by Alice Reeds
“I’m not sure I want to know,” I said, my voice coming out hoarse, “but I’d guess they were running a test or trial, and it obviously didn’t work out the way they expected. Considering how some of the others around the Villa look, they weren’t doing this for the first time. They look so dazed and detached, like their minds are just absent altogether.”
“And that guy, he was so out of it. Just thinking about us…”
“Stop.” I pulled back and took her face into my hands. Her eyes met mine with confliction, fear, and hurt evident in them. She didn’t deserve this, none of it. Neither did the others, past, present, and future. “Don’t even think about that. I won’t let the same happen to us.”
“But there’s nothing we can do.”
“We have our map. If we find a way, we can get out, and then we can send every authority on the planet after these bastards.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
She was right, it wasn’t nearly as simple as that. We’d tried breaking out before, and because of that I still couldn’t sleep on my right side, but there had to be a way—something, anything. I was sure we’d manage to find it. We’d gotten so far, this couldn’t be the end for us. Thirty-nine percent didn’t leave us much time, especially if we’d fallen that far in just a few days. Complete failure could be only a few more days away, and I was terrified more than I could even comprehend, but that didn’t matter. Only getting out of here did.
Would we be the same beyond these walls, our feelings? What if it hadn’t been real—
Stop!
“What we need are allies,” I said, forcing myself to focus. “Four pairs of eyes and brains are more effective than two.”
Fiona frowned. “What are you saying?”
“Ivy and Wakaba. They’re the best chance we’ve got.”
Pulling out of our embrace, Fiona stepped away just a bit, the frown on her face deepening. I could see the thoughts racing through her mind, hear the gears turning, an evaluation of my idea happening in there.
“I don’t know,” she finally said, her voice neutral.
“Hear me out?” I requested.
She waved her hand as though to say the floor is yours.
“Ivy told us not to trust Briola, sign one. They caught us in that cave room and nothing happened, therefore they didn’t rat us out, and they even told us there was a time limit, sign two. They told us there’s a way to get to the medical bunker and it was the truth, sign three. Everything they’ve done so far points toward them being trustworthy, so why not use that?”
“Do we really need them, though? I mean, just because they didn’t screw us over yet doesn’t mean they won’t. What if they get scared and do something stupid? Or turn us in to save their own backs?”
“They could think the same of us. They got themselves in a bad position, as well, in that cave, and yet they trusted us. Just think about it. They’ve been here longer than we have, they know the place better, and perhaps together we’ll be able to figure something out.”
Fiona pursed her lips and looked away, then walked a little in one direction and then the other, clearly giving it thought. “We’ve come this far on our own, why shouldn’t we be able to go the rest of the way alone? We managed to get off the island without them.”
“We didn’t do it completely on our own,” I argued. “Joe helped us out.” Help, though, was possibly a stretch. He was potentially an actor in their play as well, just following direction.
“You have a point,” she admitted, although begrudgingly. “Still…”
Reaching out, I took her hand and stopped her from pacing. “Sometimes you have to have a little faith, put your trust in others, to reach a common goal.”
Her mouth quirked up to one side. “You know I’m incredibly bad with that.”
“And yet you’re able to trust me…”
Coming closer, she put her hand on my waist, her eyes not leaving my face. “That’s different. I know you, and over time you’ve shown me that I have reason to trust you, even with our stupid files—” She cut herself off, reconsidered her words. They were getting under our skin, no matter how much I didn’t want it to happen or tried to block it out. “My point is we know each other,” she continued, “but we don’t know Ivy and Wakaba.”
“And it’ll stay that way if we don’t give it a shot. How about we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?” Fiona raised one eyebrow inquisitively.
“The second you get a bad feeling about this, about them, or anything that makes you think we can’t trust them, we stop. We make a new plan.”
“And you have no say in it?”
“According to my file, I’m a naive idiot with a stupidly high IQ, so you’re probably better at judging things than I am.”
“Ha.” It was nice to see her smile again. “That’s all bullshit, and you know it.”
I didn’t. But now wasn’t the time for that.
“So, what do you say?” I said, extending my hand to shake. “Do we have a deal?”
A small nod, and then she shook my hand.
…
The cave-like room was far brighter the next day, the sky cloudless and an almost anime-like blue. Ivy and Wakaba sat on the floor on a set of cushions they must’ve brought with them, their backs against the wall, their hands intertwined as they spoke quietly about something. Wakaba looked at Ivy as though she was the most precious thing in this world.
“Hey,” I said, the single word strange on my tongue, the tone too light for everything that was going on.
“You’re early,” Ivy commented as she looked at the watch on her wrist. She sounded surprised, her eyes smiling. But then her expression faltered. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? That’s why you asked for a meeting?”
“You could say that,” Fiona said, the words quiet but accented with a sigh. We exchanged a look before we sat down opposite them on the cold, hard floor.
“There’s something we’d like to ask you, actually,” I said.
Wakaba nodded encouragingly. “Don’t be shy.”
