The Outcast Ones Read online

  My eyes go wide with disbelief and I gasp, alarmed. Immediately, D523’s gaze locks onto mine, but she doesn’t seem shocked, just annoyed like always.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss at her.

  “I’m adjusting his nutrition.” She shrugs, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

  “But the program is suggesting something different.”

  “Then the program is wrong.”

  “The system doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “It does too, and you know it.” She is vehement, still fixing me with her eyes.

  My heart rate begins to climb. I’m almost frantic. I look around the room full of people. Did anyone hear us? But no. They are all staring at their screens, almost lifeless. B269 is waiting for his food. I confirm the program’s selection.

  “Why?” I whisper in D523’s direction.

  “It’s called rebellion,” she whispers back, conspiratorially.

  It takes my breath away. Rebellion means danger. Means war. Laws are there to be followed. They protect us.

  Disturbed, I shake my head. “Please don’t do that. It’s wrong.”

  She lays a hand on my arm. What’s she doing that for? We’re not supposed to touch each other. “The Legion is wrong. They’re deceiving us. What they say—it’s not true.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They don’t let us be human. We can’t make our own decisions. We’re not allowed to think or feel.”

  “That’s not true!” I don’t want her to say such awful things about the people who keep us alive.

  “Really? Why were you rebellious, then?”

  Completely bewildered, I stare at her wide-eyed. “I wasn’t! I would never!”

  I was too loud. D375 turns in his first-row seat and eyes us suspiciously. Quickly we both yank our attention back to the screens in front of us. I confirm the program’s selection without even looking at it.

  My heart’s racing. How can she even say such a thing? I’m not a rebel. I would never do anything against the Legion. The safety zone is my home. The only safe place in this world. I’m glad to be here.

  “You didn’t shoot at me. You disobeyed their order because you knew it was wrong. That’s the only reason you’re here. People like you and me...they want us on ice.”

  I hold my breath and in my head, the scene in the arena plays over. My reluctance to shoot at D523 is just as strong as it was then. It wasn’t the first time I resisted an order. It started when I was little, with the nightshirt. I didn’t mean any harm by it. And in the end, I did shoot her. I’m not a troublemaker, but D523 is still right. We have something in common—and we’re both here.

  Today is my first time on morning shift. The first time I’m getting up at 2200 hours instead of going to sleep. The first time my usual schedule is disrupted.

  At night, the Atrium and the corridors are almost dead. There are no pretty pictures on the Atrium’s walls. It is just as high, but now just as grey and cold as most other rooms. It’s lost its magic.

  When I enter the nutrition distribution room, D523 is already in her seat. Like everyone else, she doesn’t even look up when I enter. But I know she’s noticed me. Strangely, I’m still happy to see her. Most of the time I’m scared to be with her. Scared to be caught doing something, although I never do anything wrong—I just catch her at it. I should probably report her to a supervisor, but after I shot her in the Arena, I feel like I owe her something.

  I slide into my seat beside her, and it squeaks. My fingerprint starts the computer and the program appears. I look at my list of names and find F701. One familiar face, at least. I call up the profiles one after another and look for peculiarities in them.

  Some time later I turn to look at D523. She’s surprisingly quiet today. Basically she’s behaving exactly like anyone would expect of her. But that’s the strange thing. She always starts talking to me after ten minutes or so. Sometimes she even touches me deliberately with her elbow and points to a colleague who might be falling asleep or scratching his nose. Then she starts laughing, so quietly that only I can hear it. I like it when she laughs. It’s like music, it makes me feel warm on the inside. Mostly I start laughing too. The air that flows in through my mouth, it tickles my palate and sinks to my belly. When that happens, I feel happier than any other time. D523 is strange, probably so strange that she should go to sickbay, but I would miss her if she wasn’t here.

