One Thousand Tears_a dystopian mermaid tale

by Pauline Creeden

  With that, she took the lead again. Scotty helped Nathan to his feet, and then Adelaide. And they were off once more, but thankful to be on solid, dry land. Then they hit a wall. Literally. To the left and to the right, the wall appeared to span the full length of the room. It was about seven feet in height and solid stone. There were a few places where the stones protruded enough to help with climbing and footholds, but otherwise, it was just a barrier in their way. Jo turned back to the others. "Now what?"

  Scotty rushed up. "No problem."

  He grabbed Jo by the waist and lifted her so that her fingers could hook the wall. Nathan had to squeeze himself against it in order to help give the rope enough slack that she was able to clear the top by scrambling along the side, catching some of the rocky footholds.

  Nathan followed, climbing up while Jo pulled on the rope and Scotty helped boost him toward the top. Scotty grabbed Adelaide by the waist. "I can boost you too."

  She nodded. "Okay."

  The boy's sudden closeness to her body felt awkward, but she understood that now wasn't the time to analyze the feeling of his grip on her abdomen. She reached for the top of the wall, where Jo grabbed one of her wrists and Nathan the other. They pulled while Scotty pushed, his hands now on her bottom. She used the footholds against the side of the wall, but barely needed to do anything as she floated to the top by the strength of her teammates.

  Once she reached the top, Scotty jumped up, and his fingertips barely hooked on the edge of the wall, Jo and Adelaide gripped his arms while Nathan pulled as hard as he could on the rope. Scotty was so much heavier than the rest of them, but with their help, he managed to scramble over the top, gasping for each breath as he slowly stood up.

  "I see the door!" Jo yelled out, and there it was, at the end of a thirty-yard pathway.

  "We've got this!" Scotty growled, charging forward and taking the lead once more. He pushed the tall grasses aside as he rushed forward along the path.

  Adelaide followed after him, running into his back when he stopped and clucked his tongue. She frowned. "What's wrong?"

  He spun around. "These grasses are sharp, they are cutting us anywhere we have exposed skin. They don't seem to be able to cut through the jumpsuit. Turn around, keep your hands in and duck your head. We'll have to move backward."

  With a nod, Adelaide followed his instructions, and watched as Nathan and Jo did the same. She followed the tug on the rope as she tucked her head in, working to keep her neck from being exposed. The grasses pulled and tugged at her jumpsuit but didn't snag any of her bare skin. They walked backwards for those full thirty yards, spinning around once they were clear of the grasses.

  The door was within their reach, Scotty smiled back at them. "Told you we had this."

  And they rushed forward, the door swooshing open at the feeling of their presence. They stumbled into the darkened hallway on the other side, giddy. They'd made it. But when they lifted their eyes, they were met with the eyes of the other team. Adelaide's heart sank. They were slower than the other team. This meant that if their team ended up being last among all the teams, they were going to fail. Her gaze met with the worried eyes of her companions. It meant that there was a possibility that Scotty and Nathan would be out of trial.

  The foursome stood in the hallway waiting area while the remaining three teams finished their trials. While sewage went from dripping off their limbs to drying on their bodies, they watched the other teams as they entered the waiting area. Not one other team had the sewage from the swampland upon them. That meant that theirs was the only team that had taken the direct, shorter route. All the other teams had chosen to go around and take the longer but easier route.

  The teams pointed and laughed at them, keeping their distance from Adelaide's group, and she couldn't blame them. The stench that radiated off their bodies was enough to make her gag, and she'd already become half-accustomed to the smell. When the last group came in from their solo trek through the terrarium, clean, Scotty leaned in toward them. "We're doomed."

  Adelaide's stomach twisted.

  Jo shook her head, tears filling her eyes as she made tight fists at her side. "No. We can't give up hope. It's possible that our time was still faster than one of the other groups. We don't know yet."

