Withered World

by Sara Kincaid

  I turned my head away from the harsh lights and stared at my aunt left prone in the chair across the room. Our eyes met and I knew that she could read in me the story I longed to share. In turn, I took in her angled features and keen brown eyes, nearly exact replicas of my mother’s. For a moment I was struck by the cruelty of genes. How long I had put the image of my mother and father aside in my head to avoid the anguish; and now, bound and held against my will, I felt my mother’s eyes upon me and I saw her jagged outline, though softened with age, in the face and figure of my aunt. Her white hair was thin and tangled, but beneath the wrinkles and the other emblems of age and abuse, I saw strength.

  “Well now, shall we get started?” I didn’t answer since I didn’t really have a say in my fate anyway. Kade walked around the table, placing sensors on various parts of my body, careful not to touch my skin. It was infuriating to have him so close but to be unable to do anything about it. When he finished, he turned to a cabinet and pulled out a series of test tubes balanced on a rack. I kicked my legs, pulling against the chains that bound me. “What we have here are a series of tests,” Kade explained. “Bram tested himself, though I’m sure you already knew that. So, there’s no harm in what we’re about to do. Now I’m sure you can clean all of these things. Clearly you can heal flesh wounds, though you refuse to heal yourself. Pity. You’ll scar terribly. No matter. But what I want to know is how you heal yourself and your limitations. I have some ideas for increasing Curare development.”

  I eyed the strange liquids skeptically. Some of them appeared to be laced with chemicals that dyed them strange colors. The first was thick and dark, nearly black. He filled a syringe with the black liquid and approached my left side. Unable to escape, I struggled against my bonds. “Now resisting like that will only make the injection hurt worse,” he admonished with a parental tone. I refused to listen and screeched as the needle slid into my vein. Kade depressed the plunger slowly and the dark liquid forced its way into my body.

  My heart pumped softly in my chest, unaware of the poisons it distributed throughout my body as the foreign substance drifted through my veins and back out into my bloodstream once again. I imagined it, like an angry cloud, darkening the waterways of the earth with its poisons. Almost immediately, I felt hot and sweaty and my stomach rolled with nausea.

  “This first substance is some remnants of the infamous spill in East Farm that is thought to have brought us you little gems. Now heal yourself,” he commanded, eyes open and tablet at ready, eager for me to obey.

  Spots glittered before my eyes as the pressure built up in my head from the poison. My heart rate soon became erratic. Strange beeping noises filled my ears and it took me a moment to realize that it was some machine tracking my vitals as the poison worked through me. Panicked by the swift and harsh nature of the poison, I did what felt automatic in spite of the energy I had lost reviving my aunt. I turned my head once again to look at Annel, though her image swam in my vision, hoping the sight of her would calm me. I used my own energy and urged it to burn through the poisons swimming in my blood. My body temperature rose, steam curling up from my limbs in the cold room as whatever forces I commanded followed my orders and took aim at the invasive substance.

  At first, I wasn’t sure it would work. I had never healed myself from the inside. But slowly, the poison began to recede from my system. As my vision cleared, I caught a glimpse of Kade standing impassively with his arms crossed over his narrow chest. He was alight with wonder. When I felt relatively normal once more, I withdrew, letting my abilities fizzle out.

  “Extraordinary,” Kade whispered in the silence.

  Spent, I slumped in my bonds, my head lolling to one side. My vision blurred and my stomach heaved until I vomited painfully. I wiped my face on my shoulder and cried in big sobbing gasps. Through my tears, I registered the sound of my aunt shouting at Kade. “You animal!” Be quiet, I urged her silently, fearful that Kade would notice her and choose to subject her to the same torture.

  At the commotion, two guards burst into the room. Kade looked up, startled. “Sir?” one of them asked. “Everything okay in here?”

  “Yes,” he waved them away. “Actually,” he began. The guards stopped. “Remove her.” He pointed at my aunt.

