Sylla Fairchild combs her long, dark hair as she looks into the mirror. A dirty, broken piece of glass that was once a mirror anyway. This isn’t like her. Since when has Sylla cared what her hair looked like? It’s always been as wild as she is. And for all her sixteen years she’s preferred books and building bots to all else. But this time she has to go. This time it matters.
The Debut may be her only chance to escape her genus, to get out of these tunnels. The right suitor could indeed wisp her away from this place, taking her with him off to one of his estates in the ocean or cloud cities. Then she scoffs. Sylla being courted by one of the Brahmins? She hasn’t even ascended yet, and her only benefaction seems to be invisibility to boys.
Sylla gets up, meaning to go tell her parents that she has no intention of attending the Debut.
“But the possibilities if she’s selected!” her father speaks. Jakeb Fairchild has always been a firebrand, constantly ranting against the Brahmin and the Realignment. He’s been beaten, arrested, and Sylla was sure one day one he’d be killed. She loves and hates him for that. She loves his courage, and hates that sometimes it seems he cares more about his politics than he does his family.
Sylla stops where she is. “Oh, Jakeb,” her mother speaks wearily. “Sylla is many things… but the type a Brahmin would peck from the tunnels as a trophy to be waltzed up top? That’s not our girl.”
Sylla’s face turns red. She knows she’s not the most beautiful girl of her genus, but to hear it from her own mother hurts. She’s angry with herself too; angry that such a simple truth spoken without malice could cut so deep. She turns back around and climbs into her cube. She opens her desk drawer and locates a pair of long-neglected scissors. She picks up the same piece of broken and glass and begins clipping away at wild and weyward strands of hair.
She can do this. All she has to do is win the heart of a Brahmin and blow up the system from the inside. One way or the other, Sylla promises herself that she’ll never spend another night in these tunnels.