Is she serious? Then I realize she’s teasing me as she continues to smile and tilts her head to the side, studying me.
“I don’t know,” she finally says. “You comport yourself like a Citizen though I know you haven’t actually been a Citizen in years, have you?”
She’s got that right. I haven’t been a real Citizen since the Sorens took me from under Isaac’s nose—what, five years ago?
“And yet,” she continues. “You’re not quite a Soren. You poopoo the lives of the Prospo. So—what ARE you, Romy Mason?”
I can’t imagine why that’s important. Still, I pause. It’s simple, isn’t it? I’m a person who happens to love living, happens to want to continue living. My whole purpose here is so that I can continue staying alive. Right?
Then I ask her, “What are you, Warden Ellena?” I don’t really care, but hey, maybe it’s time to get her talking.
She bursts out laughing. “Oh I’m a Citizen,” she says matter-of-factly. “I think we all have our purpose here. We all need to fit in and contribute to our purpose equally.”
The words are definitely one of the Citizen mottos, but the way she looks at me, the way she’s dressed, the way she ‘runs’ this place, tells me otherwise.
“You reckon I’m a conundrum of sorts,” she says. “Maybe we have more in common than you think, Romy Mason.”
The idea is ludicrous. I certainly don’t desire jewels and men in birdcages. My eyes flash quickly to him then back at her. “We don’t,” I mutter under my breath.
“Ha!” she says. “Sure, my motivations are far more, shall we say—material? No—flashy? Oh oh! I know, eccentric?”
I can’t help but smirk at that.
“But what I claim we have in common,” she says, “is that both of us will do whatever it takes to attain our goals. We will do whatever is necessary, no matter the sacrifices, no matter the pain we go through—”
Hmm. Well that’s true—
Then she says, “No matter who else dies in the process, am I right?”
That’s where she stumps me. Well of course not. I’m not that cavalier about other people’s lives. Am I? Of course not, I think, as a stream of doubt flows in the back of my head.
My frown deepens as she cackles. What is she playing at?
“Why am I here, Warden Ellena? Why have you summoned me? I should be working in the fields along with the other EPrisoners.”
“True,” she says. “Though you brought your own self here, you’re one of our most ‘Too Dangerous’ inmates, Romy. And I shouldn’t keep my most ‘Too Dangerous’ out there with the others where she could hurt them, should I?” She looks over at Muscles in the cage as she speaks, and my heart starts to trot.
“No,” she says, though Muscles doesn’t utter a sound. “No, I reckon I need to keep her and her far too dangerous ways away from the populace. I reckon, since she refuses to cooperate with me and play nice with me, that she should be held where the ‘Too Dangerous’ go for the rest of her life. In the South Tower.”
Then she turns away from me with a huff, as if suddenly impatient. “Guards!” she yells, then instructs them to take me out of her sight, and she presses a button, letting Muscles out of his pen.
“Take that horrid girl out of my mind,” she purrs to him just as I’m being pulled out the door.
What new hell awaits me now? I think, as I’m being pulled away to the special veda.
Then, we’re heading down, but only a couple of floors. The veda pauses, and instead of the doors opening, the entire veda moves to the right for a minute.
Finally, when the doors do open, a foul smell hits my nose from a source I can’t see, the room is pitch black, whatever it is.
Then I’m shoved forward into the smelly black chamber, and the veda doors shut tight behind me, sealing my fate.
The Vault
At first, my legs refuse to move under me, but my eyes fight to adjust to the dark. The smell, though, the smell is not something I can adjust to, like weeks old cheese, human waste, and something else.
Something acidic that burns the inside of my nostrils. I gag then shut my nose closed with two fingers as I fight to breathe through my mouth. It’s not much better.
It’s also warm in the room, warmer than in any other shaded spot I’ve sat in the EPrison. I try to picture where I could be, in what I know about the EPrison. I know the warden’s quarters are on the topmost floor. We didn’t travel down that far, but then we also moved sideways. I wonder if we’re anywhere near that moat I saw on the third floor.
