The Choosing (The Arcadia Trilogy Book 1) (7 page)

She slept soundly for the remaining three hours of the night, and the next night managed to sleep before he arrived, as well as after, though after was harder. There was something compelling about Simon's eyes, the way he watched her. The way he touched her to show her certain moves. After he took her back to her room on the third night, escorting her the entire way even though she knew it by heart now, she couldn't sleep, tossing and turning and picturing those eyes.

The fourth night he showed her how to escape when being held too tightly by an attacker.

"What if he comes up behind you and wraps his arms around yours?" he asked, and demonstrated, fitting himself close against her back, his breath hot on her neck, his arms tight around hers.

Livy felt herself trembling, suddenly uncertain of her body and what she wanted to do with it, which parts she might think needed improvement and which she thought fine as they were. He made her think of all of herself, not just her brain.

Which was good. He was teaching her the physical side of her education.

But she felt so unsure!

Finding her tongue, she said, "I don't know why any of the Centurions or anyone else would ever grab me like this. They've got weapons. Why would they ever need to come so close?"

He was still pressed against her, breathing into her hair and against her neck. When Livy turned in his arms, they stayed locked around her. She found a way to snake hers up his hard, muscled body, to slide them around his neck and look into his eyes.

Simon's gaze softened. He looked from her mouth to her eyes. "You call this fighting back?"

She said softly, "I call this surrendering." And didn't look away.

His mouth came down over hers hot as if they'd been running, as if he were feverish or burning up from inside. She laughed up at him, delighted, letting him pull her close even as she pulled him closer. Their bodies twined together, his arms around her, his hands on her back, her hands stroking his face, tangling in the hair she'd so wanted to touch.

It was over too fast. They had to get back. There wasn't enough night for fighting, sleeping and kissing.

But the next night they started earlier. The next night he kept instruction to a minimum. She was getting proficient anyway. So the next night they found a place in the Room of All Things as Livy had dubbed it and stretched out together, body to body, mouth to mouth, touching and exploring and learning there was more to Arcadia than drilling and tests and homesickness.

H
e did
teach her that night, though nothing the Centurions were teaching her. He showed her how to free herself if an attacker knocked her down and knelt over her and Livy tried not to let herself think she'd ever get into such a position.

But of course, it happened to girls all the time.

Best to know how to get herself free.

And not at all unpleasant in between being "attacked" by Simon – and getting free.

O
n the way
back to her room, a trek Simon made with Livy for the pleasure of it now, they froze suddenly at the sound of heavy boots clomping through the Institute halls. Never before had they encountered anyone on their midnight journeys to the Room of Abandoned Objects. There were guards posted, during the day as well as at night, because students who knew they were failing sometimes tried to run. The Plutarch's system was set up to make use of
all
the citizens, not only the ones who chose to serve. Still, the guard posts were in specific places, not active patrols. They needed to watch exits, not classrooms – what students were going to break into the classrooms most of them longed to be free of?

"Quick," Livy hissed, and dragged him into one of the maze-like hallways that led to offices. They pressed against the wall, moving fast, disappearing into the dark before the boots came closer. Now they could hear the conversation between the two.

"…waste of time," one was saying. "The problem's in the villages, not in the Institute."

"Just shut up and do the check?" the other said, sounding irritated and hurried.

"Fine, fine, but it's coming out of the villages. Stupid of them, don't know how good – "

"Did you hear that?" the irritable one demanded.

Livy and Simon exchanged a look. Neither of them had heard anything. Either the irritated guard wanted away from his companion, or he'd heard something from another direction, far enough away that Livy hadn't heard it over the nervous buzzing of her ears and hammering of her heart.

"You go check it out, then," said the cranky one who didn't want to be patrolling.

"Not without you, good buddy. Orders are we stick together." The sound of one of them slapping the other, possibly a rough pat on the back.

"Shove it. And right. Stick together. Never know when we're going to run into an unarmed rebellion of
teenagers
."

They didn't move for some time after the sound of the patrol moved away and when they did there wasn't time for anything but hurrying back to her room, a quick kiss goodnight they hoped Julia didn't see, and Livy was back in bed before she knew what had happened, her mind spinning.

