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Darkness surrounds me. I know better than to run from it, as anything could lurk in its shadows. Instead, I wait in the stillness, as if I’m under the surface of the holding pond beyond Miles’ barrier, counting the seconds for the camera to pass.
I become aware of a steady, dripping noise. Though its echoes try to fool me, I sense that the source of the drip is close. Strangely, it is my nose—not my ears—that is responsible for determining the rhythm’s nearness.
I’ve come to recognize this odor. I smelled it first at the age of twelve when I discovered my mother’s suicide at the institution. The distinguishing scent invaded my nostrils again at the makeshift hospital in Lame Deer where faithful Decklin lied dying, doubly wounded by bullet and flame. I endured the smell as we drove back to Sheridan in a van that carried the caskets of two noble-hearted young men. I buried my face in my lap and covered my head with my arms, not only to guard myself from the sickening stench, but also to keep secret the stream of sorrow that ran from my eyes.
This is the smell of blood. Death.
I try to hold my breath, but I’m quickly choked for air. I don’t have the strength to fight my hunger for oxygen.
A rush of cold air fights its way through my obstructed, sticky throat. I relax my lungs, but I’m unable to do the same for my mind, which is increasingly leery of my dark, mysterious surroundings.
Dim light begins to seep into the obscurity. A shape takes form beside me. I can tell that it’s human, but its edges are blurred and its face deeply shadowed. Where did this person come from? Were my eyes not open before? Are they now? I can’t find the light source.
“Welcome to Neo-Necropolis.” Female. From the voice’s smooth texture and deep tone, I’d guess that the woman is older than I am. I warily raise my eyes toward the head of the form, sending a shooting sensation deep into my head. It’s dark, but something is also wrong with my eyes. I can’t make out any features of the person’s face.
“Necropolis is Greek. It means city of the dead. Neo is Greek for new.”
New city of the dead?
I remember. I was halfway to Miles. I should have been driving a truck, but my panic and fate from above had changed that.
The first hour passed too rapidly. I was begging for more time as I still struggled to convince myself that I had made the right decision when I contacted Miles’ inner circle to trade places with my sister. I had seriously considered turning the car around not five minutes before a crash that turned the compact car into my steely grave.
I spotted the buck before his hooves hit the pavement, but my perceptiveness didn’t matter. There was nothing I could do to change the course of the deer, or the car, at the speed that each was traveling.
I heard that a person’s life is supposed to flash before their eyes during a moment like that. Time is supposed to slow so the departing soul can calmly express their final words to their maker. As if the intolerable government ruled it too, time did not alter itself for me. I gasped in terror, pounded the brake, and shut my eyes. That was it. No thought squeezed its way into my mind, not of Evvie, my dad, or Sheridan.
There is time for worries now, though, especially those regarding Evvie’s safety. They flood my heart and mind with full force, and my body acts accordingly.
“Relax.” The woman gently places a wet cloth on my forehead and guides me to lie back down. “The name of this place is just another way they taunt us. You’re not dead; you’re going to be just fine.”
Fully alert, I find the reflection of low light in the woman’s eyes. They’re dark, darker than her ebony skin, but kind. I can only focus on them for a second before the splitting headache returns. Of course, I’m not dead—I feel too much pain. I can’t imagine the head can sustain this many blows in quick succession without the tissues swelling dangerously to protect the beaten brain.
“You need to rest,” urges the unfamiliar woman. I can feel that she’s right, but something important is gnawing at my mind like a misplaced itch. What is it?
Oh no, the collateral that was forced upon me to make sure that I upheld my end of the agreement with the county. “You don’t understand,” I stress to the woman. “Miles County BOTs are going to bomb everyone if I don’t get there before dawn!”
“Everyone?” she questions. “Who are they going to bomb? No! Don’t tell me,” she blurts, just as the answer forms on my lips. She’s right. This moment is filled with desperation, but I still need to think before releasing my secrets to a complete stranger. I could jeopardize the safety of Evvie, my father, Crewe, and all other Sheridans with such carelessness.
