Prodigy Read Free Page B

up to the stalled screens while my eyes dart to the soldiers lining the street. “Freak accident?” he says. His labored breathing worries me.
Hang on just a little longer. We can’t stop here.
    I shake my head. “No. Look at the troops.” I nod subtly in their direction. “They’ve changed their stances. Their rifles aren’t slung over their shoulders anymore—they’re holding them now. They’re bracing themselves for a reaction from the crowd.”
    Day shakes his head slowly. He looks unsettlingly pale. “Something’s happened.”
    The Elector’s portrait vanishes from the JumboTrons and is immediately replaced with a new series of images. They show a man who is the spitting image of the Elector—only much younger, barely in his twenties, with the same green eyes and dark, wavy hair. In a flash I recall the touch of excitement I’d felt when I first met him at the celebratory ball. This is Anden Stavropoulos, the son of the Elector Primo.
    Day’s right. Something big has happened.
    The Republic’s Elector has died.
    A new, upbeat voice takes over the speakers. “Before continuing our pledge, we must instruct all soldiers and civilians to replace the Elector portraits in your homes. You may pick up a new portrait from your local police headquarters. Inspections to ensure your cooperation will commence in two weeks.”
    The voice announces the supposed results of a nationwide election. But there’s not a single mention of the Elector’s death. Or of his son’s promotion.
    The Republic has simply moved on to the next Elector without skipping a beat, as if Anden were the same person as his father. My head swims—I try to remember what I’d learned in school about choosing a new Elector. The Elector always picked the successor, and a national election would confirm it. It’s no surprise that Anden is next in line—but our Elector had been in power for decades, long before I was born. Now he’s gone. Our world has shifted in a matter of seconds.
    Like me and Day, everyone on the street understands what the appropriate thing to do is: As if on cue, we all bow to the JumboTron portraits and recite the rest of the pledge that has reappeared on the screens.
“—to our Elector Primo, to our glorious states, to unity against the Colonies, to our impending victory!”
We repeat this over and over for as long as the words stay on the screen, no one daring to stop. I glance at the soldiers lining the streets. Their hands have tightened on their rifles. Finally, after what seems like hours, the words disappear and the JumboTrons return to their usual news rolls. We all begin walking again, as if nothing had happened.
    Then Day stumbles. This time I feel him tremble, and my heart clenches. “Stay with me,” I whisper. To my surprise I almost say,
Stay with me, Metias.
I try to hold him up, but he slips.
    “I’m sorry,” he murmurs back. His face is shiny with sweat, his eyes shut tightly in pain. He holds two fingers to his brow.
Stop.
He can’t make it.
    I look wildly around us. Too many soldiers—we still have a lot of ground to cover. “No, you have to,” I say firmly.
“Stay
with me. You can make it.”
    But it’s no use this time. Before I can catch him, he falls onto his hands and collapses to the ground.

THE ELECTOR PRIMO IS DEAD.
    This whole display seems pretty anticlimactic, doesn��t it? You’d think the Elector’s death would be accompanied by a goddy funeral march of some sort, panic in the streets, national mourning, marching soldiers firing off salutes into the sky. An enormous banquet, flags flying low, white banners hanging over every building. Something cracked like that. But I haven’t lived long enough to see an Elector die. Outside of the promotion of the late Elector’s desired successor and some fake national election for show, I wouldn’t know how it goes.
    I guess the Republic just pretends it never happened and skips right ahead to the next Elector. Now I remember