Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,33

and she realized she wanted to feel that a little longer. She wanted to feel it more than she wanted to win the match.

That made her angry. Angry enough to pull away from his grip and put some space between them. There was no lane line, no net, nothing to keep them apart but the wall of her will. But that wall kept losing bricks.

Scythe Yingxing signaled the end of the match. Citra and Rowan bowed to each other, then took their places on opposite sides of the circle as two others were called up to spar. Citra watched intently, determined not to give Rowan a single glance.

* * *

We are not the same beings we once were.

Consider our inability to grasp literature and most entertainment from the mortal age. To us, the things that stirred mortal human emotions are incomprehensible. Only stories of love pass through our post-mortal filter, yet even then, we are baffled by the intensity of longing and loss that threatens those mortal tales of love.

We could blame it on our emo-nanites limiting our despair, but it runs far deeper than that. Mortals fantasized that love was eternal and its loss unimaginable. Now we know that neither is true. Love remained mortal, while we became eternal. Only scythes can equalize that, but everyone knows the chance of being gleaned in this, or even the next millennium is so low as to be ignored.

We are not the same beings we once were.

So then, if we are no longer human, what are we?

—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

* * *

11

Indiscretions

Citra and Rowan were not always together at gleanings. Sometimes Scythe Faraday took just one of them. The worst gleaning Citra witnessed took place in early May,  just a week before Vernal Conclave—the first of three conclaves she and Rowan would attend during their apprenticeship.

Their quarry was a man who had just turned the corner and reset his age to twenty-four. He was at home having dinner with his wife and two kids, who seemed to be around Citra’s age. When Scythe Faraday announced who they had come for, the family wept, and the man slipped off into a bedroom.

Scythe Faraday had chosen a peaceful bloodletting for the man, but that was not what happened. When Citra and the scythe entered the room, he ambushed them. The man was in peak condition, and in the arrogance of his new rejuvenation, he rejected his gleaning and fought the scythe, breaking his jaw with a vicious punch. Citra came to his aid, trying some Bokator moves she had learned from Scythe Yingxing—and quickly learned that applying a martial art is much different from practice in a dojo. The man swatted her away and advanced on Faraday, who was still reeling from his injury.

Citra leaped on him again, clinging to him, for the moment giving up on anything beyond eye gouging and hair pulling. It distracted him just long enough for Scythe Faraday to pull out a hunting knife he had concealed in his robe and slit the man’s throat. He began gasping for air, his hands to his neck trying futilely to hold back the flow of blood.

And Scythe Faraday, holding a hand to his own swelling jaw, spoke to him—not with malice but with great sorrow. “Do you understand the consequences of what you’ve done?”

The man could not answer. He fell to the ground quivering, gasping. Citra thought death from such a wound would be instantaneous, but apparently not. She had never seen so much blood.

“Stay here,” the scythe told her. “Look upon him kindly and be the last thing he sees.”

Then he left the room. Citra knew what he was going to do. The law was very clear as to the consequences of running from or resisting one’s gleaning. She couldn’t close her eyes, because she was instructed not to, but if there was a way, she wished she could have closed her ears, because she knew what she was about to hear from the living room.

It began with pleas from the woman begging for the lives of her children, and the children sobbing in despair.

“Do not beg!” Citra heard the scythe say sharply. “Show these children more courage than your husband did.”

Citra kept her gaze fixed on the dying man’s until his eyes finally emptied of life. Then she went to join Scythe Faraday, steeling herself for what was to come.

The two children were on the sofa, their sobs having degraded into tearful whimpers. The woman was