Chapter 2

I leave the study room with Rosalin and we walk to the cafeteria together, a babble of voices around us.

“Look it’s beauty and the beast!” a voice says behind us. “Right carrot top? Sucks getting hit with the ugly stick, doesn’t it?”

I turn to Yakov. He’s a skinny, dark haired boy with a wide nose and a crooked tooth that sits in his mouth like a fang. He always looks like he’s snarling.

“Back off,” I say. “We didn’t ask your opinion.”

“Ooooh, did I offend you?” His eyebrows shoot up and he wiggles his fingers at us.

“Clearly you haven’t looked in a mirror lately, Mr. Snaggle Tooth.” I retort.

Yakov’s face darkens. “Yeah, well at least I can fix my tooth. You’ll be ugly forever.”

“You’re such an idiot,” I retort. “Go pick on someone else.”

“Or you’ll what?” he taunts. “You’ll tell on me?” He laughs.

“You piece of-“

Rosalin pulls me away before I can finish and it’s just as well. Head is standing by the cafeteria entrance glaring at us. We’re not being good citizens.

“Arela,” he says as I walk by. “Watch that attitude. Your credit limit-”

Osiris currency is entirely digital and controlled by the policy department. Minors earn one credit a day unless the proctors withhold them for punishment and I’ve been punished a lot.

“Yes sir.” I duck my head, not willing to antagonize him. A flare of anger rises in my belly and I think about stomping on his shiny black-booted toes. I feel a bit better thinking about him hopping around on one foot and almost laugh out loud.

“What?” Rosalin asks. She looking at me curiously.

“Nothing,” I say and we pick up our trays from the metal dispenser near the entrance to the room. The food is delivered from an unseen kitchen, luke warm and rubberized. Vegan-meat, green beans and white pudding. They’re supposed to look like real beans, the kind that grew on stalks before the collision, but these look more like lumpy clots of grass. And they’ll probably taste just as appetizing.

“I wish we could grow real food,” I say as we find a table.

Rosaline pushes the beans across her plate. “If we can find the right string sequence we could recreate the DNA of beans and grow them in the green house. They just haven’t figured it out yet.”

I’m always surprised when Rosalin talks about science or mathematics. She says she’s not interested in complex algorithms or formulas but if it’s plant related she soaks it up like… well like the spongy pudding on my plate.

“They better put you in horticulture or we’ll eat mush for the rest of our lives,” I say and stuff a chunk of the meat in my mouth.

Jaela and Jacobo sit down at the table opposite us. Jacobo sticks his nose so close to the pudding I think he’s going to lick it.

“Don’t you think it smells like dirty socks?” he asks. His hair is a dark explosion of curls and his amber eyes look cat like. Not pet cat - the cats from the African Sahara.

Jaela elbows him. She can. She’s technically older, even if it’s only by two minutes and eleven seconds. She’s the female version of her twin, all dark curls and long limbs.

“Just eat it,” she says. She bosses him around, making up for their missing mother. I secretly think she likes being the one in charge and wouldn’t know what to do if their parents were still alive.

Their parents died in a freak monorail accident years ago. A Resolutionist group detonated a bomb on the track and the entire train dropped three stories, killing everyone on board. I found a brief article about the attack and the subsequent exile of the only convicted attacker. The woman was sentenced and exiled four days after the bombing. There was no name and no photo in the files.

Now the twins live at TWOC with us, the rag tag crew of misfits. I sometimes think of us as a band of circus performers and the twins are the lion tamers of the group. Jaela really knows how to crack a whip.

“Hey, check it out.” Jacobo points his fork to the back of the room where Head is standing next to another man. The unidentified man is short by Osiris standards, less than five foot four. His dark hair is teased high in the front, as if the extra inch will make up for his lack of height. His face is long and a bulge of fat encases his chin. While his suit is green, it’s finely cut and gives off a satiny sheen. I’ve never seen someone so well dressed and certainly not inside TWOC. The welfare unit is on the outer edge of the city, in between the residential quarters and the abandoned section near the wall. The building is utilitarian and while the sturdy construct sits solidly on it’s foundations, the walls now have a weary cast, the furniture is battered and lines of rust creep in from the corners. It’s not an attractive place and we don’t get many visitors. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a new face inside the cafeteria.

The strange man and Head are surveying the room like they’re counting stacks of credits. The unidentified man nods and turns to Head. They talk for a moment, shake hands and the man walks out of the room. Head lingers, watching the children eat and a shiver runs down my back. He looks like a black spider poised over a deliciously bundled dinner, pinchers ready to dig in. I turn back to Jacobo.

“Who was that?” I ask.

“Never seen him.”

“I have,” says Jaela. “He comes in every few months. Looks at the kids and leaves. It’s weird.”