My eyes continue to adjust. Cold, hard ground, with a layer of dirt under my feet. I reach out as I stumble forward and stop when I hear a grunt the same moment my foot digs into something—someone.
“Hello?” I say, my voice shaky.
But the body that grunted just moves out of the way and doesn’t speak.
I keep moving forward again, a little bit slower this time, until finally, I reach what feels like a wet mossy wall ahead. I feel all around the wall, still not seeing a thing. Oh what I would do for some light right about now. I turn around, not quite putting my back against the wall behind me, and I face—well pitch blackness.
So this is where she means to leave me until I die of—what? Hunger? Boredom?
I breathe in and out, still fighting the nausea caused by whatever THAT smell is. Then I move to the right, keeping the wall within reach. I walk, and keep walking, and keep walking.
Then I wonder how long it’ll take for me to sit here before I completely lose my mind. Not long, I expect since a disembodied voice in the dark starts whispering my name.
Shivers run up and down my spine as I hear my name being whispered, over and over and over again. What is this new hell?
“Hello?” I yell into the void, just so I hear something other than my name being repeated like that. “Who is in here?”
But the whispering doesn’t ease, making goosebumps rise to my skin. Finally, I give up on walking around, and place my hands over my ears. At least I know it’s not IN my head, this thing, because my fingers lodged in my ears muffles it some. Only muffles though, it doesn’t go away completely.
But I sit there for hours, before deciding, I’ve gotta get up again and keep walking. I need to find something to tell me what else is in this room. Whoever grunted hasn’t said a word, and I can’t hear anything but my name being whispered.
Finally, I stop walking in a circle. I’m making a wild guess, but the EPrison’s walls should be a circumference of around fifteen kilometres.
If I walk in a straight line across, I should hit the other side in about an hour, all things being equal. Unless something gets in my way, but I try not to think of that too much. If only I’d fashioned myself a weapon before being summoned to her. I wasn’t thinking of course, but after all her talk, I didn’t expect this—still, no need to beat myself over the head with it. I keep walking.
Then stop again when a high-pitched scream reverberates over the walls.
It comes from behind me. My shoulders tense and I turn, still keeping my arms ahead. But nothing comes at me and the scream, shrill as it is, doesn’t get louder, doesn’t get closer. I turn back around again, though everything in my body tells me not to turn my back to the jarring sound.
I shuffle ahead a little bit faster now, wanting to shut my eyes despite not seeing anything, wanting to sit right down and cover my ears and rock myself to—what—sleep? Not likely. But the scream continues, ringing on the walls, making me want to gouge my ears so that I never hear another thing again.
Then it stops as abruptly as it started, though the bells keep ringing in my ears. The sudden silence is deafening. I only stop for a moment before taking a deep breath and walking forward again, determined to get to the other side of this—cavern.
Then my name rolls in whispers, now coming from my left. What is this? Is this what happened to Blair and Franklin? I wonder, remembering the wild look in her eyes as she tried to forget.
Is this what
they had to go through for a year? I know they said they weren’t always in the general populace area, and being labelled ‘Enemies of the Sorens’ wouldn’t have endeared them here.
I start counting in my head, just wanting to calculate something, to focus on tangible things, and I count to a hundred and thirty before the whispering stops. I count from zero and reach a hundred and fifty before the silence ends and the screaming begins, and I count to yet another hundred and fifty before that ends, and the silence returns.
The counting helps me at least. It’s even better when I count out loud, loud enough to not hear the whispers because out of the two, that’s the worst one.
I stick my pinky fingers snug in my ears during the screaming parts, and though that doesn’t silence it completely, it helps. And the counting helps.
Until I count to ninety before the screaming starts again, then twenty counts to silence, forty counts to whispers and I realize the silence part is diminishing fast. Before I start my count again, all I hear for another five hundred counts is the scream.
