* * *
Everyone knows the Green is just a fancy name for the Thinkers. They’re the ones who broadcast the transmissions and categorize the people. The ones who do the thinking so regular people won’t have to.
Zenn would join Them when he finished training with the Special Forces. He’d wanted to be a Greenie for as long as I’d known him, but that didn’t stop our friendship. This arrest might—SF agents didn’t hang out with criminals.
Inside the hovercopter, large panels with multicolored buttons and complicated instruments covered the dashboard. Glass encased the entire bulb of the body, allowing the pilot to spot rule-breakers from any angle. A window in the floor beneath the single—and occupied—metal chair provided a good view of the ground below. Since I had nowhere to sit, I stood next to the tiny doorway.
I felt trapped in a bubble, with the charcoal sky pressing down around me. My throat tightened with each passing second.
After cuffing me, the pilot scowled. “This return trip will take twice as long. We usually send transports for arrests.”
I made a face at the back of his head. Like I didn’t know that. Almost as bad as Lock Up, transports are twice as uncomfortable as the cramped hovercopter. And the filth and stink? Nasty.
With my extra weight on board, the pilot maneuvered the craft awkwardly and zoomed back toward the towers on the south end of the Goodgrounds. “I have a break in twenty minutes. I don’t have time for this.”
Then let me out. I watched Zenn fade to a distant dot, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time I saw him.
The hovercopter slowed and the pilot turned to glare at me. “Don’t try your tricks on me, girlie.”
I had no idea what he meant. I gripped the handle above the doorway as he swung the hovercopter to the left. Toward the towers.
The Southern Rim is only accessible to Goodies with special clearance or important business. I’d never been there, not that I hadn’t tried. No one I knew had ever been—water folk didn’t make trouble.
True fear flowed in my veins as we approached. Maybe sneaking to see Zenn had been a bad idea. The thought felt strange, almost like it didn’t belong to me. It grew, pressing me down with guilt. You shouldn’t have risked your freedom to see Zenn.
The voice in my head definitely wasn’t my own. Damn Thinkers. I shook the brainwashing message away. Zenn had risked his freedom for me last summer.
Below me, fields wove together in little squares, some brown, some green, some gold. Crops grown in the Centrals provided food for those in the Southern Rim and the rest of the Goodgrounds.
The fields gave way to structures standing two or three stories high. Constructed like the other buildings in the Goodgrounds—gray or brown bricks, flashing tech lights, and red iris readers in every doorway.
Windows were blinded off from the outside world. We certainly don’t want any sunlight getting in. No, that would be bad. According to the Thinkers anyway. Sunlight damages skin, no matter what color. Our clothes cover us from wrist to chin, ankle to hip, and everywhere in between. Suits for the business class. Jeans and oatmeal-colored shirts for everyone else. Wide-brimmed hats must be worn at all times.
Goodies are walking paper dolls, devoid of personality—and brains.
Yeah, that doesn’t work for me. I don’t want to be a paper doll. That’s why I broke the rules and stopped plugging in to the transmissions.
The pilot swerved and twisted around the tall buildings. I’d never seen the city up close. My eyes couldn’t move fast enough from one shiny structure to the next.
The pilot steered toward the last and tallest building on the border of our land. The one with the symbol that can be seen anywhere in the Goodgrounds.
The olive branch is the symbol of good. It signals our allegiance to the Association of Directors. More like Association of Dictators, if you want my honest opinion. But no one does.
“So now you’ve seen the Southern Rim,” the pilot said. “Was it everything you expected?”
I didn’t know how to answer, so I kept my mouth shut—a first for me. That was the Southern Rim? No magic, no golden pathways, no perfect escape from my sucky life. The wall now towered in front of me, closing off any thought of freedom.
The hovercopter hung in midair as a door slid open in the wall. Darkness concealed whatever waited inside. And what would I find on the other side? Could I come back? Maybe I would never see Zenn again. My mouth felt too dry.
“We’re going in there?” I asked.
“After I process your file,” the pilot said. He made a note on a small screen. A long list popped up.
“I’ve cited you before,” he said, smiling slowly. I remembered the last time: I’d left the City of Water after dark, crossed through the crops growing in the Centrals, and tried to enter the Southern Rim. I’d dressed up real nice in a fancy white dress and old platform shoes—which were the reason I’d been caught. No one can run in shoes like that.
I endured six rounds of questioning until I admitted I’d stolen the shoes from the basement of a house in the Abandoned Area—another off-limits place—another violation of the rules. Wearing contraband (which I didn’t know about at the time) from an illegal area, trying to enter another forbidden district, and then there was all that nasty business about lying. Like it’s the worst thing on the planet or something.
You see, Goodies don’t lie. Ever. Honesty is sort of bred into us, but somehow mine got out-bred. Maybe when I stopped listening to the transmissions. Or maybe because I just don’t give a damn.
And I’m a good liar, but that’s all been properly documented in my file, which the pilot was now reading with interest. “Mm-hmm,” he said. “A liar, a thief, and now the Green wants you. It’s no small wonder, Vi.”
I absolutely hate it when strangers use my nickname like we’re old friends. I ignored him as he eased the hovercopter closer to the wall. A red beam scanned the rose on the bottom and a signal flashed. The pilot steered into a long tunnel with black walls, hardly a wall and more like a building. As we careened through it, panic spread through me—something I hadn’t felt since learning Zenn would be leaving me behind to join the Special Forces. I wished he’d given me my birthday present before the stupid pilot arrested me.
When we finally cleared the tunnel, I gasped at the view below me.
A second city loomed behind that wall—an entire city.
People swarmed in the streets. Silver instruments and shiny gadgets winked up at me from the vast expanse below. My stomach clenched painfully, and I forced myself to keep breathing so I wouldn’t faint.
The fierceness of the advanced tech burned in my brain. I can feel technology, I’ve always been able to. And this whole new part of the Goodgrounds produced some serious tech buzz. My head felt like it was in a particle accelerator set on high.
“So here we are,” the pilot said. “The Institute—the birthplace of tech.”
No wonder I felt like throwing up.
Elana Johnson is the author of the Possession series, which includes the full-length novels of POSSESSION and SURRENDER, and the short stories RESIST and REGRET. The third and final full-length novel in the series, ABANDON, releases in June 2013.
She wishes she could experience her first kiss again, tell the mean girl where to go, and have cool superpowers. To fulfill her desires, she writes young adult science fiction and fantasy. She lives in Utah, where she spends her time with many students, one husband, and two kids. Find out more at elanajohnson.blogspot.com
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She wishes to say thanks to Dustin Hansen for the gorgeous cover for this short. And mucho gracias to Christine Fonseca, Beth Revis, Dustin Hansen, and Lisa Roecker for reading the zero draft of RESIST.
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