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“I thought they were your friends.”
Raffe stops walking. “Just because we’re all from Tosu City doesn’t make us friends. I don’t know about you, but friendship is a luxury I’ve never had time for. I was too busy beating out my competition to get here.”
I can’t help but wonder about Raffe’s words as we walk across campus. Friendship is something I’ve always taken for granted. In Five Lakes, we competed to be the best in the class, but we all worked hard to get along. It’s impossible for me to imagine growing up without Daileen’s whispered confidences or Tomas’s kind understanding. Are the people here in Tosu City so different that they don’t place value on that kind of connection? Or maybe Raffe is just using this opportunity to gain my sympathy in hopes of using it later.
Naomy and Stacia are waiting outside the library when we arrive. I introduce them to Raffe. If either of them is surprised that I brought a noncolony student with me, they don’t show it. The four of us go into the well-lit library, pick a table in the back corner of the main study room, and get to work.
Several upper-year students and professors take notice of us, but none seem to be surprised or unhappy with the group study session. Nothing could be more natural than students working together to succeed. When I convince Tomas to join us, no one will think twice about his addition. At least, that’s what I hope.
In between discussing how much history was lost when computer networks were destroyed, we talk about ourselves. Raffe mentions he is the youngest son of the director of education for the United Commonwealth. Of the seven children in his family, six were accepted to the University. Naomy says she’s envious of large families. While her parents were proud of her being selected for The Testing, they couldn’t quite hide their sadness at the prospect of saying goodbye to their only child.
“At least you got to sleep in a bed growing up,” I say. “I shared a room with my four brothers. All of them snore.”
As we fetch books and look up information, we do something more important. We laugh. It feels good. Normal. Happy. How long has it been since I felt either of those things? Even Stacia, who is usually so reserved, unbends enough to talk about her little brother, Nate, who was born too early and as a result learns slower than his classmates. She wonders how he is doing now that she isn’t there to help him with his schoolwork and keep the other kids from teasing him. “Dad and Mom don’t always have enough time to spend with him.”
Stacia shrugs off the hand Raffe places on her shoulder and changes the subject, asking me to help her find a book. The two of us climb the stairs to the second floor. Several heads turn our way. Stacia studies them before leading me down a row of medical texts. Under her breath, she quickly tells me about the Medical Induction, where first years were asked to select the correct treatments for a dozen common diseases with the help of a medical textbook. Once answers were given, each student was taken to a treatment room. On the table inside, twelve sets of medications sat waiting to be dispensed to patients who, one by one, walked through the door. The medication inside the cup representing the correct answer was a placebo. Wrong answers contained poison.
“The final years made us watch each patient take their medication. They wanted to test our confidence in diagnosis and our ability to cope with losing a patient. I guess some people have trouble living with a mistake that causes someone else to die. Anyone who demonstrated psychological unfitness or gave more than two incorrect answers was Redirected.”
Bile rises in my throat. “The patients didn’t actually die, right?” It would be almost impossible for Dr. Barnes to explain that kind of loss of life or get officials to volunteer for that kind of job.
Stacia shrugs. “The one I lost looked dead, but I was instructed not to touch a patient after treatment had been dispensed. So anything is possible.”
Stacia is driven and sometimes aloof. Of all of the colony students, she has always accepted the challenges we face with calm resolve. But the fisted hands and tightening of her jaw when she speaks of death and the three students who her head of residence said were Redirected to work in the colonies indicate worry she has never mentioned. For some reason, seeing Stacia unnerved is more disturbing than if she had maintained her stoic resolve.
The overhead light catches the bracelet on her wrist. In the center of it is a symbol I remember seeing in Dr. Flint’s house. A snake coiled around a staff. Dr. Flint had it displayed in the room he used to treat patients. When I asked him about the design, he said it was the ancient symbol for medicine. However, unlike Dr. Flint’s version, this one has what looks to be a second snake coiled underneath it, ready to strike. After hearing Stacia talk about the Induction, I can see why this symbol was chosen to represent her.
I quickly answer Stacia’s questions about my Induction experience before grabbing a book and heading back down the stairs to join the others.
The next day’s classes get harder. Professors collect our homework. Several give quizzes to assess our level of understanding of the basic material. Others announce that tests on more advanced concepts will be given the following week.
