The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

image and whipped around. “Who are you trying to kid, KE Jathem? There is no way anyone could have performed surgery like that. She would’ve died! The sheer obscenity of the harm it could do is beyond words! Who is she, and where did she come from?”

Jathem sighed heavily and touched his earlobe with a finger. “M. Selka, you are relieved of duty. Report to your superior and speak of nothing you have seen here until you are debriefed.”

“Now you can’t expect me to—” M. Selka fell silent, her head tilting to the side as if she were listening to something. After a moment, she pulled her top down with a yank at the bottom, smoothing it out, and then tapped her wrists into an x in front of her face. “Wahela, and my apologies, Knight Elite.”

“Tahatlana, Medic. May your waters run clear and cold.”

She nodded and moved quickly for the door, leaving in a hurry. The entire exchange left me baffled, and I looked up at Jathem. He turned from the door and saw me staring at him.

“You have questions,” he said, his voice resigned.

“A billion,” I replied, shifting excitedly.

He sighed. “I’ll give you an answer to three, but if there is one I feel I shouldn’t answer, I will skip it. Deal?”

A stupid one, but it would have to do. I gave him a nod, and started with the first one I could think of. “What’s an undoc?”

“Undoc is short for undocumented. Population is strictly controlled and enforced in the tower—we are a completely balanced system. Too many people and the entire thing comes tumbling down. However, that doesn’t stop some people from accidently conceiving, and then deciding to keep their child a secret.”

“Interesting,” I replied, because it was. The implications of it all, strict population control and secret children… This place had to be carefully monitored and observed to maintain order. It made me want to ask a dozen follow-up questions, like what happened to an undoc after it was discovered. I hated to think they might kill them just to keep the population under a certain number.

“We don’t execute undocs,” Knight Elite Jathem said tersely, and I realized I had spoken the last bit out loud. I shook my head to clear out some of the spider webs as he continued to speak, mumbling an apology. “We educate them and try to put them back into the system.”

“The biggest problem is getting them placed,” continued MacGillus. “Lots of departments won’t take them, as they… represent a certain amount of controversy and shame.”

I blinked at that. I knew they were trying to explain things to me, but it was clear they were things they took for granted, and even though I had gotten some good information out of that, a lot of it seemed implied, which meant it flew right over my head.

Sighing, I leaned back. “Second question. With Medic Selka now dismissed, does that mean I won’t get to see how you guys could fix my arm faster?”

Jathem stared at me, and then smiled for a brief second. “We would never dream of that. It was just decided that you would be attended to by the Chief Surgeon. He’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“If we’re lucky and he’s feeling spry today,” MacGillus mumbled, and Jathem reached out and smacked him loudly in the shoulder, making the other man yelp.

“Be respectful,” Jathem said, just as the door swung open, and a man and a woman entered.

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9

Violet

The woman entered first. Something about her posture and physicality immediately made my hair stand on edge, it reminded me so much of Tabitha. However, as she drew closer to me, pushing deeper into the room, I could see subtle differences that clearly distinguished her from the now-deceased Matrian princess and psychopath.

For one thing, her hair was jet black, with clearly premature whitening occurring at the roots. It was collected and woven into an elaborate braid encircling the crown of her head, making it look like a dark, shining tiara. There were smile lines around her mouth, and a worry line seemed to be permanently indented between her thick, generous eyebrows. As she moved deeper into the room, I caught the smell of rich soil and vegetation, and noticed that the knees of her forest-green uniform were stained with dirt, as were her fingertips, and there was a smudge on her cheekbone as well.

Behind her came a tall, lanky man with long brown hair gathered in a tie at the base of his neck. He wore a goatee, like Jathem, but it was longer than Jathem’s by half an inch. His face was narrow, his cheekbones high, with slight hollows underneath. An aquiline nose, thin and straight with a hooked end, added another angled element, making him seem almost stern, with the narrow countenance of a hatchet.

His eyes—a strange combination of one blue eye and one brown eye—blazed as they looked over me, and an all too vulnerable feeling crept over me as he took me in, like he could drink up all my secrets. He stepped in behind the woman, and stopped as she stopped, just a few feet away.

“I’m assuming this is Raevyn Hart and Devon Alexander?” I said, after the silence had grown unbearable. I kept my tone light, hoping to put the two newcomers at ease.

“Head Farmer Raevyn Hart and Knight Commander Devon Alexander,” MacGillus said nervously, clearly correcting my bad manners, and I nodded, deciding not to speak for a minute.

“You’re certain they landed on top of the Green?” the woman, Raevyn, said after a moment, turning her head toward Jathem. She didn’t even seem to notice my blunder.

“Wait, you have The Green here?” I asked, blinking in surprise.

MacGillus blinked at me, confused. “I’m not sure—‘the Green’ refers to the Greenery, a place where—”

“Do not address her,” Devon commanded in a stern voice. “And answer HF Hart’s question.”

There was a small pause as Jathem seemed to collect himself. He and several others reported the same