Green Jack (7 page)

The bus didn’t
take them towards the cluster of skyscrapers and the old university
buildings that made up the Directorate district, instead it took
them into the Core. Jane’s palms began to sweat. No one ever went
into the Core voluntarily. The bus pulled through three sets of
gates and into a lot shadowed by barbed wire and soldiers standing
at attention.

The curved
walls of a stone amphitheatre were not exactly what Jane expected.
She rubbed the back of her neck, willing the shards of light not to
pierce her brain. She silently repeated the Numina mantra to
herself;
I am the earth, I am the earth where the seeds of
wisdom grow
.

A woman met
them in the dusty archway, the sounds of construction throbbing
behind her. The contrast of the woman’s relentlessly cheerful smile
was unsettling. “Welcome,” she said. “My name is Grace, and I’ll be
giving you the official tour. You must all be very excited as very
few people have this opportunity.”

Asher sauntered
toward them, rain beading his hair. A man Jane took to be his
father was beside him. He was tall, thin, and sharp; like an arrow.
There was a full ring of leaves embroidered on his tunic sleeve,
trailing up to his collar. Grace half-bowed with dazzled respect.
Asher smirked at her obvious deference. The smirk turned deadly
when he met Jane’s gaze. She’d pay for Kiri’s trick with the door
before long.

“Follow me,
please,” Grace called out, still fussing with her hair. She led
them down a dark hall to a set of stone steps. “You’ve been chosen
to serve the Directorate and the entire City.” Her voice was somber
but she was still smiling. Something about it made Jaen’s eye
tattoo tighten uncomfortably.

They descended
past small cells dug into the stone, each with a bed and desk and
plush woven rugs and metal bars. The next level down was a research
facility of some sort. Bleach fumes stung Jane’s nostrils.
Underneath the antiseptic, the smell of rot and green water
lingered.

Windows
overlooked bays of equipment and scientific looking devices.

“The labs alone
aren’t enough, nor are the green prayers of the Woodwives. As
always we must all work together.”

Medical chairs
were bolted to the wall, people strapped in the seats, their right
arms locked to the armrest. One of the subjects couldn’t have been
more than eleven years old. He didn’t fight the restraints, or the
needle sliding into his vein, only stared straight ahead.

“A pity,” Grace
said. “But everyone must do their part, even those who would go
against the Directorate. This way, they get to prove that they are
worth something, after all.” Jane couldn’t imagine what a little
boy could have done to merit this kind of punishment. Grace’s smile
returned, though it was softer. “But none of you need to worry
about this room. We know you’ll be loyal.”

Jane tensed so
completely that something in her shoulder popped uncomfortably.
Even Asher was quiet. A unit of soldiers waited for them in the
muddy corridor that ringed the amphitheatre. Jane had the crazy
urge to run. Her calves quivered. She had good stamina and she was
relatively fast---but a bullet was always faster.

When she heard
the shout, she half thought her own legs had moved without her.
Another girl, sixteen at most, knocked three soldiers into each
other. She was leaping behind the protective cover of the bus when
the bullet caught her. Blood sprayed from her shoulder as she hit
the ground. She struggled to stand up but the soldiers descended.
She kicked and spat and scratched at them until a solider
backhanded her but even that wasn’t enough to stop her frenzy. She
bit and screeched, right until Grace approached with a syringe,
stabbing it into the back of her neck. Her eyes rolled back in her
head mid-yell. She went terrifyingly limp.

“Where are
they…” one of the students cut himself off as they carted the girl
away. Questions never had an answer that helped.

“One warning,”
Grace replied dispassionately. “The Program is everything. You
cannot defeat what is necessary.”

Jane’s legs, so
keen to run just moments ago, were weak as boiled leaves. Grace
took them into the amphitheatre, ringed with benches and arches
held up by columns carved like Green Jacks. The lowest level was
screened by black iron fencework painstakingly decorated with
individually forged leaves. It would separate the spectators from
those fighting in the sand, and from the strange glass-walled
houses built on platforms all around the ring. It was beautiful in
its own way.

