by Roxie Ray
But when she returned to my booth with a big plate of still-steaming apple pie, a scoop of vanilla ice cream already beginning to melt against it on the side, I was too grateful and too hungry to turn her down.
“There you go, baby. This’ll fix everything. Trust Norma-Jean—she knows what she’s talkin’ about.”
She set the plate down in front of me. From a distance, the pie had looked positively mouthwatering. But now, up close, I could see that it had been expertly made, too. Even by Sector One standards, it had obviously been crafted with the finest ingredients. I could even see little flakes of vanilla bean in the ice cream. And apple…
I sighed. Apple had always been my favorite.
“Eat up, now,” Norma-Jean urged me, and after the day I’d had—the decade I’d had—I didn’t need to be told twice.
I scarfed the pie down so fast, the way the first few bites scorched the roof of my mouth barely even registered. I cooled myself down with a few spoonfuls of ice cream, then dove right back in. The apples were soft and caramelized, ooey-gooey and spiced with cinnamon. The latticed crust crumbled then melted on my tongue, dusted with sugar and perfectly sweet. I lost myself in it so completely that by the time I finally realized what I was doing, my tongue was lapping the last of the ice cream off of the plate.
“Oh, my gosh.” I grabbed a napkin to dab at my lips and leaned back into the booth, cheeks burning hot pink. “Sorry, it was just so good, and I—”
Norma-Jean only laughed. “Honey, you don’t gotta apologize. Not to me, anyway.”
I blinked as I placed the plate back down on the table. That pie had been addictively good. And even though my stomach had been practically yowling for food when I first sat down, now I felt completely full and pleasantly warm. Norma-Jean’s kindness and that one little treat had heated me all the way through.
“Thank you. That was just…incredible,” I said, still a little embarrassed. But if Norma-Jean didn’t want me to apologize—well, like she’d said, Norma-Jean knew what she was talking about. “I should…um. I should find a place to sleep for the night…”
I blinked again, feeling the warmth in my belly radiate all the way through me. Only, it wasn’t just warmth anymore. It was sticky, dizzying heat, curling its fingers around my body and tugging my consciousness down toward a soft, dark sleep.
“You okay, honey?” Norma-Jean stared down at me, but she didn’t look concerned anymore. Just…interested. Like I was a fly stuck to a long strand of Section Six flypaper, and she was just studying whether I’d be able to flap my wings hard enough to get free.
“I’m…I think I must be more tired than…than I thought…” I turned my head, trying to fight the sensation. The motel was just down the road, but first I’d have to get to my car, and then…
“Aww, baby. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
I looked up at her again, hoping the sound of Norma-Jean’s voice would help keep me from nodding off right there in the booth. But as my eyes met hers, I didn’t find those comforting chocolate browns staring back at me anymore. Now they were…orange? Had they always been orange? And her skin…it looked…It looked yellow. That couldn’t be right. Her cheeks had been pink when I came in, but now…
“Smthins wrng,” I slurred, reaching out for her as I tried to stand.
But my legs wouldn’t hold my weight. My body was suddenly a sack of bricks, and my limbs felt like they’d been sunk into concrete.
Drugged. I’d been drugged. I’d seen a hundred different patients come into the ER in Sector One just like this—workers who’d taken a little too much of something to take the edge off at the end of their days, party girls who’d taken a sip of something awful after someone had spiked their drink.
“No, no,” Norma-Jean reassured me as the edges of my vision began to soften and fade out. “Nothin’s wrong, darlin’. In fact, everything’s just right.”
“Wht wz it?” My tongue was so heavy, it might as well have been made of lead. Every time I tried to open my lips, they felt like they’d been glued shut “Th ize crem, or th pie?”
The last thing I heard as my vision faded to black were her words, distorted and deepened, slow as cold molasses to my ears.
