The Culling (The Torch Keeper) by dos Santos Steven

Author:dos Santos, Steven
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: teen, young adult, sci-fi, dystopian, fiction, science fiction, sci/fi, military, totalitarian government, male protagonist
Publisher: Flux
Published: 2013-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty

Graduation Day. On this last day before the Trials, the Establishment has moved us from our cramped and sparse barracks to the Officer’s Lodge. Each of us has been provided with a private luxury suite—in honor of our accomplishment.

I barely recognize myself in the floor-length mirror. I’m not used to seeing such a crisp reflection, especially one that’s decked out in fancy clothes I’d never expect to wear in a million years. My dress uniform is made up of a stark-white, long-sleeved shirt; cobalt-blue pants with a complementing vest; and a long-tailed coat that’s embroidered with silver brocade the same color as the buckle on my leather belt. A white silk scarf is neatly coiled around my neck, matching the gloves on my hands. I shift my weight in a pair of gleaming black boots.

The garments feel strange, constricting yet cushy against my skin. I sigh. When I first arrived at Infiernos, I wouldn’t have had any idea how to put this stuff on. I turn my head from side to side. Whatever was in those cleansers in that biometric voice-activated shower I just took has left my hair a shiny, wavy black. My skin seems healthy and tanned, not burned. I actually look … well … not too shabby. A wide grin spreads across my face.

After what’s seemed like forever, the moment I’ve been longing for these past few months is here.

I’m finally going to see Cole and Mrs. Bledsoe again!

I let loose a chuckle. They probably won’t even recognize me.

Neither will Digory.

My elation evaporates, along with my saliva.

This isn’t just a graduation ceremony. It could very well be the last moment I share with the people I love most in this entire world.

By the time the bullet-shaped Trans-Cab shuttles me over to the steel-domed Academy Pavilion, there’s already a procession filing into the building in full military regalia, complete with marching band. But despite the legion of soldiers, the only sound I can hear is my heart thudding in my ears.

My eyes scan the troops as I pass them. They’ve stopped marching and are frozen like statues. Hundreds of eyes creep over me, like a swarm of cockroaches devouring a piece of bread, as I make my way up the steps and through the front doors of the Pavilion. Even the trumpeters have stopped playing their procession march, the last notes trapped by the atrium’s vaulted ceiling and bouncing back in discordant echoes.

Even though I’ve completed Orientation and successfully made it all the way to graduation, these soldiers still see me, Lucian Spark, as a traitor to the Establishment. They’d never accept me into their ranks. The contempt they feel for me now is just as potent as it was on the day I stepped off the freighter ten weeks ago. If not more so.

I want to shout at them at the top of my lungs, tell them I don’t give a damn, that the last thing on earth I want is to be one of them. But I can’t make a scene.

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