Elected (The Elected Series Book 1) (27 page)

Excerpt from SUSPECTED

The second book in THE ELECTED SERIES

We stand in front of the double glass doors for a moment, looking at each other to bolster our resolve. “No going back after this,” Griffin says.

“Nope.”

“One more chance to turn back, Aloy. I’d walk back with you to East tonight, if you wanted.”

“Nope,” I say again and press firmly on the entrance door. Inside, cool filtered air hits our faces as we pass through into the sterile hallway. It’s eerily quiet here, and for a moment I wonder if we misunderstood and stepped inside the wrong building. “Maybe we should turn back,” I start to say before a voice in front of us interrupts me.

“Right this way.” A man stands up from behind a high counter to our side. “Come to register?”

“Yes,” says Griffin. He drops my hand and goes to shake the official’s, but no hand is offered to Griffin. Finally, Griffin looks away, confused, and pulls his hand back. May
be they don’t have the same customs here. I watch to see if the official will bow to us or make some other kind of sign, but he just looks down on his desk, adjusting thick glasses.

“Where do you originate from?” asks the man. He still doesn’t look up.

“West Country,” I say without hesitation.

“You’re late.” He glances at us, pushing the rims of his black frames low on his nose.

I cough a little, thinking the jig is up. “Doesn’t matter, though,” says the man before I can even think what to say next. “We’ll take you either way. Always good to increase our numbers. Don’t know how you survived out there longer than most, though. Your brethren all mostly came a year ago. Just dribs and drabs of people now.” The man seems to be talking to himself now, staring down at a book in front of him.

“What do we have to do to register?” asks Griffin. He’s leaning forward just a bit, trying to see the big book behind the desk.

But the official doesn’t try to hide it. At once, he grasps hold of both thick ends and grunts, pulling it up on top of the counter.

“You need to sign in. Do you know how to write?”

“Yes,” I answer, surprised at his question. Were the people in West illiterate?

“Sorry, just have to ask. You’re all pretty uncivilized over there.”

I try not to seem offended. It’s not even my country he’s talking about, but the superior tone he uses when referring to West is unnerving.

“All right, sign your name here.” He points to a blank line on one of the large, yellowed pages in front of us. Griffin grabs the offered writing implement first, scrawling something noncommittal for his name. All I can make out is a large G. The rest is purposefully indistinguishable.

The man twitches his nose at Griffin’s scrawl but doesn’t ask him to redo the signature. “Ok, your turn,” he says, handing me another writing implement. It’s not like the charcoal sticks we used in East Country. This stick is white and long with a blue tip on the end. I set it against a spot on the page and start to write an A-L-O, before thinking better of it and finishing my A-L with an I-C-E-N. Alicen. That’ll be my name here. It could be either a boy’s or girl’s name, ambiguous. I like how the thin stick glides across the page, and I take an extra second letting the letter N slide off my hand into text.

“What do you call this?” I ask the man, holding the writing implement out in the middle of us.

“What? The pen?” he asks.

I nod.

“You’ve never seen one of these before? The rest of your people did.”

I stop holding the pen in front of my face with interest, instead dropping it with a tiny clack onto the white desk in front of us. I need to be more careful. We don’t know anything about West, and even this tiny question could show us for who we really are.

“We were poor,” I respond, my voice low and quiet as if I’m ashamed. I don’t have to fake the tone of my answer. I’m so scared, my voice cracks easily on its own.

This seems to pacify the official. “Many of you people from West were.” He shakes his head in condemnation and turns the book back toward himself. “All right, I’m going to assign you places to stay. It’ll just take a few moments. In the meantime, look through this listing of jobs. Everyone works here, so you’ll need to pick something.”

He thrusts a thinner book in front of us and turns it to the first page. After each job, there’s a short description and two numbers in parentheses. Griffin immediately sees the listing for “Animal Caretaker” with the number “10” in back of it and another number “2.”

“What do the numbers mean?” he asks.

“Oh,” says the official looking up at us from behind another stack of papers. “The first number is the amount of openings we have in that area. The second is how long the earliest one’s been available.”

Griffin puts his finger on the page and silently traces the description next to the listing while glancing back up at me. I lean in, reading what he’s pointing to.

“Animal Caretaker: Consists of generating clones of existing mammals, reptiles, insects, and birds. With more experience, creation of new species.”

This is not what either of us were expecting, and we both scan down the page to see if there’s anything else involving care of animals. But this is the only listing dealing with animals at all. Griffin sighs, and shakes his head in disgust. It’s almost enough to catch the attention of the official, though, so I don’t answer it back with any recognition. I just keep looking down the list for any job that I could do.

“I’ll take this one,” Griffin says, motioning to the official. The two of them start to talk about Griffin’s experience, and the man is obviously satisfied. This time he’s clicking keys on some type of machine, not using another pen to input Griffin’s information.

“All right, this will just take a moment to go through the system and get accepted,” the official explains, pointing to the small, square machine in front of him. “I’m sure you’ll get the job, though. Don’t worry.”

I keep peering down the list. The jobs are listed in alphabetical order. I page through to the middle and see “
Engineer (20-1), Guard (80-4), Holder (90-3)
.” I grimace at “Holder,” redoubling my efforts to find something I’ll be qualified for. On the same page as Holder, I see one interesting listing. It catches my eye because of the numbers in back of it. “
Historian (1-110)
.” I squint at it closer. There’s only one position? And it’s been open for a hundred and ten months? That’s a long time. I read the description, not quite understanding it even after the third review.

