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The boy in the green ATV put his machine in reverse, but his wheels locked up. He unstrapped his harness and started to lift out of his seat. The orange ATV had become a 500-pound missile. It landed hard and bounced once, turning on its side as it flew forward. In less time than it took the crew-cut boy to blink, the roll bar caught him in the chest, knocking him fifteen yards down the track. He landed like a heavy sack, blood pouring from his mouth. The green and orange machines crumpled together in a single, smoking heap.
Meed glanced around the oval. In every direction, ATVs littered the track, but none of them were moving. She tested her throttle to see if her machine had anything left. It lurched forward, shaky and sputtering. There was a loud scraping noise from underneath, metal on metal. Meed worked the clutch and the shift lever. The whole transmission felt balky. It felt like she had only one gear left. But that was one more than anybody else had. She knew that all she needed to do to secure the win was to thread through the smoke and the wrecks and cross a white line fifty yards ahead.
Mead revved her engine. The sound reverberated around the track like a wounded animal. Every spectator and driver turned in her direction, expecting her to roll forward. The instructor on his platform readied the blue flare to signal victory.
Instead, Meed swerved directly across the track and bounced onto the infield. It was twenty yards to the medical tent. When she got there, she jumped out of her seat and ran to the open side—just as Irina burst out.
Irina’s driving suit was torn and stained with grass and blood. Her eyes were wild. Meed leaned forward, exhaling a sigh of relief. Irina grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her up, and shook her hard.
“Why didn’t youfinish?!” Irina shouted into Meed’s face.“Why??”
Meed stared back in stunned silence. She realized that she had no answer—at least not an answer that Irina would ever accept.
CHAPTER 48
IN THE SMOKEY aftermath of the race, Meed and Irina headed across the rutted track toward the school. They walked side by side, but not speaking. Irina could barelylookat her partner. All around the dirt oval, students stood on top of their wrecks or tried to rock them upright. One boy kicked his dead machine with his boot, again and again. Two boys with huge wrenches had already started to cannibalize parts.
Several students sat on the grass while medics tended to bloody gashes and twisted limbs. Meed looked to the left, where the boy from the green machine lay still on the grass, a blanket pulled over his face, his crew cut showing at the top. His hands, now bluish-white, were clawed at his sides.
Meed yanked off her gloves and wiped the mud from her face with the back of her hand. Irina pulled a few stray strands of grass from her jet-black hair. She was limping slightly, but Meed knew better than to offer help, even when they reached the rise that separated the track complex from the main campus. She slowed down to match Irina’s pace.
When they crested the hill and looked down the other side, they saw Kamenev standing at the edge of the main schoolyard, hands behind his back. It was not unusual to see the headmaster outside, especially on the day of a major event. The girls nodded respectfully as they approached. Then it became clear that Kamenev was not just out for a stroll. He was waiting for them. Meed and Irina stopped, suddenly nervous.
“I see you both survived,” said Kamenev.
“We both failed,” said Irina—brutally honest, as always.
Meed looked down, not wanting to make things worse. No use in trying to explain her motivation at the end of the race—why concern for her partner was more important to her than winning. That was a conversation she could never have, not with anybody at school. And definitely not with Kamenev. But the headmaster did not seem concerned with the outcome of the race. He pulled a folder from behind his back.
“This is your final test,” he said.
Meed and Irina looked at each other, hearts pounding. From the age of five, they had been told this moment would come. They just didn’t know exactly when or how it would happen. But they instantly knew what it meant.
With those five simple words from the headmaster, they understood that their classwork was over, competitions done, a lifetime of training complete. There was only one more thing to accomplish. The last assignment. The final test.
Over the years, Meed had managed to tease out a few details about finals from Lyudmila Garin during her piano lessons. She knew that every final was different, meant to reveal each student’s strengths and weaknesses. Some finals were solos, others paired. Meed glanced over at Irina and felt a sense of relief. In spite of their conflict over the race, there was nobody alive that she trusted more. Nobody had more determination.
If they’d been assigned to their final as a team, Meed had no doubt that they would both succeed, no matter how impossible the task appeared.
“There’s a village six miles to the east, over the mountain,” said Kamenev. “A matter there has been festering for years. It needs to be cleaned up once and for all.”
A village? To Meed, it felt odd to realize that there was any other kind of civilization nearby. For as long as she could remember, all she had known of the world was what she experienced at school and what she’d seen in videos and photographs. There had been nothing else. No other contact. The final was a huge step from theory to reality. Meed knew that it was meant to be disruptive, even shocking. Students never spoke about a final test after it was completed. That was an ironclad law. But she knew that they came back changed—and that, soon after, they usually left the school for good.
Kamenev held out the dossier. Irina took it and opened it. Meed leaned in to see the contents. She had expected a complex file, filled with data and background information. It was nothing like that. The file was bare bones. A simple hand-drawn map was clipped to the inside cover. A single sheet of paper showed an address and photo scans of two people. Just faces. A man and a woman. Total strangers. There were no names on the paper, just four digits and a letter, repeated twice. The assignment codes. Meed knew the codes. They were death warrants.
Meed felt her adrenaline start to pump as her mind shifted. Sheforcedit to shift. Because whoever these people were, they were not human to her anymore. They couldn’t be. They were simply targets.
“Final test accepted?” asked Kamenev.
Both girls nodded.
“I need to hear it,” Kamenev said.
“Final test accepted,” said Irina, closing the folder.
“Final test accepted,” said Meed softly.
Meed understood that there would be no further clarifications or explanations. They had the assignment. The rest was theirs to decide. She knew that from this point on, anything they asked would receive the same reply: “Wrong question.”
