DEDICATION
To Andreas
NOTE
Oxygen is essential for most living things.
For 2.5 billion years, it was the most abundant
chemical element on Earth.
Until the Switch.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Note
Part I: The Pod
1. Alina
2. Bea
3. Quinn
4. Alina
5. Bea
6. Quinn
7. Alina
8. Bea
9. Quinn
Part II: The Outlands
10. Bea
11. Alina
12. Quinn
13. Alina
14. Bea
15. Quinn
16. Alina
17. Quinn
18. Bea
19. Quinn
20. Bea
21. Quinn
22. Bea
23. Quinn
Part III: The Resistance
24. Quinn
25. Bea
26. Alina
27. Quinn
28. Bea
29. Quinn
30. Bea
31. Quinn
32. Bea
33. Alina
34. Bea
35. Quinn
36. Alina
37. Bea
38. Alina
Part IV: The Battle
39. Quinn
40. Alina
41. Bea
42. Alina
43. Quinn
44. Bea
45. Alina
46. Quinn
47. Alina
48. Bea
49. Alina
50. Bea
51. Alina
52. Bea
53. Quinn
54. Bea
55. Quinn
Part V: The Ashes
56. Alina
57. Bea
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
PART I
THE POD
1
ALINA
Breathing is a right, not a privilege, so I’m stealing it back. I’m nervous, but I’m not scared. This is the mission I’ve been training for. I’m ready to lead.
I squeeze Abel’s hand and he looks at me. “Now?” he asks. He puts his other hand into his pocket.
“No, no. Not yet,” I whisper. Several cameras are trained right at us and there’s a steward only yards away. I pull Abel close and nuzzle his neck. We aren’t a couple, but posing as one makes us less conspicuous.
“Tell me when,” Abel says.
We get to a cluster of silver birches and join the group gazing up at them. The tour guide is giving a detailed explanation of what is required to keep the trees alive in here and the tourists, mostly Premiums, are eating it up. “It took twelve years for this particular species to grow. Nowhere else on Earth will you find such a specimen.” I resist rolling my eyes and even pull out my pad to take a picture so I seem like a real tourist.
An announcement comes over the loudspeaker, the voice firm: “The conservation area will close in five minutes. Please leave the biosphere. The conservation area will close in five minutes. Please leave the biosphere.”
“We’re too late,” Abel says, letting go of my hand and heading for the exit. I throw my arms around his neck. In training he was so cocky; I could never have imagined fear setting in like this.
“We can’t backpedal,” I say. “We’ve been saving for months to pay the entrance fee. And we need those cuttings. We aren’t leaving without them.” I glance around. Everyone is coming our way. Including the stewards. I kiss the tip of his nose. He pulls back.
“Why can’t your aunt or uncle do this?”
“I already explained it once,” I snap. “They’re in agriculture and they don’t get permits for this part of the biosphere.” The tour group shuffles by and heads for the gift shop. I grin at an older couple watching us and they return the smile, linking arms with each other as they move on.
“If I get caught …”
“We won’t get caught,” I say, though I can’t know this for sure. All I know is that I’ve never been caught before, and Abel’s hesitation is only putting us at greater risk.
I lead him back to our planned spot, where only camera four can see us. “It’s to your right,” I say. “Do not miss.” He nods, rummages in his pocket, and pulls out a fist, so I know he has the rock in his hand. I want to kiss him for real now, but there isn’t time, and anyway, he might not want a real kiss from me.
As the camera scans in the opposite direction, I elbow Abel, and he launches the rock into the air. I hold my breath. And I want to shut my eyes because I can see that the rock is going to miss. We’re going to get caught. And it won’t be jail time for us. We’ll simply go missing.
“Shit,” Abel says.
Instead of hitting the camera, the rock bounces against a tree then down onto the head of a tourist. I gasp. Stewards come running as he starts to howl.
“I’ve been hit!” the tourist shouts. “I’ve been shot.”
“I have to get out of here,” Abel says. “Now. You don’t understand.”
“Do you have another one?” I ask, grabbing his elbow so he won’t run. He nods and pulls another, larger rock from his pocket. He tries to hand it to me. “You have to throw it,” I say. “Your aim is better than mine.” The camera continues to pan the area. “Quickly!”
“If I miss, this could kill someone.”
I look down at the rock in his hand. He’s right. It’s huge and jagged, and Abel is strong.
“Then don’t miss,” I say. The stewards are calling for a stretcher. If anyone turns our way and spots us off to the side like this, we’ll be flagged for sure. Abel has to throw it now, or we have to get out. “Do it!”
The rock spins through the air. It hits the camera, smashing the lens to pieces. Glass and plastic shower the pathway and more stewards appear. Abel glances at me, then runs forward to where the crowd is growing.
“That could’ve killed someone!” he shouts. “This place is a death trap!”
I take a deep breath and slip under the ropes. I sprint through the trees, crouching low, hopping over roots. Most auxiliaries can’t run like this; their hearts wouldn’t cope with the strain. But that’s why we spend our nights in alleyways chasing one another up and down, forcing our hearts to pound and breathing in unlicensed quantities of oxygen.
