Luminosity (2 page)

The crowd erupts into jeers. Gabe boos along with them, taking care to be extra loud and annoying. I elbow him in the side, and he stops abruptly. “What?”

I look back at the Keeper and Paradigm. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not being stupid. She killed people.”

“You’re being stupid.” I leave it at that because the Keeper begins to speak once more. The sun beats down through the smog of the City, which smells like trash and something else that I can’t decipher.

“Dreamcatcher.” The Keeper doesn’t give Paradigm the respect of calling her by her name. “Your sentence is execution by firing squad. Do you have any last words?”

My chest squeezes tight. For some reason, I don’t want her to speak.

Paradigm’s lips peel apart. “We’re coming.”

The Keeper steps off the platform. The captain of the firing squad calls them to arms. The black rifles rise one-by-one, all pointed toward the girl who could hardly be my age. She looks at me again. I’m still looking at her. I promised myself I would not watch, but I watch. I can’t look away.

“Ready!” The captain calls. The firing squad’s elbows rise. “Aim!”

“I thought you weren’t going to watch.” Gabe reminds me, but I still can’t tear my eyes away.

“I wasn’t.”

But I am.

“Fire!”

Bullets slice through the air and into Paradigm. Where they hit, her sundress turns crimson, first in small circles, then bleeding into larger spots. Even after she is hit, she stands for a moment, her eyes on me. Then, all at once, she crumples onto the ground in a pool of her own blood. The raven is screeching somewhere in the background.

“It looked like she was looking at you, didn’t it?” Gabe speaks over
the cheer of the crowd. People clapping for the end of someone’s – or something’s – life.

Why was she looking at me? How did she know it was I who had the Vision? Standing in a sea of other Seers, it could have been any of us…but she knew it was me.

When it is clear that she’s no longer alive, the pain in my head starts to fade away. Some poor soul tasked with removing the body hooks his arms under Paradigm’s shoulders and begins to drag her off the platform. A trail of blood follows behind, even down the stairs as she is
thunked
down each step.

“No, she couldn’t have been. There are too many of us here for her to have picked me out of the crowd.” I don’t want Gabe to worry. Of course she was looking at me.

The Keeper steps back up onto the platform after it has been washed clean of the blood. “Let this be an example to you all. The Dreamcatchers can be anywhere. They are coming, and we must be prepared.” Her violet eyes seem to meet each and every one of our stares. “You are dismissed.”

“We are sparring in the arena today, remember,” Gabe says, and we start to walk back to the Institution. We have little choice as the crowd begins to push in that direction. “It’s about time we bring down Team B. I hope you are on your toes today, Bea. If we lose again, they’ll think we are hopeless.”

“Maybe we are.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We have you. We can’t be hopeless.” Gabe grins, and something inside of me flutters. He always knows the right things to say. But what will happen when he realizes I am not the solution?

As we turn and leave, I hear the voice from my Vision in my head again.

It whispers sadly,
“My sister…”

And suddenly, I’m filled with an unbearable sadness. An overwhelming feeling of sorrow flows through my arms, my fingers, down my middle and through my legs. I stop walking and close my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Gabe pauses next to me.

I have to shake the feeling. Gabe would never understand. I pretend as if nothing is wrong and smile at him. “Nothing. I guess the execution kind of got to me, that’s all.”

Gabe smiles and puts his hand on the small of my back, ushering me forward. “Let’s sneak off and go get something cool to drink before the Keeper can find us. That’ll make you feel better.”

But I know it won’t.

Chapter Three

The City is dark. Always dark. I am street level, not hovering above, omnipresent. I am walking down a side road, my boots wet
from the damp sidewalks. It has just rained, and puddles are scattered in the dimpled places where the pavement isn’t quite even. I know where I am going, yet I don’t know where I am going. Something tugs me toward the barrier, past the towering scrap metal guard stations that remind me of the parapets of a castle.

