Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) (22 page)

“Is he coming here?”  I ask as she has me walk across the room.

“He wanted to,” she says, twirling her finger. It’s a multiversal symbol, and I dutifully turn and walk the other way.  “He was very concerned, very dismayed to hear you were brought in.  But he’s got several surgeries today.”

She gestures to the rift.  It’s so soft that I’m surprised it’s a rift and not a regular mattress. That’s one thing Attero does better, if you ask me. Beds. Blankets.

I hear my own thoughts and my eyes well up again. Attero. They’re making me one of them, whether I want it or not. Concordia words are burning themselves into my brain. Soon I won’t be able to remember my own language.

The keeping is quiet when I enter. Sheila kept me in Respite until only an hour remained in the regular day. Ritter is still functioning, oblivious to my early release.  Strega, on the other hand, has logged me three times, starting even before Sheila released me with full clearance for the following day.  She wasn’t happy about it, but she looked at me levelly and said,

“I’d much rather have you out for a few days, but given what I know you overheard, I don’t think it’s in your best interest.”

I nodded at her. “Thank you.”

She frowned at me.  “Be careful out there.  Another hit like that could end you.”

I hear those words echoing in my head now as I reread Strega’s logs.

Please log me when you reach the keeping so I know you arrived safely.

I am with wards until late this afternoon. Please keep any activity to a minimum but do not lie down. Try not to sleep.  I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

And just now, as I was logging my arrival in the keeping:
I’ll be there as soon as I can. Ritter is on his way, as well. He may reach you first.

I fight a smile, wondering exactly what Ritter is going to do when he gets here.  What
is
there to do?  As far as I know, there’s no cure for a concussion except time and rest, and I am unlikely to get much of either one.

Predictably, when he arrives Ritter looks me over with a frown and gives me a squeeze on the shoulder. “Rough day, huh?”

I nod and close my eyes, my head resting on the back of the sofa.  “And when Strega gets here, it’ll get rougher still.”

Ritter chuckles. “He means well. And he’s an excellent caretaker.” I don’t disagree, but Ritter hears what I don’t say, and he answers as though I’ve said it. “He’s thorough. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust anyone else’s opinion, he just needs to see for himself.”

And so he does. He barely says hello to Ritter before ushering me into the cleanse.  While that is nothing new, nor is the dismay on his face, his agitation is unusual.

“Sheila is a good caretaker. We went through onboarding together,” he says, repeating her tests one by one.  “Why would she clear you to go back tomorrow?  You have a concussion!”

I let him rant and ponder for a few minutes until he winds down. I nearly reach into the hip pockets of his caretaker’s uniform for the alpha inducers I know are there.

When he reaches for his logger, it is my turn to become agitated.

“No, Strega, don’t!” I say sharply, grabbing his wrist so that he can’t call up Belgrade’s codes. “If I don’t show up at Assimilation tomorrow and seriously improve my performance, Belgrade will call for my Disposal.”

Strega’s fingers freeze, hovering over the logger for a few seconds before his hand slowly drops.  I punch the meld release. Ritter needs to hear this, too.

Ritter is in the office, working on something on the computer that he clearly doesn’t want us to see, for he quickly shuts the wall viewer down and turns to us with ridiculously false cheer.

“So, you’re good as new?”

I almost laugh at the phrase, at how jarring it is that so much of Concordia’s phrasing is identical to Attero’s…until it’s not. The likenesses are almost as chilling to me as the differences.

I shrug and lock my eyes on Strega’s. 

“I took a hit at onboarding today from one of my new teammates. She’s tall, and she’s got about thirty pounds of pure muscle on me. And she can fight,” I sigh.  “She caught me here,” I say, rubbing my left temple. Ritter’s eyes go flat and his jaw twitches. “I guess I lost consciousness for a few minutes. I woke up to Belgrade and another facilitator, Melva, carrying me to Respite.”  I don’t have to explain. They already know who both of them are from stories I’ve told about Assimilation. 

