The Slave Series

by Laura Frances

  “Yes.”

  “Those are some of the bravest men you will ever have the privilege of knowing,” he says. Pride warms his face. He reaches a hand past the back of my head, stretching to grip Cash’s shoulder. “Second only to this guy.”

  Cash grunts his disapproval. One more pat, and Edan lets his hand fall. We stand in silence, until Edan turns to me.

  “There are soldiers like that spread all throughout the southern edge,” he says. “Dozens of them. They are the ones who did not bend beneath the Council’s threats.”

  My eyes go wide. “What threats?”

  Edan bows his head but remains silent. I look between the men, but neither of them will look at me.

  “What threats?” I say again. “Cash?”

  Cash meets my eyes. “When a soldier is recruited for the valley,” he says, “the Council logs all of their personal information.” His gaze returns to the street. “Including family details: mother, father, number of siblings. They take all of it. When the recruits pass training, they are informed that any insubordination will be taken out on their family members.”

  I press a hand to the glass for support, because I suddenly don’t feel much like standing. Heaviness settles over me. “How,” I say, my voice breaking. “I mean, in what way do they…take it out on the families?”

  Edan lets out a heavy sigh. Hands in his pockets, face to the ground, he closes his eyes.

  “Well, right now,” he says. His voice snags, and I see the hard swallow that echoes in his throat. Every second brings a terrible feeling, like I’m about to learn something that I won’t ever be able to forget. But I need to know.

  I touch Edan’s arm. He gives me a quick, empty smile.

  “It’s poison,” he says. “It works slow at first, like a virus. Same symptoms. Fever, runny nose, vomiting. Only there is no cure available. At least, none the people can access. And the body can’t fight it. It…doesn’t recognize it.”

  He looks to the glass, swiping fast at his nose. Sniffing hard. I see the glisten in his eyes that he’s trying so hard to hide from me. His jaw tightens.

  “And the thing is,” he says, his voice seething, louder. “The thing is, they deliver it like news. A letter, from their soldier.”

  “How—”

  “It’s a powder. Almost invisible, undetectable. When the letter is opened, it puffs into the air, and they breathe it.”

  I feel nauseous. My hand is on the glass again. I press into it, letting my head hang. I know what the Council is like. I understand their brand of evil. But I had never considered that they were manipulating the Watchers too.

  Listen to me, Hannah, Norma said to me the night before the explosions. There is always more to a situation than what’s before you.

  She knew. I don’t know how, but somehow she knew. I close my eyes. I need Norma and her wisdom. I need her fragile hand on mine and her hopeful sighs.

  Would I have done the same? I don’t know. I don’t know if I could let my family suffer and die. I don’t know if I could kill an innocent person to save them.

  I gasp, and my gaze whips between Cash and Edan. “What about your families?”

  “I don’t have a family,” Cash says tersely. His eyebrows hang heavy, his glare still aimed through the glass. “But Edan—”

  “Cash—” Edan warns.

  “Edan’s sister is very ill.”

  My gaze slowly shifts to Edan. His eyes flick to mine, just long enough that I get a glimpse of the pain he’s storing behind those grins and those twinkling eyes.

  “She’s seven,” he murmurs. “My dad’s dead and it’s—” His voice breaks. He clears his throat. “It’s my job to protect her.” He shakes his head, breathes a dry laugh.

  I know I should say something. But saying something is not a talent of mine. I get angrier the longer I stand here, like a mindless, wordless idiot. I hate myself for it. But there are no words. Just like there were no words when my knees landed on the wet asphalt outside this facility. I feel sick, light-headed. I turn my back to the glass and slump to the floor, letting my legs sprawl and my head thump against the window. My eyes unfocused, I feel each cell in my body begin to disintegrate…one by one by one. Despair is an empty kind of feeling. It’s the breath being sucked from your lungs. It’s the life-blood draining from your body. It’s the realization that nothing you do can make this better.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally whisper. But as soon as the words leave my mouth, I hate them too.

