Darklandia Read Online Free PDF Page B

rations. You’re ill.”
    I wasn’t ill. I was electrocuted.
    I couldn’t speak these words aloud, but some primal part of my brain refused to let go of this notion, the feeling that something was deeply wrong; not just with what was happening inside Headmaster Tate’s office at this moment, but with what was happening all over Atraxia. The rations, Darklandia, the sec-bands, the language filter, everything.
    But I felt so much better now under the influence of that clear liquid. Was it really so bad to want to feel so good?
    The headmaster continued to hover above me, his eyes beseeching an explanation for my reckless behavior. Then I noticed it, right between his eyes, the tiny scar no larger than a pinky nail. Headmaster Tate had been branded with the mark of the traitors: the letter F enclosed inside a star. The headmaster had once been evaluated and let off with a warning. No trace of his betrayal left behind but a blotch of marred skin between his gray eyes: the Atraxian star.
    “Get up, Sera. Your evaluation is in thirty minutes,” the headmaster said, as he stepped back and I was finally able to get a better look at the two angels flanking the sofa.
    I sat up and found another person in the room standing just behind the headmaster. My mother’s dark eyes were wide with a façade of shock, but her smile indicated she was quite pleased. Her smile made me smile. Even as the angels ripped the needle from my arm and escorted me off the school grounds, I still smiled.

    My feet carried me willingly across the courtyard, past the dusty fountains and the empty tree planters, toward the enormous tower that soared into the sky like a wake of glass left by a rocket. One part of my mind told me I should run or at least defend my actions during the evaluation. Another stronger, or weaker, part of me knew I should just stay quiet and be happy that life was back to normal again. If I remained silent and obedient, I would be given a second chance, like my father. Only I wouldn’t waste my second chance. I would treasure it. I would drink my rations and spend extra hours inside Darklandia. I would do whatever it took to escape that despair, that blackness, that darkling mania.
    The angels held the doors open for me and I stepped into a large reception area. The first thing the Department of Felicity did when they took Manhattan back from the rebels was to renovate the violence out of these interior walls. This building, which had once been used to memorialize the victims of one of the most horrific tragedies in American history, had been purified just as the rebels captured during the war were purified. Walls were torn down, shifted, and replaced. Plaques dedicated to the heroes who emerged in the midst of that tragedy were burned and new ones hung on the freshly painted walls.
    We watched a video of the events of that day in Darkling History class. The entire class was rapt with attention as the paper and ash fell like snow upon the sun-drenched streets. Then the bodies began to fall as people sought refuge from the flames that seared their backs as they teetered on ledges hundreds of feet above the ground. So much violence. So much despair. The darklings celebrated the memories of the victims, but it was they who created the victims. They blew each other up with their bombs and their words. They didn’t even try to stop it. They just kept fighting one war after another with the sickening idea that this war would be the last. This one would make the bad men stop. But the wicked never rest. Not even for a little while. The bad men and women were everywhere—until Darklandia arrived.
    Darklandia saved the human species from its inevitable self-destruction. Why couldn’t the rebels see that? Why did they still take the time to paint brassy red stars on the front doors of innocent people’s homes? Why did they still fight an unwinnable war?
    Because they were ill.
    Just voicing these thoughts inside my mind made me feel