Prodigy Read Free Page B

skin. His portraits make him seem fatherly, with healthy
     pink cheeks. Not how I remember him.
    —to the flag of the great Republic of America—
    Suddenly the broadcast pauses. There’s silence on the streets, then a chorus of confused
     whispers. I frown. Unusual. I’ve
never

seen the pledge interrupted, not even once. And the JumboTron system is hooked up
     so one screen’s outage shouldn’t affect the rest.
    Day looks 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,