Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) (19 page)

I wander into the office to see if he’s put a note on the desk. I check my logger.  Nothing.  I pull up the scape, intending to check for a message there. Concordia’s version of email is video or text captures from the loggers.  Again, nothing. No blip of Ritter grinning, telling me he’ll be late.

I notice, though, that there are scape screens Ritter has minimized, the same as we do at home. I cringe at that word, home.

Attero,
I remind myself.  Part of Assimilation is about thinking of Concordia as home and referring to one’s former world by its Concordian name. I’m not doing very well at this.

My heart stops as I enlarge the screens and some of the same research I’ve already done pops up. Erasure research.

I blink as other screens I hadn’t seen open begin to pop up. Profiles. People whose names I ran across, myself. People who claim to be Erasers.  These are on the guardian’s scape. They are photos and profiles of criminals. Fugitives.

Cold seeps into me.

Oh, God.

Oh, no.

I desperately log Ritter, asking,
Where are you?!

I can’t log Strega. Hours away by slide, all it will do is make him feel helpless and worried. I have no idea what it would do to his function level if he left the seminar early. His level is very high, but I’ve learned in Assimilation you don’t necessarily just drop one level at a time. You can lose several at once, depending on the severity of your functional transgressions. I don’t know what ditching a seminar might cost him.

Ritter, meanwhile, has stopped leaving me any access to his function information. He used to have the herald functioners’ page readily available, but he’s recently put a password on it. I don’t know if he knew I’d been looking at it and didn’t like the intrusion or if he just wanted to keep me from worrying about anything but my Assimilation.

I begin to pace the keeping, wondering if it is too late, if he’s already tried to contact people from the guardian profiles. I feel sick as I realize how stupid they are to post those profiles. It’s like a directory!  Worse, if they aren’t Erasers so much as scam artists, it’s a little like entrapment, isn’t it? 

With a few keystrokes, I pull up one of the profiles Ritter has marked.  Cordelai Tinnit.  She is a solemn brunette with a deep scar running down from her right eyebrow to the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are steely blue and intense, her lips pursed in a tight line. She looks very serious, very dangerous.

I pull another. Galeon Braithewaite. He’s so mean looking I get a chill down my spine. Flat, flinty eyes so dark they look black in the photo. I can’t see any pupils.  Unlike Cordelai, he’s unblemished. His skin is so perfect he looks a little unreal.

The last one Ritter has flagged is Mueller Bench, who looks nothing like the other two. His face is open, friendly, trusting. There’s none of the hardness I can see in both of the others. Cordelai and Galeon have seen—and probably done—things. Bad, dark things.  You can see it all over them.  But Mueller looks like everything has always been unicorns and rainbows.

I don’t trust any of them.

I wait for Ritter as the hours pass. Once I tire of pacing, I retrieve the cling packs Strega ordered from the MedQuick and sit on the sofa, obsessively checking my logger while half-heartedly watching another of Ritter’s herald colleagues interview Janat about the continued closure of the launches.

I answer logs from Mina and Melayne, which ask the same thing they always ask: When can we see you? 

I log back, promising I will find time over the weekend to get together with each of them.  There’s no time off of Assimilation for the weekends, but the schedule is much lighter, allowing for more free time. Maybe I can invite Melayne to come with me to Flash. Kill two visits at once.

I wake on the sofa. Ritter must have come home at some point, because there’s a blanket over me.  Sometimes I sleep on the sofa on purpose just for the snuggly feel of a blanket.  I still can’t get used to the way the rifts maintain perfect temperature balance so that using a blanket is uncomfortably hot.

I toss aside the blanket, though, and move quickly to Ritter’s unit. It’s empty. Without blankets, there’s no way to tell if he slept on his rift. I search the desk, my logger, and even the servette board for a note. Nothing.

I log Strega. 
Have you seen Ritter?  Talked to him?

A few minutes later, as I am pacing in front of the ScanX, he logs back
.  No. I stopped by before function to check on you. He must have left already
.

Tears spring to my eyes. The blanket must have been Strega’s doing.  I hadn’t noticed before, but now I realize that there were no spent cling packs on me when I woke up. I go back and search the sofa and the floor for them. But they hadn’t fallen off anywhere once the cold wore off.  Ritter wouldn’t have collected them even if he’d been in the keeping. He just doesn’t think about things like that.

Ignoring the ScanX, I check the time. There’s just enough before Assimilation, if I hurry.

All the way to the caretaker’s function hall, I promise myself I will be calm.  I will approach Ritter’s disappearance rationally, assuming nothing.

I lie to myself quite a lot, without meaning to.

