Extraction Read Free Page A

me wants to stay out here on the roof, to run far away from this test.
    As long as I haven’t taken it yet, I still have a chance. I could still be one of the chosen.
    A guard stops me at the door. Even though it’s not just me, even though the officials are stopping everyone to check us in, my heart quakes like someone jabbed an electric socket inside it. He grabs my wrist, digs his nails into my skin—I hide my wince—and passes his scanner over my citizenship number: S68477. Green light pierces my eyes through the slits in his helmet.
    After a moment, he drops my arm and motions me along with a flick of his finger. My wrist throbs where he touched it. I keep my eyes trained on the floor as I move past him.
    Two lines are forming in the fifth-floor lobby, one for girls and one for boys. They stand beneath a low, black-paneled ceiling. Officials patrol the room’s perimeter, including the exit behind me and the entrance to the hallway ahead, where instructors wearing scarlet uniforms and knee-high boots stand waiting with smiles on their faces. Now I couldn’t run even if I wanted to.
    “Welcome to Extraction testing,” a female instructor says, her voice rich and deep. She’s darker-skinned than most and wears her ebony-colored hair in a sleek, high ponytail that falls halfway down her back. “We’ll see you one at a time.”
    Words clump and tangle in my mind as I join the girl’s line: It’s going to be okay; it’s just a test; I can pass this.
    But the test for Extraction is different every year. No one knows what to expect or how to prepare for it.
    I’ve done well in school. I got the highest score on my final exams for mathematics and quantum physics. My instructors have hinted several times that I’d make an excellent addition to the team of scientists in the Core.
    I’m not sure that’ll help me today.
    I stand in line waiting for my turn with a trembling hand wrapped around my still-fragile wrist. I recite the prime numbers from one to five hundred to stay calm.
    This year, one hundred and sixty-two sixteen-year-olds on the Surface are eligible for the test. Only the top ten will be picked for Extraction.
    When I reach the hallway entrance, the instructor with the high ponytail steps forward, carrying a tablet. I notice a small, golden moon pinned to the neck of her dress uniform. “What name do you go by?” she asks.
    The question catches me off guard. For years, adults have only referred to me by my citizenship number. “Um, Clementine.”
    Her eyes flicker to the scar along my right jawline. The reminder plastered on my skin of the night I met Laila. The night an official slammed the butt of his gun into my face.
    I’m used to the stares, but it still takes everything in me not to lower my eyes.
    “Follow me,” she says.
    Down the corridor and around several corners, she leads me through a door on the right.
    In the center of the bright, whitewashed room, three instructors stand gathered around a machine: a leather chair enclosed by a cage of metal strips, adorned with knobs and wires. The walls to my left and right are made of glass. Through them, I see identical rooms running along the corridor. Kids climb into the caged chairs, while others climb out. The ones inside don’t look quite right. Their bodies are almost seizing.
    My eyes widen.
    “This will help us determine how Promising you are,” my instructor says.
    No “it’s all right” or “it’ll be okay.” If she’d cooed in that weird way the nicer instructors do—as if they think they’re our parents, even though we don’t have parents—it’d be easier to trust her.
    But whether I trust her or not, I have to go through with this. This test might get me off the Surface.
    I set my jaw and climb into the chair. The instructors approach and place black straps over my arms and legs. They don’t tell me what they’re doing, but I feel them push small, mushy balls into my ears that block out everything but my