Another door. Another hall full of rooms. Even a gallery, with art gathered from the people. Beautiful things used to cover gruesome truth. We pass through a courtyard of trees, opened to the sky. Benches offer a quiet place to rest and relax. Even here, armed guards stand watch. My pulse beats in my fingers. My thoughts narrow to the gun holstered at my back.
From here, we descend.
The elevator dings at the first level down, and my chest tightens as the doors slide apart. The last time I entered here, Ian carried me. My skin tingles with the memories of fresh burns. Raw, singed flesh.
We walk the dark, decorated hall, passing deep blue lanterns along gray walls. Watchers lined this walkway, shadowed and proud. Boldly protecting cruel men. Now only a few Southern soldiers patrol it.
We bypass the entrance I used those weeks ago and enter into a large room. A crescent table sits with five high-backed chairs. My feet carry me closer until my hand runs along the smooth, velvet cushion. I still remember the trembling, the near collapsing. Titus’ nails digging into my face.
I walk out of the room without a word and wait in the hall for the others to finish. I have no need to linger on those memories anymore. When I leave this place, I’ll do everything in my power to forget.
The next level down is an elaborate layout of suites, all designed to house the five members of the Council. Gold and jewels decorate the furniture. Lavish rugs lie sprawled across marble floors. Lights simulate sunshine, adding warmth and comfort this far beneath the earth.
When the doors open at the third level, I blink against all the white and trail behind as the guide gives details to Takeshi about the purposes of these labs and rooms. Experiments on viruses and bacteria. Human testing. Torture. The extent of information flowing from his mouth turns my stomach. I let my steps fall farther behind.
Past windows, people hunch over computers and lab equipment, perhaps searching for a cure to the illness spreading through the hospital. They rush and discuss, heads bent together with urgency in all their movements.
A metal stopper holds open a door at my left. When I peer in, I feel suddenly cold, like a draft wound its way to my heart, and all my blood is freezing, trying to stay in my body.
The room holds a metal table. A counter wiped clean…shining.
A buzzing fills my head. My heart pounds. Maybe it isn’t the room…not the same one. But it was like this.
My fingers trace the cool edge of the table until I’m standing at the side, peering down the way Titus was. Looking at the memory of my dying body.
My blood in bags. My life half-stolen.
I’ve stopped breathing. My lungs burn, and I suck in a breath, my fingers flying from the metal as if from fire.
“Hannah.”
Takeshi stands in the doorway, postured like he’ll jump forward to help me the second I ask.
“I’m fine,” I whisper, but I meant to be louder.
“You know you don’t have to be, right?” he says, moving farther into the room. “You’re allowed to struggle. I hope you know that.”
I avoid his eyes. “I do know,” I say. “Just some of these places…”
He studies his palms. “I was wrong to bring you down here. I’m sorry.”
“No,” I say firmly. “I wanted to come.”
Flying to the North may not have been my idea, but every step I’ve taken upon arriving has been by my own choosing. He doesn’t owe me an apology.
“You’ll tell me the minute you’ve seen enough?”
“I will.”
We walk together to the elevator, and my gaze catches on the fury of work happening in the labs. How many will be alive when we return South?
The next level is storage, full of crates and metal trunks. Our guide tells us they’ll be going through all the containers in the coming weeks. I’d rather not know what they’ll find.
I’m aware of every inch we travel deeper into the earth. I try to push the knowledge out, but it’s cold when we arrive at the last level. Cold, dark, and gray.
We’ve reached the cells. The deepest pit.
All the rooms are the same, an endless series of thick metal doors with small windows set too high for little girls to peer through. I remember trying…and failing.
The smells hit me first when we enter one of the tiny spaces. Foul, nauseating air circulates with the opening of the door. Human smells, and the scent of dying dreams.
I glance up. See the high, vaulted ceiling. The vents. The lights. I was broken in a cell like this, but so was Titus.
Half of the soldiers in this building are your enemies…and it is Cash who commands them…not you.
