Reached

didn’t want her to try to talk me out of going. She knows that once I get to Central, there’s a chance I might find a way to stay.
    Indie doesn’t blink. “You’ve been waiting a long time for an assignment there,” she says. She pushes her chair away from the table and stands up to leave. “Make sure you come back,” she says.
    I don’t promise her anything. I’ve never been able to lie to Indie.

    I’ve just started eating when the siren sounds.
    Not a drill. Not tonight. This can’t happen.
    I rise with the rest of the trainees and head outside. Figures, fast and dark like me, run for the ships. By the looks of things, it’s a full drill. The runways and fields are crowded with ships and trainees, all following procedure to prepare for the time when we all run one massive errand to take over the Society. I switch on my miniport.
Report to Runway 13,
the message reads.
Group Three. Ship C-5. Copilot.
    I don’t think I’ve flown that ship before, though it doesn’t really matter. I’ll have flown something like it. But why am I the copilot? I’m usually the pilot, no matter who I’m flying with.
    “To your ships!” commanders call out. The sirens keep on shrilling.
    When I get closer to the ship I see that the lights are already on and someone’s moving inside the cockpit. The pilot must already be on board.
    I climb the steps and open the door.
    Indie turns to look at me and her eyes widen in surprise. “What are you doing?” she asks.
    “I’m the copilot,” I say. “Are you the pilot?”
    “Yes,” she says.
    “Did you know they were putting us together?”
    “No,” she says. She turns back to the panel to start up the engines on the ship, a sound familiar and unnerving at the same time. Then she glances over her shoulder at me, her long braid whipping around. She looks angry. “Why waste two of us on the same ship? We’re both good.”
    The group commander’s voice comes in from the speaker in the cockpit. “Begin final checks in preparation for departure.”
    I swear under my breath. It’s a full drill. We’re actually going to take flight. I can feel my trip to Central slipping away.
    Unless they send us there on our drill. There’s still a chance.
    Indie leans forward to the speakers in the cockpit. “We’re missing our runner,” she says.
    The door opens and another figure in black comes in. For a moment we can’t see who it is, and I think
Maybe it’s Vick, or Eli.
Why not? I’m paired with Indie, which feels almost as unlikely.
    But Vick is dead and Eli is gone.
    “You’re the runner?” Indie asks.
    “Yes,” he says. He looks to be about our age, maybe a year or two older. I don’t think I’ve seen him before, but we get new people all the time in the camp. I catch sight of a few notches on his boots as he walks over to the hatch.
    “You were in the decoy villages,” I say. There are a good number of us here who were decoys at one time or another.
    His voice is flat. “Yes,” he says. “My name is Caleb.”
    “I don’t think I knew you there,” I say.
    “You didn’t,” he says, and disappears into the hold.
    Indie raises her eyebrows at me. “Maybe they put him with us to equal things out,” she says. “Two smart, one stupid.”
    “Do we have cargo for this drill?” I ask.
    “Medical supplies,” Indie says.
    “What kind?” I ask. “Is it real?”
    “I don’t know,” she says. “The cases are all locked.”

    Moments after Indie lifts us into the sky, the computer in the cockpit starts spitting out flight code.
    I pull it out and read it.
    “What does it say?” Indie asks.
    “Grandia City,” I say.
Not Central.
    But Grandia’s in the same general direction. Maybe we could keep going past Grandia and on out to Central.
    I don’t say anything to Indie, not yet.
    We leave behind the dark spaces near the mountains where our camps are located and soar over the Boroughs on the outskirts of Camas City. Then we move over the City itself. There’s the river that goes through the City, and the taller buildings like the Hall.
    A circle of white loops around them.
    “How long has that been there?” I ask. I haven’t flown directly over the City in almost a week.
    “I don’t know,” Indie says. “Can you tell what it is?”
    “It looks like a wall,” I say. “Around City Hall and some other buildings.”
    My uneasiness deepens. I keep my eyes on the control panel, resisting the urge to look over at Indie. Why is there a wall