by Tahereh Mafi
I wonder if Emmaline is here, somewhere.
It makes sense that she’d be here, close to home—close to her parents, whose medical and scientific advances are the only reason she’s even alive. Or something close to alive, anyway.
It makes sense that they’d bring Juliette—Ella, I remind myself—back here, to her home. The question is—
Why bring her here? What are they hoping to do with her?
But then, if her mother is anything like my father, I think I can imagine what they might have in mind.
I push myself off the floor and take a steadying breath. My body is running on mere adrenaline, so starved for sleep and sustenance that I have to—
Pain.
It’s swift and sudden and I gasp even as I recognize the familiar sting. I have no idea how long it’ll take for my ribs to fully heal. Until then, I clench my teeth as I stand, feeling blindly for purchase against the rough stone. My hands shake as I steady myself and I’m breathing too hard again, eyes darting around the familiar cell.
I turn on the sink and splash ice-cold water on my face.
The effect is immediate. Focusing.
Carefully, I strip down to nothing. I soak my undershirt under the running water and use it to scrub my face, my neck, the rest of my body. I wash my hair. Rinse my mouth. Clean my teeth. And then I do what little I can for the rest of my clothes, washing them by hand and wringing them dry. I slip back into my underwear even though the cotton is still slightly damp, and I fight back a shiver in the darkness. Hungry and cold is at least better than drugged and delirious.
This is the end of my second week in confinement, and my third day this week without food. It feels good to have a clear head, even as my body slowly starves. I’d already been leaner than usual, but now the lines of my body feel unusually sharp, even to myself, all necessary softness gone from my limbs. It’s only a matter of time before my muscles atrophy and I do irreparable damage to my organs, but right now I have no choice. I need access to my mind.
To think.
And something about my sentencing feels off.
The more I think about it, the less sense it makes that Max and Evie would want me to suffer for what I did to Emmaline. They were the ones who donated their daughters to The Reestablishment in the first place. My work overseeing Emmaline was assigned to me—in fact, it was likely a job they’d approved. It would make more sense that I were here for treason. Max and Evie, like any other commanders, would want me to suffer for turning my back on The Reestablishment.
But even this theory feels wrong. Incongruous.
The punishment for treason has always been public execution. Quick. Efficient. I should be murdered, with only a little fanfare, in front of my own soldiers. But this—locking people up like this—slowly starving them while stripping them of their sanity and dignity—this is uncivilized. It’s what The Reestablishment does to others, not to its own.
It’s what they did to Ella. They tortured her. Ran tests on her. She wasn’t locked up to inspire penitence. She was in isolation because she was part of an ongoing experiment.
And I am in the unique position to know that such a prisoner requires constant maintenance.
I figured I’d be kept here for a few days—maybe a week—but locking me up for what seems to be an indeterminate amount of time—
This must be difficult for them.
For two weeks they’ve managed to remain just slightly ahead of me, a feat they accomplished by poisoning my food. In training I’d never needed more than a week to break my way out of high-security prisons, and they must’ve known this. By forcing me to choose between sustenance and clarity every day, they’ve given themselves an advantage.
Still, I’m unconcerned.
The longer I’m here, the more leverage I gain. If they know what I’m capable of, they must also know that this is unsustainable. They can’t use shock and poison to destabilize me indefinitely. I’ve now been here long enough to have taken stock of my surroundings, and I’ve been filing away information for nearly two weeks—the movements of the sun, the phases of the moon, the manufacturer of the locks, the sink, the unusual hinges on the door. I suspected, but now know for certain, that I’m in the southern hemisphere, not only because I know Max and Evie hail from Oceania, but because the northern constellations outside my window are upside down.
I must be on their base.
Logically, I know I must’ve been here a few times in my life, but the memories are dim. The night skies are clearer here than they were in Sector 45. The stars, brighter. The lack of light pollution means we are far from civilization, and the view out the window proves that we are surrounded, on all sides, by the wild landscape of this territory. There’s a massive, glittering lake not far in the distance, which—
Something jolts to life in my mind.
The memory from earlier, expanded:
She shrugs and throws a rock in the lake. It lands with a dull splash. “Well, we’ll just run away,” she says.
“We can’t run away,” I say. “Stop saying that.”
“We can, too.”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“There are plenty of places to go.”
I shake my head. “You know what I mean. They’d find us wherever we went. They watch us all the time.”
“We can live in the lake,” she says simply.
“What?” I almost laugh. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m serious,” she says. “I heard my mum talking about how to make it so people can live underwater, and I’m going to ask her to tell me, and then we can live in the lake.”
I sigh. “We can’t live in the lake, Ella.”
“Why not?” She turns and looks at me, her eyes wide, startlingly bright. Blue green. Like the globe, I think. Like the whole world. “Why can’t we live in the lake? My mum says th—”
“Stop it, Ella. Stop—”
A cold sweat breaks out on my forehead. Goose bumps rise along my skin. Ella.
