by Katie French
“Last room on the left,” she says, pointin’ from behind me.
I walk toward the closed door slowly, my chest tight. On the other side, I hear movement.
“Open it,” she says.
I shake my head, tuggin’ again on my cuffed wrists. “You open it.”
Nessa takes a deep breath like a frustrated mother tryin’ to deal with her disobedient brat. Before she can discipline me, the door opens on its own.
Light blinds me. Then, as my eyes adjust, a man in operating scrubs comes into focus. Inside the room sits an operating table, equipped with trays of instruments—sharp scalpels, scissors, pliers.
“What’s this?” My heart’s beatin’ like a cow in a slaughter chute. I turn to run. To fight.
Something pinches my neck. I lift my hands to the spot and see my mother pulling a goddamned needle back from my skin.
“What’d you do?” I ask, my legs already numb. I turn to face her, to strangle her with my cuffed hands, or run, but it’s like someone pulled a drain at my feet and all my blood’s running out. My arms sag, my head droops. The landscape of the hallways goes fuzzy.
God, I’m fading.
“What’re…you gonna… do ta me?” I slur. Everything’s tilting. Blurrin’ all to hell.
“Clay, honey, don’t you worry,” she says coyly as her assistant grabs under my armpits and drags me to the table. I try to fight, but my body’s just air. I’m floatin’.
They lay me down. I wanna run. Wanna fight. My eyes lock on the scalpel blade, glistening in the light. “Don’t.”
Above me, blurred into three shapes, my mother smiles. She raises the scalpel. “We’ve just got a few things to take care of.”
Chapter 6
Riley
I lie face down in the dirt, letting the pain from my back wash over me. Waves of agony roll up and down my body. The dirt is hot on my cheek and stones dig into my palms and knees, but it’s nothing compared to the howling skin on my back. Am I cut open? Bleeding? It feels like it. My shirt clings to my skin like wet paper. Something warm and wet runs down my ribs and pools under my stomach. Bile rises in my throat.
A hand cinches my arm and pulls. Pain flares along the skin of my back, sharper than before. I stagger to my feet and look at the guard who’s beaten me; his face shows no mercy. He lifts one corner of his mouth and points to a twenty-by-twenty concrete building. When I stare at him, he jabs his finger at the building again.
“Go wash up,” he says, frowning under his big bushy mustache. He’s got dark eyes covered with heavy eyebrows that match his moustache. The shapeless hat, button-down shirt and jeans are standard, but in his hip pocket he’s shoved a book of what? Puzzles? Sudoku. “Hurry up. Be in the warehouse in ten minutes.”
I say nothing and stagger toward the washhouse with my arms wrapped around myself.
The washhouse is cool and dark. Two-foot-tall windows run along the top of the white concrete walls. Three porcelain sinks with metal faucets come into focus, and, beyond that, five open stalls hold rusty toilets. On the other side of the room are concrete stalls. Showers? A shower would feel wonderful, but even if they work, I can’t afford to undress. Not when I told Doc I wanted to be a bender.
Goddamn Doc. He acted like he would help me and instead ordered a beating. I shouldn’t have trusted him, but what choice did I have? He would’ve found out my secret anyway. And yet, as far as I know, he didn’t tell them my secret.
I limp over to a metal mirror, grip one of the sinks and look at my reflection.
My face is boney, my cheeks sunken. Dirt smudges one cheek and my clothes. My short black hair stands up in lop-sided spikes. Slowly, I tug up my sticky shirt and turn around to see the damage, but I can’t. I guess I haven’t been injured too bad or there’d be more blood.
When I try the faucet, a small trickle of water dribbles out into my hands. The water is cool and tinged with brown, but it smells clean enough. I run handfuls over my face, neck, and hair. I scoop handfuls onto my back, which stings. Then I lean my face under the facet and gulp water. The cool water is so satisfying I could cry.
Someone knocks hard on the entrance. “Time’s up.”
When I walk out, the guard points with his baton to the large warehouse. He leads me to the open doors, my nerves bundling into a knot.