  The guards exchanged glances and the one who had remained silent approached Annel and led her away. The other guard remained and glanced in my direction. “Would you like me to clean her up?”

  “Sure, sure. I’ll be back in a moment.” He followed the guard out the door but turned the opposite direction in the hall.

  Alone with the guard, I tried to swallow my tears. He approached me slowly and removed his helmet and I realized that the person beneath the uniform was a woman. Without her helmet, I recognized the honey-brown hair and the freckles on her cheekbones. Rhina, the guard who accompanied Maric in my capture. “Hello, Vea,” she spoke in a quiet voice and raised her hands slowly as she stepped near me. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I’ve seen the number you did on Maric’s hand. I’m not sure what to make of it myself, but I don’t think it’s going to heal.”

  My eyes hardened at the mention of Maric. “It won’t.”

  “He deserved it,” she sniggered. Rhina opened a nearby cabinet and grabbed some clean rags, wetting one under the faucet. She used the rag to clean my mouth and the table around me. She took a new rag, wetted it and wiped the dried blood from my arms and legs.

  Next, she held a glass of water to my lips. I swished it around in my mouth and spit on the ground. “Why are you doing this?”

  Rhina gestured meaningfully into the air, reminding me that people might be listening or watching. But as she worked to clean Kade’s workspace, she leaned in close to my ear and whispered. “I’m sorry I can’t do more. If it helps, the Curare have been revolting against the guards.” Our eyes met silently as she continued cleaning.

  Nita and Micah. I felt a twinge of hope. “Who?”

  “Igni,” she whispered quietly before facing the sink near my head. She rolled up her sleeves and on her wrist, I noted a small bracelet, a richly polished silver band with a bird dangling from it.

  The sight of that little bird filled me with confusion. It was a sign, surely; a sign of loyalty, of fealty to a cause of which I was now a part. I was made a member of this cause when Alors marked me. Though, perhaps I was already marked when my mother gave me the necklace. Surely she had known the meaning of the icon when she fastened it around my neck.

  Also, and significantly, Rhina had been part of the team that had captured me. She was a CPA soldier. Perhaps she treated the Curare better than her peers, but she was still a member of a group that had enslaved us. Did I view her as innocent? I couldn’t overlook her part in all this and the mixed feelings were too much to bear. I knew she was showing her allegiance to give me courage and hope. But she wasn’t untying my bonds and leading me out a secret doorway.

  Rhina dawdled at her work as long as possible, but was finally forced to leave the room. As she left, she tried to catch my gaze, but I avoided her soft stare and merely laid there, wavering.

  When she was gone, I felt guilty for having avoided her and I wished for her return. Perhaps she was unable to act grandly. In fact, Rhina was even smart to not free me. Where would we go? It was unlikely that we would escape the CPA facility alive, even with her knowing the way. I turned it round and round in my head until I was dizzy and was no further along accepting her allegiance or rejecting it.

  Kade returned some time later, his mouth set into a firm line. He injected me with each of the remaining substances and barked at me every time to heal myself. Fatigued and starved for energy, my body shook with exertion. My control over my abilities faltered and I could taste the energy swirling inside of my captor’s body with every swell of his heart. To have energy so close but to be unable to access it was maddening and I fell into an animal-like state, grunting and growling my
displeasure, howling my sorrows to the reflective ceilings above. I caught sight of my messy hair and bloodshot eyes and at first, didn’t recognize the desperate creature looking back at me. Even so, no one came and my only witness was Kade, the man who had watched the murder of our patriarch, Bram, with the same level of disinterest.

  My arms were dotted with angry red marks and when I lapsed into unconsciousness, Kade would inject me with Pop. The silvery liquid left me cold and hysterical when I awoke, my body still seizing and out of control. Something about the reaction was of primary interest to my torturer. Each time I came to, Kade’s eyes were alight and he typed furiously on the flat handheld screen attached to the machines that monitored me. Cold sweat dribbled down my temple and around my chin and my hair laid damp and limp over my eyes. The salty drops settled painfully in the corner of my cracked lips.

