The Wanted (The Woodlands Series Book 4)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  Grant’s eyes snapped to him in irritation. “As we know, the terrorists have been projecting a video showing a very one-sided view of what we are trying to achieve here. It has upset the community unnecessarily, but I fear it is too late to use reason to calm the situation. No…” He shook his head like he was sorry. But I knew he wasn’t. “We must send a clear message that uprisings will not be tolerated.” He paused for effect.

  “Tell them, Daddy,” Judith encouraged.

  “I suggest we make our own video,” he said, weird mischief in his tone.

  Everyone was still very quiet, hanging on his every word, and he loved it. He clicked his fingers and someone brought a large roll of thick, blue paper to the front, laying it down on an empty table to Grant’s right.

  The guests moved in like moths to a flame and Grant hungrily absorbed their attention, grabbing at their silken wings and shoving them in his pockets. “I had already selected Pau Brazil as the site for personal reasons.” My hands dug into the underneath of my chair. It felt gummy and strange. “But now that our operative, Olga, has told us Pau Brazil is the rebels’ next target, it seems like the perfect opportunity to strike. We can show the terrorists what we’re capable of and issue the most severe of warnings to the other towns before the terrorists have a chance to reach them.”

  Olga? No, no, no. That can’t be true.

  “No,” I whispered, feeling everything I knew being shaken and poured down the drain.

  Poltinov spoke, his aged voice slipping over his words. “Er, how do you propose we, er, strike? Cough, cough, ahem. We don’t have their kinds of weapons.” Then he muttered, “There never, er, seemed a need, cough, to develop them.”

  “And Wyatt let the one man go who could have whipped us up a few bombs and high tech guns,” Sekimbo shouted.

  Grant’s stare was the sharp end of a knife when he looked at Sekimbo, who in turn, was unflappable.

  “Come,” Grant said, beckoning with his finger, which then flew in semicircle and landed on the large drawing. “These are the original drawings President Grant commissioned before Signing Day. See here…” I couldn’t see what he was pointing at. “We haven’t had to use this before, but I think now is the time.”

  “Which Ring and how many people are we talking about, Superior Grant? We can’t afford to lose too many workers,” someone I didn’t recognize asked.

  Again, Grant’s eyes slid to mine when he said, “Ring Two. Roughly three thousand citizens.” My mother’s Ring. I stood to try and see what he was pointing at, to understand the plan, but a guard pushed my shoulder down.

  “If you think, er, it will work then that, er, seems like an acceptable loss.”

  Acceptable loss? I screamed on the inside until my lungs started to peel away from my ribs.

  “How does it work?” Sekimbo asked, pushing himself to the front like a barge.

  Grant smiled, though it was more like a snarl.

  “It’s very simple. But it must be done manually from beneath the town. I will do it myself. We already have cameras all over the Ring that can record the incident. We simply flick the switch and show the people what happens when you rebel against the Woodlands.”

  What switches? I couldn’t see anything from where I was forced to sit; all I knew was thousands of people were about to be killed in a ‘simple’ way, and my mother and sister were part of that number of acceptable losses. It was my fault he chose Pau. Mine and Olga’s. That unassuming, egg-shaped woman had deceived us all.

  I writhed in my chair, impotent, and clamped my mouth over the indecision hooking into my lips.

  The three remaining Superiors voted unanimously for Grant’s plan.

  After the vote, they strolled around the room, eating, drinking, and socializing like it was easy to kill. They didn’t see us as people. We were numbers, workers, losses and gains. We were the foundations they stood on with their swollen, over-fed bodies. That was all.

  Judith approached me, squatting down to reach my eyes, which were wide and panicked like a gun was to my head. She placed a plate of food on my lap.

  “Rosa, eat, you’ll need your strength,” she crooned as she pulled out her lip gloss and applied it while she spoke. “You know I’ve enjoyed having you around. I might actually miss you.”

  I stared down at the colorful, oily food, and my stomach turned. I wanted dried meat and stale bread. Fresh game roasted on the fire. Not this. I poked it with my finger with distaste. “What do you mean, miss me?”

