by Alice Reeds
Horrified, I stood there, my heart slamming against my rib cage, my mind suddenly blank. What was I supposed to do now? Miles wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t even want to believe me. Cargo, they called us. Not even people, just objects that needed to be returned to their rightful owner.
Who did they even think they were that they could talk about us like this, treat us like we were nothing and no one? And how was it possible that Leon took a minute to even recognize Miles in the first place, then was so happy to see him, and now he talked about him like he didn’t give two cents about him and was more than aware of who the both of us were, especially Miles? Why was he basing his assessment of Miles’s behavior on some kind of paperwork instead of his own memories? How did any of this fit together?
Just as I started to back away, slowly and quietly, an arm grabbed me around my waist and a hand covered my mouth to keep me from screaming. Panicked, I wanted to break free, at the same time feeling terrified that I’d been caught and everything that could mean.
“It’s me,” a familiar voice whispered barely audibly next to my ear. Miles. Immediately I stopped fighting while he let me go. He’d followed me, but did he hear what Leon and the others had said, too?
Slowly we retreated back to our room, me closing the door behind us quietly to avoid anyone coming to check on us. The last thing we needed was for the agents to grow suspicious of us the way we were of them. Who knew, maybe they’d lock us away in our room under false pretenses or something.
“It’s your brother.”
“I heard,” Miles said, his tone sad, with a shade of disappointment mixed into it. He’d been right, keeping our eyes open made the difference, though surely not the way Miles had hoped, or even I. “I really thought…” He sighed heavily. “But after what you said, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering if maybe you were right.” I stepped closer to him and pulled him into a hug like it would allow me to share some of his pain, take some of it and make this easier for him, though I knew that it was impossible. “Whoever he might be, this isn’t my brother, at least not the one I remember.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine…well, it’s not, actually, but it doesn’t matter,” he said and pulled away just enough that he could look at me. “If Leon is lying, if we are just an assignment, what are we supposed to do now? Can we still trust Joe if he knows these people?”
There was something in the way he looked at me, his eyes seemingly searching mine like he hoped I’d be able to lead us, and that I knew what I was doing. I knew I could trust my intuition, but could I get us out of this mess alive? I certainly would try my best, but would that be enough?
“Joe is okay, I really do trust him, plus he wasn’t there. According to what he told us, he didn’t come here with Leon and the others, and only McCarty is his friend,” I said trying to sort through all the thoughts racing through my mind. “She didn’t say anything, just stood there off to the side and listened, so maybe she’s okay as well?”
Enemy, friend, ally, liar, why had the lines turned so damn blurry?
“Our time is limited,” I said, my mind racing. “We have no idea where we are headed or how long until we get there. We needed to find Joe, tell him what we heard, and make a plan to get the hell off this ship as soon as possible.”
…
After a bit of looking around, we finally found Joe on deck, leaning against the railing, looking out on the water. There wasn’t much to see besides darkness, stars, and the moon reflecting off the waves, though it was surprisingly loud. The latter was definitely a useful fact, since it would drown out our voices, lowering as much as possible the chances of anyone overhearing us.
“Everything okay?” Joe asked as we approached him, his brows drawn together.
“We are royally fucked, so no, nothing’s okay,” I said.
“What happened?”
“Leon happened, and the others. This entire thing is all lies, nothing but an act, even possibly that friend of yours.” I took a deep breath, trying to steady my voice. “I heard Leon talking with Gail, McCarty, and Lido. This is all part of an assignment and not a rescue party, at least, not the way we would like it to be.”
“Are you sure?” Joe asked. He didn’t sound surprised or shocked, at least, not as much as I expected him to. Maybe he had the same worries as me but didn’t let it show.
“They called us cargo, not even humans. Delivered to an owner like we’re dogs that ran away,” I said, my hands balling into fists. “We need to get off this ship as soon as possible, before they figure out we know something or get us wherever they are supposed to deliver us to.”
“I see,” Joe said and lightly nodded. “Okay. The two of you should go back to your room so they won’t get suspicious, get your things, and in an hour, we’ll meet here again, yes?”
“And what will you do?” Miles asked.
“I will watch, maybe go in and talk to them, act natural. Maybe I’ll overhear more, something that could help. Who knows, maybe you heard something out of context and everything isn’t as bad as it seems, just a misunderstanding.”
“Don’t try me,” I warned. How dare he claim something like that? I knew what I had heard!
“And if what you heard is true, we’ll get out of here using one of the safety rafts of the ship. I have enough old contacts that I’m sure we’ll manage to get back to safety. I said I was going to help you, and I intend on keeping my word.”
“I think he’s right,” Miles said while I stared at Joe. “He used to be an agent. He knows what he’s doing, don’t you think?”
I didn’t say anything, just sighed. As much as I would’ve liked to do something, be active, act, a part of me knew that both of them were right. Joe creeping around was far less suspicious than the two of us, since we were the targets, not him.
Without further discussion, Miles and I retreated back inside. I rounded the corner into the hallway that led to our room, but a retreating figure caught my eye. Grabbing Miles’s arm, I stopped dead in my tracks, him coming to a halt next to me, eyes wide with surprise and confusion. I pulled him back around the corner and then whispered: “McCarty.”