The barrier is the edge of our City,
heavily guarded and definitely off-limits. Gates lead to the outside, but they haven’t opened in years. No one leaves the City. There is undeveloped nothingness beyond here, an undesirable and uninhabited wasteland that we are forbidden to see or know too much about. Everyone, Seer and Citizen alike, is taught from a young age that beyond our great City lies a terrible threat, and a world of nothingness that will suck you in and never spit you back out. No one ever approaches the barricades. No one ever has a reason to wander anywhere near the perimeter of the City. Until now.

Everything is quiet, like I have gone deaf. I cannot hear the rain, or the surge of electricity pumped through the barbed wire spirals that line the top of the barrier wall, but I know they are both there. It’s eerie not being able to hear anything. It’s like I’m underwater and everything is so muted and silent that I can’t discern my own thoughts.

But, I do hear a voice—the voice of a young man.

“Beatrice…Beatrice…”

“What?” I whisper, afraid the guard in the tower will hear me and shoot me. There have been stories of Citizens who have gone crazy and run themselves into the fence—a death sentence of its own, as their whole bodies fry and convulse against the lines of metal links.

“Beatrice…”

“WHAT?” I whisper louder, as loud as I can without drawing attention to myself. I shoot a look back to the guard station, but nothing up there moves, so hopefully I am safe. For now.

“Meet me…meet me…”

“Where?”

“Meet me…”

“Why?”

There’s a hesitation between my question and the next words that come from the nothingness around me. “My sister…they killed my little sister. We need your help, Beatrice. We need your help to stop this.”

“You need
me?
”

“Meet me…”

…

“A boy?”

“He sounded older than a boy. Like Gabe’s age.” I look at Gabe when I say that, because of course he is standing behind the Keeper, waiting to hear about my Vision. After our snack, I told Gabe I was going to go back to my bunk to rest before the Training Games. That is when the Vision came.

“And what did he say?” The Keeper types on her digipad, her brows knitted in concern.

“He said to meet him…but he never said where…or why.” Everything is too bright. This Vision hurts my head more than the last. “Can we turn off the lights?”

Gabe hits the button by the door without being told, and the lights flicker off as the window shades close. The digipad is the only thing that glows in the bunk.

“Thanks, Gabe.”

“Meet you? That is rather strange. And you were by the barrier?” The Keeper’s finger pushes here and there on the flat screen.

“Yes, beside a guard station.”

“Mmm.” After typing a few things more, the Keeper’s violet eyes lift away from the digipad and flit to me. “Interesting, Seer Beatrice. Very interesting.” And without mentioning anything else, she leaves, brushing by Gabe as she does so. “You should be hurrying along to the Training Games, shouldn’t you?” But she doesn’t wait for an answer. The “suggestion” is enough.

“Interesting, Seer Beatrice. You should be hurrying along to the Training Games, shouldn’t you?” Gabe mocks the Keeper when she’s out of earshot. He’s dead-on with his impersonation, staunch and stuck-up just like her. “It
is
interesting though. Funny that you should have a Vision that makes absolutely no sense after having one that was almost too clear for your own good.”

“Yeah, I don’t understand it either. I keep hearing him calling me. Even now, after the Vision, I can hear him…”

“You didn’t tell the Keeper that.”

“She didn’t ask, did she?” I smile through the pain in my head.

“No, I guess she didn’t.” Gabe taps his fingers on the frame of the doorway, as if waiting for something. “So, when are you going to get dressed? We have to be at training in…oh, fifteen minutes? And I shouldn’t stick around any longer than I have to.”

I groan since the last thing I want to do with a splitting headache is any extra work. But I have no choice. We have the Training Games today, and if I let my team down and we fail, Team B will never let us get over it and there’s no way I’m going to allow for them to get a one-up on us.

