Extraction: Infinite Hunger

Chapter 78: A Piece Of Paper

"You put your name on a piece of paper and you’re done," Ash said, mocking Seth’s voice.

Seth had said it like the whole trip was beneath explaining, and standing in front of the board now, Ash began to understand. The annual trip wasn’t a process. It was a list. Destinations ran down the left margin, blank lines beside each one, names already inked into most of them in the order people had reached the board.

He read it the way he read a room. Top to bottom, shape before detail.

The shape was bad.

A few students were still clustered around the posting when Ash arrived, claiming the last of the good spots from themselves before clearing out. He counted the students leaving. Six, then four, as two peeled off toward the dining hall comparing the spots they had claimed. The fluorescent strip above the board buzzed at a pitch the corridor had stopped hearing years ago. He still heard it.

Seth’s name sat near the top of a tropical posting, the kind of place that came with a beach and a research station bolted onto the side of it as an excuse. Azure had signed for a Hollow-dense district several lines down. Phoebe’s handwriting stood precise and early against a beach resort station, the way she did everything before the question had finished opening.

And Evelyn.

Evelyn was going to where he grew up.

He hadn’t thought the place was worth a pin on a map, let alone a place the academy would let its best students go to. Her name sat in the first line of that posting, ruled and exact. Every line below hers looked like a war was fought over making sure they could go to the same place as her.

He looked at it a moment longer than he had looked at the others. Then he moved his eyes off the line, because there was nothing else he could do.

Some part of him had wanted that posting before he ever reached the board. Wanting it had been the mistake, not losing it.

The good rows were filled and the bad ones stayed empty. There was a logic to it that needed no villain to explain. Warm places. Survivable places. The kind of places someone would actually want to spend a month abroad. What remained read like hazard labels on products. Desert codes. A string of coordinates with a classification stamp where a name should have been.

He took out his phone and called Phoebe. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to ask her.

"Phoebe, I—"

Running water swallowed the rest of it.

"Is it important? I’m in the middle of something."

"No. It’s—"

"Say what’s on your mind."

He heard the sound of the water shutting off.

"I was wondering if you wanted to video call when we are both away. It seems like we’ll be going to different places."

She went silent for several seconds. Ash had thought she had gotten disconnected. Or worse, that her phone had gone for a swim.

"I would like that," she said at last. "But if we are, it has to serve us both a purpose. I’ll expect you to be a second set of ears and help me wind down after a hard day."

"How can a day at the beach be stressful?"

"Ash." She merely said.

"Right. I’ll call you when I make up my decision. Thank you Phoebe."

He pocketed the phone and went back to the board.

Azure’s Shade arrived before she did. He felt her warmth touch his shoulder before the brush of her sleeve as she stepped up beside him to read the board.

"Still deciding?"

"All the good spots are gone." He didn’t say it like an accusation. "I can’t fault you for taking one. I would have done the same thing if my standing in the academy was like yours."

"What about this one?" Her finger touched a line near the bottom, one with every slot still open. "Nobody’s going. You’d have it all to yourself."

"That’s the part that worries me."

"Or is it the quiet you’ve never had? A month with nothing asking anything of you."

"I guess I can’t complain," he said. "I didn’t expect the invitation in the first place."

"Mmm that place probably doesn’t have anything tasty to eat. We can always video call each other if you run into food problems there."

"Azure, I haven’t decided I would go to that place yet. But thanks for being there for me."

She smiled and turned, her hair catching on his shoulder as she went. Warm, brown and then gone.

Another Shade made itself known.

Or rather—

Twelve.

"They invited a person like you to a field trip?" Lucia, behind him, unhurried.

"That’s what Cavel told me." His eyes ran the board again and didn’t find Lucia’s name anywhere on it. "Oh? Looks like you didn’t make the list."

Her expression didn’t so much as twitch. She looked like she had been waiting for him to say exactly that.

"To go to places like these." A manicured nail tapped the board, posting to posting. "Been there. There. That one too." The nail moved like she was crossing off chores. "Boring."

"Message received."

She hummed, then set her finger on the same open line Azure had shown him. "It would behoove the Crimson Workshop for you to be there."

She managed to say that all without saying Ash’s name once.

"Though if you intend to be this uncommitted about it," she went on, "we could shop instead. A month of you playing researcher in a freezer, or a month of something we’d both enjoy more. We both know which one you’d pick."

She was gone before he could answer, the twelve Shades folding away after her like a held breath let out.

He wasn’t about to let her leave on her terms. He picked back up his phone and dialed Lucia.

"Not interested," she said.

"You don’t even know what I was about to ask."

"Ash." She didn’t say anything else for ten seconds. "I know exactly what you were about to ask."

The call dropped before he could gather another word to say. He was about to call her again when he received a text.

[ Lucia: Not interested. ]

He brought the pen toward the paper and stopped.

A door held shut from the inside passed through the corridor behind him. Evelyn, somewhere out of sight, moving with purpose and not hurry. If someone left a foot in her path she wouldn’t step around it. He thought about going out to talk to her about going to his hometown. But her Shade told him she was in a hurry, so he let her go by and turned back to the board.

He wrote his name on the open line. He made it clean and legible out of habit, though he doubted anyone would ever check who had volunteered for a frozen wasteland with no cell signal and the nearest town several hours out. It was a polar tundra. The kind of place that got coordinates instead of a name.

Then—

The pen left his fingers. Gripped and taken, without asking and no apology.

Vivian. Her blonde hair still carried char from the fight with Evelyn, though she looked less like a burn victim and more like her normal self. Her Shade sat open the way it always did, a wide open vault door and no attempt to hide itself.

The hunger glanced at it and didn’t bother to poke at it. Ash didn’t even want to breath the same air as her.

She found the line he had just signed and dragged her own name across it in capitals, sprawling, eating most of what space was left.

"Oh. Hey." Like they’d crossed paths at a vending machine.

"Hi." He watched the ink dry. "Do you know anything about this place?"

She rolled a shoulder, loose, like the question bored the muscle. "I don’t concern myself with places that won’t fight back." She was already leaving.

He was starting to regret the line on the paper when Sheila stepped in and signed the last open slot, clean, her name small and level at the end of the row. She returned the pen to the string it hung on and let it swing.

"I’m still waiting for that answer. It’s rude to leave a question hanging."

He didn’t know which question she wanted answered, and her face gave him nothing to narrow it down with.

"You’re going too?" he asked.

"Lucia told me about you." She studied him like a customs officer examines a passport. "I didn’t think she would be this accurate."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

The smile she gave him was the answer, and it was the kind that turned his question into the proof of it.

"I’ll see you on the trip. I expect an answer next time," she said leaving.

"I feel like I’m making a mistake," Ash told himself, "or have already made one."

He pulled out his phone again.

[ Ash: Can we meet? ]