by Linda Marr
I turned around. It was one of the men, thick set, his face distorted with anger. He spat at me. “Defiler!”
I held the book out to him. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry means nothing.” He pulled a knife from his pocket. “You must pay.”
He thrust the knife at my throat, I dodged away. “Stop. I didn’t do anything.”
He was moving toward me again. I screamed for help.
But no one came. Instead, behind him, there were more men moving toward us. And they weren’t coming to help me.
Now I was trapped. How could I have been so stupid to get into this situation? Had I come this far just to die?
There were more men pulling out their knives, closing in around me. There was no point in screaming again.
I said, louder, so they’d all hear me “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
It was Jax. He pushed through the crowd, and stood in front of me.
“She didn’t know what she was doing,” Jax said. “Let it go.”
The men stopped advancing toward me.
“Jeremiah values her,” Jax added, coldly.
Everyone just stood for a long moment.
Then the man who’d first confronted me backed up a step. Slowly he put the knife back in his pocket. He turned to the others, and they all tucked their knives away. Gradually they walked back to the main church, like nothing had happened.
I was weak with relief. Jax stepped up next to me.
“You okay?”
“Thank you. You saved my life.”
“Probably. Never touch one of those books. They’re sacred to them.”
“What are they?”
“Who knows. They’re religious freaks. It’s what they believe, no girls allowed, Sparkles.”
“Why do they care about the donors?”
Jax shrugged. “It’s some kind of a deal they made with Jeremiah.”
“They don’t seem like people who want to help anybody but themselves.”
“Just be cool around them. Jeremiah needs the man power,” Jax said. “You don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. At least as long as Hector keeps them in line.” He flashed me a smile, and he was off before I could ask any more questions.
I decided to go back to Jax’s room to think about what had happened. At least I could feel safe there. But I saw Hector and Gideon striding through the corridor.
“Got the keys to the van?” Hector asked.
“They’re in the garage. We’re all set to go,” Gideon answered.
Were they part of the religious group too, or were they here for Jeremiah and the donors? I should’ve asked Jax that, even though my curiosity had already gotten me in trouble once today.
Hector and Gideon stopped to talk to a couple of other men. I slipped past them, my head down, and hurried to the garage. I opened the door cautiously, for all I knew there were twenty men inside.
But the garage was empty, Jeremiah’s big white van parked all by itself. I could easily slip in the back and hide. But should I?
I hesitated. But then I heard Hector’s low growl from the hallway behind me. I didn’t have time to think about what to do. I raced to the back of the van, hoping it wouldn’t be locked. It wasn’t. I dove inside and closed the door behind me just as Hector and Gideon strode in.
If they opened the back, they’d see me, there was no place to hide, only a blanket crumpled in a corner. I threw it over me, and pressed myself against the side, hardly daring to breathe.
Just in time. They opened the front doors and slid into their seats.
Hector pulled out of the garage, going fast. Where were they off to in such a hurry?
The van jumped and swerved so much in the battered city streets that I had a hard time staying covered. I didn’t want to imagine what Hector might do if he found me now.
They were mostly silent. I pushed the blanket aside just a little so I could see a tiny slice of the city go by through the back window.
“Funny nobody’s blown up that big old shiny library yet,” Gideon smirked.
I caught a glimpse of massive granite steps leading to a square silver building.
“There’s only one book that matters, ours,” Hector laughed.
That answered one question. Hector and Gideon were just like the others.
The van twisted and turned through dozens of streets, until finally Hector screeched to a stop.
“This is it,” he muttered to Gideon. He shut off the engine, and they climbed out.
What is it? I held my breath, and waited until I heard their footsteps move away from the van. Only then did I shrug off the blanket and crawl to the back door. I inched myself up to a kneeling position and looked through the window, to make sure they were really gone. The crowd surged, but there was no sign of them.
I opened the door.
Being out in the frenetic city again after staying in the church felt like an assault. The people, the smells, the dirt, the sounds, it almost knocked me to my knees.
I pushed through the crowd until I caught sight of Hector’s back disappearing around the corner. I shoved my way through the throng and followed.
In the near distance, a plume of smoke expanded into the sky like a dirty gray flower. The explosion that followed shook the ground, and everyone scattered for cover. I pressed up against a sooty brick wall, but what good would that do if a bomb fell any closer?
But none did, and a moment later, people surged onto the streets again. Life, such as it was here, went on. A line of soldiers cut through the crowd, their faces hidden behind those dark shiny visors. The crowd split in two, letting them pass.
What had happened to Hector and Gideon? I glanced around. There, crossing at the light. I could barely see their backs as they moved through the crowd. I was smaller than they were, and it was hard to follow them, people just pushed me aside. I gritted my teeth and fought to keep moving forward without falling.
I was struggling so hard just to stay upright that I almost bumped right into them. They had veered off the sidewalk and were standing in a small clear space near a wrought-iron gate. It wrapped around what looked like a city park. But it was chained shut, and the grounds inside were tangled and long neglected.
Why did they stop there? I followed the push and shove of the crowd around the corner of the park, out of their view. I had to grab onto the iron fence to anchor myself. It was only then that I looked up.