“I received notice of my new roommate the day before yesterday. Just what day do you think it is?”
She received notice two days ago? That’s not possible. It was only yesterday that I made contact with Miles. She couldn’t have known about my arrival before then. Wait…roommate?
The keen woman beside me can tell that my head swells with questions and worries. She bends closer to me, making it easier for me to focus on her eyes as she speaks. “You’re in Miles County. You’ve been here at least two days. Today is Wednesday, but I’d rather you not start this day yet. Get a few more hours of sleep while you can.”
I’ve been here three days then. That’s a long time, considering that I can’t remember anything since the accident. I don’t even know how I got here. I have many questions that need answering. “I need to know some things,” I tell the woman beside me. “I don’t sleep much, anyway.”
“Well, look at that,” she says casually. “I’d already nicknamed you Thrasher. Your nightmarish stirrings have been enough to keep me awake tonight, and I’m usually a rock through all sorts of horrors.” The nickname Rock would seem appropriate for her. She certainly has the build for it.
“I wish I could ease your mind, but nothing we say goes unheard.” Her eyes flash from wall to wall of the small room. “Do you understand?”
I nod. I understand this well.
The woman removes the wet cloth from my forehead and slaps it into my hand. “Wipe your face.”
I sit up slowly, bringing on a rush of dizziness, nausea, and a sharp pain in my left thumb. I set the cloth on my knee for a minute, to feel a sleek contraption housing my presumably broken thumb. Something warm and wet then touches my upper lip. Blood. I wipe as instructed, first below my nose. The bridge of my nose is unnaturally wide, and I can feel that one side of my face is equally as swollen. There’s some tenderness to the touch, but not as much as it seems there should be.
“That’s why I stopped you from telling me about the everyone whose lives you feared were in danger,” the woman continues. “I don’t want to know a thing about that.”
“They know the name and location of the people they threatened,” I say, discarding the wet cloth on the floor with a plop. “I doubt it would be news to anyone listening.”
“Yet you still don’t name it? It must be me that you don’t trust then.” She stands, picks up the wet cloth, and disappears around a partial wall at the foot of the bed across from the one on which I sit. I hear a squeak and then interrupted splashes of water as she rinses the cloth. “I don’t blame you one bit for that,” she calls over the flow of water. “Caution is smart and necessary.” Water continues to leak from the faucet after it squeaks off, but the woman has presumably left the cloth in the sink to absorb the irritating pings.
Before I opened my eyes, I imagined that blood was the dripping medium. I understand how that morphed into my nightmare, having now learned that I had a nosebleed during my sleep. I heard the leaky faucet, but smelled blood. The bleed also explains the immediate choking I experienced when I attempted to hold my breath. A thin layer of my anxiety has been relieved now that the dripping has lessened.
>
“What’s your name?” I ask as the woman sits on a bed much too small for her frame.
“Edyn with a Y. And you’re Sydney. With a Y too,” she adds. “Your name is the only thing they told me about you, but I don’t see any need to get to know each other this morning. We have our whole lives for that,” she says as she slides under the covers and turns toward the wall.
“Our whole lives?” I can’t help asking.
“That’s right. Once you’re a resident here, your days of sunshine are over. I get the feeling you didn’t have much sunshine to live for anyway.”
“Where are we?” If we’re truly locked up somewhere, then Edyn will have the rest of her life to sleep. I need answers tonight, and she’s the only person who can give them to me. “I lived in Miles my whole life; I’ve never heard of Neo-Necropolis.”
I’ve gained Edyn’s attention. She spins around and props her head up. “That’s because no one knows about this place unless they’re in it. Most of us call it Neocropolis for short. Actually, a lot of residents call it Neocrapolis, even the guards.”
“Residents?”
“Prisoners. We’re buried below EPA 12-1 on Miles’ northernmost border. Citizens have no idea that there is a fully loaded penitentiary right under the county seat.”