  She slammed into Nathan and wrapped her arms around his waist. Then the buzzer overhead sounded, and the door at the end of the room swished open. The bullhorn man stepped out. He clapped his hands together. "An entertaining spectacle. Some of your runs, more than others. As we told you, the winners of this trial are the ones on the team with the best time. That prize goes to the team ran by Annette Anders."

  He waved toward the same group that had run the course with Adelaide's team, and for the first time, Adelaide had hope that maybe their time would beat out one of the other teams. If the team that they ran with got first place, maybe it was possible that their time would beat out one of the other teams, as Jo had said. The winning team stepped forward, and Adelaide noticed that the team leader, Annette was the same girl with a bruise across her cheeks from the broken nose that Adelaide had given her. She swallowed hard as the girl glared directly at her with a smug smile.

  "They completed the terrarium course in seventeen minutes, eight seconds. The remaining teams’ times are as follows. The team lead by Gerald Sunday had a time of seventeen minutes, forty seconds. The team lead by Kathleen Hines had a time of eighteen minutes, eleven seconds, and the team lead by Scotty James had a time of nineteen minutes, four seconds."

  The rest of the teams smiled and slapped hands together and bumped fists. Adelaide glanced at her own teammates and found their gazes at the floor. Their time had been the worst. They were doomed, just as Scotty had said they were going to be.

  9

  The man at the front cleared his throat. "As we told you at the beginning of the trial, all the male members of the losing team will be eliminated from the trial, and one of the female members. Because the leader of the losing team was female, Kathleen Hines is eliminated. And the three male members of her team are also eliminated—Logan Higgins, Judd O'Neil, and Deacon Evans."

  Adelaide's gaze jerked up and she exchanged surprised glances with her teammates.

  Kathleen cried out, "But wait. We didn't have the worst time!" She pointed toward Adelaide and her group. "Those sewage rats were the slowest. How did we lose?"

  A cunning smile spread across the lips of the man on the stage as he lifted an eyebrow. "If you remember, we told you that the team with the best time would win. We did not tell you that the team with the worst time would fail. We told you from the start what this test was actually about, didn't we? Teamwork, strategy, and decision-making. Every single team that took the long, easy way around had points deducted from their test. The team with the best time's prize was that their points were not deducted. The team that showed they had the heart to make the hard decision, the one where they rushed headlong and faced the most dangerous course had no points deducted either. They proved their willingness to work together and face hardships. In fact, they beat our test team's time through the rough part of the trial, and for that we are impressed. Those of you who are not eliminated now have a rest period. Get cleaned up, take a short break. Whatever is necessary. A buzzer will sound when rest period is over and the cafeteria is open for your supper."

  Without another word, he stepped through the door he'd entered in, and the guards that were with him rushed forward and escorted the four eliminated initiates out through the same door. Kathleen continued to scream and cry out about the unfairness, while Deacon landed on Scotty with a tear-filled gaze. Scotty sniffled and ran a hand across his nose.

  "Nine girls and nine boys left," Jo said, her expression mournful as she watched the last of the failed initiates leave. "That could have been us."

  Adelaide nodded, feeling somber herself. A woman in a Horizon jumpsuit stood next to another door in the waiting area. "This way, please," she called out. The remaining initiates followed her
into a large cargo elevator and started their trek back down to the third floor.

  Dinner that evening was a much quieter affair than it had been previously, especially at Adelaide's table. Deacon had been eliminated, so instead of six at their table, they only had five. And their team had been so close to elimination themselves, that it made everything just a little more real.

  Gerald shook his head and slammed his fork down next to his plate on the tray. "I can't go back out there, man. We get two solid meals a day in here, all the fresh water we can drink, and we don't have to worry about our safety at night. I hear it's even better in Atlantis 5. Three meals a day, I hear, like they did in the olden days and in fairy tales."

  Scotty nodded. "Life is better even in here, as an initiate. I'd be fine if Atlantis 5 was just like this.