Strega’s concerned when I burst into his quarters at the function hall. These are the private offices, closed to the general public, used for completing ward records and medical research. Wards are not seen here, and the caretakers are seldom disturbed even by their own peers.

If just my presence in his quarters worries him, my tears alarm him even more.

“What’s wrong, Davinney?” He searches me up and down, probably looking for blood.  “Are you hurt? Sick?”

“He’s going to get himself erased!” I blurt, my words tumbling over themselves like haphazardly thrown dice. “There’s all sorts of research on his computer, including profiles of known Erasers from the guardian scape.”

Funny how I am so vehemently opposed to this, to losing Ritter, whom I’ve only known for about two months.  I guess being stuck on Concordia has me clinging stubbornly to what friends I have.

Strega predictably pulls out the alpha inducers. Though I know they’ll calm me when I don’t want to be calm, I let him press them to my temples.  I let him and his devices reassure me.

“Maybe it’s for an article. He
is
a herald,” Strega points out.

“But I don’t think he came home last night,” I say, forgetting to use my Concordia words.

Strega frowns. He checks his logger and dashes off a quick, sharp message, which he shows me.
Ritter, Davinney is worrying herself sick in my quarters when she should be focused on Assimilation. Are you alive? 

I lift my eyebrows. Strega studies me for a moment before checking the clock.  I have to go soon if I’m going to make it to Assimilation on time.

“Even if he’s looking into erasing over this suicide theory of his,” Strega says, “he’d never go through with it. Not when—”

“Not when what?”

Strega looks pained. “Not when you stood for him the way you did.”

I don’t see the connection. 

“You saved his life, Davinney.  Very few people in your position stand for their violators.”

“He didn’t take me on purpose,” I shrug.

Strega nods. “He won’t do anything to put you at risk. If he plans to erase, he won’t try it until you’ve assimilated.” His words, however, are spoken glumly. His logger chirps. My heart stops. Strega meets my eyes. “He’s fine. He was up against a deadline and fell asleep at the function hall. He’s sorry he worried you.”

Relief rushes over me like a wave, but when I glance at the clock again, I tense up.

“I have to go. I’ll see you later?” I hadn’t actually meant for it to sound like a question, but it does.

“Of course,” Strega nods, giving me a small smile.

I am out the meld in a dead run to meet the slide.

15

RITTER LOGS ME just as we break from Assimilation for the day to tell me he’ll be late again. It’s possible he won’t make it back to the keeping at all.  He promises this will be the last of his long nights for a little while.

I feel it in my gut. Despite his assurances, something is wrong. He’s up to something, into something he shouldn’t be. I know it. His lies make my heart ache.  I can too easily picture us back at Tribunal, breathing into tubes. And this time, Janat’s voice says,

“Let the record show that Ritter Boone has violated the theft standard. He has spoken lies. He has stolen the truth.”

I shiver even though the day is mild.

Strega’s unhappy when I reach the keeping. Neither of us admits it to the other, but we both know Ritter is hiding something.

Instead of talking about Ritter, after doing his usual caretaking routine with me in the cleanse, Strega calmly goads me into the servette and puts me in front of the ScanX.

“You didn’t eat this morning,” he reminds me. “And I can see by today’s battle wounds that you burned up a lot of energy.”

He’s matter-of-fact about it, but he’s bothered by the turns this Assimilation is taking.  When I showed up at the caretaker’s function hall, he was on the scape. Before he shut off the viewer, I could see he was paging through several different articles at once. One about the suicides, one about the launch closures, one about Assimilation, and one about the Agreement review.

He eats with me, using his profile in Ritter’s ScanX to select his meal. We don’t talk. I suspect that’s because other than my Assimilation and Ritter, there’s really nothing for Strega and I to talk about unless it’s the news, and the last thing Strega wants to do is agree that with the major headlines being the suicides and the launch closures, Ritter might just be right. They might be connected. It might all point back to the Tribunal.

Afterward we try to watch some mindless show on the viewer. Television isn’t really so different than on Attero. Just like on Attero, it is a source of information, entertainment, and escape.

I’m only half watching the program when I become aware that my left hand is resting palm up on Strega’s right knee and that his fingers are idly stroking my palm. Though I’ve had my Idix for a while now, he seems fascinated by it. My forearm is no longer smooth and unblemished. It now carries my identification, telling all my secrets now, and it’s clear by the way he stops before his fingers meet my wrist that he’s not sure he wants to know them.

After a few long moments, he sighs and drops his hand to his lap.  My heart falls a little. I didn’t know I wanted his touch so much.

“It’s okay,” I say softly, still staring sightlessly at the viewer.  “You can trace me.”

