RIFT
Andreas Christensen
RIFT
Copyright 2014 Andreas Christensen
All rights reserved.
Cover design: Cormar Covers, cormarcovers.com
Editor: Shelley Holloway, hollowayhouse.me
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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, organizations, events or locales is purely coincidental.
Prologue
SUE
She moved quietly through the streets. It was after dark, and she wasn’t supposed to be out this late. Her mother would be furious, anger fueled with fear. Susan Atlas knew all too well what happened if you were caught outside at this hour. She had almost been caught once before, about a year ago, and though she escaped to safety, her friend Laurie hadn’t been so lucky. When he returned after that night in prison, he’d been quiet for days. In general, they all avoided being outdoors at this time of night, unless it was absolutely necessary.
But tonight was the night before Initiation, and everyone from school was gathering outside the gymnasium for a final night together. Tomorrow, some of them would be chosen for Service, many risking their lives while gaining the opportunity for a better life for themselves and their families. Others would not be chosen, and would remain in Charlestown, doomed to a short life of limits and boundaries.
Her father had turned fifty last year.
She missed him tremendously.
Though they were all taught that the Covenant depended on its rules, and that only the Covenant protected them from the world outside, it didn’t make it any easier to accept that her father wouldn’t be there tomorrow. Ever since she could remember, she had been told that the system could only be sustainable by imposing an upper age limit of fifty on non-citizens, but she didn’t know why. And her father had been healthy, a merchant, and a productive member of society. But, as soon as he had turned fifty, he was gone.
She wanted a different life.
She wanted to serve.
A noise from a side street caught her attention. Shuffling feet, sobs, heavy grunts. She stepped closer to the street entrance. In the faint light, she saw three officers and something between them. A man, struggling to remain on his feet. One of the officers shoved his knee into the man’s groin, and he doubled over. This couldn’t just be someone breaking the curfew.
The man lifted his head, and when the light lit up his swollen face and shaven head, she saw the electronic tattoo across his scalp. Corpus.
What was one of the Corpus doing here, she wondered. But she knew the answer right away. A fugitive.
The Corpus lands lie just south of here, but the boundary—the Belt—was so tight, she had never heard of someone actually escaping. She could understand why someone would try. Within the Corpus, you served until you died, or for a lucky few, until your seven years were up. There was no way out of Service, and with the Corpus, the only way for most was death.
His face had a resigned look, as if he didn’t care what happened to him anymore. Even with blood running from his nose and broken teeth, and a deep gash on his temple, a wan smile crossed his bloody lips. She realized she was looking at a man who saw death as a way out. A man free at last. She shuddered and withdrew, afraid that the officers would notice her. But none of them moved away from the fugitive.
Instead, one of them drew his nightstick and adjusted the voltage. She had seen how they did that, depending on how much pain or damage they wanted to inflict‑enough to subdue, or enough to incapacitate. She had heard the voltage could be set to kill, though.
“You sure about this, Gunnar?” she heard one of the officers ask. The one with the nightstick grinned, teeth showing in the streetlight.
“This one’s done for. He’d be useless, anyway. Let’s just get this done, and file the damn report.” When no one protested, he set the nightstick against the fugitive’s neck.
“Move away, Trace, this will hurt,” he said. He pressed something, and the fugitive began to shake violently. After a moment, the officer withdrew the stick, and the body slumped to the ground. The one called Gunnar kicked the dead man lightly to make sure.
“All right, let’s get this one out of here,” he said.
Sue withdrew further, shocked at what she had seen. This man had toiled in the Corpus lands, and whatever the officers did to him before they killed him, his expression had told her everything she needed to know.
Tomorrow was Initiation Day, and she might face the same fate that this man had run away from. A chill ran down her spine as she realized this was the last night of the life she had lived until now, and that whatever tomorrow would bring, nothing would ever be the same again.