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  Chapter 1

  The sun shines onto the metal roof of the Washington Positive Treatment Facility. I stand with my father and mother on either side of me in a line outside of the facility. Most of the people here patiently wait outside with their IDs in hand. Most people came here by choice.

  My family is different.

  Two armed Drug Policing Agents stand on either side of my family. We tried to run with what little family we had left, but they said it was treason and brought me here after the hospital. One of them nudge my father forward with the butt of his shotgun. His grip on my hand tightens.

  As we step forward into the waiting area of the testing office, I hear my mother whisper, "Are we at risk for exposure?"

  "That's ridiculous," my father says, but something in his voice tells me he doesn't believe that.

  We're escorted to a room with a single table and four metal chairs. One man in a hazmat suits sit across from us.

  "Name?"

  "Salvatora Cuevas," one of the agents escorting us says.

  The men at the tablet flip through a binder with until they find my name. "Have a seat."

  My father walks me to the chair and has me sit next to him. The man grabs my arm and ties a tourniquet around my bicep. Four empty vials lay on the table with my name written in thick black letters on them.

  I look up and feel my heart drop. A red door is guarded by two more people in hazmat suits. It's the door that everyone spoke about before they disappeared. My heart pings at the back of my ribcage. Beyond that door was where my nightmares always led me.

  "I was informed by my colleagues that your surgery didn't go quite so well," the man says, making me jump.

  "No," my father responds. "It didn't."

  The man nods and flips through a thin folder, my name also branding the tab attached to it. "We're running the General Health Spectrum Test today. If one does indeed come back positive, you will be admitted to the Washington Positive Treatment Facility immediately." He closes the folder and looks up through his mask's goggles. "Any questions?"

  My voice gets caught in my throat. I manage a nod. The red seems to get brighter as he prepares my skin for the needle. I feel nauseous.

  My father turns my head into his chest as the needle goes in. "You're not going through that door, sweetheart," he whispers.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. If I do go through there, I'll be another number. Another statistic. Another person taken by the chip's malfunction. They call this place a treatment facility, but if you're admitted, you're never coming back. No one comes back from going through the red door. Going through it means you’re a Positive. And being a Positive means there’s no hope for you.

  Chapter 2

  The doctor pulls the needle from my arm; the blood is a combination of deep red and dark purple. Does that mean I’m a Positive? I don’t know the symptoms of being one. All I know is that you get tested and if that green plus sign is on your results, you go through the red door. My heart raps against the back of my rib cage as the doctor takes the vile of blood away.

  Blood tests never used to mean so much. After the Drug Policing Agency declared that a simple microchip could cure any disease known to man, millions flocked to medical treatment centers worldwide; my parents, my sister and I were the first in line at ours.

  The chip was a one inch square that was inserted into your lymph nodes. At first, the itching was unbearable. But then, the fear of becoming ill faded with each month the chip worked its magic. Flu season didn’t exist, cancer was a thing of the past and everyone lived in wonderful health.

  That’s when everything took a turn for the worse.

  A firm grip tightens on my shoulder—my father. I can’t mistake his oversized hands with anyone else’s. My mother paces back and forth behind me. Is the test taking longer than normal? My eyes fail to make contact with her from across the room.

  “Is everything ok, Dad?”

  He looks down at me with wrinkles around the corners of his eyes and smiles. “I’m sure it is, Sweetheart,” he says, squeezing his hand again. “There’s no need to worry.”

  That’s where my father is wrong—if I’m a Positive, my life is over. Worrying is an understatement.

  A few years after the chips were inserted into about ninety percent of the world’s population, symptoms of a new disease popped up in several thousand people. Symptoms varied among the sick but one thing was certain, they would die from whatever it was. Doctors and scientists tried to remove the chips before the virus killed them. Those who did survive the procedure were the Negatives, mankind’s only hope for survival. More than half of the chipped population died either during the operation or from the virus.

  My parents rushed me to the hospital to get mine removed, but they were too late; my chip had embedded itself into my lymph nodes. I remember my mother screaming when I woke from the anesthesia, demanding him to put me back under and continue the procedure. The drugs made it hard to understand a lot of the doctor’s explanation. He said it was like my body refused to give up the manmade cure-all, that I was lucky enough to survive an attempted removal. The scar from the surgery is still raw; the stitches pull at my skin when I move my head. I run my finger over the puffy incision and wince at the dried blood around the threads.

  Footsteps echo from beyond the red door drawing my attention away from my incision. As it swings open, my heart drops. The look in the doctor’s eyes confirm my worst fears. Hands protected by thick rubber gloves squeeze my upper arms and drag me toward the bright red door. My father’s hand slips from my shoulder as they pull me away. I’m a Positive—I’m death in a sixteen-year-old girl’s body.

  “Mom! Dad!” I wrench my neck, several of my stitches tearing in the process, to catch one last glimpse of them before I’m dragged through the door.

  My mother and father stand looking at me with vacant stares. They don’t reach out to me. They don’t call my name. They don’t do those things because of what I am, and because they are safe from wherever I am going.

