Blood Zero Sky by J. Gates Page B

and campfire at my feet seems far preferable to wandering my immaculate apartment alone for the rest of my life. Surely here they wouldn’t care if I wore pants, or if I kissed a woman. Maybe Clair, even . . . if I could persuade her not to kill me first.
    But of course, such thoughts are insanity. Sure, there is something that thrills me about these people, but what I don’t understand is the nature of their cause. The Company is good! Credit limits go up every year, and the product lines just keep getting better. Every imaginable luxury is just a shopping trip away. Crime is dropping. Faith in God is through the roof. And anyone, if they just work hard enough, can be a Blackie one day! Why would somebody want to rebel against a world like the one we, the Company, have created? That’s what I can’t fathom.
    No, the idea of living here is just another dream, another ridiculous, unrealistic utopian fantasy.
    I am a Fields. I live in a penthouse. I will be a Blackie. When all these anarchists are wasting away in Company prisons, I will be tanning myself on a two-hundred-foot yacht off the coast of Fiji.
    And the Company, it will be expanding still.
    Ethan still watches me, and I can see disappointment on his face as he guesses my thoughts. Without a word, he slips the knife back into its sheath.
    Clair stands, finally smiling. “What did you expect?” she says to Ethan. Then she stalks off into the shadows.
    “You all seem really nice,” I say quickly, apologetically, “but I can’t understand—”
    “We don’t have time for you not to understand, May,” Ethan stands, nodding to McCann, who rises, too. “Take her,” he says.
    Without warning, McCann grabs me from behind.
    “No! Please! Listen! Let’s talk! My father—we can negotiate! He’ll pay you—please—” I shout, in a panic.
    Ethan doesn’t respond. He merely stands there in the firelight with his arms crossed, watching as McCann drags me away. I scream until I lose my voice, but McCann doesn’t stop, doesn’t answer. He moves with the inexorable gait of a robot, dragging me away, into the darkness.

—Chapter ØØ7—
    McCann leads me to a heavy, rusty-hinged steel door. When I open my mouth to speak, he jams a gun in my back, urging me through the doorway and into the darkness beyond. A set of metal stairs. We clang our way downward endlessly. The suspense is too much. I could puke at any second. The silence is killing me. I have to speak.
    “What’s going to happen to me?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder at him.
    “You and God will decide that. No one else.” The humor that filled his voice earlier has fled.
    We continue the rest of the way in silence, trudging down the stairs, flight after flight, until I imagine we must have reached a level at least five stories lower than that of the rebel warehouse. At the bottom of the stairs is a doorway, and I hold my breath as we step through it and into a small, twelve-by-twelve-foot room with walls of unadorned concrete block.
    Inside the room, now. The door through which we entered is at our backs. Ahead of us is another door, this one a little lower, a little narrower, made of steel and shut tight. The door behind us swings shut as well. One dying, fluorescent tube flickers above us, providing the only light.
    I turn and face McCann. A knife blade protrudes from his fist, deadly and evil-looking. We are alone in a place where even the most pitiful death scream would fall to silence before reaching any living ear. I struggle to remember the prayer of Jimmy Shaw, the one he closes each sermon with, but although I have heard it a million times, only a few phrases remain in my memory: Give me the grace to bear my burdens, the will to work hard . . . let me obey the Lord Jesus and His mother, Mary, honor my family, devote myself to my Company . . . forgive my sins . . .
    My heart sinks. Surely, these scraps of drifting words will never form a solid enough raft to float me to heaven. Still,