The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (3 page)

I shook my head. I was shaking and I didn't have to fake the fear in my voice. "I was terrified. The bombs were dropping in the heart of our territory and I could see the explosions getting closer and closer with each wave. It's true, I ran away. I figured that Jenks had done something to piss off the…ants. I knew that I had to get out of there or I was going to end up dead."

Bash smiled, but it wasn't a pleasant expression. "Take off your shirt."

"I don't care what you think you have on me, I'm not going to take my clothes off. I—"

"You'll do what I say or your new home is going to be a pauper's grave. The perimeter territories keep a good watch on all of the approaches to the city, but Piter thinks that the ants are sending people in from the sky using some kind of fancy parachute. If you're really an ant, then you'll have the bruises to show for it—marks from the straps that stopped you from slamming into the ground."

I started to hesitantly lift the bottom of my shirt, and despite the poor lighting, there was no mistaking the flash of excitement in Bash's eyes. Regardless of whether he was right or wrong about me being part of the Society, he was still going to win.

My shirt was nearly high enough to expose the slender pack around my middle when I struck, slamming my right foot into his knee. He never even had a chance—my blow destroyed his joint before his brain had time to realize I'd started moving.

I didn't allow him a chance to react to my attack. Instead, I moved in and slammed my elbow into his throat, crushing his trachea and knocking him to the ground. He would suffocate over the next several seconds unless medical help arrived, but I'd already spun around to deal with the second guy.

The second enforcer had a knife out and stabbed at me, but despite his adrenaline and obvious experience in violent confrontations, he was still moving too slowly to have any chance of scoring on me. I stepped to the side and slammed my palm into his elbow, shattering the joint a split second before I reversed the course of his hand and slammed his own knife home into his chest.

Despite my superhuman reaction time, it had all still happened too fast for me to register what I was doing. I'd been reacting out of instinct, responding with counters that had been drilled into me by some of the most brutal instructors inside the Society.

I was supposed to be leaving the scene of the fight already, making my way to a safer location before anyone stumbled upon my handiwork, but I just stood there staring at the two men lying there on the ground.

The skinny guy was already dying. Society med techs probably could have stabilized him if they'd been onsite already, but nothing the grubbers had was going to be able to save him at this point. Bash was a different matter—even the low-tech grubber doctors could probably perform a tracheotomy if they arrived soon enough. All my training said that I should take care of him, should ensure that he couldn't come after me at some later date.

I looked back and forth between Bash and the knife in the other enforcer's chest, and then forced myself to walk deeper into the narrow alleyway. A single instruction to the computer riding inside of my chest was all it took for my face to start shifting. Five steps later Sally and the others wouldn't have been able to pick me out of a lineup. I was still me, but my features had been shrouded by localized swelling.

By the top of the hour, everything from my bone structure to my eye color would be different.

Chapter 2

The Society Presidential Administration Building
Six months earlier

The man sitting across from me always made me feel vaguely unclean. There was never anything I could quite pin down, and I'd told myself dozens of times that I wasn't being very enlightened by thinking such thoughts, but I hadn't been able to shake the feeling.

He didn't look at me with the kind of open sexual desire that I'd encountered so often from other citizens. I was well past the legal age of consent—an adult in nearly every way that mattered—so if that had been the cause of my discomfort I could have easily dismissed it as being insignificant.

At one point I'd thought maybe it was the way he carried himself. I'd been on half rations for the last two years, with no explanation given other than that it was for the good of the Society.

Food was one of the intermediate rights, granted free to anyone and everyone who wanted it, regardless of their contributions to the Society. Technically the administration couldn't enforce their decree that I take in only slightly more than fifteen hundred calories per day—it was unconstitutional.

I could have gone to any food dispenser in the entire city and requisitioned additional nutrition, and received thousands of extra calories if that was what I wanted. If I'd been concerned about the administration finding out about my 'excess' then it would have been a simple matter to have one of my acquaintances procure the food for me.

I wasn't particularly close to anyone, but there were easily half a dozen people I could have manipulated into giving me whatever I wanted. Most of them wouldn't have even realized what I was doing. The rest of them wouldn't have cared—most of them had tried to slip something to me at some point in the past because they thought it was unnatural for me to pass up the latest dessert crazes.

By any sane measuring stick I should have abandoned my starvation diet months ago and ballooned up by thirty or forty pounds, but whatever the Society wanted, the Society got. It was one of the rules I'd had drilled into me a decade and a half ago by one of the nannies assigned to my crèche.

What I wanted didn't matter. Following orders would eventually result in rewards beyond anything I could imagine. None of the kids in my housing unit seemed to have received the same lectures, but it didn't matter what other people did—or didn't—do. I was special. More was expected out of me than was expected out of them.

The longer I went before asking for a reward, the bigger my eventual reward would be.

My compliance with the restricted, bland diet had started out as nothing more than habit, but as time had gone on, I'd grown to appreciate the results. Unlike most of the kids my age, I was slender and fast. My instructors had pushed me for hundreds of hours in countless different exercises, and as a result I could perform athletic feats that were the equal of many of the top citizen-athletes in half a dozen different events—once my results were adjusted to reflect the fact that I'd not yet earned my franchise.

The level of speed and strength I'd obtained so far was heady and I could only imagine what I might accomplish once I was franchised. That—and complying with the needs of the Society—was more important than any concerns among my peers that I had some kind of eating disorder.

