Free Darklandia by T.S. Welti

back to normal as she whispered these words so close to my ear her breath tickled me.
    I sat back on my heels and swiped the back of my hand across my mouth. My arms shimmered with sweat as my hands trembled with the weight of Darla’s words.
    “What time is it?” I asked. “We have to go downstairs.”
    Darla nodded before she quickly helped me sop up my vomit and throw the rags down the garbage chute. My mother would notice two rags missing from the drawer in the kitchen, but I could conjure an excuse for the rags. I couldn’t make up an excuse for the vomit.

    The smell of the VITALIS factory across the street was refreshing after a long vomit-filled afternoon, but my head still pulsed with Darla’s confession. I couldn’t shake the feeling in the pit of my hollow belly that I had corrupted her. I couldn’t let anything happen to Darla. I loved her like I loved my father and my grandmother. Darla felt more like family to me than my own mother.
    I could sense Darla’s discomfort with what she had just confessed to me as we stood on the crumbling curb outside the apartment building. All over this city the streets and buildings were caked in multiple layers of filth and in various states of decomposition, but I had never felt more full of hope that the slowly rotting heart of Manhattan would one day be revived. Maybe I—maybe Darla and I would be its salvation.
    Aaron rounded the corner and from this point of view it was easy to appreciate the confidence of his swagger. He looked like everyone else: healthy and happy and, most importantly, undaunted by the presence of the cameras and the angels. A fear of disappointing him bellowed inside me, a critical voice shouting, “You didn’t drink your ration like he told you to.”
    “I can’t do it,” Darla whispered.
    “What do you mean? He’s almost here.”
    “I can’t. I don’t want to get marked. I’m—I’m so sorry, Sera. I have to go.”
    She bolted across the street and that feeling I got when I thought of my grandmother yesterday returned; the unbearable longing for everything to be different.
    “Hello, Sera,” he said, his eyes aglow with a question I couldn’t glean. “Are you ready for the grand tour?”
    I hesitated a moment before I replied, “Yes.”
    “Follow me.”
    I didn’t know what Aaron meant by “grand tour”, though I was almost certain this word was for the angels’ ears.
    We rounded the corner onto Broadway and I made a deliberate effort to appear confident and happy—like Aaron—not showing the aching misery plaguing my belly and mind. I studied his movements through quick and careful sideways glances. He nodded at almost every passerby. An old woman with glazed eyes returned his nod from a bench in Zuccotti Park. A young gentleman appeared dazed by Aaron’s friendly gesture, but he returned the favor, nonetheless.
    He seemed to get away with more odd behavior than the average Atraxian citizen and I desperately wanted to know his secret. It couldn’t just be that he worked for the Department of Felicity. There had to be more to it than that.
    “You drank your ration before I arrived?” he asked, as we approached Chambers Street.
    “I did,” I replied. “But I couldn’t hold it down.”
    He didn’t reply as he continued toward the entrance to the Chambers Street subway station.
    “Where are we going?” I asked, unable to hide the tinge of fright in my voice.
    Aaron continued down the steps toward the iron gate, which blocked off the entrance to the station. “I’m taking you on a tour, remember?”
    I stood still at the top of the steps remembering the videos I’d seen on the Community Information server of subway trespassers being purified. No warning. No branding. Just straight to purification.
    “Are you coming?” Aaron called to me from the pit of the station entrance.
    I descended the steps slowly, allowing the weight of gravity to pull me closer toward the truth about my father. When I reached the