I can feel his eyes snap to my face. My own are still glued to the screen.

“You know about tracing?”

I nod. “Melayne tried to explain it to me after I walked in on her and Scuva in their servette.”  I blush just remembering it.  “And we’ve read about it in the Assimilation onboard.”

I remember Melayne’s description more than the clinical description I read at the onboard. Tracing is intimate, it lets someone look deep inside you, at the very core of who you are. It’s just a glimpse, and you can’t control what it is they see. So you have to trust them, because you’re essentially giving them the keys to your kingdom.

Strega’s eyes are still on me. He’s waiting, I sense, for me to look back.  It’s difficult not to be a little afraid, even though I genuinely want him to trace me, and I genuinely want to trace him.

“Are you sure?” he asks, breaking the silence between us. 

I nod and turn off the viewer.

“Have you…?” his eyebrows lift.

I shake my head.  Ritter’s never asked. I don’t know whether I would let him even if he did. Even though I understand that friends and family and even acquaintances can trace for different reasons, the Attero in me sees it as something too intimate for just anyone.

Strega shifts his body on the sofa, and I do the same so we’re facing each other. He rests his left arm on his leg, and I align my left arm with his. I close my eyes at first, unable to watch him as his fingertips ease over my wrist and begin to trace along the silvery threads fused to my arm. But I realize I need to see my fingers if I’m going to trace him.

Keeping my eyes locked on his muscled forearm, I suck in a breath as all at once I
feel
him in my head. Like he’s leapt out of his body into mine, except at the same time, impossibly, I feel myself surge into him, and he’s there, too.

I could talk all day long and never be able to express or explain how it feels to rub up against someone else’s consciousness, to feel it in your own. It’s a mind trip of epic proportions.  I instantly understand why it would be a violation of the abuse standard for someone to trace you without your consent. Mind rape doesn’t even come close to describing what it would feel like.

But with Strega it is solemn and playful both at once. It exhilarates me and terrifies me.  I hear the whooshing of breath, and I don’t know if it is me that’s breathless with wonder or if it’s Strega or both of us.  The things I reach in him and the things he reaches in me are not just memories or the emotions attached to them but the most basic foundation of who we are.  There’s no hiding from it.

At first, there’s just a series of flashes in my mind, like an introduction of sorts. An abbreviated reel like a movie montage of images. I see things from his eyes…his parents, places he knows and loves, random things he’s done like hike the rugged terrain just inside the Outer Territory, the land occupying the far north portion of this zone. Through his eyes, I dance with a girl, feeling shy. I sit staring at questions on the viewer. Before I sat down, I was certain being a caretaker was the future I’m meant for, but now I wish desperately for more time. I’m not ready to choose my function…

And as I’ve been moving through those pieces of Strega, he’s been whirling through my childhood of one move after another, several of those awkward, “Class, this is Davinney Keith. She just moved here from—” mornings, and many instances of tears. Thankfully, however, he also gets to see me giggling with Amy Finn in an igloo-like fort made from blankets, clothesline, and a card table. He sees
me
dancing with a boy I had my first fierce crush on. He sees me rolling around on the ground with Shamu, laughing wildly as I try to duck and dodge her sloppy dog kisses.

My heart lurches in my chest as I’m catapulted away from those visions into my living room, sitting beside my parents. It’s hard to explain, but Strega is living the moment as if he was always there all along. But he’s not just in the room with us. He’s
me
, and I am him. There’s no separation, yet I’m aware of Strega as a separate person.

It’s an ordinary night, one I once would have considered a little on the boring side. We’re all in our pajamas, and Dad has Mom’s feet in his lap. She’s been standing all day, and she’s teased him into giving her a foot rub.  It’s a tenderness that I can’t help but notice even though I don’t really want to see them doing stuff like that…kissing, hugging, or any kind of touching that reminds me they are sexual beings just like anyone else. Because that’s just…ew.

I keep my eyes on the movie. It was my mother’s turn to pick tonight, and she enjoys torturing my dad with romantic, often bittersweet movies.  This one is from a Nicholas Sparks novel.  Mom and I try not to giggle when my father begins to sniffle, growling gruffly about his allergies, easing out from under her feet. As he leaves the room, allegedly in search of the allergy medicine, Mom and I snicker and snort until our heads are tipped together and we’re clutching our popcorn-filled stomachs.

Dad, watching us from the doorway, reacts the way he always reacts when we catch him having any sort of emotion.  “Knock it off,” he says, a hint of grudging laughter in his voice. “If you tell anyone Dad cried watching this movie, I will disavow all knowledge of this night and my presence here.”

