UNRANKED BEFORE THE END: Everyone had a rank except me

Gold, Blue, Gray

TRESTIN — DAY FOUR

---

By nine in the morning the quad is full.

I've never seen it like this. Not for a protest, not for a concert. Students are packed shoulder to shoulder from the library steps to the fountain, and the fountain is off, and nobody's laughing. There's a stage at the north end that wasn't there yesterday. A table. Six guards in dark jackets standing along the edge with their hands clasped in front of them.

And scanners. Three of them, tall gray frames like airport security, set up in a row at the south end, humming.

The dean comes out at nine-fifteen with a folder and a face like a man reading a verdict.

"Following the emergency order," he says, "the university will be issuing Continuity Bands to every registered student. These will help us allocate resources fairly." He clears his throat. "Every student will be assigned a tier. You will wear your band at all times. Report to the scanners in an orderly line."

Somebody near me laughs. Nobody else does.

---

It doesn't take long to work out what the bands mean.

It takes about four minutes. I watch the first twenty people go through and I have it. Gold for the donors' kids the ones whose surnames are on the buildings, who walk through and get a white band and a firm handshake and a form to sign. Blue for the scholars, the athletes, the ones the university wants to keep looking good. Gray for everybody else.

Gray goes through fast. Gray doesn't get a handshake. Gray gets a band snapped on and a guard saying next.

I get in the line. Gray queue, third from the left.

I count while I wait. Fourteen people ahead of me. Twelve of them get a band. Two get pulled out of line and walked to a table for a form.

Then it's me.

"Name."

"Cole. Trestin."

The guard types. Waits. Types again. Frowns at the screen and turns it toward the second guard, and the second guard leans in, and they have a short conversation that ends with both of them looking up at me.

"You're not in the system."

"I work here. Facilities. Nights."

"Student?"

"Yeah."

"Then you're in the system." He taps the screen. "You're not in it."

"He's on the roster," the second guard says. "He's just not " She stops. She looks at me the way you look at a stain on a shirt you've already decided to throw out. "He's not assigned."

The first guard shrugs at me. Actually shrugs, small and apologetic, like a man who can't find my reservation. "Step aside, please. Next."

I step aside.

No band. No chip. No name on the list.

I stand at the edge of the quad with nothing on my wrist, and around me four thousand people get counted, and I watch every one of them.

---

Drake doesn't get in line. He walks the perimeter.

I know his name because everybody does now Commander Drake, security chief, emergency order, the man who owns the scanners. Six-three, broad, cropped sandy hair going gray at the temples. He walks with his hands behind his back, unhurried, like a man inspecting a fence he already knows is too low.

He doesn't look at the golds. Doesn't need to.

He looks at the grays.

He watches them get their bands and walk away, and there's something in the way he does it flat, patient, like a man reading confessions. Gray isn't a color to him. Gray is a line item. Gray is these are the ones who will come asking.

I've been invisible my whole life. I know what it feels like to be looked through. This is different. Drake doesn't look through anybody. He's keeping a ledger in his head, and every gray band is a row in it.

He stops at the fountain and looks at the crowd, and I look at his hands, and his hands are very still.

Then his tablet buzzes. He looks down at it, thumb moving, and the screen scrolls.

It stops.

I'm too far away to read it. But I see his thumb go still, and I see him tip his head a fraction, the way a man does when a number doesn't match what he expected.

He looks up.

---

Across the quad, Rask is standing by the science block with a broom and no reason to be there.

I raise my chin, just slightly. Not a wave. A question.

He sees me. I know he sees me his eyes come up and find me and hold for half a second, and there's a whole conversation in that half second and none of it is good.

Then he turns his back and sweeps.

I watch him go. He doesn't look again.

The boiler room key is in my pocket and it feels like a stone.

---

Drake walks into the crowd.

People move for him without being asked. That's the thing about men like that the crowd does the work. He doesn't push. He just walks, and the quad opens a lane for him, and he goes down it with his tablet held against his chest.

He stops about six feet from a knot of gray-band students near the noticeboard.

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.

His eyes go along the faces, slow, left to right.

And they stop.

I follow the line of them before I can stop myself, because I have to know, because I already know.

She's standing near the back of the group, gray band on her wrist, hair loose, holding a stack of books against her chest. Somebody next to her is talking and she's nodding and her mouth is doing that small polite thing it does when she's listening but tired.

Amelia Grace.

Drake's tablet says something on it that made him leave the fountain and cross a whole quad to look at her.

And now he's looking at her.