  Chapter 3

  The hallways have no noise. Rows of plexiglass cells pass by like a slideshow reel. Tears stream down from the corners of my eyes mixing with the blood dripping from my torn stitches. The two people in hazmat suits exchange very few words. I can tell that at least one of them is a female.

  “Name?”

  “Salvatora Cuevas.”

  “Age?”

  “Sixteen.”

  The one on my right grunts in response.

  “Where are you taking me?” I know they won’t answer, but when the silence returns, panic courses through my veins. This is real. All my nightmares have finally come true with one test. One test and now it's me versus them.

  Several cells contain Positives that glare through the plexiglass at me. Their eyes peer from sunken sockets—I don’t see any life in them whatsoever. As we get further down the hallway, the pleas for help finally reach us. The taller guard shakes his head. "Nothing would make me happier than to silence these diseases already."

  The female laughs. "Sure hope this new lead ND knows what he's doing."

  We reach a second door at the end of the hallway. The person on my left punches in a key code and pushes through it. Two cells are occupied while the third remains open. They toss me into the open doorway and I stumble, my knees colliding with the concrete. The door to the cell slams shut behind me followed by a vacuum sound. Without another word, the people in hazmat suits march back through the door in a muffled hurry.

  “Hey!” My voice bounces off the walls of my cell. I slam my fists into the plexiglass until my hands throb. “Let me go! You can’t do this to me! You can’t!”

  “It’s no use trying.” I turn to my right and see a
lanky boy in white scrubs on the other side of the glass. “They’ll just ignore you.”

  Tears blur my vision again. I knew he was right—my parents didn’t even try to stop them from taking me. Why would they so much as care about a Positive? People like me were the reason that humanity was in danger of extinction. I was a flaw in the system—a glitch with deadly consequences.

  I slam my fists harder against the glass and scream after them. My breathing comes in gasps as panic takes hold of my body. I thought the red door was the worst I would face, but I know now that what happens behind the door is much, much worse.

  I slide down the glass until I’m on my knees with my fists pressed against the clear barrier. My sobbing deafens me. A pulse vibrates through the cell and shocks my hands where my skin meets the wall. I scurry backward and rub my tingling skin.

  “They’re electrified.” The boy comes within an inch from the conjoining wall between our two cells. “It’s to keep us contained.”

  “Has anyone gotten out of here?”

  “Sure.” He dips his head and pulls at the hem of his shirt. “But they’re usually dead. Their room gets cleaned and then another person takes their place.”

  “How long have you been here?” I pull my knees into my chest and hug them.

  “One month, seven days and sixteen hours,” he responds, mimicking my position. "Not that I'm counting or anything.”

  I look past him to his neighbor’s cell and see a trail of blood drip from the Positive’s bed to the drain in the middle of the floor. The panic takes hold again—it feels like the walls are closing in on me.

  “I found it’s easier to survive here by focusing on your breathing,” he responds. “It takes away the stress of being here.”

  “Is it because of the chip? Is that why he’s sick?”

  The boy shakes his head. “I don’t know. I was studying english at college before all of this happened.”

  A whishing noise fills the room. I look up and watch a white mist fall from the ceiling like snow. My neighbor stands up and heads to his bed. Before laying down, he turns toward me. “You might want to get in bed. Once you inhale this a couple times, you’ll be knocked on your ass faster than a rodeo clown.”

  I copy him and climb onto the stiff white mattress and curl into a ball. The mist calms my nerves, but not the emotions attached to them. There's not bone in me that wants to sleep. I sob in between hyperventilated breaths into my palms. What are they going to do to me?

  Even with the soothing feelings from the mist that falls, I can't sleep. My body shakes with fear. I'm surprised I haven't thrown up from the amount of stress in my veins. My neighbor sleeps with his back turned towards me. Even though he's like me, I'm afraid of him.

  I've never been sick a day in my life and seeing all those Positives glares through their cells walls make me sob harder into my palms. I can't help but wonder if the person that occupied this cell before me was doing the same thing I am right now when they found out they were a Positive.

  The mist falls in thicker layers now. I look up at the ceiling and think of home. The mist reminds me of the rainy days in Washington. I'd give anything to be curled up in my bed at home with the picture of my sister and I on my nightstand staring at me.

  "Please, don't let me die here," I whisper into my pillow before the mist lulls me to sleep.

  Chapter 4

  "What's going on? Why won't you let me out?' I scan my bedroom for something to pry open my door with. Even with my panicked heartbeat banging against the back of my rib cage, being in my own bedroom sends a wave of relief over me—even if it's only for a moment. "What's wrong with Elaine!"

  Reliving the day my sister died has been something I've dealt with for the past several weeks. I think of it as my punishment for everything; my punishment for not going to her, my punishment for being afraid, my punishment for watching her suffocate to death.

  The dream hasn't changed very much to be honest. Little details have faded since that day, but the same vacant glare from her purpled face never changes. It always haunts me, sending me into a panic when it appears again.

  A scream rips through my throat and everything fades to black.

