My feet carry me over to our small table as my eyes scan the room again. Sam’s cabin is included in the first meal rotation, and there—I can see them across the way, over hundreds of heads bent over their Styrofoam bowls. The girl with dark, curly hair, the one I saw crying yesterday, looks like she’s been dusted with chalk, she’s so pale. Her eyes dart to the blank space next to her as the PSF patrolling the aisle behind her leans down and whispers something in her ear. A thick finger runs along the shell-pink curve of her ear and I know, even before he looks up and catches me staring, that it’s Tildon.
That empty space is Sam’s. My stomach turns to stone and I barely manage to swallow the food already in my mouth. They still have her locked up, then. She is still in that goddamn cage.
The tables vacate one by one, faces and numbers assembling into orderly lines, two by two. We do the same, and I’m surprised to find that I’m actually eager to get moving today. Work means the hours will pass faster, and I’ll see Sam when our schedules collide one last time at the final meal rotation. I pick up my clipboard from the table and tuck it under my arm, ignoring the terror on the faces of the Green boys who have assembled to our right.
F14 turns toward them, her eyes as dull and flat as sandstone. If it weren’t for the PSF standing nearby, I think the kids still would have scattered like mice. The proximity of us is wearing down their nerves.
The kid listed as 5552 on my list turns out to be a teenage girl, who knows to wait at her table, even after the other girls in her cabin have stood up and shuffled their way out for the day’s work. I press the clipboard to my chest as I walk around the rows of long tables to stand behind her. She glances back, then looks again. She remembers herself just as quickly, and her dark eyes fall back to the table. Her body is as rigid as the icicles that have frozen like teeth along the edge of the Mess’s roof. Shame sweeps through me when I take her by the arm and haul her to feet. The minute my glove touches her arm, it’s like I’ve stabbed her there. She couldn’t have jumped higher if I had been a live wire.
When it’s our turn to head to the double doors, I finally notice that Tildon has repositioned himself at the exit, still wearing the look of a cat contentedly grooming itself after a kill. My unease spikes into real, living fear as he catches my arm and holds up the line behind us.
“It’s just too bad,” he says, tilting his head toward mine. His voice is light and airy. “It’s just too damn bad you weren’t there this time.”
I am three steps away when the words register, dissolving like static in my brain. I start to turn back, but can’t—I know I can’t. It would confirm it for him. An alarm is screaming in my head and I have to hold my breath to keep from releasing the flame building up inside me. He knows, or at least he thinks he knows, that I care about Sam. Why else would he say it? Calling in to the camp controllers yesterday was a gamble, but I thought it had paid off. The only thing I’d cared about in that moment was getting him away from her.
This asshole—he’s a tried and true predator. Whatever he wants out of you, it’s in his nature to detect a whisper of weakness, exploit every small crack in your wall. He picks at wounds just as they start to heal, he touches, knowing you can’t touch back, he takes from people who aren’t in a position to give.
I’d been stupid enough to assume he was too much of a chickenshit to try to turn around and hunt me. I should have known better—I got between him and his chosen prey.
Sam. My heart is like thunder rolling through my ears. I’m convinced that the girl can hear it, too, it’s so damn loud. Tildon must be lying—testing me. He wants to see if it’ll affect me, slide like pins beneath my fingernails and drive me crazy. I saw the look on his face, how closely he watched me as I passed. He suspects. He must.
And, well, it’s working. The dark wood structure behind the Mess has become the center of my universe, and my whole body is so attuned to it, it’s the fight of my life to not look back over my shoulder more than once.
I can’t stop seeing it, what he could have done to her. How he must have touched her. Disgust turns my blood to acid and the girl cringes as I feel myself go hot—too hot. My left arm jerks hard enough that it knocks her forward a step.
Sorry. The word is so damn worthless. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—
He’s lying. He couldn’t have hurt her. I would have heard it broadcast over the wireless.
Not if you were still sleeping...