Rebellion! Maybe the guards couldn't agree on what was happening, but it sounded like it was something coming out of the villages. Her heart beat faster at the idea and she longed for a way to contact her parents. Was her grandfather alright? Her mom and dad? Pip and her brothers and sisters?

It had been months now since she'd been taken. Spring had turned to summer and she wasn't there to help with the growing. By now they should be starting the early harvest.

And sometimes, Livy felt ashamed. Because she didn't miss it. Her family, yes, especially Grandfather Bane. But she didn't miss toiling in the fields under the ever-watchful eye of the Centurions.

And you think what you're doing here is different?
She mocked herself.

But it was. Here she studied. Here the guards were to stop her leaving, not to brand her traitor and rend her limb from limb if she failed to stand too quickly after freeing her plow from a rock.

Here she had value.

And instantly she regretted the thought. Her parents, her family, they all had value.

Livy turned on her side and tried to sleep.

T
he next day was endless
. Her classes took forever. The summer heat infiltrated the coolness of the Institute and left her wooly headed and dumb. Several times her math teacher screamed her awake, once striking Livy's knuckles with a short crop she carried. Usually she only slammed it onto tables, waking students who'd been up too late studying in a terror of the upcoming choosing.

The woman, a persimmon-mouthed shrew, glared at Livy through beady black eyes and went back to her endless droning about geometry.

That's one for you,
Livy thought.
I won't forget
.

T
hat night
she threw Simon several times in practice, until he surrendered, hands up, breath coming hard.

"You've learned all I can show you! Peace! Peace!"

Livy laughed and swept his leg out from under him, controlling his fall to the mats they'd spread out in their empty training room. She followed him down and straddled him, pinning his wrists to the floor.

"I win!" she crowed.

"You win." He strained his head upward, eyes on her mouth, and she ducked her head and kissed him. The next instant he had freed himself and rolled them both until he hovered above her, kissing her, cradling her in his arms.

T
hat night
they sat on abandoned furniture and talked after they trained. Training, really, had been half training and half kissing, trying different holds and laughing when she couldn't – or wouldn't – wriggle free.

Now they sat on the edge of a stage in the very back corner of the abandoned room, their hands loosely linked together between them.

"I heard some talk today," Livy said. She swung her legs, lightly tapping the edge of the stage with her heels. "It's amazing how they don't pay attention if you're a student. It's like we're part of the furniture."

Simon gave her a lazy grin. "Teachers?"

Livy nodded, her dark auburn hair falling into her eyes. Carelessly she pushed it out again. "The math witch kept me to clean up the room. I should have been done for the day."

"Let me guess. You fell asleep." But he wasn't smiling and he sounded concerned.

"It's not because of what we're doing," Livy said hastily. "She's just
boring
."

"Yes, but you can tolerate boring better when you've slept all the way through the night."

"Simon, I – "

"No, we'll talk about it later. For now, tell me."

So she did. About the teacher and the Centurion in the hallway, about their clear attraction for each other despite Livy's feeling that no one could like the woman.

"They said there's talk in the villages that rebels are recruiting." Her heart pounded just at the thought. "That the Plutarch will crack down on them and take action if it's not stopped. And if they identify specific villages, they're going to make an example."

She didn't want to tell Simon about her father and the bullets. She trusted Simon. That wasn't the problem. But she'd heard of what happened to traitors and anyone even accused of treason. No one was ever executed before it was proved they'd committed treason, but the tortures that came before that meant anyone accused was found guilty.

Her heart shifted again. Every day she struggled to feel one way or the other about her situation. Sometimes she gloried in the freedoms of an incipient Blue – she was going to test into Alpha, and already her scores were so high, even in physical abilities now she that was working with Simon every night – that she loved being in Arcadia with the beautiful domed city, the trees reaching up to the glass and the flawless blue sky beyond. She loved the technology and the ease of living and she loved not grubbing in the earth for a subsistence living.

