Gravity (The Taking) (3 page)

“Start the sequence,” Dad says.

I bounce on the mat and tumble backward in a series of flips to give me the distance I need to do the sequence. Dad widens his stance, rotating his arms forward to get into position. He won’t hit me—well, he never has—but this look, serious and deadly, always makes me think he will. It’s no wonder he was top seed, top Operative, top everything. Part of it was because he wasn’t a legacy like me, but I think it’s also just who he is—driven, always a step ahead. Even though I’m the legacy, the one legally born to be commander, I’m not sure I’ll ever have the determination he has.

I sigh, wishing I could fight someone—anyone—other than Dad, and run across the mat, dive into the air, and then flip again and again until I’m in front of him, in motion before my mind can slow me down. I spin and kick. Throw punch after punch. My teeth grit together.

I push harder and harder, Dad blocking each move, but I refuse to give up. I shake the last of sleep from my body and continue to fight without thought or worry, until Dad throws up his right hand, his signal to stop.

He steps up, towering over me. “Good, but not good enough. You need to close the fight in under five. To pass Op training, you’ll have to do it in under two. To live if you’re in a
real
fight, you’ll need to know how to kill the enemy in less than a minute. You have to respond faster, Ari. The Ancients will guess your moves before you can think them. The key? Stop thinking so much.”

I glance at him, bewildered. “Under five? I clipped you. Aren’t you—” A zillion different words come to mind. What I really want to say is
proud
, but I know better than to speak of self-praise.

Dad watches me for a fleeting second, then exits the room without another word.

I grab a towel from the weapons shelves, wipe my face, and return my gloves, my mind reeling. Even if I weren’t rattled beyond measure, there’s no way I could knock someone out in under a minute, forget the enemy. I sigh. Well, I guess I’ll figure it out or get bruised up trying.

I walk back to the transfer door and step inside. It shoots up, opening to the main level of our three-story house. I wave to Mom, who’s watching some computerized cooking program on the T-screen in our sitting area. Thanks to World War IV, 95 percent of Sydia can’t afford food. Our land was destroyed, toxic, so that nothing would grow. As part of the treaty, the Ancients cultivate our land, but they can’t—or won’t—sustain the entire planet. So our genius Chemists created food supplements. A single pill provides all the nutrition of an entire meal. The problem is that manufacturing them is expensive. Their solution? Charge ridiculous amounts for real food and use that money to cover the costs. So while no one starves now, the majority can’t afford to even buy an apple, while the rest can have anything we wish. Mom’s wishes are simple—cooking and the necessary tools to make it fun for her. But she still feels guilty, which is why she transferred from Composites to Nutritional Development. I think if I weren’t so programmed to become an Engineer, I might have liked to try Chemist training. They do lots of good things.

My bedroom door slides open as I near. I take my time across the composite carpet. The softness surrounds my toes, and I wiggle them deeper into the carpet before reaching my closet. I weed through my clothes, choose my outfit for today, and then head to the shower. I need a plan, a way to question Jackson without anyone noticing. The last thing I need is for him to go all Ancient on me at school, exposing both of us. I need this to stay a secret—for now—until I can find out why he’s here…and why he protected me. Twenty minutes later, I come down to a silent house. “Mom?” I call out.

“Here!” she shouts from the kitchen. I round the corner to see her already in her white Chemist coat and scrutinizing a tiny pill on the counter. She pulls a dropper from her pocket and dispenses a brown drop onto the pill. The liquid coats the encasing, changing it from white to a deep brown. She passes it over to me. “Do me a favor and taste this.”

I recoil. It’s not that I mind food pills. I take them every day even though my family can afford natural foods. But still, brown? I don’t think so. “Thanks, but I’m not…hungry.” I step as far from her outreached hand as possible.

“Oh, come on. I’m trying a new formula that infuses flavors into the pill. This one”—she smiles at the tiny dot in her hand—“is chocolate.”

I eye the pill with suspicion. “Chocolate?” Her grin widens, so I relent and pluck the pill from her fingertips. “Are you—?”

“Just taste it already,” she says, excitement in her voice.

I drop the pill into my mouth and instantly the taste of melting chocolate pours over my tongue. “Mmmm. How did you do that?”

