The Reaction by Helena Coggan

Author:Helena Coggan [Coggan, Helena]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780763694142
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2017-09-14T22:00:00+00:00

Nineteen years earlier (age 17)

April 12, 3:01 p.m.

“Can you help him?”

He says it straight, so they do not mistake him: he is asking them to break Regency law. They stare at him, and then at each other.

“How . . . how serious a help would this be?” asks Ariadne uncertainly. She turned twenty-four earlier this week. Felix threw an entire day of festivities for the whole army on account of it. Even the branch in Seattle knew about it.

Ari hates parties. David saw her standing awkwardly in a corner, drinking vodka from a pint glass.

“Just to survive the Darkroom. Just . . . food and water. And sanity.”

Rayna and Ari glance at each other. “That’s against regulations, David.”

“God knows I know that.”

This is perhaps the riskiest thing he has ever done. They are out of sight of the cameras — the bedrooms of Regency’s leaders, and their loved ones, are the one place that is not watched by the surveillance systems — but the fact remains that he is talking to, respectively, the sister of one of Regency’s most powerful figures and its second-in-command, not to mention the girlfriend of its leader.

Were there any other way, he probably would not even have trusted Rayna and Ari with this request.

But there is no other way.

“The Darkroom leaves its mark,” says Rayna. “They’ll know if Michael hasn’t passed it properly.”

“No, they won’t. I’ll coach him.”

They exchange a look. “David, can’t you . . . ?”

He knows what the question is, and he cannot blame them for it: Can’t you do something on your own to help this guy? Do you have to drag me into it? But all three of them know that is not how the system works. David may officially be Head of Security, but his job is to prevent people from destroying Regency from the outside. All security on the inside, and especially regulation of those who volunteer to join, is managed unofficially by Loren Arkwood.

He remembers the Darkroom from his own time there. It is the test that all who wish to join Regency must pass, and which Michael must now undergo: to be placed in an underground, pitch-black room for a period of several days, without food or water; to be drugged, in that darkness, and forced to see nightmares, to live out their worst fears. If, at the end of that, they are still sane, they are allowed to join.

David has no control over the Darkroom.

Except.

“They’re going to give him the Insanity Gas,” he says, suddenly remembering. “That’s mine. I produce it. If the batch that gets pumped in that night is, say, mysteriously ineffective — if Michael isn’t hallucinating — then will you help him?”

That is a first step, but still dangerous.

“I can try and bring him food,” says Ari. She is the next most powerful person in the army after Felix, and one of the things she controls is the management of supplies in and out of the complex. If anyone can get food to Michael in the Darkroom, it’s her.

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