Variant by Robison Wells Read Free Book Online

people?”
    “Don’t let it fool you. Mouse is vicious.”
    She followed the oval of the track, jogging fast and steady. I wondered if she was training for an escape. I wished it was me down there—I’d run straight for the woods and get out of this place.
    “Can anyone go out on the track?” I asked.
    “No. Havoc has the contract for groundskeeping. They can get out there most of the time. The Society’s security, so they can go wherever they want. But we can’t.”
    “I ought to join the Society for that,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t. I’d just been thinking aloud, but the idea was so good that I wished no one had heard me.
    “It won’t work,” Mason said. “Other people have tried it—joined the Society to get on the security team. But those guys are handpicked by Isaiah, and you’d never make it.”
    “Why not?”
    “You’ve said no to him. People who say no to Isaiah don’t do well in the Society.”
    “What contracts do we have?”
    Mason smirked. “Janitorial and maintenance. Not very flashy, but it pays pretty well.”
    Mouse bent down to retie her shoe and then stood and continued jogging.
    I heard Mason open the closet door behind me. “Hey, Fish,” he said. “Your stuff came.”
    I stood to look. My school uniforms—seven sets of white shirts, red sweaters, and black pants—were all neatly hung. Below them on the floor were shoes and socks, and a bag of school supplies—pads, pencils, and a very small notebook computer, about the size of a paperback.
    “Did someone bring them in during the night?”
    “No,” Mason said, pulling a shirt down from his side. “This is how we get the stuff we buy with points. I’m not sure how it works. At night we lock the closet, and in the morning the new stuff is in there. It’s some kind of elevator.”
    I walked to the closet and inspected the edges, trying to figure out how it moved. “I was awake all night, I think. I didn’t hear it.”
    Mason shrugged. “You can hear it in other rooms. Ours just isn’t as squeaky as some.”
    I took a shirt from the hanger. I wanted a shower, but didn’t really want to deal with a communal bathroom right now.
    Mason talked as he dressed. “Some kid, like, a year ago, tried to stay in the closet all night. They must have seen him on the cameras because the closet never moved until he got out. He’d try all kinds of things—waiting until the room was totally dark and sneaking in, or having someone stand in front of the camera while he hid.”
    I took off my T-shirt and pulled on the uniform. It was heavily starched and stiff.
    “They watch us pretty close, huh?”
    “Yes, they do,” he said. “That’s why we do dumb stuff like wear these uniforms. Leaving the dorm without your uniform is against the rules. Not going to class is against the rules. Not shaving is against the rules. Everything is.”
    I had to get Mason to help me with the tie—I’d never tied one before. He said that was pretty normal for the new guys.
    Mason seemed pretty even-tempered. He was a V but didn’t have the same drive I did to get out. I had to wonder if he’d joined the Variants simply because he wasn’t passionate enough to be Society or Havoc.
    We skipped going down to breakfast on Mason’s recommendation. He said it might be better if we waited until class to leave the dorms, just to be sure Oakland was already gone. That was fine with me.
    Instead, Mason had a box of snack food that he’d bought with points, and he quickly downed a couple of granola bars. He offered me one, but I refused. He’d probably had to go to a lot of trouble to earn the points for the bars, and I didn’t want to owe anything to anyone.
    At eight o’clock, as guys were trickling back from the cafeteria, there was a loud chime from the hallway.
    “You’re going to love this,” Mason said with a smile as we walked toward the door.
    A few of the guys had gathered around a flat-panel TV screen that was mounted on the wall. A