The words work through me like poison, eating away at my faith.
The Infirmary is the one building I’ve yet to step inside. The camp controllers didn’t have time to include it on their initial walk-through, and, from what I can tell, I didn’t miss much. The smell of it is like every dentist’s and doctor’s office—rubber, antiseptic, fake lemon. The ground floor’s checkered tile is half hidden by the stacks of boxes, plastic crates, and piles of what almost look like curtain rods. It’s not anything alarming, but the girl beside me stops dead and stiffens as she takes it all in.
They don’t know they’re leaving here, I think. Of course not. They’ll just be woken up in the middle of the night and marched out. They won’t even be told they’re never coming back, I’ll bet. They’ll always fear the possibility.
Still, I have orders. I turn toward the staircase as the sheet on my clipboard instructs. She drags her feet at first, pulling back against my grip before she remembers. She’s staring up at the second floor, but we’re going to the basement and she doesn’t ease up on the resistance until she realizes that fact for herself. I look between her and the first few steps leading up, and wonder what the hell is up there to provoke that immediate, unconscious response—to turn her so inside out with dread she’d be willing to challenge a Red, even for a second.
I tug her forward, down the steps, feeling like the uncaring asshole she must think I am. The closer we get to the small landing, the easier my ears can detect the voices whispering there. We take the two of them by surprise—and then I’m caught by the same thing. Olsen is standing in the corner with a younger guy, no more than thirty, decked out in gray scrubs. His ID badge is swinging from where it’s pinned on his pocket as he gestures harshly toward the PSF, his face marred with angry lines. “—is not going to make it if you don’t help me—”
Olsen holds out her hand, silencing him as we come fully into view. I wait for her permission, a nod, to squeeze past them with the girl, but my ears are straining the whole time, trying to catch her words when she speaks again. “Handle this...best you can...it’ll be okay...again...”
The basement of the building mirrors the structure of the first level: it’s T-shaped, one long hall running horizontally—this one packed with expensive-looking medical machines—the other, with a series of doors, intersecting it. The sheet tells me to bring each kid to office number twelve, which seems to be at the other end of the hall. Small gift. It lets me glance inside the rooms that have been left open, assess what’s still left inside. Shelves, filing cabinets, more than one computer.
I bump shoulders with a PSF hauling a stack of boxes in his arms, but he’s concentrating too hard on not dropping them to level me with a cutting remark or hit. I draw the girl over to the side to make way for more uniforms and boxes, and we narrowly avoid colliding with two women in gray scrubs. Nurses, I think. They’re weaving in and out of all of us, shouting, “Coming through!” with what looks like bags of blood in their hands.
I glance back, alarmed, just as the first door on the right opens and two men step out, allowing the nurses inside the room. One is O’Ryan, rubbing his buzzed hair, the other is in a white coat. We reach office twelve before their words can carry down the echoing hallway, but I feel unsettled as I guide the girl inside and kick the stool over so she can climb up onto the metal examination table. Two sharp, dark thoughts try to connect to one another, and then a third, but I force them out. I need to be focused on finding a way back into the kennel toda
y. I have to make sure she’s okay.
I position myself by the door, near the small counter with its jars of cotton balls and ear swabs. I let my hand rest on the flat surface, fingers inching over to the computer’s mouse. At the smallest touch, the dark screen erupts with light. It’s on, I think, but the screen it brings up is locked and the only thing on it is a space for entering a password.
The door swings open behind me and I straighten, shifting to allow the person in. Gray scrubs, reddish-brown hair—it’s the guy from the landing, the one who’d been arguing with Olsen. When he turns to shut the door, he takes a moment to collect himself and clear the anger clouding his expression. When he faces the girl again, he’s not smiling, but he no longer looks like he wants to rip someone’s head off.
The nurse steps past me to get to the computer. My eyes dart down to the keyboard as he types his password: Martin09! I track his progress as he clicks through several different programs and screens to bring up the girl’s file. Chelsea. Her name is Chelsea.
