But then his lips curled into that secretive smile no one could have possibly duplicated, the same smile I had once thought was meant to reassure me that I was doing the right thing. Now all I could see was a mocking smirk.
He parted his lips as if he was about to speak to me, but instead he said nonchalantly, “This one.”
He raised his hand to claim me, and rather than playing it cool the way I desperately wanted to, I flinched as if he were about to knock my teeth out.
Instead, he never touched me.
The girl beside me let out a choked sob. When I opened my eyes, Knox’s hand rested on her shoulder, not mine.
“You three, with me,” barked Williams. “The rest of you, get to work.”
Knox stepped back, his eyes locked on mine until he turned away. Silence seemed to permeate the cabin as the three girls walked down the aisle to join the guards. Two of them were crying, but the third glared at me as if to say this is your fault.
She wasn’t wrong, and I couldn’t watch anymore. This was just another sick, twisted game I could never win, and the more Knox tortured me, the more I wanted to rip his throat out and feed him to the wolves.
More heavy footsteps echoed against the porch steps as the men exited, leaving us three fewer than we had been before they’d come. Before I had a chance to move, Scotia slapped the wall beside her, startling half the bunkhouse.
“You heard him,” she called. “Dining hall now, and if any one of you is late for work, you’ll have to answer to me.”
The girls grabbed their coats and began to filter out. As I pulled mine on, someone took my elbow, and I looked up to see Noelle standing beside me, her wide eyes glassy with unshed tears.
“I thought for sure he was going to take you,” she whispered.
“Me, too.” Judging by the way everyone glanced at us, we weren’t the only ones who thought so. I stepped into my boots, too shaken and furious to bother being annoyed by the fact that they were still damp. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she said. “This isn’t your fault.”
Yes, it was, but there was no use trying to convince Noelle, who only seemed to be able to see the good in people. “Is this how it always is? You wake up with twenty girls, and by lunch, you’re down to fifteen?”
“By dinner, we’ll be back to twenty,” said Scotia from behind her curtain. “Get out of here, both of you.”
Together Noelle and I ducked out the door and into the snowy street. The sun strained to shine through the clouds, leaving a weak light to fall on us as we trudged toward the dining hall. Others joined us, and Noelle slipped her arm into mine. At first I thought she was trying to comfort me, but when she hugged my arm to her chest, I realized it was the other way around. I was her security blanket.
The dining hall was only marginally warmer than the bunkhouse. I shivered as Noelle and I stood in line with the others, waiting our turn and soaking up what little heat crept toward us from the hot plates and ovens in the kitchen. As a woman served us pale pancakes and limp bacon, I tried not to think about the room beneath my boots, stockpiled with more weapons than I’d ever seen in my life. If one of those grenades went off, we’d all be dead. As if we weren’t already.
“It’s warm in the dollhouse,” said Noelle as she slurped weak, pulpy orange juice from a plastic cup.
“The dollhouse?” I said, too busy rubbing my hands together and trying to breathe heat back into my fingertips to eat.
“Where we work,” she said. “I guess it’s not really warm there, technically, but the suits we wear keep the warmth in.”
All of my questions died on my lips as I finally started on my breakfast. The pancakes tasted like paste, and the bacon was so salty that I nearly gagged, but it was food. I’d eaten worse.
We finished our meal in silence, and when another bell rang, Noelle leaped up and led me back outside. Groups of men and women in orange and red uniforms ducked into the buildings, stripping the streets of their color until only gray remained.
“In here,” said Noelle, and we stopped beside the large three-story building I’d noticed the day before. Despite the size, the only entrance I could see was a single door. There were no windows, and the only hint I had as to what might be inside was a long chimney where white wisps escaped.
Beyond the first door was a second with a metal lock attached, and when Noelle opened it, I peered inside, expecting the same kind of interior—gray and dark. Instead I was greeted with a bright white hallway and a woman sitting at a desk, sorting something on a screen. She looked strangely familiar, and I tried to place her, but my brain had gone numb with the rest of me.
“Noelle, dear,” she said warmly. “You’re late.”
“Sorry,” said Noelle, her cheeks flushing. “I had to show Lila around.”
The woman’s gaze settled on me, and her eyes widened. “Oh—Lila! Yes, yes, of course. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She beamed, and suddenly I remembered where I’d seen her before. The meeting the night before—she’d been among the fringes of the group. I’d caught her staring at me twice.
“Can she work with me?” said Noelle hopefully. “Now that Maya...”
“Of course, of course,” said the woman, and she typed something into the screen. “Why don’t you show her the way, dear?”
With her arm still looped in mine, Noelle led me through a third door, one that looked much heavier than the others. It opened at her touch, however, and we stepped into a long hallway. It was just as bright as the room before, and there was a sterile feel about it that made me uneasy.
“What is this place?” I said. “Why do you call it the dollhouse?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know—that’s just what everyone calls it. Come on, we’re through here.”