Directly across the street was a limestone building with a distinctive stone archway - an eagle perched over the grand front doorway.
A stone eagle. I knew this building. This had to be where my mom and dad and brother lay surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands, more like them. Where I had lain myself. Naked and oblivious. How many people passed by this place every day without a clue about the horrors inside? How had this place survived the bombs? Was it just luck, or were the labs protected in some way?
Anger and fear pulsed through me. I wanted my family out, now. How easy would it be to walk over and free them this minute?
Probably not very. Somebody would stop me before I made it to the door.
Hector and Gideon were gazing at the building, talking in low voices, too softly for me to hear.
This was the donor center they were going to take pictures of. I had to know everything that was being planned.
Inching toward them through the crowd, I stopped when I was close enough to hear Hector’s voice. He was more passionate and animated that I’d ever heard him. “…embarrassed… criminally negligent….” those were the words.
Gideon was nodding. They looked like ugly bearded twins.
“…once people see those… things… half dead in those… tanks…”
A rush of hatred ran through me. Things? Those were people, donors, my family in there. These were the men who were going to rescue them?
“Once we throw the government into chaos, my men are ready to take control,” Hector
said. Gideon just kept nodding.
So, they didn’t care about rescuing the donors at all. Did they even care about Jeremiah? I didn’t think they did. It sounded like Hector thought of himself as some kind of leader. A religious leader.
“We’re ready,” Gideon said.
“Are you sure?” Hector asked.
“I know explosives. This is what I did when I worked for the government. I blew things up.”
Explosives? My heart pounded.
“Jeremiah wants a blast that’s big enough to disable the electronic waves. The ones that blur the photos.”
“And what do you want?” Gideon’s eyes didn’t leave the front of the donor center. It was as if he was already trying to figure out where he’d place his explosives.
“I want to be sure it’s big enough to destroy this place.”
Gideon’s tone grew condescending. “I can dismantle the whole building. If you think you can still get pictures.”
“Of course. Photos are photos. Who cares whether the subjects are dead or alive.”
“No –” the word escaped from my lips.
And somehow in spite of all the city noise swirling around us, Hector heard me.
He whirled, his face was livid.
I started to run but he reached me in one stride, his manicured hand clamping on my arm like steel.
“What are you doing here,” he snarled.
Gideon slipped a long thin knife from his jacket. Did all these men have knives?
“Who cares why she’s here,” Gideon moved toward me. “Nobody’ll know how she died. She’ll just disappear.”
Gideon was right up against me now, the knife glittering at my throat. If I shouted for help, no one would even hear me.
With the knife nicking my skin I blurted, “Jeremiah knows I went with you! He sent me.”
Hector knocked the knife out of Gideon’s hand. His dark eyes burning. “Damn.”
“She’s lying,” Gideon’s tongue darted out between his teeth like a snake.
“We don’t know for sure,” Hector stared at me.
I returned his gaze, defiant. Inside I was shaking. “He wants to know what you’re up to,” I said. Because all at once, I was sure he didn’t know.
“Then it doesn’t matter,” Gideon argued again, “let’s just get rid of her.”
Hector shook his head. “It matters, you fool. She’s Jeremiah’s golden girl and we don’t want him to know our plan yet. If he thinks I’ve lost his precious little donor there’ll be too many questions. And we’re too close.”
“And there won’t be questions if the girl tells what she’s heard?”
“I said we’d bring her back so Jeremiah can see her. I didn’t say she’d be able to talk.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I had to will myself to stop shaking. What were they going to do me? I was squeezed between Hector and Gideon in the front seat of the van. I didn’t want them to know how scared I was. Gideon’s knife never left his hand.
As soon as we pulled into the garage, Hector yanked me out of the cab.
“Hurry up,” he growled, grabbing me by my hair. I kicked wildly, but I couldn’t touch him.
He had me inside the church hallway, even as I struggled. I screamed, but the sound was choked off as Hector’s hand clamped over my mouth. With his other, he still held me tight in his grip.
Gideon disappeared but returned with a small black doctor’s bag. He unzipped it and I could see a syringe inside, already filled with a clear liquid. So this was how Hector was going to silence me. A drug. How would that fool Jeremiah?
Maybe it worked the way the vaccine at the farm had, and would prevent me from talking about something they didn’t want me to talk about. Or maybe it would make me sick, and silent, and then they could kill me in a way that Jeremiah wouldn’t suspect.
My eyes darted around the hall, looking for a way out. Jeremiah’s room wasn’t that far away. If I could get there, I could tell him what Hector and Gideon were planning, and what they were going to do to me.
Gideon ripped the plastic wrapping off the syringe with his teeth. He handed it to Hector – which meant Hector took his hand from my hair for a moment to reach for it. He was afraid to lift his other hand from my lips.
So I bit it. And then, for just one instant, he wasn’t touching me. I crouched low and shoved my body against Hector’s legs, knocking him off balance.
Hector was the one who shouted now, as I ran, faster than I’d ever run in my life. I dashed full-out towards Jeremiah’s door.
