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patiently for the next sacrifice.
    “Sera Fisk?” the girl asks in a bright voice, as if I was here for a party. “The committee is ready for you.”
    They’re ready?
    But I was early. Would it look bad on the evaluation that they had to wait for me to arrive?
    The husky angel pulled me by the arm toward a steel door in the center of the wall behind the girl. The textured linen wallpaper made me a little dizzy as he jerked me forward and around the desk. He held his wrist inside the scanner and the door slid open.
    There was no hallway or lobby. The sliding door deposited us directly into the evaluation room. A wall of mirrors at the opposite end of the room reflected the glossy vinyl examination chair in the center of the room; a health specialist dressed in gray surgical scrubs stood in the corner next to a tray of surgical instruments; everything bathed in the unholy glow of fluorescent lights.
    “Please have a seat,” a pleasant female voice spoke.
    I glanced at the health specialist’s reflection, but he was obviously a man. The angel who smelled of rations escorted me toward the reclining chair bolted to the floor in the center of the room. I scooted back to take a seat as the angel flipped a switch to activate the footrest, knocking me off balance so I tumbled onto the chair.
    “Tie her down,” the voice said and the angels secured each of my wrists to the arms of the chair with leather straps. My legs were secured with a single belt that fastened between my ankles.
    My leg jerked involuntarily and I wondered if the rations were already wearing off. Maybe the liquid they pumped into my vein wasn’t even rations. Maybe it was something meant to wear off once I got here so the committee could see me in my “dark” state of mind.
    “Sera Fisk,” the female voice said. “You are being evaluated today for health purposes only.”
    “What?” I couldn’t help but utter this question aloud.
    “You are being let off with a warning today,” the voice echoed throughout the evaluation chamber. “But you must submit to a physical evaluation and a marking.”
    I had a sudden fear that the marking would be a great slash across my face to widen my smile. Then the black-haired boy’s half-smile flashed in my mind. He obviously worked for the Department of Felicity—he was wearing the signature uniform, gray coveralls with a blue star on the breast pocket—but did he know what was going to happen to me today? Is that why he mocked me with that bizarre smile?
    A nervous tremble grew inside my chest as the health specialist approached me. The wheels on the surgical cart squealed and my muscles ceased up.
    This was going to hurt.
    The specialist began organizing his tools on the tray and the despair that gripped me less than one hour ago returned. The sharp edge of the scalpel in his hand gleamed and taunted me.
    This was going to hurt badly.
    “Please,” I begged the specialist though he wasn’t looking at me. He was focused on the glimmering steel instruments before him. “Please don’t do that.”
    “Sera,” the female voice came again. “You will need to answer a few questions before Specialist Dodd examines you. Do you understand?”
    I nodded.
    “Sera, do you remember drinking your noon ration yesterday, Sunday, at approximately ten in the morning?”
    I nodded again. Of course, I remembered. I drank my ration early then skipped out of the apartment to make the four-mile trek across town to the darkroom on Broadway. I made that journey daily, usually at noon or after school, but Sunday’s session inside Darklandia was different. I didn’t spend the requisite hour in the pod. After Saturday’s rapture celebration, I needed more than an hour and six hours was the limit any single person could spend inside Darklandia per day. I spent six hours inside Darklandia on Sunday; six hours in a world where my father still smiled and cried.
    My father cried the day before they dragged him away from that park