“Oh, honey. You know better than that. It was both.” A laugh like a haunted clown doll’s echoed all around me. “But don’t you worry, girl. I’m about to take you out of a whole world of pain. Just like I promised…”
2
Bria
When I woke up, I woke up slowly. There was no other choice. Whatever drug I’d scarfed down with the pie and ice cream in that diner didn’t want to take its claws out of me. Not at first. Instead, I drifted somewhere between consciousness and dream for what could have been hours, could have been days as the drug worked its way out of my system.
I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know how I got here. I didn’t even know what day it was, what month. But when I opened my eyes, as the blurriness faded out and my vision sharpened, I was able to determine one thing.
I was in a room. A small, stark, almost blindingly white room.
Something told me that couldn’t be good.
It looked like the queen of bad decisions had struck again. Going into that diner—bad decision. I should have just ignored my aching stomach, saved my money and gone straight to bed. Telling Norma-Jean that I was on the run from my husband with no one to turn to, completely alone in the world—that was another bad move if ever I’d heard of one. I’d handed her the keys to the castle there. I had told her that anyone looking for me wouldn’t be surprised when they couldn’t find me, and that there was no one expecting me at my journey’s end. And eating that pie—I could hardly believe that I’d been so stupid. In Sector Six, I should have known better. There was no such thing as free apple pie there.
Every choice I’d made ever since I pulled off of the highway had led me to this latest disaster. The only solace I had was that when it came to bad situations, this wasn’t my first rodeo. And at least this time, I wasn’t a dumb, naive twenty-one-year-old anymore.
Whatever I’d gotten myself into, I’d need to keep my wits about me if I wanted to get myself out of it.
Of course, that was easier said than done when getting hold of said wits felt like trying to grab spaghetti noodles with buttery fingers inside my head.
Okay, Bria. It was pep talk time. Take inventory. What have you got around you? What can you use to get free?
My eyes scanned the room as I sat up. Immediately, a roaring headache crashed through my skull like a rogue wave. I blinked it away, pushing the pain back so I could maintain focus.
A sink in the corner. A toilet next to it. A showerhead with a tap beneath it. A metal shelf jutted out from the wall, containing a tar-black block that I only assumed must have been soap. On the floor, the white tiles sloped downward under the shower, leading to a few small holes in the floor that probably acted as a drain.
Okay. I had a bathroom, or most of one. That told me—what?
That I’d be here for long enough that I’d need to shower. Not a good sign.
There were no privacy curtains, either. Another bad sign. But as I looked around a little further, I decided that mattered a little less than I’d initially thought. There were no windows in the room, which was a tiny relief. At least I wasn’t going to be peeped at while I washed behind my ears.
But there was no door, either. We were back to the cons column. I didn’t even know how whoever had put me here had gotten me into the room. Every wall was exactly the same. Big square tiles, each a sterile-looking white. Above me, the entire ceiling glowed like it was all made of the same overhead light. Not blinding, but bright enough that it made my eyes ache.
I clenched my eyelids for a second and laid my head back down. There was a pillow beneath me, a little too firm for my liking, but at least it cushioned my head. I ran my fingers across my stomach, hoping to feel the comfort of the thin t-shirt I’d been wearing when I left Sector One. I’d been wearing the
same t-shirt when Michael had taken me from Sector Six, even though he’d been quick to suggest I change into an expensive dress he’d bought me instead. Instead, I only found the thin cloth of what felt like a hospital gown.
Crap. That meant someone had undressed me, taken my clothes, and redressed me in this instead. That made me feel dirty all over. After I’d decided to leave Michael, I’d made a vow to myself that the next man who touched me had to be someone who loved me. Protected me. Kept me safe.
Instead, some jerk had drugged me and stripped me down while I was unconscious. I guessed that was pretty much par for the course for me, though. I’d already broken my wedding vows. What was one more broken promise now? Just add it to the burning trash heap of others.
My fingers felt around my body next, pushing into an equally firm mattress.
