Inner Circle

by Y A Marks

  “So, you are still getting into trouble?” She giggled.

  “Dhyyyyy-la. I stay out of trouble. I don’t need to be some statistic. I’m smart.” A spark of pride filled me.

  “Paeton, you have to let your guard down sometimes.”

  “Nope!” I said in a light tone. “Not me.”

  “You’re going to stay away from the Rebels then?”

  “Rebels? Are you crazy?” I sat back and took a sip of my coffee. It tasted weird, a bit flat. But I didn’t want to offend her, so I kept my opinion to myself. “You know I just saw some jerk who thought he was all high and mighty. Some guy with gray eyes and a smirk that wouldn’t quit.”

  “Gray-Eyed Fox?” Dhyla asked.

  “Yeee-ah.” The word came out of my mouth oddly. Did I tell Dhyla about my nicknames? I didn’t remember telling her this. Where was I? When was this?

  I glanced at Perimeter Market, which looked brand new. Better than even I remembered it. I focused on Dhyla’s face, but the details blurred. I took another sip of the coffee. What kind was this? This definitely wasn’t chocolate crème mocha. I never remembered Dhyla giving me coffee that tasted this bad.

  “I thought you said you wanted to join the Rebels, Escerica?” Dhyla asked.

  I almost spit out the coffee. A crackle of laughter burst through my mouth. I coughed out a few coffee drops going down my windpipe. “What have you been smoking, Dhyla? I thought you told me to stay away from them.”

  “Oh, then why do they want you around?”

  “Want me around? They don’t want me. You asked me to join. Don’t you remember that?”

  “A few days ago,” she said.

  “Yeah, duh. Dhyla, I think you need to take a break. You’re starting to lose it.”

  “You’re special. You have some kind of specialness about you.”

  I shuffled a bit in my seat. Confusion flooded through my mind. She was hinting at my good luck charm—the “imitation game” that I could play with the computer systems. But she knew all of that. Why was she asking me such redundant things? “You already know what I can do—with the computers and ATMs and such.”

  “The computers?”

  My brain burned. Thousands of flames licked my cerebrum. I squeezed my skull with my hands. “Yes, my good luck charm, my super ability to—Ow, my head!”

  The café dissolved into tiny particles until nothing had shape. It was just globs of the lightest of colors. The blobs circled and shrunk until they became darkness again.

  ***

  White light cut into my irises as I woke. A padded room stretched around me. I was no longer bound but lay on the floor. The dream with Dhyla had been etched in my short term memory but faded away. While I couldn’t remember everything exactly, I had an itch in my gut that Clarisse drew information from me. She needed what was in my head and would do anything to get it. If she had information about Escerica she could infiltrate it. If she had knowledge about me she could use it to get what she wanted from me. I shivered, wondering if this drug-induced dream was just the beginning.

  I gazed into the vanilla blankness of the room, refusing to go to sleep. I stood and paced. A half-sphere made from dark glass hung from the ceiling. I was sure that behind the glass a camera focused on my every move. When I urinated in the corner, it followed me. When I vomited because of the smell of my own feces, it recorded me. I was a rat in a cage.

  My mind spun and everything inside of me ached as though my skin, muscles, and bones cried out to be free. To run the streets of Atlanta and to be away from this padded whiteness.

  “Agrahhhh!” I screamed. Over and over I screamed to the top of my lungs. My chest was raw. My throat burned, but I yelled. I never stopped. Even when my vocal cords were so shredded that my voice cracked, I still forced myself to make noise.

  It felt like days had passed, but that couldn’t be true. I’d be dead from dehydration in seventy-two hours. After living on the streets, the timelines the Grim Reaper had set for all of us set in my head: three days for water, twenty-one for food. For someone like me, I’d be lucky to make it fourteen days without food. I was too small, too thin. I was a common anomaly living every day in plain sight of those who say I shouldn’t exist—a sixteen-year-old, ninety-six-pound girl, standing a whopping five foot four, who robbed banks.

