The Agrista (Between the Lines Book 1)

by Shannon Lamb

  “I don’t mind an experienced woman meself. They know what they’re doin’,” the bigger man stroked his chin speculatively as he stepped into Chrystina’s path, refusing to let her pass and laughing at her futile attempts to do so.

  “I’d rather a maidenhead, but I’m no’ picky. I don’t mind sloppy seconds, or thirds. In the end, they all feel the same,” the shorter guard sniggered, forcing Chrystina to shrink against the wall as he eagerly advanced toward her with a wide gait.

  Johanna and Cerin watched in horror as the repulsive pair cornered her with violent thoughts, evident in their salacious glares and twitching fingers. Cerin mercilessly pressed his balled fists to his sockets, causing floaters to pulse beneath his eyelids as he racked his brain for a solution. He had to do something.

  “Where have you been, child? Aemilius is not a patient man!” Agatha squawked from behind the guards, forcing them apart and grabbing Chrystina firmly by the wrist.

  “Oi! She’ll be as late as we please! He’s going to kill the girl, anyway. What’s it really matter, old woman?” the bigger guard grunted.

  “Oh? As late as you please, is it? If she’s late, we’re the ones that get punished!” Agatha snarled.

  “It matters not to us what happens to you lot,” the shorter man scoffed.

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t. But the Queen likes things closely controlled. Do you want to be the ones to explain to her why the the chemist is unhappy?” Agatha smirked, knowing she had them. It was no idle threat.

  “Ugh. Off with ya, then! She’s too ugly, anyway. It’d be like rammin’ the back end of a Dooble!” the plump guard sneered.

  “Come along, Chrystina. Let’s leave these dogs to their bones,” Agatha hissed, scowling behind her as they hastily made their way to the kitchen with Cerin and Johanna hot on their heels. They skirted by, unnoticed by the guards in their roiling agitation.

  Chrystina lost her head at the mouth of the maze. She’d held it together until now, even beneath the cutting scrutiny of Cailene’s dogs, gnashing their teeth in promise of harm. Seeing the gargantuan mass of gnarled wire and reinforced steel melted her own down to smoldering iron, languidly stretching out across the banked flames of fear and hardening into something unrecognizable as she shuddered amidst the heat.

  The pale faces of her fallen friends – slack-jawed and lifeless – lined the looming walls of the perimeter on silver pickets. They seemed to be frozen in a private moment of fear and reflective resignation, identical to her own. For just a moment, she envied them, lost to this world forever. Every face she recognized brought about a violent shiver that sent her slowly crashing to her knees, obliterating the crumbling floodgates and liberating a tumultuous cry that left her shaking.

  Johanna had never seen the maze up close, nor heard tales of its appalling grandiosity, for no one had lived to tell them. She processed the gruesome sight in silence with macabre fascination. It was no worse than she’d imagined. Growing up among the rebels, Johanna had seen things no man should ever see, let alone a child.

  Still, seeing it and smelling it now was far more pungent than fleeting thoughts, and she couldn’t deny the rise of bile worming its way up her throat and threatening to expose her true vulnerability. She might be an old soul, but she was, after all, still only a child.

  “Johanna,” Cerin’s wavering tenor ripped her from her racing thoughts. “It’s time.” He held up the nearly empty vial of Flight’s Fancy, and she nodded in recognition. “There isn’t much. It will only lift us a few inches from the ground, but it’s enough to keep us from triggering the detonators. We still need to be extremely careful, and walk single file,” his firm voice was drowned out by Chrystina’s racking sobs. “Let’s hope this works!”

  Cerin cringed as he applied the remaining drops of Flight’s Fancy to their shoes, not knowing what to expect. Johanna’s heart broke into a gallop when he tightly grasped her hand to steady her as she slowly rose into the air. She grew mildly disgusted with herself at the reflexive reaction. Now wasn’t the time to be mooning over boys.

  “Stop your sniveling!” a nasal male voice boomed over the loudspeaker, wired to be heard throughout the maze. Cerin couldn’t help but note how familiar it sounded. “I’m starving! Enter the maze at once!” it hissed, accompanied by an overwhelming feedback of shrill frequencies and crackling static.

