Chapter 13 - MONEY

     They humiliated me.

     Eva is backing away at the door, staring at what I have done. She isn't sure if I've yet snapped out of the mindset that created this bloody mess.
  I'm mostly back to normal. "They were cutting me Eva!" I try to explain, but there's not even a scratch on my body to prove it.
    She looks me dead in the eye. "You're not going to hurt me, are you?"
    "Never!" I start crying, "why would you say that Eva, why would you think it?!" I run Dr. Crowley's sparkling blade against my throat.
    Eva screams, running to me with tears flying behind her. She punches my arm and the knife goes flying into the pool, landing with a "zzt" noise caused by the electric current.
    "Wow," I'm somehow laughing, "that was actually really impressive."
    She took off her shirt and pressed it to my neck, using both hands to steady my head. "Jace, how could you!"
   I was smiling at her with wide, wild eyes, and she couldn't even look at me. Finally my sense of sympathy kicks back in. "Eva, darling..." I wrap my arms around her, "I'm going to be ok. It didn't do anything. Look..." I pry off her arms, which had been clamped like laundry pins around me. The skin was fresh.
   But her shirt was half red.
   She gave me a doubtful look, and then recalled we were standing in the middle of a homicide. The murderous guilt began to set in. I was staring at the bodies. Eva was now calmer about it than me. "It's okay Jace. I'll get us out of this. Let's leave... now."

    "Why did you come back for me?" I asked her as we rolled out of the laboratory garage.
     She was twiddling her thumb on the steering wheel, looking straight ahead as she softly spoke, "because I love you."
     I didn't ask any more questions. We drove in silence together. My attention was directed to out the window. Blue sky... green leaves... grey cement. It's hard to believe there ever was an apocalypse looking at these streets. I was even wearing normal clothes, riding shotgun with my girl. I was relieving to pretend like everything was okay for just a moment.
     I noticed an old man peeking out from between two buildings. His beard was greyed and overgrown, and almost everything he wore had holes in it. "Is that man homeless?"
    "Correct," said Eva. "Two years ago, Ramecha reached its population capacity."
     "No," I argued, "it couldn't have. Less than two years ago, you and I were sent out to recruit more people to Ramecha. And it didn't feel like we were the last batch they sent off either."
     "Also correct," she frowned. "Somehow the government still finds recruiting precedent above expanding the walls. I suppose the logic is to let the least useful to the system go out and find the most useful to the system... or die trying."
     I nodded my head. "I guess that makes sense."
     "Sense?!" Eva laughed with an undertone of disgust, "you of all people should understand what this heartless cycle does to people! They say anyone can be a recruiter, but who can, really? The young, the strong... not the old and weak." Though the man was long behind us, I saw her gazing melancholily through the rearview. "The law says only the working citizens can have homes."
     "Couldn't he have found another job?"  I tried weakly, although I felt I already knew what answer was coming.
     "We're already overpopulated. The Protector's Council reserves jobs for its families and for the incoming citizens who score high on the Potential Services Exam."
     I briefly recalled taking that test- it was just moments after my vaccination. I was certain I did horribly; no wonder I never received any calls from this mysterious council. In fact, I'd never heard of this "protector's council" before, and now it was spoken to me twice in one day. "The Protector's Council?"
     "It's what the government really is, Jace. Our government is not a network of people exchanging agreements for the good of everyone. It's a council of a few dozen people who are making decisions for their own good that affect all of us. They're the ones who invented recruiting. If just anyone told you to hold this gun and go risk your life outside the SafeZone, you'd call them crazy. But the Protector's Council built a whole station and promised jobs for everyone, and we call it an opportunity."
      "Why would they do that?" I shuddered.
      "Money," Eva said plainly. "Recruiting is a franchise. To the government, it creates profit. To the country, it creates space. To the people, it creates jobs. We've viewed recruiting as heroism for a long time, but what happens to recruiters, really? You serve three seasons for five years... then you come back and the government expects you to either have a family to go back to, or a job lined up as soon as you return. The other half die on the job. I don't expect it gets any easier the next four years."
     I'd never considered pinning my frustrations on the Ramechan establishment, but Eva had just enlightened be to the fact that I was wounded on the job... my illness was a product of enlisting as a recruiter.
      Yet what would I have done, if not enlist? Hide in my parent's house all day? I didn't disagree with the idea that our government wanted every citizen working. But as Eva made clear, recruiting was a deadly last resort. And if the Protector's Council really was preventing simple kids like myself from having any work at all... this cycle truly is vicious. None of us recruiters knew what we were getting into when we began, and the journey itself was a lesson that willed us all back to the SafeZone. Nobody would want to stay on the road long... or would they?
     I remembered again the bike gang. Were they rebel recruiters who decided to never come home...?
     "Now that I think about it... recruiting is the perfect ticket out of here. They give you a bike!"
     Eva smiled. "That was my thinking- well, after I met you. I was never attached to Ramecha... not even my family. I wanted to run away with you."
    I looked at her, and it was as if I could feel her all around me. Her smile, he voice, even her name.
    "I love you too," I said.