Hector’s footsteps were right behind me, inches away, as I flung myself against the heavy wood.
The door flew open. The fire was blazing just as it had been when I’d visited to talk about our donor lives.
Jeremiah was propped up on his sofa, everything looked so safe and warm and homey.
“Elle? This is a surprise.” Jeremiah studied me. I was panting, out of breath. “Are you alright?”
My words rushed out. “I followed Hector and Gideon to the donor center. They’re going to blow it up! They don’t care if everyone dies.”
Jeremiah arched an eyebrow. But then his gaze moved past me, and I heard the footsteps, and I knew Hector had come up behind me.
“The girl’s correct, Jeremiah,” Hector interrupted, his voice ominously low. “She stowed away in the van and secretly followed Gideon and me. Apparently she was so distressed at what she heard that she’s blown our plans all out of proportion in her silly little mind.”
I glared at Hector. “I’m not blowing anything out of proportion. You’re going to kill the donors! I heard you. You don’t care about them at all. And just now you were trying to inject me with some kind of drug to shut me up about it.”
“I was trying to give her a sedative to calm her down,” Hector said. He showed Jeremiah his hand where I’d bitten it. “She’s out of control.”
Jeremiah’s mellow voice interjected. “Elle, what you’re saying can’t be so. Hector would never hurt you. Yes, there may, unfortunately, be a few casualties at the center, but in the end all the rest of the donors… thousands of them… will be freed. I know it’s hard to separate your feelings-”
“No!” I was angrier by the second. “It’s not about my feelings! They said the whole building’s coming down. I didn’t misunderstand that. Tomorrow, they said. All those thousands of donors you’re talking about are going to die!”
Jeremiah gazed at me solemnly.
Hector cut in. “I told you the girl couldn’t take the responsibility of knowing our plans, that she didn’t have the emotional maturity to handle it.”
“You’re lying,” I shouted.
Hector went on calmly as if I hadn’t spoken. “Jeremiah, I told you anything of this sort would throw her over the edge. That she’d imagine all sorts of things. Most donors aren’t like you. They can’t see the big picture. Their minds…” He shook his head back and forth indulgently.
I wanted to hit him. To bite him again. I saw there was blood seeping between his fingers. I felt a grim satisfaction.
“That’s not true. We’re talking about donors,” I implored Jeremiah. “Just like us. And unless you stop this, they’ll all be killed.”
“All right, Elle. Don’t worry,” Jeremiah’s eyes rose to Hector’s face, “I’ll look into this.”
Look into it? He was talking as if I had made it up. He believed them, not me. I felt sick.
“Would you leave Hector and me alone now, please?”
“I’m not emotional,” I yelled, angrier and more afraid than I’d ever been in my life. “I’m not imagining anything!”
Hector smiled, once more in control. “Let me talk to the girl alone for a moment, try to calm her down.”
“All right, but be gentle,” Jeremiah said.
Hector crossed the room with one long stride, and his hand clamped down on my arm. “Of course I will.”
I started to protest. Surely Jeremiah would realize something was wrong now.
But he was nodding. How could he believe Hector over me? Didn’t he see how Hector was grabbing me?
Once again, I was thrust out into the hall, my arm throbbing from Hector’s grip.
“From the moment I saw you, I knew you were a freak,” Hector said. And then he plunged that needle into my arm. I slid to the floor, like all the air, all the hope had been taken out of me. The parquet was cool and I could smell what seemed like centuries old dust.
“Put her somewhere she can’t get out,” Hector’s voice drifted down to me. And I saw Gideon’s face hovering blurry above me. “Just in case Jeremiah needs to see her again.”
I saw the door to Jeremiah’s room open once more, and Hector’s polished shoes moved back inside.
What had they given me? The drug made my mind blur. I could hardly think much less remember whatever it was I had wanted to tell Jeremiah. Plan…what plan was that? I fought the drug as Gideon yanked me to my feet and slung me, like a lifeless doll over his shoulder.
I made one last attempt to scream, if Jeremiah heard me, he’d come, wouldn’t he – but my voice sounded like something less than a whisper. And then I was bumping in and out of consciousness.
My mind went back to Charles, the way he’d rescued me from the donor center. But this was different. I knew enough through my muddled thoughts to realize I was not being rescued, I was being trapped.
Gideon carried me through a maze of dark halls, one after another, dirty, dank. Wherever he was taking me, he didn’t want anyone else to see us going there. The path he took was empty. I blinked frantically, trying to clear my hazy vision, trying not to black out again. It seemed like we were walking in circles. Finally we passed a door that looked familiar. My mind struggled to hold on to the image. There was a crack running top to bottom like a lightening bolt. I knew that door…how did I know it? I grasped for the knowledge but it slipped away.
A second later Gideon opened a different door, struggling with a lock. I bounced on his shoulder. I tried to push myself away from him, but my limbs were weak, like rubber. Again, I thought, what had they done to me?
The door opened abruptly and he threw me inside, like I was nothing. And he slammed it shut. The last thing I heard before my world went entirely black was the harsh sound of a lock grating shut.