“How are you feeling? The cold giving you any trouble?” he asks, and, to my surprise, there’s no malice or irony coating the questions. The girl relaxed the moment she saw him and is no longer trying to wring her hands raw. She shakes her head, keeping her eyes on the toes of her shoes.
Right. No eye contact.
The nurse reaches up into the cabinet on the wall and unlocks it. Inside are rows upon rows of bottles and jars. I shift my gaze back to the ceiling as he turns around and fills a paper cup with water from the sink. Chelsea accepts it along with two pills.
He takes a long, thin piece of latex and ties it around the girl’s arm. A tourniquet. He’s drawing blood. Only, even when he gets a grip on her arm, she’s trembling so hard he’s struggling to get the needle in.
“You have to stop shaking,” he says.
Her gaze slides over to me before jerking back to the nurse’s face. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth, bloodless with how hard she’s biting it. A look of understanding breaks across the man’s face. The way the girl clutches the examination table makes me feel like I’m wearing a disgusting Halloween mask I can never take off.
Oh, I think.
“Oh,” he says. To his credit, it only takes him a second to steel his nerves and turn toward me with that same calm face. For the first time I see the name on his ID tag: R. Dunn. “Step out for a moment.”
I don’t release the breath I’m holding until I’m in the hall again, and the door is shut behind me. The rumble of his voice starts up again. I press my hands flat against the wall behind me, turning my face away. I don’t want to hear it. For some reason, it feels like a rejection—it feels like I’ve been stung, and I’m swelling with toxic resentment.
The day marches on with half my thoughts on the wooden structure behind the Mess, and the other half on monitoring the Infirmary’s hallway. I’m barely listening to a sound track of status updates in my earpiece and nearly miss a request aimed at me.
Sam isn’t in the Factory when I go to pull one of the girls there so she can get a hit from her asthma inhaler. She isn’t in the Mess during the midday meal. If it hadn’t been for Tildon, I would have assumed that they’d just forgotten about her, or stretched her punishment out another night to drive home their point with a wrecking ball instead of a hammer. Has she eaten anything? Did they bring her water, at least? I come up with a thousand different ways I can ask Olsen about her without actually asking, but none of them work. They all make me seem like I have a heart.
Focus. Computer. Then Sam. I just have to be fast.
I bring each kid I go to collect for their treatment down to the nurse in that same room, counting the minutes it takes for him to finish with them. In those minutes, I look for cameras. In the hallway. Through the doors that swing open. In the room directly across from where I’m standing I have seen not one, but two separate pairings of female nurse and male PSF disappear inside of it. I have heard the door lock behind them. And I have pretended not to notice how winded they always seem when they come out again a short time later. Whatever happens in that room is not being monitored, clearly.
I bring the last kid, 2231, a Green boy, in, open the examination room door, and practically push him inside to where the nurse is waiting. I take two seconds to look both ways down the empty hall and duck through the door opposite me. Fast, I think, just be fast.
My heart slams against my rib cage as I lurch toward the dark computer. The room is a mirror of the one across the hall, with one exception: the PC isn’t already on. I waste two full minutes waiting for it to boot up, my ears straining at every muffled sound bleeding in through the walls. Sure enough, the camera in the upper corner has been all but torn off the wall and has been left dangling there by its rainbow wires.
There. Finally. The log-in screen glides into place and, before I can second-guess myself, I’m typing in the username and password I’d seen Dunn use. The system seems to load pixel by pixel, and it seems like each second is being shaved down to fractions of their former selves. I can’t explain the rush of power I feel when the database finally loads and a blinking cursor appears in the search field.
I type Orfeo and hit Enter.
No results.
I have to look again, because that can’t be possible.
No results.
I go hollow at the core. Pure, helpless anguish rushes in to fill the empty space where hope used to be. She’s not in the system at all? That means—it’s not possible, I won’t—Mia—Mia—
The door slams open behind me, hits the wall, and slams shut again.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit, heartless son of a bitch!”
