The Culling by Steven Dos Santos Read Free Book Online Page A

look forward to?” My throat gulps dryness. “I know that’s what I want for Cole. Does that mean I should be crushed, too?” I stand as straight as I can, forcing him to look up into my eyes.
    He waves my question away. “It’s not the same. You and Cole are different .” The poster crumples in his grip. “You’re not like these leeches who want to drain the government of its resources. Ingrates, all of them.” He flings the banner on the floor, where it rolls up against the foot of the sofa.
    My jaw plunges. “Leeches? Ingrates? It wasn’t so long ago you used words like that to describe the Establishment, not its citizens.”
    His eyes dim. “I was young then. I didn’t understand.” He shakes his head. “Without order, civilizations whither and die. The Establishment’s learned from the mistakes our ancestors made.”
    “And it’s making even bigger ones.” I stare into his eyes. “What’s gotten into you? How can you think the Establishment cares about the good of all its people? I just saw someone not much older than we are get mauled to death by a Canid patrol. Have you taken a good look around you? Taken a good look at me ?” I tug open the top of my robe, exposing the blue and purple blotches that contrast with my pasty flesh. Lacerations weave across my chest like the fancy lace pattern on his lapels, swirling downward to wrap around my jutting ribs.
    He wraps me in his arms. “The guards who did this to you will be punished, I promise,” he whispers.
    I break the hug. “Don’t you see? It’s not about the guards or revenge. It’s about having your dreams smothered, day after day, until there’s nothing left.”
    “I used to think the same way.” Taking my hand, he leads me out onto the balcony and points to the pockets of gatherers slowly filling the Square below. “The people need someone to look after their interests. They can’t do it themselves.” He turns the finger on himself. “ We give them structure … a purpose.”
    I pull my arm free. “And just what is that purpose, Cass? Huh?” My hand sweeps the path leading from the onlookers up to the dais. “To be cattle in the slaughterhouse just waiting for their turn in the meat grinder? That’s not living. You of all people should know that. Think of what happened to your family.”
    Hurt flickers in his emerald eyes. “But it’s not going to happen to me , and it doesn’t have to happen to you.” He turns away and storms back inside, heading toward an elaborate wooden cabinet built into the alcove wall.
    I’m at his heels, like a Canid at its master’s side. “You say that, yet you serve the very government that recruited you and destroyed your family in the process.”
    Unlatching the cabinet doors, he pulls out a decanter of blood-red wine, sets it on the shelf beneath, and digs out two crystal goblets, handing me one.
    I examine the glass, staring at him through a prism of haze before shaking my head and setting it down on the shelf. “These past few years I’ve told myself you were only doing what you had to do to survive, to come back to … the Parish. But now it sounds like—”
    His thumb flicks the carafe’s stopper off with a loud pop. “Like what?” His brows arch. “ Like I’ve been brainwashed —is that what you’re thinking?” Sighing, Cassius watches dark crimson gush from the carafe as he tilts it over his goblet. “I assure you I haven’t been.”
    “I was going to say, it sounds like you’ve forgotten what life in the Parish is like.”
    The decanter clangs against my unused goblet as he puts the wine back on the shelf. “Of course I haven’t forgotten. I survived Recruitment, remember?” Half his drink disappears in one gulp.
    “And you shouldn’t have had to. The whole Recruitment process is barbaric.”
    “The Recruitment is a training method, Lucky. Five candidates who fit a certain profile are chosen to bypass the standard draft and given the opportunity to serve in an