I knock on the door labeled 27 and a woman’s voice calls for me to come in.
Cady 34—and everyone else from her division, obviously—is a petite woman with light brown skin and dark eyes.
“Have a seat, Dahlia 16.” She gestures to the pair of chairs in front of her desk.
I sit in the one on the right, my palms slick with nervous sweat.
“Your instructor tells me that your produce is consistently among the best, not just in your class but in your entire union.”
I blink at her, surprised. Sorrel 32 is obviously pleased with my work, but standing out too much—even for a good reason—is never advisable. Anything that breaks from the norm threatens the efficiency of the system as a whole.
“Sorrel 32 has nominated you for consideration as a future instructor. She believes that your skills could better benefit the city by teaching others to grow food at a higher quality than by growing food yourself. Do you agree?”
I can’t remember another adult ever asking my opinion. This is a test. It must be.
My heart races. I don’t know the right answer.
“It’s not a trick question, Dahlia 16.” But Cady 34 isn’t smiling, nor does she make any attempt to set me at ease. “Do you believe you could best serve Lakeview as an instructor? Do you want to become an instructor?”
Do I want…?
What a strange question.
Selecting me as an instructor is the only way the city of Lakeview will ever acknowledge my hard work and superior skill. But rather than growing tomatoes, carrots, or strawberries in the company of my peers, I’ll spend the rest of my life growing other gardeners. Alone.
Is that what I want?
Cady 34 notices my indecision. “You don’t need to answer right now. But you should know that you’re not the only one being evaluated for this position.”
Surprise gets the better of me and I sit straighter in my chair. “Who else are you watching?” It’s Olive 16. I know it is.
Cady 34 frowns, and I realize I’m not supposed to care about who else they’re considering. This is not a competition. What matters is that Management chooses the person whose instruction of future gardeners will most benefit the city of Lakeview—whether or not I am that person.
“Dahlia, as long as your efforts continue to glorify the city, you have a good chance of being selected as an instructor. But the city of Lakeview has no use for ego or personal pride, and Management won’t reward either of those by putting you in a position of authority and instruction over young minds. You are just one pixel out of the thousands required to form a clear image, so you need to focus on that image as a whole. If your arrogance were to be deemed a genetic flaw, Management would have no choice but to recall all”—she glances at something on her tablet screen—“five thousand specimens of your genome. Do you understand what that means?”
Fear weighs me down like shoes made of lead. I nod. Recalling my genome would mean purging every girl in my division.
Five thousand corpses, all wearing my face.
I am numb as I step into the elevator. The doors slide closed and I begin to ascend, because I am so lost in this new fear that I forgot to press a button.
The floor number climbs as I jab at the button marked “L,” for lobby, but it doesn’t light up, nor does the elevator descend. Someone else has called the elevator.
My rise stops on the tenth floor, and when the doors slide open a cadet from the Defense Bureau steps inside. The name embroidered in white on his black jacket reads TRIGGER 17. He is just months away from starting his life as a full-fledged soldier.
“Thank you for your service,” I say as the doors slide shut, because that’s all a trade laborer is allowed to say to a cadet or a soldier.
“Your work honors us all,” he replies. Then he pushes the “L” button.
The elevator begins to descend, and I sneak a glance up at him because I’ve never seen his genetic model up close. The geneticist who engineered his genome has certainly brought glory to the city with this design.
Trigger 17 is tall, with skin a few shades deeper than mine and eyes like the night sky—dark and bright. His features have a pleasing strength and symmetry. I’ve just noticed the way the cadet’s hair curls around the top of his left ear when the elevator grinds to a startling halt, throwing me off balance.
As I stumble into the wall, the lights go out. I am trapped in a broken elevator with Trigger 17.
A panicked sound escapes from my throat. I blink, but the darkness doesn’t clear. My hands find the wall, searching for something to grip, but this elevator has no handrail. If it plummets, I will have no way to brace for impact.
Air rushes in and out of my lungs as I slide down the wall to sit on the floor. I can’t see anything, so I clutch my knees to my chest and try to stay calm. Someone will come for us. Someone will fix the elevator and turn the light back on. It’s just a little malfunction.
The elevator drops several feet. I scream as I am lifted, then slammed down hard enough to bruise my tailbone. My teeth snap together, cutting off my cry, and across the elevator there is a heavier thud of impact, followed by a startled grunt from the cadet.
I can’t breathe. Have we run out of air already, or is there something wrong with my lungs?
What if the elevator drops again? What if it falls all the way to the lobby? A gardener’s academic block doesn’t include much physics or human anatomy; I have no idea what to expect from a plummet to the ground.
I try to suck in a deep breath, but only a weak wheeze escapes my throat. I’m panicking, obviously, and that realization leads to a terrifying certainty: Management won’t want an instructor who’s prone to panic during emergencies. How could they trust me to calm and lead a class full of children during a crisis if I can’t even compose myself?
My throat is closing, and I don’t know how to open it. I’ve forgotten how to—
“Breathe.” The cadet’s voice echoes in the silent elevator.
