The Emotion Ban: Book One: The Archive Of Hearts

The first time my heart betrayed me, the government called it a malfunction. I called it Tuesday. In Elyria, that was about as close to a joke as anyone was allowed to get. I stood beneath the white lights of Classroom 17-B, staring at the words glowing across the instructional screen. EMOTION IS THE ENEMY OF ORDER. The letters were perfectly aligned. The screen was spotless. The classroom smelled of disinfectant and recycled air. Twenty-three students sat at their desks with their hands folded and their faces arranged into the same carefully practiced expression of neutrality. Not happy. Not sad. Not bored. Just nothing. I was very good at nothing. At least, I had been until the morning my Pulseband turned red. “Repeat the pledge,” instructed the voice overhead. Every student rose. “I surrender disorder,” we recited. “I surrender attachment.” “I surrender attachment.” “I surrender the illusion of love.” My lips moved with the others, forming the words I had spoken every morning since I was old enough to read. My Pulseband rested against the inside of my wrist, its smooth silver surface cool against my skin. I surrender the illusion of love. The words had never bothered me before. Today, for some reason, they made me want to laugh. Not because they were funny. Nothing about the Ministry's daily pledges was funny. The Ministry had an entire department devoted to removing humor from educational materials after a group of students in the northern district had used a satirical poem to undermine public confidence. No, I wanted to laugh because the alternative was screaming. I swallowed the urge. My Pulseband blinked amber. Elevated physiological response. Wonderful. “Aria Vale.” I closed my eyes for half a second. Of course. Director Voss stood beside my desk, her silver hair pulled into a severe knot at the base of her skull. She wore the white uniform of the Ministry's senior instructors, complete with the insignia of the Emotional Order stitched above her heart. I'd always thought it was ironic that the Ministry placed its insignia there. As if any of them had one. “Your pulse is elevated,” she said. I glanced at my wrist. “Perhaps the classroom temperature is too high.” “It is seventeen degrees.” “Then perhaps I'm developing a fever.” A boy two desks away made a tiny choking sound. I didn't look at him. Director Voss tilted her head. Her face remained perfectly composed, but her eyes sharpened. “Do you find this amusing?” “No, Director.” “Then explain your response.” There were several acceptable answers. I had failed to select any of them. “I apologize.” “For what?” For wanting to feel something. For questioning everything. For waking up every morning in a city that looked like a beautiful machine and knowing, somehow, that something inside it was broken. Instead, I said, “For being human.” Silence swallowed the room. I knew immediately that I'd made a mistake. The surveillance camera above the instructional screen rotated with a soft mechanical click. My classmates stared straight ahead, suddenly fascinated by the polished surfaces of their desks. Director Voss didn't move. Then she smiled. It was a small smile, the kind that never reached the eyes. “An interesting choice of words, Miss Vale.” “I meant that I may have a medical condition.” “Of course.” She tapped a command into the device on her wrist. My Pulseband vibrated. A tiny red symbol appeared on its display. BEHAVIORAL ANOMALY RECORDED. My stomach tightened. “Report to the assessment center after your final instructional period,” she said. “Until then, I recommend you practice the regulation techniques provided by the Ministry.” “Yes, Director.” She moved to the next desk. I sat down slowly, keeping my hands flat against the tabletop so no one would see them tremble. The assessment center wasn't a place anyone wanted to visit. Students returned from it with new medication schedules, revised behavioral classifications, and expressions that seemed somehow less their own. One girl in my year had spent three days there after crying at her father's funeral. When she returned, she couldn't remember why she'd been crying. Her father, apparently, had been an important citizen. Her grief had not. I stared at my Pulseband until the red symbol disappeared. Then I looked toward the classroom windows. Beyond the reinforced glass, Elyria rose toward a colorless sky. White towers stretched into the clouds, joined by transparent bridges and suspended transit lines. Surveillance drones drifted between the buildings like insects searching for something to consume. There were no gardens visible from our classroom. No old buildings. No trees. The Ministry had replaced the last public park when I was six, explaining that unregulated green spaces encouraged unsupervised gatherings. I remembered the park anyway. Or I thought I did. Sometimes I could almost recall the feel of grass beneath my bare feet, the smell of rain, the warmth of a hand wrapped around mine. Whenever I tried to remember whose hand it had been, the memory dissolved. My mother had disappeared when I was eight. The Ministry said she'd been transferred to a residential rehabilitation facility after a prolonged period of emotional instability. My father said we were fortunate she had received treatment. He never said her name. I had learned not to ask. The bell chimed, signaling the end of the pledge period. Everyone sat. And then, for one impossible second, I noticed something on the opposite side of the room. A boy was