“Things aren’t looking good for us.” I’d gone over what I wanted to say a hundred times, but now I still struggled to put it into words. “Chances are we don’t have much time left at the Villa, since our trial is failing, and you know what that means.”
Wakaba shuddered, and Ivy looked away. Ivy was the only one not affected by trials and the possibility of failing them, being sold, though we didn’t know what Briola’s plan was for her now that Joe had fulfilled his mission.
“What he’s trying to say,” Fiona interjected, “is that we want to get the fuck out of here as quickly as possible. We kind of have a plan—well, not really, but we do know that we can’t do it alone. So, we wanted to ask if you’d join us?”
I’d wondered what we would do if they said no, but the way their eyes lit up and grins spread on their faces made it clear that I’d worried needlessly. They looked at each other, silent words passing between them, before they turned back to us and nodded enthusiastically.
“You’re the ones who tried to escape the other night, aren’t you?” Ivy asked, though I was pretty sure she already knew the answer to that question.
Memories of that night flashed through my mind, followed by the bizarre feeling of being shot, of waking up from whatever they’d knocked us out with, overcome by the fear of what would happen to us.
“Guilty,” I finally said, and Fiona simply nodded. “So we know that literally running for it is not the way to go. Because I’d really prefer to avoid being shot again. Wasn’t fun.”
“Dope, also, hell yeah,” Wakaba said. “Anything to get out of this shithole. I’d rather be on the run than here.”
“Now that my father is out of the equation,” Ivy said calmly, “ain’t nothing forcing me to behave anymore. And what worse punishment
could they give me than being here? I’m more than ready to just GTFO.”
It was easy to see that Ivy tried to make it sound casual, yet there was a redness to her eyes as well as tired shadows beneath them from a night I was sure she hadn’t spent sleeping much, or at all. Her voice broke a little at the mention of her father, but I still admired her strength to at least appear tough and ready to start a riot.
“Why are you so willing to do this?” Fiona asked, her question pulling the mood back to the reality of things. “I’m sure trying to escape and getting caught will only land us on the to-be-sold list quicker, or simply shot.”
It was another level of madness that made my skin crawl and acid rise in my throat while hatred ran through my veins. What right did they have to decide that once we weren’t useful to them anymore, they could just sell us to the highest bidder like farm animals? How could Leon be on their side and watch it all happen? I wasn’t sure which made me sicker.
“Even if Ivy wasn’t bought to be here, I was,” Wakaba said, her voice far quieter now, her usual confidence dissipated like smoke.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“The person who did it told me, great-grandmother/granddaughter bonding time.” While there was anger in the way she said it, there was a sense of acceptance as well, but also something that sounded like she truly hadn’t even been surprised. Guess we weren’t the only ones with truly dysfunctional families. “Anyway, I’m on my second trial right now. So just like you, if I fail…”
None of us finished the statement for her.
Fiona’s voice cut through the silence, uncertain but pushing on. “Can I ask you something, Wakaba?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Who were you before all of this, before Briola and the Villa?”
Wakaba looked toward the window, her expression sobering. “I was just a student, a senior in high school, and the president of the mechanics club.” She rested her head against the wall behind her, her hands idle in her lap, legs stretched out before her. “My fam owns a bakery, which my brother loves, and it’s been ours since my grandpa came to the U.S. from Poland. I was more of a nerd with zero skills in the kitchen. Sad shit. Also, my ma is like a painter, but selling art ain’t easy so she, like, gives classes on the side for elderly people and bored housewives, you know, typical rich-people activity.”
At the mention of rich people, Fiona laughed. Ivy raised her brows, and Wakaba seemed lost between amusement and annoyance, maybe thinking she was being laughed at. I knew why Fiona was laughing—she was thinking of me—yet it was odd seeing her acting so openly in front of others. She said it herself, she usually hated people upon first sight. Ivy and Wakaba had won her over, though. It was a good sign, it had to be.
“I’m sorry,” Fiona said, a laughing smile still on her face. “I’m not laughing at you, I swear.”
“Why were you laughing then?” Ivy asked, a slight edge to her voice.
“Because of me,” I said. “I used to be one of those ‘rich people.’” I made little quotation marks in the air.
“And that means exactly what? If you aren’t actually Kellie and Oscar, since otherwise you wouldn’t have asked if they’re real, who were you, then?” Ivy pushed.
We told them our stories, who we were and where we’d come from. Our worlds were so different even beyond these walls, all four of us from different walks of life, and here we were, trapped together. Ivy made a joke about my clothes and was just a little offended when I said it was most likely all real.
“Blatant favoritism,” Fiona said.
“We have five minutes left,” Wakaba reminded us.
“What was your first trial?” I asked, wondering if it was similar to ours.
“Thinking back to it now, parts of it are fuzzy,” Wakaba began with a sigh. “It was about geography, arguably my worst subject ever in school. And yet, within two days I could tell you basically every capital city on this garbage planet. On the third day, I could explain in detail how to get from, I don’t know, Paris to Almaty. It’s like my brain suddenly got this inexplicable upgrade I didn’t ask for. I’d go to sleep and wake up with knowledge I certainly didn’t have before.”