When it stops abruptly, I’m shaking so hard, my teeth chatter though it’s not cold in here. My heart hammers hard and I try to bring it down realizing that this entire time, I’ve been enduring a panic attack, but I’m also still walking.
Then the silence keeps going and I know it’s not my favourite part any more. Because it brings on the anticipation of more screaming or more whispering, and I simply can’t enjoy it.
It’s the calm before the storm, the comfort before the pain, it’s the incessant tick tick tick before the bomb detonates, except you don’t know just when the bomb detonates. It reminds me of an old toy I once had, a small jack-in-the-box. I hated it.
Still, I continue shuffling forward because I must be close now. I have to be.
Then the whispering starts up again. But this time, it says, “Romy, have you had enough yet, Romy?”
And it repeats the words over and over again, over a hundred times, certainly. I only stop in my tracks once when the horror continues with, “Maybe it’s time to end your life. Maybe this is enough. You should end it now before it gets worse. Because it will get worse, Romy. It will only get worse and worse and worse until what you think is your brain and your conscience and your strength in there turns to nothing. Maybe you should stop now. We can help you.”
I finally reach the other side of the wall, tears streaming down my face this entire time.
“If you move down the wall to the right,” the voice whispers, “we can help you find a quick, painless death. You won’t even feel a thing. It won’t hurt. We promise.”
The voice draws out the last word for so long, I imagine snakes writhing in a pit.
“If you walk down the wall to the left,” it says, “it will hurt, Romy. It will go on for a lot longer. You’d wish so much that you went right. You’ll live for a while longer, but do you really want that? You’ll fail on your mission here, Romy. Nobody even knows you’re here. Nobody cares.”
And it continues. I dip my forehead until it rests on the cool wall as I fight to breathe. Though it’s still dark as night in here, I shut my eyes closed, pushing more tears down my cheeks.
What am I doing here? What is she doing to me? I try to ignore the whispering but it’s all around me, and even sticking my fingers in my ears doesn’t do anything anymore.
My hands try to dig into the wall, but I feel it give slightly. It’s covered in mud or moss or something. I don’t know—the smells in here swirl together. I could be in Maya’s belly again, for all I know.
Still, I don’t move as the voice urges me to turn right to my “quick painless death”, to promises that it will be fast, that I won’t feel a thing, that this will all end the moment I decide to do it. To end my life.
How many other people have come through here? I can’t blame a single one of them for choosing to walk to the right. Still, I don’t move. I don’t know why. I can’t think straight with the whispering, whispering, whispering.
Finally, I push slightly off the wall as it keeps whispering at me. And I turn to the left.
All logic’s left my brain, I realize, because I meant to go to my “quick and pain-free” death.
So why did I go left? I don’t know. But at least the whispering stops. For now. Here comes the anticipation of the onslaught of silence again.
Still, I keep shuffling left, waiting for the oncoming torture I’ve been promised. I stop when a disembodied hand wraps around my calf and it’s my turn to scream.
Prison
“Shhhh! Stop it! Stop screaming. I can’t stand the screaming!” she yells.
Then I realize, there really is someone else in the black room with me. She lets go of my leg but that small act makes me panic again.
“Where are you?” I say.
“Down here,” the voice says. “Just kneel. I’m on the ground. But please, I beg of you, please don’t scream again. I simply can’t stand the screaming!”
Then a small light flickers ahead of me and I look down into the face of the old lady who’d bitten my cheek, the old Metrill.
She’s dressed in the same type of sack I have on, and she holds a candle in her hand, one she’d lit, I’m guessing with a lighter she’s put away somewhere in her clothes.
The candle’s already on its last few inches, I see, as she lets a few small drips land on the ground, then sits the candle up in the melted wax.
“Please,” she says again, and she gestures for me to sit beside her.
I finally crumple to my knees, my face wet with tears. I’m pretty certain snot’s falling down my chin as well but I didn’t care until now.