     She pulled into a large, empty lot, next to a small metal complex. There were no signs and no other buildings around. "Where are we?"
    "This is where I live, with other ex-recruiters. When we came back, we couldn't find jobs and we didn't want to go out again."
     It went deep, like a metro station. Our footsteps began to echo, and then I saw the tunnels. On one side, an old cart now served as a multi-room home. People inside were seated as if they were on their morning commute, and yet between them was a slanted table with a deck of cards. On the other tracks, groups were surrounding small fires; some roasting rats on sticks.
    "All this time... I was living in some big fancy research center, and you were here?"
    "It's a lot nicer than the way we lived on the road. I don't mind it, really. You know some people here actually."
    I then realized faces had been recognizing me before I recognized them. The Garcia family... some members of Team D... even Augustus was down here.
    "Jace...?" he looked at Eva. "What's going on?"
    This was dangerous. To strangers, I could appear to be just another person... at least for several hours until my symptoms of turning began to show. But nearly everyone here already knew what I was. Worse was what it was doing to my ego to be in the presence of all who had seen me in a mentally vacant state; I felt the size of a mouse as I walked now, following Eva while avoiding the gazes of even my former friends.
    "He shouldn't be here," I heard Mr. Garcia growl. His father chimed in with a string of hisses I could not understand. Prencess was clutching onto Augie's arm fearfully. Bitty watched warily with wide eyes. The last time I'd seen all these people, they treated me like just another recruiter- heroic and approachable for aid. Too see them glaring at me in fear was difficult to swallow.
   With a touch, Eva grounded me back to reality. "You don't have much time, Jace." She urged me to sit on the platform.

   There was a man sitting, facing the miles of darkness down the tunnel. We were face to face now. "Mr. Orion," he croaked humbly, "I've heard lots about you."
   He wasn't old, but he wasn't young. Blue and purple veins traveled up his skinny neck to his bald head. He wore old clothes and faded tattoos.
   As Eva helped him up, he bellowed through the tunnel, "calm now, Everyone! Jace's presence is a good omen for ERA!"
   The only uncertain one was me now. "...how so?"
   "The ex-recruiter's association has been waiting for a moment to strike, and you are our key!"
    "Strike? Against what?" I feared his answer would be the god of the sea, or the zombies. It was a pointless battle- a suicide mission- and I would not involve myself in any more madness.
    But instead he pronounced, "Ramecha!"

    "Humans are the only creatures who must pay to live on this planet."
    I wasn't sure how many followers trailed behind us as the blind man led us slowly down the tunnel he'd been facing. Eva was next to me, holding a burning torch which lit up the crooked brick walls.  She kept a steady eye on the man, whose bare feet traced the path between the railings. I wondered why I was not introduced- why his name was obsolete- and yet everyone was quietly listening for his next words like their lives depended on it.
     But I felt a strange truth in his speech.
     "There is no utopia! There is no world where everything survives and everyone belongs! No one can achieve this- not even a God! When He unleashed his curse, he meant for us to return to a life of animals... to gather food... avoid predators! But we are not animals!"
   "NO!" Everyone shouted in unison, echoing through the tunnel and sending chills down my spine.
   "We are sophisticated! Conscious! Why did He do this to us?"
    Oh no, I thought, don't try to put a reason behind anything Naceo does.
    Yet still I found truth to his words:
    "...because he felt the sadness... the destruction... the inequality! Ramecha and the SafeZones are only reflections of the world he burned down. The people found comfort in them and flocked to them because they are familiar, but the God is asking for a New Order! If we do not want to live like animals, nor like slaves to our safety. it is our duty to make certain we do not slip back into the destruction and the inequality. It is our duty to destroy the heart of Ramecha!"
    I was startled to hear Eva shout alone, "It is not our duty to create a world where everything belongs, it is not our duty to govern!"
    "NO!" they yelled again, and everyone chanted altogether, "it is our duty to set humanity free! To restore our ancestor's promise to the divine! To thrive in anarchy!"