  As time ticked on, I wondered about Rylan. Was he okay? He floated in my mind’s eye. My hands reached out to him as though he was in the room with me. When he faded away, I wrapped Mari and Miko up in my empty arms and gazed at their invisible faces as though they held me too. After they went off to play, I talked with Dhyla’s ghost, but I was so hoarse I couldn’t say anything aloud.

  Insanity toyed with my brainstem. Was this the point, to drive me crazy in a room of nothing where all I could do is think, defecate, and vomit?

  Focusing my mind, I circled the room. Around and around I went.

  “Keep walking,” I told myself.

  If I could continue, then maybe, I had a chance. They controlled me when I slept. They probed my mind, and I couldn’t stop the flow of information.

  My body weakened. My mouth dried and every joint ached. My vision came and went. White faded into black which lightened back to white. It was a never ending cycle. The black times grew longer and the white ones flashed for only an instant.

  I collapsed. The darkness, the beautiful, relaxing night within my mind, took me away.

  CHAPTER 5

  Something struck me. My eyes popped open, and I blinked several times as I reoriented myself. I was in a room that I had never seen before. The walls were far away, but shiny bits of something reflected in patterns. I had no way of knowing if the patterned bits were attached to the walls, but they created the illusion that something solid was a dozen yards away. Everything felt solid and didn’t have the dusty haze that represented a dream or drugs.

  There was no color and no black. A bright light hung over me, but as I searched the distance, I couldn’t find where the shadows ended. They just dipped into a dark, colorless mass, but never became truly black. I could always see something within even the deepest gray.

  My body was strapped to a chair, but this chair was very different from the one in the white room. Each piece of my body was locked in place. I could move my head, neck, and a little of the top of my torso, but nothing else would budge.

  Prickly panic crawled into my limbs. I squinted in the light searching what was holding my body and hands in place. A thick, plastic cast surrounded my stomach area. The cast had to be at least six-inches-high. Nylon straps linked to it, stretching around both sides. My upper and lower arms were also held in place by the same things. As I struggled, a light winding noise spilled into the air. Each strap increased its grip, until even being motionless hurt.

  I couldn’t see my hands. They were buried inside what looked like the fists of a giant android. My torso twitched as the tiny, creeping legs of fear scurried up my back. I wondered if this was the process for being turned into something robotic. Did they chop up my body from here? Would I be just a brain and spinal cord attached to motorized arms and legs for the rest of my life? Would I seek to kill others like me who defied the government? Would the others know that it was my eyes that captured them for a warped justice?

  I screamed. Even my shredded vocal cords couldn’t hold back. My voice was shrill, oscillating in and out of volume by my strained throat. My heart raced, and my lungs pulsed. A cold—a deep, chilling cold buried itself deep within my bones.

  I shuffled around, spinning my head from left to right, struggling to see behind me and trying to understand the tiny objects in the gray shadows. My mind wrestled with all kinds of horrid imaginations. Who was watching me? What was watching me? The smell of blood found my nose, filling me with the aroma of death.

  The motors wined and the straps cut into my skin. The continuous cycle of fear mentally and physically crushed my body.

  A noise clattered, bouncing off the walls. I couldn’t pinpoin
t the sound. It came from everywhere at once. Several clicks followed with the same surrounding effect. Then, all sorts of noises: slithers, pops, clangs, footsteps, and then screams. But they weren’t just any screams; they were mine. The screams were from the padded, white room. Each echo of what I said and done played out. My eyes zigzagged in their sockets, trying to find something solid to focus on. If I hadn’t already lost my mind, it dissolved under the strain. My sanity slipped away into the grayness.

  A deep voice that sounded partially digitized echoed around me. “We will ask you a series of questions. We expect the correct answers.”

  It took a moment for me to find the words. I didn’t know where I was, what reality was, and what fantasy was. After a few moments, I stuttered. “I…I don’t have any answers. I don’t know anything.”

  The voice repeated the message.

  “I…I don’t know any. I don’t...” I said.

  A hologram appeared before me. I could barely see it in the harsh light.