His knuckles cracked against my face, but I’d seen the veil fall. The beginning of his end.
I expel the memory, the last of the poison, releasing it to stay in this cavern beneath the earth.
“Let’s go home,” Takeshi says. He means the South. Our shared homeland.
I’m lighter as we ride to the surface. I relax against the elevator wall, breathing easier with each passing level.
“When can we leave?” I ask around our guide, who stands in the center of the elevator, scowling and fiddling with his radio. Takeshi leans to the opposite wall, hands in his pockets. He glances at a watch on his wrist.
“I just need a few more minutes with the guys in charge here. We can head out as soon as I’m done. Maybe twenty.”
We near the first level, and Takeshi pushes off the wall. I watch as the light jumps from the two to the one. The door slides apart.
A gunshot cracks the air, and our guide staggers back, clutching his neck.
46
Takeshi lunges across the elevator, shoving me to a corner and firing into the courtyard. I tell myself not to look at the body. Don’t look at the blood. But my eyes keep returning, and cold barrels through me. I grab my gun with shaking fingers. Takeshi jams his shoulder between the elevator doors to keep them open.
He eases into the courtyard, sweeping his aim. “Come on,” he whispers.
Five soldiers lie dead, sprawled across the floor. All in blue, but two lack decoration of any kind. Not even their names. Gunshots echo through the halls.
“Stay behind me,” Takeshi says.
We inch forward, hugging the walls. Fifty yards down, gunmen enter through an exterior door. No name badges. Fear prickles over my skin. We take cover in doorways, firing first. Killing before they can kill us. My blood screams that this is wrong. That I hate it. But a rush of power surges through my veins. I run with Takeshi, somehow willing, regressing back to the laws of the valley: I have to fight to survive, or I will die in this place and never leave.
Fire to injure, I think. Stop aiming to kill.
But my instinct to survive takes control, and terror makes me lethal. Every time a body collapses by my doing, pain shoots through my chest.
Don’t scream.
Survive it.
We run low down the hall, toward the sounds of guns and shouts. I try to keep my eyes trained ahead. This back section of the building is nothing but a wasteland of death. Some of the soldiers still make sounds, groaning against pain. Damaged artwork hangs off-balance on the walls, riddled with bullet holes.
We round a corner just a dozen yards from the foyer, but Takeshi’s arm shoots out, stopping me. Southern soldiers fire from broken, interior windows, engaging with a group of gunmen at the foyer entrance. Across from us, a soldier recognizes Takeshi and motions for him to stay back. Takeshi signals that more gunmen may be entering behind us, and they send three soldiers farther in.
Tremors wrack my body, so violent I grit my teeth to contain it. My ears ring as shots echo through the narrow space. I squeeze my eyes closed, and Cash is there.
The soldier runs low across the carpet, and we move back to make room against the wall. His name badge says Wright.
“Radios went out just before they hit us, but they’re back on. Our guys are moving in from all sides now. It won’t last.”
T
akeshi’s jaw clenches. The last time I saw him this angry, Meli was refusing a tourniquet. “Any outside intel?”
Southerners rise from their positions, moving toward the foyer. I hear shouts from the other side, booming orders for weapons to be dropped.
“None yet, sir.”
Another soldier arrives from a connecting hall, and he crouches at my side so we are surrounded, protected from every angle. I bite my lip until I taste blood.
The call to cease fire reaches us. Slowly we rise. I replace my gun and stretch my fingers, trying to rid them of the feeling. We inch around the corner, and bodies are everywhere, loyalists and several of the king’s men. A sour taste floods my mouth. I grip Wright’s forearm as we step around the dead and wounded, thrown off balance by the urge to gag.
“You never get used to it,” he mutters. His voice sounds strange in the silence. I clench my teeth against another wave of nausea and don’t answer. He doesn’t know what I have lived, but he’s right.
