Guardian by Alex London Read Free Book Online

alley.” He turned to the doctor again. “Bury. Not burn.”
    The doctor nodded, scratching absently at an itch on his cheek, and Syd stormed outside. Just before Liam rushed after him, he glanced back at Marie.
    “Interesting,” Marie said, but Liam didn’t have time to say anything back. He had to get Syd through the crowd. That was his job. He had to do his job. Keep Yovel alive. Nothing more and nothing less.

[ 8 ]
    “YOUR CONCERNS HAVE BEEN noted.” The chair of the Advisory Council leaned forward on her kneeling mat and pressed her index fingers together in a triangle. Her voice echoed in the cavernous space of the empty factory.
    She looked from Syd, seated on his own mat before the semicircle of Advisory Council members in the center of the factory floor, to Liam, kneeling beside him with his hands folded in his lap. Unlike Syd and the eighteen counselors, Liam did not have a mat to kneel on and the hard floor pressed into his knees. Beads of sweat collected on his upper lip, and he could feel several more making a mad dash for escape down his back.
    Behind the Council, a ring of white-masked Purifiers stood with their clubs hanging from their belts, ready to do the Council’s violence, should such violence be called for, or to protect them, should such protection become necessary.
    “I don’t just want my concerns noted,” Syd objected. “I want them heard!”
    “And we
hear
them,” Chairwoman Pei responded, her voice hard as stone. She was not accustomed to argument from teenagers during her Council meetings. “Your concern for the nonoperative entities speaks greatly of your compassion, but poorly of your intellect. Nonoperatives are not people and thus, cannot be—what did you call it?”
    “Murdered,” Syd said.
    “Can livestock be murdered?” a counselor to Syd’s left mused aloud. “Can feral cats be murdered?”
    “The Guardians were born people,” said Syd. “The old system transformed them. They’re as much victims as any of the proxies you’ve trained to kill them.”
    “Mind your tone,” Chairwoman Pei snapped.
    “I’m just saying, it’s not right to kill them like that.”
    “There is no right or wrong with nonoperative entities,” the chairwoman replied.
    “If I may,” Counselor Baram, kneeling just to the chairwoman’s left, interrupted. She glared at him. There was no love lost between Counselor Baram and Chairwoman Pei, that was plain to see. Baram addressed Syd without looking at her again. “The nopes—as some have taken to calling them—have no volition. They cannot act with any intention of their own; they cannot think for themselves, or speak, or even recognize themselves in a mirror. There is no definition of personhood that can be applied to them. They may have been born like other people, but they are no longer. It is a mercy for us to end their suffering.”
    “I wonder if they would agree,” said Syd.
    “They can neither agree nor disagree,” said Baram.
    “So that, like, makes it okay to kill them?” Syd wished he had Baram’s way with words. He never was great at arguing. “Because they can’t complain?”
    “Because they never knew they were alive to begin with,” Baram countered.
    “How do you know?” Syd asked.
    “We will not sit here and argue philosophy with a teenager,” the chairwoman snapped at Syd. “We decide the best course of action for society and our decision is made.”
    “But there are other ways than killing them!” Syd pleaded. “You can look for a cure for what’s wrong with them, but you don’t want to. It’s more convenient to get rid of them because they remind everyone of the past. And the Reconciliation is all about the future, right?”
    “And what is wrong with looking to the future?” another counselor asked.
    “You can’t just erase the past,” said Syd.
    “You assume the worst of us, Sydney,” said Baram. “We have worked on a cure, but found none. For the safety of all, extermination of the