Chapter 1: Leyna

Introduction to Hinder from Leyna's perspective.

{Leyna}

“New guy! New guy!” Lukas called and barreled into the cafeteria. Suddenly the entire room was abuzz with excited chatter.

“Oh, good�"another mouth to feed.”

“Be quiet! What’s this one’s problem?”

“Probably diabetic or something.”

“Who is he bunking with?”

Lukas sat down by me, smiling. He ruffled my short, pixie-cut hair lovingly and kissed my nose. “Don’t get any funny ideas, now. I’m told he’s quite the looker.”

I chuckled at the tiny undercurrent of insecurity in Lukas’ tone. “You have nothing to worry about,” I assured him. “You know I’m your girl.” He nodded and stole a bite of my beans. “So,” I asked, “Does this one have a name?”

“He’s called Knox. He’s around seventeen years, I think�"just old enough that the guys won’t have any shame about putting him through hazing.” He shook his head in amused exasperation, and I knew exactly which guys he meant: Farr, Jude, Roland, and Chance. They’d only been down here as a group for about three years�"Farr the oldest at nineteen, the same age as Lukas and me, while Roland brought up the end at seventeen�"but they’d definitely already established themselves as the resident hooligans. They liked to stir things up if the daily routine got too monotonous, but mostly they just did harmless little pranks and surprises for the city to enjoy or scold. Unfortunately, one of their favorite pastimes was hazing newbies, and each new ritual became more bizarre than the last. The most recent arrival was tied at the ankles and forced to hop from place to place for an entire day.

“Poor Knox,” I groaned.

“Poor Knox what?” a familiar voice asked. Speak of the devil. Farr was sliding into the seat across from me with a plate of his own, piled high with tomatoes. “Who’s Knox?”

“Nobody,” I said.

“New guy,” Lukas said at the same time. I shot him an accusatory glare, which he shrugged off.

Farr grinned and popped a tiny tomato in his mouth, swallowing it without so much as stopping to chew. I rolled my eyes.

“Those are for everyone, you know,” I chided him.

“I was the one to grab ‘em,” Farr insisted indignantly. “You want some, then you can get ‘em when YOU go on the Scavenging. Besides,” he added defensively, “I paid for ‘em!”

I sighed with mild annoyance. Lukas quickly changed the subject. “So,” he said to Farr, “Your hair. It’s blue.”

Farr nodded and ran a hand through his hair self-consciously. “Yeah, I colored it again. Lifted the dye from a couple unsuspecting Unblems on the Scavenging�"there’s a few more colors back in my room if you’d like to try it.”

Lukas declined politely. I smiled grudgingly at Farr’s hair, one of the things I loved about him. Yeah, I griped about him a lot, but Farr was actually one of my best friends in Hinder. His wild and ever-changing appearance was what made me talk to him in the first place. He was literally his own canvas upon which to create art�"tattoos, dyes, clothes�"you name it, and Farr had done something crazy with it.

“Hey, guys,” Nadine said as she, too, sat down at our table. She snagged one of Farr’s little tomatoes and ate it before he’d even noticed she was there. “You hear about the new guy?”

“Only that there’s going to be one,” I replied. “And that his name is Knox.”

Nadine nodded slightly. “Anybody know what his problem is?”

I shrugged, as did Lukas and Farr. Nadine sighed with a little disappointment�"clearly she’d wanted some new gossip. I rolled my eyes. Nadine had been in Hinder nearly as long as I had, and she really should have known that unless it was something extraordinary we almost never knew the problem until the new person arrived.

The problem, of course, was why anybody ended up in Hinder. The Up-world, as we called it, was full of people (we referred to them as “The Unblemished Ones,” or “Unblems” for short) who wanted “clean” gene pools. Anything that might be passed on from generation to generation was a problem for them. Blindness, mental issues, physical deformities�"anything out-of-the-ordinary was to be disposed of. The moment any problem was noted, the person was sent to the Specialists for immediate termination. Luckily for everyone in Hinder, the majority of issues were found in newborns and small children. The Specialists couldn’t bring themselves to kill babies, so a few of the older problem-people were allowed to dig into the earth and take the children. Since then, the tunnels have become an entire world below the surface, and every time the Specialists receive a person, that person is smuggled below. Sometimes we get criminals as well as defects�"the ones that didn’t get the death sentence in the Up-world but still are to be locked away for good�"and we have our own trial system for dealing with them, too.

