Free Pure by Julianna Baggott

you suddenly become more of a risk than your value, they flip a switch. Partridge doesn’t believe in the ticker.
    “It’s just a myth, Hastings. There’s no such thing.”
    “Then what do they want to do to you?”
    “They just want biological info.”
    “They don’t need to put you under for info. DNA , blood, piss. What more could they want?”
    Partridge knows what they want from him. They want to alter his behavioral coding, and for some reason they can’t. And it has to do with his mother. He’s told Hastings more than he wanted to. Mainly, he can’t tell anyone that he’s planning to get out. He knows how to get out of the Dome. He’s done the research, the calculations. He’s going to go out through the air-filtration system. There’s only one more thing he needs, a knife, and he’s going to get it tonight. “No need to panic, Hastings. I’ll be fine. I always am, right?”
    “You don’t want a ticker, man. You do
not
want that.”
    “Look, you’re all dressed up, Hastings. Don’t worry about it. Go have fun. Like you said,
It’s a dance, for shit’s sake!
”
    “Okay, okay,” Hastings says and lopes to the door on his long legs. “Don’t leave me alone down there forever, okay?”
    “If you’d stop bugging me, I could go faster.”
    Hastings gives a salute and shuts the door.
    Partridge sits down heavily on his mattress. Hastings, that idiot, Partridge says to himself, but it doesn’t help. Hastings has freaked him out, talking about the ticker; why would officials want to off their own soldiers? He could have told Hastings that he should watch out for himself. Hastings’ behavioral coding has probably already been altered a little. It might even be one of the reasons why he doesn’t want to be late for the dance. Punctuality is a Dome virtue.
    Partridge can’t imagine how it would feel to start acting differently, just in the littlest of ways. “It’s just like growing up. A maturation.” That’s what parents think of the behavioral coding—for boys at least. Girls don’t get coding, something about their delicate reproductive organs, unless they’re not okayed for reproduction. If they aren’t going to reproduce, then brain enhancements can start up. Partridge doesn’t want to change at all. He wants to know that what he does comes from himself—even if it’s wrong. In any case, he has to get out before they find a way to mess with his behavioral coding or else he’ll never do it. He’ll stop himself. He might not even have the impulse to get out anymore. But what’s outside the Dome? All he knows is that it’s a land filled with wretches, most of whom were too stupid or stubborn to join the Dome. Or they were sick in the head, criminally insane, virally compromised—already institutionalized. It was bad back then; society was diseased. The world has been forever changed. Now most of the wretches who survived are atrocities, deformed beyond human recognition, perversions of their previous life-forms. In class, they’ve been shown pictures, stills frozen from ash-fogged video footage. Will he be able to survive out there in the deadly environment among the violent wretches? And it’s possible that once he’s out, no one will come looking for him. No one is allowed out of the Dome for any reason—not even for reconnaissance. Is this a suicide mission?
    Too late. He’s made up his mind. He can’t afford any distractions right now—from Hastings or himself. He hears the ventilation system click on and checks his watch. He stands and climbs the short ladder to his bunk. He pulls out a small notebook wedged between the mattress and the railing. He opens the book, notes the time, shuts it, and pushes it back into its spot.
    Wherever he is now, whether he’s lying there in his mummy mold undergoing radiation or waiting for another vial to be taken from him or during his classes or in his dorm room at night, he studies the patterned hum of the filtration fans—the