After the Fear (Young Adult Dystopian) (12 page)

Gideon’s feet appear by my head. He throws down four black L-shaped things so that they land on the grass next to me. When I go to grab one, it pulls my hand down.

‘Weights,’ Gideon explains. ‘They go around your wrists and ankles.’

That’s it. That’s all I get. I strap them on angrily, yanking off my boots, scowling and thinking unpleasant thoughts about how this is all Dylan’s fault . . . somehow.

At least Mr Motivator over here has managed to put his digipad away. He calls to Alixis and waits in silence as she stumbles towards us. My legs are like empty shells as I drag the extra weight up with me.

‘Where’s Dylan?’ Alixis asks, at last.

‘He has a Demonstration in city Sierra. I’ll be training you this week. Although I’m not very impressed, Dylan usually has the newbies fitter than this by now.’

Something—aside from the insult—squirms at that. I don’t like the thought of Dylan training other people and not me. How long has he been doing this, I wonder? Mental note: try and find his Debtbook profile after training. I don’t know why I’ve never thought of it before.

Gideon paces in front of us, arms folded behind his back like the army general I saw in a historical film once.

‘Anyway, we need to move on from basic training. You’ll still participate in your endurance drills morning and evening, but this week you’re on defence. Next week you’ll learn to attack with precision and how to give the audience a good show. By your fourth week here, you should be able to combine all of these to conduct yourself appropriately within the Stadium. You must not kill too fast, or too slow. You must read the audience well, judge when they want brutality. Then, you’ll be ready.’

I take a sharp breath.
Only three more weeks.
I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready. I feel as though I’m picking the petals off a flower; like a damsel trying to decide whether or not somebody loves her: I want to live, I don’t want to kill again, I want to live . . .

‘So we could be home really soon then?’ Alixis asks, her eyes glimmering.

‘In theory. Although
you’ll
die in your first Demonstration unless you get very good, very fast.’ His eyes rake the field behind us. He’s not even paying attention. Alixis’ mouth opens as if to protest, but she looks away, blinking fast. I give Gideon my best scathing look, which must be terrible because when he finally glances at me, he looks as if he’s going to crack up. When he clocks Alixis’ expression though, he lets out a short sigh.

‘Look, don’t shoot the messenger. You’re not good enough, either of you. Finishing the fight alive can come down to who has the most energy left. If you can’t run this field forty times before you go out to fight, you’ll lose. Dylan has been soft on you, and it could cost you your life.

‘Persistence and resistance, remember.’ He finishes his speech.

I hate those words.

‘Anyway, let’s stop that from happening, eh?’ Gideon says, attempting a happy expression. His raised eyebrows and weird, open-mouthed smile is actually quite funny; being upbeat
really
doesn’t come naturally to him.

We spend the rest of the day learning self-defence techniques for when you have been disarmed. They run through my head like the recipe to a tasty dish, and I imagine them read out by a woman with a high pitched, cheery voice:

-To escape one bear hug, you bend, put all your weight to the floor, and elbow your opponent in the head until you are free.

-If you find yourself being choked face-on, simply sweep their hands away in a fast motion while applying one knee kick to their groin, proceed to punch them in the neck and face until they are on the ground.

-To evade one sword attack in a downwards trajectory, place yourself between the hilt of the blade and your attacker. To do this you will need to slide the arm closest to the weapon towards your attacker’s neck. Use one free hand to punch the face, and mix in a knee kick to the groin.

The drills go on and on until the sun casts a murky grey through the camp and my arms are as heavy as, well, the weights which I carry. Gideon’s right, though: the moves become instinctual, almost to the point where I’m worrying about someone so much as placing a hand on my shoulder to say hello. I think I would have them on the floor with a broken arm within seconds.

Annoyingly, though, when Gideon and I parry, I fail to see most of his attacks coming and end up winded twice. Dylan’s words from the Medic’s Cabin repeat in my ears, but I push them away. What does he know?

I don’t want an answer to that.

At least Alixis is better at these than the fitness exercises. She knows it, too. Her melancholy finally breaks around the same time we hear the whir of a spinner in the distance.

We stare as it lands behind the gate. Gideon checks his digipad and takes in a broken breath, his eyes smiling. He darts over the field and down the path just as Dao passes through the gate.

I guess that’s the signal that our training is over for today. Without a word, Alixis and I head over to the Wetpod. I imagine we’re both thinking the same thing.

In three weeks, that will be us returning.

We hope.

THAT NIGHT, as I sit up in bed, I tap out Dylan’s name on my digipad. I hit the link to city Victor, and am confronted with a choice of over two hundred Dylans.

Thinking fast, I tap out the name of Coral’s ‘BFF’, Tulia Hurn. Her profile zooms up at me. I flick my finger across the screen to find her ‘following’ list.

My name is one of the first on the list. I can hardly believe what I’m reading.

It doesn’t fit among the other Demonstrators’ names and I’m not sure I like it.
She’s
following
me
. Me—the girl who couldn’t have paid anyone at school to talk to me, and not only because I didn’t have any money.

Although I know it’s a tiny bit pathetic, I smile at the thought of Coral reacting to this betrayal by Tulia. My finger hovers over Coral’s name for a moment, but I clench my fist. The one good thing about being chosen is that she is out of my life, and I won’t invite her back in by checking her Debtbook.

