“Jeez, Leo, weren’t you the one complaining earlier about Father ordering the stuff? Now you’re the lush.”
So she did notice our financial woes, as well as boys.
“I’ve eaten my weight in hors d’oeuvres. I can take it.” I took another sip as a hole opened up in the crowd, giving me a perfect view to Elliot bowing, kissing the gloved hand of Asta Madsen. “Let’s dance.” I changed tack, grabbing Carina by the hand and dragging her along behind me. I finished the champagne along the way, depositing the empty glass on a nearby balustrade.
I felt the bassline in my bones, threw my head back and my hands up, letting the music wash through me. Only an hour ago, I’d been right here, my only care Lukas’s wandering hands and eyes on me, my father winking from the sidelines. Now it was Elliot standing by, his eyes and hands interested in other girls. I refused to look, spinning, jumping, twirling Carina at intervals, sure to keep my back to wherever he and Evgenia were.
Then, suddenly, the music screeched to a stop. I was mid-spin and stumbled gracelessly to a halt, surprised to find a steady hand on my arm, preventing me from face-planting on the floor. I looked up at my savior. Then down. He was shorter than I was—it was the boy from earlier, the one who had asked me to dance, only to be shunted onto my cousin. I checked his name tag again. Daniel from the Empire. Where had he come from? I mumbled a thank-you and turned back to my sister, who looked more than a little put out.
“When will they turn the music back on?” Carina pouted.
Our ears were treated to the muffled tap of someone’s fingers on the microphone instead.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” came the precise, crisp voice of Captain Lind. I sighed and turned toward the stage. On a large screen behind my aunt was the Valg logo—a golden rose emblem intertwined with an elaborate V—which shimmered and pulsed in time to a silent beat. She spotted me immediately and gave me a nod, ruling out any chance I had to duck out and skip what was sure to be a long, bombastic speech about the Valg, and marriage, and family.
She did not disappoint.
“Many years ago, it became clear that in order to keep our population healthy and thriving, we needed a solution for finding . . . suitable partners. The Scandinavian was happy to host the first of these illustrious matching events, which is how we all got stuck with such a dreary name as the Valg.” She paused for the polite smattering of laughter that she clearly had expected.
“Valg means ‘choice’ in Norwegian and Danish. And, yes, we Swedes did protest, but Val just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!”
Another pause, more polite laughter.
“Over the next four weeks, you young people will be faced with many options. Everything will culminate in you making the most important decision of your life: who to marry.”
I groaned, seemingly in stereo. I twisted around to find Daniel, still beside me, who apparently agreed with my sentiment.
“I encourage you to cast a wide net and make good choices.” Captain Lind paused once more, but this time no one got the joke. “Anyway,” she recovered smoothly, “thank you so much for being with us, and—”
There was an electric snap, and then the entire ballroom was plunged into darkness. Some people screamed; beside me, my sister drew in a sharp breath and dug her fingers into my arm. The blackness lingered ten seconds, then twenty, and the cascade of confused murmurs crescendoed to worried cries.
“Everyone remain calm! Stay where you are so there is no stampede,” Captain Lind shouted above the din. Her mic wasn’t working.
“The doors are locked!” someone yelled from the ballroom entrance.
“Check the others,” the captain commanded, and after a tense moment, the same report echoed back from the four corners of the room.
Then the large digital screen affixed behind the stage blinked on, casting a pale glow across two hundred faces. A hush fell over the room as we read the words splashed across the screen in big, bold letters:
murderers.
Three
“Leo, what’s happening?” Carina whispered in my ear as my eyes clawed over the word again and again.
Murderers.
It was an accusation. My brain started clicking as I pieced it all together. The screen, the doors—we had been hacked in order for someone to send us a message.
But who?
And then the word faded from the screen and was replaced by a woman with drab, stringy hair and deep, dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted, wrung out.
“Now that I have your attention, we need to talk,” the woman said.
“Find them now!” I heard my aunt hiss from the stage, though I didn’t know how far she expected security to get if they couldn’t leave the room. We were a captive audience, with no choice but to focus on the screen.
“My name is Lena,” the woman onscreen said, “though of course you all don’t care enough to give me food, so why would you care to know my name? Regardless, my parents taught me to be polite, so you have my name, and my apologies for interrupting your celebration. I wish I could be there, but you all like to restrict visas, so it was impossible to join you. Happily for me, your system was easy to hack.”
My eyes flitted over to my aunt, who was now hunched at the back of the stage, fingers flying over a tab unit, clearly trying to put a stop to this. She was brilliant but no match against hackers, so Lena continued on.
“Don’t worry, tonight’s program will be short. I just want to share with you a little glimpse of how some of the other half of the fleet has been living. Given that a prudent marriage appears to be your foremost concern, I assume none of you are aware of the exact cost of your lifestyle. Allow me to show you.”
With that, the video changed, the screen flooding with images of human misery. Packed medical wards and insufficient supplies. Children weeping at a funeral—one could only assume their parents’. Signage forbidding the consumption of fruits and vegetables “reserved exclusively for the Empire.” A government memo about a series of brownouts on the Stalwart. A sweeping shot of an endless line of emaciated people. There were even graphs comparing the population-to-food ratios of several ships. The Scandinavian had only three hundred permanent residents compared to the Saint Petersburg’s twelve hundred. Both ships received the same amount of food.
Shame seared hot through me. I thought about my dramatics over having meat less often and the occasional blackout because Father and Carina used electricity a little too enthusiastically. It was so easy for me to jaunt over to the Scandinavian and enjoy my extended family’s finery. People in the fleet were starving while we lived like queens. And pretended we still were.
Lena’s face appeared once more.
“Amazing how none of this has appeared in the media. Now you know.” She smiled, sickly sweet. “Many of the people in this room play a part in government. If you wanted to, you could change everything. Fairly distribute resources. Allow ships with overcrowded populations to migrate to less crowded ships. But I won’t bore you any longer. I’m sure you want to get back to your party. Just know that we know how to get in now. Cheers.”
Lena lifted an empty hand, as if to toast us, further driving home the point. I imagined many hands in the room tipping back their champagne flutes, draining them dry.