“Follow my lead.” The old woman winked.
Having no idea where things were going, Briar nodded.
They chose a table in the purple section and sat down. Immediately, an orderly slid a tray of food before each of them.
“I don’t have my teeth!” Harper yelled at the purple tray. “How can a person eat breakfast without her dentures?”
The blank-faced orderly stared.
“How am I supposed to eat this—” She leaned over the tray, inspecting the food. “What are we having?”
“Diced peaches, toast, and a protein similar to eggs.”
Harper frowned and resumed her complaint. “How am I supposed to eat peaches, toast, and scrambled-up protein without my teeth?”
The orderly motioned to Cleo, who was kneeling, speaking with an elderly woman in a wheel chair. She gazed in Harper’s direction and gave the woman a pat on the shoulder before leaving her side.
“Is there a problem Ms. Ross?” she asked as she approached.
“Not if you want me to starve to death. Which is exactly what I’ll do without my dentures.”
“You’ll have to wait a few minutes, until everyone is seated. Then I’ll get someone to escort you to your room to get your dentures. We’re short staffed this morning.”
“My food will be cold by then. I can’t eat cold food. Freezes up my insides. Makes me sluggish.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Harper. It’s against the rules to let you go back to your room before breakfast is over without an orderly to escort you. You already know this. We can’t have people wandering around the facility unattended.”
Harper’s chin trembled. Tears slipped down her wrinkled cheeks. “I just want my teeth.”
Briar’s heart tugged for the old woman. For a second she almost forgot the dentures were tucked snugly in Harper’s waistband.
“Ouch!” her thoughts were jolted by a sharp pain in her thigh. Harper had pinched her, and was now staring at her intently. She cleared her throat. “I’ll walk her back to the room,” she offered, no longer captivated by Harper’s award-winning performance.
Cleo shook her head. “I’m sorry, that’s against regulations,” she said loudly. She then leaned close to Briar, rearranging the silverware on her tray. “Straight to the room, and straight back,” she whispered. “Make it quick.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Briar helped Harper to her feet. “Thank you.”
They walked through the crowded dining hall and through the doorway without seeing another orderly.
“How did you know they were shorthanded?”
“I didn’t.” Harper shrugged. “Must be a God-thing.” She pulled her dentures from her waistband and slipped them into her mouth. “Now hurry up, before we’re spotted.”
Briar bit back a giggle as Harper scooted her walker forward at a snail’s pace. She hoped she could hurry fast enough to keep up with the old woman.
After creeping down the hallway for what seemed like hours, Harper paused her walker. “This doorway, right here. The nurse’s station.” She pointed to a sign above the iridescent drape.
Anxiety inched up Briar’s spine. “How will we get in without clearance?”
Harper held up the back of her hand. “All taken care of. I’ve been to the nurse’s station a thousand times. Nicks, cuts, scrapes, cramps, backdoor trots. Name the affliction, and odds are I’ve suffered it.” She glanced around. “Eventually, the nurse that worked in here got so sick of letting me in, she gave me clearance. Apparently, she never told anyone.” She shrugged one bony shoulder. “These days, there’s no nurse in this wing. The orderlies just roll around a medication cart all day in case someone needs a cough drop or an adhesive bandage. The more serious conditions are sent to the infirmary ward. Is it my fault no one reprogrammed my fleshcard after the nurse disappeared? That’s how I discovered what all they keep inside this room.”
Briar felt her eyeballs expand. “What did you discover?” she whispered.
“A computer. In the back, behind the supply room.” Harper took a step toward the drape. “There’s lots of information in there—the kind they don’t want anyone to see. The top-secret kind.” She braced against her walker and held the back of her hand to the curtain. Under her papery skin, the fleshcard glowed.
The automatic light switched on as Briar followed Harper into the space. She glanced over her shoulder as the drape reappeared in the doorway.
“This way,” the old woman said, pushing her walker toward the back of the room.