  Today it’s me who bumps her lightly on the arm. For a fraction of a second she looks over at me. A small smile passes over her face, but then she turns back to her work. I let myself lean back into the chair to see what she’s doing. But her work is the same as mine: she’s opened the profiles to look through them. Nothing wrong with that. She’s just doing her job, like I should be. But the profiles bore me. They’re basically all the same, because all of us are the same.

  Suddenly I’m the one breaking the rules. I long to watch D523 doing something that breaks the routine. If she doesn’t do it, maybe I should give it a go.

  My fingers hover over the nutrition selection for F701. I know she likes the vitamin tablets best, because unlike the other capsules, tablets and cubes, they’re coloured. They come in bright orange, pink and green. Before I can think about the consequences of my actions, I assign her an extra pink one.

  “Don’t do that!” hisses D523 suddenly. Her tone is unusually sharp.

  I flinch in shock that she caught me. Just as well it was her and not someone else.

  “Why? You do it all the time,” I whisper back, trying to justify myself.

  “That’s different.”

  “Why?”

  “I won’t be here much longer.”

  Swallow. What’s that supposed to mean? Usually we do our assigned jobs for our whole lives. Unless...

  “Are you getting a promotion?” There’s fear in my voice. It just wouldn’t be fair if she got promoted after only two weeks and I get to keep rotting in here.

  She shakes her head.

  “What then?” My voice is trembling now. The thought of working here without her alongside is depressing.

  Suddenly she raises her hand and for a moment I’m afraid she’s going to tell on me.

  “Sorry,” she calls for the whole room to hear, “I have to use the toilet.”

  D375 turns around to look at her. His eyes are narrowed to slits. The green sparkle is gone.

  “It’s not time yet,” he says. During the day we use the toilet every five hours. At night we don’t usually go at all.

  “It must be because of changing shifts,” says D523.

  D375 raises an eyebrow sceptically, but then he presses the blue button by his desk that will call a C guard to us. C515 enters the room.

  “C515 reporting for protection duty. Is there a problem?”

  “D523 has to use the toilet. She seems to be having trouble with the morning shift. Would you please go with her?”

  D523 waves him away. “I can find it myself, thanks.”

  “Anyone moving around the safety zone outside of regular hours needs protection,” answers C515 and holds the door open, waiting. I can hear D523 grinding her teeth, but then she follows him.

  I’m getting a funny feeling that something’s not right. Maybe it even has something to do with her leaving soon. I just hope she isn’t getting herself into some kind of trouble.

  It’s not even a minute later that the door opens again and two other guards stand there. “There’s been a system error in nutrition production. D276, D219, D389, D483 and D523 are required to help.”

  “D523 went to the toilet.”

  “Now?”

  “It’s her first morning shift. Just take D518.”

  The C shrugs. I leave the computer room together with the other four Ds and the two guards. We cross the Atrium and enter the green laboratory corridor, where the factories are also located. I have never been here before, but I’m not surprised that the hallway is no different from any other, except for its g
reen stripe. There are doors to the left and right with various signs on them. We stop in front of a lift at the end of the hall. Now I’m surprised. I always thought lifts were only for going to the Legion commanders’ area. Just before we step into the lift, we are suddenly joined by a woman of the 4th generation and a girl of the 7th generation.

  “Where are you going?” asks one of the guards.

  “F701 is refusing to sleep. She damaged her bed. She has to go to sickbay immediately.”

  I falter, seeing her in my mind’s eye as she taps on her lower lip, waiting for her food. She seemed so peaceful, completely harmless. Now everyone’s looking at her as if she’s mad. She’s a threat now, and must be isolated. I hope the doctor can help her like he helped me back then.

  We step back and let the teacher and child enter the lift. One of the guards presses a button and I can feel the lift start to move. It should really be going down, but I’m sure it’s taking us up.

  In a moment, as if they were ordered to, the two guards pull gas masks over their faces—masks they only wear outside. Everyone sees. Everyone panics.

  “What’s going on? Is it an attack?”

  “Is radiation leaking?”