looking at me. He sat near the windows, two rows behind the students who never spoke unless called upon. Dark hair fell across his forehead, and his uniform was fastened all the way to the collar. His expression was composed, almost indifferent. Kael Rowan. I'd seen him before, of course. Everyone knew Kael. He had one of the highest compliance scores in our year, and his academic record was so immaculate that even the instructors seemed vaguely suspicious of it. He was the sort of boy the Ministry liked to display in instructional broadcasts. Proof that the system worked. But there was something strange about the way he looked at me. Not with disapproval. Not with curiosity, exactly. It was more like recognition. As if he'd heard what I hadn't said. I looked away first. My Pulseband remained silent. For the rest of the morning, I told myself I had imagined it. By the time the final instructional period ended, I had developed three separate plans for avoiding the assessment center. The first involved pretending to faint. I abandoned it because fainting would probably trigger a medical response, which would involve more paperwork and possibly a longer stay at the assessment center. The second involved setting off the classroom fire suppression system. Unfortunately, Elyria had eliminated open flames centuries ago, and the system required an actual emergency. The third involved leaving. It was my favorite. I slipped into the eastern corridor while the other students filed toward the transit platforms. My Pulseband displayed a harmless amber light, but I knew the anomaly had been recorded. Somewhere in the Ministry's endless network of servers, a file with my name on it had just become a little more interesting. I needed to find a way to erase it. The corridor was nearly empty. White walls, white floors, white lights. Every twenty meters, a surveillance camera watched from a recessed panel in the ceiling. I knew their positions because I'd spent the past two years mapping them. Not because I intended to break the law, obviously. I simply thought it was important to know where one could stand without being watched. There was a difference. I turned into an unused maintenance passage and stopped. Someone was standing at the far end. Kael Rowan. For a moment, neither of us spoke. Up close, he looked less like a Ministry poster and more like a person who hadn't slept properly in several nights. There were faint shadows beneath his eyes, and a tiny scar crossed the edge of his lower lip. He glanced toward the corridor behind me. “You're not supposed to be here,” he said. I folded my arms. “Neither are you.” “I have authorization.” “Congratulations.” His gaze flicked to my wrist. “Your Pulseband flagged you this morning.” I felt the blood drain from my face. “How do you know that?” “Because the instructor sent an alert to the academic monitoring system.” “Are you monitoring me, Rowan?” “No.” He answered too quickly. I took a step toward him. “Then why do you care?” For the first time, his expression changed. It was almost nothing. A tightening around the eyes. A brief hesitation, as if he had a dozen answers and every one of them was dangerous. “Because,” he said quietly, “they don't always send people home after an assessment.” I stared at him. The corridor seemed to shrink around us. “What does that mean?” “It means you should go home.” “I'm trying to avoid going to the assessment center.” “Then stop standing in a corridor with surveillance cameras.” I looked up. The camera at the far end was facing the opposite direction. It should have been watching us. It wasn't. I turned back to Kael. “Did you do that?” He said nothing. My heart began to pound. I hated that he could see it on my wrist. I hated that he had managed to make me curious when I should have been terrified. Most of all, I hated that I believed him. “What do you want from me?” I asked. “Nothing.” “Everyone wants something.” “Not everyone.” The answer was so quiet that I almost missed it. He moved past me toward the exit. His shoulder brushed mine. It was barely a touch. A fraction of a second. Fabric against fabric. Yet something flashed through me—an unfamiliar warmth that spread from the point of contact into my chest. My breath caught. The corridor lights seemed suddenly brighter, the air sharper, the entire world alarmingly present. I stumbled backward. Kael stopped. He looked down at his hand as if it had betrayed him. Then he looked at me. For one terrible second, his composure vanished. I saw fear. Not the practiced, manageable kind we were taught to identify in regulation exercises. This was something raw and unguarded. Something alive. His Pulseband flashed red. So did mine. Neither of us moved. Somewhere beyond the wall, a mechanical chime sounded. UNAUTHORIZED PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE DETECTED. Kael seized my wrist, covering the display with his hand. “Listen to me,” he whispered. His fingers were warm against my skin. The strange feeling inside me intensified. I had never been held like that. Not that I could remember. “Whatever happens,” he said, “don't tell them what you felt.” “What did I feel?” His eyes met mine. And there it was again—that terrible recognition. “You know.” Footsteps echoed from the main corridor. Kael released me. “Go left,” he said. “There's a service stairwell. Take it to the lower transit level and wait for the next public shuttle.” “What about you?” “I'll take care of it.” “You can't possibly—” “Aria.” It was the first time he'd said my name. I hated the