I pull out a hand-drawn map of the biosphere with an X marking the spot where the elm is growing. But even without the map, it wouldn’t be hard to find: its branches, like splendid wings, are spread so wide it looks like it is ready to take flight.
My breath catches at its grandeur, but I have no time to stand and admire it. I open my backpack, take out a rope, and hurl it over the lowest, thickest branch. I grab a pair of clippers from the backpack, too, stick them into my pocket, and climb. When I reach the lowest branch I let go of the rope and begin to scramble up the tree using the branches and knots as handles and footholds. I don’t think about failure. I think only of the cuttings and getting them to The Grove. I scuttle along a branch and snip, throwing the cuttings to the ground as I go.
I would like to stay here, have Abel join me, and spend the afternoon breathing real air, nestled in the arms of this elm. Or his arms. Not that it’s allowed; No romance between members of the Resistance, Petra insists. It complicates things and compromises our decision-making. And she’s right. When I chose Abel for the mission, I didn’t care that he wasn’t really ready. I just wanted an excuse to train with him.
But I don’t have time to w
orry about that now. Soon the stewards will have swept up the camera pieces and injured tourist and everyone will be filing toward the exit. I hasten to the ground, gather up my equipment and the clippings, and race back, my heart hammering.
When I near the space in the trees where the yellow pathway reappears, I get down onto my knees and inch forward. No one notices me as I stand and saunter over to Abel. He turns his head, smiles, and steps away from the fringes of the crowd.
We follow the last of the tourists through a revolving door into a dark tunnel separating the biosphere from the rest of the pod and the air changes; it no longer tastes real and green but plastic. And once we reach the end of the tunnel, we calmly walk away, careful not to go above three miles per hour in case a speed camera flashes us or a steward notices.
We are in Zone One, with its clean boulevards and mirrored buildings. Every person we pass is pristinely dressed, with facemasks strapped to their self-satisfied faces and connected to airtanks tied to their hips. They are all Premiums, of course, and when they see us, their gazes shift away. Ever so slightly.
We move steadily forward, and while there are no walls or electric fences, no barricades separating the different zones in the pod, when we enter Zone Two there can be no doubt we’ve left behind the elite. Here, closer to the center of the dome, houses have turned into squat apartment buildings. Open boulevards are now narrow streets and the place is swarming, not with suits, but with stewards, because this is where they live. We keep our heads down.
Before long we reach Zone Three. The apartment buildings, built to house one thousand people each, reach up toward the glass dome of the pod, and the roads are so dark it could be night: all the natural light is swallowed up by the concrete. We slip into a gloomy alleyway between two buildings. They are poor substitutes for the grandeur of the elms and alders.
Abel rubs his hands together and dances on the spot with excitement. “We did it! Did you get everything you needed? Can I see? I’ll take care of everything if you like. Hand it over.” He is back to his old self.
“I got a heap of clippings. Silas won’t believe it. Petra will probably promote me!”
“You were amazing!” he says, and grabs my hips to draw me in toward him. He is smiling and so close the tips of our noses are practically touching. I push him away playfully, not ready to begin whatever it is a kiss would start.
“Me? The way you threw that rock and distracted everyone. I’m glad Petra found you, Abel. You’re going to be very useful to us.” I don’t know why I continue to make our relationship all about the Resistance. I don’t know why I can’t tell him I’m glad he’s around whether we’re working together or not.
“So are we going to deliver them to The Grove?” he asks.
“Yes. Will you come with us?”
Abel beams. “Of course I’m coming!” We slink back into the street and Abel throws his arm around my shoulder. My insides tumble.
“Do you trust me?” he asks. He tickles my neck with his fingers.
“Cut it out, Abel!” I say. “We’re comrades, not a couple.” I want him to contest this and tell me he can’t live without me. He doesn’t. He just laughs. And I do not push his arm away.
But unlike him, I’m not laughing.
2
BEA
Ten candidates sit around the glass table. Many of them are fidgeting. One girl is chewing her nails and spitting them onto the table. A boy is eating the insides of his mouth. I try to appear calm. When I look at Quinn sitting across from me, he grins to show he isn’t worried for either of us; he is as relaxed as he always is and leans back into his chair, his hands behind his head.
We are waiting for the professor. We are waiting for the debate. We’ve all spent over a year studying and it’s time to prove how well we can outwit one another. Everyone else in the room is a highly groomed, prepped Premium, and apart from Quinn, who isn’t in the least bit snobby and who you’d never know is a Premium unless you were close enough to see the circle tattooed onto his earlobe, I feel small next to them. Like Quinn, most of them probably had tutors preparing them for the debate, so they’re ready to pull me apart.
When the professor sweeps into the room, he doesn’t look at any of us. He turns his back as though he hasn’t even noticed we’re here. We freeze and peer at him as he powers up the screen at the front. When he speaks, his voice is metallic.