Other days her beliefs were tested. She heard rumors of horrors being perpetrated in the villages or someone accused, tried and executed for treason and her blood ran cold. She didn't know whether to believe the worst of the society that held her or hope that the treatment she received, the food, shelter, clothing and only the occasional painful reprimand from a dried up shrew of a math teacher was really the government of the land.

Today, tonight, her emotions were only fear for her family and the need to run.

She couldn't run. Running was treason.

"Did you hear anything?" she asked Simon, shivering with her thoughts.

Simon, distracted, didn't put his arm around her like he usually did. "Just some talk about the Chosen One." He seemed ready to jump down from the stage and walk her back to her room. Maybe get some extra sleep tonight so she wouldn't fall asleep in her math class.

But Livy had fastened onto his last words. "The Chosen One? What's that?"

Simon looked surprised. "You don't know? It's a legend. I thought it was throughout all the world but maybe not." Now he did help her down, but then didn't make any move to the doors. "It's said there will be a youth, someone our age, who rises from the provinces and leads the – villagers – " He stumbled on his terms.

"Serfs," Livy said comfortably. Simon's people had been ice fishers. They'd dabbled in the frozen oceans of Tundrus, not in the dirt.

"Anyway, the Chosen One will guide the serfs to freedom, leading a rebellion. A revolution. Against the government. The Chosen One will topple Arcadia and lead the people to freedom."

Livy shivered, thinking of holding the forms while her father poured the liquid metal to create the bullets he said were the essence of freedom.

Simon had started for the door. Livy panicked, grabbing at him, caught his sleeve and demanded, "Who is it? Who is the Chosen One?"

"No one knows that," Simon said easily. "I think it's all legend anyway. If someone were going to come, wouldn't they have done so? Everything is so out of balance here. You can't think this is fair, that we're here and our families struggle? That we can't even see them? That they die for stupid things like keeping some of the food they produce to prevent themselves from starving?"

His anger burned off him. It took everything Livy had to make herself believe the anger wasn't directed at her.

It might be, if he only knew the unfaithful, unkind thoughts she so often housed. Her ambivalence toward her captors.

"No one knows who it is? Or where – where he'll come from?" She was pleading with him, still holding his sleeve, looking up into his face.

Simon shook his head, not paying attention to her desperation, getting ready to head back to the dorms. "No. But they do say he'll come soon. The 'messiah' is almost here. Freedom is coming soon."

L
ate spring changed
to late summer to early fall, but nothing inside the domed city changed. The roses still bloomed, perfuming the air with their scent. The temperature held at a comfortable level. The aristocracy ruled. The beta classes served. The gammas performed in the pleasure palaces.

And the students came ever closer to graduation.

"
D
id you hear
? We get to get
out of here
," Julia sang to Livy as they got ready for bed.

"Of course I heard," Livy teased. "We're in the same classes, you know."

Julia, irrepressible, took her hands and danced until they both ran into the too-close walls of their room. "Out. I mean, we're going
out
. We get to visit the Senate, and the Square. We'll be out for an entire day. Fresh air! Flowers! People other than all of
us
!"

Livy smiled, enjoying Julia's excitement even if she didn't share it.

"What's wrong?" Julia finally asked, settling.

Livy waved a hand. There was too much to tell her friend. The nightmares that Julia slept through. Livy had them nightly now, dreaming of Agara being burned to the ground, her mother shot, her grandfather –

Already gone.

That hurt the most. The idea not of the dream, because it was only a dream, her daytime fears come to life at night, but that her longing to go home, to see them all and visit, would never be answered. Because her grandfather would already be dead.

She couldn't tell Julia about what she and Simon had overhead, both together and separately, that there were uprisings in the villages, and an active recruitment to the rebel forces. She couldn't tell her she'd heard something about the Chosen One or that the belief was growing that someone was coming to change everything and lead them all to a new life.

To the freedom her father had spoken of.

Her father, standing traitorously with his bullets.

She couldn't tell Julia any of that, and it weighed on her. She could talk about it with Simon, but all her other friends, no matter how close, were in the dark, and Livy wasn't convinced that didn't put them in danger.

So how to answer
what's wrong?
Livy couldn't even point out that the fresh air Julia was looking forward to was still under glass. Stagnant, and never changing.