We entered through a door that boasted a long word I couldn’t read, and on the other side was the strangest room I’d ever seen. The walls on either side of us were made of the normal solid materials, but the one directly in front of us was made of clear plastic. The only way through was a thin slit in the center, and I saw several more layers of plastic beyond it, creating an odd tunnel.
“You have to strip,” said Noelle, who had already taken off her jacket and was working on unzipping her jumpsuit. Half a dozen lockers lined the left wall, and I opened the one Noelle pointed to.
Growing up in a group home, I wasn’t shy about nudity, but it was still unnerving to undress like that in front of someone I’d known for less than a day. Noelle didn’t seem to notice—or maybe she had no idea that being naked was anything to be shy about—and once we had both stripped and shoved our dirty jumpsuits into our lockers, she led me over to the plastic wall.
“Go ahead,” she said. “It’s the sanitizing chamber. It’s a little loud, but it doesn’t really hurt.”
With that ringing endorsement in mind, I slipped through the tight plastic, wincing as it rubbed against my skin. As soon as I was fully inside, the plastic seemed to close in on itself, and a red light above my head began to blink.
“Noelle, what—” Before I could finish, thick steam spilled into the airtight chamber, engulfing me until I couldn’t see. On instinct I held my breath, and my skin began to tingle. If this was some kind of joke and I was about to melt into a puddle of blood and bone—
As quickly as it had come, the steam disappeared. The X on the back of my neck stung, but other than that, it had been painless. I glanced down at my hands. All the dirt that had accumulated under my fingernails over the past day was gone, and my skin was as pristine as it had been the day I’d woken up and discovered the Harts had had me Masked.
“My turn,” said Noelle brightly, poking her head through the plastic. “Just go into the next chamber and put on a suit. I’ll be right there.”
I slid through the second slit into another section, this one full
of plastic suits, shoes, and masks. Frowning, I pulled on the one nearest the entrance, unnerved by the way it crinkled every time I moved.
By the time I’d managed to finish tugging up the zipper, Noelle stepped through, looking as clean as I felt. “There you go, you have the hang of it already,” she said, and she quickly dressed in a second suit. “You pull the hood over your head like this—you have to make sure you have every single hair inside, else they’ll reprimand you. And then you put on the shoes and mask.”
By the time we were both fully dressed, I felt like we were about to jump into a vat of toxic waste for a swim. But at least Noelle had been right about the heat—I hadn’t been this warm since arriving in Elsewhere.
“What is all of this for?” I said.
“So we don’t contaminate anything,” she said. “Come on, we’re already late.”
She slipped through the final piece of plastic, and I hesitated. This one was opaque, making it impossible to see what was on the other side until I was there. My heart hammered. If Noelle did this every day, then it was fine. I’d be fine.
Before I could figure out when I’d regained my survival instinct, I reached the other side of the plastic, and I stopped. It was a simple white room, completely unlike anything I’d expected. It was mostly empty, except for a pile of small containers stacked neatly along several shelves and a guard dressed in a similar suit, holding a long thin club made entirely out of plastic. In the middle of the far wall was a window with a plastic barrier separating us from what lay beyond it, and beside the stack of containers was the start of a conveyor belt.
But the strangest thing of all was the boy who sat on a plastic stool in the center of the room, dressed in the same suit we wore. He had no mask, however, and his hood was pulled back, revealing his bald head.
“Good morning, Teddy,” said Noelle cheerfully. The boy—Teddy—didn’t acknowledge her. I frowned. Her voice had been muffled behind the mask, but even when she hadn’t been facing me, I’d understood her. She turned and gave me a significant glance, one that was obvious even if I couldn’t see most of her face.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Lila.”
Teddy didn’t answer me, either. I looked at Noelle uncertainly, but she didn’t seem fazed in the least. Instead she was sorting through the containers, setting several up on a long white table beside the conveyor belt.
“Did I do something wrong?” I said quietly, ducking my head near hers.
“Wrong? What do you think you did wrong?”
“I—” I hesitated, my gaze darting toward Teddy.
“Oh!” Noelle giggled. “It’s okay. He doesn’t talk to anyone. I’ve never heard him say a word his whole life.”
“His whole life?” I glanced at Teddy again. He sat perfectly still on the stool, his eyes focused on something I couldn’t see. His lips moved as if he were speaking to himself, but no sound came out.
Noelle nodded. “We grew up in the same section. We were in all the same classes, but he never did anything. He just sat there. Everyone knew he was going to be declared a I, but then a couple years ago, when we were learning about what we’d be doing once we left Section J, they discovered he was really good at—”
Before she could finish, a buzzer went off. I jumped, but no one else batted an eye. The plastic barrier in the strange window in the wall opened, and a pair of gloved hands emerged, holding a lumpy red thing that looked like a piece of raw meat.
“What the hell—” I began, but Noelle jumped into action, delicately taking it from the gloved hands. She turned toward Teddy, whose eyes focused on the thing she was holding for a moment before unfocusing again.
“Open up that container,” said Noelle, nodding to the nearest one on the table. “Hurry!”
My fingers trembled, and it took me two tries to undo the complicated latch. At last I opened the top, and cold vapor poured out of the container while Noelle gently placed whatever it was inside.
