Crossed

Ky and Vick stand in a cold, dark river. They’re currently in a holding camp somewhere in the Outer Provinces, waiting to be sent to a village as part of the Society’s war with the Enemy. If an Aberration spends six months in the villages, they get to return to the Society as a Citizen—but no one has ever survived the ordeal. Everyone sent to the villages dies, but no one is supposed to die in the holding camps. This is why Ky and Vick are in the river: They’re disposing of a boy’s dead body, where he won’t be found. The Officer commanding the boys from the banks tells them to get out of the water. He also tells them to take the coat off the boy before they let it go.

Ky, Vick, and the dead boy are all Aberrations—a classification below Citizens of the Society, and therefore ineligible for official funeral rites. Still, Ky asks if the Officer wants to get a final tissue sample from the boy, and Vick comments on the lack of ceremony. The Officer ignores them, absently swinging the boy’s boots around. For the first time in a while, Ky lets himself feel the full force of his anger: “It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I’m gnawing through foilware” (4).