I say something?

“No.”

Your negativity concentration—

“You’re reading me!?” I cried, jolting to my feet and causing a nearby Knight to shoot a disparaging look my way.

I’m just watching your screen while we talk, Alex said hurriedly. I like to keep an eye on you.

“Alex, that’s…”

Would you rather I didn’t?

I paused, considering. “No,” I said eventually. As invasive as it was, as bizarre as it was to think that someone always knew my inner state of mind, it was comforting to know that someone cared enough to look. To look at that negativity and not just slap a number on it but ask why my thoughts looked that way. Alex had always been different like that, and I adored him for it. It gave me hope, knowing that someone like my brother worked with the Eyes.

The net in my brain continued to buzz, but Alex didn’t speak for almost a minute.

Things are changing, he finally said.

I tilted my head up, looking at the Core. The great computer was located somewhere in there, but the Eyes never let anyone other than other Eyes inside. Even their trainees, called Bits, weren’t allowed inside, until after they had passed copious screenings.

“How so?”

I can’t say. Or maybe I’d simply rather not—I don’t know, he replied. Just… get your number back up, and stay away from any more moronic Cogs. Or just Cogs in general.

I chuckled at the tone of his voice—it was dryer than the desert outside. Eyes and Cogs were notoriously bad at getting along, and it seemed Alex had picked up that characteristic as well.

So it is possible to get some positivity out of you after all, he drawled. Anti-departmental humor works like a charm every time.

“Seriously, though, it’s creepy for you to just… read me like that.”

He was right, though; I was smiling.

You sure? I thought it was endearing.

I laughed. “Pretty sure you don’t have any idea what’s endearing about you.”

There was a silence, then a sigh. I have to work.

“I know.”

You going to be okay?

I stared down at the number on my wrist. “I don’t know,” I replied honestly.

Another silence.

I’ll do what I can, he said.

The buzzing in my head cut out, and just like that Alex was gone. With the noise, and my brother gone, I abruptly felt very alone. I thought about going home. About seeing my parents. But they didn’t care about anything more than the number on my wrist, and now that I had finally dropped—as they expected me to—I suddenly didn’t want to. The only thing that could possibly redeem me would be if I went off and managed to catch an entire gang of criminals—and even then it might not work. Both of them were Knight Commanders, the highest rank in our Order without becoming Champion, and that seat was held by Devon.

I realized that I didn’t want to go home. In that moment, perhaps it was more that I couldn’t. I turned, moving back across the bridge, intent on finding an elevator to take me back to Water Maintenance.



The elevator decided that the three using it needed an insultingly long lecture on immorality in exchange for travel back down to Water Maintenance. I waited, stewing in sullen silence, for it to finish and deposit me where I needed to go. I quickly went back to where I’d confronted Grey. He, of course, was long gone, but the pipes along the wall still bore the faint black mark where my baton had struck as I flew out of the sky to arrest him. Flew out of the sky and saw his wrist.

A nine.

I gritted my teeth as I walked forward, scanning the area for something, anything that might indicate what had happened. He had been a one. I had seen it, and even if I hadn’t I would have known. The easy smiles, the spark of character in his eyes; those things died when someone’s number got higher. Even aside from that, why would he have run if he wasn’t a one?

I moved up to the place where he had been hovering, but there was nothing obviously different about it. Uncertain, I lowered my hand into a gap between the pipes and rooted around in the little pocket within.

“So, Grey Farmless,” I muttered. “What were you rooting around for over here, huh?”

It was a stupid venture. Grey was cleared. Even if I had found a bloody knife and a confession to murder, the man would have been free to prance about the Tower while people looked at me like I was going to burn the place down. To the eyes of the world, a nine was all but infallible, and a three was just waiting to explode. Still, something drove me. I needed to know the truth.

Just then, my fingers brushed against something. It was small, smooth, and the contact sent it rolling away from me. I cursed, scrabbling for a moment, and just managed to close my hand around it before it got away. Yanking my hand out, I held it before me, then slowly opened it.

It was a pill. And while Medica pills were brightly colored and well labeled, this one was a nondescript white, the sides completely blank.

Hello… What might you be?

I rolled the pill in between my fingers, thinking. I ought to take it to Gerome was the first thought that came to my head. This was important. Significant. As I thought about it, though, I pictured Grey. Cocky, self-assured, and so… himself. So much more himself than anyone I had ever known—and so unafraid to be so. He didn’t act like someone worried their number would fall. He didn’t act like someone who was worried about their number at all.

I stared down at the three on my wrist. Medica treatment. Mood-altering pills. Liana—vanished.

I shoved the pill into my pocket.