Bodies and debris litter the foyer. A small group of gunmen kneel in a line, arms propped on their heads, surrounded by glowering soldiers. Some of their eyes catch on me.
I let go of Wright and weave my way to the exit. Takeshi calls my name, but I don’t stop. I show my hands as I pass soldiers at the door, then run to the wall bordering the stairs. I have the sense only to make sure no one is below before I wrench over the side.
A palm touches my shoulder. “Hannah—”
I raise a hand. Shake my head. After a pause, Takeshi says, “I’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.” He leaves.
Tears burn my eyes, but I glare until they stop. My nails dig into the wall. My breaths come heavy, hot and angry. I wipe my mouth and turn to sit on the top step, then lift my gaze to the mountains. My ears still pulse, still pound in the chaos.
Soldiers move around me, rushing blurs of blue. Medics run the stairs two at a time. Words fly between them, shouted things I block out. I stare at the place my parents lived and died, fixing on their memories to help me calm.
When Cash discovers what happened, the guilt will crush him. But I’m grateful, because I will never again return. I’m done with violent deaths. With survival by any means. I’m not angry he sent me here, because this last time, I can look at the place my parents loved me and finally say goodbye.
When I return to the foyer, Takeshi stands near the stairs leading up to the sleeping rooms, talking with two soldiers. I amble across the wide space, avoiding the dead and the chunks of debris.
I stop and study the white stone scattered around the room. My gaze jerks to the statue, but she’s gone, shattered into a million pieces. Sorrow burrows in my chest. It pains me to see her destroyed. She was the one beauty in this awful place.
47
“How many?”
Takeshi stares out the window, watching as we rise above the clouds. “All.” He flinches at his own word. I draw up my knees, recoiling.
“And the Councilman?”
“They have him.” His eyes return to mine. “But we’ll find him, Hannah. It’s only a matter of time.”
Only a matter of time before the old man is found. But what about the men I laughed with over a game of cards? They can never be recovered. My chest burns at the memory. So many faces over the last weeks have been snuffed out, doused like flames. Burning one minute, leaving holes in lives the next. A gaping absence that can never be filled.
We both decline food. I have no appetite, though I’ve not eaten since breakfast. I keep seeing our guide crumpled on the elevator floor. Tension winds through my body, waiting for the next shot to be fired, though we’re thousands of feet above the ground. I glance at the soldiers scattered through the aircraft.
“The airfield’s thirty minutes from the hospital,” Takeshi says. “It’ll be late when we get there.”
He’s just saying things, filling the still air. I turn my gaze to the glass. The sun rests at the level of the clouds, turning them gold. I wish I could stay here, high above the pain and cruelty below. All I want is peace that lasts. For the first time since the elevator opened, a sob fills my throat. I press my lips tight, holding it in. But a tear slips anyway.
“You’re coming with me?” I ask, wiping my cheek before he sees it.
“I should bring you to him,” he says. “After what happened.”
Just the vague mention of Cash, and longing sweeps through me, aching. I curl in my chair, closing my eyes so I don’t have to talk.
When I feel the first descent, I crack my eyelids to see the sky. I don’t know why I can’t see the stars up here. I always think I should, but it’s just black. I peek over at Takeshi, but he’s asleep. I scoot closer to the glass, cupping my hands around my eyes. When I still don’t see them, I fall back into the chair, disappointed.
How is it that the closer I am to the things I want, the less I see them? I swallow back the impulse to cry.
Takeshi doesn’t wake until we touch down. He grabs his arm rest, startled by the jolt. His muscles tense, and his eyes quickly scan our surroundings until they land on me. Slowly he relaxes. I wonder if his dreams were made up of the carnage we lived through today, like mine will be. I dread the thought.
The cold night air makes me shiver, sending sharp pain down my back. I cross my arms as we walk to a black car waiting outside the aircraft. I spend the drive hugging my bag of clothes with my gaze on the window, battling anger and tears. Takeshi doesn’t speak either, though maybe it isn’t our day he’s replaying behind his sullen eyes. Maybe he sees Meli.