He nodded back at me and then turned his head like he was trying to listen more into the space around us. I did the same, listened to McCarty’s quick steps disappearing farther into the ship. It’d been such a close call. Who knew what would’ve happened if we ran into her.
We waited until the hallways were quiet again and then rushed into our room. As I closed the door behind us, Miles fell back into his bunk. We had an hour to kill and I already hated every minute of it. I itched to get off the ship. Following Miles’s lead, I climbed into the top bunk, falling onto the unpleasant, stiff, and somewhat scratchy sheets. A weird sound caught my attention, something that sounded like crinkling paper.
Confused I sat up, looked back at my sheets but saw nothing. Curious, I grabbed the blanket and pulled it aside, checked if there was something hidden underneath it. Two pages lay there, now slightly wrinkled, the top one with my own mug shot looking back at me. Where the hell did they come from? A gasp escaped me as I took the entire thing in, at first convinced that maybe somehow it was just my eyes and mind playing a trick on me, another one of Briola’s dirty tricks. But as I reached out and grabbed the pages, they were really there.
“Are you okay?” Miles asked, his voice lightly confused or maybe concerned, I wasn’t sure.
“No.” It was all I managed to say before I slid off of my bed and jumped back down, my eyes meeting Miles’s a second later. I had no idea what those pages were, my fear almost too great to look at them closer.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. Reluctantly I handed him the second page, the one with his picture on it. My hand trembled, my heart beating harder, faster. I tried to swallow the lump that suddenly formed in my throat but couldn’t seem to do it.
“Shit,” Miles said.
Willing mys
elf to raise my hand, to look down on the page, I read what was written on it. The top held the Briola Bio Tech logo, just like had been on Ji’s instructions, and below it on the left was my picture, the same one as on my ID and passport. Next to it on the right was my basic information like my name, date and place of birth, address, height and eye color, even my blood type.
My hand trembled even more when I reached the last few lines on the page, which came before what seemed to be like a basic description of my personality and behavior:
Father: Anthony Wolf
Mother: Allesia Mayson
Contact person and seller: Carla Wolf
Value: two million dollars (SOLD)
What the actual fuck?
“Fiona?” I heard Miles ask but found myself unable to react in any way. I hadn’t even realized that I started to cry until the words in front of me blurred too much for me to read them, until wet patches formed on the paper, my eyes stinging.
Contact person and seller: Carla Wolf
Lies, it had to be, but there it was clearly, the name of a woman I’d never heard of listed as my mother. And the woman I thought was my mother. The woman I’d thought I could trust above all others. She was listed as the seller.
This was it, the final nail to the coffin. Everything until now I could deal with, but this? This was it, the one thing that crossed the line so far that I wasn’t sure if I could ever recover. I felt like something within me was this close to shattering, the pieces scattering everywhere, disappearing out of sight.
“Fiona, talk to me.”
“Look at this,” was all I managed to say, my voice strangled and unsteady.
I handed him my paper, let it go as quickly as I could, as though it were poisonous. It might as well have been. In the same motion, he handed me his, though I wasn’t sure if he did it so I could read it or just hold it. Against my better judgment, I still looked at it, my eyes scanning the page down to the same lines that had me in tears, the words blurry but just readable enough.
Father: Minsar Echo
Mother: Victoire Elise Echo (DECEASED)
Brother: Leon James Saqr Echo
Contact person and seller: Minsar Echo
Value: one million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars (SOLD)
Miles’s information wasn’t any better than mine—the fact that his own father had sold him to this madness—but somehow the only thing I felt inside of me was pain and hurt. Not only had my mother sold me, on top of that, she wasn’t even my mother. I couldn’t believe it.
“You’re worth more than me,” Miles said, his voice sounding as though he was trying to somehow find something amusing about this, even though nothing was. “See, I told you, you are worth more than you give yourself credit for.”
“This isn’t funny,” I said, new tears blurring my vision once again. My words seemed to have their intended effect because a moment later he pulled me into a tight hug, holding me as I cried.
The one person I thought I could rely on, who loved me unconditionally, turned out to be a fraud, nothing but an actress pretending to love me, cherish me, just so she could give me away for money. Two million dollars, no wonder. Who would say no to having that instead of a daughter that wasn’t even yours.
Every time she told me she loved me, was happy to have me, was that nothing but bullshit? Did I really not mean anything to the woman that pretended to be my mother? It hurt so bad I felt as though someone had set my insides on fire and thrown my body into a pit of broken glass.
“No, it’s not funny; you’re right,” he agreed. “What is all of this about if we were worth just that much money. And why?”
“I can’t believe she would do something like this to me,” I said instead of answering or even thinking about his question. “I don’t even know who she is.”
“Who?”
“My mother or Carla or whoever the hell she is.” Another wave of tears overcame me, my throat closing, and my body shaking.
“You didn’t know,” Miles said, a statement and not a question.
“I don’t know who this Allesia person is. I’ve never heard of her. Carla is the only mother I’ve ever known, but now? All these years, all those lies.”
