“Stay close.” His mother tugged him against her side as they amalgamated into a throng of thousands. Caiden had never seen so many people all together. They dressed in color and style according to their determinations, but otherwise the mob was a mix of shapes, sizes, and colors of people with only the brands on the back of their necks alike. It was clear from the murmurs that no one knew what was going on. This was not “the way things have always been.” Worst fears and greatest hopes floated by in whispers like windy grass as Caiden squeezed to the edge of the Flat Docks’ huge metal plate.

It lay empty, the guardrails up, the crowds bordered around. Only seven aerators in their sector still trickled. Others much farther away had stopped entirely. There should have been hundreds feeding the gray overhead, which now looked the palest ever.

Caiden said, “We’ll be out of time to get the aerators running before the vapor’s gone.”

“I know…” His father’s expression furrowed. The grime on his face couldn’t hide suspicion, and his mother’s smile couldn’t hide her fear. She always had a solution, a stalwart mood, and an answer for Caiden even if it was “Carry on.” Now: only wariness.

If everyone’s here, then—“Leta.”

“She’ll be with her own parental unit,” his father said.

“Yeah, but—” They weren’t kind.

“Caiden!”

He dashed off, ducking the elbows and shoulders of the mob. The children were smothered among the taller bodies, impossible to distinguish. His quick mind sorted through the work rotations, the direction they came from—everyone would have walked straight from their dropped tasks, at predictable speed. He veered and slowed, gaze saccading across familiar faces in the community.

A flicker of bright bluish-purple.

Chicory flowers.

Caiden barked apologies as he shouldered toward the color, lost among tan clothes and oak-dark jerkins. Then he spotted Leta’s fawn waves, and swung his arms out to make room in the crowd, as if parting tall grass around a flower. “Hey, there you are.”

Leta peered up with dewy hazel eyes. “Cai.” She breathed relief. Her knuckles were white around a cluster of chicory, her right arm spasming, a sign of her losing the battle against over-stimulation.

Leta’s parental unit wasn’t in sight, neglectful as ever, and she was winded, rushed from some job or forgotten altogether. Oversized non-determination garments hung off one shoulder, covered her palms, tripped her heels. She crushed herself against Caiden’s arm and hugged it fiercely. “It’s what the older kids say. The ones who don’t pass Appraisal’re sent away, like the bovine yearlings.”

“Don’t be silly, they would have called just the children then, not everyone. And you haven’t been appraised yet, anyway.”