I glance around. This is it. Don’t lose your nerve now.

(Talking to myself again. Nothing new there.)

Everyone else is readying for The Moment. Hands out, palms up, faces tipped down. Ready to Receive. On the outside: hushed, solemn, devout. On the inside, well, I know exactly what they are, because I’ve been it a thousand times. Giddy. Frothing. Wild for the first hit of sweetness. On the third bell they’ll drop to the floor, robes whispering, eyes shut, and wait for the Yummies to rain down.

I say they. Because I’m not doing this any longer.

Noma finds my eyes across the row. She’s my oldest friend, squat and red and striated like the rest of us, wearing the permanent little scowl every Myocyte is born with, but I know that face better than my own, and right now it’s reading me like a page. Her look is sharp enough to cut: Do it. Or they’ll lose their minds.

We’d gone round and round about it that morning, low, down by the water.

“You’re quiet,” she’d said. “You’re never quiet. What are you planning?”

“Nothing.”

“Ayanda.”

“I just… I can’t keep pretending it feels good when it doesn’t.”

She’d gone very still. “Whatever’s in your head, don’t. Not at The Moment. Not in front of everyone.”

I didn’t answer. That, apparently, was answer enough, because she grabbed my wrist and held on until it hurt.

Now her grip is only a memory, and her face is a plea. I look away.

I’m not going to do this any longer.

I say it inside, over and over, until it hums low in my belly. Every reflex I own is screaming the opposite: do what you always do, do what everyone’s doing, do the easy thing, and my body strains to obey without me. I dig my nails into my palms. I’m not…

The third bell.

The Yummies come.

My hands stay at my sides. Stone. I breathe through my teeth.

And then, gone. Dissolved. Unclaimed. My Motor Unit has missed the allocation.

For one heartbeat, silence.

Then the row nearest me turns, face by face, and finds me. A little one three places down starts to cry. Someone whispers, “She didn’t lift her hands.” Someone else, louder: “Why didn’t she lift her hands?” The word travels outward, hands, hands, she didn’t, until the whole Kingdom has turned my way and all that reverence has curdled into something with edges.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” an elder chokes out, his voice splitting on the last word.

This is awkward.

Here’s the thing they’re all working out at once: a muscle contracts together or not at all. The other Units caught their Yummies today, but muscles don’t move in pieces, and if my Unit can simply decline, then no one’s supply is safe. That’s the fear I can see climbing their faces. Not anger, underneath. Fear.

Because we’ve always believed we’re fed for our obedience. Reward for compliance. It’s the one rule nobody has ever tested, because we were all too frightened of losing the Yummies to poke at it.

My heart is slamming so hard I’m sure the Myocyte beside me can hear it.

Well. We’re about to find out. And whichever way it falls, this is my fault.