Shocked, I can only stare into the dark in his direction. His advice adds a new layer of anxiety to my fear of this confined, unlit space. We’re not allowed to converse with members of another bureau beyond the prescribed greetings and any communication required to perform a necessary joint task.
Trigger 17 is violating the fraternization directive.
He must be defective.
The thought sends a chill across my skin. Suddenly the elevator feels even smaller and darker than before. Tighter somehow, as if there isn’t enough room for my lungs to expand.
“You have to calm down, or you’ll hyperventilate. Is that what they teach at the Workforce Academy?” the cadet demands softly. “How to panic until you pass out?”
Of course not!
Indignation pierces my fear, but I don’t know how to respond without breaking a rule myself. Nor can I understand why I want so badly to do that very thing. Is that impulse a sign of a defect in my own genome?
“You don’t have to say anything. I know Workforce isn’t taught to take risks,” he says. But he can’t possibly know that for sure, any more than I know what Defense cadets are taught. Even if he is right.
I want him to stop talking. When Management finds out that he violated the fraternization directive, they might assume I did too. Because why would he keep talking if he got no response?
Would telling him to stop be a violation, or might Management consider that a necessary communication? I don’t know, and the possibility that I might be found guilty by association makes me feel as if not just the elevator but the entire world is closing in on me.
I’m breathing too fast again.
“Okay. Just calm down and listen.” Clothing rustles as he shifts on the other side of the elevator. “Concentrate on the sound of my voice and you’ll be fine.”
His voice.
I wish I wasn’t hearing it yet….It’s much lower and smoother than the voices of the boys in my bureau. I find it oddly pleasant.
“Back w
hen I was Trigger 7, a boy named Mace 7 locked me in a closet during a tour of the Defense Bureau. The space was dark, and it smelled weird, and there must have been an air-conditioning unit nearby, because all I could hear was the growling of the motor and the whistle of air through some massive vent. I tried to yell for help, but no one could hear me over all that noise. At first I just wanted to curl up in the corner. But that would be behavior unbefitting a future soldier.”
I can picture it—a young Defense cadet alone in the dark, determined to stay true to his training in spite of his fear—and I want to hear more. Maybe because I’ve never been spoken to by a cadet. Maybe because I’ve never truly considered what life is like for members of another bureau. But probably because Trigger 17’s voice is captivating. It commands attention.
He should stop talking for his own good, but I hope he won’t.
“I was in there for hours,” Trigger continues in the dark, and since I can’t see him, it’s almost as if this moment isn’t really happening. As if I’m imagining it. “I tried to find a creative solution to an impossible situation, as I’d been trained. I opened all the boxes, but they only held paper. I stacked them to try to reach a vent in the wall, but it was too high. I tried to pull the pins from the door hinges but couldn’t without any tools.”
I listen, fascinated, and it’s like I’m there with Trigger 7 in that storage closet, trying to rescue myself through methods no Dahlia 7 would ever have thought of. Methods no Dahlia, Poppy, or Violet would ever have been taught.
“No one noticed I was missing until they wound up with an extra tray at dinner, and even then it took them so long to find me that I thought when they finally opened the door, they’d be greeted by my emaciated corpse.”
My chest feels tight at the thought that we could be trapped in this elevator for hours. That our absences could go unnoticed.
“My point is that someone did come, eventually, and when my instructor finally opened that door, he found neither an emaciated corpse nor a crying child. He found a cadet standing at attention, reciting everything he’d learned in class that week between sets of jumping jacks.
“They’re going to find us much more quickly than they found me that day, because it won’t take long for someone to notice that the elevator doesn’t work. And when they open the doors, what they’re going to find is Dahlia 16, composed and confidently reciting a list of evergreen trees suitable to grow in warm climates. Or whatever they teach you gardeners.”
He noticed my name. I’m surprised by the warmth in my cheeks. Then I laugh out loud when I realize what he’s said.
“Hydroponic gardeners don’t grow—” I slap both hands over my mouth, and my face burns even hotter with guilt for my infraction.
“The power’s out, so the cameras don’t work,” he says. “And I won’t tell.”
But that isn’t the point. The only way society can function efficiently is through the division of duties and personnel into distinct and independent spheres. We learn that before we’re even old enough to walk. No good can come of my speaking to Trigger 17.
Yet somehow I’m breathing normally, finally. His story distracted me from the dark elevator and the possibility of plummeting to our deaths.
The light comes back on and I exhale. Then I realize that the elevator looks too dim. Too yellow.
“Automatic emergency lights.” Trigger points at the corner over my head, and I twist to look. “The camera is still off.”
There’s no red power light.
My focus falls from the camera and lands on his face, but I don’t realize I’m staring until his gaze meets mine. His lips turn up into a small smile and his left brow rises.
I look away, my face burning again, and Trigger laughs. “There’s no rule against looking.” At the edge of my vision, I see him shrug. “I’m going to look.”
My face is on fire now, but I can’t stop him from staring at me. I can’t even tell him to stop without breaking a rule. So I steel my nerves and stare back at him.
He has thick dark eyebrows and long lashes. A straight nose. A square jaw and generous lips. And that’s where my gaze snags. I can’t look away from his mouth, and I have no idea why.