  The questions stop all at once. My legs grow heavy and I can hardly keep my eyes open. My throat starts to scratch, but then it freezes like ice, and I can’t even swallow. My whole body is crippled and everything sounds like a faint echo in my ears. I can’t feel it when I hit the floor, can’t feel the lift door opening. I’m trapped in silence and darkness.

  Rough stone scratches under my fingers. When I rub it, the rock falls apart like sand. The wall behind me is the same rough, sharp material. A sharp edge is poking into my shoulder. I try to roll to one side, but a swift pain bores into my head and I have to stop moving. Although I can’t see, I’m sure everything’s spinning. Just don’t open your eyes, I tell myself. It would be best if I go back to sleep.

  My body collapses again. I ignore my shoulder, it’s harmless compared to the torture in my head. Far away, I can hear two people talking. Both male.

  “Where is she?” He’s angry. So angry that it makes the hair on my neck stand on end. I’ve never heard so much rage and hate.

  “Maybe you just don’t recognise her,” says a friendlier voice. This man seems to want to calm the other down.

  “I will always recognise her,” growls the other, not so hard this time, more disappointed. “She’s not with them,” he adds, very quietly. The sadness in his words wraps itself around my heart. One moment I thought he was the angriest, cruellest person I ever encountered. The next, I’m so sorry for him that I want to scream. I would like to see this man who carries so much feeling within himself, but my eyes are too heavy and my head too exhausted. Sleep embraces me again.

  The scratching in my paper-dry throat makes me cough loudly. Soft sobbing comes to my ears. I run my tongue over my lips. They are so dry that my tongue sticks to them instead of moistening. I clear my throat and open my eyes carefully. It’s dark. I’m sure I’ve never been in this place before. Has there been an accident?

  My gaze wanders across the small room and I count six other inert bodies, besides myself. Light from above falls into the small cell. I look up and raise a hand to shield my eyes from the brightness. It’s not a light panel. The lamp is round, but it has sharp edges that don’t seem to follow any pattern. But the light is strange, too—much weaker than usual, and it’s a strange colour, almost orange.

  My hands touch the sandy ground again. I rub it in my fingers and hold it up to the light. It breaks, leaving red dust on my skin and on my brown suit. What kind of weird place is this? Why were we brought here? Did someone notice that I manipulated the nutrition distribution?

  I look back to the others. F701 is clutching her knees and swaying back and forth. Her eyes are wide and she’s trembling. As for the others, some are still sleeping and the rest are staring at the floor, apathetic.

  “Where are we?” I can’t stop myself from speaking, but it sounds scratchy, not like a voice at all.

  My question hangs in the air, finding no answer. Only F701 looks up at me with hope. She seems to be happy that someone’s speaking, because she stops her seesawing. She crawls across the room and sits beside me. Her mouth comes close to my ear, then she whispers.

  “They’re watching us.”

  04. OUTCASTS

  I follow F701’s gaze to the big iron door. I didn’t notice it before, because it was camouflaged in all the red rock. But now I see an electronic light blinking softly above the door. Carefully I stand up. My legs are so weak that they shake, and I have to grab the wall for a moment to support myself, so I don’t fall back on the floor. My stomach feels hollow. How long has it been since we ate?

  Two steps to the door, and I stretch towards the blinking light. Coming closer, I recognise a camera lens, like for nutrition distribution.

  We’re not alone. That’s good, right? There’s someone watching us. But why is F701 so upset about it?

  I turn to her. “Do you know who’s watching? Did you see them?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Maybe it’s an experiment to improve protection in the safety zone.” I’m trying to cheer her up, but it’s hard to believe my own words.

  Now someone else is stirring, a man from the second generation. D276. He worked with me in nutrition distribution. “We’re not in the safety zone.” It’s a simple statement, with no analysis, no emotion.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Look around. Does this look like home to you?”