"I'm afraid, I guess," she answered her friend.

Julia instantly sat down beside Livy on the lower bunk and put an arm around her. "Of what?"

Livy said, "Graduation. Of the Choosing. Of learning where my place is." Before Julia could interrupt to promise her she was safe, with her marks she couldn't be anything but Alpha, Livy said, "And everyone else's."

Finally she'd gotten through with something that made sense to Julia, something Livy might legitimately be fearful of.

Because they might be doing well.

But not all of their friends were.

"
T
his might be
our last training session," Simon said.

It was the night before graduation. Livy had been thinking of little else. Only that her time with Simon was probably ending.

Only that her life might be ending.

Or the lives of her friends.

But they had the night. Best not to waste it.

"Let's make it count," she said.

T
he hours passed too quickly
. They stayed in each other's arms until there were only two hours to sleep.

The last kiss was sweet.

"
Y
our name will be called
," the director said from the front of the auditorium.

Simon and Olivia had been shocked to realize their Room of Abandoned Objects was actually an auditorium, used for events of state. Now the empty room was full of chairs and students, dusted but no less austere. The government didn't approve of spending funds simply to decorate a room for their students.

"When your name is called, you will move to where you belong. Blues, those of you with privileges, will likely be assigned to the Alphas. You will be our leaders, our business people, our successes. Greens may be Alphas. Or Betas. Yellows will be assigned the rank of Beta. You will work for our community. It is an honor."

He surveyed all of them who watched him wide-eyed in fear, and added, "Of sorts."

Livy felt her hands tighten into fists again. Simon put a gentle hand on her arm, trying to make her relax.

"The reds, those students who had no place in this school and have no place in this society, have already been chosen."

A gasp went up from the students. It explained where anyone they hadn't yet spotted might be.

It meant those of them in the auditorium need fear nothing more than a life of labor.

The tension in the room eased, just a little.

Livy found herself staring around in a panic, counting everyone she could. Simon and Julia beside her. Kara and Trevor in the crowd. Damien scowling as usual from a place near the door, as if he thought he could graduate and then, finally, leave the Institute.

There was no sign of Viola. She turned to whisper to Julia when Julia put her mouth to Livy's ear and said, "Where's Vee?"

Livy shook her head, mouthed the same question at Simon. He had no more answer than either of them.

The three friends took hold of each other's hands and waited through the director's droning delivery of names, hoping to hear Viola's. Each of them was called to stand with the Blues and Alphas along with Damien and Trevor, chosen ones in a field smaller than that of the yellows, where Kara ended up. She looked dazed.

"Do you think she's at the pleasure palace?" Julia whispered as they filed out of the room. The Alphas were headed for the Square, for an afternoon of government business performed by Senators, and then back to the Institute for testing.

Livy didn't answer. It was Simon who leaned in close enough for them to both hear him and said, "There are worse things."

T
he Square wasn't
that different from the central village squares in their hometowns. Only in Arcadia, it was bigger, wider, with bleachers that allowed the crowds on the outside of the center stage to climb higher and higher, assuring them a view.

Standing in the muted sunlight for one of the first times since she'd come to Arcadia, Livy realized Julia was right – even this version of being outdoors was worth it.

Until the event scheduled for the Square started and Livy watched in horror. A series of trials were underway, the three Senators present presiding as judges. The students were packed into the square, held in place by Centurion guards and the press of humanity. Betas had the afternoon off to watch the trials. The aristocracy always had time off. The director and teachers were there to watch and to guide their students. Under cover of the press of bodies, Livy and Simon groped for each other's hands.

The judges took the stage and the eldest of them read a document that Livy, in a panic she didn't completely understand, barely comprehended. Three people were being accused today, three traitors to the glorious cause of Arcadia, three who put themselves above the commonwealth and community.

The first up on the stage, bound in shackles and treated like a criminal of the worst degree, was an Alpha boy barely older than they were. Inducted into a branch of government that controlled transportation and movement around the city, he was accused of having violated curfew. He'd been found walking home through the city after midnight, violating the privilege of his caste, which allowed him to move around freely – within proscribed hours.