The warehouse is a large, rectangular building with high, arched ceilings. Skylights throw down squares of light. Rows and rows of tables are laid out around the concrete floor. Benders sit on stools, hunched over their work. In the back, heavy machinery hisses and chugs loudly. They must have electricity here. The benders who work the machines wear goggles, gloves, and heavy boots, but others seem to be working with hardly any protective gear at all. The air is punctuated by all kinds of smells—acrid, smoky, metallic. My eyes scan the different stations, noting each item for its potential use. There’s a lot of great bludgeoning material here, but the guards have guns.
The guard shoves my shoulder with his baton to propel me further in the warehouse. I walk past large metal presses. One bender pushes down a lever with a grunt, and something falls with a clink into a barrel on the floor. The next table I pass has several cauldrons the size of soup pots, each melting metal. Around the tables are bins of what looks like copper scrap. One bender walks over and scoops up a bucket of scrap and walks it to the cauldrons.
“Bullets,” I say, staring in wonder.
The guard shoves the tip of his baton between my shoulders and pain flares up my spine. “Yeah, bullets,” he says. “Got plenty. And plenty of guns, too. Don’t go getting any clever eye-deers.”
I glower, but say nothing. He shoves me farther into the loud, hot building.
As I walk past tables, benders lift their eyes to me, dismiss me and go back to their work. Scarred fingers and burnt hands fold copper casings back and seat lead bullets into their new homes. When I walk past an aging bender, his coarse gray hair sticking out from his head like porcupine quills, he fumbles a newly seated bullet and it clatters onto the concrete. The guard herding me stops. Before I can turn around, a whistling noise cuts through the air; a loud crack and an agonizing cry follow.
I whip around to see the old bender fall off his stool and roll onto the concrete, holding his shoulder.
Another bender at the table—this one younger and more spry, with long brown hair plaited in Indian braids—jumps up with a cry of indignance. “Hey, Bukowski, lay off the baton,” he growls.
“That’s Mr. Bukowski to you,” the guard says. “Or Your Supreme Highness. Or Big Daddy. Either way.” One side of his mustache twitches up with glee. “You want a nice crack to match?” He lifts the baton.
Indian Braids backs down, helps the beaten bender off the floor, and both of them hunch over their work.
Bukowski turns back to me, jabbing with that damned baton. He speaks into my ear over the noise of the hissing machinery. “We don’t put up with tomfoolery here at Merek Bullets and Ammo. Lazy asses are properly dealt with.” He flexes his baton between both hands and smiles at me.
“And how are bastard guards dealt with?” I mumble under my breath, though no one can hear over the din. I picture several forms of punishment for this particular bastard as he prods me on.
We stop at the back, near a singed metal table. The concrete wall and floor are also charred like there’s been a fire or explosion. Even the air seems charged to blow. As I scan the table, the fine hairs on the back of my neck rise. Handcuffs are welded to the metal table. Down at the far end a petite bender works, cuffed, her chains clanging against the surface as she reaches for a metal spoon. When she lifts her eyes, I recognize Nada. Her swollen, broken face and sunken eyes look dead in this light. If she’s chained up here, they must’ve recognized her after all.
Hands on my wrists jar me from my thoughts. The guard yanks me toward the table.
“Why do I have to be chained up?”
The guard’s mustache twitches up again. “Some of you benders got a chunk of concre
te in your head instead of a brain,” he yells. He taps the baton on the top of my head, leans in, and whispers in my ear, “A little time in the powder will do ya.”
“Time in the powder?” I look to Nada, but she won’t meet my eyes. The cuff bites into the flesh on my wrist with metallic clicks.
“Nada’ll tell you what to do. If you can stay alive long enough to learn that is.” The guard swaggers off, his baton tapping his thigh to the jagged rhythm of the machines.
My cuffs are metal, solid, and completely tamper-proof. A long chain gives me about three feet of movement in any direction before it’s stretched tight against the loop welded to the table. I look at my tablemate. Nada’s hunched over a large stone mortar and pestle, grinding black powder. I watch her for a while, her thin arms cranking.
I take a deep breath and yell over the percussive sound of machinery. “Is it gun powder?”
She keeps grinding, her eyes down. “I shouldn’t talk to you.”