When I finish relaying everything I heard about the sheer number of candidates and the discussion about rebel bases and infiltrators, neither of them misses the fact that this Assimilation class is ten times as large as we were told: three thousand instead of three hundred.

“The rebel base must be in Zone 1,” Ritter says, reaching the same conclusion I did.

I nod. “They’d want to keep it close to the Tribunal.”  Looking from Strega to Ritter and back again, I ask, “What are dampers?”

Both Ritter and Strega go very still.

“Dampers?” I ask again, looking at each of them in turn.

“Old technology,” Strega says dismissively, with a wave of his hand. 

“They’re mesh sleeves,” Ritter says. “They slide over your forearm and they dampen the signals from your Idix. They’re illegal, for obvious reasons.  If the rebels have them, they can move around with some level of anonymity.”

“Like being erased?” I ask, intrigued. This never came up during any of my scape searches.  It sounded far easier than erasure. Just slide a damper over your Idix and disappear.

Strega nods. “Except instead of completely hiding your location, they just widen the radius.”

“Concordia’s meld receivers and the receivers buried underground and hidden overhead can lock your exact location within a three foot radius.  The dampers make it more like Attero’s GPS devices…you might be followed to, say, a shopping mall, but no one would know exactly which store.”

“Even if the rebels wear dampers, why can’t Concordia pinpoint the rebel base, then? Being at one end of a building or another still puts you in that building,” I point out, causing Ritter to stop pacing for all of about a half a second. “Why would Belgrade say the last two leads were dead ends?  I mean, if the rebel base was, I don’t know, the library, it wouldn’t be too difficult to pin down.” 

Ritter shakes his head.  “Maybe they’ve found a way to improve upon the standard effects of the dampers.”

I can see Ritter is itching to jump on the scape and investigate the possibilities.  But Strega made him promise: no action that could result in Disposal until I clear Assimilation.  By the looks of him, that promise is about to end him.

My logger sounds.  It’s Mina, teaming up with Melayne to get me to agree to visit with them over the weekend, since we couldn’t make it work last weekend when they asked. I look at their hopeful faces, each one taking up half of the logger screen.

“It’ll have to be next weekend. I’ll get back to you after Assimilation tomorrow. That’s when next week’s schedule comes out,” I say, buying time. I actually already know the schedule for next weekend, but I want to talk to Ritter and Strega. Is it wise to hang around the mates of guardians right now?  I worry that I might say something that proves I’m not assimilating properly, that I have no interest in becoming a citizen of Concordia.

Something that will get me disposed.

Surprisingly, Strega, not Ritter, is the one who thinks I should go, and not because I could use some pleasant distraction.

“It might be a good idea,” he says thoughtfully, “to see if they let anything slip that might give us a hint at what’s really going on.”

Ritter looks as surprised as I feel. I halfway want to ask Strega to do a BAU exam, see if he’s been brainwashed by the Tribunal and is now some kind of spy for them, trying to get us to entrap ourselves. In fact, I don’t have the wherewithal to form a polite response.

“Are you nuts?” I ask him, plainly gaping at him. “All along you’ve been on Ritter’s case to lay low, to not go digging around in anything that would look suspicious to the Tribunal if by some chance they’re watching what he’s researching on the scape. And now you want me to intentionally make plans with Melayne and Mina to pick their brains about what Scuva and Ollie are up to at function?”  I flinch as I hear my own words. I’m becoming one of them, a Concordian, whether I like it or not. Their words are becoming ingrained.  How quickly it’s happening surprises me. How quickly doors became melds and jobs became functions…how I actually have to consciously
think
the words doors and jobs.

Strega looks abashed. “I would never ask you to…pick anyone’s brain,” he says slowly. “I’m just asking you to listen, not speak. Don’t ask. Just…observe. Listen for anything that might give a clue.”

