Sacrifice: A Young Adult Dystopian Novel (The Emergents Trilogy Book 2) by K. A. Riley

Author:K. A. Riley [Riley, K. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Travel Duck Press
Published: 2019-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

22

Bounding up the stairs to the fourth floor, we spill out into the hallway and make our way to my father’s lab with me leading the way.

Pushing open the door, we find the figure of a man in a white lab coat sitting hunched over in an old office chair on four wobbly black wheels. Ribbons of metallic gray smoke rise up over a field of electric blue lights that snap and sparkle in front of him.

Now it’s my turn to be stunned into a shrieking squeal of greeting.

“Dad!”

The man stands and turns to face us. I know it’s not my dad, just a simulated image culled from my memories, but it’s close enough and so much better than nothing!

I throw my arms around his waist. He’s tangible. Kind of. It’s like hugging a pillow-stuffed mannequin designed to imitate the human form. There’s solidity. A faint bubblegum smell of the pink liquid soap we used to use from the old hand-pumps in the bathrooms on each floor. There’s the feel of the worn, threadbare fabric from his lab coat. But there’s no warmth. Not even in the return hug. I guess I’d have to agree with Brohn and say the only thing missing from my dad right now is his soul.

“Kress,” he says. “Meet Render.”

I laugh because I know this moment so well. I’ve relived it many times over the years. In a lot of ways, it was, and still is, the defining moment of my life.

My dad turns back to the table where the bundle of gray fluff is lying motionless under a bank of syntho-stimulus lights. Barely visible wires, spider-web thin, snake in dainty curves from a small bald patch on the back of Render’s fuzzy head.

“What is this?” I ask my dad.

When he doesn’t turn his attention from where he’s fidgeting over Render, I try lifting my chin skyward and asking the Auditor. “Why are we here?”

When the Auditor doesn’t answer, I turn to Rain. “What are we supposed to do?”

Rain runs her fingertips along her cheek and down to her chin. She slips past me and peers down at Render over my dad’s bank of three holo-panels where green lines of code and glowing diagrams are scrolling up like movie credits in the air above the table. With their baffling blend of science, math, and computational theory, the formulas are far too complex for me to understand, so I don’t bother trying.

Rain passes her hand through the code and the morphing schematics. “I think your dad has answers, and we’re supposed to ask the right questions to find them.”

Cardyn claps his hands together. “Marvie! So…it’s like a party game. Like twenty-one questions!”

Rain shakes her head. “I don’t think it’s quite that easy. I think what we find out here might be…dangerous.”

“What makes you say that?” Brohn asks.

“The Auditor is testing us. She’s looking to see how we respond to challenges, how our abilities function in confusing or stressful situations.”

“We’ve definitely had plenty of those,” Cardyn moans.

“Why

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