Briar glanced at the cardboard boxes of medical supplies as they made their way to an area the size of a large closet. Harper snapped on the light. On a small, dust-laden desk, sat an old-fashioned laptop that had definitely seen better days. “So, this is where they keep all the top-secret info?” Briar asked, trying to mask her disappointment. There was no iridescent drape, just a regular door standing wide open, to set the room apart. How top secret could the information really be?
“Yep.” Harper crept to the desk, creaked open the laptop, and wiggled her finger on the touchpad. A password bar appeared beneath the golden image of a roaring lion. “Chocolate,” she recited, clacking the keys. “Figured that out all on my own. ’Course, it wasn’t too much of a feat. Nurse Brumble never skipped dessert, if you get my drift.”
Briar stepped closer as the screen blinked to life. Probably just an old inventory file or a bunch of outdated order forms.
“Hold on a second. Ah—here we are. The main portal.” Harper tapped a lion icon on the desktop then removed her fingers from the keyboard. She scooted her walker to the side. “The ARC’s entire computer system is at your fingertips. Click on any tab you want to read.”
“Warning: Classified Information. Credentialed Employees Only,” Briar read from the top of the page. “Unbelievable. Why would the ARC leave confidential information unguarded?”
“They forgot. That’s my theory. Best I can figure, Nurse Brumble handled some of the data entry. Light stuff, such as how many people visited the station for antibiotic ointment and ear swabs, that type of thing. Boring, low profile information no one cared about or paid much attention to. Once she left, that kind of data was no longer needed. No one thought twice about checking this dusty little cubbyhole for secrets. Even if they did, what use would they have for an obsolete computer that can’t handle much more than standard Internet? For all practical purposes, this workstation is invisible.”
Briar squeezed closer to Harper’s side, squinting as she scanned the tabs of endless options. “Mission statement, policy and procedure, schematics, logistics. I don’t even know where to start.”
“May I suggest, Inactive Patients?”
Briar clicked the tab above Harper’s fingernail. A list of names and ages appeared on the screen. “Who are they?” she asked, scrolling continuously without reaching the end.
“Those who have died here.”
Briar’s finger froze on the touchpad. Her heartbeat rang in her ears. “No. That can’t be accurate. You’ve misinterpreted the information—”
“Fifteen hundred people were sent to the ARC ten years ago. And the numbers continue to increase. Tally up the names on that list, and you’ll find well over two thousand people—close to twenty-six hundred. But how many are actually here?”
“I-I don’t know. No one ever told me.”
“Six hundred. That’s how many. A total of six hundred patients reside here. So where are the other two-thousand?”
“They must’ve been cured and reunited with their families—which actually lifts a weight off my shoulders. Such a high number of rehabilitated unlevels gives me hope.”
Harper gently removed Briar’s hand from the pad and continued scrolling. “No one is rehabilitated, Briar. No one leaves. Not ever. Over two hundred people per year have disappeared since the opening of the ARC ten years ago. These people are casualties. Over two thousand human beings, dead. They’re all listed here.” The never-ending list of names rolled down the screen. �
��Some were young, some were old. All of them suffered.”
Briar shook her head. “I hate to say this, but you’re delusional. I believe there are surgical procedures—I can’t argue with your scars. But extermination? Harper, I just can’t accept—”
“More than two hundred people per year. Hacked to pieces by scalpels. Burned to a crisp by lasers. Skulls cracked against the tile to quiet their own diced up brains.”
“Stop it!” Briar clamped a hand over Harper’s, stilling her fingers. “It’s not true.”
“Look at the dates.” Harper pointed her gaze to the screen.
Briar whispered a name and the date beside it. “There’s a mistake. This can’t be right. According to the date, this person would be a four-year-old child. Everyone at the ARC is at least eighteen.” She traced her finger down the alphabetical listing, choosing another name. “This one would be even younger—just over the age of two. And this one, only six.”
Harper nodded. “Yes, you would be correct, if those were their birth dates.”
Briar looked again, her heart leaping into her throat, choking her, squeezing tears from her eyes. “No,” she mouthed silently.
“Those are the dates their lives ended.” Harper patted the younger woman’s back.