  “Y-yes, sir!” Chrystina sniffled.

  Her next breath exploded into a gasp as Cerin latched onto the back of her dress. It was followed by a quick succession of clumsy steps to hide her surprise, causing the others to scramble behind her in a heap of flimsy limbs. Their Parvúlus Armor was their only saving grace, working as a charge of similar polarity as it repelled the steel walls, saving them from sure destruction and discovery.

  “Slow and steady!” Cerin reminded with a hiss.

  People always say the first step is the hardest, but the ones that followed were just as difficult. Chrystina took painstakingly slow and deliberate steps so that Cerin and Johanna could mimic her movements with ease. The sharp corners proved to be especially difficult, causing the others to go bounding off the sides and careening into her tensed back, making her footing markedly clumsier as she stumbled forward.

  Most of the slaves’ footing got a little sloppy around the corners. They were terrified to see what might be waiting for them around the bend. To Aemilius, she simply looked scared. All the power lie with Aemilius himself at the heart of the maze, and he refused to even entertain the thought that someone could penetrate the systems he had in place, despite the nagging feeling in his gut as he watched Chrystina robotically worm through the corridors.

  Chrystina felt her head spin out of control along with the faulty compass the closer they got to their destination. She foolishly cast a terse glance at the large glass face of the lab. It was much like looking into the hypnotic eyes of an enormous snake as it stretched its jowls and readied itself for the kill. Aemilius’ foreboding silhouette cast a shadow over her footing and struck a fear in her so deep that it momentarily paralyzed her.

  “Keep moving! If you stop even once more, I’ll reactivate the maze and get the Queen to send in another. Perhaps one of your sisters?” Aemilius’ shrewd bark sent her charging forward with weak strides.

  When they finally reached the entrance of the lab, it was as if a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders, only to be replaced by another. Fear begot fear, only strengthening their burden by means of reciprocity. They braced themselves at the sound of mechanical whirring as a large iron door slowly rose to reveal an endless spiral staircase limned with shadow.

  A chill ran up Chrystina’s spine as she took in the daunting structure. The dark hid many things, and none of them were good. It comforted her greatly to know that she wasn’t alone. One by one, the stairs appeared before her like freshly erected cairns. She felt the weight of each meticulously placed stone; barrows of final prayers that unearthed her own and laid her calm to rest.

  She soon lost herself in the surge of fluorescent lights that flooded the stairwell with every next step she took. Cerin and Johanna struggled to keep pace as she hurried hers along, but they could scarcely see their footing, let alone her ebbing outline.

  “It’s about time! What took you so long?” Aemilius flung the door open as soon as her foot hit the top step. It chilled her to know how eerily cognizant he was of her every movement while she remained completely blind to his.

  He’s so familiar, Cerin scoured his mental faculties as he looked the gangly man over.

  “Get to work!” Aemilius huffed, throwing himself back down in his chair.

  Aemilius was in his mid-fifties, but looked well into his sixties, exposing a string of sleepless nights and poor decisions. Just shy of 6’6” and thin as a rail, his jet black hair was streaked with silver and puffed out beneath his glasses, as if trying to make up for its absence over his glossy dome by drawing attention to the unruly sides.

  His comically large coke bottle gl
asses spent more time resting at the butt of his nose than they did over his eyes, for his face was unnaturally flat, and there seemed to be nothing to hold them up. His thin lips pursed into a constant moue of disapproval to hide his extremely crooked teeth and only exacerbated his shrewd appearance.

  “Put the food down there, you filthy cretin!” With a roll of his eyes, Aemilius motioned to a nearby table before jumping to his feet and rushing off in another direction. “Don’t touch anything! It’s important for my lab to remain sterile, and you’re anything but.” Aemilius impatiently rummaged through a drawer for eating utensils. Anal to the core, he insisted on using his own personal set.

  Cerin and Johanna flattened themselves along the back wall to avoid Aemilius as he chaotically stormed about the room. Chrystina kept her head down and stood stock-still to avoid a further onslaught of verbal jabs. Seeing as her station was the only provocation he needed, her precautions would be all for naught.

