Caden was gone when Greeley woke me with a woman at his side. She wasn't like the women I was used to seeing, wearing shapeless sacks and young faces with old eyes. She looked like a woman from television. Tall and modern with stylishly short purple hair and a perfect tan, complete with a chic modern gray dress and shoes.
"This is my wife, Trinity." Greeley introduced us. "This is Caden's new woman, who has no idea how to eat with a fork." He turned to me. "I usually don't take my wife to work, but you could use a feminine touch." Greeley winked. "I figured you'd need all the help you can get to be ready for dinner tonight."
The wall by his head blinked on and I saw Caden's face on an enormous TV screen. From the background I gathered he was riding the air rail in a personal electric car. "I forgot to tell you that we're having a social tonight. I wanted to introduce my new wife to society. Oh good, Trinity is there. She'll fix you up. Be nice to her okay?" And he was gone.
"He's just like a little boy showing off his new toy to his friends." Trinity's voice was light and cultured though slightly nasal. Affectionate amusement underlaid her disapproval. "How old are you child?"
"Fifteen." That's what my age was supposedly, but mills have a way of tweaking things like that. With the illegal hormone and growth simulators some girls reach sixteen fast. I'm pretty sure I'm fifteen however, the one time they tried to give my section illegal steroids it backfired and they lost a lot of people. It didn't go down in the records but was passed word of mouth whenever I switched hands, and I didn't have to take them again.
Her disapproval deepened into disbelief. She was too polite to say it, but I knew what she was thinking. 'No respectable woman is married until she is thirty and has a career. Well, I guess we can hardly call a girl born in a factory respectable.' My thoughts were interrupted when she drew close and with a ruined sound swept her hands over my cropped hair. Besides the dye and the sweep and I didn't see much difference between my short hair and her stylish hairdo, but obviously she did.
"Fortunately for you I'm a stylist. Otherwise I'm sure Caden's friends would think he's dating some trendy middle schooler, just without the facial tattoos and dyed teeth. Come on Jace, let's get her breakfast and get started."
What followed next was a whirlwind of activity. We went from place to place, skipping over the vast city on what I learned was Caden's private air rail. I took everything in with huge eyes, my face pressed to the glass. I'd seen the city on the news, but only went out on the yearly visits to the mill doctor, crammed on a bus with section Epsilon and some guards. We always rode down on the lowest level of the city, where the poor people traveled on subways or buses that still ran on fuel. There were 4 levels. First level was where Caden lived. Second to highest level the wealthy lived in, third level was for the commuters and disgruntled middle class and fourth was where the teeming poor lived. I knew the city army policed the two lowest levels the most, because of the riots and unrest that had been growing steadily for decades. The top level, the one exposed to the sky, was for the most powerful and influential, the elite of society, superstar level. I came from the third level.
We went shopping and bought clothes, did my hair, did my makeup all the while getting crash courses on etiquette. Finally Trinity gave up. "It's no use! What took me years in a finishing school I'm trying to shove down your throat in a few hours. At least you WILL look fabulous." It was getting dark in the city when I arrived back in Caden's room. In the dressing room I spun around slowly, not believing the princess in the mirrors was me! She'd colored over my freckled face with makeup, bemoaning my ghostly paleness.
"It'd be okay if you were TRYING to look like that, but anyone can see you were born and raised in a factory. Unless I..." and in an hour and a half I had burnished copper skin with a faint flush on the cheekbones, showing up delicately against my tan. She brought out the blue in my eyes with makeup that somehow coaxed a little green from around my irises. My cap of whiskey colored hair was masked with a flowing hairpiece of a slightly darker color and diamonds hung around my neck, decorated my forehead and the ears pierced when I was born. Trinity somehow managed to make me look older, prettier and sophisticated.