  Edan slips to the floor beside me, dropping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close. “It’s all right,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “It’s why we took the medicine.”

  I shake my head. “It isn’t enough. We only took a few samples.”

  “True. But it’s a start. And don’t underestimate Takeshi.”

  “Takeshi?”

  “The guy has connections.”

  Cash shifts beside me. I look up, and he’s craning his neck, angling to see something in the sky.

  “There’s something out there,” he mutters.

  I jump to my feet when he darts to the nearest door. A second later, he is in the middle of the street, walking backward, peering at the sky. He pulls the pistol from the holster on his leg and uses both hands to aim it at the swirling gray smog.

  “Wait here,” Edan says. He runs through the door to Cash’s side. The two share tense whispers. All the men on the rooftops are aiming toward the sky.

  I step closer to the window and angle my head, trying to see what they see. I’ve just caught sight of a blue flashing light hovering just fifty yards above the buildings, when a high-pitched sound cuts through the air. I press my hands to my ears, but it doesn’t block the noise. I stumble back a step, disoriented.

  The men on the roof are ducking for cover, and Edan is shouting something, pointing toward me before racing down an alley.

  Cash is barreling toward the door. I stare wide-eyed, watching as he slams his way into the building. He’s yelling at me, waving his hands and pointing to the door that I entered through. But I can’t move. The sound is scrambling my thoughts.

  As Cash reaches me, the entire wall of windows shatters in a loud crack, and a million tiny pieces rain into the corridor. I’m flying backward, Cash throwing me to the floor, and his body lands against me as a shield.

  17

  One of his hands cradles my head, holding my face to his chest. The other arm is wrapped around my back, stopping my body from slamming into the hard floor.

  Deep pain shoots through my left arm, and warmth trickles over the skin. Slowly we peel ourselves apart, and I see a shard of glass embedded in my forearm.

  “Slowly,” Cash says. “Don’t move too fast.” And it’s not just because I am cut. It is because we are lying on a bed of broken glass. It glistens as far as I can see. Cash sits up slowly, kneeling into the clean patches of floor beneath us. He pulls me up with him, until we are both kneeling.

  “Let me see,” he says, taking my arm gently into his hand and leaning close to examine it.

  I watch as he slips off his coat, shaking glass from the fabric as he does. He separates the two shirts he wears, holds the bottom in place with one hand, and tugs the top shirt off with the other. He tears a strip from it, wadding the extra fabric and tossing it aside.

  “Look at me,” he says. “Keep your eyes on me.”

  I’m still nodding, still agreeing, when he pulls the glass from my arm in one quick movement. I feel its exit, and a strangled sound falls out of my mouth. Seconds later, the strip of fabric is wrapped tightly around the wound and tied. I can already see the red stain of blood seeping through. Cash tugs me to my feet, a hand on my back to keep me from falling.

  I stare in shock at the floor of this corridor. Cold wind blows through the hall, and I cross my arms against it.

  “What was that?” I ask, teeth chattering.

  “Drones,” Cash replies. Outside, soldiers are emerging, shouting things I
can’t make out.

  “Stay here.” He grabs his coat.

  “No way!” I say. “I’m coming with you.”

  Cash gives me a stern look, frustrated. When I don’t back down, he says, “Fine. Stay with me.”

  I follow him carefully across the floor. My boots crunch over the tiny shards, reminding me of the Watcher in the alley. I slip, grabbing Cash’s arm to catch my balance. He doesn’t seem to care that I don’t let go. I hook my hand into the bend of his elbow as we step through a window frame. Once we are past the worst of it, I let go.

  “Why did they do this?” I whisper.

  Cash doesn’t answer.

  From outside, the damage looks much worse. From this vantage point, I can see the long stretch of the corridor. What once was a solid wall of glass is now open metal framing. Jagged sheets of glass still hang in some places, swaying, some falling, when the wind catches it. I turn in a circle slowly, taking in all of the surrounding buildings. Glass glistens on the street. Even some of the street lamps are blown to pieces.

