Whispers in Autumn (The Last Year, #1)

by Trisha Leigh

  I repeat the story at his request. I wait for his verdict, my lips forcing air past them and into my lungs as he squints at his screen. The cot sags with my sweat. He didn’t seem so concerned with what he saw on the men’s screens. Paranoia?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  Currents zap back and forth inside my head under the filmy hat. It stings but doesn’t register higher than an annoyance after staring at Elij. Adrenaline pumps through me, brought on by terror, pain, and guilt, but doesn’t distract my focus from that perfect image of what he wants me to believe happened tonight.

  He studies my still face for what feels like forever. The wind burrows deeper inside my brain, prods harder. I keep my eyes vacant and my expression pleasant, hoping for the best as the pain inches toward agonizing. A breath before I scream, the second Other enters my field of vision and peers down over Elij’s shoulder.

  Double the pain. Double the trouble. He squints, too, and at a different time their mirrored expressions might strike me as comical.

  “What are you staring at her like that for?”

  The refresher jumps and whirls. “Why’d you sneak up on me like that? You know hearing is the one thing we can’t enhance in these bodies.”

  I want to hug the skinny Other. He broke Elij’s gaze and blessed freedom floods my head. I don’t feel different; I still remember what really happened. What I did.

  “Sorry. Speaking of these bodies, Deshi’s on his way.”

  Alarms sound in my head, nerves stretching to their breaking point at the news that these Others know Deshi.

  Nervousness passes over my refresher’s face, too. “When?”

  “Five minutes. Less, maybe. So why are you staring at her? Aren’t you done yet?”

  “Are you?” Elij is still sore about being startled, I can tell.

  Despite the very obvious reasons for not wanting to be here right now, the emotional range of my captors fascinates me. They have feelings besides pleasure. I’ve witnessed anger, irritation, contrition, pain, confusion…almost enough to cause a sensory overload. A thought sneaks in, unbidden and unwelcome.

  Deshi’s coming here. He’s like them.

  If we’re the same, that means I could be like them, too.

  No. They wouldn’t leave me in the hands of a human family. Being Other doesn’t explain the traveling. Doubt snags my confidence with its slimy fingers and refuses to let go. I know nothing about how Others are raised, what they’re capable of.

  Nothing at all.

  I suppress a shudder at the thought of the terrible acts the Wardens commit. Taking the Broken kids from the Outing. The way they tossed Greg around like trash. What they’re doing to Mrs. Morgan. She might have creeped me out sometimes, but she’s a nice lady. They’re going to Break her, I know it. No more cranberry pancakes, frilly dresses, or starched white aprons. My thoughts are so soaked in terror at the prospect, it startles me when the Other who attended Mrs. Morgan answers, a hint of expectation creeping into his voice.

  “I wrote the report and filed it in the system.”

  “Under the list of Broken?”

  “Of course. Where else would I put it? Anyway, I thought you’d want to help with the disposal.”

  Elij grins, a sadistic shadow falling over his expression. “Yes, thanks. I’ve been waiting for a disposal for months.”

  He sounds elated, as though it’s going to be fun to get rid of Mrs. Morgan. Relief mingles with guilt that his excitement distracts him from me. He stops and turns, looking back at me one more time. Nothing’s inside my mind now, though.

  “Seriously, why are you looking at her like that? Do you fancy this one? She is pretty.”

  Vomit shoots up and lands on my tongue. Swallowing will draw attention so it sits in the back of my throat, acidic and vile. They both watch me now.

  Finally my refresher shakes his head and smiles. “It’s nothing. Her mind map didn’t look quite right. Like it was all just a little too perfect.”

  His friend claps him on the shoulder. “Just means you’re good at your job. Everyone’s always talking about what a great refresher Elij is going be when he’s ready. And here you are, making too-perfect memories in a pretty human head.”

  He pauses, his gaze drifting from my face to peruse the rest of my body. My insides squirm for my outsides that want to. I feel naked and exposed.