I’m up and on my feet, whirling around, reaching for a weapon I don’t have. He’s so busy cursing and tearing his hands back through his chestnut hair that he doesn’t even notice me until the stool I’d been sitting on rocks back against the counter and clatters to the floor.
There’s a second where neither of us moves.
“What—oh.” It’s Nurse Dunn.
I can actually feel my heart stop on the next beat. I know what the others feel now, because my head has gone completely dark. I don’t have a thought inside, save for a single word: shit.
How is he already done treating the kid I just brought in?
He’s breathing hard, his pale face flooded with furious color. And just when I need it most, my brain just walks off and abandons me. My body has to rely on instinct to protect it, and instinct is telling it to pick up one of the jars from the counter and—
“Easy—easy—it’s okay,” Dunn says, balking at the way I raise my arm to reach for the glass jar. He seems to remember what I am suddenly and puts his hands out in front of him. “Pal, it’s okay. You just...I didn’t see you in here. What’s—”
His eyes flick between the computer screen and my face. A roar of blood moves between my ears, and I can’t speak, I can’t think of an excuse fast enough. Why did I come in here without thinking of one? Damn, I’m so stupid I didn’t even think to try locking the door.
“Did someone tell you to come in here?” he asks. I can’t read his expression now. His words sound strained. He thinks I’ll hurt him, kill him, burn him—
Maybe I’ll have to.
No. I can’t. Not without setting the room on fire. People with flames racing along their skin don’t just stand still and calmly let their bodies be burned to cinder and bone. He’ll take the whole place down with him. It’s a gruesome thought, one that brings the sickening smell of burnt flesh to mind. My stomach flips over. In what scenario are both of us getting out of this room?
“Okay,” Dunn says when I don’t answer.
My heart is slamming against my ribs. He doesn’t know it wasn’t an order for me to come in here. Not yet. Maybe he won’t think to radio in and ask someone.
Can I scare him into silence? I think so—I tak
e a step forward and he takes a generous one back. The Trainers taught us to fight with fists as well as fire. They wanted strength in body, not strength in mind. But he would know, wouldn’t he? That we aren’t supposed to do anything without orders, that my will has supposedly been crippled. Two issues with that: he can’t be as scared of me as I think, but when he finds out the rules don’t apply to me, he will tell someone. There’s no way he won’t. These adults are all on the same side.
Think, Lucas—Christ, do something, say anything, get the hell out of here—
Killing him won’t help me and Sam get out of here. It won’t help me find Mia who—a wave of nausea passes through me—might not be findable. I can break the jar, use the shards to cut him deep where the Trainers showed us to, but how long before the Control Tower puts together who did it?
“It’s...hey,” the man says, his voice strained, “everyone needs to take a break, get away, right?” He starts to lower his hands. “It’s fine. Go get the kid you brought in and take him—”
His eyes have latched on to the computer screen. He squints at it and my pulse starts beating behind my temple.
“Orfeo?”
The name cuts me like a knife through my spinal cord. I didn’t clear the search field. I shouldn’t have done this, I should have made a plan, a real one, but—I need to get out of here. I need to get Sam out of here. I need to find Mia. My uniform is drenched in hot, clammy sweat and the collar of my vest has me like a hand wrapped around my throat.
The nurse steps closer to it, giving me a wary look as he reaches past my arm. I can’t speak. And not just because I’m supposed to be playing a role.
“Did you search for this?”
Can’t. Breathe.
I want to disappear into my head so badly. The silence that stretches between us is unbearable. I look down. He must take it as a nod.
“There’s no one here by that name,” he continues, leaning over the desk to move and click the mouse around. Another field appears on the screen, and the whole thing refreshes. “But there’s a Natalie Orfeo who’s listed as being in Belle Plain. That’s in Texas, apparently.”