  Edan appears at our left, rounding a corner, holding his pistol low. Soldiers scatter into the surrounding alleys, rifles pressed to their shoulders, green lights cutting through the darkness.

  “Drones!” Edan exclaims. “Three of them!”

  “But how?”

  “Vibrations,” Cash says, neck arched back. “The drones let out a frequency that causes the glass to shatter.”

  “I’ve heard of these,” Edan says, breathless, looking awestruck. He runs a hand down his mouth, over his chin.

  I stumble back a step. I’ve just remembered—

  “Hannah…”

  But I’m gone. My boots slide over slick piles of glass. I stumble through the window frame, racing through the door to the hall. I trip over obstacles I can’t see with no idea if I’m going the right direction. Cash is on my heels, yelling something to me, but I can’t understand him over the surging in my head.

  He must have caught on, because he’s grabbing my elbow in time to turn me down the right hall, and together we race toward the sleeping quarters, Edan running behind us. We are several yards from the doors when I begin to hear the crying. People are wailing and children are screaming, and my heart is pounding in my chest, slamming against my ribs. I push my legs to run harder, but panic is draining the life out of my limbs.

  We race through the double doors and our boots skid to a stop. My mouth drops open.

  I look up.

  The skylights have shattered, and the room is glistening in sparkling glass.

  I’m sitting on a pile of metal boxes in the Infirmary, my legs drawn up, my back against the wall. I touch the tender skin on my arm, where new stitches hold it together. I was braver this time. When the needle went in, I barely registered the pain. I was too busy gaping at a woman a few feet away, glass protruding from the curve of her shoulder.

  Tiny cuts zigzag across my fingertips. I’ve just finished pulling pieces of glass from hair over the last two hours. I yawn so hard my jaw pops. A woman told me to take a break, so I’m trying. But there are so many children with glass tangled in their hair. I close my eyes and wrap my arms around my legs. My forehead presses into my knees.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Aspen peers up at me. She has a shallow cut across her forehead that hasn’t been bandaged yet. Her hair is pulled into a tight bun on the top of her head. She climbs the boxes and settles next to me. Her warmth is welcome. It’s freezing in here. I scoot closer, so our arms press together.

  “Why did they do this?” I say. I watch a guard carry a child into the room. He takes her to an empty chair, and hands are quickly examining her. Tiny, red-stained shards of glass are dropped one by one into a bucket.

  “To make it easier to get to us,” Aspen says. She gingerly touches the skin around her cut. “Who cares about doors when all the windows are blown out?” She holds out her arms and wiggles her fingers at a man walking by with a stack of blankets. He tosses one up.

  It seems so obvious. I don’t know why it never occurred to me. We are completely exposed now. Taking us will be easy. Simple.

  They are coming for us. That is next.

  “I’ll never sleep again,” I mutter, helping Aspen wrap the blanket around our shoulders. We huddle closer together.

  “I will,” she says flatly, her teeth chattering. “I say let them come. We’ve been sitting here doing nothing for over a week.”

  I don’t know why I’m surprised when she says it. Aspen never shows fear, even when a healthy dose would be wise. I remember being fourteen. I was not so bold as she is. My only dream was to remain invisible. I’ve only ever wanted to survive.

  Across the room, a sob rises above all the crying noise. The sound of it sends a jolt through my chest. I search for it, moving my gaze over the chaotic room.

  “Babies don’t sleep in blankets,” Aspen says softly. Her eyes are lowered. I stare at her, stunned, while understanding catches up with me.

  I hear it again, and this time I find the mother. When I see her, the last of the energy pours out of me. The woman is kneeling beside a blanket that is spread across the floor. On it lies a baby…and so much red. The infant cries so hard that its entire body trembles. Calm faced women and gentle looking men lean over the baby with careful hands, using tweezers to pull glass from so many places it would be useless to count.

  I want to go to her. I want to help her. But how can I move when my heart has stopped? The breaths I take in are shallow at best. How do we combat this? What can we possibly do?