  “Too bad, the restriction against intimate contact with the humans. Some of them are so desirable. This one smells good, too.” He leans over me and inhales, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  I’m going to die if they don’t leave.

  He stands up and I release stale breath out my nose. Elij picks up a syringe of silver fluid and runs his fingertips along my arm, to my shoulder, and back down, then wraps his hand around my elbow. “I know what you mean about this one. She smells like summertime. It is nice. Still, she’s not worth the punishment.”

  “Hurry up. Deshi will be here any minute and you know he’ll steal the disposal if—” He breaks off and drops out of view.

  Thrashing and moaning rip at my ears, the sounds of suffering twisting my heart. I swallow the puke in my throat in time for more to take its place. The noises stop and Deshi steps into view, gazing down at the Other with cold eyes. The sight of him, looking for all the world as though he belongs here, murders a piece of me.

  This can’t be my future. I can’t be like him.

  “You were saying, Paj?”

  “Nothing,” the skinny Other rasps from the floor. He doesn’t stand.

  Deshi reaches down to help him up and Elij takes advantage of the moment, plunging the needle into my vein. Deshi recognizes me, surprise contorting his odd face. He may act as if he belongs here, but he couldn’t look more unlike the golden, perfectly molded boys shrinking away from him.

  He glares at Elij. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Incident at her home. The mother shed her veil. We refreshed this one, her father, and the Healer who attended.”

  My vision blurs as whatever he injected into my arm slips into my bloodstream. My legs and arms grow heavy. Lifting them would be impossible.

  Deshi steps next my cot and freezes me with his hard blue stare. “Any trouble?”

  “No, sir. Refreshed. Clean mind maps. The girl’s memories are the clearest I’ve ever created.”

  This doesn’t please Deshi; his eyebrows knit together as he leans closer until his cheek presses against mine. My eyes slip closed and a strange buzzing noise soaks the air. The last thing I hear before I fall asleep is Deshi’s voice.

  It’s gentle, serene. “I’m watching you.”

  CHAPTER 15.

  The taste of bile lingers in my mouth, my head throbs, and claustrophobia presses down on every inch of my body. My arms and legs still feel weighted, as though they’ve sunk into the mattress. A fleeting image of lying in the snow, how it presses in and mutes the sounds of the world, crosses my mind. That ugly orange comforter clashes with the serenity of the image. Memories crash in and tumble around me, piling up until I throw off the covers. My bare legs and arms quiver in the cold, but the cloying sense of entrapment refuses to leave. I stop wheezing as reality sinks in.

  At least, what I think is reality.

  I won’t know for sure until I go down for breakfast.

  This morning my feet don’t drag, I don’t linger in the shower, and I don’t stop to reread the note folded inside my necklace. I throw on jeans and a sweater, brush my teeth, and hurry down to the kitchen.

  The smell of strawberries and sausage wafts through the air. I summon all my courage and dart a glance at the stove. No Mrs. Morgan.

  Mr. Morgan looks up from his paper and coffee. “Thea, darling, you’re up rather early. Sit down and have some breakfast. They delivered something new today.”

  A tower of waffles topped with strawberries covers my plate. Caution paints my every move as I slide into my chair, irrational fear curling knots into my shoulders. The sense that if I make a sudden movement
the entire scene will dissolve into reality. The one where Mr. Morgan remembers what happened last night and panics over the loss of his Partner, over the Others’ ability to control his mind.

  He seems unharmed. He peers at me over his paper again and an automatic smile slips onto my lips. Mr. Morgan returns it. Except…it’s shaking slightly. Like the chemistry Monitor’s. As though he’s not sure why he’s smiling, or if he wants to smile at all.

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  “Fine, dear. It’s just, well, waffles aren’t the same as cranberry pancakes.”

  My heart withers as he goes back to his paper and I finish eating breakfast. He’s right about the waffles. The dirty dishes in the sink even strike me as sad, a visible reminder Mrs. Morgan won’t be washing them. I wonder if someone will be sent to take care of it. I rinse them off and leave them there.

