Extraction Read Free Page B

faster-than-usual heartbeat.
    I focus on the air flowing in and out of my nostrils, urging it to steady. I have to make a good impression.
    “I’d like you to try not to run,” my instructor says.
    Two pairs of hands place a lightweight silver helmet onto my head. It slides over my eyes, and the world goes black.
    *   *   *
    A soft hum fills my ears. The hum of the deflector shield in the sky.
    Wind tugs at my curls. Desert dirt lies beneath my feet, though I still feel the leather of the machine chair against my back.
    I breathe easy. This is a simulation. Whatever happens, it won’t be real.
    I spin in a slow circle, taking in my surroundings. I’m on the giant plateau that lies a mile west of the work camp. I can see the camp from here, with its sea of shacks on every street.
    In another direction, a dark building looms much too close to me. It can only be one place: the quarantine facility.
    I swallow hard and turn away. In the third direction, a row of figures stands in the distance. Children chained together. I hesitate before slowly walking closer to see them better. No one appears to be guarding them, but they aren’t moving.
    Maybe ten feet beyond them, the electric force field forms a hazy green barrier along the settlement perimeter. It runs from here all the way to the other side of the Pavilion, bordering the part of Kiel’s surface where we are allowed to go. Making escape on our own impossible.
    Beyond the force field and on the edge of the horizon floats the moon, a vast and terrible giant looming over our planet, Kiel. A pilot can reach the moon by ship in an hour if he’s a fast flier. Pink gas drips from its surface onto the deflector shield built to protect us after pollution ate away our ozone layer. The technical term for the moon’s lethal gas is letalith acid , but everyone, even the Developers, calls it moonshine.
    The whir in my ears falters and starts zapping.
    pew-pew
    A flicker runs all the way across my vision. For a second the shield fails, and I glimpse the true golden color of the moon.
    pew-pew
    I twist my lips into a frown.
    p-p-p-p-p-p
    The sky flickers everywhere now like lines on the CorpoBots in the Pavilion, when their signal cuts out.
    There’s a flash, and the shield vanishes from the sky.
    The moon sits on the edge of Kiel, a brilliant globe. Oozing pink acid.
    I can’t breathe anymore. I’m rock solid, and every inch of me is screaming, no, no, no, no, no, no.
    Heavy fog stretches toward the line of chained children. The force field doesn’t block the acid at all; it seeps right through.
    I’m shaking and breathing too fast. Let me out, please, let me out, I want to scream. This isn’t real, so I can’t die, but I can still feel pain—I’ll feel everything.
    Moonshine reaches the children. I almost yell at them. I almost run and try to pull them out of the acid’s way, even though they’re not real. But it’s too late.
    Their clothes sizzle and disintegrate. Their bodies contort in unnatural positions, like they’re burning insects instead of humans. Their mouths open in piercing screams—too many, too many—that make me want to fly out of my skin.
    The acid is almost to me now.
    I want to run. I want to be anywhere but here, even in quarantine, even staring at the muzzle of a rifle. Burning to death by acid is worse than any other kind of death.
    But my instructor said not to run.
    But I need to—I have to.
    But there’s no more time. The fog of moonshine clouds my vision. My face pulls away from my head like some hand is wrenching it. Then my hands and arms—everything. I burn like someone sliced me all over and drowned me in salt, and then set me on fire. The acid claws at my throat—I can’t breathe. I can’t think, and I sob and scream.
    Let me die, I plead. But I don’t die. Instead, I scream. Despite the fact that I don’t want to give the instructors the satisfaction of having brought me to this level. The pain is too much, so I keep