  The sand under my feet grinds together as I move back to sit beside F701. The light changes from orange to a mixture of dark blues.

  “That’s open sky,” explains D276, and as if to confirm it, a raindrop falls through the hole and lands right on my nose. I gasp in shock and flick the drop away as if it were blood and not water. I stare at my hand in horror. A second drop falls through the hole, this time onto my shoulder. In a panic I dash to the other side, F701 on my heels, as far away from the rain as we can get. It’s raining harder and harder. We don’t have rain in the safety zone, just like we have no snow, sunshine or wind.

  In spite of the rain I start to sweat and realise how unusually hot it is here. It must be several degrees above the ideal temperature.

  “We’re going to die!” F701 looks at me desperately. She wants me to say she’s wrong, but I can’t. If we’re in the open air, we’re condemned to death. The radiation will kill us all within three minutes.

  Now the others are beginning to toss and turn. They’re just as afraid to die as I am. F701’s teacher is breathing hard. She tries to control it, taking air deep into her lungs, but she’s only inhaling the poisonous air. When she realises it, she turns pale. Her skin almost goes green before she vomits in the middle of the room. She spits bile. There’s nothing else left in her stomach.

  Some of the others grab their own necks as if they want to stop themselves from breathing.

  Suddenly, the door opens with a loud creak. We huddle in the farthest corner of the room.

  A man enters the room. He doesn’t look like any male inhabitant of the safety zone. His whole body is wider and taller. He wears black clothes, but not a jumpsuit—it looks more like a shirt and a pair of trousers. The clothing falls loosely from his frame, rather than fitting tightly as ours does. Only his black boots are the same as what we wear

  He throws a grey cloth down over D456’s vomit and wipes it up with a disgusted expression. Light falls on his face and I freeze. He’s wearing a sort of hood made of thick, dark blue fabric, but underneath it I can see hair. Like an animal’s fur. It’s dark, almost black, but it looks so soft I want to touch it. His eyebrows are the same dark colour, accentuating the bright green of his eyes. His mouth is surrounded with a soft frame of the same dark hair. It’s a beard, like we’ve only seen in documentaries from Old Earth. He’s so strange, but at the same time, so appealing. I’m almost disappointed when
he finishes and turns towards the door. In the opening I see another pair of eyes, but nothing more of their owner. I’m scared of him though. F701 presses herself harder against me.

  “Maybe they’re hungry,” says the man with the nice green eyes.

  “Bad luck.” The other voice is cold. I freeze and remember a conversation that might have been real or somewhere in my imagination: “She’s not with them.” This is the same voice, I’m certain of it. Suddenly I’m not so afraid of him any more and I stretch my head to see him properly, but the door is closing already.

  “Outcasts,” hisses D276, just as disgusted as the stranger was when he had to wipe up the bile.

  My eyes go wide with surprise. That has to be it. But how long have they lived here? Why are they holding us captive? Do they want revenge on us—are they crazy enough for that?

  “The Legion will rescue us,” says D389 quickly and nods as if to convince himself.

  “They would have to know where we are,” argues D276.

  “They have locator devices. They’ll find us.”

  “But we’re contaminated with radiation.”

  “They can cure us.”

  “We’re going to die.”

  It’s hopeless. Even if the Legion finds us, they won’t be able to save us. What will they do with us?

  F701 starts to tremble again. Her body shakes so much that she keeps bumping against me. Her wailing makes a return and she sways again, back and forth, back and forth.

  “Stop that,” hisses D456. “Don’t behave like a crazy person.”

  But F701 can’t stop. Her sobbing just gets louder. D456 looks away. The others seem clueless and no one knows how to make F701 be quiet if we don’t have the right medicines.

  Strange sounds come out of her throat, sounds that make me hurt on the inside. It’s like the sadness of the angry man. It causes a reaction in my heart. I’m not angry at F701, and I’m not scared of her, because I know she’s only scared herself. I lay my hand on her small arm, like D523 once did to me.