Ritter nods, agreeing now. “If they’re doing the same, you know, asking all sorts of questions about Assimilation, just—”

“Just pretend I’m the perfect little Concordia wannabe,” I finish for him. “Sure. What makes you think they’ll even talk about the launch closures or the Agreement review or anything useful?”

Strega shakes his head. “I don’t. But we can always hope to get lucky.”

19

THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, I take two supersonics and one regular slide to Melayne’s keeping. Mina is already there.  I had to stop at Ritter’s keeping to clean up from a morning spent sparring with Julian. My team was matched with Pilar Amal’s today, and that’s where Lyder dumped him in the redistribution bid.

It wasn’t blood, however, that I was cleaning. It was mud, from avoiding Julian’s clumsy attempts to punch and kick me. Since the rain showers predicted by the meteorologists hadn’t materialized, they closed the roof and turned on a rain scenario in the reaction center. We fought in a steamy downpour that reminded me of the year I lived in Louisiana. The ground was so spongy and slippery, our offensive maneuvers were just as likely as our defensive ones to end in a fall.

Belgrade has either written me off completely or he does actually have a tiny seed of a heart, because for most of last week, he only paired me with the low ranking members of our team and on the two other teams we sparred with.  I’m fearing it’s the first one, yet I haven’t slipped in the ranks, and the fact that he’s paired me with people we both know I can beat gives me hope that it’s the latter, however unlikely it seems.

Mina looks like she’s about to cry. I know I bear the shadows of bruises, all in various stages of healing. “They’re making you fight,” she guesses almost to herself, nodding. Her eyes tear up, and she rubs her Idix absently.  I don’t answer her because she’s not listening, anyway, and because we both know the answer already.

Melayne just smiles brightly at me and envelops me in her arms.  “It’s been too long,” she says. “I was starting to think you were just being friendly for Ritter’s sake.”

I shake my head and smile back at her in a way I hope is genuine and not wary. These days, I’m not sure anyone is a friend, save Ritter and Strega. The things we don’t know have made us paranoid. We shut ourselves into Ritter’s keeping at night, seldom venturing out to the unwinds or the occasional viewing.  They’ve all but stopped socializing, which means I have, too. I don’t know enough people of my own to have a nightlife.

The big problem is, I don’t know how to relax anymore. Assimilation is a lot like boot camp on Attero must be. My brain and body are taxed to their limits each day.  Letting your guard down always leads to trouble, whether it is a sucker punch or a “fatal” mistake in the reaction center. So I don’t.  Instead, I take a nightly dose of sleepbringer, which is the only thing that makes my muscles unclench.

“I’d ask how you’ve been,” Mina says as we each choose drinks from the ScanX, “but I can see how you’ve been.”

They choose alcoholic drinks. I just have some Cascade. When Mina lifts an eyebrow, I shrug and blame Assimilation. Though I’m technically allowed to drink here, I don’t. It still feels weird, like something I’ll get into trouble for. And since on Concordia the only thing I can associate trouble with is the Disposal, I can’t bring myself to order anything with alcohol in it.

We sit at the dining room table where I burned my hand with what I thought was a pepper grinder. It feels like it happened years ago, though it was only about two months.

Melayne pulls out a deck of cards much like something on Attero and teaches us a game that’s clearly meant for just these sorts of gatherings. Little attention is needed to play once you have the rules down, so the true focus—gossip and chatter—is easily maintained.

Melayne and Mina start off talking about shows on the viewer, which I have little time for. When Melayne realizes I don’t watch them, she switches to music. When I don’t join in on that conversation, either, she asks,

“Have you been making any plans for your Assimilation celebration?”

I glance up from my cards.  It’s easier and less hurtful to pretend I don’t understand the game well enough yet and must concentrate than to tell Melayne I’m bored because I can’t relate to her topics.  I blink at her. “My what?”

Mina smiles. “Your Assimilation celebration,” she says. “When you clear Assimilation, you become a regular citizen of Concordia. Most people throw a big party at an unwind, public servette, or a park.”

