Safe. Full of weapons and fruit and not a single threat when her head hits the pillow at night. A part of me hates her just for that.
“Here we go,” Orion says. She pulls out her pistol and checks the clip. Five bullets, and one still stuck in the glass. I take a deep breath, turn to the doors, and watch as the Initiative soldiers let the citizens file in.
It only takes me a few minutes to get into the swing of things. When a number is scanned, I pull out a ration bag from a crate marked with the right serving size. Mostly it is sackcloths of dried meat, some so small they fit in the palm of my hand. Some citizens get a bundle of bread, depending on the Creds. I shove the rations through the slot above the counter, quick and steady, and move on to the next one. The work itself is easy, even with the heat and the smell.
But the citizens are rabid. They push and shove and claw at each other to get closer to the front of the line. I feel as if I am looking into the eyes of animals, like wolves that have not fed for weeks.
I grab a sack of dried meat. This one is so small, and it cost 25 Creds to get it. That is almost a week’s worth of earnings for my father.
“What do you think I am, a Ward?” a man with a scarred face yells. “I paid for this food, I should get more!”
“There’s nothing I can do about that.”
The man grunts, then reaches through the slot, clawing for the other bags beside me. In an instant, my dagger is out of my waistband and I slam it down, right in between his middle and ring fingers. The handle vibrates with a menacing twang.
“Unless you want me to target an even bigger appendage, I suggest you take your food and move on,” I say. I shove his rations bag at him, and he leaves me, his eyes focused only on his food now.
“Atta girl,” Orion shouts. She’s fast at what she does, so I speed up, too. I will not let a member of the Initiative outshine me. My father would be ashamed.
As the line continues to grow on the other side of the glass wall, I watch the women. Some of them are pregnant. My heart sinks. How many more people can we add to our society before we are all destroyed?
We have not a crumb of food to spare, or a square inch of space to make room.
Even if the murders continue, the hundreds of dead each month hardly scratch the surface of the problem. There are too many of us. Way too many. I’ve had nightmares of trying to swim in the ocean, but there are so many people I can’t move, can’t even rock side to side in the waves, and then I imagine that there aren’t waves at all. It is a sea of people and I am stuck helpless in the middle of it.
Later, when the line is finally gone, I slump against the glass, staring at the hundreds of now-empty crates of food. There was so much this morning. Now there is nothing left.
Something lands in my lap. A slab of dried meat. I look up and Orion is sitting on one of the crates across from me, swinging her legs back and forth. “For your first day,” she says. “Eat it or hide it before someone sees.”
I close my hand over the meat, and suddenly all I want to do is race back home, where I can show Peri what I’ve earned, and see her smile. Orion is watching me with her strange dark eyes, and she won’t look away. There is something off about her, something I cannot quite put my finger on.
I don’t like it.
I put the meat in my pocket and give a nod of thanks.
I stand up, ready to leave, but Orion stops me. “Hold up, Blondie. Got your work badge?”
I grab it and toss it to her. Her reflexes are fast, like a cat’s.
“This is temporary.” She stands up. “Time for the real deal. You get a little adjustment to your Pin. Come with me.”
We head to a small table in the back corner, with two rickety old wooden chairs. “Sit down,” she says. “Hold out your arm.”
There is a black box on the table. Orion opens it, and inside, there is a tiny black ball no larger than my pinky nail that I recognize as a Cred Orb. Koi does not have one, and he never will. The Initiative does not give us second chances. In the box there is also a can with a nozzle on top, and a syringe with blue goo that I think is pain medicine. My father told me about this, and as Orion reaches for it, I stop her.
“I don’t want it,” I say. She raises that same pierced eyebrow again. I don’t need to explain myself. Pain is good. Every time I feel it, I get stronger. I learn how to push it down.
“I didn’t want it either,” Orion says. She watches me for too long, but I will not look away and show weakness. “You and me, we’re not so different,” she says. “Right arm on the table.”
I could find a thousand and one reasons to argue with her, but instead I just sit in silence and hold out my arm.
The cut is not deep, but the pain is. I grit my teeth and take it in, and I do not close my eyes when she slides the strange black orb beneath my skin.
“This is where your Creds are tracked. You work, you get Creds. You scan your arm, you get rations. You step out of line . . . your Orb goes back to zero. Got it?”
I watch as Orion holds the can to my arm. Blood drips down my wrist. “These are liquid skin cells,” Orion says. “Nasty smelling stuff. Like ham. You ever had ham?” I shake my head. I don’t even know what that is. Orion sprays the stuff over the cut, and I watch as the tan liquid bubbles up on my arm. “Nanites can fix you up good. But this stuff will toughen the skin. You aren’t getting this Orb out unless you slice yourself up real nice with a knife.”
Seconds later, the bubbles fade, and I can see a fresh layer of skin under my own dried blood. The new skin is lighter than my own, and when I press a finger to the fresh patch, I don’t feel any pain. “It’s amazing,” I say.