  Time was a blur, but I knew without a doubt that I was dying. I didn’t even have the strength to connect to the void. Bitter thoughts filled my head as my resolve gave way to defeat. I was alone. I had failed and every step I had taken thus far had been in vain. Were Nita and Micah still alive? Had their rebellion been shot down by the soldiers? I would never know. “Why are you doing this?” I croaked, wincing in pain as my lips split open with the movement of forming those simple words. Some time ago, I had been removed from the table and now sat in the metal chair, my shoulders slumped and my hair in my face. The angry slashes on my arm and legs no longer bled, but the sharp pain had never receded.

  Kade laid his tablet on the counter and walked toward me. His stride was casual, unconcerned. He wiped his hands on his lab coat. “To understand you.” He stopped in front of me, mere inches out of reach, and gave a leery smile. “You see, Vea, you are special. There has never been another Curare like you. The liquids I gave you were different formulations of the chemical spilled in East Farm fifty years ago. I need to know how exposing others to this chemical will affect them if the reproductive program doesn’t pan out in the way we hope it will.”

  “You’re going to inject innocent people to try to turn them into Curare?” Impossible. How could he make it work? How many would he turn into slaves? I shuddered.

  Bored, he turned away and began to pace, gesturing with his hand. “Of course! As far as the planet is concerned, no one is without responsibilities. And we’ll start with me. To do that, I had to make sure you could heal others and yourself in case it doesn’t work out.”

  I blanched at the thought of him forcibly injecting more innocents to breed Curare, at the idea of him taking on the abilities of the Curare, the same people he had persecuted these fifty years. Of course, it was no different than what they’d done before, injecting children with Pop to see if they exhibited the telltale signs of the Curare. He yammered on, his eyes bloodshot and his clothing flecked with my blood.

  “I’ve already injected other Curare with these substances to gauge their responses. Most of them died right away. The Igni Curare survived for a time, but that’s because their body temperatures range a bit higher than a regular human being. It simply took the poisons longer to infiltrate their systems. You clearly have some of their abilities, but your body temperature is not in their same field.” He stood at the sink, his back to me, methodically cleaning the syringes and placing them carefully on a drying rack with gentle clinks of glass and metal on metal. “Shall we continue?” Kade asked as the tremors in my limbs ceased. “There’s lots to be done.”

  The thought of enduring more pain, more mysterious substances or worse brought a new wave of bitter tears. My fate was clear. I would die in vain for, as close as Kade was, I could do nothing to destroy him. I didn’t even have the energy to break the bonds that strapped me down. “I don’t have anything left. I can’t heal myself anymore. Please…” I whimpered.

  “You will do as I say, or you will suffer the consequences.” Saliva flecked his lip as he spoke. I could do nothing but cry. “It’s time to progress, anyway. Now it’s time for you to show me your true range of power.”

  “What do you mean?” Although the last shred of my will had wilted, I still had the instinct to protect my secrets.

  “We know you can destroy as well as heal. We’ve kept record of the mysterious dead footprints found in South Farm. And then there’s Maric’s arm—a marvel! I’ve examined it myself. Surely you can destroy with your abilities in other ways, too?” He flipped his tablet so I could view the screen and scrolled through photos of the withered arm. The fingers were black and shriveled. The arm itself was curled in, the skin discolored and wrinkled like a raisin.

  I remained noncommittal and licked my lips, hoping to alleviate some of the discomfort. Dazed with hunger and yearning for death, I swayed in my seat. Likely I would have puddled on the floor had I not been chained to the spot. “Well?” Kade prompted, setting the tablet down again before crossing his arms in front of his thin chest.

  I tossed my hair from my eyes and looked around the room. With no natural elements for me to latch onto, there was little I could do. “I don’t have enough energy left,” I mumbled, bowing my head, fearful of angering him.

  “You will do as I say.” His hands tightened into fists and beneath bushy brows, his eyes narrowed. Each word beat against my skull and I huddled further down, trying to hide.