Okay. So I had a bed—or at the very least, a cot. That meant that whoever had put me here at least wanted me to be somewhat comfortable. It wasn’t exactly reassuring, but at least I didn’t have to lie on the floor.
As I forced my eyes open again, the room looked like it was spinning around me. Immediately, I moved my fingers to my wrist to check my pulse. Yep—it was racing, and I knew that dizziness coupled with the tightness in my chest all too well.
Either the drugs that had knocked me out were interacting badly with my circulatory system, or I was having a panic attack. Maybe one or the other, maybe both.
Crap. Okay. That was especially not good.
I shifted myself back up into a sitting position and tucked my head between my knees, counting the tiles beneath my feet while I waited for the heart palpitations to subside. This wasn’t my first experience with a panic attack—if I was having one—either. Life with Michael had essentially been one panic attack after another. And if I’d gotten through that, I could get through this, too.
Slowly but surely, my pulse slowed back down to an almost-normal rate. Almost. But not quite.
But as my head cleared, another panic-inducing thought set in.
Who the heck had put me here, and what the heck did they want with me now that they had me?
Like some kind of higher power had been reading my mind, I heard a crackle above me like a PA being turned on. I looked upward at the glowing ceiling, searching for a speaker, but I couldn’t find any sign of one.
A brutal, snarling sound filled the room anyway. It wasn’t loud, but it was forceful enough to make me jump.
Okay, and there went my pulse again. We were right back to the heart palpitations. Great.
I shook my head and pushed myself to listen as closely to the growling as I could. I’d been drugged. Kidnapped, obviously. By who, and for what, I didn’t know—but I was in too dire of straits to let any clue I could grab hold of slip through my fingers.
If I was having another panic attack, it’d have to wait.
At first, the snarling just sounded like garbled nonsense. The kind of sound that hungry fairytale wolves might make if they were scratching at your door. But then, there at the end just as the sound ended, I thought I heard a cadence to it. Like each grunt and growl was actually forming some kind of…sentence or something.
It was a language. Just not one that I spoke. For a moment, I wondered if maybe I’d been taken overseas—but no, that couldn’t be right. Everyone in the sectors spoke English. Some of the blue-classes I’d met in Sector One spoke Italian or Spanish as well. Even Michael had spoken a little bit of French. But that sound, it wasn’t any language I’d ever heard before.
But before I could listen any further, abruptly, the snarling stopped.
That ship had sailed, then. If there were any clues that I could have gleaned from it, I didn’t have time to sink my teeth into them.
I clutched my still-aching head, cringing as I tried to puzzle out what my next move should be. Escape—that much should’ve been obvious. Would have been, too, if the haze that the drug had left on my mind hadn’t been doing such a good job of clouding my brain.
But another quick sweep of the room told me that escaping was just as futile as trying to understand foreign growl-words. I pushed myself up and staggered over to the shower, but all the fixtures were fastened too perfectly to the walls. The drain wasn’t removable. Even on my hands and knees, I couldn’t pry the tiles around it away. That left the sink, which was immovably sturdy, and the toilet—and I wasn’t exactly going to be able to flush myself to freedom.
Freedom. Just thinking the word nearly sent a sob wracking through my chest. I’d put so much into my great escape from Sector One, only to go from one prison to another.
Out of the frying pan, into another freaking frying pan. It didn’t feel fair—but in my life, what ever had?
Suddenly, out of the mists swirling around in my head, a thought caught hold of me.
Michael. Could he have been behind this? He certainly had the money for it—and the psychopathic inclination, too. But I’d been careful to leave only when I knew he’d be gone on business for long enough to give me a head start. By the time I’d reached the diner, he shouldn’t have even realized that I was gone yet.
That sent a whole new wave of awful rolling through me. This time, it was nausea-flavored. After all my careful planning, the months I’d spent sneaking around and saving every credit I could, had he actually known the whole time?