Rolling out of the bed, I stretch my arms over my head and glance into the mirror. My eyes are still glowing, which probably explains why I still hear the echo of my name reverberating through my mind. The Vision doesn’t feel over, but at the same time I know it has to be, or I wouldn’t be able to function. “Fine, fine. I’ll meet you down in the lobby in fifteen.”

“See you there, Bea.” Gabe leaves me to get dressed. I pull on my black jumpsuit and fasten my name tag opposite the violet eye embroidered on the right chest. My black hair is tightly bound in a bun high at the crown of my head. I lace up my knee-high combat boots and head out of the bunk.

The halls of the Institution are all the same: dark with dim bulbs that line the floors, with beams of light striating up the walls. Other Seers, also dressed for the Training Games, are heading in the same direction I am. Every few feet, a new door opens to another bunk, one for each resident. Some doors are still sliding closed, filling the hall with hydraulic hissing that mingles with the other participants’ excited murmuring.

The loudspeaker crackles as the Keeper’s voice echoes through the building. “The Training Games will begin in five minutes. Those players not assembled at that time will forfeit, and their teams will take a point loss.”

Rounding into the lobby, I spot Gabe and jog in his direction. “You ready for this?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. Just remember our new tactics…and stay out of the lights.” Gabe looks at me in concern. Specifically, he looks at my forehead, as if trying to gauge the pain there. “Are you ready, though?”

“Do I have a choice?” I don’t. The Training Games are mandatory, especially now with the City on lockdown.

Our team lines up in pairs in front of a large door marked with a big, silver “A.” Everyone holds a machine gun. Instead of live ammunition, the guns are equipped with laser sights that when aimed and fired send a shock through the opponent’s uniform. The better the shot, the more painful the shock. You are out when you can’t take the pain anymore…in other words, when you are unconscious.

I don’t plan on being unconscious, though. Team A has a pretty good record, truth be told. So far this year we are eighty-three and seven, those seven being the few, rare times that Team B or Team C managed to cut us down. The other teams are classified differently, made up of newer and less-trained Seers. For example, Team A would never go up against Team M, because poor Team M wouldn’t stand a chance in the arena with us. They are still equipped with paintball guns loaded with red pellets that leave nice bruises that take weeks to heal.

Gabriel and I are the last pair to line up. In front of us, a girl named Rachelle turns and smirks. Rachelle is usually the captain for Team B. She has been striving to move up to Team A, doing whatever she can to get the attention of our trainers. Sometimes, she even resorts to dirty tactics, just skirting the definition of “cheating.” Today, they are letting her play on the A team, testing her skills. “You two together again?”

“We were late,” I say defensively.

“Yes.” Gabe replies without any hint of being offended. He smiles at me and warmth floods my cheeks.

The red light over the massive doors begins to rotate, filling the hall with strobes of deep crimson. A loud buzzer goes off somewhere behind where we stand. At the last minute, I pull the sensor vest off the hook on the wall and wiggle it over my head. I’m not thrilled about the Games, especially when something is still pounding from inside my head, as if trying to get out.

“Ugh,” I groan.

“No turning back now, Bea. Just stay out of the light.”

“Yeah, don’t screw it up for us, you hear?” Rachelle throws in for good measure. I hear her, but I certainly do not care. She has no idea how this team runs, and she’s no one to talk to me like that.

I turn to the rest of the team and step up to try and take control of the situation. “Listen up, Team A! We have a lot to prove, and we can’t let Team B beat us. Keep to the shadows as much as you can. We are going to break up today and each go in different directions so they can’t focus on any group of us.” Looking over the gathered Seers, I stare at their helmets, barely able to see their eyes through the tinted visors. I look for my friends, but they blend into the group. “Don’t hesitate. There’s no time for hesitating. Got it?”

They mumble their assent together, and Gabe gives me a thumbs up. His simple gesture fills me with even more confidence than I had before, and I somehow know that we’re going to be okay.

The doors part, screeching under their own weight, and the arena opens before us, a large space with too many walls and too little light. We are dressed in black in order to meld into the shadows. That is where the Dreamcatchers lurk, and in the end, we are being trained to become efficient Dreamcatcher-killing machines.