  Fueled by the threat, I sought the dregs of what remained of my energy and felt my body protest as it was unwilling to part with the last of what it needed to function. Remembering the rags Rhina had used to clean the lab, I turned my attention to the pile on the floor near the sink and tried to draw the water from them, calling it to me. But as much as I called and made demands, the energy required for the exchange just wasn’t enough. As the energy within me began to dry up with effort, I lapsed into unconsciousness.

  I awoke sputtering as cool water splashed on my face. I licked at the precious drops and my body hungrily sucked in the meager morsels of energy it could extract from them. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep me conscious. “You’re not getting out of this so easily. Show me what I want to see.”

  “You don’t understand,” I panted. “I don’t have enough left to give you what you want.” Still I kept my secret way of achieving nourishment. I would die before telling him what I could do. I would never be his weapon.

  Forgetting his caution, he slapped me. His bony hand bruised my cheek, but in that instant of contact, I felt the entirety of his life force. I tried to latch on to him, but the length of our contact was too short. Fresh tears streamed down my face, my cheek burning with the force of the slap. “Fine. We’ll do this the hard way.” He turned abruptly and stomped his way across the room, his feet like drums on the floor.

  Errant sobs echoed around the smoothly surfaced room and I realized they came from me. I felt lost among the placid chrome and steel. It had been so long since I had been among the leaves and the trees of the farms that I was beginning to doubt their existence.

  When Kade returned, he wasn’t alone. Behind him trailed two guards who supported the figure of a man. I bowed my head quickly, unwilling to look at Kade’s next victim and ever fearful of what he had in store next.

  Kade stopped a few feet from me. “I think you might be familiar with this person,” he crooned. “It’s too bad he was abandoned and left for me to find.”

  Fat rivers of tears curled around my nose and down my chin. I sniffed and slowly raised my head, my mind blank. I blinked, clearing my vision, and beheld the figure of a young man with light brown skin, the color dulled with ill health. My eyes wandered up his bony legs, taking in his torn clothing, his labored breathing. The man was forced to his knees, his head bent and his dark, messy curls covering his face. He grunted as his knees hit the ground and sat still. My gaze traveled further until I had nowhere else to look but at his face. In the moment of stillness, the man chanced a glance up from the spot he stared at on the floor. Tangled locks fell from his face and I gasped. Lig
htning ricocheted through my body. “Leo,” I whispered, his name like water on my parched tongue. It tasted of hope.

  In that moment, my heart stopped, its pattern forever altered. Though I had little energy to spare, I reached into the void, seeking the song that I knew I would find, the one that I had held onto like a ghost in the night. The gentle music of the earth poured into my ears, though his was much weakened. Bruises and half-healed lacerations covered his face and body.

  “Now, about those abilities you’ve been hiding from me,” Kade began. I heard little of what he said, my entire focus on Leo, my mouth open in amazement. Finally, I was overwhelmed by the realization that he was alive, and my tears flowed anew. I shifted in my seat, wanting nothing more than to reach out to him, to touch him and to have him take me into his arms. The cold metal shackles clicked as I floundered against them. “Vea? Are you listening to me? Are you ready for your next test? If you don’t give me what I want, I will inject this young man with the chemicals from East Farm and you will watch him die right here.” He shrugged casually. “It will be no one’s fault but your own.”

  I held my hands out in supplication, my movements hindered by the handcuffs. “Please,” I begged, eyes burning and voice shaking. “I’m telling you the truth. I don’t have enough energy to do what you ask. I don’t have the power to give you what you want. I need food.” What little control I had was lost in that moment and I sobbed into my hands.

  My tears seemed to fuel his anger and he grabbed Leo roughly by the shoulder and dragged him closer to me until they were standing a matter of feet away. Deftly, he curled his fingers around a syringe on a nearby table and brandished it aloft for me to see. He then pulled Leo cruelly by the hair, exposing his neck to the needle.