percentage of the cells in my arms, legs, and torso will end up like that by tomorrow. Sometimes I wish anatomy class had been less graphic.
We divide into groups of five, each of which gets a hundred-meter-long straightaway to work with. The original circular track disappears, and neon lights indicate the new paths.
We sprint. We hop on one foot, back on the other. We crawl on hands and knees, and crawl on one hand. We tackle cartwheels, roundoffs, and forward rolls with varying degrees of success.
“This is how you get in shape!” Yinha hollers as motivation.
By the time the cooldown run arrives, my kneecaps pound and the room around me jolts with every step.
Copper Head finishes a full five seconds before everyone else and jogs around Yinha, avoiding her eyes.
Who is he? The day he came for Mom, I was too upset to identify him using the voice-recognition software on my handscreen. I’ll learn his name soon enough—but more important, how do I reach his level?
6
THE MESS HALL’S THICK TABLES ARE EMPTY when the ravenous trainees troop inside for dinner. I sit near the end of the room with Nash and two other girls, my back against the wall.
“You following me again?” Nash says.
I shake my head and drop my gaze to the tabletop, wishing Umbriel could back up my denial. No, I wish I were home with my family, or in the Phi complex. Anywhere but here, surrounded by hot glares that could incinerate me at any moment.
On my right is a sensor for my thumb. I scan myself in; the little bar on the top reads, THETA, PHAET. 2,650 KILOCALORIE DIET.
“Leave the kid alone, Nash,” the lovely girl across from me says. Her skin is bronze and freckled, her hair is wavy and black, and her eyes are shot through with gold. “She’s probably my little sister’s age. Chitra’s terrified of boys, and we’re about to see boys with guns. ”
Biting back a laugh, I decide I like her wit.
Nash scowls. “Itty snob. Look, Vinasa, she’s ignoring us, like we’re not worth her breath.”
No, that’s not it. I shake my head, panicked, but Nash has turned her attention elsewhere.
The tables rumble as decades-old conveyor belts carry our personalized meals from the walls to our seats—it’s nothing like having Mom ladle vegetables onto our plates and watching Anka wrinkle her nose if she smells horseradish or okra. Are they missing me like I miss them?
The square section of plastic before me tucks itself away, revealing hot food in a circular compartmentalized tray that rises and screeches into place. Dinner is knobs of whole grain bread and a vegetable soup with bits of lab-grown beef drifting in the hearty broth; dessert is a personal cantaloupe, a new fruit the size of an orange with skin that peels away just as easily. Cygnus and Anka would be jealous, not because of the food’s quality—Mom could make even an underripe eggplant taste delectable—but its quantity. I’m going to finish every last crumb of bread, every last drop of soup, and my cantaloupe too.
“I don’t care where I place, or how much Defense pays me,” the short girl sitting across from me is saying to Vinasa, who compared me to her little sister. She has white skin and hair as orange as a marigold blossom, cropped short like Cygnus’s. “Actually, I’d rather rank low so they don’t put me on Earth recon.”
Earth recon missions are unpopular but necessary assignments for high-ranking soldiers. From what I’ve read in the Luna Daily , Battery Bay and Pacifia have more problems between them now that we leave them alone—but we make a point of keeping an eye on them. My Earth Studies teacher once joked that the two cities are like teenage lovers: fickle, silly, bickering. They float atop the ocean, sometimes chasing each other and sometimes speeding in opposite directions. They’ve each tried to get as many other countries on their side as possible; now, most of the planet’s population belongs to one of the alliances.
Vinasa swallows
We divide into groups of five, each of which gets a hundred-meter-long straightaway to work with. The original circular track disappears, and neon lights indicate the new paths.
We sprint. We hop on one foot, back on the other. We crawl on hands and knees, and crawl on one hand. We tackle cartwheels, roundoffs, and forward rolls with varying degrees of success.
“This is how you get in shape!” Yinha hollers as motivation.
By the time the cooldown run arrives, my kneecaps pound and the room around me jolts with every step.
Copper Head finishes a full five seconds before everyone else and jogs around Yinha, avoiding her eyes.
Who is he? The day he came for Mom, I was too upset to identify him using the voice-recognition software on my handscreen. I’ll learn his name soon enough—but more important, how do I reach his level?
6
THE MESS HALL’S THICK TABLES ARE EMPTY when the ravenous trainees troop inside for dinner. I sit near the end of the room with Nash and two other girls, my back against the wall.
“You following me again?” Nash says.
I shake my head and drop my gaze to the tabletop, wishing Umbriel could back up my denial. No, I wish I were home with my family, or in the Phi complex. Anywhere but here, surrounded by hot glares that could incinerate me at any moment.
On my right is a sensor for my thumb. I scan myself in; the little bar on the top reads, THETA, PHAET. 2,650 KILOCALORIE DIET.
“Leave the kid alone, Nash,” the lovely girl across from me says. Her skin is bronze and freckled, her hair is wavy and black, and her eyes are shot through with gold. “She’s probably my little sister’s age. Chitra’s terrified of boys, and we’re about to see boys with guns. ”
Biting back a laugh, I decide I like her wit.
Nash scowls. “Itty snob. Look, Vinasa, she’s ignoring us, like we’re not worth her breath.”
No, that’s not it. I shake my head, panicked, but Nash has turned her attention elsewhere.
The tables rumble as decades-old conveyor belts carry our personalized meals from the walls to our seats—it’s nothing like having Mom ladle vegetables onto our plates and watching Anka wrinkle her nose if she smells horseradish or okra. Are they missing me like I miss them?
The square section of plastic before me tucks itself away, revealing hot food in a circular compartmentalized tray that rises and screeches into place. Dinner is knobs of whole grain bread and a vegetable soup with bits of lab-grown beef drifting in the hearty broth; dessert is a personal cantaloupe, a new fruit the size of an orange with skin that peels away just as easily. Cygnus and Anka would be jealous, not because of the food’s quality—Mom could make even an underripe eggplant taste delectable—but its quantity. I’m going to finish every last crumb of bread, every last drop of soup, and my cantaloupe too.
“I don’t care where I place, or how much Defense pays me,” the short girl sitting across from me is saying to Vinasa, who compared me to her little sister. She has white skin and hair as orange as a marigold blossom, cropped short like Cygnus’s. “Actually, I’d rather rank low so they don’t put me on Earth recon.”
Earth recon missions are unpopular but necessary assignments for high-ranking soldiers. From what I’ve read in the Luna Daily , Battery Bay and Pacifia have more problems between them now that we leave them alone—but we make a point of keeping an eye on them. My Earth Studies teacher once joked that the two cities are like teenage lovers: fickle, silly, bickering. They float atop the ocean, sometimes chasing each other and sometimes speeding in opposite directions. They’ve each tried to get as many other countries on their side as possible; now, most of the planet’s population belongs to one of the alliances.
Vinasa swallows
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