  "But there's only one spot for a male. One. So two of us sitting at this table are not going to make it, no matter what. Maybe none of us three," Nathan said, keeping his gaze down on his food, then he picked up his head and met eyes with his sister. "But no matter what. If I don't make it--You still need to. Got that."

  Deep furrows firmly embedded themselves in Jo's forehead. She opened her mouth to disagree but snapped it shut when her brother glared harder at her. She gave the slightest nod and then dropped her gaze down to her food.

  "It's one of those times where I wish I was a girl," Gerald said, picking his fork back up and starting in on his side dishes.

  Adelaide's appetite was almost non-existent. What if she'd been eliminated today? What if it had spelled the end of her possibly seeing Jonas again? Her eyes scanned the room. Whenever the bullhorn man appeared, three guards would be with him. But they still wore armor and blackened helmets. It was impossible to tell if one of them might be Jonas. She wondered and stared at them each time they appeared.

  But instead, they mostly saw one of three women in Horizon Jumpsuits who guided them from room to room, as if the young adults were unable to get from the barracks to the cafeteria without getting lost.

  After each of them had finished the food on their trays, they had to remain seated at their table until everyone at every table had finished their meal. So things grew louder among the tables where people had finished. Adelaide sat at her seat until she felt an empty carton of processed chocolate beverage smack against the back of her head.

  Frowning, she turned around and looked to see who had done such a thing. She met eyes with Annette. The girl smirked at her, which looked extra sinister with her bruised nose bridge, and taunted, "Sewer rat."

  For half a moment, Adelaide was tempted to ball up her own carton and throw it back toward the girl. But her mother had always told her that revenge and retaliation only escalated matters. If you take revenge for another person's harm and cause harm, they will feel they now have the right to harm you again. It's never ending. Each battle becomes a war, and sooner or later, no one can remember who exactly started it and who was wronged first. She took a deep breath and turned back around.

  "That's right, Sewer rat. Turn back around," Annette said in her nasally tone, and then laughed with the rest of her lackeys.

  A moment later, another carton had been tossed in the direction of their table, narrowly missing Adelaide's head, flying over her shoulder, and Nathan caught it. He narrowed his eyes at the table across the way, standing up partway and crushing the cardboard box in his hand as he made a fist.

  Laughter ensued even more from the other table, but no one called out any names. And they continued to sit for the next few minutes in peace before the buzzer finally sounded. Everyone stood and started to make their way over toward the doorway leading back to the Barracks. Most got to their feet as soon as the buzzer sounded and rushed for the doorway. But Adelaide preferred to wait. There was no point in standing in the crowd and fighting for a better position. Making it out first through the door didn't amount to much.

  She'd much rather just sit at her table and wait until the crowd thinned. When she looked up, she found Nathan still sitting across from her, even though Jo and the others had already took off.

  He offered her a wan smile. "Sorry that you're dealing with that kind of stuff. Jo told me about what happened in the locker room. So you did that to her nose, huh?"

  Adelaide shrugged. "Retaliation is stupid, but defending yourself is not. I'm not an animal who is guided by emotion. We all have the ability to reason through things. She likely blames me for breaking her nose, rather than realizing that if she'd left me alone, her nose would be fine."

  "You're probably right, there." He half-laughed.

  Adelaide watched the crowd as the last few started to get near the doorway. She stood up, and Nathan stood with her.

  "Thank you for taking care of my sister."

  "She takes pretty good care of herself." Adelaide shrugged.

  He nodded, looking in the direction Jo had gone with affection. "Yeah, but it doesn't hurt to have someone else looking out for you."

  Adelaide nodded and they both started heading for the doorway. She really did appreciate that someone else might look out for her in this place. She'd never really had that all her life, but she hadn't needed it as much as Jonas did. She tried to offer that to him as much as she could. Now where was he?

  In the hallway, Nathan waved goodbye as he headed toward the men's barracks, and she toward the women's. Her footsteps echoed in the nearly empty hallway as the muffled sounds of the talking women in the barracks seemed so far away.