“How do you know all this and I don’t,” Jacobo says. I want to ask the same thing but I know why I haven’t seen him before. I haven’t spent a lot of time lingering in the TWOC hallways lately.

“Because I pay attention,” Jaela says.

Jacobo makes a face at her and she swats him.

“Is he from the allocation department?” Rosalin asks. “Maybe he’s evaluating us for the allotments.”

“He’s definitely in policy,” Jacobo says.

“And high up too,” Jaela adds. “Did you see the pin on his collar. That’s ruling party status.”

“Maybe a highborn,” Jacobo says and it’s like they’re having a conversation without us. I often wonder if they even talk out loud when we’re not around. It doesn’t seem like they need to.

“If he was highborn, why would he be slumming around here?” I ask. “They don’t come past the five hundreds.”

“I’m sure you could find out for us,” Jaela says and raises and eyebrow at me. It’s true. I have a knack for digging up information. I’ve hacked into most of the Osiris networks and once I’m in, it’s easy to find what I’m looking for.

“I’ll see what I can find,” I say.

“Arela,” Rosalin looks at me seriously, her smile gone. She’s sitting on the bottom bunk with mouse on her lap. He’s cleaning his whiskers and ignoring our conversation. I’m standing in the middle of the room, feeling defensive. We’ve had this argument before. Rosalin thinks I take too many risks exploring the city, hacking into mod terminals and other systems. She thinks I’m not upholding my promise to be a worthy citizen.

“What if they catch you?” she prods me. “We have allocations in two months and you need the credits. We’re still five hundred short for our apartment deposit. You want us and mouse living on the street?”

“They won’t throw us out,” I say.

Rosalin and I turn fifteen in December, the age when minors are allocated a profession and integrated into the community. Technically, we’re going from one set of rules to another, but at least we’ll be out from under Head’s lecherous watching. We’ll have our own apartment and a job to go to.

“If they catch you they’ll hold you back, or it could be worse than that. What if they exile you?”

“Exile me?” I scoff. “That’s extreme.”

“But what if they do? You are not allowed to leave me here by myself.” She makes a comically sad face, but I can tell she’s still being serious.

I scoop mouse off her laps and plop down on the bed beside her. I hold the little creature up so I can look at him face on. His black eyes follow me in a steady, curious way. He twitches his nose.

“See? Mouse doesn’t look worried,” I say. I turn mouse’s face toward her. “Don’t worry Rosalin,” I say in a high-pitched voice and grin at my own silliness.

“Arela,” Rosalin says. “I’m not taking advice from a mouse.”

“Ok,” I say and lower mouse into my own lap. “Take it from me then. You don’t have to worry.”

Rosalin sighs. “Fine.”

“So, “ I say brightly. It’s time to change the subject. “Where do you think they’ll put you? In the green house?”

“I don’t think I’ll be that lucky,” she says. “They’ll probably allocate me to the fabric crew. I heard they need more people on the threading machines and you know, I’m the right size for that.”

She’s talking about the machinery that cuts and sews the city’s clothing - shoes, pants, shirts, and jackets – all in blue or green. The factory churns out enough to dress the entire population, but it doesn’t happen smoothly. Thread breaks, material jams and they need people slight enough to climb into the machines and untangle everything. I know the machines are dangerous, they unjam while workers are inside and skewer or crush them, but I don’t say this to Rosalin.

“What about you?” she asks.

I think about it for a moment. I’m torn about my allocation. I know I’m mathematical enough for programming or policy but I want something exciting. Emergency crew or patrol, an allocation that allows me freedom to access the city without sneaking around. I’m connected to the physical structure of the metropolis in a way I can’t explain. I love exploring the abandoned buildings and leaning from rooftop barriers to drink in the sweeping views. I know every fire escape in the city.

“I wish we were allowed to do more than one,” I say. “Think how boring it will be, doing the same thing every day.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad if it’s something you like doing,” Rosalin says. She’s looking at her collection of plants in the corner. She’s collected them for years, nurtured them into a small but ferociously abundant garden. Although we’re technically not allowed personal items in our room, the cleaning crew has turned a blind eye to Rosalin’s fetish.
“But what if they allocate you to something you hate? Then what?”

Rosalin looks back at me. “They take our requests into consideration. It’s not like they intentionally place you in something you don’t want to do. That violates the code.”
“But what about all the horrible jobs, like clean up and credit counting. I’d rather die than do those.”

“Don’t joke,” Rosalin says. “Every job helps the community. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t work together.”

I roll my eyes. She’s an eager Osiris citizen ready to do her part and I’m totally selfish.

The lights flicker once. Rosalin takes mouse from my lap and lowers him gently into the top draw of our dresser.

“Will you at least promise be careful?” she asks. “Mouse and I will miss you, if anything happens.”

“I’m always careful,” I answer, knowing that sometimes I’m not.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3