  * * *

  A muffled banging reaches my ears. My eyes are frozen shut, my sister's stare still pleading for me to help her even after her death. A thin layer of sweat clings my scrubs to my skin. The sheets twist in my fists as the night terror forces me to stay in my memory. My throat burns with each yell until I choke on my own voice.

  "Miss Cuevas!" A swoosh followed by heavy footsteps brings the voice closer to me. "Miss Cuevas, wake up!"

  My eyes shoot open. A man with green eyes leans over me; a hazmat suit is the wall between him and I. I push myself from him and scurry to the far corner of the room. My knees slam into my chest and I rock there, wishing the image of my sister from my head. The footsteps come once again, but I don't open my eyes.

  "Are you all right, Miss?"

  The man's hand grazes my arm but never fully grabs it. I want it to be my father's hand squeezing my shoulder. I want it to be him reassuring me that everything is going to be all right. I only want his comfort.

  When the rumors about the malfunction started, my father would always clear the air with a ridiculously loud laugh and some joke about the Drug Policing Agency. "It's just the DPA's gimmick for them to get us to buy the Chip 3000." We'd all laugh and call those gossipers mean names. "It's just some conspiracy theorist somewhere with too much time on his hands," he'd say.

  Then the day came. The malfunction made national news when forty-five heart attacks happened within three seconds of each other on the street. Next, the illnesses came. Cancer, diabetes, leprosy—diseases that were long gone, tore through our country. A state of emergency was declared and the President appeared on televisions everywhere.

  "Stay inside your homes and wait for instructions." Those words will never leave me. I can still the fear bubble in my gut the same way it did that day.

  "What do you mean 'wait for instructions'?" the green-eyed man says, reaching for my arm again. "Please Miss Cuevas, I'm here to help you—"

  "Don't touch me!" I scream, my voice coming out hoarse and missing in several parts of the sentence. There's silence. A wonderful, peaceful silence that I've wanted for months now. I claw my fingers through my hair and rock faster in my corner.

  "I don't know what's happened to you," the man's voice says through the mask of the hazmat suit. "I wish you didn't have to go through whatever it was to be honest. But if you trust that I have your best interest at heart, things will get better for you."

  "Please go away."

  A few seconds of silence pass before the crinkle of the hazmat suit intrudes my ear drums. Footsteps stutter away until there's nothing else but the heaving breaths coming from my lungs.

  I don't know what's worse anymore: feeling hopeless being hidden behind the red door while everyone else believes Positives are being taken care of, or the fact that no matter how many times I tell myself that my sister's death wasn't my fault, I still want my chip to kill me as punishment.

  "Are you all right?" The man in the hazmat suit stands on the other side of the glass wall now. His hands lay lifeless alongside his body. The muffled sound of his breathing barely makes it past the pounding in my ears. "I wanted to give you your space."

  "Will I ever be all right after being in here?"

  The man looks toward my neighbors's cells for a couple thumps of my heart then, glances at me. I can't make out his expression behind his black mask. But something deep down tells me that I will never be ok. I will not make it out of here alive. And honestly, I think I deserve that.

  "When you're ready to talk, just let the guards know," he says, walking back toward the gray door across from my cell. "We have a lot to discuss." The door slams.

  My breathing turns to dry heaving. I can't shake Elaine's face from my vision. I look over toward my neighbor
s cell. He sits on the other side of the glass with his hand pressed against the glass. His mouth moves, but I can't hear his voice.

  "I want to go home!" I scream it over and over again. My neighbor nods his head and waves me over to him, but he isn't my home. He isn't my safety. I don't even know where home is anymore. I don't know safety. I'm so far from either of them that I don't even know who I am anymore.

  Chapter 5

  A burning on the back of my neck wakes me. The room swirls in a circle of yellows and whites. I look at the warped faces of doctors standing over me. They’re arguing—that’s all I can tell. One looks down at me and shakes their elongated face. Darkness returns, and my breathing lulls me deeper into it.

  * * *

  Tapping forces my eyes open. I look to my right and see my neighbor wave. I sit up, my head feeling like a lead weight in the process. I massage my temples in an attempt to push away the grogginess. Were the doctors surrounding me earlier a dream? I look down at my arm and notice I’m no longer wearing the long sleeve shirt and jeans I came here in. Instead, white scrubs cover my brown skin.

  “They usually do that the first night you’re here.” My neighbor sits just on the other side of the plexiglass and crosses his legs. “That and the tattoo.”

  “Tattoo?”

  “On the back of your neck,” he responds. “We all have them.”

  I reach my hand behind me and wince when I make contact with my skin; a raised pattern of a plus sign throbs under my fingertips. “So the dream was real.”

  “Dream?”

  “I must have been half asleep, but I felt them doing this—two doctors.”

  The boy laughs and shakes his head. “You must have one hell of a tolerance to be able to wake up while being sedated.”

  I climb out of bed and sit across from him in my cell. His hair sits in a mess of brown curls on top of his head. A beard covers his face, and his eyes carry the sunken look that the other Positives had. My eyes travel past him to his neighbor’s room. “Your neighbor—”