Six names later, the Officiant called the only person in the hall who would have sat next to Mav by choice.
Ronald Brown climbed the steps two at a time.
He was the biggest student in their year by a comfortable margin, with shoulders like a cargo door and a face that never seemed worried about anything.
His family lived three streets from Mav’s uncle’s family, the Lowes, in an apartment even smaller than theirs.
Ronald had walked to school beside the traitor’s son for eight years, mostly because nobody had ever managed to explain to him why he shouldn’t.
He slapped his hand on the stone as if greeting an old friend.
It lit up at once.
Gray hills unfolded above the stage, bare and windy, littered with boulders.
The Officiant read the lines out:
“World: highlands.
Potential: B.
Species: stone boar.”
There was real applause this time.
For a boy from the foundry district, a B potential was an excellent result.
Ronald looked at his hills, nodded like a man approving a meal, and came down to the bench.
He dropped onto it right next to Mav.
The bench creaked, and Mav felt a little less alone.
For a while, neither of them said anything.
“Seaweed, huh.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying.
It could be worse.”
Mav turned his head and looked at him.
“How?”
Ronald opened his mouth, frowned, and thought about it for what felt like a very long time.
“…Give me a minute.”
The ceremony ended 20 minutes later.
The last name was called, the last palm left the stone, and the Officiant closed his list with the relief of a man setting down a heavy bag.
Mav had kept counting to the end, out of habit.
347 students.
35 Awakened.
It was a little better than 1 in 10.
The school would probably put it on a banner.
The other 312 were already filing out through the main doors, quietly, back to the lives they had walked in with.
Nobody stopped them.
Nobody looked at them, either.
By the end of the week, most of them would be standing at a machine.
The 35 stayed on the bench.
The Officiant turned to face them, and for the first time that day, he seemed to actually see the people he was talking to.
“You know the rule.
At midnight, the Genesis will come for you.
Use the hours you have.”
He paused.
“And say what you need to say to your families.
Some of you will not get another chance.”
Then he picked up his list and left.
Mav felt a knot form in his throat.
They had until midnight.
That was the rule, and the Genesis had never once broken it.
At midnight on the day of the Bestowal, every new Awakened was taken.
There was no ship and no door.
One moment you were standing in your kitchen, and the next, you were standing on your Mote.
Wherever that happened to be.
You went with what you were carrying.
Clothes, a pack, whatever your own two arms could hold.
Nothing more.
And you did not come back.
Not until your World reached rank E.
Before that, there was simply no road home, no matter what you found waiting on the other side.
A dead world.
A frozen one.
A world with nothing to eat.
People vanished at midnight every year and were never heard from again.
That was why wealthy families sent their children off with packs that experts had spent months putting together.
Cassian Pyrecrest was probably being fitted for his at this very moment.
Mav had 41 credits and an afternoon.
“55 for the lot.”
“30.”
The surplus market behind the foundry district was the cheapest place in the city, which was the only reason Mav knew it existed.
He had laid out his choices on the counter.
Four water canteens.
12 days of ration bars, the gray kind.
A knife with a decent edge.
A coil of cord.
And, sitting on top of the pile like a deflated orange jellyfish, a flotation vest.
The man behind the stall looked at him with pity.
“Son.
You’re going out there tonight.
Is this really the moment to save a few credits?”
“The vest has a patch on it.”
“That’s a reinforcement.”
“It’s a patch.
I can see the glue.
35.”
Behind him, Ronald was weighing two shovels in his hands with great seriousness.
He had hills, which meant he would need to dig.
It took another 10 minutes.
In the end, Mav walked away with everything for 40 credits, plus a dented whistle the seller had thrown in to make him leave.
He looked at the single credit chip left in his palm before putting it away.
One credit.
He felt a small, warm glow of victory.
Ronald glanced at the orange vest, then at him.
“You sure about that thing?”
“The image was all water.
I’m not going to be the idiot who drowns in the first five minutes.”
“I meant the patch.”
“The man swore on his mother.”
“Did he look like he liked his mother?”
Mav did not answer that.
They stopped at the corner where their streets split.
It was the same corner as every other day.
For some reason, that made it worse.
Ronald shifted the shovels to one shoulder and held out a hand the size of a dinner plate.
“Don’t die.”
“I can’t afford to.
I just spent everything I own.”
Ronald laughed.
He shook Mav’s hand once, hard enough to hurt, and walked away without looking back.
He had never been good at this sort of thing.
Neither had Mav.
He watched his only friend go, and his chest felt tight.
Dinner at the Lowes’ was the best meal he had eaten in a year, and nobody tasted any of it.
His aunt Mira had made too much food, and she kept getting up to make more.
Every time she passed his pack, which sat by the door, something else disappeared into it.
A jar of pickled cabbage.
A wrapped loaf.
A pair of thick wool socks, which were going to be extremely useful on a world made of water.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her.
His uncle Garrett sat at the head of the table and said nothing at all.
He was a quiet man at the best of times, a foreman who had spent 26 years shouting orders over the noise of machines and seemed to have used up his supply of words there.
Tonight, he just looked at his plate.
Now and then, he looked at Mav.
Then back at the plate.
That left Juno.
His cousin was 17, sharp-tongued, and completely unable to leave a silence alone.
She had been staring at him across the table for most of the meal.
“So.
Seaweed.”
“Juno.”
“What?
I’m only asking.
Is it at least a rare seaweed?
Can I tell people it’s rare?”
Mav shrugged.
“You can tell people whatever you like.”
“Then I’m telling them it’s poisonous.
Deadly poisonous seaweed.
Very exotic.
Nobody has to know.”
Her voice wobbled on the last word.
She stabbed a potato with great violence and did not look up again.
Mav studied the table, because his eyes were stinging.
These three people had taken in a 10-year-old with a dangerous name, when the sensible thing would have been to shut the door.
They had been paying for it ever since.
He knew exactly how much.
He had counted that, too.
His aunt set down her fork and asked quietly:
“How long?
Until you can come back.”
“Until rank E.”
“And how long is that?”
He didn’t know.
Nobody at the table did.
With good land and a strong species, some people managed it in days.
He had an ocean and a plant.
“Not long.”
It was a few minutes to midnight when he stood up and put on the pack.
Then the vest, over his jacket.
It was even more orange under the kitchen light.
Juno made a strangled sound that was halfway to a laugh.
His aunt held him for a long time and let go very suddenly.
His uncle got to his feet last.
He put one heavy hand on Mav’s shoulder and looked at him the way he looked at a machine he wasn’t sure would hold.
For a moment, it seemed he would say nothing at all.
“Come back.”
That was it.
Two words.
From Garrett Lowe, it was practically a speech.
Mav’s throat was too tight to speak.
He opened his mouth to answer anyway.
The clock on the wall clicked over.
There was no flash and no sound.
The kitchen simply stopped being there.
The light, the table, the three faces turned toward him.
All of it was gone between one heartbeat and the next.
Then he was falling through cold air, with a sky full of strange stars above him and black water rushing up from below.
There was no land anywhere.