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“Bottoms up,” she said, and started gulping.
I stuck my nose into the top of the glass. It smelled like compost.
“Now,Doctor,” she said. Her glass was already empty.
I could feel grit and chunks in my throat as the slime went down. I could see Meed—or whatever her name was—staring at me, hands on her hips. In a few seconds, it was over. I shoved the glass back across the counter.
“That’s vile,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I could feel the mess churning in my stomach, threatening to come back up.
“Get used to it,” said Meed. She slapped her hands together. “Anyway, time to get started!”
“Started with what?” I asked. I was feeling weak and queasy. And her enthusiasm made me nervous.
“Training, Doctor,” she said. She walked around to my side of the counter and poked me hard in the belly. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re not exactly in Wheaties-box shape.”
That poke was all it took. I hunched over and vomited my entire green smoothie into the sink.
CHAPTER 7
Eastern Russia
25 Years Ago
FIVE A.M. A line of groggy, sullen five-year-old girls shuffled down the stone corridor from the dormitory toward the dining hall. Teenage hall monitors in blue uniforms were stationed along the way. At the back of the line, the copper-haired girl followed along, eyes down. Her mind was dull, but not from sleep. She had simply found a way to turn herself off. Every day, she ate her meals, learned her lessons, did her chores. But she wasn’t really there. At least not in her head.
Suddenly, there was a new sound in the hall. Piano music. Complex and dramatic. It echoed off the stone walls and filled the corridor. The copper-haired girl looked up. It was like nothing she had ever heard. Something in her brain woke up. There were speakers everywhere in the school buildings, but the music was coming from somewhere else, close by. It didn’t sound like a recording. Someone was playing it live, right now.
The girl turned her head from side to side, trying to figure out where the music was coming from. As she passed a doorway, she paused and stood on tiptoe to look through the thick glass pane. Inside the small room, a woman was hunched over an upright piano. It was Miss Garin, the matron. She looked lost in her own world, rocking slowly, her fingers flying back and forth across the keys. The girl stood, transfixed, as the line moved ahead without her. A moment later, she felt a knee in her back.
“Move it!” the monitor growled.
The girl doubled her pace to catch up to the others. Suddenly, a dark-haired girl darted away from the front of the line. She ran to the wall and pulled herself up onto a stone window ledge. The copper-haired girl recognized her right away. Her name was Irina. She slept in the next cot but never spoke to anybody. She had dark, flashing eyes and a face that looked angry even when she was sleeping.
One of the male monitors lunged for her. Irina already had one leg out of the window bars, and she looked skinny enough to slide the rest of her body through. The boy grabbed her trailing leg and wrapped his thick arm around her waist. He pulled her down and slammed her onto the floor like a slab of meat. The other girls winced at the sound of it. Irina stood up slowly, rubbing her side. The monitor slapped her on the cheek, sending her back down to her knees. Irina didn’t cry. She barely flinched. She just stared back at him and slowly stood up again.
“To the back!” the monitor shouted into Irina’s face, spittle flying.
Irina wiped his saliva off her chin and walked slowly past the long row of stunned, silent girls until she was next to the copper-haired girl, the last in line. Instinctively, without thinking, the girl reached out to hold Irina’s hand. She squeezed it tight. Irina squeezed back—so hard it hurt.
CHAPTER 8
Chicago
I WAS BEGINNING to feel like a science experiment. Meed had me standing in the workout area in just my shorts and new training shoes, with electrodes connected to my bare chest and a blood-pressure cuff around my left biceps. She reached into a metal instrument drawer and pulled out a pair of creepy-looking black pincers. My heart started speeding until I realized that they were skin calipers. She pinched the loose folds on my chest, belly, and right thigh. She checked the gauge and shook her head.
“Twenty-two percent,” she said. “I need you under ten.”
Besides exercise equipment, the workout area was filled with high-tech medical gear. The university clinic would have been jealous. After my body-fat shaming, Meed did a pulmonary function test and a flexibility assessment. Both results were disappointing. She wasn’t surprised.
“That’s what happens when you spend ninety percent of your existence sitting on your ass,” she said. “That’s about to change. Big time.”
She sat me down on the weight bench, then tied an elastic band around my biceps. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a plastic packet with a small syringe inside. I twisted away. She yanked me back.
“Quit moving,” she said, in that low, even voice. I didn’t want to get punched again, but I really hated needles.
“What are youdoing?” I asked. I was squirming. She tightened her grip and tore open the packet with her teeth. She curled my fingers into a fist.
“What do youthinkI’m doing?” she said. “I’m turning you into a heroin addict.”