Another lie fed to Miles’ inhabitants. I bet the EduWeb instruction monitors don’t even know. As told, they direct their pupils to courses that rave about how well chips deter criminals, so well that Miles County doesn’t even need a jail.
“Don’t answer this without caution,” Edyn warns. “You said that you needed to arrive in Miles to prevent a bombing, so I can only assume that you were outside the county. I won’t ask where, but I’d like to know how long you’ve lived beyond Miles’ border.”
Suddenly, I realize there is something I need to look into before I can answer Edyn’s question. Do the monitors that I need to be aware of exist in the room or directly within us? Before I could be taken from Miles to Sheridan, Galvesten cut into each of my wrists to find and remove my chip, which also served as a tracking device. The wounds had healed enough before I left Sheridan that I would notice had they been reopened. I feel the smoothness of each scar. However, I accidentally notice a fresh incision on my left forearm. There’s also the high-tech splint around my thumb that I cannot undo. Both of those injuries could easily occur by impact or debris from the crash, but they could also conveniently cover up a fresh implant.
“I was only outside a week,” I answer Edyn. “I lived in Miles until my eighteenth birthday.”
“Well, happy belated,” Edyn wishes. “I imagine the start to adulthood hasn’t been too good for you, seeing as you’ve incurred enough damage in a week to land yourself in level three.”
“Level three of what?” I have to ask.
“Of Neocropolis,” she says. “There are five levels here. The depth they hide you in the ground is based on the severity of the crime you committed or the threat that you pose. The fifth level is solitary confinement. Very few have been down there, though residents spread rumors like they know the place. Level Fours have a bunkmate, but they don’t receive any of the freedoms that we do. Twos above us have committed minor offenses, or they were innocents that put up a fuss. We call Level Ones Innocents. They never committed a crime. They were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. They caught wind of some top-secret information or what have you, and the county couldn’t risk that they be among citizens, where they could repeat what they saw or heard. There are even a couple of kids that are Innocents,” Edyn sighs.
“Their parents think they’re dead, except for one little girl whose momma is in three with us. She was pregnant when they put her down here. Wouldn’t make sense for the child of a dead, pregnant lady to be alive. You can change the kid’s identity and put her into an orphanage in another county, but they feared her DNA could one day reveal who she really was, and they couldn’t have that.”
“Couldn’t they change her parents’ DNA information in the system?” I ask. “Don’t they change things like that all the time?” Edyn has been around for a while, and has probably heard many conspiracies through the other residents. I want to affirm that other situations, like when my sister saw a listing of our dead mother’s foster children at the courthouse, occur sometimes.
“Without a doubt,” Edyn answers. “But there were too many eyes watching this case. The child had to die. Negotiators promised her mother that she’d live in this death as long as she kept providing them the information and services they sought. The little girl gets to come down and visit her mother, and they’ve promised to take her out to see the sun on her tenth birthday. It’s not too far away now. All of us are living for that event—living through that sweet child.”
“How long has it been since you’ve seen the sun, Edyn?”
“Altogether, it’s been seven years.”
Altogether? There must have been a break between Edyn’s time in Neocropolis. Maybe she was generalizing or exaggerating when she explained that imprisonment here is permanent. “Were you out for some time after you’d been in?”
“No.” Edyn removes the covers from her side and sits up on the edge of her bed. “That doesn’t happen,” she says with heavy weight. “It’s going to take you some time to accept it, but you will die here, Sydney. You should also understand that you’ll never again speak to anyone out there that you care about. It’s truth for every one of us, no matter what level we are sentenced to. We are the abandoned dead.”
Maybe Edyn is trying to prepare me for the worst-case scenario. I can’t accept that this is the beginning of the end for me. Evvie was here, and permanent captivity wasn’t true for her. She woke to the sun almost three days ago, and for that, I am glad.