Stupid, stupid girl. Of course he had. He’d known. He’d sent people after me. He’d even calculated exactly when I’d get hungry, when I finally believed I was far enough away from him to let my guard down. To start to feel safe again. And the moment that had happened, Norma-Jean had been ready. Waiting for me. If my body hadn’t still felt so heavy from the drugs she’d fed me, I would have kicked myself for being so dumb.
But before I could try, a strange sucking sound caught my attention instead.
My gaze flickered frantically around the room in search of the source. I found it quickly, just there over the bed. A tile in the corner near the ceiling had started to shimmer, then disappeared completely. Out of it, a mechanical arm appeared with glowing, neon blue vein, maybe some kind of hydraulics system, snaking through the gaps in its gleaming white structure. The arm jutted out at first, then descended toward the mattress. Clutched in a claw at the end of the arm was a metal tray.
I scrambled to my feet, but I was too slow and stumbling still to catch it. The claw placed the tray on the bed, then disappeared back behind the tile where it’d come from before I could even try to grab hold of it.
That was…maybe a good sign. Maybe the worst sign of all. Either way, in the entire decade I’d spent in Sector One, I’d never seen anything even close to that kind of technology before. That tile hadn’t moved away. It had shimmered right out of existence.
Which told me two things, at least.
One: I wasn’t in any of the sectors. There was no way. Even the gold-classes, the people one rung above Michael in our society, didn’t have anything tech that looked like that. Which meant that this wasn’t of Michael’s doing. Which meant that I was dealing with someone—or several someones—completely new. Completely unknown.
Two: if that tile could disappear, that meant that somewhere in the room, there was a door that disappeared too. I just hadn’t found it yet.
But before I could look, my stomach yowled angrily. Now that the nausea had come and gone, in its place, hunger had set in. Suddenly, my stomach felt so empty, it made my headache intensify to a bright white flame behind my retinas.
Carefully, I hauled myself back to the bed to inspect the tray the claw had left for me.
Food—that much was clear. But there wasn’t much of it. Not nearly enough to appease the growling, writhing mass that my stomach had suddenly become. There was a rough, crusty bread, so dark it was almost black, like it had been burned. In a bowl next to it was a strange, clear pink soup. When I dipped a spoon from the tray into it, it slipped back off in globs like thin, viscous jelly. I tried to give it a sniff, but that was a losing game. It had no scent
at all.
Okay. Burned bread and weird soup. Even if I hadn’t already been drugged once in recent memory, I would’ve hesitated. Seeing as I was still recovering from the last time I’d eaten something without knowing where it came from, I pushed the tray away with a soul-aching sigh.
“We’ll eat when we’re out of here,” I told my stomach. “Promise.”
My stomach only gave me a pathetic grumble in reply.
A little while later, I still hadn’t found any tiles that budged. No signs of a door. But then, the sucking sound returned, and the claw reappeared. Gently, it lowered back down to remove the tray.
That was my cue. I scrambled up onto the bed, clinging to the wall as I tried to reach up into the hole that the claw had come from. It was pointless, though. For what was far from the first time in my life, I cursed how short I was. At five feet five, even trying to jump up off of the bed left me nearly a foot too short.
Panicking—I didn’t know when the claw would return again—I snatched at the claw itself. But as soon as my fingers closed around the mechanical arm, a searing burn scorched my hand and forced me to pull away. The claw withdrew before I could get up the courage to try again. It left me balanced precariously on the mattress, nursing a first-degree burn across the entire palm of my hand and with nothing gained from it.
I moved to the sink and ran cool water over my hand to take away a little of the sting. The whole time, I was cursing myself all over again. It wouldn’t have mattered, even if I could have somehow yanked the claw out of the wall and found a way to crawl up to the hole it came out of. When the hole was there, it was only just barely big enough to pull the tray in and out of. Maybe one of the skinny Sector One blondes could have fit through it, but with my breasts and my hips? Not a chance. At best, I would’ve gotten stuck halfway, kicking and flailing like a terrified bunny caught in a fence. Not exactly how I wanted to spend the rest of my time in the room.