Gregory Katsoulis - All Rights Reserved - the must read YA dystopian thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat!

Please no, I thought.

They heaved themselves down the street, waving off the Ads like flies. They couldn’t be bothered. One of them cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled back at me. “Sluk!” That was all the effort he could expend.

My Cuff popped to life again. Are you a Sluk? Take the Cosmo™ Quiz!

I kept my head down. The Ad faded quickly. Then I heard a different voice, this one quiet and gentle.

“I have things to tell you,” the voice whispered.

I looked up. Beecher’s grandmother was standing right in front of me. She was smaller and more stooped than I remembered. She wore a stiff black dress with sleeves so long they covered her hands. It looked ancient. She looked so sad, and I had the urge to tell her how sorry I was.

“Find me,” she said in a low, quavering voice. Her lips barely moved. Her head was low.

She shuffled away, back out of the park, and stepped onto the bridge with a heavy sigh. Find her? Did she want me to follow now? Why didn’t she just say what she wanted to say? Was she on the edge of Collection, too?

She moved to the side of the bridge opposite where Beecher had jumped, and then made her way over the curve. Anger suddenly twisted through me. Was she toying with me? Hadn’t I done enough for her? If Beecher hadn’t jumped, I don’t think any of this would have happened.

I wasn’t going to follow her. I wasn’t going to find her, either. If what she wanted to say was so important, she could find me.

SILENTS: $12.99

Nancee’s Last Day ceremony was moved to Pride’s Corner, a small, empty square of land not far from Mrs. Micharnd’s gymnastic academy. It was a “waker,” because Nancee had been born at 4:12 a.m. and Mrs. Harris refused to apply for a shifting permit to schedule the ceremony at a more reasonable hour.

“Maybe we’ll see a Placer,” Sam said, scanning the rooftops as we walked. He wasn’t supposed to come, technically, but he said he wanted to walk with me. Even if I had been speaking, though, I wouldn’t spoil his enthusiasm by pointing out that the Placers would have come through long before. They would have to know Nancee’s schedule, to make her Last Day Placements and set her Brand. But Sam enjoyed looking out for them too much for me to ruin it. I’d already ruined enough.

I couldn’t hold his hand while we walked, either. Even without the cost of the gesture, Sam was too old for that. Instead, I half curled my fingers over my thumb and thought about when he was little, and I would hold his hand and take him walking in the better sections of the city.

A small platform was set up for Nancee—much smaller than mine had been. Her product tables were sparse, with only Moon Mints™ and Kepplinger’s™ Hair Braids. I didn’t see any Huny®. Nancee had so wanted to be a Huny® girl, like my sister. If you weren’t rich, it was like a verified stamp of approval that you were pretty and worth something, but I don’t think Nancee or I were ever going to make that grade, according to the algorithms of the Huny® corporation.

Kids were milling around, far more subdued than they might be at a more reasonable hour. Even the kids who hadn’t had their Last Day yet were fairly quiet, and once people caught sight of me, the whole place went almost dead silent.

“Don’t pay her any mind!” Mrs. Harris’s sharp voice cracked through the air. The sound echoed between the buildings, amplified through Nancee’s microphone.

Nancee watched me with her big eyes, and I suddenly wanted to scream at her to run. But there was nowhere for her to go—nowhere for any of us to go. The best I could really hope for was to warn her away from doing what I had done, but I couldn’t even do that. She stood up a little taller under my gaze. She looked at the paper in her hands and smiled sadly.

The crowd turned back to Nancee in stages. I couldn’t have been very interesting to look at.

Mrs. Harris forced herself to smile and put a hand on the paper. “Nancee,” she purred. I hated when she spoke in that soothing tone.

Nancee was trembling. I could see it even from the back. The paper fluttered in her hands. She took a step and centered herself on the podium. Her eyes scanned the crowd. Her parents weren’t here. Like so many parents I knew, they’d been indentured to pollination. Once, I heard, this was a job done by bees, but honeybees were extinct, or close enough to it that it didn’t matter.

The air was rent by the shearing sound of tearing paper. A few gasps scattered through the crowd as Nancee let the pieces slip to the ground. She put her hand to her mouth, and Mrs. Harris slapped it away.

“Oh, damn!” Sam said, half amused, half worried. My breathing quickened.

“Stop that!” Mrs. Harris rasped. Nancee jerked away and stood on tiptoes so everyone could see her. She made the sign of the zippered lips. Mrs. Harris flushed with fury, glared at Nancee and then turned her wild eyes to me.

“Carlo Mendez did it yesterday,” Penepoli Graethe whispered, suddenly beside me. “And I heard Chevillia Tide did it the day before.”

Did what? I wanted to ask, but I had a sinking feeling I knew.

“What does it mean?” Penepoli asked me in a trembling voice, like I was leaving her behind. Nancee turned her back on Mrs. Harris, the platform and the crowd, and began to walk away. Penepoli grabbed my shoulder and shook me. “What does it mean?”

“If she told you,” Sam said, “it wouldn’t mean anything.”

I looked at him. I ached to know—what did it mean to Sam?

The crowd began to mill around. More eyes turned to me. Mrs. Harris moved off to intercept Nancee, and it seemed like a good moment to escape. I caught Sam’s attention with my eyes, and we headed home.

* * *

Mrs. Harris came straight to our apartment after dealing with Nancee, her eyes blazing. She stalked to the wall-screen and turned on the Central News Network™.

The news was calling them Silents. The report was vague about how many there were or what it meant. It sounded like there were more than the four I’d heard about that morning. They didn’t name any names, except mine. They showed the footage of my Last Day again. They’d found a reverse shot of Nancee looking up at me in wonder, implying I’d inspired her. I felt proud, embarrassed and sick all at once.

“She’ll never be Branded now!” Mrs. Harris squealed, like I had made Nancee go quiet. She was never going to be Branded by Huny®, like she’d wanted. I wondered if it would have been harder for her to go silent if Huny® had been on her table.

“It is estimated that Silents have cost the Dome of Portland, Vermaine, more than six million dollars in revenue.”

“The Silents,” Sam said in a dramatic voice, like it was a group of superheroes.

Mrs. Harris’s face contorted into a snarl of disgust. “Sam, this is not a joke.” She turned to me. “If you don’t fix this, they are going to take Saretha.” Her hands flailed around in a panic as she squawked. “And then they are going to take you. And then they will take him!”

We didn’t need her flapping around the room like an overwrought bird. Saretha stared right through her. Sam looked out the window, shaking his head. I didn’t say a word. Why didn’t she get the message?

“Do you have any idea what they are going to do? Saretha can’t even be properly Collected. I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

I was more than aware. I’d been thinking about what would happen to Saretha constantly. Yet the idea that they would disfigure her just for looking like Carol Amanda Harving only fueled my desire to keep quiet. I didn’t understand it, but somehow my silence hurt the system that formulated such terrible possibilities.

“I knew no good would come from trying to look famous,” Mrs. Harris said, shaking her head. Who was she trying to kid? I felt like she tried to dream up the most irritating things to say. She had been plenty excited that Saretha looked like Carol Amanda Harving until the letter arrived.