The administrator sitting behind the oversized desk was plumper than any of my friends, but he wasn't off of baseline for someone his age. I passed dozens of people in very similar physical condition every day and none of them ever made me uneasy.

No, it had to be something else. I just hadn't managed to figure it out yet.

"Your instructors are satisfied with your progress, Skye. I've read all of their reports and you are performing within specification. You are nearing the completion of several of your current courses of instruction. Would you like to make any requests regarding your next round of training?"

Additional physical education. Maybe a class in unarmed combat, or one in weapons mastery. That was what I wanted, but once again I suppressed any sign of my true desires. With sacrifice would come reward.

"No, Citizen-Administrator. I am happy to continue whatever units of instruction the administration judges to be most useful to the Society."

"Surely you must know how unusual your course of study is? The other young people your age have all completed as much schooling as they are ever going to complete. The most advanced stopped studying last year and the rest have been finished for three years. When they aren't campaigning for their elders to reduce the franchise requirements, they are all working hard—as much as two or even three hours a day—to make sure that they contribute to the Society in a significant enough way to earn their franchise. Some of the ones who finished studying three years ago—the most dedicated social servants—are within a month or two of completing their long-held goal and finally entering into our Society as full, franchised citizens."

I wondered for a moment if he'd forgotten who he was talking to. It was doubtful given just how unique my circumstances seemed to be, but it was the only logical explanation. I routinely spent six hours a day undergoing extreme physical conditioning and then studied other courses of information for another four hours.

I was lucky to get four hours a day to spend in the leisure pursuits that most of our people—citizens or otherwise—dedicated themselves to. My current schedule was nearly as demanding as that of the Society's small, but very elite group of military men and women.

It was hard to rationalize what I was hearing out of the Citizen-Administrator. In one breath he talked about the unusual nature of my decisions so far. Then in the next, he described two or three hours a day of work as being an exemplary level of dedication out of someone who would doubtlessly cut back to a few hours a week—if that—once they earned their franchise and received their injections.

"I'm aware that my current course of study is outside of the normal selections made by people my age, Citizen-Administrator. I'm aware that I'm lagging far behind most of my fellows with regards to earning my franchise, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make if our Society demands it from me."

"Don't you want to vote?"

"Yes, Citizen-Administrator. I would very much like to be part of our great democracy, I'm willing to wait for that day for as long as you and the rest of my instructors deem it necessary."

He studied me for several seconds before looking back down at his terminal.

"Since you left the juvenile housing and were allowed to pick your leisure activities, there have been no instances where you've visited any locations other than those designated with a green-one classification. Why is that? Surely you're curious."

I forced my face to remain relaxed. He was wrong. There had been one time when I'd ventured out into the wider world. The tracker buried in my arm should have alerted whoever was tasked with monitoring my activities of that fact.

I'd been young, curious about the world, and tired of being confined to the same thirty-thousand-square-foot facility that had been the limits of my world up until that point, but that hadn't been why I'd left the approved areas.

Thinking about what had nearly happened still gave me nightmares, but even that wasn't as disturbing as the fact that nobody seemed to know what had happened that day. Putting myself in a position where I could be forcibly taken from the approved areas of the enclave was a mistake that I'd never repeated, but the man sitting across from me had never given any indication that he was the kind to make excuses for anyone's actions but his own.

This felt like a test—something designed to establish whether I was willing to admit to my errors—but I forced myself not to follow my instincts.
She'd
told me five years ago that I must never admit to leaving, no matter what situation I found myself in.

"The social desirability index has been established for a reason, Citizen-Administrator. I may not fully understand the reasons behind why a given section of our nation has been categorized as being more or less socially desirable than another, but my understanding a given rule is not a prerequisite for obedience."

He smiled, and I finally realized what it was that bothered me about him. He did want me—just not sexually. There was something behind his eyes that seemed to indicate that I wasn't entirely real to him. It was unnerving.

I'd run into plenty of franchised citizens who'd retreated into virtual worlds once they no longer had to spend hours every day trying to earn their franchise. The Society's simulated reality equipment had been perfected more than seventy years earlier. For those citizens, the outside world often seemed to become less real to them than their simulated playgrounds. I'd had several of them treat me as though I was beneath their notice—unfranchised and locked out of their virtual worlds as I was—but this was different. He didn't just think of me as something that existed to entertain him, he viewed me as something that could be owned.

"…understand that many franchised citizens don't view the desirability index as anything other than an archaic holdover from days gone by—days when the Society was under attack from all sides. Given that, don't you feel a little silly detouring more than a mile out of your way just to avoid crossing into a blue-two zone?"

I slowly shook my head. The number of things that didn't add up were starting to bother me. The Citizen-Administrators worked directly for the Citizen-President. More than any other group, the administration was responsible for preserving our way of life.

"If the desirability index is really pointless, then the Citizen-President will abolish the color designations. Until then, I will continue to restrict myself to the most benign areas. Maybe there is some validity to the argument that the activities in the other zones are harmless. I've heard people say that the stresses put on our society as a result of those activities are so minor as to be insignificant, but if my training has taught me nothing else, it's taught me that under times of emergency even very small stresses can mean the difference between success and failure. I will not be a cause of a failure for our Society."

He cocked his head to the side. "Our Society is not under stress. The grubber cities are no threat in the face of our technology and military. There is no need to forgo pleasures and diversions when there is no emergency."

"With all due respect, Citizen-Administrator, emergencies by their very nature cannot be predicted with perfect accuracy. I stand by my words."