Sapient Salvation 1: The Selection (Sapient Salvation Series) by Jayne Faith, Christine Castle

lifted my jar and inhaled the scent of soil. It was such a potent reminder of home, and I had to swallow back tears.
    Thoughts of Earthenfell rushed to the forefront of my mind. What were Mother and Lana doing? Were they back at home yet? How would Lana fare without me when work in the orchard resumed on Monday?
    I pulled my lips in between my teeth and bit down hard, trying to steel myself against the tide of emotions rising up. I forced myself to look around, to focus on my surroundings.
    We’d entered some sort of facility with white plastic-looking walls lining the hallways and a smooth floor made of slightly springy gray-and-white mottled tiles.
    In the stupor of grief at leaving home and the disorientation of passing through the portal, I’d failed to truly consider what would come next, and the space offered almost no clues.
    When we passed a pair of Calistan women, they leaned toward each other and whispered. When their eyes fell to the jar in my hands, their expressions shifted from curiosity to a sort of hungry awe.
    I turned my head to one side to whisper over my shoulder to Orion, “Where are we going?”
    A sheen of cold sweat slicked my palms as we came upon a group of four Calistans dressed in tight-fitting white clothing. They stared intently at each of us and equally intently at our jars.
    “I don’t know,” Orion said. “Maybe a medical exam?”
    If we were in some sort of medical facility, it was nothing like the neighborhood clinics we had on Earthenfell.
    Akantha turned and stopped, pinning me with a hard look. “Do not speak to each other unless I’ve given you permission to do so. This is the last warning you will get, and it goes for all of you. If you’d like to test me, it would be my pleasure to demonstrate your punishment.”
    She brandished a stubby metal wand. When she pressed a button on it, the end of it glowed white hot and a blue arc of electricity bowed outward. I drew back and clamped my elbows to my sides, not daring to breathe until she put the wand away.
    Akantha took us around a left turn that dead-ended at a door. She gestured to a cabinet next to the door. “Place your vessels in here.”
    Though Akantha had not yet treated us with any particular cruelty, she clearly had no qualms about ordering us around and treating us like annoying wayward children. I’d always wondered how the overlords would address and treat Earthens. We were their servants—slaves—both here on Calisto and back on Earthenfell. We worked the land of Earthenfell to keep it fertile for when the Calistan Lord, either the current Lord Toric or some future Lord, would lead his people back to Earthenfell and reclaim their ancestral home. And we supplied the Calistans with food and a wide variety of goods.
    I had no idea if Akantha’s treatment of us was better, worse, or typical of how we’d be treated by other Calistans. My stomach tightened into a hard ball. I suspected that worse was yet to come, but the most difficult part was simply not knowing what awaited us.
    As we obediently placed our jars on the shelves of the cabinet I glanced at the other Obligates. I knew a few of them by name, and recognized most of their faces from when I was still in school. Orion was the only one I’d spoken to recently. I would need to become familiar with all of them. They would be—they already were —my competition.
    Akantha opened the door, revealing a long room with plastic curtains dividing narrow beds made up with plain white linens. “Choose a bed and lie down. Do as you are asked by the medics.”
    I went to one of the beds toward the middle, and Orion took one right next to me. The plastic curtains allowed light through but distorted what was one the other side.
    My heart tapped a rapid nervous rhythm as I fidgeted with the folds of my dress.
    I heard the door open again, and then the shuffle of many pairs of feet entering. Calistans dressed like the ones we’d seen in the hallways walked passed the