“Historian (1-110): Knows things forgotten.”

“What’s this one?” I ask the official. He’s almost finished typing in Griffin’s experience into his machine, but he stops to quickly look at the job I’m pointing to. Once he sees it, he stands up, leaving the machine altogether.

“I’m sure you don’t want that one,” he says, squinting at me. He looks at me harder than he’s done before, this time removing his glasses completely. Maybe I’ve made some blunder. Requested something I shouldn’t.

“I don’t know. I might,” I say. “What does this job entail?”

He doesn’t answer me. Just states the obvious. “It’s been open for a very long time. No one is qualified.”

This makes me mad in a way I remember feeling years ago when I asked my parents if I could leave the White House and constantly got “no” for an answer. It makes me feel young and stubborn again. My fingers start twitching in my clasped hands.

“Well, maybe I am. How do you know?”

“Historian? You think you know things others don’t?”

At this, I stare at the man without looking away or down at the floor in defeat. His thick brown hair leaves sweat marks on his forehead. He’s not good-looking, and his face, all contorted, as he looks at me makes him look even more like a troll from my old fairy tales.

“I might,” I say. “Try me.”

The man
humphs
. “Fine. What is a turbine?”

“Any of various machines in which the kinetic energy of a moving fluid is converted to mechanical power by the impulse or reaction of the fluid with a series of buckets, paddles, or blades arrayed about the circumference of a wheel or cylinder,” I blurt out without even giving it a second thought.

Both Griffin and the official stare back at me with wide eyes. I shut my mouth hard. What have I just done?

The official starts to stammer, still looking at me in amazement. “Umm... I suppose that answer is correct. I’m... I’m not too sure, actually. Let me just type it in here.”

He bends down to thumb my answer into his machine, asking me to repeat parts of it a few times. We all wait in silence as the machine registers my response and pings back after just a few seconds. It gives a small, upbeat “ding.”

The official looks up at me, eyes still wide. “Ok, answer this then. What kind of weapon did governments use back in two thousand thirty for assassination?”

I look at the official like he’s joking with me. But when he just stares back, completely serious, I answer, “Long arrows.”

He types my answer in again, and it only takes a second for the machine to ding.

This time the official fumbles nervously with the keys in front of him, typing in something fast. He peers at the screen, pushing his glasses back on his face to see clearly. Finally, he looks back at me and says, “Ummm... all right. What year was the last Accord dictated and which one was it?”

I think back to my lesson with Tomlin the day I saw my first execution in East. I got the answer wrong back then, but this time I’ll be right. “The Ship Accord. Twenty-one fifteen.”

The official chokes loudly into his hand and immediately turns back to his machine to log my answer. The computer doesn’t just beep once this time. It comes back with a fast “bing, bing bing.” The official turns to me, his mouth open wide.

“You got the job,” he says. He thumbs through the book again, looking once more at how long the position has been open. More than two years.

Griffin mouths “Way to go” at me while the troll-like man paws through the book. Griffin smiles big, proud that I’ve been able to knock the official down a peg or two.

“How... how... did you know those things?” the official stammers, looking up once again.

I shuffle my feet in front of me. I can’t very well tell him I’m the Elected in my country and was raised on all this information. So I just look over his shoulder, letting my facial expression go flat and closed. “Books,” I say. “My father collected books.” It isn’t a lie, so it comes off my lips easily.

“Well...” The official shakes his head in confusion, trying to comprehend how I’ve been able to answer questions that others haven’t. “Report to building thirteen tomorrow morning at eight am sharp. You got the job. But,” and at this he smiles slightly, feeling his own power leveling the playing field once again. “You’ll be on probation for a few months. You’ll probably have to come back here in a few weeks and pick a new job.”

I just nod noncommittally, not wanting to fully acknowledge the official’s warning. He starts talking to Griffin again, inputting the last bits of Griffin’s answers into the machine. The two converse back and forth and it affords me a few seconds to flip through the big book of names on the official’s desk again. I pretend that I’m just checking my signature, but it doesn’t matter. The official is so caught up typing in Griffin’s information that he doesn’t pay me any attention.

I’m looking for just one thing in the book, and it’s not my signature. I flip back ten pages to a date months in the past. My fingers fly across the names. I’m frustrated that I can’t find what I need until my eyes finally rest on the hard scrawl that I’ve seen many times in my life. This signature’s written on official documents. Birth certificates. Execution warrants. Speeches. I can’t help smiling slightly, and I pull my finger along the small indentation the two signatures made into the pulpy paper.

“Claraleese and Soyer.” My parents’ names. They’re here.

About the Author

Rori Shay is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). She lives with her husband, kids, and two proficient hair-shedders: Misch the cat and Gerry the 90-lb black lab. Rori studied public relations and marketing at the University of Maryland and received an MBA from George Washington University. She enjoys traveling, running, reading, pumpkin-picking, and snow-shoeing!

Email:
[email protected]

Website:
www.rorishay.com

Twitter:
@RoriShayWrites

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/RoriShayWrites

Goodreads:
www.goodreads.com/author/show/7266322.Rori_Shay