Ella Ella Ella
Over and over again.
Everything about the name is beginning to sound familiar. The movement of my tongue as I form the word, familiar. It’s as if the memory is in my muscle, as if my mouth has made this shape a thousand times.
I force myself to take a steadying breath.
I need to find her. I have to find her.
Here is what I know:
It takes just under thirty seconds for the footsteps to disappear down the hall, and they’re always the same—same stride, same cadence—which means there’s only one person attending to me. The paces are long and heavy, which means my attendant is tall, possibly male. Maybe Max himself, if they’ve deemed me a high-priority prisoner. Still, they’ve left me unshackled and unharmed—why?—and though I’ve been given neither bed nor blanket, I have access to water from the sink.
There’s no electricity in here; no outlets, no wires. But there must be cameras hidden somewhere, watching my every move. There are two drains: one in the sink, and one underneath the toilet. There’s one square foot of window—likely bulletproof glass, maybe eight to ten centimeters thick—and a single, small air vent in the floor. The vent has no visible screws, which means it must be bolted from inside, and the slats are too narrow for my fingers, the steel blades visibly welded in place. Still, it’s only an average level of security for a prison vent. A little more time and clarity, and I’ll find a way to remove the screen and repurpose the parts. Eventually, I’ll find a way to dismantle everything in this room. I’ll take apart the metal toilet, the flimsy metal sink. I’ll make my own tools and weapons and find a way to slowly, carefully disassemble the locks and hinges. Or perhaps I’ll damage the pipes and flood the room and its adjoining hallway, forcing someone to come to the door.
The sooner they send someone to my room, the better. If they’ve left me alone in my cell this long, it’s been for their own protection, not my suffering. I excel at hand-to-hand combat.
I know myself. I know my capacity to withstand complicated physical and mental torture. If I wanted to, I could give myself two—maybe three—weeks to forgo the poisoned meals and survive on water alone before I lost my mind or mobility. I know how resourceful I can be, given the opportunity, and this—this effort to contain me—must be exhausting. Great care went into selecting these sounds and meals and rituals and even this vigilant lack of communication.
It doesn’t make sense that they’d go to all this trouble for treason. No. I must be in purgatory for something else.
I rack my brain for a motive, but my memories are surprisingly thin when it comes to Max and Evie. Still forming.
With some difficulty, I’m able to conjure up flickers of images.
A brief handshake with my father.
A burst of laughter.
A cheerful swell of holiday music.
A laboratory and my mother.
I stiffen.
A laboratory and my mother.
I focus my thoughts, homing in on the memory—bright lights, muffled footsteps, the sound of my own voice asking my father a question and then, painfully—
My mind goes blank.
I frown. Stare into my hands.
Nothing.
I know a great deal about the other commanders and their families. It’s been my business to know. But there’s an unusual dearth of information where Oceania is concerned, and for the first time, it sends a shock of fear through me. There are two timelines merging in my mind—a life with Ella, and a life without her—and I’m still learning to sift through the information for something real.
Still, thinking about Max and Evie now seems to strain something in my brain. It’s as if there’s something there, something just out of reach, and the more I force my mind to recall them—their faces, their voices—the more it hurts.
Why all this trouble to imprison me?
Why not simply have me killed?
I have so many questions it’s making my head spin.
Just then, the door rattles. The sound of metal on metal is sharp and abrasive, the sounds like sandpaper against my nerves.
I hear the bolt unlock and feel unusually calm. I was built to handle this life, its blows, its sick, sadistic ways. Death has never scared me.
But when the door swings open, I realize my mistake.
I imagined a thousand different scenarios. I prepared for a myriad of opponents. But I had not prepared for this.
“Hi birthday boy,” he says, laughing as he steps into the light. “Did you miss me?”
And I’m suddenly unable to move.
Juliette Ella
“Stop—stop it, oh my God, that’s disgusting,” Emmaline cries. “Stop it. Stop touching each other! You guys are so gross.”
Dad pinches Mum’s butt, right in front of us.
Emmaline screams. “Oh my God, I said stop!”
It’s Saturday morning, and Saturday morning is when we make pancakes, but Mum and Dad don’t really get around to cooking anything because they won’t stop kissing each other. Emmaline hates it.
I think it’s nice.
I sit at the counter and prop my face in my hands, watching. I prefer watching. Emmaline keeps trying to make me work, but I don’t want to. I like sitting better than working.
“No one is making pancakes,” Emmaline cries, and she spins around so angrily she knocks a bowl of batter to the ground. “Why am I doing all the work?”
Dad laughs. “Sweetheart, we’re all together,” he says, scooping up the fallen bowl. He grabs a bunch of paper towels and says, “Isn’t that more important than pancakes?”
“No,” Emmaline says angrily. “We’re supposed to make pancakes. It’s Saturday, which means we’re supposed to make pancakes, and you and Mum are just kissing, and Ella is being lazy—”
“Hey—” I say, and stand up.
