Reached (Matched, #3)

by Ally Condie

The red silk of the dress I’m wearing slips neatly under the unflattering lines of my plainclothes. It’s one of the Hundred Dresses, possibly stolen, that came up in a trade.

On the outside, I’m a Society girl wearing plainclothes. But underneath, I have silk and paper against my skin. I have found that this is the easiest way to carry the poems; wrap them around my wrists, place them against my heart.

And there’s a chance I won’t forget anything—that I’m immune like Indie, and Xander, and Ky. The Society thinks the red tablet does work on me.

According to the Society, I’ve never been in the Outer Provinces at all.

“This is what you say when people ask where you’ve been.” He handed me a sheet of paper. I looked down at the printed words:

“We have an Officer who is prepared to corroborate your story and claim she found you in the woods,” he said. “And the idea is that I’d been given a red tablet,” I said. “To forget that I saw them take the other girls away on the air ships.”

“Apparently one of the girls caused a disturbance. They had to give red tablets to several others who woke up and saw her.”

we’ll say that you went missing after that,” he said. “They lost track of you for a moment, and you wandered off while the red tablet was taking effect. Then they found you days later.”

“What do you want me to do once I’m in Central?” I asked him. “Why did they tell me I could best serve the Rising from within the Society?”

“Central is where the Society planned to send you for your final work position,” he said. I nodded.

Now that they think you’ve been rehabilitated in the work camp, they’ll be glad to have you back, and the Rising can make use of that.”

“You’ll need to be patient,” he said. “It may ...

There’s only one, which is strange. Officials almost always travel in groups of three. “Cassia Reyes?”

“I’ll need you to come with me,” she says. “You’re required at the sorting center for extra work hours.”

Sometimes, it takes weeks instead of days for our letters to go through, but this one came quickly.

Months ago, when I first came here, I told Ky of this place and that it would be a good spot to meet, something

wall has been here since before I came. “Renovations,” everyone says. “The Society will open the stillzone back up again soon.”

I want to know what’s behind those walls. I want so much: happiness, freedom, love. And I want a few other tangible things, too.

And the other trade is even more expensive, even more risky—I traded seven poems to bring Grandfather’s microcard from my parents’ house in Keya here to me. I asked the trader to approach Bram first with an encoded note. I knew Bram could decipher it.

Bram. I’d like to find a silver watch for him to replace the one the Society took.

We are some of the last to arrive, and an Official ushers us to our empty cubicles. “Please begin immediately,”

Next sort: exponential pairwise matching. I keep my eyes on the screen and my expression neutral.

I’m not just looking out for a sort; I’m also looking out for a particular set of information, which I’m supposed to mismatch.

This is it. The right sort. The right data set. Is this the beginning of the Rising?

No chime sounds. The Rising’s bug worked. I think I hear a breath of relief, a tiny exhalation somewhere else in the room.

feel something, a cottonwood seed of memory, light and flitting on the breeze, floating through.

The fact that we’re doing the sort in real time seems to indicate that there’s a rush.

“We’re Matching,” someone says out loud. He breaks my concentration. I look up from the screen, blinking.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of green—Army Officers in uniform moving in on the man who spoke.

“For the Banquet,” the man says. He laughs. “Something’s happened. We’re Matching for the Banquet. The Society can’t keep up anymore.”

glance up. His mouth is gagged and his words unintelligible, and above the cloth his eyes meet mine for a brief moment as they take him away.

Are we Matching people? Today is the fifteenth. The Banquet is tonight.

the Match Department has its own sorters. The Matches are of paramount importance to the Society. There should be people higher than us to see to it.

Something is happening out there. It almost feels like they’d done the Matching before, but now they have to do it again at the last minute.

If we’re Matching, then the data represents people: eye color, hair color, temperament, favorite leisure activity.

What could have caused such a decimation in the Society’s data? Will they have time to make the microcards or will the silver boxes stay empty tonight?

Because the Banquet is the most important celebration in the Society. The Matching is what makes the other ceremonies possible; it’s the Society’s crowning achievement.

I realize, the Rising added the bug, so that some of us could Match incorrectly without getting caught.

“Please stand up,” the Official says. “Take out your tablet containers.”

“Remove the red tablet,” the Official says. “Please wait until an Official is near you to observe you taking the tablet. There’s nothing to worry about.”

They’re prepared. When someone swallows down a red tablet, the Officials refill the containers right away.

Hands to mouths, memories to nothing, red going down. The little seed of memory floats past again.

“Please take the tablet,” the Official tells me. This isn’t like last time, back in the Borough.

But perhaps I am immune to the red tablet, like Ky, and Xander, and Indie. I might remember everything. And, no matter what, I will remember

Pilot lives in the Borders, here in Camas. The Pilot doesn’t live anywhere. He or she is always on the move. The Pilot’s dead. The Pilot can’t be killed.

We’re the ones the Pilot will use to take down the Society—and it’s going to be soon.

Most of the trainees want to please the Chief Pilot so badly you can feel it rolling off them in waves.

When I first came to this camp, I worried that the Rising might use us like decoys the way the Society did, but the rebellion has invested too much in our training.

The Society is right about Aberrations. We’re dangerous. I’m the kind of person a good citizen imagines coming up behind them in the night—a black shadow with hollow eyes.

As I perform the turns, I can feel my head, my arms, my whole body sinking into the seat beneath me, and I have to strain to hold myself upright.