  She stood and covered her mouth with her dainty, peeling hand, her eyes filled with devilish delight. The secret on her lips was so delicious.

  “You’ll see,” she said, stepping away from me and swaying her hips as she walked. When no one was looking, I picked up a cream puff and threw it at the back of her head. She stumbled forward, and then snapped around to glare at me. She was about to turn me in when Grant cleared his throat and called for everyone’s attention.

  His hand shook, just a small tick, tick, tick, as he waved everyone over. The guard dumped me out of my chair and pushed me forward. The crowd of drunken gluttons laughed and then whispered as Grant hushed them.

  “Dear friends and family, it has been years since my accident. Just one misstep, one literal slip in my life, has caused so much pain and suffering. I must admit I have struggled daily with my condition. It has not been easy.” He paused for dramatic effect and wiped his mouth with his hand. “But now, through great personal sacrifice and commitment, I have found a cure.” I couldn’t help myself. I scoffed. The laugh quickly turned to hatred emanating from my eyes like fire. So many people had died to get him here. “Today… I walk!” he shouted proudly. I leaned in, ready to slap his face, but the guard had a hold on me.

  “Please join in my triumph as I am placed into the healer a paraplegic and step out on my own two legs.”

  Everyone clapped and cheered. Denis and Judith the loudest of all. For a moment, I forgot what was about to happen and all I could think was how selfish he was. How could a person put his need to walk above other peoples’ lives?

  I was cracking open with anger like a breaking stone, my anger parting me with fissures of red-hot light.

  ROSA

  He was ready. Nervous, but it was like he was already standing. Standing on the inside. I didn’t feel ready. I turned to Denis, and he gave me the slightest of nods. He was prepared for this. He’d been planning it long before I got here. I just gave him the key. Judith beamed proudly at her father below. He looked small, almost frail from up here, in a hospital gown and black socks. Just a man.

  The guard had been instructed to place me right in the front, so I had the best view. I didn’t want to see this.

  Doubts swirled around me like shards of glowing embers, stinging my skin and branding me with finality.

  I clenched my fists and wrapped my legs around the legs of the chair. It wobbled as I struggled to contain my shaking and nervousness. I glanced up at Denis, who was standing by an intercom, staring down on the glass coffin.

  “Good luck, Dad,” he said happily, his voice nasal from the break. His head snapped to me, and his eyes narrowed in warning. I needed to control myself.

  Grant’s eyes flicked up to his son and daughter. Judith made an apathetic show of pressing her hand to the glass and letting it slide down, making a squeaking sound. She smiled, but it was a fake smile. A hardened smile appeared across Grants lips as he smoothed his hair from his forehead. Even from here, I could see the beads of sweat twinkling under the fluorescent lights. When his eyes lit on me, they solidified. This moment was doubly pleasing to him. After I watched him heal, he planned to execute me in some horrible way, I knew. The word ‘execute’ hung there like a nothing word, a word you said over and over until it lost its meaning. Grant walked, and I died. That I understood. That was always the plan. But something other than fear was creeping up on me.

  Men in white coats stood around his wheelchair, holding a printout and checking through a list. G
rant’s hospital gown flapped under the air conditioner. The socks pulled halfway up his hairy calves making him look old.

  I was there when Judith flushed the two remaining pills down the toilet. I watched as they’d circled the porcelain and disappeared. Any chance Grant had of surviving this had bobbed along in the water like tiny life preservers and dissolved with the disinfectant.

  Grant’s eyes were still on me. His eyebrows furrowed as he watched my reactions. My inner struggle was bubbling up onto my face. But to him, I probably looked exactly as he would expect. But I didn’t expect my reaction. I looked scared to him because he knew I was about die. But I was scared because I knew he was about to die.

  A whitecoat put his hand on Grant’s shoulder and squeezed. Grant jerked and glared at the man. It was time to be lifted into the healer. One man held him under the arms and the other under his knees. Grant’s butt sagged down. He looked pathetic, helpless.