“Secured,” she called, closing the latch. “Number?”
“M042853,” said a female voice through the half door before closing the plastic again. Noelle gestured to a blank square on the metal container.
“Can you write that down?” Her hands were covered in what looked like blood. I blinked.
“With what?” I said.
“The tip of your finger. It’ll show up, trust me.”
I couldn’t distinguish whole words, but I did know enough to be able to slowly trace out each symbol on to the square. As promised, they appeared, though in shaky, barely legible writing. Noelle sighed.
“Never mind, I’ll do it from here on out. Just let me wash my hands.”
She moved to a sink I hadn’t spotted in the corner, and using pedals on the floor, she made blue-tinted water spurt out from the faucet. I hadn’t felt so incompetent and clueless since I’d first become Lila Hart.
“What was that?” I said. The blood from her hands mixed with the blue water, turning a sickening shade of purple before running down the drain.
“A heart,” she said. My stomach contracted.
“You mean—a human heart?”
“Haven’t you ever seen one before?”
I stared at her. “What are we doing with a human heart?”
She placed the container on the conveyor belt, and within seconds, it disappeared through another layer of plastic. “That’s what we do,” she said. “Once they harvest the hearts, we package them up for shipping. The doctors on the outside give them to people who need them. They do all kinds of stuff in the dollhouse—I’ve only ever worked hearts, but the others do lungs and livers and eyes, and Scotia’s lucky enough to work hair.”
I gaped at her. I really was going to be sick. “Human—human lungs and livers and eyes and—and hair? But where do they come from? Whose heart was that?”
She shrugged. “Probably not a I. The number’s their birthday—April 28, 2053. It’s really rare a I makes it that long, so he was probably a prisoner.”
I stood rooted in place, trying to process it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d known the organs of Is were harvested. Daxton had mentioned it when he’d taken me hunting Elsewhere. But I’d never let myself think about it too hard before, preferring to pretend it was just a story Daxton had told me to scare me into going along with his plans.
Now, after what I’d just seen, there was no pretending anymore.
“And—and Teddy?” I managed, my throat tightening. “What does he do?”
“He can tell the bad ones from the good,” she said, her brow furrowing. “I’m not sure how, exactly, but they found out he could pick the hearts that would survive being transplanted from the ones that would likely fail. That’s why they let him live.”
“How is that even possible?” My voice broke, and it took everything I had not to lean up against the table of containers waiting for their inhabitants.
“Lots of Is can do stuff others can’t,” she said. “There was another one in my group that could draw anything from memory. Buildings, faces, trees down to the last leaf—it was amazing. He drew me a picture for my ninth birthday.”
“Where is he now?” I said. “Does he have a job like Teddy?”
Her expression fell, and she busied herself with the latch on another container. “No. I don’t know. Maybe. I never saw him again after graduation.”
The buzzer went off again, and this time I didn’t jump. There was no maybe about what had happened to the other boy.
“Here, you take this one,” she said as the plastic window opened again, and another pair of gloved hands held out another human heart.
I wanted to say no, but the guard in the corner leered at me, and I gently took the organ from whoever was on the other side of the wall. It was still warm and much firmer than I’d expected, and I could’ve sworn I felt it beat. br />
The room began to spin, but I forced myself toward Teddy, holding it up for him. “Is this—” My mouth felt like sandpaper. “Is this okay?”
Teddy focused on it for a second, then looked away. “That means it’s okay,” said Noelle. “Here, put it down gently. Make sure it doesn’t touch the edges.”
She already had a container open, and I carefully—very, very carefully—set the heart inside. As soon as Noelle closed the lid, I exhaled and swayed on the spot. “Secured,” she called, giving me a concerned look.
Whoever was on the other side either couldn’t see us or didn’t care that I was about to pass out, and a male voice called back, “F111964.”
Female. November 19, 2064.
“Oh,” whispered Noelle, her eyes going wide as she set the container down on the conveyor belt. She didn’t say anything else, but it was obvious she knew whose heart I’d just handled.
The edges of my vision went dark, and in that moment, something inside me shut down. Together we watched the container roll away, and it wasn’t until I felt something warm disappear behind my mask that I realized I was crying.
Noelle didn’t say a word for the next hour, and I kept my mouth shut. There was nothing I could say to make any of this easier for her, and there was nothing Noelle could say to me to make me feel like any of this was okay.
Only once did Teddy open his mouth like he was trying to say something, and he slapped his hand to his thigh, his whole body squirming. This must have been the signal Noelle had been waiting for, because she immediately handed the heart back to the man on the other side of the plastic barrier.
“Defective,” she said. The man didn’t say a word; instead he took the heart back, and the plastic door shut, leaving us once again in silence. Teddy calmed down after that.
I wanted to ask what they did with that human heart—if it was tested to make sure Teddy was right, or if they simply threw it away on his word. The loss of life was hard enough to take, but not even being able to provide a viable heart that could help someone else live—somehow that made the whole miserable situation even more hopeless than it already was.