The Outcast Ones by Maya Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

the room and sits beside me. Her mouth comes close to my ear, then she whispers.
    “They’re watching us.”

04. OUTCASTS
    I follow F701’s gaze to the big iron door. I didn’t notice it before, because it was camouflaged in all the red rock. But now I see an electronic light blinking softly above the door. Carefully I stand up. My legs are so weak that they shake, and I have to grab the wall for a moment to support myself, so I don’t fall back on the floor. My stomach feels hollow. How long has it been since we ate?
    Two steps to the door, and I stretch towards the blinking light. Coming closer, I recognise a camera lens, like for nutrition distribution.
    We’re not alone. That’s good, right? There’s someone watching us. But why is F701 so upset about it?
    I turn to her. “Do you know who’s watching? Did you see them?”
    She shakes her head.
    “Maybe it’s an experiment to improve protection in the safety zone.” I’m trying to cheer her up, but it’s hard to believe my own words.
    Now someone else is stirring, a man from the second generation. D276. He worked with me in nutrition distribution. “We’re not in the safety zone.” It’s a simple statement, with no analysis, no emotion.
    “How do you know that?”
    “Look around. Does this look like home to you?”
    The sand under my feet grinds together as I move back to sit beside F701. The light changes from orange to a mixture of dark blues.
    “That’s open sky,” explains D276, and as if to confirm it, a raindrop falls through the hole and lands right on my nose. I gasp in shock and flick the drop away as if it were blood and not water. I stare at my hand in horror. A second drop falls through the hole, this time onto my shoulder. In a panic I dash to the other side, F701 on my heels, as far away from the rain as we can get. It’s raining harder and harder. We don’t have rain in the safety zone, just like we have no snow, sunshine or wind.
    In spite of the rain I start to sweat and realise how unusually hot it is here. It must be several degrees above the ideal temperature.
    “We’re going to die!” F701 looks at me desperately. She wants me to say she’s wrong, but I can’t. If we’re in the open air, we’re condemned to death. The radiation will kill us all within three minutes.
    Now the others are beginning to toss and turn. They’re just as afraid to die as I am. F701’s teacher is breathing hard. She tries to control it, taking air deep into her lungs, but she’s only inhaling the poisonous air. When she realises it, she turns pale. Her skin almost goes green before she vomits in the middle of the room. She spits bile. There’s nothing else left in her stomach.
    Some of the others grab their own necks as if they want to stop themselves from breathing.
    Suddenly, the door opens with a loud creak. We huddle in the farthest corner of the room.
    A man enters the room. He doesn’t look like any male inhabitant of the safety zone. His whole body is wider and taller. He wears black clothes, but not a jumpsuit—it looks more like a shirt and a pair of trousers. The clothing falls loosely from his frame, rather than fitting tightly as ours does. Only his black boots are the same as what we wear
    He throws a grey cloth down over D456’s vomit and wipes it up with a disgusted expression. Light falls on his face and I freeze. He’s wearing a sort of hood made of thick, dark blue fabric, but underneath it I can see hair. Like an animal’s fur. It’s dark, almost black, but it looks so soft I want to touch it. His eyebrows are the same dark colour, accentuating the bright green of his eyes. His mouth is surrounded with a soft frame of the same dark hair. It’s a beard, like we’ve only seen in documentaries from Old Earth. He’s so strange, but at the same time, so appealing. I’m almost disappointed when he finishes and turns towards the door. In the opening I see another pair of eyes, but nothing more of their owner. I’m