Matched: Chapters 24–32

Ky puts his hand on my arm. “Cassia. The Archivists aren't altruistic. They saw a commodity and they did what they could to preserve it. Anyone can have it who's willing to pay, but their prices are high.”

Ky glances up at the sun blinking through the trees above us. He’s gauging the time. He trusts the sun more than his watch.

“I believe in you,” he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent.

It doesn't take long anymore to traverse the first part of the Hill; everything is tamped down and well marked and we know where we are going, at least initially.

She glances over at the Officer with a touch of deference in her look.

As Ky disappears into the building, the blond Official leads me around to the front, to a kind of antechamber.

"As we mentioned before, the goal of the real-life sort is to see if you can sort real people and situations within certain parameters. We want to see if you can help the Government improve function and efficiency."

Steam mists and writhes around the room.

One of the workers raises his hand, and an Official comes down from his perch to confer with the worker.

She sees the shock on my face and continues. I can tell she’s trying to be kind. "It’s one shift of one group of menial laborers, Cassia. Don't worry. Just do your best."

For a moment, I contemplate throwing the datapod into one of the sinks, letting it drown.

Over the course of the sort, I watch for pacing and patterns and I watch for stamina. I see the slower, more steady ones who get more done than you might think. I see the quick, deft ones who are the very best.

I think of the ruddy color of the tight new buds on the trees.

I’m hunting around through my meager belongings when my mother comes into the room.

“Someone out in Grandia, and then in another Province, reported that there were strange crops popping up. The one in Grandia was in the Arboretum, in an experimental field that had been fallow for a long time. The other field was in the Farmlands of the second Province. The Government asked me and two others to travel to the fields and submit reports about the crops. They wanted to know two things: Were the crops viable as foodstuffs? And were the growers planning a rebellion?”

“Someone out in Grandia, and then in another Province, reported that there were strange crops popping up. The one in Grandia was in the Arboretum, in an experimental field that had been fallow for a long time. The other field was in the Farmlands of the second Province. The Government asked me and two others to travel to the fields and submit reports about the crops. They wanted to know two things: Were the crops viable as foodstuffs? And were the growers planning a rebellion?”

"Wild carrot," she agrees, her voice sad. "The second grower had a crop I'd never seen before, of white flowers even more beautiful than the first. Sego lilies, they called them. One of the others with me knew what they were. You can eat the bulb. Both growers denied knowing you could use the plants for food; they both asserted that their interest was in the flower. They insisted the plants were new to them and that they cultivated them as research, for the blossoms.”

If the Officials orchestrated our whole love affair, the one thing in my life I thought happened in spite of them—I can't finish the thought.

They must have seen that I hardly ever do this. Or maybe there’s some other flag on my data that I can't think about right now. Not after the revelation from Ky.

“Of course she is,” my father retorts.

A white-coated Official takes charge, his voice loud so that everyone gathering can hear. His words are clipped and formal. “I’m sorry your morning has been disrupted. This young man received a new work position and we were merely picking him up to transport him. Since the position is outside of Oria Province, his mother became overwrought and upset."

Patrick’s head snaps back as one of them gags him to keep him from talking, and they do the same to Aida to stifle her screams.

An air car descends near us and disgorges more Officials.

I drop the tablet on the ground, trying to be discreet.

I glance down at the grass beneath my feet, almost expecting to see a tiny patch of it seared and obliterated, wiped clean.

Somehow I’ve run out of fear; I feel lethargic instead, which is almost worse.

This in itself is an oversight, another little hitch in the well-oiled machine of our Society that proves something is wrong somewhere.

This in itself is an oversight, another little hitch in the well-oiled machine of our Society that proves something is wrong somewhere.

He stares at my mother, whose face is ashen and pale as she stares at the portscreen.

Even its windows are made of frosted white opaque glass to keep the artifacts inside safe from the light.

“Welcome,” says a curator, sitting at a round white desk.

A light from above illuminates the sign in its empty, cavernous case.

That sign could last forever in this sealed and pristine environment.

I put my hand against the rock after I sit down, wondering where they quarried the stone.

"I planned to write an article about it, available only to select Officials, of course. It would have been an unparalleled proof of the validity of Matching. That's why I didn't want you to lose your memory of what happened this morning at the air-train station. All my work would have been for nothing. Now, at least I can see you make your final choice while you still know what happened.”

“Ky, however, was different,” she says. "We told him. We pretended we were warning him, but of course we were hoping to give him impetus to try to be with you. And that worked as well.”

She smiles, smug, because she also thinks that I don't know this part of the story.

I want to ask her if it ever gets tedious being right all the time.

“They keep extra supplies in the pharmacy at the medical center," Xander says. “These were slated for disposal. They’re about to expire, but I think they’ll still work for a few months past expiration."

Once we are on the long-distance air train, my mother and Bram both fall asleep, exhausted from the emotion and exertion of the journey.