  “Pay attention,” the voice said.

  As my head twitched, my eyes strained to absorb every colored pixel of information. There was a figure of a man locked in a chair with the same types of things over his hands and feet that I did.

  I stretched my neck forward. My head passed through the hologram, but I had to know if those things were on my feet too. A huge metal box type thing wrapped around my feet and ankles. My toes refused to wiggle. They wouldn’t—couldn’t move.

  “Pay attention,” the voice reminded me.

  I yanked my head back to watch the hologram.

  The hologram zoomed in on the man’s left hand and left foot, creating a split screen effect. Cylinders no larger than a half-inch in diameter had a glowing highlight around the base. There were exactly five cylinders for the hand and five that were in a row for the feet. My gaze shook and rattled between the hologram and my own hands. In less than a second, I identified all five cylinders.

  Something happened on the hologram, but I missed it. My attention locked back to the hologram as the animation played again. A needle was inside the cylinder. It shot down through the man’s fingernail into the finger and stopped at the bone before retracting.

  Everything inside of me went numb.

  I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. My mind transfixed on what was happening. The needle moved over slightly and repeated the strike animation. The hologram displayed the words “10 Fingers, 10 Toes, 25 Strikes Each.”

  My breath left me. It was stuck between my mouth and my lungs, held there by an increasing prickly fear that cut into my throat. My chest quaked. I squirmed in the chair, trying everything, but my body couldn’t move. The chair wouldn’t budge. I gasped for air and tears welled in my eyes. Twitches started beneath my stomach and spread out into my limbs, constantly increasing in strength.

  “I don’t know anything. I don’t know. I don’t know. Please, I don’t know. God, I don’t know!” I repeated the words over and over and over again. Someone had to hear me. Someone had to care.

  Everything within me vibrated and ached at the thought, the mere concept, of what was about to happen. A flood of worry turned panic blasted through me. Tears slid from my eyes as the last threads of hope escaped me. I couldn’t leave this place and this was now my fate. I was about to be tortured and then I was going to die.

  The voice radiated around me. I snapped to attention, trying to listen.

  “Where are the other Escerica bases?” the voice said.

  My voice was lost. I didn’t know. I had never been anywhere. I tried to think about the maps that Rylan used to look at. But he had never shown me anything. There were other places because of the plane I had seen take out the third drone. But I didn’t know.

  The number five appeared in the hologram and started counting down.

  “I…I.” I shook my head and braced myself for what was about to happen. But which finger or toe? How should I prepare? There were too many thoughts, too many scenarios. It was overwhelming.

  The hologram hit zero. On cue came a deep, quick prick in my right thumb. At first, it was just like I had been given a shot, but after a second it started to radiate and throb. The shock of pain blasted up my arm and into my brain where it burst, slicing into my mind, and terrorizing my thoughts.

  “Where does Escerica’s funding come from?” the voice asked.

  The answer zapped between my brain cells working to find cohesion. I remembered talking to someone about sympathizers in the Upper-Cs. I stared at the numbers. My lips started to move, to say something. I wavered. How they would know I was telling the truth? How would they know if anything I said was just a lie?

  As the hologram struck the number one, I shook my head.

  My right thumb was struck again. This time, the pain was almost unbearable. The radiating throb exploded through me like my thumb had been sliced into two pieces.

  “Aghhhhh!” I cried. My voice echoed around the endless, gray room.

  The voice continued to ask questions. Most I didn’t know. A few I did. But no matter what I said, the needle came just the same. After the twenty-five strikes to my thumb, like the hologram had shown, another finger or toe became the new target. After my right thumb; came my left, ring finger; then my middle, right toe; followed by my left second toe. When a hundred strikes had passed, the torture went back to my right hand. The pain radiated and throbbed. Every nerve in my right hand was raw, torn, and broken.

  I wished my hands and feet were just cut off. I prayed. I screamed. Tears and sweat soaked into Sun Hi’s pretty blouse mixed with Rylan’s blood and my vomit.