As my eyes adjust to the light of the flickering candle, I wipe my wet face on the sleeve of my sack and sniffle.
“What is this—hell?” I ask her, moving closer as if to take in her heat though I don’t know her. I don’t know what’s about to happen next. Still, I don’t fight the mild relief I have that at least, for now, that old hell was over. For now, there’s a bit of light and I’m not alone. Still, I’m sure I meant to walk to the right.
“That’s it,” she says. “It is hell. Can you imagine a worse sort of prison?”
Then I pause because I didn’t expect her to articulate so well. She’s crazy. Or at least I thought she was. My hand moves up to my cheek where I remember her old teeth drew blood.
“Oh!” She watches my hand. “Oh! I am so so so so sorry.”
She reaches out to my face with her right hand then pulls it away before she touches my cheek.
What do I make of this well-spoken, seemingly normal version of the old crazy Metrill that bit my cheek? I know better than to drop my guard but I’m just relieved for this little bit in time.
I try to freeze this moment in my head, knowing that things are bound to get really bad from here. Knowing that I made the wrong decision, and who knows what I’d have to go through before death does finally grace me.
“How—” I say, then change my line of questioning. “Who are you? And how are you in here? How long have you been in here?”
She gives me a soft smile. “My name’s Annicka,” she says. “I’m in here because this is the only place I can meditate in peace. So I make sure to get thrown in here as much as possible. I’ve been in here now for over two days.”
Too many more questions pop in my head as she’s speaking. Then I wonder why I was drawn to the left instead of right. Whatever this place is, whatever the warden has planned for me, Father’s holo somehow compelled me to move to the direction of the Metrill. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I realize my shoulders are still shaking and I lean into the wall, imagining that its solid lines keep me grounded. I’m not going crazy, I lie to myself. This is real—she’s real.
“I could use some meditating myself.” I shut my eyes then open them wide again. I don’t want to get lost in pitch black again.
“So,” she says, “let’s meditate.”
But I tell her I can’t—not quite yet.
“Oh yes,” she agrees. “It’s hard to imagine the dark now as anything less than horrific, isn’t it?”
I agree, still surprised with just how sane she really is. Then I sit and watch her as she sits still, closes her eyes shut, and her breaths slow right down.
I don’t touch her but know that, if I were to check her pulse, I’d feel a slight flutter. I wonder where she is, what she’s looking at. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to close my eyes again
I watch her for hours. A part of me waits in anticipation of whatever new horrors will arrive, but a bigger part knows that I’m safer here, in the presence of this Metrill, than I will be anywhere else for a while. The irony of the thought doesn’t escape me.
Of course I’m not really safe—she is one of the people who means to destroy the planet. Who knows what she’s doing? It’s possible she’s connecting with them now, discussing strategies and plans, timelines and—well, me.
They should be happy I’m here then. I’m here to ‘save’ the girl I failed to all those years ago. I’m here to unlock whatever it is they need to be able to follow through with their mission.
And I’m willing to go through with it because it’s the only way we’ll hopefully find out what their plans are, just so we can try to stop them. Yeah right, a little voice in my head says. You know you can’t stop them.
Still, I have to try. I have to. Even if the rest of my life would only last a few more days after they get what they want, I won’t be able to live with myself knowing that I didn’t try—
So when her eyes flutter open and she smiles at me, I return it readily. “Ah, Romy Mason,” she says. “I thought it was you.”
“This is just so—weird,” I say. “I came looking for a Metrill here, one that I’d seen being taken away. And I can’t find her anywhere, but there’s you.”
“Taken away from where?” she asks.
“From Apex,” I say. “I saw her get auctioned in Liberty. A Vorkian won her. And he brought her—well, here.”
“Ah,” she says. “A young spritely thing she was, with dark curls around her crown?”
Romy's Last Stand: Book III of the 2250 Saga Page 15