We arrive at the hospital well into the night. When we step out into the frigid air, my gaze lifts to the sky. It angers me that I still can’t see the stars. I’ve fixated on this one thing, and I can’t achieve it. The lights of the city blot out their twinkling, and I could scream.
We enter through a side door, past guards with rifles. I don’t look at them.
I follow Takeshi down the quiet, dim hall of rooms, and a memory rises: my mother huddled on the floor, weeping. My father’s arms wrapped around her frail body, desperate to keep her from breaking.
Tell me, she whispered into his ear, into the dusty air we shared. Tell me again.
My father gathered her closer, holding her head to his chest. That was my favorite place too. Like my mother, I loved to hear the steady way his heart beat.
The words he spoke reached me in fragments, words like: long ago and blue sky.
I couldn’t look away. Even then, when I didn’t understand what made her cry. Their love is the most beautiful, painful picture from my life.
A woman jogs down the hall, raising her hand to grab our attention. She nods quickly toward Takeshi in a sloppy attempt at acknowledgement, then turns her eyes on me.
“Are you Hannah?” she asks, breathless. I peek at Takeshi, but he’s also confused.
“Yes,” I say.
Compassion fills her eyes, and my hearts stops. “I need you to come with me.”
I want to say no. Dread makes me tired, sweeping over so heavy that for a moment, I consider sitting against the wall. My shoulders sag. “Please tell me.”
“We’ve received a refugee,” the woman says. My gaze jerks up. “Mr. Gray told us you were close to her. She’s on her way here.”
48
The door to my unit creaked open, and for a second, I froze, hidden by the gray haze of night. I pressed farther against the wall, hoping the shadows would hide me from the threat inching past my door.
Hannah?
A small frame appeared against the dim glow of outside lights. She slipped in, shutting the door with barely a click.
Sweetheart, where are you?
She followed the sounds of my sniffling and sobs to where I sat huddled on the tile. I’d not washed it in weeks, and my feet were black.
Oh, my dear, she whispered, dropping slow to the floor and folding me in her arms. I fell against her chest, and the sobs came heavier. At thirteen, I needed my mother to explain the things happenin
g to me, the changes I couldn’t cope with alone.
There now, her gentle voice cooed. Tell me what’s wrong.
I stare through the glass sliding doors of the roof, waiting for the blades and the lights and the running. Waiting for her to arrive.
For a while I pace, eyes on the sky, but the doors keep sensing my movement, allowing in cold bursts of air. I settle on the floor at the opposite wall and chew my thumbnail.
Nurses gather, glancing at me but not asking. When the door opens to their presence, a steady beating hits my ears. I’m on my feet.
Don’t let hate defeat you, Norma told me once. If you look hard enough, you’ll find the good things. You’ll find beauty…even here.
She was the beauty. She was the good thing.
I run onto the roof, past armed guards, hanging back while they carry her from the helicopter on a stretcher. I’m caught up in the whirlwind of cold air, arms wrapped around my stomach, but my eyes don’t leave her. All the tiniest pieces of me cry out…begging.
They bring her through the glass doors, and I follow alongside as she’s wheeled to the elevator. Her eyes remain closed. Her skin is pale, more weathered and wrinkled than I remember.
“What floor?” I call as they crowd into the small space. No room for me.
“Six!” a nurse answers at the last second.
I fling open the stairwell door and take off running. When I burst onto level six, I have no idea which way to go. The white halls confuse me; all of them look the same. I glance up at a sign, but the words mean nothing.
I guess the direction of the elevator by the layout of the roof far above. By the time I find it, they’ve wheeled her to a room.
“They need time to examine her,” someone says. The words find me, but I don’t look at their source. I drop to a chair, catching my breath. “They’ll come get you as soon as possible.”
Steps retreat. Voices float around me. Lights scream, way too bright. I hear every clock ticking in every room on every floor.
The Slave Series Page 56