  She took two steps and then heard someone call her name behind her. When she turned around, she expected to see Nathan, but instead, she found a young man in a guard uniform looking her way. He lifted the shield on his helmet, and her heart constricted in her chest. Jonas.

  She nearly tripped over herself as she spun around to stumble back to him. His sapphire eyes met hers, but they were different, somehow brighter. She whispered, "Where have you been?”

  The lines across his forehead deepened and he frowned, holding up a hand for her to stop. "I'm sorry," he said, dropping his gaze.

  She furrowed her brow at him and shook her head. "For what? What are you sorry about?”

  He continued to stand in the doorway, holding it open so it didn't slide shut on his body. Jo had told her there were sensors that kept it from happening. His face looked a little bit more pale than normal, but it was him. Her Jonas. His eyes met hers again. "I shouldn't have told you to join the group. You shouldn't have come here. It's dangerous in more ways than one..." he trailed off.

  "I'll be fine," she said, standing taller and straightening her spine. "I can handle what the land-walkers throw at me."

  He shook his head and folded his arms over his chest. "You don't understand. Things are different now. You should leave. Fail the next test and get out while you can. It's safer out there than it is in here. There are wolves."

  Every time he told her to leave, she felt as though something was stabbing her in the chest. Her heart constricted. "There are wolves outside, I'm told."

  His eyes grew wide. "Not like in here."

  Everything he was telling her made her feel as if he didn't believe in her. If she left, they would never be together. He was basically telling her that he was staying, and she should go. Go where? Back to the water? She wouldn't be allowed to return until the next full moon. He knew that. So what did he expect her to do out there? At least here, things made a little sense. Out there, nothing made sense.

  "I'm not going. I can handle myself." Her words came out with even more conviction than she'd felt—they strengthened her resolve.

  He lifted his lip in a disappointed sneer. She'd never seen that look on his face before. Then his eyes narrowed at her. "I tried to warn you. Don't forget that I tried."

  Then before she could say another word, he slipped into the room and allowed the door to slide shut in her face. She stepped forward, to go after him, but the door did not open by the presence of her body. The sensor ignored her. She stepped closer and pressed her ha
nd against the door. Nothing.

  The backs of her eyes stung. Why was he treating her like this? Suddenly it felt like she was the outcast here, like he was back in the ocean. But she never treated him like that, did she? She racked her brain but couldn't remember ever doing it. She shook her head, tears slipping down her cheeks. She swiped at them, surprised. Another new experience. She'd never cried before. Or maybe she had. It was hard to tell when she was already submerged in salt water to know whether the pain she felt manifested itself in tears... or if it was just the water from the sea.

  She swallowed down the sob that rose up in her throat. Her hands fisted against the cold metal door. Then she spun on her heel and leaned back against the door, willing it to open and wishing that Jonas would step out and tell her that he was just kidding. She needed him to believe in her. It crushed her deep down in her soul that he might not believe she was good enough to do this. The tears slipped over her cheeks and wet her lips. She licked them away and pushed away from the cold metal door, suddenly feeling chilled.

  Murmurs came from both ends of the hallway. The men's barracks were to her right, and the women's to her left. The elevator door sat directly in front of her. The last thing she wanted to do was go to her room and go to sleep. Nothing in her wanted to behave the way that others wanted her to, including Jonas. She stepped forward and hit the button on the elevator to go up. The elevator dinged, and the doors swooshed open. Without another thought, she stepped inside.

  10

  Once Adelaide turned around in the elevator, she debated which button to push. Did she want to go to the bottom floor, maybe find a way out of the building? Did she want to go back to the top floor of the building to the terrarium? It was the only thing in the building that she actually knew the location of. Or did she take her chances, hit a random button and find out what went on in this building? The doors started to slip shut. She really just wanted to be alone and think. So she leaned forward to hit the button for the top floor, when a hand slipped in between the elevator doors and stopped them from shutting they swished back open.