The System

Darla, still holding the crinkled wrapper in her hand, leaned down to her son and looked at him. “Teddy,” she said in a slow, firm voice. “Where did you get this chocolate from?”

Teddy shook his head and clamped his mouth shut. He looked to the ground, his lip starting to tremble.

“You’re not in trouble,” Darla added. “But we don’t know where you got it from and we’re just all confused. Can you tell us? Please?”

With everyone waiting for his answer, Teddy leaned in to his mom and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t want to say,” he mumbled. “Everyone’s looking at me. I’m embarrassed.”

“Teddy—” she continued and she lowered her head and her eyes expectantly.

“The man.”

The room took a collective intake of breath.

Ethan snapped his head back to Ainsley, but her eyes were trained right on Teddy. Joey took a step forward and Doctor Krause sat up straighter. And Spencer’s hand went to the gun he kept perpetually in the waistband of his jeans.

Clearing her throat, Darla tried to steady her voice. “What man, Teddy?”

The child wiped his mouth. “The man in the backyard.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Her mother said to be ready at nine for brunch in the Sky Room. She brought in a sundress and a hot pink cardigan, instructed Lucy to take a shower, and even handed her a steaming mug of green tea. Maxine kissed Lucy’s forehead, paused in the doorway, hesitant and unsure, and then ushered her other children away, leaving Lucy all alone to get ready, without any idea of what the Sky Room was or why she had to wear a dress.

Their underground apartment was tiny compared to their two-story home, three counting the basement, back in Portland. And even though Lucy couldn’t get Grant out of her head—where could he be? Did he think she had abandoned him? Was he hurt? Afraid?—she still managed to fall asleep in the bed assigned to her in a small room designed for her and Harper. Late into the evening, after the lights in their room dimmed and the wall night-lights clicked on a soft glow, Harper left her own bed and crawled under the covers with Lucy. Her body filled the empty spots left by Lucy’s own body with a natural flexibility. Harper tucked a leg under Lucy’s legs, pressed her back against Lucy’s belly, and twisted her hair between her fingers. The six-year-old also sucked with ferocious vigor on her thumb; it was a habit Lucy thought her little sister had outgrown.

Yes, Lucy had slept, but only after she had a chance to talk to her dad.

Hours after he left for work per Huck’s bidding, her father reappeared, shedding his lab coat, kissing Maxine, and absorbing hugs from the twins. He proclaimed he was off to bed, but Lucy quizzed him on the System; she stood between him and his bedroom door, unwavering and unwilling to budge.

She learned that the underground housing was powered by solar energy. Had she and Grant ventured up over a grassy hill to the North of Brixton, they would have seen the expansive solar troughs harnessing high concentrations of power and fu

Lucy couldn’t conceptualize where the tanks were located. She supposed, as much as she hated to admit it, that her father could be misleading her on the size and scope of the System. She tried to remember the path to the tanks after she was pulled out of the elevator, but everything was a hazy blur—her already distant memory, slipping away before she could grasp it.

It wasn’t too long before she could tell her father grew restless of her questions. He retreated to his simple bedroom, but only after embracing Lucy wordlessly and holding her close to his chest. She could feel his steady heartbeat through his shirt. A consistent and comforting thud-thud thud-thud. “I’m proud of your bravery, Lucy,” he said. And she initiated the end of the hug, pulling away, and curling up onto the uncomfortable beige couch in the corner of the open room.

She wished that everyone understood that she was not the same. The weeks had changed her. How had everyone else arrived at the System unscathed?

The world was dead. Her friends were dead. She was living underground.

But now: brunch with her mom in a sundress just her size.

The dichotomy was dizzying.

Lucy held the dress in her grasp and opened the door to her room. She stood in the middle of the open area, shifting between one leg and then the other. Monroe and Malcolm were playing a board game; moving tiny plastic pieces around some map of the United States. Harper watched them from the couch, sucking away, her index finger curled up over her nose.

“Shower?” Lucy asked and Harper pointed with her free hand to a door next to their tiny kitchenette. She walked across the room and slid into the bathroom, which had a toilet and a tile shower. Shedding her clothes, Lucy stepped onto the tile and turned the shower dial; a low-pressure stream of water trickled from the showerhead. It was lukewarm. Lucy loved her showers hot, scalding—no amount of heat was enough. The tepid water a

Working fast, Lucy lathered up what she hoped was shampoo and then rinsed; she watched the suds slip down the metal drain in the middle of the floor. She had enough time to run some of the same soap over her body before the counter reached zero and the shower clicked off, leaving Lucy standing naked and shivering.

She took a towel and wrapped it around her body and then she walked over to the mirror. It wasn’t even steamy. Lucy looked at herself, leaning in and peering at her bare skin, yellow under the light. It seemed already that her cheeks had lost some of their youthful roundness. Her face appeared pallid and gaunt.  She tucked her wet hair behind her ears and sighed.

The Sky Room was a restaurant located on the tenth floor. When they walked through the double doors and into the room, Lucy gasped. The top of the dome was painted as a replica of the sky—just like the ceiling of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas that Lucy had seen in pictures; artificial light simulated sunlight and from small speakers on the walls, Lucy heard the distinct chirp of birds and a subtle whooshing of wind. Fu

Maxine stayed closed to her daughter, and she had do

“Mom?” Lucy asked as the young man then grabbed two paper menus and walked them through a maze of bistro tables where people from the System ate off of mismatched china. “This is weird.”

With an apologetic look around at the people at the other tables, Maxine flashed Lucy a cautionary smile and then motioned for Lucy to sit. The young man handed Lucy a menu and helped her push in her chair. Lucy set the menu aside and took in the room—nicely dressed people, eating in hushed voices.