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My hands tremble over my screen. Is he right?
Are we Matching people?
Today is the fifteenth. The Banquet is tonight.
The Official back in the Borough told me that they Match a week before the Banquet. Has that changed? What has happened that would make the Society in such a rush? Data culled so near to the Banquet will be prone to errors because they won’t have much time to check for accuracy.
And besides, the Match Department has its own sorters. The Matches are of paramount importance to the Society. There should be people higher than us to see to it.
Perhaps the Society doesn’t have more time. Perhaps they don’t have enough personnel. Something is happening out there. It almost feels like they’d done the Matching before, but now they have to do it again at the last minute.
Perhaps the data has changed.
If we’re Matching, then the data represents people: eye color, hair color, temperament, favorite leisure activity. What could have changed about so many people so quickly?
Maybe they haven’t changed. Maybe they’re gone.
What could have caused such a decimation
in the Society’s data? Will they have time to make the microcards or will the silver boxes stay empty tonight?
A piece of data comes up and then gets taken down almost before I see it at all.
Like Ky’s face on the microcard that day.
Why try to have the Banquet like this? When the margin of error is so high?
Because the Banquet is the most important celebration in the Society. The Matching is what makes the other ceremonies possible; it’s the Society’s crowning achievement. If they stop having it, even for a month, people will know that something is very, very wrong.
Which is why, I realize, the Rising added the bug, so that some of us could Match incorrectly without getting caught. We’re causing further havoc with an already compromised data set.
“Please stand up,” the Official says. “Take out your tablet containers. ”
I do, and so do the others, faces appearing from behind the partitions, eyes bewildered, expressions worried.
Are you immune? I want to ask them. Are you going to remember this?
Am I?
“Remove the red tablet,” the Official says. “Please wait until an Official is near you to observe you taking the tablet. There’s nothing to worry about. ”
The Officials move through the room. They’re prepared. When someone swallows down a red tablet, the Officials refill the containers right away.
They knew they’d have to use these, at some point, tonight.
Hands to mouths, memories to nothing, red going down.
The little seed of memory floats past again. I have a nagging feeling that it’s something to do with the sort. If I could only remember—
Remember. I hear footsteps on the floor. They’re getting closer to me. I wouldn’t have dared to do this before, but trading with the Archivists has taught me to be stealthy, sleight of hand. I unscrew the lid and slip the paper—remember—into my sleeve.
“Please take the tablet,” the Official tells me.
This isn’t like last time, back in the Borough. The Official standing in front of me isn’t going to look the other way, and there’s no grass beneath my feet to grind the tablet into.
I don’t want to take the tablet. I don’t want to lose my memories.
But perhaps I am immune to the red tablet, like Ky, and Xander, and Indie. I might remember everything.
And, no matter what, I will remember Ky. They’re too late to take him from me.
“Now,” the Official says.
I drop the tablet into my mouth.
It tastes like salt. A drip of sweat running down, or a drop of tears, or, perhaps, a sip of the sea.
CHAPTER 3
KY
The Pilot lives in the Borders, here in Camas.
The Pilot doesn’t live anywhere. He or she is always on the move.
The Pilot’s dead.
The Pilot can’t be killed.
These are the rumors that people whisper in the camp. We don’t know who the Pilot is, or even if the Pilot is male or female, young or old.
Our commanders tell us that the Pilot needs us and can’t do this without us. We’re the ones the Pilot will use to take down the Society—and it’s going to be soon.
But of course the trainees can’t help but talk about the Pilot any chance they get. Some speculate that the Chief Pilot, the one who oversees our training, is the Pilot—the leader of the Rising.
Most of the trainees want to please the Chief Pilot so badly you can feel it rolling off them in waves. I don’t care. I’m not in the Rising because of the Pilot. I’m here because of Cassia.