  Aemilius wove through the room with the lithe dexterity of a snake, seeming to find order amidst the overwhelming chaos. Several black lab tables lined the room and filled the spaces in between, making the lab itself a makeshift maze of much smaller proportions. Large cabinets adorned every inch of the walls, filled with various tools of the trade. Half of their contents were strewn atop the tables in a confusing – albeit orderly – fashion.

  At the back of the room, a blood tinged curtain draped across the floor, marring their pristine surroundings, which was pronounced by Aemilius’ disheveled appearance as he briskly paced the room. Chrystina shuddered to think what might lie behind the curtain, and forced her attention back to the task at hand. Aemilius boorishly plunked himself down in his chair and glared at her, letting out a staccato of a sigh.

  “Bring me my food!” he demanded, slamming his fist onto the arm of the chair.

  “Y-yes, sir!” she struggled to keep the fear out of her voice, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. She dumbly held out the platter of food, only to meet with further scorn.

  “I’m not going to eat it on my lap, you imbecile! Bring the table here!” he jerked his head toward a nearby table with an impatient groan.

  Chrystina placed the tray of food on the small iron table, and wrapped her arms around the two front legs as she awkwardly bowed her legs. The table was even heavier than it looked. She managed to pull it over, inch by inch, but not without a grating cacophony of tearing marble and screeching iron.

  “That’s close enough! Ugh! Graceless swine,” Aemilius muttered as he turned toward the table. He hesitated before removing the cover from his food. “Stop hovering!” he hissed, shooing Chrystina away as if she were a whimpering mongrel.

  Wild boar ate more gracefully than Aemilius. He double-fisted his food, shoving piles of it into his mouth before he’d finished swallowing his previous bite. He often missed his mark and hit the floor. Because he ate with such speed and fervor, he was unable to control the intake of air, and made a distinct snorting noise as he suckled his food. It was a miracle the man had never choked to death.

  Great Lucidus, he reminds me of that idiot, Emil! Cerin smothered his forthcoming gasp with the back of his hand. It can’t be, could it? Emil could be short for Aemilius…It must be! Emil was a former schoolmate of Cerin’s, and the only person Cerin had ever met that ate – quite literally – like a pig.

  Emil had acted as the schoolmaster’s warden, revealing every minor infraction of his fellow classmates’ and gloating about how cunning he was to catch them. Meanwhile, he painted a huge target on his own back that stood the test of time. Fear of repercussions had little bearing on children that age, and didn’t stop Emil from getting tormented throughout the rest of his school days. The cruel treatment only strengthened Emil’s foolish notions, and Cerin was often at the head of it.

  “I keep hoping they’ll send up someone with at least half a brain. I’m in dire need of an assistant,” Aemilius sighed, hoping Chrystina would have sympathy for his plight. “I’m going to give you the same choice I gave all the other rats,” Aemilius set his utensils down and began cleaning his glasses with the edge of his dingy lab coat, only making them filthier.

  “Ch-choice, sir?” What choice did he give them? Which way they wanted to die? She quailed at the thought.

  “You can return through the maze and take your chances; not that there’s much of one, mind you,” he snorted. “Or...” his voice shifted an octave higher in his apparent excitement. “You can volunteer to be a test subject, and in return I can guarantee you greater longevity.” His face split in an eager grin, revealing twisted rows of sallow, pointed teeth.

  “Test subject?” Chrystina took a wary step back.

  “Only one of you has given themselves to science. The first slave that was sent here,” he recalled fondly. “All the others chose death. One would think they’d have some appreciation for science,” he sighed, disappointed. “Perhaps I’m putting far too much credence in filthy animals.”

  “The p-person that volunteered to b-be a t-test subject, are they s-still h-here?” asked Chrystina.

  “You’re the first that’s asked to see her,” Aemilius’ face lit up. “Perhaps there’s hope for you yet. Follow me!” He whistled an irritatingly chirpy tune as he obliviously bustled past Cerin and Johanna, leading Chrystina to a shady alcove at the back of the room.