  Finally, Grant’s eyes left mine as they laid him on the table and I thought I would relax. But everything inside was screaming.

  I gripped the chair arms and tried to steady myself. Talk myself out of it. This was stupid. This could change everything. Murderer, whispered in my ear. This would change me and I was already so broken that pieces would go missing.

  Denis took a step towards me.

  Grant closed his crinkled eyes, his forehead, for once, un-furrowed. I remembered the pain of the healer and wondered what would happen when it all went wrong. Would it hurt more? I turned away from the glass. A guard placed his hand on my head and forcibly turned my face back towards the coffin.

  “He wants you to watch, miss.”

  I hated him. He hated me. Despised me. I would hate myself if I became like him.

  Nausea pressed out of me as the leftover smells of the banquet started to sour like they were sitting in a stomach. “He’s going to die.” It came out like a desperate, hoarse whisper.

  The guard laughed. “No. That’s you, Own Kind.”

  I shook my head, my blonde-tipped hair hitting my face. My freedom tied up with this murder was too high a price to pay. Denis took another step towards me shaking his head and smiling.

  “She’s trying to ruin Dad’s big day,” he said casually, bruises like war paint smudged under his eyes, then he leaned down and took my face in his hands, squeezing my cheeks together. His cool blue eyes danced over my face. “Don’t worry. It will all be over for you soon,” he said as he pushed my head back into the headrest violently, warning me to keep my mouth shut.

  I bit down on my lip until blood pooled in my mouth.

  I tried.

  I watched them insert the needles into his back and legs carefully. Grant’s face was calm. He didn’t know. The men stepped back when they’d finished, and the glass case lowered. Grant’s upper body flinched when the seal closed and then everyone left the room below us except the technician, who stood behind a thick piece of glass.

  “Are you ready, Superior Grant?” the man asked through a microphone.

  Grant laughed nervously. “I’ve been ready for years!”

  The crowd tittered awkwardly.

  Camille inhaled sharply as they started the countdown, her hands knotted together.

  “Right. The machine will be activated in 3… 2…”

  Something inside me burst, my heart, every bubble of air left. My voice broke and soared over the nodding heads of the onlookers to what would be a murder.

  “Stop!” I screamed as I stood, slapping my palms against the glass wildly like a bird attacking its own reflection. Everyone gasped in shock and the technician paused, his eyes blinking up in surprise at the crazed girl screaming. But he wasn’t going to stop unless I did something big, something that made it impossible for them to continue. Picking up the chair, I smashed it against the window. It bounced off the glass and scattered the crowd.

  Sekimbo belly-laughed. “My, she is spirited!” he said, directing a guard to hold me down.

  The guard wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug. My legs kicked and dragged across the glass. My dress tore as I struggled in his grip, the layers of taffeta ripping sounded like pain, like death. “It’s going to kill you!” I screamed through the glass. Grant’s head turned in my direction, but he couldn’t hear me. He spoke to the technician, who pressed the intercom button.

  “Bring her to the mic,” he ordered.

  I was roughly lifted to the mic, arms still hugging me so tight my ribs felt ready to crack. Breathless, I shouted into the speaker. “It will kill you! You don’t have the pills. Without them, you’ll die after the procedure.”

  People exchanged nervous glances. Denis’ hands were shaking but he calmly moved the speaker to his mouth, about to utter words of reassurance to his father like, Don’t listen to her. She’s crazy. She’s unhinged. Judith’s steady hand had taken her mother’s, and she was stroking the woman’s wrist calmly. Before Denis could open his mouth, Grant’s laughter shredded the room with its iciness—it’s pure disrespect for me.

  “Do you think I would listen to anything you have to say, child?” he said coldly, so amused at my attempts to stop him from getting what he wanted. “You’re nothing.” Words spat. “And I will be everything I once was when this is over. You fear that, as well you should. Your death will not be quick.” There was a small bridge of silence. I watched it build and grow as people’s panic quickly turned to disbelief in me—the nothing girl from Pau Brazil.

