The door moved and A stepped back slowly until the darkness of the hallway covered him. He returned to the block. He lay down.
He didn't close his eyes.
Ronda slept in the locker making that small sound she made when she was comfortable.
A watched her from the bed.
Friday. Today was Wednesday.
His stomach tightened in a way that wasn't hunger. He thought many things out of order, as sometimes happened to him when something was too big to sort out before falling asleep. He thought about the word kill. He thought about Ronda on his shoulder, the sound she made, how she always found A's boot in the yard without anyone teaching her.
'I'm not going to let anything happen to her!.'
He thought it very convinced, with a determined look... Like only 8-year-old children can think...
———//————————————//———
On Thursday before dawn A went out to the yard.
He knew about the shift change because Z had told him — five minutes where no one looked at anything too closely. He went straight to the perimeter. The grass was wet and it was cold and A had his shoes poorly tied but the cold was a more immediate problem than the shoes.
He searched by the west wall. Nothing.
South wall. Neither.
The dry bush next to the north wall — the only place where no one looked.
Crouched among the branches, with his hands in the damp grass, he found something.
A small bird. Brown. Legs up.
A looked at it for a moment. Then he wrapped it in the cloth he had brought from the locker and put it in the pocket of the uniform.
He washed his hands twice in the bathroom and went to training.
———//————————————//———
On Friday at 10 they gathered them in the large room.
The nine children of block A. In line. With the birds.
Renner was at the front. The second instructor at the back, standing by the wall, arms crossed.
"This morning each one will enter the room when called and will have to execute the order that is given," said Renner. Without raising his voice.
No one asked what the order was.
One by one. A counted without meaning to. He looked at the back wall with the door
He noticed in the third person who came out that they came out with tears or with sadness on their faces
When his turn came he entered the room quickly, he wanted to finish as fast as possible
When he saw the inside, instructor Renner was there with a support folder and various sheets
"Oh, here is our dear No. 1," he said with a mocking voice while writing something in his folder
A did not respond, he only kept his head down waiting for the order
"Very well, let's get to the point. Take out Londa"
He took the bird out of his pocket. He held it with both hands.
"It's Ronda... And she died 2 days ago"
Said A with the saddest expression and voice he could
He took a step back.
Renner glanced at the bird and wrote something.
"Good, put it away and go outside"
A left and when he had his back to Renner he smiled happily.
'You are safe now Ronda'
When he left, he saw all the children in a line, with sad expressions and some indifferent, A went and returned to his position
While he thought about all the things he would teach Ronda, he saw Renner come out
Renner scanned the line. Then he walked toward A. He stopped in front of A longer than in front of the others. He lowered his gaze to the bird. Looked back at A.
"Where is this bird from."
It wasn't a question. As if he already knew where it was from
"I don't know sir, it came from a box..."
"This bird has been dead for more than a day."
"....!!!"
"Yours is alive."
A tried not to do anything with his face. He tried very hard.
Renner looked at the second instructor at the back, the instructor assigned to A. He stared for a few seconds. Then he looked back at A.
"Step out of the line."
———
The small room smelled like metal and something else that A couldn't identify.
Renner entered behind him and closed the door. There was no one else. Just a chair in the center, a side table and a lamp that illuminated downward.
"Sit."
A sat.
Renner stood in front of him with his hands behind his back. He didn't look angry. He looked exactly the same as always — the face of someone evaluating a piece to decide if it is useful or not.
"You knew what the test was."
It wasn't a question either.
A didn't respond.
"You heard something you shouldn't have heard. You processed it. You looked for a solution." Renner made a brief pause. "All of that is fine."
A looked at him without understanding.
"The problem," Renner continued, "is what tells you that that was a solution."
He took something from the side table. A small, metallic instrument, with a fine tip that A had not seen before. But it felt familiar, with a tingling at the back of his consciousness
"Extend your left hand."
A extended it.
What came next was not fast. It was deliberate. Each line of the symbol traced with a constant pressure that was neither carelessness nor cruelty — it was precision. Like everything Renner did. The pain was real and A clenched his teeth, looked at the wall and made no sound because he had learned that making sounds changed nothing and only made things worse.
Three crossed lines on the back of the left hand.
Renner put the instrument away.
"That mark is seen by any member of the organization. Reduction of ration, reduction of water, restriction of access. For thirty days." He said it with the same tone with which he explained a training exercise. "You acted against a direct order."
A looked at the mark. It burned.
"Now comes the lesson."
Renner opened the door and gestured for him to go out.
They returned to the large room.
The other children were no longer there. Only A's locker was there, placed in the center of the room. Open.
Ronda was inside, on her stick structure, with her round eyes looking outward.
A stopped.
"Come closer," said Renner.
A approached slowly.
Renner stood next to the locker. He looked at A with that expression that reflected nothing. It was a perpetual expression
"You hid the bird because you cared about what happened to it."
It wasn't a question.
"That," said Renner, "is what is going to kill you. That something matters to you is giving your enemy the only weapon they need against you."
He put his hand into the locker.
A opened his mouth.
No sound came out.
It was fast. Faster than the tattoo, faster than his voice... Faster than Ronda...
Renner did it with the same efficiency with which he did everything — without drama, without emphasis, like someone turning off a lamp because the light is no longer needed.
He left the locker.
He wiped his hand on the side of his pants.
"I. Already. Taught. You."
He turned and left.
The door closed.
A remained standing in the center of the large room, alone, with the open locker in front of him, the left hand burning and something in his chest that he didn't know how to name and that pressed from inside outward as if the chest were too small for what he had inside.
He didn't cry.
Not because he didn't want to.
But because he was learning that wanting and being able were not the same.
———//————————————//———
The thirty days of the tattoo A spent training.
Not in the assigned schedules — in those too, but also in free time, in breaks, in the ten minutes between classes. He ran the perimeter until his legs failed. He returned to the bag when everyone slept. He repeated the precision exercises in the empty locker with his fingers, without the weapon, only the movement.
Z watched him in the dining hall — the plate with less ration, the bruised knees, the open knuckles — and said nothing. From time to time he pushed something from his own plate toward the center of the table without looking at him.
A ate it without commenting.
They didn't talk much that month. It wasn't because they were fighting. It was that some things they didn't know how to express.
Not only Z, most of the children acted the same, in the end, they were just children...
One night, late, A was in the training room alone.
He had lost count of how many times he had run the circuit. His legs trembled. The knuckles of his right hand were open again from hitting the bag without protection because the bandages had been restricted the previous week due to the mark.
He didn't stop.
The door opened.
A didn't look at who it was. He continued.
Footsteps. Slow. They were not Renner's footsteps — Renner's were shorter, more regular. These were different.
He stopped in front of the bag.
A kept hitting.
"Stop."
A stopped.
The second instructor looked at him. He ran his gaze over the knuckles, the knees, the face. He said nothing about that.
"You're doing the circuit wrong."
A looked at him.
"The weight goes back on the turn, not forward. You lose half a second each lap."
Silence.
The instructor took something from the pocket of his jacket. An ointment in a small tube, without a label. He put it on the side bench without looking at him. Then a ration bar — the compact ones, the ones from the storage.
He didn't give them directly. He left them there.
He looked at A for another moment.
"You're doing it wrong," he repeated. And this time it felt like he wasn't referring to the circuit. "Come. I'll teach you."