Of course, not everyone in Hinder is terribly disfigured or diseased. Nadine was sent to us because she has one blue eye and one green. Lukas has only four toes on his right foot, and Farr had a mild case of Attention Deficit Disorder, which he grew out of by the time he was ten.

As for me, I’m perfectly healthy. There’s not a thing wrong with my DNA. I was actually born here. That’s not really terribly uncommon anymore; Hinder’s been here for a couple hundred years. What’s odd about me is that I don’t have a problem. There are others, of course, but we’re few and far between. It’s ironic, really, since the whole point of the Genetics Act was to protect gene pools, and yet here we are. Fine and dandy. I suppose we could get reintegrated into the Up-world if we wanted to, but we’re all content down here. It’s a fine society, really. We have a system. Actually, come to think of it�"

“Leyna? Don’t you have to get to work?” Lukas asked.

I did have to get to work. I quickly stuffed the rest of my beans into my mouth. I dropped the plastic lunch tray into the big, industrial sink outside the kitchen as I hurried past and sprinted down the corridor.

Every time my foot slapped the pavement, I could feel myself getting later and later. Deborah was going to have a cow. I glanced at my watch and groaned out loud when I saw the time�"12:42. I was already twelve minutes over my break.

I skidded around a corner and slammed into a solid object. Reeling backward, I saw that Jude was staring at me, dazed.

“Sorry!” I called over my shoulder as I took off again.

“Nice talking to you, too!” Jude shouted back at me.

While I closed the last two blocks between me and the archives, I ducked three more people and a vegetable cart. At last I threw myself through the door.

Deborah wasn’t there. I glanced around, not believing my good luck, and slid behind my desk without a word. If Deborah hadn’t seen my graceless, belated entrance, she might not even have noticed my absence! I was free! I was�"

“Busted.” Any wind I had left after my mad dash to the archives flew from my chest in terror. Deborah had been standing behind the wall screen, and she was now she was gliding toward me, a furious glint in her eye.

“Do you think this is an optional clock-in time, Miss Bennett? Are you under the impression that you may simply waltz in here whenever you please?”

“No, I�"”

“Then why, might I ask, are you no less than fifteen minutes late?” she demanded.

I could feel my face reddening in embarrassment and anger. “I just lost�"”

“Track of time, yes of course you did,” she cut me off impatiently. “When are you going to get an alarm on that snazzy watch of yours? Your lunch break ends at twelve thirty, and that is when you are to be back at the desk.” She sighed irritably. “I had to give Roland the music section.”

A tiny, disappointed whimper escaped my lips. I loved working the music section, and we’d gotten a ton of new stuff from the last Scavenging for us archivists to sort through.

Deborah caught my whimper and a shadow of a smile passed her face. “Fine,” she said, her tone almost imperceptibly softer. “I’m docking your pay for today, but you may relieve Roland of his post. Just send him back to me.”

I nodded eagerly and turned to go.

“And I expect you here until six fifteen tonight!” Deborah called after me. I didn’t respond�"I didn’t need to. I’d be here, Deborah knew as well as I did, and I’d be here until I’d combed through the entire music section. It was a real possibility that I’d be here until nine or ten.

I came around the end of another row of the archives and saw Roland. He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of piles of inventory, muttering angrily to himself as he shuffled them around in obsessive-compulsive frustration. He ran his thin hands through his messy, chocolaty-brown hair and lifted another item.

I smiled to myself. Roland's OCD made for some very amusing idiosyncrasies, and today was proving to be no exception. Still, I had work to do, and Roland looked moments away from a complete breakdown.

I cleared my throat and Roland's head snapped up. His clear blue eyes widened in relief when he saw me.

"Can I go back to the Dewey Decimal System now?" he asked me with a grin. "There's no system here!" He stood and dusted off his pants.

"There's a system," I told him defensively.

He stepped over a pile of inventory. "What is it, then?"

"Type of source, then year, then style of music, then alphabetically by artist."

"Leyna, you had the Beatles next to Mozart and Tim McGraw."

I folded my arms impatiently. "I haven't organized the new stuff yet."

Roland chuckled and waved as he left. I exhaled, relieved, and stooped to collect a stack of old Compact Disks. I touched the "CD" option on the wall screen, and a small tray slid out. Entering the title and artist of the CD, I set it gently in the tray, which slid back into the wall screen and began scanning. When it finished converting the contents of the CD to the format of our database, I removed the disk and tucked it back into its case before shelving the hard copy and saving the newly made digital file. I repeated this process with each CD until the stack had dwindled to none.

I moved to the next set, this one a box filled with antique vinyl records.

It was going to be a long night.