“The following exam requires rigorous brain functioning. Those of you who have taken the exam before and failed”—he spins around and eyes a boy with beads of sweat spotting his neck—“will remember that we are not looking for the right answer. We are looking for plausible arguments. Strength of reasoning. We are looking to build leaders who have the logic and fortitude to run the pod. You have been chosen because you performed exceptionally in your preliminary tests under simulated debate conditions. The only true test, however, is human-to-human contact in a real debate. This examination is being watched by several governmental officials and by directors from Breathe, the sponsors of this leadership program.” Quinn glances at the mirrored walls. I guess he’s wondering whether or not his father, a senior director at Breathe, is here. “The examination will be recorded, and you will be informed on your pad of your status as soon as you have been assessed. We will recruit no more than two of you. And we may recruit none of you.”
It is not an ordinary debate, with one team on one side and another team on the other. We all sit around a conference table, much like we’re in a board meeting, and take sides simply by listening to one another and deciding which candidates we agree with. At any point in the debate the professor can eliminate a student he deems aggressive, too quiet, or irrational. The key is to stay calm, stay in the game, and get others on your side. The professor settles himself into the high-backed chair at the front of the room and assigns us numbers by which to address each other. “If we have a situation wherein you all agree, points will be awarded for those among you who can act as a devil’s advocate. I won’t explain what this means—you all passed the preliminary tests.” He turns to the screen, flicks a switch, and a statement appears:
Trees are no longer essential to our survival, nor our progress.
Obviously. What else does anyone ever talk about? A boy in a crisp white shirt jumps in first. “Trees were essential, historically, but now they’re dead, we can do without them. One only need enter the pod to witness how happy and healthy every citizen is.” Of course. A Premium would think of the pod as a paradise. But he’s jumped in without thinking through his argument and there’s no way he’s going to be able to maintain that position for a whole hour.
“I disagree,” I say. “Auxiliaries can’t afford to buy extra oxygen to exercise. How can we be healthy?” And so it begins. We argue. Teeth are bared and voices raised. A few pushovers are easily eliminated. Then more. And at the end of the hour only two are left: me and Quinn.
“What type of progress are you talking about?” I ask. “Are we happier than our predecessors?” Quinn tilts his head and looks at me carefully. We are facing each other, a table between us. Quinn’s fingers twitch. He glances at the professor.
“But progress and happiness aren’t the same thing. We have more sophisticated technology than before The Switch because the loss of trees forced us to advance,” he says. He looks apologetic because I know he doesn’t want to battle with me. When we were given our test dates and saw we had been scheduled together, he threatened to quit until I convinced him otherwise.
“I didn’t claim that progress and happiness are the same thing. I’m asking how we define progress.” I pause, waiting for Quinn to respond, but he doesn’t. He just shrugs, a little defeated. I’m sure he has an answer, and I don’t want him to let me win. Before I can push him into responding, the gong sounds and Quinn lets out a sigh of relief. Then he smiles, not smugly or with any self-satisfaction but in a congratulatory way. I smile back.
“Thank you, candidates,” the professor says, tidying his things. “A
notice will be sent to your pads in due course.”
Once outside the Scholastic Institute, Quinn turns to me, grabs my hands, and says, “You did it, Bea! You were better than all of us. And you were so tough. I can see that tattoo on your ear already!” He hugs me, and I smile, both because Quinn has me in his arms and also because I’m sure he’s right: I argued perfectly.
“So now do you have time to hang out with me?” he asks. I’d been seeing Quinn less often as I prepared for the debate. Now that it’s over with, we can get back to living in each other’s pockets.
“I would love to,” I admit.
“Cool. Because I have something massive planned: a camping trip out of the pod. Three days. What do you think? We have a school holiday coming up.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’ve got to get a few things first, but I think we could go this Sunday, if your parents will let you. We can’t go Saturday because I have a soccer match.”
“Great, I’ll ask. But … oh …”
“What?” He steps closer to me and pushes his hair from his eyes.
“There’s the mock trial on Monday evening,” I say. “I’m the lead lawyer for the defense.”
“Oh, right.” He bites the inside of one cheek.
“I’d love to go on a trip, but I’ve been working on the trial for ages.”
Quinn shakes his head. “Don’t be silly, it’s important,” he says. He puts his hands into his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels, thinking. “You know what, I’ll skip the match and we can go on Saturday morning instead. I’ll tell coach it’s a family trip.” He looks up and nods.
“No way. You love those games,” I say. And I love watching him play.
“Nah. I need to get out of the pod. And we need some time together to work out what you’re gonna do once you become Premium.” He takes my hands again and we sway together as though we’re in some black-and-white movie. “You’ll be dancing in the streets, Bea.”
A woman pushing a stroller passes us and elaborately clears her throat. “Stop!” I laugh, pushing him away. “We’re going to get arrested.” We aren’t moving energetically enough for what we’re doing to be illegal, but I’m self-conscious dancing with him out in public.