We just laugh harder as he returns to the sofa with a bowl of freshly air-popped kernels, reduced to grunts for the rest of the movie. When it is over, he insists on watching an action show on cable. Usually my mother would clear out of the living room by now, clutching the popcorn bowl with one hand and pinching glasses together with the other. This time she stays put.  As Dad and I are discussing the show during a commercial, a piece of popcorn bounces off my nose.

My eyes narrow, and I look accusingly at Dad just in time to see him flinch back in surprise from his own popcorn assault, right in the jaw. Gape mouthed, we laugh incredulously as my mother clamps her lips down hard to keep from laughing, too.

“This is war!” Dad jokes, lunging for the popcorn bowl.

Suddenly there’s popcorn flying everywhere, and Shamu has roused from her nap to munch on the wayward pieces that hit the floor. Aware that Mom will come to her senses any second, Dad and I make the most of the moment. We team up against her, snatching the bowl, darting around the room, firing kernels until there are only the unpopped ones left.  We stop there, knowing she won’t like it if we throw those.

With no ammo left, Dad resorts to recycling kernels he finds littering the couch, and I scoop up a few from the floor that Shamu hasn’t found yet. Mom laughs helplessly, breathlessly, and begs for mercy.

“Oh,” she gasps, clutching her sides, “oh, God, we need to stop…this place is a mess. We’ll never get it clean…”

Dad tosses one last kernel onto her belly before heading back into the kitchen for, I suspect, the dust pan and the whisk broom.  With a last chuckle, I start gathering what I can with just my two hands. Mom plays Queen and instead of helping, just watches me.

It’s so strange to feel elated, light and bubbly inside while also feeling so hollow and homesick. The memory is a gift, and I feel huge gratitude toward Strega for happening upon it with his wandering fingers. 

But this moment of bittersweet bliss is happening at the same time my fingers wander along Strega’s forearm.  We are simultaneously fighting a popcorn war in my living room while also on the lawn outside the Challenge onboard. We’re younger. He’s four years old by Concordia’s calendar. Twelve by Attero’s.

I am in his mind, seeing the lawn through his eyes, feeling everything he feels as he feels it, like we are one person. We’re angry and afraid. No one told us Challenge would be so hard, make us feel so unsure of ourselves when we normally reside quietly in confidence, knowing we are ahead of so many of our peers. 

We feel misled somehow, and we’re not sure why. But if our parents misled us like that, why? Maybe they thought we’d Challenge poorly if we’d ever suspected how hard it was, how difficult the questions would be.

We stare together at the slide as it appears in the distance. In most areas, the slide rises from underground only to exit a station, dipping under again almost instantly. This is one of only a few sections in the entire area where the slide surfaces and stays above ground for almost a mile, turning slightly to run alongside another of the function halls before dropping back underground around the corner.

We watch the tiny bluish dot that is the slide grow larger and larger as it approaches. It will spit out Ritter’s parents but not ours, we think bitterly, because our own parents are too busy with their functions today to make it to one of the most important days of our life.

We wonder, just for a second, what it would be like if the slide were to suddenly careen out of control at an excess of 100 miles per hour and smash into the function hall instead of turning to run alongside it.

For just a few mean seconds we pretend it is our parents’ function hall. Wouldn’t they be sorry they left us standing here in this horrible silence alone instead of standing with us? 

But they wouldn’t be sorry, we realize guiltily, our stomachs churning and our faces burning with shame.  They’d be ended.

That is all it takes for our little vengeance fantasy to lose its appeal. We’re flooded with nothing but relief knowing that the screaming of brakes, shattering of glass, loud explosion of brick, and the split second echoes of screams followed by eerie silence was just imagination, all an illusion brought about by our discomfort, our disillusionment over this day, this day that was supposed to be so exhilarating, one of the best days of our life.

Except it wasn’t.

It wasn’t a good day, and it wasn’t imagination.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

It wasn’t.

We made it happen. Somehow, we thought it, and we made it happen. We pictured it like we’ve pictured a million similar things before…those stupid little fantasies you have when you’re in trouble and your parents are mad at you and you picture yourself being punished in your unit and a tree suddenly falling into it, pinning you on your rift. Their anger at you instantly turns to worry and sorrow. If only you’re okay, they’ll never punish you again! Ever!

It isn’t our parents, though. It’s Ritter’s.  Ritter’s parents were on that slide, and now they’re gone. Just…gone.  Forever. Just like we pictured. The unholy screeching, the horrible thunderclap of collision, the split second screams of those toward the rear of the slide before they met the same jarring fate of those in the front. The lucky ones. The ones that didn’t have that split second of knowing what was about to happen.