That seemed like a far more useful trial in the context of the whole “supposed to be used by the military one day” thing, unlike ours.
“And how did you fail that?” Fiona wondered. “Doesn’t necessarily sound like something easy to fuck up.”
“By day five, I kept on getting these killer headaches, which got only worse and worse by the hour. There was a ringing in my ears, and my heart would occasionally race so much I thought I was gonna have a cardiac arrest. I couldn’t sleep or eat, and I definitely couldn’t fucking think. Even the easiest question, what’s the capital city of the United States of America, was too hard for me to answer.” She paused for a moment and shook her head. “At some point I knocked myself out with a hardcore nosebleed. So, on day six, the morning after, I woke up in the med bunker with no recollection of how I got there, what happened, barely even able to remember my own name and age. Eventually that returned, but all the geography stuff, gone like it’d never been there.”
It sounded impossible, like something from a movie that would never happen in real life, and yet I knew she spoke the truth. We’d seen them torture that poor girl, so messing with Wakaba’s brain enough to almost kill her and break her memory didn’t seem like such a farfetched concept.
“So yeah, that sucked,” she said with a shrug, signaling the end of that discussion. “Now, what’s the plan? We have, like, only two minutes left.”
I nodded, gathering my thoughts, and then said, “We need a layout of the Villa. We already have a rough map, so it’s more in the sense of which hallways are frequented by staff and what places to avoid altogether. More intel on the staff in general would be useful, too.”
“Who’s your caretaker?” Wakaba asked.
“Pamela Jackson.”
Ivy pulled a grimace. “When I first came here, I was on your floor, so she was my caretaker, and wow she drove me up the walls with her overly friendly and fake approachable personality. Like, fuck off, woman, no one wants to be your friend or even be here.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I agreed.
Fiona shifted in her seat. “What about those night guards? They stick around all night, right?”
Ivy nodded. “Yes. Wakaba figured that out when she tried to sneak from her room into mine one night at like four thirty in the morning. She got an earful from the night guard for it.”
“It was terrifying,” Wakaba said. “I decided never to piss them off again after that, but they’re not on our floor anymore, so it doesn’t matter.”
An alarm that sounded like the one we had back at school, high-pitched and annoying, filled the air, not too loudly, but all of us flinched. Wakaba tapped the watch on her wrist and the alarm stopped.
“Time’s up,” she said. “Tomorrow, same time, same place?”
Chapter Eighteen
The Villa
As hopeful as our meeting left us feeling, every positive mood was usually followed by a downfall, the storm just a step or two away. It didn’t happen until hours later, when Fiona and I were supposed to be asleep. Her back was against my chest, her hair lightly tickling my cheek, my arms wrapped around her.
“Miles?” her voice slipped into my mind, pulling me away from the gates of sleep.
“Yeah?” I said, my voice breaking around those four letters. “You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“What can I do?”
She remained silent at first, her breathing so calm that I thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she said, “Remember what I told you about my father on the island?”
Even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to forget it. The hurt I’d seen on her face and heard in her voice, even if she’d done he
r best to hide it, pretended that she was at fault for it all. I’d never wanted to punch anyone in the face as much as I did her father.
“Of course.”
“There was more to the story,” she admitted, her voice quiet, as though she was afraid to say it. “You were right.”
I wasn’t sure anymore who I hated more, my father or hers. I wished I hadn’t been right this time. She snuggled against me closer, like she could hide from the truth of her past if she buried herself in my embrace.
“As much as I hated the bullshit Briola tried to make us believe about us not being real, part of me longed for it to be true,” she continued. “If Fiona weren’t real, and all my memories were false, all the things my father had done would’ve also been false, and that would’ve meant that maybe he wasn’t as awful as I remember him being. But thanks to the files we know all of it is true. It’s a confirmation of all our memories and who we are, right?”
“Yes.” Kellie and Oscar were written down as V.N., which I’d concluded had to mean Villa Name. Our memories as Miles and Fiona were real, every horrible thing, every awesome thing, and everything in between.
“It’s so stupid, really.” She chuckled hollowly to herself. “I’m a damn kickboxer, I should be used to being hit as much as I’m used to hitting and kicking others. So why is this so different?”
“Because he’s your father and he, of all people, shouldn’t do it,” I said, razors sliding down my tongue and throat, the thought lighting a thousand fires in my mind.
“He was also my coach, so it’s not that unusual, and yet…”
“If he did it outside of training, it wasn’t coaching. That piece of shit.”
“He’s still my father.”
“Doesn’t change a thing. If anything, it makes it worse—you’re his daughter, fuck, nothing gives him the right to abuse you, verbally, mentally, and most certainly not physically. Even if Briola seemingly ordered him to do it.”
The way she flinched, it broke my heart all over again, the pain like being stabbed repeatedly, my anger gone and replaced by sadness and powerlessness. As much as I wanted to help her, there was nothing I could do for this. But just thinking that, didn’t it mean I was making it all about myself again? Idiot.