“—and no one is doing what they’re supposed to be doing and instead I’m doing it all by myself—”
Mum and Dad are both laughing now.
“It’s not funny!” Emmaline cries, and now she’s shouting, tears streaking down her face. “It’s not funny, and I don’t like it when no one listens to me, and I don’t—”
Two weeks ago, I was lying on an operating table, limp, naked, and leaking blood through an aperture in my temple the size of a gunshot wound. My vision was blurred. I couldn’t hear much more than the sound of my own breathing, hot and heavy and everywhere, building in and around me. Suddenly, Evie came into view. She was staring at me; she seemed frustrated. She’d been trying to complete the process of physical recalibration, as she called it.
For some reason, she couldn’t finish the job.
She’d already emptied the contents of sixteen syringes into my brain, and she’d made several small incisions in my abdomen, my arms, and my thighs. I couldn’t see exactly what she did next, but she spoke, occasionally, as she worked, and she claimed that the simple surgical procedures she was performing would strengthen my joints and reinforce my muscles. She wanted me to be stronger, to be more resilient on a cellular level. It was a preventative measure, she said. She was worried my build was too slight; that my muscles might degenerate prematurely in the face of intense physical challenges. She didn’t say it, but I felt it: she wanted me to be stronger than my sister.
“Emmaline,” I whispered.
It was lucky that I was too exhausted, too broken, too sedated to speak clearly. It was lucky that I only lay there, eyes fluttering open and closed, my chapped lips making it impossible to do more than mutter the name. It was lucky that I couldn’t understand, right away, that I was still me. That I still remembered everything despite Evie’s promises to dissolve what was left of my mind.
Still, I’d said the wrong thing.
Evie stopped what she was doing. She leaned over my face and studied me, nose to nose.
I blinked.
Don’t
The words appeared in my head as if they’d been planted there long ago, like I was remembering, remembering
Evie jerked backward and immediately started speaking into a device clenched in her fist. Her voice was low and rough and I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
I blinked again. Confused. I parted my lips to say something, when—
Don’t
The thought came through more sharply this time.
A moment later Evie was in my face again, this time drilling me with questions.
who are you
where are you
what is your name
where were you born
how old are you
who are your parents
where do you live
I was suddenly aware enough to understand that Evie was checking her work. She wanted to make sure my brain had been wiped clean. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say or do, so I said nothing.
Instead, I blinked.
Blinked a lot.
Evie finally—reluctantly—stepped away, but she didn’t seem entirely convinced of my stupidity. And then, when I thought she might murder me just to be safe, she stopped. Stared at the wall.
And then she left.
I was trembling on the operating table for twenty minutes before the room was swarmed by a team of people. They unstrapped my body, washed and wrapped my open wounds.
I think I was screaming.
Eventually the combination of pain, exhaustion, and the slow drip of opiates caught up with me, and I passed out.
I never understood what happened that day.
I couldn’t ask, Evie never explained, and the strange, sharp voice in my head never returned. But then, Evie sedated me so much in my first weeks on this compound that it’s possible there was never even a chance.
Today, for the first time since that day, I hear it again.
I’m standing in the middle of my room, this gauzy yellow dress still bunched in my arms, when the voice assaults me.
It knocks the wind out of me.
E
lla
I spin around, my breaths coming in fast. The voice is louder than it’s ever been, frightening in its intensity. Maybe I was wrong about Evie’s experiment, maybe this is part of it, maybe hallucinating and hearing voices is a precursor to oblivion—
No
“Who are you?” I say, the dress dropping to the floor. It occurs to me, as if from a distance, that I’m standing in my underwear, screaming at an empty room, and a violent shudder goes through my body.
Roughly, I yank the yellow dress over my head, its light, breezy layers like silk against my skin. In a different lifetime, I would’ve loved this dress. It’s both beautiful and comfortable, the perfect sartorial combination. But there’s no time for that kind of frivolity anymore.
Today, this dress is just a part of the role I must play.
The voice in my head has gone quiet, but my heart is still racing. I feel propelled into motion by instinct alone, and, quickly, I slip into a pair of simple white tennis shoes, tying the laces tightly. I don’t know why, but today, right now, for some reason— I feel like I might need to run.
Yes
My spine straightens.
Adrenaline courses through my veins and my muscles feel tight, burning with an intensity that feels brand-new to me; it’s the first time I’ve felt any positive effects of Evie’s procedures. This strength feels like it’s been grafted to my bones, like I could launch myself into the air, like I could scale a wall with one hand.
I’ve known superstrength before, but that strength always felt like it was coming from elsewhere, like it was something I had to harness and release. Without my supernatural abilities—when I turned off my powers—I was left with an unimpressive, flimsy body. I’d been undernourished for years, forced to endure extreme physical and mental conditions, and my body suffered for it. I’d only begun to learn proper forms of exercise and conditioning in the last couple of months, and while the progress I made was helpful, it was only the first step in the right direction.
But this—
Whatever Evie did to me? This is different.