Children of the Cull Read Free Page B

occurred to me that I had no idea where Olive was barracked. She had to be with the rest in the west wing, but I’d never asked. Better that way. I wasn’t here to make friends.
    What a shame Allison didn’t seem to realise that. I just hoped she wasn’t about to get into how she and Bets had made up.
    “Have you seen Ruth this morning?” I asked as we approached the Dorm corridor, bringing Allison’s attention back to our patient.
    Allison nodded breezily. “I checked in as soon as the alarm sounded. She was fine. She’s always fine, you know that.”
    “I don’t know,” I replied as we approached the door marked with Ruth’s name. “There’s been something about her recently.”
    “Like what?”
    “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be worried. Something in her manner.”
    Allison opened the door to the suite and stepped into the small antechamber that preceded Ruth’s actual quarters. Like all of the children’s dorms, the rooms had been converted from old offices, each with an observation area identical to the one we were standing in. Allison lowered her voice, even though Ruth wouldn’t be able to hear a thing. The place was completely soundproof.
    “Her test scores are consistent, her responses exceeding expectations. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
    I stared through the one-way mirror that separated us from the 12-year old girl we were discussing. Allison was right—on paper, nothing had changed, but...
    It was a hunch, nothing more.
    Ruth sat in her stark quarters, cross-legged on the floor, staring up at a television screen set into the wall. A games controller twisted in her hands as she threw the racing car around the circuit on the screen, the soundtrack playing through her headset. Crowds lined the side of the racetrack, waving their pixelated arms above hoardings for long-forgotten soft drinks. It was a world Ruth had never known, one that even I struggled to remember, and yet what could be more normal than a girl sitting in her bedroom playing computer games?
    “Let her know we’re here,” I instructed, and Allison went to the adjoining door, pressing a button on the intercom, and a doorbell chimed. Ruth barely looked away from her screen.
    Allison laughed. “I doubt she can even hear us over those things.”
    She tried again, and this time the girl answered, calling over the intercom.
    “ Yes .”
    “Ruth, it’s Dr Tomas and Dr Harwood.”
    “ Come in. ”
    I nodded at Allison, who entered, holding the door open for me to follow. As always, Ruth’s room was immaculate, a place for everything and everything in its place. My mother would have been proud.
    Ruth was wearing her usual light blue pyjamas, one of the few splashes of colour in the largely white space.
    Allison closed the door behind us, shutting Olive in the observation area. I walked over to Ruth’s small functional desk, pulling out the chair to sit down. The papers on the desk were perfectly ordered in neat piles, the pens lined up in order of colour and size.
    “Good morning, Dr Tomas,” Ruth offered, still engrossed in the game.
    “Good morning, Ruth. How are you today?”
    “I’m fine,” she replied. “How are you?”
    The conversation was hardly what you’d call spontaneous; we said the same thing, day after day, never deviating from the script.
    “Very well, thank you. Are you enjoying your game?” I said, glancing at the screen. Ruth’s car slewed round a tight corner.
    “It’s my favourite,” came the reply.
    You wouldn’t know by looking at her. She was concentrating, but there was no sign she was enjoying the activity. Her face was a passive mask, and she played in total silence at all times. There were seven other subjects, similar in age to Ruth, in similar rooms, and we had allowed them the headsets to communicate when they played their video games. The results hadn’t been what you’d expect from children their age. No shouting or yelling, no grunts of frustration as they misjudged their