Briar clicked on a woman’s name, her insides curling into a tight ball. Harper was right. The woman’s cause of death appeared, along with the types of experiments she was subjected to.
“Why didn’t you tell me before, when you told me about the surgeries? When you explained what they’d done to you? You never mentioned murder.”
“I tried to, but your brain couldn’t process it. You had to see for yourself.”
“But—the bodies. What do they do with the…remains?”
“Cremation. No graves. No memorials. Just gone.” Her eyes gleamed. “But if they accepted Christ, we know where their spirits are, don’t we?” She wiped a tear. “That’s the important part.”
Briar returned to the main menu and chose a tab labeled Photos. Horrified, she closed the tab, wishing she could un-see the empty-eyed woman with the shaved head and sutured scalp.
“So, the reunion videos and smiling family photographs, all of the heartwarming stories shared in the brochures and on commercials—those are all fake.”
“Fabricated. Every single one of them. No one leaves. Families of young victims are told their loved one is still undergoing treatment. Families of the old are told their loved one has passed peacefully away of natural causes.”
Briar drew a shaky breath. Her mother had been right.
“Someone’s coming.” Harper scooted her walker toward the open door.
Briar listened, but heard nothing.
“The footsteps in the hallway stopped outside the drape. Stay in here. Don’t come out for any reason—do you understand?”
Briar had no intention of abandoning Harper, but nodded anyway.
“Promise me.”
That complicated things. A promise was for real. The swish of the dematerializing drape rushed her response. “I promise.”
“All along, I’ve been waiting for you. God has sent you here for such a time as this.” Harper snapped off the light and hobbled from the closet, pulling the door closed behind her.
Esther. Briar’s mind reeled at the old woman’s biblical reference. She felt Granna Grace was watching over her.
Briar held her breath and pressed her ear to the door, recognizing the stern voice of an orderly.
“What are you doing in here, Ms. Ross?”
“Looking for the dining hall. Guess I got turned around.”
“Where’s your friend?”
Briar’s stomach dropped.
“Some friend.” Harper sniffed. “Is a friend someone who runs down a maze of hallways to the cafeteria, leaving a toothless old woman with a walker to fend for herself?”
“Briar returned to the dining hall?”
“Didn’t even have my teeth in yet. Girl took off like a shot, muttering about not having time to wait. She was afraid they’d dump her tray before she got back. Has a thing for peaches.”
“Is that so?”
Hearing footsteps, Briar backed from the door.
“It won’t do you any good to open that door—the traitor ain’t in there. I told you, she’s in the cafeteria stuffing her face with peaches—probably eating mine, too!”
Frantically, Briar stretched out her arms and felt around the room. Her fingers skittered across the small desk. She ducked under it, wrapping her arms around her knees, squishing into the space like a human stress ball.
The door creaked open, illuminating the closet.
Briar squeezed her eyes shut in silent prayer.
Footfalls neared, then stopped.
Briar pried open an eye to see the orderly’s ugly shoe touching her own. Her heartbeat thumped like a stereo with too much bass.
Please, God, don’t let her hear it.
The shoe moved away.
“Come with me, Ross. I have to report you for breaking protocol.”
The closet door slammed shut.
In the darkness, Briar rolled from under the desk and lay shaking on the floor.
24
Briar sat up in her cot and gasped for breath. She ran a hand over her slick forehead, into her sweat drenched hair. People died here. Thousands of them. Perhaps some had taken their last breath in this very room—in this very bed.
She wanted to get up, but it would do no good—just as it hadn’t the three other times she’d awakened. The lights were still off and the drape was still locked. And Harper’s bed was still empty.
Why had she made that promise? And why hadn’t she broken it? Sure, there would have been a struggle, but she could’ve kept Harper from being taken away. Maybe even saved her life.
Briar fell back on her pillow and closed her eyes. “Take a deep breath. Calm down,” she said aloud. Who said anything about Harper being dead? The old woman was probably sleeping soundly in a private room down the hall. Or perhaps they’d paired her off with a new partner—someone more responsible who wouldn’t let her wander off alone.
