Sorrow Space Read Online Free PDF

then...” Neighley didn’t go on, instead she broke down in tears, the emotional floodgates finally giving out.
    “I’ll need to speak to them both,” Magistrate Kane said in his professional voice, emotionless.
    Principal Neighley was sobbing, a handkerchief clutched in her tiny, cold hand, the sounds coming around it like the squeak of a rodent. Between sobs, she promised Kane she would find them, and Kane waited while she left the room to locate them.
    Alone now, Kane stared at the girl’s corpse. Sprawled in the chair, Helena didn’t look serene or peaceful to Kane; she simply looked dead. He strode around the body and the desk as the rain lashed the windows, examining the scene through the medium of his visor. Swirling handwriting curled across the open page of the jotter, and tiny pictures had been drawn down the margin, hearts and flowers. Three pens lined up beside Helena’s open pencil case, her name inscribed along their shafts close to the apex.
    And then Kane saw it, peeking out from just under the open mouth of the pencil case itself—a little package of pills. He reached inside, drew the package out with the tip of his index finger, clawing it across the desk’s surface until it could be seen properly. It looked like an ordinary bag, transparent and waterproof with a resealable plastic zipper across the top. Kane peered through the plastic at the contents, three white pills like chalk bullets. They could have been painkillers, but she was dead, right here. Whatever these drugs were, they were sitting right here, too, right inside the lip of her pencil case.
    Kane was still studying the bag’s contents when Instructor Levy and the student who had first alerted her to Helena’s distress walked into the classroom.
    “Magistrate—?” Levy began. She was a young woman with an olive complexion and a jaw that made her face seem too long.
    Glancing up, Kane told them both to sit. Then he took the package of pills and, ignoring Levy, showed it to the kid, a brunette with tousled hair as if she had just gotten out of bed. The girl looked intimidated even before he began.
    “You recognize these?” Kane asked.
    The brunette visibly swallowed, her eyes flicking left and right before she broke down in tears. Ten minutes later, Kane knew everything, from what they were to where they came from and who was supplying them. Smart drugs, chemicals designed to make their users more intelligent. They were supposed to enhance a user’s concentration, ensure a greater level of recall, make the brain run quicker.
    Whether they did or not, Kane could certainly see the appeal. Cobaltville was a strictly regimented society where prestige was bound up with status. As a rule, its people were born into their class with very little room for movement—those who were close to the baron lived in the highest levels of the Residential Enclaves; those designated the dregs of society would have a tough time escaping the Tartarus Pits at the base of the structure. In between, the other tiers all had their checks and balances, ensuring a society that remained static and docile. As a Magistrate, Kane saw more of it than most ever would.
    To maintain social status, the pressure was on to succeed, to stay smart and beautiful so you would fit in, retain your family’s position. These schoolkids knew that better than most; they felt it every day, in every lesson, at every family meal.
    Kane had grown up the son of a Magistrate, and it was expected that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. His father had drummed that into him over and over when he was just a child. These kids would be getting that same speech every night from their parents, assuring that they, too, must become doctors and dentists and supervisors in the Historical Division. It didn’t take much for a kid under that kind of pressure to get sucked into drugs, especially the kind that promised a shortcut to their goals.
    “Ain’t no shortcuts,” Kane muttered as