way it sounded in his voice. I hated the way some small, disobedient part of me wanted to hear it again. “Go,” he whispered. I ran. I didn't look back until I reached the stairwell. He was still standing in the passage, facing the approaching Ministry officers, his expression restored to perfect neutrality. But his Pulseband was still red. And just before the door closed between us, I saw him do something I couldn't explain. He touched two fingers to his chest, directly over his heart. As if he were trying to remind himself that it was still there. I made it home seventeen minutes before curfew. My father was seated at the kitchen table, reading the evening Ministry bulletin on his screen. A nutrient meal sat untouched beside him. He didn't look up when I entered. “You're late.” “Transit delay.” “Your location record indicates you left the academic building at sixteen hundred hours.” I stopped. My father finally raised his eyes. He wasn't angry. Anger was an emotion, and my father had spent twenty years cultivating the appearance of a man who possessed none. He was simply disappointed. That was worse. “Director Voss contacted me,” he said. “She informed me that you experienced a behavioral anomaly.” “It's nothing.” “Nothing doesn't get recorded.” I stared at him, wondering whether he had ever felt anything real in his entire life. “Do you think I'm defective?” I asked. He set down his screen. For a moment, something moved behind his eyes. Something so brief I might have imagined it. Then it disappeared. “I think,” he said carefully, “that you need to learn when silence is in your best interest.” He rose and carried his meal to the disposal unit. Conversation over. I went to my room and locked the door, even though the lock was mostly symbolic. The Ministry had access to every residential security system in Elyria. My room was small, immaculate, and deliberately empty. A bed. A desk. A wardrobe. A narrow window overlooking the neighboring tower. I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my wrist. The Pulseband had returned to silver. No warning. No red light. No evidence that anything had happened. I pressed my fingertips against the spot where Kael had touched me. Warmth bloomed in my chest again. I pulled my hand away as if I'd burned myself. This was impossible. Physical contact was a routine part of medical examinations, and I'd never experienced anything like it. My body was malfunctioning. That was the obvious explanation. But it didn't explain the look on Kael's face. It didn't explain why he had risked being caught to warn me. And it didn't explain why I couldn't stop thinking about him. I crossed to my desk and opened the small compartment beneath its lowest drawer. Inside lay the only thing I owned that the Ministry had not approved: a photograph, old and creased at the edges. My mother stood beneath a tree, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. She was smiling. Not the polite, restrained curve of the mouth used in Ministry-approved portraits. She was laughing. Her head was tilted back, her eyes squeezed shut, one hand pressed against her stomach as if the laughter hurt. I'd stolen the photograph from a box of confiscated personal belongings after her disappearance. I had no idea why the Ministry had kept it, or why they hadn't destroyed it. On the back, in faded handwriting, were four words. Feel everything. Fear nothing. I had never understood them. Tonight, for the first time, I wondered whether they were a warning. My Pulseband vibrated. I nearly dropped the photograph. A notification appeared across the silver display. MINISTRY OF EMOTIONAL ORDER CITIZEN ARIA VALE MANDATORY ASSESSMENT: 07:00 TOMORROW I stared at the message until the letters blurred. Then another notification appeared. This one contained no Ministry seal. No sender identification. Just a line of text. If you want to know what happened to your mother, don't go to the assessment center. Beneath it was a second message. And stay away from Kael Rowan. I stopped breathing. The screen went dark. For several seconds, I sat completely still, listening to the low hum of the city's ventilation system beyond my window. Someone knew about my mother. Someone knew about Kael. And someone had found a way to reach me through a system that was supposed to monitor every word, every movement, every heartbeat. I looked at the photograph again. My mother's laughing face stared back at me. For the first time in nine years, I allowed myself to wonder whether she had really been taken away because she was sick. Or whether she'd simply discovered something the Ministry couldn't afford for anyone else to know. Outside, a surveillance drone passed my window. Its red sensor paused on the glass. I held my breath until it moved on. Then I placed the photograph beneath my pillow, lay down fully dressed, and stared into the darkness. Tomorrow morning, I was supposed to surrender myself to the people who had taken my mother. Tomorrow morning, I was supposed to behave. But all I could think about was the boy in the maintenance corridor, his fingers wrapped around my wrist, his voice barely audible above the approaching footsteps. Don't tell them what you felt. I didn't know what I'd felt. I didn't know why it mattered. And I didn't know why the thought of never seeing Kael Rowan again frightened me more than the assessment center ever could. I only knew one thing. For the first time in my life, I wanted something the government had forbidden me to want. And somewhere inside Elyria, someone already knew.