Harper was fine. She’d see her in the dining hall a few hours from now, at breakfast.
“She’s fine,” Briar told the darkness, before drifting immediately into another nightmare.
~*~
Briar scanned the dining hall for Harper. Maybe she’d been forced to change colors, and was wearing something other than purple. Earlier, she thought she’d spotted her in the blue section and rushed to the other side of the room. It wasn’t Harper. Beside the silver-haired woman sat a younger woman with familiar dark eyes. She could’ve sworn she’d seen her before.
Briar could feel it in her gut, something was terribly wrong. She had to report Harper missing. But what good would it do to report a kidnapping to the kidnappers?
Cleo. Harper said she was unlevel. Surely, she would help her. Briar stood and scanned the crowd, searching for the woman’s intricate braids. She was nowhere to be found.
“Residents, I need your attention, please.” A blonde woman in a golden smock entered the doorway as she addressed the crowd. “Every color of the rainbow—put down your eating utensils and focus your eyes upon me, Vanessa, your pot of gold.” She gestured to her shimmering jacket and chuckled, her maroon smile pulling downward, instead of up. “It’s time for our weekly session.” She clapped her hands. “Lights out!”
The room turned black. In the center of the space, a flicker of light appeared and grew, becoming an enormous, three-dimensional profile of a roaring lion. Then the lion was gone, replaced by a plethora of images changing so rapidly, Briar could barely tell one from the other.
“We are level,” the woman’s voice boomed. “There are no lines.”
In the blur of images, Briar caught sight of a woman dancing with a Great Dane.
“To be level is to be human.”
The image of a shrouded man with red eyes blinked briefly on the screen
, followed by a quick glimpse of tattooed children.
“There is no right or wrong. To be level is to be free.”
Women writhing in cages, men biting one another, horned beasts sitting on thrones.
“Level equals love. Level equals life.”
Briar turned from the visuals and held her ears, muffling the woman’s malevolent chant. She squinted at the throng of people surrounding her, each face coated by the ethereal glow of the images. She glanced over her shoulder, and the outline of a woman in a wheelchair caught her attention. “Harper!” she cried, unable to stop herself. She pushed through the crowd toward the old woman. “Harper, you’re OK!” She threw her arms around her friend and cried.
Harper sat unmoving in her wheelchair, glacial and rigid as a stone slab.
Briar stepped back. “No.” She stared into the woman’s vacant, faded blue eyes and shook her head. “No, no, no,” she cried, taking her friend’s cold cheeks into her hands.
“Sin is a lie. To be level is to be free!”
The devil’s mantra thundered from Vanessa’s maroon lips and drowned out Briar’s sobs.
~*~
“You all right, man?” A concerned frown creased the brow of the young man seated beside Lukas.
Lukas attempted a smile. “Fine, thanks,” he choked.
The man stared a moment longer before reinserting his left earbud and turning back to the window.
Lukas coughed and tugged at the nonexistent collar of his t-shirt. His tongue was too large for his mouth. He opened his fist, shook out the damp paper napkin, and mopped his brow. Nausea washed over him in a wave. He’d never been so sick in his life.
Funny thing was, if he died, the airline would identify him as Caster Stone. He’d used his brother’s credit card and I.D. to book the flight. The thought of Caster’s irritation over being dead made him feel better—momentarily.
He pressed a hand to his chest. He was having a heart attack—that had to be it. That figured. He’d finally taken his eyes from himself long enough to focus on someone else, and now he was dying. What kind of hero flies a thousand miles to rescue the girl, only to die on the plane?
Not that he fancied himself a hero. Non-hero was more like it—or whatever the term was for opposite of hero. He wasn’t doing this to be heroic, anyway. That wasn’t the reason he was thirty thousand feet in the air, facing his worst fear—maybe even getting killed by it. He’d boarded the plane because he’d realized flying wasn’t his worst fear. His worst fear was losing Briar.
The Commandment Page 20