Miles pulled me even closer, his arms enveloping my body perfectly, and in that moment all I wanted was to just melt into him so I wouldn’t have to think about any of this for a second longer. Briola wasn’t only about to take away my future, but now they’d even taken my past, my family.
“All these years she took care of me, loved me and helped me through all my problems, and all of it for what? So she could cash in two million at the end? Why would anyone do something like this? And your father! He lost one son and decided to sell away the other? How could they do something like this?”
“I’m so sorry you had to find out about your mom like this,” he said and lightly kissed the side of my head. “I know how much it hurts to lose someone, though I won’t even pretend I can imagine how much this must hurt. Usually I’d never say something like this, but damn, your mom is a bitch.” I laughed, wet and mangled.
“I’m sorry your father is a dick.”
“Believe me, I know.” How was it possible that he was taking this so calmly, trying to be funny, consoling me when this wasn’t just about me? His father had sold him off just as much as my mo—no, no, no, no—Carla did me. “But if anything, I’m surprised he didn’t get Briola to come and get me sooner. Would’ve saved him a good sum of money.”
“Why are you so calm?” I asked and leaned back enough to look up at him.
“Because I’ve always known that my father doesn’t give a shit about me. Maybe this was why—because it wouldn’t have made sense to care if Briola would take us anyway. Or maybe he already didn’t care before that. He was a bastard before this, and he’s an even bigger one now.”
I wanted to cry even more. For me, for him, for everything he had to go through with losing his mother, his brother, and the way his father treated him. More tears pooled in my eyes, stung, and threatened to spill over.
Pull yourself together!
All of this was absolutely ludicrous, every single piece of this puzzle that somehow only grew bigger and more complex the more we found out, instead of getting smaller and clearer. This wasn’t some kind of made-up dystopian alternate reality. It was the real world, where selling and buying teens was fucking illegal, but somehow Briola was getting away with it.
I couldn’t fall apart now, even though I could feel myself standing right on the edge. It was such a tempting idea, to just fall apart and give up, let Briola do whatever the hell they wanted, but that was bullshit. We’d made it this far, had gotten off the island, were so close to making it, I couldn’t give up now. Everything within me hurt, my heart bleeding and feeling like it was a second away from being ripped into hundreds of little pieces, but I knew I was stronger than this. I had to be.
Wasn’t this what Briola wanted, to play with and break us, use us for their plans? They tried to do it with the plane, the bear, the implants, Ji attempting to kill us, that damn notebook entry, and even Miles’s damn brother. They tried so hard, yet we were still here, still standing, breathing, so very much alive. I couldn’t give them this, couldn’t give them the satisfaction of having defeated us just like this. My entire life was nothing but lies. Carla nothing but a billion empty words and meaningless gestures, but despite that, it was in part thanks to her that I was who I was. She and my father had made me this way, made me strong, a fighter, a champion, a survivor. If that truly was why Briola wanted me, why my father trained me, why I was worth such an outrageous amount of money, the least I could do was prove that I was worth that money, right?
The fight isn’t lost until it’s over. We’d see who would have the last laugh if we’d just disappeared, no agents, no siblings, nothing.
“Let’s get our things, meet Joe, and get out of here,” I finally said and tried to pull away, but Miles held on to me, his eyes watching me li
ke he wasn’t sure what he thought about my words and sudden change of mood.
“Will you be okay?” he asked.
“Honestly? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I will mourn my loss, will mourn the lie I lived, but now isn’t the right time for it. Now we need to make sure that we get off this ship and survive.”
“Okay.” He nodded and then moved one of his arms away from my back and instead raised his hand to my face. Lightly he put his hand on my cheek, his thumb wiping away the stray tear that dared to escape my eye against my best efforts. “Despite all of this, everything your parents have done, I want you to remember that I’m still on your side. And maybe she lied whenever she told you she cared about you, but I truly do mean it.”
Slowly, as though giving me time to decide if I wanted it or not, he leaned in and kissed me, and I kissed him back, melted against him. This wasn’t anything passionate, wasn’t the sort of big kiss that in movies would come with fireworks or some grand piece of music. No. It was the opposite, gentle and soft, slow and so genuine, the type of kiss that spoke a million words in complete silence, an admission and acceptance. Everything around us was falling apart by the minute, everything we once thought had turned into dust, but we still had each other.
“As much as that was a clear ten out of ten,” I said once our kiss ended, “we really need to go.”
“I know,” he said, breathless, and I wished we could just stay in that moment for a little longer, ignore everything outside this room, ignore the papers, the agents, Briola, and everything else. But we couldn’t.
It was time to go, and I truly couldn’t wait to leave this ship behind.
We grabbed our backpack, stuffed our papers into it, and then peeked out into the hallway, listened for footsteps, but there were none. The air was clear, at least for now. As quietly as we could, we walked down the hallways and back onto the deck. I looked over my shoulder again and again, expecting one of them to appear just around the corner, to see us with our things. I didn’t know what they would do if that happened, and I wanted to avoid finding it out.
“Guess now we need to wait,” I said once we made it to the spot where we were supposed to meet up with Joe. He wasn’t there yet, nowhere in sight. The longer we stood there, the higher the chances of one of them noticing us.