"Once a Stiff, always a Stiff," he says.
"Whatever," I say. "So do you like it here, then?"
Amar shrugs. "I don't really have a choice, but yeah, I like it fine. I work in security, obviously, since that's all I was trained to do. We'd love to have you, but you're probably too good for it."
"I haven't quite resigned myself to staying here just yet," I say. "But thanks, I guess."
"There's nowhere better out there," he says. "All the other cities-that's where most of the country lives, in these big metropolitan areas, like our city-are dirty and dangerous, unless you know the right people. Here at least there's clean water and food and safety."
I shift my weight, uncomfortable. I don't want to think about staying here, making this my home. I already feel trapped by my own disappointment. This is not what I imagined when I thought of escaping my parents and the bad memories they gave me. But I don't want to disturb the peace with Amar now that I finally feel like I have my friend back, so I just say, "I'll take that under advisement."
"Listen, there's something else you should know."
"What? More resurrections?"
"It's not exactly a resurrection if I was never dead, is it?" Amar shakes his head. "No, it's about the city. Someone heard it in the control room today-Marcus's trial is scheduled for tomorrow morning."
I knew it was coming-I knew Evelyn would save him for last, would savor every moment she spent watching him squirm under truth serum like he was her last meal. I just didn't realize that I would be able to see it, if I wanted to. I thought I was finally free of them, all of them, forever.
"Oh," is all I can say.
I still feel numb and confused when I walk back to the dormitory later and crawl back into bed. I don't know what I'll do.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
TRIS
I WAKE JUST before the sun. No one else stirs in their cot-Tobias's arm is draped over his eyes, but his shoes are now on, like he got up and walked around in the middle of the night. Christina's head is buried beneath her pillow. I lay for a few minutes, finding patterns in the ceiling, then put on my shoes and run my fingers through my hair to flatten it.
The hallways in the compound are empty except for a few stragglers. I assume they are just finishing the night shift, because they are hunched over screens, their chins propped on their hands, or slumped against broomsticks, barely remembering to sweep. I put my hands in my pockets and follow the signs to the entrance. I want to get a better look at the sculpture I saw yesterday.
Whoever built this place must have loved light. There is glass in the curve of each hallway's ceiling and along each lower wall. Even now, when it is barely morning, there is plenty of light to see by.
I check my back pocket for the badge Zoe handed to me at dinner last night, and pass the security checkpoint with it in hand. Then I see the sculpture, a few hundred yards away from the doors we entered through yesterday, gloomy and massive and mysterious, like a living entity.
It is a huge slab of dark stone, square and rough, like the rocks at the bottom of the chasm. A large crack runs through the middle of it, and there are streaks of lighter rock near the edges. Suspended above the slab is a glass tank of the same dimensions, full of water. A light placed above the center of the tank shines through the water, refracting as it ripples. I hear a faint noise, a drop of water hitting the stone. It comes from a small tube running through the center of the tank. At first I think the tank is just leaking, but another drop falls, then a third, and a fourth, at the same interval. A few drops collect, and then disappear down a narrow channel in the stone. They must be intentional.
"Hello." Zoe stands on the other side of the sculpture. "I'm sorry, I was about to go to the dormitory for you, then saw you heading this way and wondered if you were lost."
"No, I'm not lost," I say. "This is where I meant to go."
"Ah." She stands beside me and crosses her arms. She is about as tall as I am, but she stands straighter, so she seems taller. "Yeah, it's pretty weird, right?"
As she talks I watch the freckles on her cheeks, dappled like sunlight through dense leaves.
"Does it mean something?"
"It's the symbol of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare," she says. "The slab of stone is the problem we're facing. The tank of water is our potential for changing that problem. And the drop of water is what we're actually able to do, at any given time."
I can't help it-I laugh. "Not very encouraging, is it?"
She smiles. "That's one way of looking at it. I prefer to look at it another way-which is that if they are persistent enough, even tiny drops of water, over time, can change the rock forever. And it will never change back."
She points to the center of the slab, where there is a small impression, like a shallow bowl carved into the stone.
"That, for example, wasn't there when they installed this thing."
I nod, and watch the next drop fall. Even though I'm wary of the Bureau and everyone in it, I can feel the quiet hope of the sculpture working its way through me. It's a practical symbol, communicating the patient attitude that has allowed the people here to stay for so long, watching and waiting. But I have to ask.
"Wouldn't it be more effective to unleash the whole tank at once?" I imagine the wave of water colliding with the rock and spilling over the tile floor, collecting around my shoes. Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but I feel like when you believe that something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can't help yourself.
"Momentarily," she says. "But then we wouldn't have any water left to do anything else, and genetic damage isn't the kind of problem that can be solved with one big charge."
"I understand that," I say. "I'm just wondering if it's a good thing to resign yourself quite this much to small steps when you could take some big ones."
"Like what?"
I shrug. "I guess I don't really know. But it's worth thinking about."
"Fair enough."
"So . . . you said you were looking for me?" I say. "Why?"
"Oh!" Zoe touches her forehead. "It slipped my mind. David asked me to find you and take you to the labs. There's something there that belonged to your mother."
"My mother?" My voice comes out sounding strangled and too high. She leads me away from the sculpture and toward the security checkpoint again.
"Fair warning: You might get stared at," Zoe says as we walk through the security scanner. There are more people in the hallways up ahead now than there were earlier-it must be time for them to start work. "Your face is a familiar one here. People in the Bureau watch the screens often, and for the past few months, you've been involved in a lot of interesting things. A lot of the younger people think you're downright heroic."
"Oh, good," I say, a sour taste in my mouth. "Heroism is what I was focused on. Not, you know, trying not to die."
Zoe stops. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make light of what you've been through."
I still feel uncomfortable with the idea that everyone has been watching us, like I need to cover myself or hide where they can't look at me anymore. But there's not much Zoe can do about it, so I don't say anything.
Most of the people walking the halls wear variations of the same uniform-it comes in dark blue or dull green, and some of them wear the jackets or jumpsuits or sweatshirts open, revealing T-shirts of a wide variety of colors, some with pictures drawn on them.
"Do the colors of the uniforms mean anything?" I ask Zoe.
"Yes, actually. Dark blue means scientist or researcher, and green means support staff-they do maintenance, upkeep, things like that."
"So they're like the factionless."
"No," she says. "No, the dynamic is different here-everyone does what they can to support the mission. Everyone is valued and important."
She was right: People do stare at me. Most of them just look at me for a little too long, but some point, and some even say my name, like it belongs to them. It makes me feel cramped, like I can't move the way I want to.
"A lot of the support staff used to be in the experiment in Indianapolis-another city, not far from here," Zoe says. "But for them, this transition has been a little bit easier than it will be for you-Indianapolis didn't have the behavioral components of your city." She pauses. "The factions, I mean. After a few generations, when your city didn't tear itself apart and the others did, the Bureau implemented the faction components in the newer cities-Saint Louis, Detroit, and Minneapolis-using the relatively new Indianapolis experiment as a control group. The Bureau always placed experiments in the Midwest, because there's more space between urban areas here. Out east everything is closer together."
"So in Indianapolis you just . . . corrected their genes and shoved them in a city somewhere? Without factions?"
"They had a complex system of rules, but . . . yes, that's essentially what happened."
"And it didn't work very well?"
"No." She purses her lips. "Genetically damaged people who have been conditioned by suffering and are not taught to live differently, as the factions would have taught them to, are very destructive. That experiment failed quickly-within three generations. Chicago-your city-and the other cities that have factions have made it through much more than that."