  Breathing through the smothering secrets and grief in the house is like sucking air through a wet towel. I wouldn’t normally leave for another half hour, but even braving the cold is actually more appealing than spending one more silent minute across the table from Mr. Morgan.

  The dreary, barren street soaks into my bones. Fall steals away more warmth and sunlight with each passing day. Before long I stand in front of the boundary fence at the edge of the park, staring out into the Wilds. Early morning birdsong serenades me and the clean, cold scent of frost clears my head.

  I’ve spent all my life not questioning the happiness of people, certain that something was wrong with me for feeling differently—for feeling at all. This morning I let myself feel everything without trying to squelch it. The crunch of individual brown blades of grass under my tennis shoes. The way the rough bark covering knots in the tree trunks scrapes across my fingertips. I gaze at an unbelievably blue sky, not worrying, not caring. Just being.

  I no longer know anything about my world. Not for sure. I believed the Others when they said the boundaries exist to keep us alive, that everything they do is in the interest of our safety. Now I suspect the fences aren’t to keep the animals out. They’re to keep us in.

  My eyes are open wide, and closing them again is impossible. What’s out there, what they’re keeping from us, remains hidden behind a heavy curtain, but last night laid bare a glaring truth.

  The Others control everything. Even people’s minds.

  Burning rage tears into my blood, pushing it closer and closer to the surface of my skin as my palms heat up. It replaces any lingering fear in an instant, and if a Warden happened upon me I’d kick him in his pain-inflicting, lying face. An overwhelming desire to yank down the boundary with my bare hands slams into me and I make fists to keep from ripping at the electrified metal. Wild desire aches, boils through me with no outlet in sight.

  I want out.

  I want to hide inside that world out there, a pristine place not possessed by the Others. My foot connects with my backpack in a swift kick and it tumbles into the boundary. I close my eyes and wait for the crackle of electricity, the scent of burning material. But nothing happens.

  My eyes fly open to spy my bag pressed up against the fence, perfectly whole and unharmed. I reach out a tentative hand, glancing around and behind me to check for Wardens. There are cameras on the boundary at measured intervals, but the nearest one is barely visible from here. Adrenaline speeds up my heart as I twine my fingers through the fence, half expecting to disappear into ashes, but I remain as untouched as my bag.

  There may not be a way to prove the Others control minds, or that they killed Mrs. Morgan. But I could prove they’re lying about the animals.

  Once the idea pops into my head it won’t let go, determination to prove them wrong on this one thing overshadowing everything else. Even if it’s the last thing I do.

  I find a foothold, take a deep breath, and brace my weight against the boundary.

  Climbing is harder than I think it will be. Every time I loosen a toe or let go to grab another link my body sways back and forth on the wobbly metal. It takes longer than it should to scale the twenty feet, since I stop and press against it each time this happens, and am soaked with sweat and exhausted before I’m halfway finished.

  The top of the fence lands under my grasp and I haul myself over it. A huge gust of wind pushes me against the outside of the wire. I hear a sizzle, see an explosion of sparks.

  I’m frying.

  No, I’m not. I open my eyes and check my body. Not fried. The breeze must have blown some debris into the barrier farther down. My brow creases at the realization that the fence is working in some places; it makes me hustle the rest of the way down. By the time I land on the soft earth my legs wobble and my breath comes in short gasps, but none of that can stop the silly grin stretching my lips.

  The Monitors tell stories in Primer Cell about a time before the fences. How small children wandered away from their parents and were eaten in a single gulp by a bear, or a lion, or most often a wolf. But no beady yellow eyes peer at me from the forest. No animals rush me, or eat me, or even show themselves during my first tentative steps into the brush.

  Branches sway above my head and birds continue their morning chirps, unconcerned by my alien presence in their world. Hot anger at the sheer multitude of lies recedes to make way for a wonder so complete it leaves no space for fear or rage in my heart.

  A small gray animal with a bushy tail scurries up a trunk, chattering in an odd voice. I search my brain for its name, try to recall that particular science lesson. A squirrel, I think.

  A rodent. According to the Others, one of the worst conduits for disease.