“You’re beautiful, Dahlia.”
I frown and my focus finds his eyes again. “Beautiful” isn’t a concept we apply to people. There is beauty in the graceful arch of a delicate growing vine or the plump perfection of grapes ready to be picked. There is beauty in the rambling shoreline of the lake that gives our city its name and in the explosion of color across the sky when the sun goes down.
Nature is full of beauty, but we are not made by nature. We are made by geneticists—scientists from the Specialist Bureau who know how to assemble human DNA like a construction worker assembles buildings, carefully piecing together the necessary components until the result has both the desired form and function.
Form.
Now I understand. I’m not sure the word beauty can be applied to my genome, but suddenly the term seems custom-made to describe his.
But he can’t take credit for his features, and they don’t belong to him alone, so what would be the point of such a compliment? The flush in my cheeks crawls down my neck at just the idea of voicing my thoughts. There could be no more pointless a violation of the fraternization directive than to waste forbidden words telling Trigger how pleasing I find the structure of his face.
Yet he’s just told me that very thing.
He glances again at the name embroidered on my jacket. “A dahlia is a flower, right?”
Actually, dahlia is a genus of tuberous plant consisting of many different species. It is a very diverse genus, which displays a wide range of sizes, colors, and types. And yes, many produce blooms. He’s walked by several hundred of them every day for the past month since one of the landscape gardening classes installed them in the flower bed on the east side of the secondary dormitory.
But I can’t tell him any of that, so I only nod. That’s not really fraternizing, right?
“Do you know what a trigger is?” he asks, and I shake my head.
“It’s the movable piece by which a mechanism is operated. In most contexts, the word refers to the part of a gun you pull with your finger to fire a bullet. And in that other context”—he smiles and shrugs—“it refers to me. I’m Trigger.”
I am transfixed. His name comes from the part of a weapon used to kill people. Which is appropriate for a cadet, who is himself a weapon presumably used to do that very thing. I can hardly imagine how different his classes must be from mine. I learn how to nurture life, and he learns how to take it.
None of my identicals would ever have locked me in a closet. Not even Calla, who’s more like a thorn than a flower. Are things so different in the Defense Bureau?
“You said you’re a hydroponic gardener?” Trigger says, and I frown at the reminder that I’ve actually spoken to him. “So what’s your favorite thing to grow? Fruit? Vegetable?”
I hesitate, because technically the terms fruit and vegetable are not in opposition. A fruit is the edible part of a plant that bears seeds, and a vegetable is any part of any edible plant—including fruit—that can be served as part of a savory meal.
But no cadet would have any reason to know that.
Trigger laughs over my hesitation. “Something that fits into both categories? Must be the tomato.”
He looks smug. He clearly has no idea how lucky his guess is, because many foods fit into both categories. But he’s right.
“I like tomatoes too,” he says. “And nuts. My favorites are pecans and walnuts.”
I laugh, because neither of those are true nuts. They’re seeds.
“What’s so funny?” he demands, and I really want to tell him. But if Management wanted him to know the difference between nuts and seeds and kernels, they would have cloned him from a different genome. All Trigger 17 needs to know about his food is how good it tastes and how much energy it provides.
His eyes narrow
. “Okay, so you may be the plant expert, but have you ever eaten a nut right off the ground? Or a peach plucked from the tree? Because that’s what we do when we go out on patrol or war games.”
Envy burns deep in my chest. I’ve been growing plants my entire life but have never been allowed to sample one before the cooks-in-training chop them up, boil them down, and serve them all mushy and nearly tasteless on my cafeteria tray.
We learned in class that soldiers have to be able to cook for themselves on long missions. “Are you training to be a field cook?” I don’t realize I’ve actually spoken the question aloud until Trigger 17’s brows rise.
Trigger laughs. “No. I’m infantry division, Special Forces union.”
Yet he gets to pluck fruit straight from the tree. Suddenly my envy flares into an explosion of anger. He has no idea what it takes to grow a vegetable from a single seed. To keep the pH balance of the water steady. To trim, replant, and nurture. Why should he get to taste food right from its source when I cannot?
“Dahlia? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“What does a tomato taste like? Fresh from the vine?”
He shrugs. “I’ve never come across tomatoes growing wild, but I’ve had spinach so fresh you have to wash the dirt from it in a stream. I’ve had wild onions. And carrots. And yams. And several gourds.”
I am a storm of envy now, ready to rain spite all over him. How can a soldier trained to do nothing more complicated with food than eat it be so much more experienced with it than I am?
I know Management has reasons for the way it runs the city, and I’m not supposed to understand those reasons. But I can’t see how this could possibly make sense.
It’s gotten warm in the elevator, and Trigger unbuttons the cuffs of his jacket so he can roll the sleeves up. My gaze stops on his newly exposed flesh and my eyes widen.
“You look like you want to ask me something,” he says, and I can tell by the way he’s displaying his right arm that he knows exactly what I want to say.
But I’m starting to understand why fraternization is against the rules. I cannot afford to indulge in uninhibited speech, even here, where there’s no one else to hear it. What if I can’t stop talking to him once I begin?