I haven’t really thought of clearing Assimilation as something to celebrate. I’ve more been thinking of Disposal as something to avoid, but I don’t say that. Mina is still cheering me along as if becoming a citizen is some kind of lifelong dream of mine, even though we both know the truth. 

I shrug. “I’ve been too busy to really think much about it.”

Melayne bounces in her chair. “Ooh! Let Mina and me throw you one!”

Mina loves the idea as much as Melayne.  Suddenly the game gets thrown on pause as they pull out their loggers and start tapping and swiping away at them.

“When is the final day of Assimilation?”

I have to check my own logger, because each time we’ve been Assimilation free, another day has been added to ensure we fulfill the entire sixty day period.

“Well, right now it looks like August twenty-third,” I say, setting my logger aside. “But that could change. If we’re Assimilation free for a day, another day gets added to the end. It’s happened twice already.”

“Welll,” Mina draws the word out slowly, “why don’t we shoot for August twenty-fourth, anyway? We can always change it if something comes up along the way.”

The two of them decide it’s a splendid idea and begin firing questions at me about what I like and don’t like: my favorite color, my favorite foods (ignoring, of course, the ones the ScanX won’t let me have), my favorite music.

The talk of my Assimilation celebration dies down as Mina studies my face again. I am sure she’s going to say something, but instead she just smiles across the table at Melayne and asks if she made the centerpiece that rests in the middle of the large dining table.

They discuss the floral arrangement for several minutes, but I can see that Melayne senses something is off. She talks merrily about how she made it, but her eyes keep switching from my face to Mina’s and back again. Just by watching Melayne as she talks about the centerpiece, nodding at all the right moments, I can tell that Mina’s eyes fall on me several times, even though I’m not looking at her.

Melayne stops talking midsentence and crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

I look at Mina.  Mina looks at me. We both turn our eyes to Melayne.

“I was going to ask you guys the same thing,” I reply.

“What’s going on at Assimilation?” Mina asks after a painfully loaded silence.

I play innocent, hating that I have to be cautious around these new friends.  I hate that my ability to make fast decisions about people has been ruined by Concordia…that my first instinct with everyone is to see a potential threat instead of a potential friend.

I shrug and grin. “The usual, I guess. We’re learning the history and customs of Concordia, and we spend part of the day in the reaction center.”

“How much time do you spend in the onboarding facility?” Mina asks pointedly, sparing a glance in Melayne’s direction.

“A couple hours,” I reply, blinking at her as if I don’t know what she’s getting at.

“And how many in the proving grounds?” Mina prompts.

“The rest of the day,” I answer.

“How much of that is spent fighting?”

The table grows still. It’s almost like they’ve stopped breathing.

“About half of it,” I shrug again, trying to appear unconcerned. I wonder what the average citizen of Concordia knows about Assimilation to begin with…how they’d know if something was awry.

Melayne shakes her head, rising from the table.  “What’s going on in this parallel?” she cries, looking at me almost accusingly, as if I’m somehow at fault. “The launches have been closed for over a month without any reasonable explanation. Scuva’s been working so much I barely see him. Are we in danger? Is Concordia going to become a closed world after the next Agreement review?”

Mina joins in. “Seriously! I never see Ollie anymore. Has Scuva told you anything?”

Melayne shakes her head. “Nothing. He used to tell me everything. Now he just says it’s better I don’t know. He says everything’s okay, but how can it be?”

Mina nods. “Right? I mean, people are killing themselves in droves, the launches are still closed, and at least a hundred people a day are being disposed without—”

“Wait,” I grab her arm. “What?”

“What what?” she asks.

“People are being disposed? Why?”

Mina shrugs. “I don’t know.  Ollie receives a list each morning of disposed persons. The list never says why.  The numbers used to be really low, sometimes zero for the day. But in the last few weeks, the numbers have been steadily rising.”

“Why do the guardians get a list of the disposed?” I ask.