“Welcome to the
Garden,” Grace said with palpable pride. The clouds thinned
slightly, as if they knew presentation was everything. The small
houses were identical; windows eating up the ground floor like
television screens that allowed you to see what was happening
inside. Jane thought of the episodes her sisters watched on their
tablets; Ivy preferred scientific programs and Portia
dramarealities about people visiting the Rings. Jane was secretly
addicted to lurid stories about the Spirit Forest and the
Greencoats.

All of which
were better than this.

The houses’
second floors had much smaller windows, but they were bare and
uncurtained. Each door was painted a different colour. Jane was
more confused than ever.

“Isn’t it
lovely?” Grace asked. “There is no finer neighbourhood even in the
Enclave! Nothing but the best here in the Garden. And now some of
you will get to live here,” Grace continued. “Assuming there is a
compatible mate available. We cannot have babies too weak to wear
the mask. That would just be cruel.”

“Babies?”
someone echoed.

“Of course. The
program needs volunteers of all kinds. If you cannot be the blade,
you can be the furrow. That’s what the Garden is all about.”

A hundred
thoughts collided in Jane’s brain, each worse than the last. The
pain at the top of her spine was so sharp she stumbled. The Garden
was a breeding program and a prison. Who would pair them together?
Would they have a choice of mates? Which was worse, fighting in the
amphitheatre or being a prisoner in a village built to grow Green
Jack volunteers? How many would they be forced to have? And when
had this even become a viable option? Green Jacks didn’t breed like
regular people.

“Jane,
breathe,” Lee nudged her. “Your lips are turning blue.” Jane
coughed, lightheaded. “We’re supposed to look around,” Lee
continued. “Come on.”

“This is
ghoulish,” Jane croaked. “They want us to….”

“I know. Just
come on. They’re watching.”

The houses were
small and pretty, furnished right down to the nurseries. The
elaborate fences were wound with razor wire and electricity. Guards
stood every hundred feet even though the village was empty. Jane
shivered, so cold suddenly that she moved like a creaky
marionette.

‘This way,”
Grace called out. “The geneticists must test your DNA to properly
pair you and ensure your strong health.” A man waited at the gate.
He smiled casually, as though they were all friends. He jabbed a
lancet into Jane’s finger. Blood welled instantly, and was sucked
into a narrow tube.

Jane thought of
the blood on the linoleum, of babies born in sterile white
Directorate rooms, or right here in the bloodstained sand of the
amphitheatre.

“And this is
supposed to be better?” she murmured, feeling nauseated.

Chapter 9

Saffron

Saffron looked
at the protein paste ration she’d just been handed. “Where’s the
rest of it?”

“That’s all you
get,” the clerk replied, aiming a blue light at her copper
bracelet. He didn’t look concerned with the fact that she was
snarling. Weapons were banned on ration days, ever since the
Wellwater Riots when desperate people cut each other down for
something to drink. Saffron remembered seeing the images on the
outdoor screens when she was six years old, and the bones in the
gutter a few years later when she started to fetch the water for
Oona. The bones were left as a reminder and a warning. Saffron
sometimes wondered if some of them belonged to her mother. She’d
always fought against the Directorate, the Protectorate, Oona. She
fancied herself a resistance fighter. Mostly she was just
desperate. Now she was dead.

“Next.”

She refused to
move. “It’s not enough.”

The clerk
sighed, looking up from his charts. “New rations.” He raised an
eyebrow. “Besides, you don’t look that hungry to me. Next.”

She wanted to
bite him, just to show him how hungry people could get.

A soldier
shoved her into the next line leading to the electrified fenced
area around the pump. When they were younger, Saffron and Killian
used to play tic-tac-toe on the sidewalk or cat’s-cradle with red
string, but now they just waited; though both still wore a length
of that string knotted around their left wrist. It was their
version of a blood pact, since Killian tended to go cross-eyed when
he saw actual blood.