  I stare across the room at the woman, because looking at her baby hurts too much. She rocks on her knees, hands cupped over her mouth, tears drenching her face. To her credit, she doesn’t interfere. I only wish someone would comfort her. Her body is trembling. She’s probably cold. It’s freezing in here, with the wind howling through the halls. They’ve hung thick blankets over the doorways, but that isn’t enough. It will never be enough once winter sets in.

  I watch the woman shake violently and I think, she’s too sad to care. She isn’t going to ask for anything. Not when her baby is suffering.

  I slip out of the blanket and wrap my end tighter around Aspen. She says something to me, but I don’t hear her. I smile a little, but the second my back is turned, the smile falls into a deep frown. I slide from the metal boxes.

  My legs are numb, and I don’t know how they’re moving. I don’t know what I’m doing. I only know that someone needs to hold her. Someone needs to tell her things that will ease the pain. I don’t know what those things are. I don’t know how to make people feel good, when reality is so bad. But someone needs to. And no one is.

  I walk to the man that is handing out blankets and take one from the top of his stack. He says something to me, but I don’t hear him either. I nod to him, and he walks on.

  The closer I get, the harder my heart beats. When I’m standing behind the woman, I freeze. No one has noticed me yet. I am still for a minute, my gaze caught on the baby. From this close, I can see that many of her cuts are shallow, but a few are deeper. She is sleeping now. They must have given her something to help the pain.

  I drop to my knees beside the mother. It isn’t until I carefully drape the blanket across her shoulders that she realizes that I’m here. Her body jerks. She grips the two sides of the fabric in a tight fist. Her sobs soften, but don’t stop.

  I draw in a breath, pushing it out slow. They need us, my father always said. He was talking about the Council when he said it, reminding me that they need us to thrive as a nation. Without us, the system would crumble. But there’s a different memory rising now, one I barely remember. I was very young.

  They need us, my father said to my mother in a quiet voice, trying to avoid my ears. My mother was lying on her cot, legs propped on my father’s pillow. She sighed. Her dark hair fell over the side of the cot, spilling in tangled waves that she hadn’t cared to brush. This was the beginning of the heart trouble, the night she couldn
’t catch her breath.

  But it’s curfew, my mother said, forearm draped over her eyes. It isn’t safe.

  She could have said it isn’t allowed. That’s what she should have said. That’s what she would have said to me.

  It isn’t safe, she said again. You know what will happen—

  They need us, my father interjected. This is more important than safety.

  After a pause, Mother hauled her body from the cot, crossing to my father. She pressed her lips to his lips. I saw the little touches: his hand on her arm, her hand on his head. I saw their eyebrows drawn in, like pulling away would be painful.

  Be careful, she whispered. Stay in the shadows.

  My heart beats faster. Where was my father going after curfew? Who was he helping?

  Fabric drops over my shoulders, and an arm brushes mine. The mother beside me smiles through her tears and pulls me close, sharing her warmth. I didn’t realize I was shaking so hard.

  “Thank you,” I say, but I feel embarrassed. I came to be the comforter. “What’s her name?”

  The mother wipes her nose with a sleeve of her shirt. “Anne,” she breathes.

  “That’s beautiful,” I murmur.

  “It was my mother’s name.” Her eyes close tight and a sob wrenches from her throat. Soon her face is contorted and her mouth gaping. I pull her close to me, and her face falls on my shoulder. Her sobs feel weightier than this moment. It is everything, pressed down, too much. Silent tears slip down my cheeks. I hold her until she is ready to let go. I fight against the desperate sadness crawling out of my own heart. I stamp it down. If I let it free, it will break me.

  18

  I am sprawled on a mattress in a new room. This one is windowless, and warm. I close my eyes, ready to escape into sleep.

  Someone drops on to the mattress beside me, and I peek from one eye to find Aspen staring at the ceiling.

  “Did you see the table?” she whispers. “Freaky, huh?”

  This room is long and narrow. On the farthest wall, a rectangular table is propped on its side. It is riddled with bullet holes.