  I remember Fils, Lucas’s fish, and try to feel better.

  The trees tower above me, their bare limbs forming a patchwork roof that lets the sun through in glinting patterns. I walk a little farther, far enough to miss detection by a patrol, before flopping down on my stomach. I press my face into the chilly, hard ground and breathe in deep. It should smell the same as the grass in the park, but it doesn’t. Instead it smells crisp, and fresh, and promising—like freedom, whatever that really means.

  I roll over onto my back and stare at the brilliant cerulean sky through the white puffs of air floating from my lips. The filtered sun dusts my cheeks, not warm but bright and comforting. Squirrels and birds dance with one another as they flit and leap between branches, greeting the new day with chatter and songs. The squirrels can hop from one tree to another as if they’re flying. Some birds are huge and black, their voices coarse and raw as their songs emerge from sharp beaks. Others are tiny and yellow with impossibly fragile legs. Dazzling red and blue birds swoop in crisscross patterns, each distinct and beautiful.

  The sight of a medium-sized bird with a bright orange head, a black-and-white checkerboard back, and a white breast catches the breath in my chest. My eyes follow as it flutters among its companions, finally settles on the side of a tree, and begins to peck. A hollow, rapid-fire thumping fills the forest. I don’t know what kind of bird it is, and none of the others resemble it even a little bit. The freckle-backed bird goes about its business, finding another tree to pound a hole in, then yet another.

  Wind meanders across me, freezing my sweaty clothes to my skin. The forest is somehow full of both blessed silence and myriad sounds; the mixture bleeds peace into an empty space inside me I’m not aware of until this instant.

  Fear hovers around the corners of my consciousness, and I sense that what the Others teach is not totally false, that some form of danger likely lurks out here. A breeze sighs through the woods and whispers to the animals, as though they keep secrets from those of us without the ability to understand. They are fortunate to grasp truth without it being explained to them. Even though I can’t decipher a word, this glimpse into a real world, a wild world where no being is told what to feel, who to love, or how to act, is enough. For today, just to know such a place exists spills warmth through me in grateful ripples.

  The hole inside me fills the tiniest bit at the simple act of being, of feeling without fear.
Not one animal stops and takes note, grows confused and horrified at the unhappy, redheaded girl on the forest floor.

  A squirrel grabs an acorn in its tiny mouth and scurries down the tree trunk nearest me. I follow his progress, turning my neck until my left cheek presses against the ground. When he lands on the ground, his black nose and twitchy gray tail are less than two feet from my own nose.

  The perfect blackness of his eye engulfs me. At first I see only my own reflection in the shiny surface, but once I look harder, dig underneath, a new understanding emerges. I see the world the way he does, from the tops of the trees, tiny feet curled around tremulous branches. I feel what it’s like to leap and have the wind catch under my tail, carry me to safety on its back. His eyes hold a special kind of knowledge, of instinct that I somehow know is part of me, too. A swish of wind sends leaves scattering his direction and he starts, dropping the acorn as he spins and disappears.

  I sit up and brush the leaves and dirt from my hair, reaching out to pick up his abandoned acorn, smooth on the bottom with a rough cap. Despite my residual trepidation about disease, the idea that I could prove the Others lie about the food, also, is too intriguing to resist. I experiment after swiping the acorn clean, sliding it between my back teeth and biting down. Nothing happens. Squirrel teeth must be sharper than mine.

  Determined now, I drop the acorn and stand, slamming the heel of my tennis shoe down on it. No results other than embedding it in the muddy earth. It takes a minute, but I find a good-sized, flat rock and place the acorn carefully in the center. I smash it with my foot again, this time receiving a satisfying crunch in return for my efforts. I pick apart the ruined shell and cradle what’s left—a soft, orange nut—in my palm.

  The animals aren’t all dangerous. What about the food? The Others insist that only the food they deliver to our homes is safe for consumption. That bright red berries that grow on bushes and nuts that fall from the trees are deadly. They won’t just make us sick or give us a bellyache—they’ll kill us.