The grinding of
machinery echoed from somewhere on the other side of the block. The
damage to the buildings on this block were older than the Wellwater
riots, mostly rubble left by the bullets and bombs of the Lake
Wars. Through the gaps between the buildings, Saffron caught a
glimpse of a crane swinging a long piece of metal and clouds of
stone dust. They never bothered building much outside of the Rings.
Curiosity prickled at her and she glanced at Killian but he just
shrugged.

She moved
forward, pausing between the scanners. Blue lights flashed,
searching for forbidden weapons or extra containers. Her hands and
boots were swiped to test for chemicals before we she was waved
through to the Wellkeeper. Posters proclaiming how grateful Saffron
must feel for the gift of her rations were tacked to every
available surface. Water hit the bottom of the container, filling
slowly. She hated his part. She was exposed, nowhere to hide,
nowhere to run to, no knives, not even Killian at her back.

When she felt a
frisson of awareness she put it down to her usual irritation with
her life. Until she saw it moving through the crowd, barely
noticeable at first, a mere rumble. It could have been anything; a
lover’s quarrel, a cross child, the average bored and belligerent
Elysian.

Someone
shouted. Saffron couldn’t make out what they were saying, only the
angry derisive tone. The crowd shifted as one and there was a
violent surge towards the enclosure. The gates slammed shut.

“Down!” A
solider clipped Saffron on the back of the neck. She dropped to her
knees, pain ringing up her ear, as protocol demanded. Guns readied
with various clicks and snaps all around her, like the clacking of
Cerebus jaws. Her pulse leapt in her throat, thrashing wildly.

They knew about
the leaf mask. Somehow they knew. She hadn’t hidden it as well as
she’d thought.

“Can’t find
your Green Jack without us, can you?”

“You’ll have to
eat the shite we eat now!”

The missing
Green Jack and tightened rations had triggered the unrest, not her
leaf mask.

Saffron wilted
slightly as the adrenaline faded, trembling embarrassingly. It
wasn’t long before two men and a woman were hauled toward the
prison cart always waiting nearby. The girl’s nose dripped blood
onto her collar. Disquiet was invisible but powerful, like ocean
water reaching a faraway jungle through the veins of a river. Even
diluted, a single drop of poison was enough to taint the entire
network.

The Wellkeeper
went back to working the pump. He handed Saffron a packet of water
purification tablets. The others continued to wait in line, but
they were still on their knees. At the end of the street, Saffron
and Killian reclaimed their weapons. She’d once asked him if it was
a katana handed down from his Japanese ancestors. He just rolled
his eyes and pointed to the army surplus store down the street.

Fair enough,
she’d have reacted the same way if someone had made assumptions
over her Anishnabee heritage. Oona had told her things like race
and gender and sexual orientation used to matter too much. Her
great-great grandparents had lived on a reservation; her
grandfather had once lived in France. Her Oona had slept in a van
and driven across Canada with her parents, when there was a Canada
to drive across. She’d been eleven years old. Sometimes she talked
about New York and Prince Edward Island and Quebec City. Quebec
City was now a closed pioneer community called Le Quartier that
allowed no electricity or tablets. The Directorate ignored them
because what could they do with candles and blueberry fields and
snow? New York had fallen into the ocean and anyway they were too
far south to be in the Directorate’s reach, however much they liked
to pretend that reach could extend anywhere. Papu threatened to
walk to New Orleans several times a week, especially when it was
cold outside. Saffron didn’t even know if New Orleans still existed
or what it might be called now if it did. They weren’t exactly
forthcoming with useful information at the Directorate school she’d
been forced to attend until she was fifteen. A crowded room in the
Rings, a bored teacher and a dusty chalkboard and flickering
television. Paper was too precious to waste and the weakening
signals from dying satellites orbiting the earth were reserved for
the Directorate. As far as education went, it was decidedly
spotty.

The only thing
that mattered now was which side of the Wall you lived on.

And how well
you could feed yourself on nothing.

“We can’t
survive on this,” Saffron said, once they’d made their way back to
the apartment. She’d tried to convince her grandmother to join the
Woodwives—praying all day and night might be boring but at least
they’d feed her. She always refused, even now that Saffron could
take care of herself. She shoved her rations at Killian. “I’ll be
back in a bit.”