“That guard said you’d show me the ropes.” I look at the other mortar and pestle. “This job’s not exactly intuitive.”
She says nothing. Her arm pumps up and down.
As I watch her, a fire begins to kindle in my brain. I helped her escape, probably saved her life, and the thanks I get is silence? “Hey!” I shout. “Hey!”
“What?” she asks, her eyes flaring as they meet mine.
“Ol’ Pokey over there—”
“Bukowski.”
“Bukowski,” I repeat, nodding toward the guard with the baton, “is gonna come back, and if I’m standing here with my thumb up my rear, he’s gonna take another whack at me with his happy stick. If he does, I’m gonna remind him that you’re not only a runaway, you’re an unhelpful one at that.” I throw my hands up, forgetting they’re cuffed to the table. The chain clangs against the welded hook.
Nada’s eyes linger on my chains. “I wasn’t talking to you because being seen with me is social suicide. Nobody respects a runaway who gets brought back. Plus, the guards’ll be hard on anyone who talks to me, so you best stay away.”
“The other benders should feel sorry for you,” I say, looking at her broken face.
Nada scoffs, her big eyes widening. “These lemmings?” She points around the warehouse. “They hate me. I remind them that there’s no way out.”
I shake my head. “That’s not true.”
Nada narrows her eyes. “You think you have the answer? You think you can get to the free colonies?”
I blink at her words. “Free colonies?”
Her expression darkens. She grabs the other mortar and pestle, shoves it in my direction, and nods at a bucket of black powder. “Grind,” she says. “But be careful.”
I think about asking about the free colonies, but Bukowski strolls by, twirling his baton on one finger. He twitches his mustache and winks at me. I drop my eyes and grind, the smell of charcoal and chemicals flooding my nose. It’s hard work. Before long, my arms and shoulders burn. Blisters form under my handcuffs and then pop and ooze. I look over to see if Nada’s having the same trouble, but she’s still grinding through batch after batch of gun powder like it’s the easiest thing she’s ever done. After an hour, she lets me stop and shows me how to measure out the three ingredients needed to make the powder. Then we grind some more. Though my arms ache, I get used to the hissing and chugging, the smell of explosives and the chains on my arms. It’s grueling work, but it passes the time.
When the sun slinks low, a bell clangs. All the benders look up from their work, set down their tools and shuffle single file out the door. Nada sighs and keeps grinding.
“We get to eat?” I ask, setting down my pestle. My right arm feels like it’s about to fall off and my stomach’s flip-flopping at the thought of food.
Nada shrugs boney shoulders. “Maybe. If Doc can put in a good word.”
“You and Doc are close?”
Nada looks around. The sound of the machines has mostly died down, so it’s the first time it’s been quiet since I walked in. Everyone has gone and it’s just her and I in the big empty warehouse. She whispers as she measures out more powder. “He’s my brother.”
“But you’re both benders. I mean, he’s not even a he.”
Nada frowns. Clearly, I’ve offended her. Or him. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was the only bender in my town, so I’ve never spent a lot of time around others.”
“Guess you get to make up for lost time,” Nada says, setting her concoction down on the metal table.
“So, do you go by he or she? Or…something else?” I ask. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me. I’ll figure it out.”
Nada stretches her fingers slowly and then her neck. “It’s all right. You don’t mean to be stupid. It’s better than most that you even care to ask.” She looks me over and begins. “Around here, benders pick a gender. Usually you’re a little more male or a little more female. Up here.” She gestures to her chest. “Or down there.” She gestures to her pants.
I feel a blush burn up my neck, but I nod, wanting to know more.
“Sometimes you can’t really tell if you’re more boy or girl, so you just pick. Or you decide you don’t care what your body looks like, you just wanna be one or the other.” Nada raises her eyes to the ceiling like she’s remembering something. “Jason always said I should just embrace my femininity, but women are the weaker sex. Everyone calls me ‘she’ anyway.”
“Jason?” I ask.
“Oh, I mean Doc.”
I look at her, suddenly wondering if she knows my secret.
Nada watches my face and finally nods. “Doc told me about you.”
“He told you!” Panic blares in my brain. “Who else did he tell?”
