When I come to, I’m sitting in a chair in a sunlit room. I think I’m in one of the Core’s upper levels. The medical department maybe? That pentagonal courtyard we only go to once a month for our vaccinations? There’s someone standing over by a bookshelf on the other side of the room, their back facing me. My hand hurts, and I lift it up to find it bandaged. Such gentle care for someone they must hate so much.
My face hurts, a dull ache. I ask myself why, but then I remember the brand in my forehead and tense up. I don’t want to wear the mask but I don’t want everyone to see the mark, the green eyes. I don’t know what I’m going to do.
The person at the counter turns. It’s a Mask. Of course.
“It seems no one explained your situation to you,” she says, crossing the room to take a syringe and a jar of a shimmering blue-white liquid. “Obviously, it’s different to what you had before you left.”
I clear my throat. Seems like I can actually make noise now. “Why don’t you just kill me?”
“We have to set an example,” she says. “If we had just killed you, people wouldn’t have much of an incentive to stay. Everyone dies anyway; why not die while being out there in the world? But if we spare you and then make an example of you, people will see that actions don’t go unanswered for.”
My stomach churns. “Do it secretly then. Arrange an accident.”
She smiles underneath her mask, identical to the one I’m destined to wear. “Oh, but we have to teach you a lesson too, don’t we? You can’t go running off and expect to come back without having to pay a price. This is as much for you as it is for the rest of the kids out there.”
“Seems like us Differents are quite a pain in the ass,” I snap. “Always causing problems.”
“You’re right,” she muses, filling up the syringe and placing it on a metal tray, “yet we still keep you around. What a waste of energy, don’t you think?”
“You need us,” I reply, eyeing the needle. “Without us you won’t have anyone to make an example of. Nowhere to send the Normals when they’re no longer considered perfect.”
“Exactly. But you all are becoming an increasingly large problem. Since the Recovery we’ve managed to fix everything that was wrong in the Old Era. Wars, natural disasters, rabid animals and the likes. But we still have one problem left -- ourselves. All the problems we humans face nowadays are created by us.”
“Okay, and? Then find a way to fix them.”
“If only.” She laughs softly, bringing the metal tray over to me and sitting down on a stool. “There’s only one way to completely fix everything.”
“And that is?” I ask.
“We all die.”
A bit counterproductive, if you ask me.
She pulls a pair of thin gloves over her hands and picks up the syringe. “This will help with the aching in your face. Just relax.” There’s a sharp stab of pain in my neck as the needle goes in, but as soon as she takes it out a blissful cool feeling spreads out under my skin, finding its way to my face and to the aching brand etched into it. “Moonflower,” she says, when I give the syringe a look of bewilderment and gratefulness. “It has a variety of medical uses. Really versatile, yet quite rare. Would you like to see our greenhouse? We’ve managed to get it to grow there.”
“Why are you being nice to me?” I ask her, staying in my chair.
She shrugs. “It is my job, after all. And you still have an hour to do whatever you want.”
“And after that?”
She ignores my question and gets up, throwing the gloves in a bin nearby. “Are you coming?”
YOU ARE READING
The Normals | ✓
Science FictionWhen Arden stumbles across a half-conscious, bloodied girl at his local train station, he doesn't know what to think. But once she tells him what happened to her, he gains a whole new perception of his world. Arden lives in pretty much the perfect s...
