Rose’s father had sent her to mindfulness classes hosted by the League’s Adjudicate office, who worked to spread Helvet culture throughout the colonies. They had taught her that reason must overcome the base limitations of instinct. They had taught her to elevate her soul through logic and discipline, so that she could do the same for others.
Rose tried to slow her breathing. She had to persevere. She reminded herself that it was supposed to be her duty to elevate unfortunate girls like Kayla, and that meant earning her trust.
Reaching out with shaking fingers, she took hold of the carved stone and stepped up on the balcony railing behind Kayla. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the ground below, and for a moment the world spun like she was going to faint.
“I-I’m not very good at climbing,” she said, as she clutched at the masonry with every fiber of strength in her being. The apparently fearless Kayla watched her with a blank expression. Rose wondered if she was ashamed to be climbing with such a scared girl.
Kayla hauled herself onto the roof, then leaned down and held out her hand. “I’ll help you. Hold on tight and don’t look down.”
Rose gripped the offered hand so tightly that Kayla grimaced. She pulled with all her might, and for one terrifying moment her foot kicked at empty air. Eventually she struggled up alongside Kayla onto mercifully solid tiling, though she could barely stand up, her legs were shaking so badly.
“Oh my gosh!” Rose said, panting with exertion as a rush of euphoria flooded through her.
Kayla nodded happily. “See? You made it. It’ll be easy on these rooftops now.” She set off, climbing higher up the slanted, intersecting roofs.
Rose staggered along behind, mind reeling and unable to process what she had just done. Her usual confidence had vanished, and now she was no more than an obedient puppy.
Kayla sat down next to the bell tower, gazing into the distance.
Rose stopped dead as she crested the roof. “This is an incredible view!” she said. “You can see everything!”
Across the canyon, the opposite cliff rose above Rackeye’s towers of glass and steel. From the base of the rock wall, a slope ran down to the city center, where the river raced beneath bridges and boats, flowing westward to a distant bend. Rose turned and gasped again when she saw that the school roof rose just a little higher than the closer edge of the canyon. Beyond lay a green rolling plain, framed by forested mountains. How had she never seen them before?
“It’s much nicer than the farms where I lived,” Kayla agreed. “They’re flat and boring, but there were some nice mountains on the horizon. Maybe we can visit them someday.”
She reached into her backpack and pulled out her little bow, along with a few blunted arrows.
Rose watched in fascination. “Where did you get that?”
“I made it myself. It’s not very good, but it’ll be easy to hit one of those fat pigeons.” She gestured to a cooing mass of feathers at the far end of the rooftop.
Rose frowned. “It isn’t right to hurt innocent animals.”
Kayla shook her head. “They’re pests. Everybody hates pests. You can’t let them do what they want, or they destroy your crops.”
“Well… This is a school. We don’t have any crops.”
“Fine, but they’ll make a mess out of the place.”
“In Rackeye,” Rose insisted, “we don’t have any pests, and everything is perfectly clean and tidy.”
Kayla gave her a look. “That’s because someone takes care of them for you.”
Rose didn’t have an answer for that. She watched quietly as Kayla drew her bow and sighted along the shaft. The string twanged, and the arrow knocked a pigeon off its perch. Kayla laughed as it flew away, while the others began squawking.
“Here, now you try.” She held out the bow.
Rose took the wooden grip, holding it away as though it might explode. Copying Kayla, she nocked an arrow, drew it back, then released it. The bowstring smacked painfully against her arm, and the shaft bounced disappointingly off the tiles a few feet away from them.
“That’s okay,” Kayla said. “It’s only your first time.”
She coached her through the proper way to draw the string and aim, and Rose tried a few more times. When she succeeded in hitting a pigeon, she gave a small whoop of delight. Then she stopped herself. She had never caused pain to another living thing before. Apart from some mean comments to girls she didn’t like, obviously, but her words weren’t that bad, and her victims usually got over it.
“I told you this would be fun,” Kayla said, grinning ear to ear.
Rose smiled back. Her other friends could also be cruel to each other, and Rose sometimes wondered whether they really liked her. But she had just made a fool of herself twice, first during the climb, and again with the bow. Kayla hadn’t said anything. She had been nice and helpful, and didn’t seem like she cared about anything other than having fun. Rose decided she would make for a good classmate, and would do everything she could to help her integrate into Helvetic society.
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They got down from the roof without being spotted, and once they were back in the gardens with the other students, Rose’s hands started shaking again, but this time with excitement.
“I can’t believe we just did that,” she said, unable to repress a smile. “I can’t believe we didn’t get shouted at.”
Kayla shrugged. “Getting in trouble isn’t such a big deal. I get into trouble all the time.”
Nothing seemed to bother Kayla, and Rose was starting to admire her for it. “But what if they kick us out of the school?”
Kayla frowned and went quiet for a moment. “Well, we just need to be careful, then.”
Rose was both surprised and delighted to see that Kayla threw herself into her studies with a passion. She struggled in the first few days, but was obviously keen to improve. While she shocked the other girls with her blunt, confrontational nature, and complete disregard for social convention, she made a different impression on Rose. The pair were often seen disappearing together, sneaking into places they weren’t supposed to go, emerging later in a dirtier state. When Kayla made crude jokes about farm animals, Rose laughed happily while her friends glared in jealous silence.