I pass more notes during class Wednesday. Tomas’s note instructs him to wait to join the group until the following week. By then I am hoping people will be so used to seeing the group they won’t be surprised by the addition of one more. In the evening Stacia, Naomy, Raffe, and Vic meet me at the same library table we occupied the night before. We don’t all have the same assignments to complete, but we still work together. Help each other out when one needs someone to double-check a chemistry formula or proofread a sentence—like I used to do with Tomas during our Early Studies classes.
Thursday’s classes are more of the same. Assignments collected. Lectures on important literature, basic cell engineering, and the equilibrium properties of alloy systems. We are told the classroom buildings will be open over the next few days so we can use the labs and the resources in the rooms to complete our projects. I do, never forgetting my other projects. The one I vowed to help Michal with and the one that circles my wrist. As I work on a pulse radio assignment, I think I might know a way to address the second.
By Monday, the strain of the workload shows on almost every first year’s face. Too much reading. Too little
sleep. Worry about the cost of failure shows in red-rimmed eyes and tense smiles. The exercises I have started doing alone in my rooms to regain my muscle strength have helped me fare better than some. Still, I find myself soaking a cloth in cold water and putting it across my eyes to hide the fatigue brought about by late work nights and dreams filled with disturbing images.
I pull myself out of sleep after every dream and sit in the dark, trying to decide if the smell of the blood and the sound of the bullet leaving the gun are simple nightmares or Testing memories lurking in my subconscious. If only I can find the key to unlock them.
I pass more notes, and our study group grows in number. Enzo joins us. As do Brick and a Tosu City Biological Engineering student named Aram. Internship assignments are postponed for another week. The tension builds.
Enzo starts walking with me to class. He is the one who spots Damone trailing behind us. When I look back, Damone stares at me. The next day, Enzo and I leave the building earlier, but still Damone is there. Watching. I notice the lock on my door is scuffed and scraped. Nothing inside the room is missing. No cameras have been added, but I can’t help feeling that someone has been inside. I sleep with a chair propped under the door handle and jump at every sound in the night as I lie awake—wondering if Symon’s faction of rebels has found a way to end The Testing without bloodshed or if war is coming while the rest of my classmates sleep, unknowing, in their beds.
I pass another note to Tomas, asking him to join us and sharing the idea that I have. When he walks up to the library table where we are gathered, the shadows in his eyes have faded, replaced by a hint of excitement.
For a while, he works next to me in silence. When some of our study companions begin to work together on assignments, Tomas turns to me and asks, “Did you finish the transmitter assignment yet?”
No one at the table is in our class. They have no idea what assignments we are working on. So I dig through my bag, pull out a piece of paper, and say, “I have a couple of ideas written down.”
While conversations about physics and literature swirl around us, I show Tomas my idea for an external transmitter that would be set to the same frequency as the one in our bracelets. In theory, the external transmitter would create enough interference that the signal from the device in the bracelet would be drowned out. Whoever was monitoring on the other end would read the problem as natural signal obstruction instead of tampering.
Tomas grins, helps perfect my design, and suggests we make extra transmitters to scatter around campus so other students’ signals experience the same technical difficulties. By the time we pack up our books for the night, we have a workable plan in place. When I get back to the residence, I head for the labs and get to work. I find a variety of resistors, batteries, capacitors, wire, coils, and transistors in the lab’s supply cabinet. My eyes are tired and my fingers cramped by the time I have assembled and tested five two-inch-long, one-inch-wide transmitters. I have also created a small receiver set on a different frequency that will light up when I flip a small switch. Now I will be able to signal to Tomas if I need his help. I hide one blocking transmitter behind a portrait in the currently empty hangout room before going upstairs to bed.
During classes the next day, I hide three of the transmitters on campus. When Tomas and I cross paths, I give him the receiver and an update on where I’ve hidden my transmitters. Tomorrow he will hide his. At dinner, an announcement is made. The internships will be assigned on Friday.
When Friday dawns, the first years and our guides are asked to assemble in the gathering room after breakfast. Most are dressed in their finest clothes. Boys wearing jackets. Girls in gauzy dresses. I did not bring fancy clothes with me for The Testing, so I am dressed in brown pants, a turquoise shirt, and my scuffed boots. Instead of pulling back my hair, I brush it until it gleams, like my mother did when I was little. Since I am more than happy to let officials track my movements today, I leave my transmitter hidden under my mattress when I go downstairs to learn what my assignment will be.