“Chef’s secret,” she says before pulling a notes tablet from her other pocket and becoming absorbed with her findings. I watch her for a few moments, studying the intensity on her face, the smile that never leaves her when she’s working. I wonder if I’ll feel that way, love my work and all, or if I’ll always look severe…like my other parent.

I grab a few breakfast supplements from the pantry and edge toward the front door without another glance from my mom. I reach the door and drape my keycard over my neck, which ensures my access to the tron, school, my locker, and anything or anywhere else I may need to go during the day. The door scanner flicks from red—no card—to green—good to go.

I set off down the street, trying not to run, refusing to think about what may—or may not—happen when I get there and see
him
.

I arrive at the tron just as the doors are about to close and rush onboard. Silver walls, silver seats, silver flooring. The entire thing is composite steel, with no hint of guilt at how cold it makes our ride, hence why I never sit on the top level. If the main level is cold, the top level is arctic.

The tron encircles and connects the four regions that comprise Sydia, our reborn American capital since a bomb decimated the previous one in the war. There are only three other well-established cities across America, one responsible for each section of the country—north, south, east, west. They’re like mini governments, each reporting to Sydia, which handles both the entire country and the southern region. The rest of the nation is wasteland, livable yet unable to grow food or maintain natural water supplies. Everything the people in those areas need is filtered through their dominating city. It’s like a business the way our government operates, but World War IV and its aftermath didn’t leave the leaders of the time much of a choice. We needed strict survival methods and controlled authority. That’s the only way we’ll survive if the Ancients attack again.

I slide into the third seat and focus out the window at the reds and yellows and oranges of fall, trying to focus on my plan for cornering Jackson. Within moments, the tron kicks into motion, and I settle in for the short ride to school. We pass through more of the residential areas of Process Park, the upper-class region where I live. Here, the houses are three, sometimes four stories, with large front porches and immaculately manicured lawns. Wealth. That’s what exists in Process Park. Wealth and expectation, which is why the school that Parliament insisted be shared by the two residential regions is positioned on Process land.

The tron reaches the school stop, and half a dozen of us exit onto the auto-walk, which leads into the main entrance. I glance to the left, to Landings Park, and swallow hard. It’s desolate looking, but I guess that’s expected of government-provided apartments. Building upon building, all stretching high into the sky, all slammed together so tightly a resident of one could jump through the window of another. A few kids walk down the main street toward school. They’re dressed in government-provided clothes. Brown pants, white T-shirt, and optional brown jacket. I look down at my own outfit and feel a pang of guilt. Sometimes I wish—

“Ari Alexander!” I hear, then fast footsteps followed by, “Where in the ’verse did you get those boots?”

I spin around just as Gretchen, my best friend, bends down to take in my new composite leather ankle boots. I smile. If Mom’s thing is cooking, Gretchen’s is fashion. We scan our keycards at the door, and I half listen as she tells me about some new technology that allows you to change the height of your heel as needed. We are almost to our lockers, and I’m contemplating telling her about last night when my breath catches. Rounding the corner, completely at ease, is the Ancient himself.

Jackson.

CHAPTER 3

Jackson shakes the excess water from his damp head, flattens out his T-shirt, and throws on a government-provided brown jacket. The jacket wraps his body, tying at the side, exposing a small triangle of his white T-shirt. He waves to some giggling girl—probably a stupid freshman—and knocks knuckles with another Landings boy as he makes his way to Central Hall, the annex of our school. He never looks my way or even hints that he knows me. My teeth grind together as I watch him, each step like he’s mocking me.

All along I’ve been jealous of him, of how quickly he moved up the rankings. I’m the future commander, my spot has always been known, but he’s from Landings. Most of the top seeds have been children of Operatives, all from Prospect. Jackson had no previous training or help to get him to that spot. I admired him. And now I find out it was all a lie. He didn’t succeed on merit; he succeeded because he’s an Ancient.

“Hey, aren’t you listening to me? I was— Ohhhhh!” Gretchen follows my gaze. A wide smile stretches across her deep brown face.

I blink a few times and rub my right eye, faking an eyelash. “What?”

“Blast, Ari, when did you fall for Jackson?”