Sometimes Rose was frightened by her new friend’s antics. When a professor shouted at her for being disrespectful in class, Kayla later climbed three stories up a drainpipe to sneak into the woman’s office through the window, and leave a foul-smelling herb beneath a filing cabinet. When Rose refused to follow her, she was punished with three days of pouting. Kayla did not make any other friends, and Rose saw that the isolation was hurting her.
Still, Rose was making a real connection with ‘the colony girl’. Sometimes she grew frustrated by Kayla’s disregard for refined culture. She only read comic books, and listened to the crass, loud music popular with the less well-educated residents of Rackeye. Contrarily, she studied the class material with a single-mindedness that surprised everyone at Madam Georgia’s. Beyond grades and trouble, she had only one other obsession.
“Tell me about the secret place—the Academy,” Kayla said as they weaved through crowds of pedestrians in downtown Rackeye.
“Of course,” Rose said with a smile as she led the way down the street. “But first, let’s get some ice cream.”
They had been visiting a museum until Rose saw Kayla dozing on a bench, and decided that a treat might help motivate them both.
“What is ice cream?”
Rose turned to stare at her. “You’ve never had ice cream?”
“Is it like whipped cream?”
“It’s a thousand times better than whipped cream. Come on over here.” Rose stepped into an alley that was home to a variety of small shops. She approached an exquisitely carved wooden doorway under a discreet sign that read ‘Ghiacciaio’. “You’ll need your phone so you can register your location.”
“Oh.” Kayla fished around in her bag.
The school had given her the device on her first day, and while she seemed to be amused by some of the games, she lost interest quickly.
Rose was shocked that someone could live without the need for a phone, but apparently the colonists managed. She held her device out to a scanner, which beeped. Kayla tried the same thing, but instead got a shrill buzz.
“What’s wrong with it?” she demanded.
“Oh, bother,” Rose said and tapped her screen for a moment. “Try again.”
This time the scanner chirped happily, and they entered into a beautiful salon with carved wooden chairs and ornate marble tables.
Once they had found a table, Rose explained further. “If you were on your own, you couldn’t come in. But I can let you in as a guest.”
Kayla frowned. “Why do you have to do that?”
“Well, this is a rather exclusive shop.”
“So?”
“When Madame Lefevre gave you the phone, she also gave you an ident, which is like a file they keep on you for your whole life. If you go anywhere in the League, a machine will scan your phone and look in your file to check your reputation score. Your activities are tracked over time, and if you’re a productive and well-behaved member of society, you receive a higher score. I have the highest score in school.” Rose smiled proudly, but stopped when she saw Kayla’s still puzzled expression.
“But the door was unlocked. Why would I care what some dumb machine says?” Kayla asked.
Rose paused, taken aback by the suggestion. “You would enter the shop when you weren’t supposed to?”
“Of course.”
“W-well, you would be asked to leave, and your score would be fined heavily. The Adjudicate really doesn’t like people breaking the rules. If you lose enough points, you might even get called in to one of their offices for an interview.”
Kayla shrugged. “If some shop owner wants to be a bully and throw me out, I would make him do it himself. People aren’t always so mean when you yell back at them.”
Rose stared at her. How was it possible that people could think like this? How could the world work without people following the rules? Taming Kayla Barnes was obviously going to be a bigger challenge than she thought.
“But this phone watches everything I do?” Kayla demanded, brandishing the black shape angrily.
“Well… I wouldn’t call it watching, exactly.”
“Even when I’m climbing?”
“Only if someone sees you, and posts a photo of you to their own feed for everyone to see. If people like what you are doing, your score goes up. If they don’t like what you are doing, it goes down.”
Rose smiled patiently. She had demanded their classmates delete dozens of negative posts about Kayla. The girl needed time and patience to integrate herself, not ridicule.
“So…my ident decides where I can go and what I can do based on how much everyone likes me?”
“Um… how much respectable people like you, yes,” Rose said.
Kayla’s arm moved violently to smash the phone against the table, but Rose grabbed her wrist.
“Wait—stop!” she said. “You can’t do that!”
Kayla’s eyes narrowed as they focused on her, then she snarled and snatched her arm away.
Rose shivered, but took a deep breath. She had to stay calm; she was making progress, and the tantrums were getting less common.
“You need that phone to do anything in Rackeye,” she explained. “You can’t go shopping, or get on trams, or do anything fun without it.”
Kayla slammed the phone down on the table and slumped in her chair. “This sucks. Helvets are awful. Everything they said about you back home is true.”
“Don’t be like that,” Rose said as her cheeks warmed. “It’s just… you’re not used to our ways yet.”
“Whatever.” Kayla shook her head and picked up a menu. “Now I really need something tasty.” She scanned the colorful photographs. “Let’s share that big one,” she said, stabbing her hand at the biggest picture, the deluxe sundae—an enormous assemblage of decadent flavors.
Rose blanched. “Oh… actually, I thought I’d get a bowl of strawberries. I’m not sure the two of us could manage that one.”
“Who cares? Let’s make a mess.”
“I’m supposed to be on a strict diet for my photoshoots, and if my parents found out…”
Kayla grinned. “Come on! Don’t be a scaredy cat.”
“Oh… alright then.” Rose had to admit, she was enjoying the guilty thrill that spending time with Kayla brought her.