  Aemilius flashed her a sinister grin and thrust the once sheer curtain – now opaque with layers of dried blood – to the side. He extended his arm toward the narrow opening as he sidestepped and inclined his head, noticeably forcing the excitement from his jittery limbs. It was by no means a gentlemanly gesture, but an attempt to attain an optimal view in which to gauge her reaction. His malicious smile bore more than the heartless acumen of a mad scientist; it held the sadistic glee of a cruel man.

  Chrystina shuffled her feet forward, toward the putrid scent billowing out from the backroom and weakening her stance with shocks of nausea. When she finally came upon the lump of dissected flesh splayed proudly across a steel table, she could’ve sworn that her heart had actually stopped beating, if not just for a moment. She clutched her abdomen and jerked her head to the side, fighting the hot rise of bile and nerves bubbling up her throat.

  The creature on the table no longer bore any resemblance to a gender, or even a species. Its limbs had been ripped from its body, only allowed to partially heal before being mercilessly gouged and cauterized, again and again, never knowing relief from the pain.

  Its skin had been replaced with a patina of gnarled scar tissue; a tribute to old wounds torn open and sloppily sewn back together, only to be ripped apart again. It was as if the madman leering over Chrystina’s shoulder was trying to create a human black hole. By the gleam in his eyes, he was already marking her with numbers in his mind as he sharpened his scalpel.

  The poor creature on the table had been ravaged of its humanity and stripped of everything but the one essential truth that thrives at the core of every living thing, even a creature so far removed from nature. A need that no person can deny, even to themselves. Survival. Somehow, this creature had held on and found the will to keep on breathing, knowing day in and day out that the torment would never cease.

  “What d-did you d-do to...t-to...” Chrystina stammered as she grappled for the right word to describe the nightmare before her.

  “Her name is Mary. At least, it was. I refer to her as Subject Number One.”

  Chrystina didn’t particularly remember Mary. Not a lot of people did, save Johanna. Mary was the first to go missing after Aemilius took up residence in the castle, but slaves often went missing with no explanation or clue as to why. She was an elderly woman and was nothing remarkable in the most commonly conceived ways. She often kept to herself and stayed out of others’ way.

  To Johanna, however, she was something special. Mary was the first friend she’d made after being stolen away to Quinque. Back then, friends were hard to come by, at least for Johanna. Mary was kind to her when m
ost people avoided her because of her lineage. The rebels infuriated Cailene, and she often took her anger out on the slaves.

  Before coming to Quinque, Johanna had thought cruelty was limited to royals, but she soon found out that fellow slaves could be just as unfeeling and spiteful.

  One particular group of female slaves had grown jealous of her Clamans ring. They begged Johanna for the benefit of its protection. While she wanted desperately to help them, she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her own virtue in order to do so, nor give up the one keepsake she had of her mother.

  One night, when Marcel had been in a particularly bad mood, he took it out on a fellow slave named Rachael. She returned battered and bruised, determined to restore her pride and continue the cycle of violence by inflicting it on another.

  Rachael and her friends concocted a scheme to drug Johanna, take her ring, and leave her in Marcel’s bed. They would’ve gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for Mary catching them in the act.

  Mary was the sole reason Johanna had lasted those first few horrible weeks. She’d never met a gentler soul in all of her life, and in her own unremarkable way, Mary had saved Johanna’s. She didn’t deserve such a terrible fate, though no one did, save those who would inflict it.

  “I won’t divulge all the gory details, but I will tell you the purpose of this experiment,” Aemilius’ nasal voice brought Johanna back from her thoughts. She forced all of her attention onto him and away from Mary, before she lost herself entirely. “I’m testing to see how much pain the human body can withstand before succumbing to death. I feel rather like a barbarian without any other test subjects to compare it to, though. To arrive at a truly accurate result, I need multiple subjects,” he sighed, flashing Chrystina a hopeful look over the rim of his glasses. “I really do hope you’ll consider giving yourself to science. Your pathetic existence could actually mean something!”