Mina frowns. “I don’t know. The one time I asked about it, Ollie snarled at me. He pinned me to the servette wall and said I was never meant to see that, that it could get us both added to the list if anyone outside our keeping ever found out he had possession of it.” Her face contorts with horror, and she claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh, shit!” Her hand muffles the word. If the implications of her slip weren’t so sobering, I might have laughed. “He doesn’t hide the lists anymore, but he won’t talk about them, either.”

Melayne frowns now, too. We’ve all apparently come to the same conclusion, which is: What difference does it make whether someone is disposed if there’s no coming back from the Disposal? Why share a list of names with the guardians or anyone else?

“Mina,” I ask, “how different was your Assimilation from mine?”

“Different,” she admits. “Much different. We only went into the reaction center for a couple hours a day, and maybe a tenth of that was combat training.”

The rain predicted by the meteorologists has finally arrived, and Melayne is standing at the rear meld with her arms folded across her chest, staring out across the canals.  “I don’t understand this, any of it. It’s like we’re preparing for war or something,” she says fearfully.

I wonder if this is the first time in her lifetime that there’s been such apparent unrest throughout the parallels. I’m used to unrest, mostly in the Middle East, but even in the United States there are riots. Attero is fraught with clashing nations, senseless violence, and always the threat of some war, some terrorist act. Concordia has none of that. The most newsworthy event has been the launch closures, though the suicides have been attracting more and more attention from the heralds.

I am afraid to discuss what Ritter, Strega, and I suspect.  These women are the mates of guardians. Guardians who apparently get lists of the disposed. Guardians who, as a function if not Scuva and Ollie specifically, are also suspected, at least by Belgrade and Melva, of being traitors. Rebels.

“I need to take Zutti for a walk,” Melayne says suddenly.  “Would you guys come with me?”

Sure.

Almost immediately after clearing the meld and waiting for it to whisper closed, Melayne pulls the hood on her jacket up and rushes out into the rain. Mina and I follow.

“I probably sound crazy,” she says, not looking at either of us, “but I was starting to worry that maybe the keeping is bugged.”

I would snort and suggest that she watches too many crime shows on the viewer, but I’m not sure she’s wrong.  If the Tribunal is killing people and calling it suicide, they’re certainly capable of watching and listening in on them first. This thought fills me with dread over Ritter’s scape activity and our many recent conversations. The only thing that keeps me from utter, hysterical panic is the fact that if they have been listening, we’ve more than incriminated ourselves by now…enough to have been disposed a million times over.

Mina looks a little sick as the implication of Melayne’s words hit her. “I really hope it isn’t.”

Melayne nods. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for here, but it just seems like there’s something really big going on that the Tribunal is keeping all of us in the dark about.  The launch closures have never lasted this long. People are ending, and the heralds are insinuating that they aren’t suicides. The number of persons being disposed is increasing. You’re spending more time fighting than onboarding,” she says to me, her eyes wide. “Davinney, have you heard or seen anything else that seems weird? I mean, it’s probably hard for you to know what’s weird, but let me assure you. The Concordia you’ve known since you’ve been here isn’t the Concordia I grew up in.”

I wonder what it would be like to have grown up here, to have known this place all my life instead of for just over two months. Well, I don’t really count holding, because I didn’t learn anything about Concordia while I was unconscious. So it’s really less than two months, if you count from May thirtieth, the day I left holding. And even though this time has felt like a lifetime, an eternity even, I can’t imagine calling it home. After twelve moves, I’ve become somewhat of a master when it comes to adapting to my environment. My words may change so I’ll fit in. I may even
think
in Concordia terms. But Attero is still inside me. My reality is still framed in reference to how things are done there. I don’t know what’s normal for Concordia.

Mina is oddly silent, offering nothing. She drops the bombshell about this Disposal list but offers little else.  Melayne seems genuine, but something whispers in me, telling me to hold my cards close to my chest.