  After a while, I didn’t even know what I said—if I said anything. The radiating shocks faded away. My mind drifted to the gray shadows at the edge of the room. The faint voices of Clarisse and the mystery man swirled like dust in the room. I wanted to think, but I couldn’t. It was too much. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t have any more left.

  My head fell forward, and my eyes closed. Someone entered the room and moved closer to me. I wasn’t sure who it was at first because my mind was adrift.

  “Do you think you have what you need?” the man asked.

  “It’s enough,” Clarisse’s voice answered. “I’d hoped for more, but she doesn’t know much at all. She’s like you said, just a random pawn.”

  Someone touched my neck. The fingers were like fire, but it was probably because my body was so cold. Footsteps rumbled into the room. The straps on my arms, legs, and torso were released, and I fell onto a soft, curved surface. As my body was taken away, the sounds diminished, and I drifted into my mind once more.

  ***

  My eyes forced themselves open. Warm sleep hugged my torso and stroked my head. Through heavy blinks, I saw a man’s back. He stood by the hospital gurney that I lay upon, staring at the news on a monitor that was mounted on a wall.

  Struggling to stay awake, I glanced at my hands and toes. My wrist was handcuffed to the gurney, but I rotated my hand enough to see it bandaged. I mentally searched for any signs of pain, but everything felt fine.

  I fought whatever forced me back into sleep, but it was difficult. I didn’t have much energy, although I didn’t feel as weak as I had in the gray room.

  Screams rolled through the area, a high-pitched, angry voice.

  I glanced at video monitor. Was I dreaming? I had to be. There was a person who looked just like me, cursing the police, and throwing up obscene hand signs to the camera. She was dragged by two police officers into a door at the edge of a courtroom. The camera panned over to a judge, who wiped her brow. The judge stood and the bailiff dismissed the court.

  The camera cut to a reporter. “We’ve just learned that Ms. Paeton Audrey Washington, the head of the rebel organization known as Escerica, has been sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole. She will begin her sentence immediately at the Georgia Northeast Maximum Security Prison.”

  Anger and frustration churned over my heart. I balled my fists and struggle
d against the restraints on the gurney. “What? I never—I didn’t… go to court…” I mumbled. “When did I… get my day in court?”

  The man in front of the gurney spun around and smiled. He turned a knob at the bottom of an IV. After a few seconds, I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.

  ***

  I woke up some time later. I drifted in and out of consciousness until I could finally maintain the current reality. Sitting up in bed, I glanced around a normal looking hospital room. There was nothing weird or odd about it. Everything was calm. A few beeps from machines interrupted the silence. A standard hospital gown covered me, and my clothes were nowhere to be seen.

  Next to the bed was a movable table with a plate of covered food. I opened the cover and saw a bowl of warm soup, applesauce, and mashed potatoes. Groggy, I fumbled with the eating utensils because they were wrapped in a tiny, plastic bag. Once free, the fork fell to the ground, but I had a good grip on the spoon.

  A few, wavering thoughts passed through my fragmented brain. Should I eat anything? There were too many drugs in me. I couldn’t stay awake. I could barely think. If I continued like this, I’d be worthless.

  I forced the potatoes into my mouth. My mouth slogged on the one spoonful. My teeth pressed down and my tongue rolled in slow motion. After about twenty minutes, the potatoes were in my stomach. I felt like me again, but I couldn’t concentrate. My mind fought against sleep. I needed to be awake to sort out fantasy and reality.

  The soup went next, but it was cold and tasted awful. I needed my strength so I forced it down. I just hoped it wasn’t poisoned. By the time I finished the applesauce, I sat up on my own and moved my legs and arms with ease.

  I glanced at the IV. I hated that people put these things in me when I wasn’t conscious. I considered removing the needle, but I didn’t know what they were putting in me, good or bad. For now, I decided to leave it.

  Flexing my fingers, my gaze lingered on the bandages that were taped around them. Fear gripped me. I didn’t want the anguish of torture to haunt me anymore. I didn’t know if I could handle it.