The computer transcribes my words into responses. When the interview finishes, the women line us against the wall and take photos. Camera flashes fill my vision, turning it an electric white.
“For the duration of the Princess Trials, you will wear an Amstraad bracelet until your elimination,” says a woman in rapid, clipped words.
“What?” I blink the light from my eyes.
Another woman slams a piece of metal on my wrist, which expands and forms a closed band that tightens around me. A hundred needles prick my skin, and I howl. “What is this?”
She ushers me through the bank of desks to the hospital part of the marquee, where a tall, female medic awaits with another computer tablet. I can only see her eyes with the hooded suit and surgical mask obscuring her other features. “Zea-Mays Calico, sixteen, neophyte.”
“What’s a neophyte?” My voice rises two octaves.
Ignoring me, the medic hurries to a booth in the middle of the room. “This way, Calico.”
A glance over my shoulder tells me that Forelle also gets fitted with one of those bracelets. Her pretty face contorts with the same kind of terror from earlier today when I pricked her with a poisoned dart. I turn around and follow the medic.
Her booth contains a bed-sized, perspex platform, and she stands with her gloved hands resting on a trolley filled with trays of plastic instruments that make my heart flip.
“Take off your underpants and lie down for your internal exam,” she says.
A bolt of shock jolts my heart, and I wrap the unmonitored arm around my waist. “Why?”
“Anyone who enters the Oasis must be deemed healthy and free of contaminants.”
“What kind of—”
“This is strictly a voluntary procedure,” the medic snaps. “Withdraw your consent, so I can release your monitor and let you leave.”
“And the Trials?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Nobody enters the Oasis without being deemed—”
“Alright, I get it.” I step into the booth and grit my teeth. This is for the revolution, and when it comes, the Oasis and its precious supply of water will be for everyone and not just a group of Nobles and those they deem clean enough to serve them.
Once I’m in position, blue, sanitizing light fills the booth. I guess it's for the protection of the medic, who frowns as though she’s just about to handle dangerous chemicals. She murmurs orders, telling me to place my wrist on an armrest that blips in time with my pounding heart.
The internal exam aches and pinches and stretches places no human has seen, and my insides burn with rage and humiliation. Who will examine Prince Kevon to make sure he’s clean enough for us?
“No,” screams a girl in the other booth. “That can’t be right!”
I raise my head off the platform and rest my weight on my elbows. “What’s happening?”
“It could be anything,” mutters the medic. “Pregnancy, toxins, disease, anatomical anomaly, genetic masculinity.”
My insides clench. “What?”
“Lie still and relax, or I’ll have to start over again.”
The girl next to me isn’t the only one to scream. Whatever these tests do, they’re weeding out girls faster than I can pluck dandelion shoots from a field of tomato trees. My eyes squeeze shut, and I breathe hard as a narrow instrument burrows a path of agony through my insides.
Eventually, the lights turn from blue to white, and the ordeal ends. “Get dressed,” says the medic. “Walk to the end of the room and take a seat.”
“Did I pass the test?” I ask.
She has already left the booth.
The next room is a quarter of the size of our kitchen and is lined with long benches. A trio of flaxen-haired sisters sits together at the far end by another perspex door. I’ve seen them around town but don’t know their names. The tallest is the older sister, and the other two are identical twins.
All three raise their heads but don’t say hello. Right now, I want to curl up somewhere and fall asleep. Nausea swirls through my insides, which throb and spasm in time with my pulse. I lower myself onto the bench furthest away from the sisters and stare into my hands.
No man is worth enduring this level of torture and humiliation, and I wonder if the Noble girls or candidates from any of the other Echelons had to suffer anything like this the day before their trial started. The Harvester region is next to the Foundlings, which is on the other side of the Great Wall and its horrors beyond. Was this why they subjected us to these tests?
Forelle’s words from the backyard rattle through my skull. If I hadn’t taken out the guard, he would have made her ineligible for the Princess Trials. She had probably known what would happen in the marquee. But that guard kissed her. Would that be grounds for disqualification?
The door opens, and my head snaps up. Two girls enter. One short and stout with a mop of purplish curls, and the other a willowy girl with red hair. It's more of a strawberry blonde than the carrot-orange of Forelle’s. She walks unsteadily, looking as though the wind could blow her away like a dandelion seed.
“By Gaia,” she says, her voice rising in pitch. “That was awful. These people are monsters and perverts lower than Foundlings!”
I dip my head and examine the blinking lights on my wrist cuff. She’s right, but talk like that can get a person taken away for sedition. The door opens again, and Forelle steps in, her face as pale as a sun-bleached bone.
Tears glisten on her gray eyes, and a lump forms in my throat. What a day she has had. I hadn’t tussled with a guard, yet my insides feel about to shatter.
“How was it?” I whisper.
She shakes her head, drops onto the bench next to me, and winces.
“Same here.”
The red-haired girl’s rant picks