“Don’t worry. My brother and I don’t talk to the other benders.”
I flick my eyes around the room again just to be certain we’re alone. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“Why try to hide as a bender?” she whispers. “Tell them you’re a girl. Being a wife would be much better.”
I think of the gold ring resting under my shirt. Of Clay’s blue eyes. “I’m spoken for.”
Nada snorts. “You mean owned.”
I shake my head, almost angry. “Clay doesn’t own me. We’re…together.”
“Women aren’t free. No more than benders are.” She lifts her hands to show the chains.
I nod and go silent a while, mulling all this over. Finally, I take a deep breath and ask. “You mentioned free colonies?”
Nada’s face darkens and her body stiffens. “We shouldn’t talk about that here.” She picks up the mortar and pestle again and starts grinding. I watch, mulling over her words. If there are such things as free colonies, I need to know about them. When I find Auntie and figure out a way to break out of here, I’ll have a place to take her. Then I can go after Clay and Ethan.
Thinking about them forms a lump in my throat so big I can barely swallow. Tears prick at my eyes and I rub at them with my tired, dirty hands. I turn my thoughts to Bukowski and his beatin’ stick. The thought of me using it on him is enough to quell my sadness for a moment.
Like I’ve summoned him with my thoughts, Bukowski strolls in, twirling his baton. He walks over to us and produces a set of keys. When he unlocks my wrists, the sudden impulse to bolt out the door swells big as a tick on a dog. But that’d be stupid. I’d be shot before I even made it to the wall.
He unlocks Nada, who keeps her head down. Then he points to the open doorway. “March,” he says. “Let’s go, dummies.”
Nada starts walking and I follow. “We gonna eat?” I ask.
The guard jabs my shoulder with his baton again. “Did I say talk, idiot? Or are you mentally challenged? Don’t understand Eng-lish?” He enunciates the word, smirking.
I hate Bukowski.
We walk through the sweltering, dusty courtyard toward the back wall. A smaller warehouse has been converted into a cafeteria. Benders sit on the floor or in plastic chairs. They eat gray slop ou
t of bowls with spoons or their fingers. My stomach growls, but what they’re eating, a mixture that looks like wet cement, does not look appetizing. I remind myself that I have to eat to keep up my strength.
Bukowski herds us to the front of the small cafeteria and up to a serving window. Two men in messy cook aprons wait for us with bowls. I accept mine and realize its cold. Whatever we’re eating either hasn’t been cooked or was cooked long ago. I flick a glance at Nada to see her reaction to the food, but her face is as expressionless as a corpse’s.
We’re shuffled into a corner and told to sit on the concrete floor. I fold into the floor, my legs grateful for a rest. It’s been a while since I did hard labor. The last time was in the garage with Rayburn and the grease monkeys at the mall. Another pang of loss and guilt hits me. Rayburn. He rests on the hill beside my Mama. How can so many people I love be dead?
Nada has begun eating and hasn’t dropped dead yet, so I try a trembling bite of gray goop. The texture is exactly like wet cement to be, but the taste isn’t…terrible. Something like oats and honey and flour. I chew slowly and swallow, the lump moving thickly down my throat.
“Eat up. Some days we only get one meal. Tastes like dirt, but it fills your belly.” Nada speaks through a mouthful of slop.
“Full belly’s nothing to sniff at,” I say, scanning the cafeteria. I wasn’t expecting to see Auntie Bell, but I am disappointed when there’s no sign. “Hey, you wouldn’t know what they’d do with an old woman, would you?”
Nada raises curious eyes to my face. “No. Why?”
I shrug, not sure if I can trust her.
Nada acts like she’ll probe further, but then her eyes are drawn to the figure striding in the open doorway. Doc walks in, looking fresh in clean jeans, a fitted blue T-shirt, and boots. His hair is damp and combed back from his forehead, giving him a fresh out-of-the-shower appearance that makes me crave the feel of water running over my skin. Seeing him makes that angry fire rekindle in my belly. I could take a swing at him right here, but it’s a terrible idea. Still, my fists ache to connect with his face. I take a drink of water to quell the feeling.