When I contacted Miles, I decided that I was willing to die for my sister, but this isn’t the death that I imagined. I didn’t expect it to come true, but I held a sliver of hope that I could reason or fight my way out of whatever evil I would encounter. What I did expect is that I would die fighting for the freedom and a better future for the ones I love. I could accept a noble death like the ones fate handed to Cy and Decklin. A slow, passive, unrewarding death buried deep below the enemy’s feet is impossible for me to come to terms with.
“It’s not right, but it’s not all bad here if you keep your head down and try to enjoy the amenities of level three. Don’t make the mistake that I made. I started as an Innocent, but you can see I’m not there anymore.”
“Why did they move you?” I ask.
“I didn’t last four days on One. I couldn’t control my anger. I had a loving husband and two beautiful children who needed me. I couldn’t give up on getting back to them. Reason got me nowhere, but the riot I brought did. It got me transferred to Two.”
So this is what Edyn meant when she said she’s been here seven years altogether. She’s been moved between different levels.
“I never was an aggressive woman, but anger about the injustices in here built and built in me until one day, I snapped. It was no small thing I did, Sydney.” Edyn pauses for a moment to reflect on the incident or to prepare her next words. “It takes a lot longer to be moved up than to be moved down. I can tell you that much. So as mad as you may be, don’t do anything that will have you locked up below.”
I can’t promise that I won’t react and get myself into trouble, so I don’t respond to Edyn’s advice.
I wonder what crime she committed that had her moved down the second time? They’ve started me on Three, so whatever she did must be considered worse than breaching and living on the outside.
Sometime, I want to hear how Edyn ended up in Neocropolis as an Innocent, but I figure it is both too soon and too odd of an hour to ask. There is just one more thing I have to know before I can allow Edyn to sleep. I have to know if those deemed dead are ever really killed down here. I’m not sure I can ask this outright since our conversation is being recorded, so I’ll begin to flush out my answer in a
roundabout manner.
“What happened to your last roommate?” I ask.
“She got moved up to Two. She promised to come down and visit sometime, but I imagine it will take her a while to earn enough to do that.”
“She wasn’t a young girl, was she?”
“Young is a relative term, but no. She was between your age and mine.” That makes it clear that her previous roommate wasn’t who I was hoping her to be. It’s dark, so I can’t really approximate Edyn’s age, but her old roommate might have been as much as fifteen years older than Evvie. “What are you getting at?” she asks me, apparently reading the additional questions stemming from her answer.
“The girl I’m wondering about is fourteen. She has long, ashen hair with a feathered, neon-green streak.” Edyn looks up as she sifts through the young faces she knows. “She would have arrived only a week ago,” I add.
“No,” she answers quickly. “You were the only recent admittance.”
“She may have been on another level, like One or Two,” I offer.
“No,” Edyn confirms. “Word travels fast around here, even between levels. Unless this girl was in solitary.”
Edyn meant nothing by this comment. She may have even been trying to make a joke. She probably couldn’t imagine that someone who I thought could have been placed in an upper level could also as easily been locked up in solitary for their association with me. Imagining Evvie being admitted here, and learning her fate from a fellow Neocropolis resident as I have tonight, hurts me enough. It tears me apart to think that she may have spent five days locked up among the worst of sorts, a place about which the prisoners only know rumors. And who knows what the people who run this place can get away with down there?
“Does this girl mean something to you?” Edyn asks.
“Everything,” I answer, looking at my lap. “She’s my sister.” I look up and find the reflection of light in Edyn’s eyes. She takes a moment to focus on me, and then shakes her head in sorrow.
“I’m sorry that she’s lost to you,” she says, “but believe me, it’s better for her than being in here.”
“I believe that,” I answer. Lying down, I turn myself away from Edyn. I pull the covers around me and close my eyes. My eyelids feel swollen, but not enough to lock in the tears that slide to the corners of my eyes at the thought of never speaking to Evvie again.
“Get some sleep, Thrasher,” Edyn says. I can’t reply without revealing my emotional state. After a pause, I hear her tuck back in.
I will away my pain with each of Edyn’s increasingly steady breaths. After a few minutes of this, she is sound asleep, and I’m alone in my hollowness.
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