“Ugh! Like I would fall for an An—other.” My eyes fleet to hers, but she’s still smiling.

“Uh-huh, so why are you avoiding the question? Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She twiddles a transfer pen against her locker, the
ping
making it all that much harder for me to come up with a decent excuse.

“No. No, it isn’t like that. I was just thinking that today I’ll face him in F.T.” I need to learn to lie better.

“Face who?” I spin around to see Lawrence Cartier, the third in our little group, coming toward us. He sweeps me into a tight hug and smiles over at Gretchen. “So…?”

Gretchen and I exchange glances. “So what?” she asks.

“Who were you talking about?”

“Oh, Ari faces Jackson in F.T. today. We were just talking strategy.”

Law’s face sours. “I don’t get it. Why do the girls have to fight the guys? He’s three times your size. It isn’t—”

“It’s fine,” I say. “Size doesn’t matter—you know that. Besides, I’ve been the best so far.” Barely.

He bites back an argument, raking a hand through his shaggy brown hair. He has that hair girls would kill for, and it gets him almost as much attention as his large brown eyes and flawless olive skin. Girls notice him everywhere he goes. And maybe part of that is his future title, but I think it’s his easygoing attitude combined with his innocent face, though maybe that’s because I’ve known him forever. “Well, let’s hope you’re right,” he says. “I’d hate to have to break his jaw.”

I almost laugh. Even though Parliament trainees take mandatory combat classes, fighting was never Law’s strongest skill. Thankfully, Gretchen pats his shoulder in that condescending way she does and says, “Nice thought, Lawrence, but we both know you better leave the fighting to our girl.”

I smile uncomfortably. “We’ll see how I do. We should get in there before the bell rings.” I grab a few transfer pens and a notes tablet from my locker and follow Gretchen into the F.T. gym. Law waves to us as he heads to the library, a fitting place for Parliament trainees.

My next class is called Field Training or F.T. Once we hit high school, we were forced to decide our career paths, and all of us juniors are well into career training now, which means everyone who plans to become an Operative like Gretchen, Jackson, and me has to face off. Of course, not everyone will make it through true Op training. Dad likes to remind me of that fact when I’m struggling with one of our morning trainings.

The gym is two stories with the same bullet-absorbing silver walls of my training room at home, but this room can hold ten thousand people. It’s huge, which to me seems crazy considering as far as I know only our Pre-Operatives class—twenty-five boys and girls—ever use it. I glance to the center of the gym. Stationed in the middle of the floor is a large, thick mat. Aerial boxing.

“Uh-oh,” Gretchen says, nodding toward the mat. “You ready for this?”

“Of course,” I say, but inside my nerves wind tight. I draw a breath, forcing myself to calm down as Gretchen and I head toward the girls’ locker room to change into our training clothes. Like the ones I use at home, these are made of a formfitting, stretchy material, although these are black instead of gray. Girls can choose tank or regular sleeve tops to go with the pants. I reach for a tank and a pair of pants before heading to my training locker two rows away. I sit down on the steel bench in front of it and start to run through my moves in my head. I consider Jackson’s size and strength, the various techniques I’ve seen him use during practice rounds, all of this making me glad that we’re doing aerial boxing instead of floor combat. On the floor, it’d be next to impossible to outmatch him one-on-one without a weapon. Aerial boxing is different. It’s all about speed and balance. Those who can control their bodies win. Those who can’t face-plant on the mat. I’ve been in both positions, though I’ve never lost to a student.

When we exit the locker room, Coach Sanders, our seven-foot, balding instructor, is standing beside the aerial mat, legs braced and hands on his hips like we wasted his time dawdling in the locker rooms and he is irritated. Coach is an ex-Operative, as tough as they come, and with an impatience level that rivals Dad’s. He’s known to yell first, ask questions later. I pick up the pace and jog to the mat.

“You know your order,” Coach says. “File into line with your opponent.”

I scan the crowd to find Jackson sitting on the ground. As the two top seeds, we’ll fight until the Engineers feel one of us is superior to the other. He spots me and winks. Fury lights up inside me, and I almost rush over and demand he answer my questions. How dare he act like he deserves to be here, like I don’t know exactly what he is? He leaps up and struts over to me. “Ready to eat mat, Alexander?”