  I surged towards the glass again, managing to break free of the guard’s grip for a moment.

  “Please!” I begged. “Listen to me.” Tears streamed down my face. I was pleading for myself. I couldn’t watch this. I couldn’t be a part of it.

  He turned away from me and I thought, just for one second, that maybe he was considering my plea. Then he said, “Gag her.” His voice was sharp, like a dagger.

  The guard grabbed a scarf from one of the women and stuffed it into my mouth and my scream of, “No!” was muffled. The clean silk cut into the corners of my lips as he tied it tightly, and I was silenced. Denis sighed in disappointment, and Judith regarded me with wane sympathy.

  The technician started his countdown again. “Three… two…”

  This would follow me forever.

  JOSEPH

  I felt lighter as we walked towards Pau. Not unburdened, more like I wasn’t alone. I still carried a heavy weight, but with my friends next to me, it seemed slightly easier.

  Matt stopped ahead of us and pointed down; I could barely see him through the sleety rain. But his torch cut a line through the forest. We would trek all night. The trees were sparser here, so we needed the cover of darkness to get closer.

  Rosa and Careen had told us there were caves to hide in. I imagined her battling her way through the snowstorm they encountered, and I swelled with pride. She was tough.

  Pulling my hood down over my brow, I skidded down the wet hill.

  I had a purpose now. It was to get myself together. Try to accept what happened on the night I lost her and regain parts of myself I hadn’t let live and breathe since then. I had time. I was going to complete this mission, get Orry, and find her. In that order.

  “This weather is atrocious!” Olga exclaimed as she waddled past me. She seemed in a hurry. I’d never seen her rush for anything.

  Elise slung her arm over Olga’s shoulder and shielded her from the rain with the flap of her jacket.

  “Yep, it’s going to be a looong night.”

  They were the last words I heard from anyone for the rest of the night. It was too hard to talk through the rain when we needed every last ounce of energy to keep walking. Pau held more meaning for many of us—our former home, family, memories.

  My mind was on Rosa.

  When I’d thought of her these past few weeks I’d stopped at the pain part, shut myself down. This time I allowed the pain to rise, but then I dug through and found that underneath, there was still comfort, warmth.

  I hugged my arms to my ches
t and watched Pelo almost galloping forward through the churning storm. He was like her in so many ways, but not in the quiet ways. I remember when we first met; those days of walking where I did all of the talking and… She. Just. Listened. And I could tell she was listening because of the flush that crept up her neck when I complimented her or the warmth in her eyes when I told her about my parents. My heart skipped to life at thought of that blush. That was the best color in the world to me. It told me I had affected her. All I ever wanted to do was affect her, impact her life, and make her feel something.

  If you’re thinking of me, please know I’m thinking of you. I want to wrap you up, shield you. But I know you’re strong. You’ll do what needs to be done. I’ll make this promise. I am in pieces, but I will slot them back together. I will be as whole as I can when I see you again.

  ROSA

  Grant lay on the cold metal bench, his fists clenched, his legs flopped apart casually. I bit into the silk and tasted the salt of my tears that just wouldn’t stop. Denis had isolated himself from me as if I were a hysterical, catching disease. He stood as close to the window as possible. His body locked into place by will. He was able to fool everyone, and it was frightening.

  I leaned back in my chair, straining my neck to focus on the corner where the large window met the bumpy, pilling carpeted wall. No one’s attention was on me now. I was a fly buzzing haplessly in the corner. All eyes were on the man with wasted legs and muscled arms. My eyes were the only ones that wanted to turn away but couldn’t.

  “…one…”

  Watching it from the outside was a very different experience. But a memory of pain still ran a routed course through my veins. I could feel the searing burn of blue liquid under my own skin as I watched Grant’s body convulse when it entered his. He was silent, his mouth a punched, hard line, but the scream lay plain across his face. His eyes pooled with water, and his arms lifted slightly as he gripped the seams of his hospital gown in his hands. He thought the agony was going to be worth it. He thought this suffering was a means to healing… not a means to his end.