Free The Enclave by Karen Hancock

contemporaries had once said of him.
    Cam stared at his employer, chilled to the core, but the director avoided eye contact, letting the moment of distress draw itself out as he drank his lemonade. When he finished, he carefully wiped the outside of the glass with the napkin before placing it on the silver tray beside the condensation-fogged pitcher, and finally looked again at Cam.
    “Consider carefully what you do here, son. You have incredible potential, and I am looking forward to the day when I can bring you safely into the fold. Stay with us on this, and you’ll be rewarded beyond your wildest imaginings. Abandon us and . . .” He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head sadly. “Assets must be guarded. Much as it would tear me up to see it happen, if you leave us, your future in genetics is over.”
    Cam took his time responding. “I’ll think about it,” he said finally.
    “And if she asks you point-blank what you know?”
    Cam met his gaze unflinchingly. “I won’t lie to her, sir.”
    Swain leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers on its leather-covered arm, eyes narrowed. For several long moments he regarded Cam. Finally he stilled his hands and his face went bland and blank. “Then you’d better make sure she doesn’t ask you.”

Chapter Six
    New Eden
    At 1100 hours on the same day that Andros had refused to say the morning Affirmation, Zowan stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellows in the bowl-shaped Justorium located at the heart of the Enclave’s central complex, awaiting the start of his friend’s trial and punishment. As one who had only recently become old enough to participate, Zowan stood on the eleventh row of the small, steeply circular chamber where New Eden’s trials were conducted and sentences pronounced and carried out.
    Below him, ten rows descended in concentric circles of decreasing size to a central stage where stood the offender with two bald, black-robed Enforcers. Each row was partitioned off from the row below it by a continuous console that paralleled the row’s curvature. On the consoles were numerous red levers, before which the audience parceled themselves out according to rank and seniority, one person to a lever.
    If the judgment was reached that Andros was guilty—and there was little doubt that it would—he would be placed into the Justorium’s Cube of Discipline, where the pain he endured would be directly controlled by how far down each member of the audience pulled his lever. Zowan had come with the determination not to pull it at all. How could he punish his friend for doing something he himself had not only contemplated but suggested?
    Warm, stifling air, heavy with the odor of sweat, pressed upon him. An undercurrent of restlessness buzzed at the base of his skull, and his stomach churned with tension. Around him, the various colors of their tunics lost in the Justorium’s red light, his friends and fellow Enclavers chattered nervously about the coming trial.
    It had been over a year since the New Edenites had put someone in the Cube. Zowan’s and Gaias’s elder brother, Neos, had been the last, and it had killed him. Of course, he’ d been a regular victim of the Cube’s torment, a rebel to the end, and all those sessions he’ d spent screaming between its electrified plates had weakened him. Or so said the Elders. Neos had refused to say the Affirmation, as well.
    Andros had never been in the Cube. He was a shy, quiet kid, prone to contemplation and asking questions the Elders didn’t like. Even now Zowan heard snatches of conversation around him as people marveled that Andros could have done such a thing. Zowan had always believed if anyone among the first generation followed in Neos’s footsteps it would be himself. Not his quiet friend Andros.
    Yet there he stood, his tall, thin form pinioned between a pair of black-robed Enforcers, awaiting the start of the trial as the last few attendees arrived. Finally a low tone sounded and a