The arena is constructed around large holo-projectors that recreate any scene they are programmed to display. Sometimes, you can even go into the buildings, the lights shifting so that you are hidden inside, creating walls that almost seem real. The technology probably costs more than the whole Institution itself, and some of it isn’t explainable, not just tricks of lights and mirrors. Other times, when it’s not so serious, a stage is set up with real rooms made from particleboard walls, and we run around practicing hitting one another with our paintball guns, destroying the bland decor and marking it and ourselves with splotches of many different colors of paint.

The ten others in front of us quickly scatter into the maze of towering walls, and Gabe starts to make a run for it as well. I thought we were going to stick together, but when he disappears into the dark I am left alone in the red light.
Damn you, Gabe.
I don’t need him to move forward. I need to protect myself. I heft my weapon, duck, then scurry into the shadows with everyone else.

A large scoreboard strategically hangs from the top center of the arena. Under “A” and “B” there are two red zeroes. I hear someone scream from far to my left and the zero under the “B” changes to a “1.”
Damn it.
They are already winning.

As I run, I nearly trip over a handle on the floor. Dipping into a crouch, I pull on it, opening a trapdoor that leads under the arena. I find this to be fair game. The Institution is always trying to sway the results of the Training Games one way or another, or at least it feels like it most of the time. The Keeper wants to see which of us is strong enough to survive, and she’ll push us to our limits to find out.

Quickly, I drop into the space under the arena and carefully pull the door closed over me. Just in time, too, as the sound of footsteps bangs down on the hatch.

The room is dark, of course, so I flick on the flashlight at the end of my gun, flooding the area with brightness. It’s a tunnel, and where the tunnel leads, I have no idea. I’m at the far end of it, stuck in a corner. Not ideal, especially if someone from Team B found a hatch on their end and is heading in my direction. I have to move.

As I snake through the narrow corridors, I hear people running above me, the soles of their shoes slapping on the ground. Mixed in are muffled screams and the sounds of bodies hitting the floor. Hopefully, we are winning.

At last, I find a place where the floorboards of the arena are loose, allowing a peek up through a crack. It’s enough for me to aim the laser sight of the machine gun through the hole as well, so I crouch down low and switch the light of my gun off. Maybe five minutes have gone by and already it sounds as if seventy-five percent of the players have been rendered unconscious. Footfalls are scarce now, and the arena is eerily silent.

That’s when I hear him.

“Bea? Beatrice! I need your help!”

Gabe.

He needs my help, but I have no idea how to get out of the tunnels. If I go back, I will be running away from the sound of his voice and not toward it. If I go forward, I could end up Maker-knows-where. He is not far away from me either, and it sounds like he is in pain.

“There’s only one more, Bea! Where
are
you?”

I can’t stay trapped in the tunnels the whole time, and I can’t leave Gabriel to be “killed” either, even if he ran off without me.

With the end of my gun, I bash away at the crack in the floor until it splinters open. After a few more adrenaline-powered thrusts, I am able to sling my gun around my back and climb up through the hole. Scrambling to my feet, my head still pounding along with my heart, I start to sprint in the direction of Gabe’s voice.

I am afraid I am lost in the maze of walls when I find him. He is kneeling on the ground, his hands behind his back with a machine gun pointed at his head. And who else but Rachelle is holding the weapon?

She smirks and pushes the end of the gun closer to Gabe. “Bang, bang.” Rachelle squeezes the trigger, and Gabe’s body jolts with electricity. Because of the proximity, it’s enough to knock him into unconsciousness and his body falls forward. Isn’t she supposed to be on our team?

I jerk my gun up and shoot, but it’s too late. I’m filled with an intense shock that brings me to my knees, and my palms hit the floor. I gasp for air and glance up, trying to find the source. It occurs to me that Rachelle is still shooting.