I cast my eye over the many male names in Tulia’s ‘following’ list before I reach Dylan’s. Blossoming guilt tells me I shouldn’t be doing this, but I tap on his name before I can change my mind.

Dylan Casey.

His profile picture is now one of him fighting. My eyes are drawn to the way he holds his sword, angling towards his victim lying on the ground.

He has 100, 681 followers, five times more than me and the most I’ve ever seen. His latest status reads:
Dylan Casey is the winner of: Demonstration in Sierra. Dylan Casey vs. criminals convicted of breaching Act 11: all persons must comply with regulatory procedures.

The statuses and comments don’t end. I lose count of his Demonstration wins after fifty and flick through them faster, desperate to find his first status as a Demonstrator. Finally, I reach a page which seems different. It has more gaps, and—I realise with a jolt of excitement—comments from non-followers. This is it, before he was chosen.

There’s a comment left by someone called David Harpen. He’s asking Dylan if he can come over and play on his model rail set. Above it is a status which makes my throat go dry. The words still inject fear into me, even now the worst has already happened.

Dylan Casey has been chosen to help pay the Nation’s Debt.

The date next to it shows December 2nd 2088. Eleven years ago. That can’t be right. I race back up to the top of his profile and check the date of birth underneath his name. August 31st 2079—that makes him twenty.

So he was nine. Just nine years old when he was chosen.

I think of William—crouched in his own urine, shaking in the corner. Is that how Dylan acted at his tryout? How did he survive? Why hasn’t he gone home yet?

Part of me wants to tap out Dad’s name, but I’m too scared. What if he’s stopped going to work? What if the last status is from days ago, showing he’s still in the flat?

He’s never written on my wall, and that scares me, even though I know why. He’s a profile monitor; he knows the kind of people who watch what everyone writes, knows how innocent comments can get someone into trouble.

Even if he is hurt, I can’t contact him directly. I can’t help him. So it’s easier if I hold his image in my head and carry around the hope that he’s okay. That he will be waiting for me when I finish my tour.

I lie back down and think of Dylan. I want so much to be home, so why doesn’t he?

I WISH I COULD HAVE spoken to Dylan at least once before he got together with Alixis. Okay, I don’t know for a fact that they’re an item, but they sit together at breakfast and dinner now, talking in hushed tones and looking as forlorn as war-torn lovers should. I’ve taken to sitting on the other side of Alixis and shovelling my food into my mouth as fast as possible.

Gideon still trains us. Days pass in a flurry of attack drills, parrying with Gideon, and sleep. Even in the dead of night his voice seems to scream, ‘persistence and resistance!’ right into my mind.

At least I’m seeing a difference. My stomach is hard and flat from the crunches. My arms and legs seem stronger, carrying me and my weights for thirty-two laps before finally creaking and giving up like a broken digipad. Even my flexibility has increased. Gideon has gone onto teaching us the more flamboyant moves, designed to impress rather than to survive. To get someone on the floor, the most practical thing to do would be to kick them between the legs, then attack them until they’re down. Now I know to crouch and sweep my leg out, knocking them from their feet. If I need to evade a blow I should try to leap over it rather than just get out of the way. This works especially well coupled with a blade throw right after, so Gideon says.

One aspect of training which I fear is creating our own ‘signature move’. All the Demonstrators have one, apparently, and performing it is like a silent acknowledgment to all your followers. As I never followed Demonstrators before, I don’t recognise any, but Alixis gets excited at this and starts to talk about this one woman who used to leap in the air and do a ballerina type spin before delivering her final blow.

‘You can often draw inspiration from your tryouts. Shepherd Fines will upload the footage to your digipad if you ask to review it,’ Gideon informs us after I express my anguish over the move.

At the thought of watching the tryouts, I shudder. I can’t think of anything more likely to reduce me to a fainting wreck.

‘Shepherd Fines would upload footage of a raging rebellion if
Sola
asked,’ Alixis teases, giving me an over-the-top wink. She’s in one of her better moods today. During her darker times, she doesn’t take my new friendship with the Shepherd quite so lightly.

We’ve only been chatting here and there, Shepherd Fines and I, but his jokes seem to be getting funnier—or my sense of humour’s getting worse—and I kind of like his company. Especially since Dylan’s avoiding me.

Two days after Alixis’ comment, Shepherd Fines visits me in the indoor gym which perpetually smells of old socks. I’m sparring with Dao, who sets off on the spinner almost every other day now that his tour is in full swing. Dao is the total opposite of Gideon: quiet, unassuming, and gentle. When I’m with him, I want to protect him even though I feel he’s protecting me. He’s saving me from going insane with his soft laughter and tactile touches.

Anyway, Dao is going easy on me, and I manage to get past his defences to land a hit with the plastic practice sword right in between his ribs.

As soon as I make contact, a booming chuckle sounds through the apparatus. Dao and I whizz around to see Shepherd Fines standing by the spectators’ bench, a grin stretched across his face and his light brown hair gelled so thickly to one side it looks black.

‘Well done, Miss Herrington!’ he calls, beckoning me over. Dao bows his head, taking a few steps backward before darting from the room.

I head over, swiping the sweat from my forehead and trying to catch my breath. Shepherd Fines holds something in his hand.

‘I’ve been hearing good things about your fighting, Sola. Now I see that they are all true.’ He looks into my eyes when he speaks, stressing his words as if he means every single one of them. Heat sears through my cheeks, and I look away, mortified.