Calico Descending

by Keri Lake

  A wildcat.

  The back of a woman’s head comes into view, and I realize Dean is chasing after her. “Come here, bitch!” His voice is muffled by the mask that must still cover his face. “Excuse my French, sirs.”

  A hand reaches out from the camera, grabbing dark cropped hair, and he yanks hard enough to knock her to the ground. “Gotcha!”

  Scuffling knocks the camera to the side. All I see is limbs flying. Boots. Dirt kicking up into clouds. Dean grunts and laughs. “Mmmm. How’s that for you, baby?”

  A palm moves in front of the camera, righting its view again, and we’re looking at the woman’s hands tied behind her back. When he flips her over, my heart catches in my throat.

  I know this woman.

  Dina.

  The one who betrayed Bryani and me. I should feel a sense of justice, seeing her captured, but instead, I feel sorry for her. It’s inexplicable, considering she’s the reason we’re here, except I know enough that grown women captured from the Deadlands don’t tend to fare well, or for long, in this place.

  “You’re going to love Calico, bitch. The accommodations are great, and the food is delicious.”

  Dina spits in his face, and the camera rattles, followed by a hard smack that kicks her head to the side.

  “Well,” Doctor Ericsson interrupts, turning to face his colleagues in the room. “His delivery needs work, but I’d consider this a successful capture.”

  The men in the room laugh, and only Medusa and I remain silent. I turn to see her shift in her chair, and I wonder if watching this makes her as uncomfortable as it does me. If perhaps she was captured the same way once.

  I wonder if Medusa has a heart, after all.

  Movement flickers in the corner of the camera, and the room falls quiet again.

  “Oh.” Doctor Ericsson sits forward in his chair, his voice full of intrigue. “Perhaps we’ll get a glimpse of the escaped Alpha here.”

  A shadowy figure moves forward, and the camera pans up.

  “Hey! Get back to the raid!”

  A helmet comes into view, and I catch Doctor Ericsson shaking his head.

  “Valdys,” he says with some disappointment, waving his hand in dismissal.

  The monstrous beast stands there, hands curled in fists at his side.

  The camera pans closer.

  “Get the fuck back to the raid! That’s an order!”

  Still, Valdys doesn’t move.

  “Move, you dimwitted beast!” Doctor Ericsson says, as he watches on. “Why is he not following the damn orders?” His eyes shoot to mine, brows winging up. “This is precisely why you’re here, girl!”

  Behind Doctor Ericsson, I see Valdys’s arm strike out, and the camera rattles.

  Dean’s grunts and gags add a harrowing soundtrack to the view of Valdys, tipping his helmet-clad head, as though intrigued.

  Crystals of ice wind around my spine, as Valdys lifts Dean’s hand, the same one that groped me, pressing it against the nose hole in his helmet. He then lifts the other hand--the one that held my palm to the soldier’s bulging erection, and sniffs that one, too, before throwing it away as dismissively as he threw mine back in his room.

  His helmet lifts toward the camera again.

  “Please … “ Dean’s choked voice can hardly be heard over the growls rumbling from Valdys. “Please, do--”

  The camera falls to the ground, bouncing back and forth, until it stills, facing upward and aimed at where Valdys holds an outstretched hand toward Dean’s hoisted body. The Legion officer’s black boots dangle above the lens and his chest curves out just enough that we can’t see his face.

  In the next breath, Dean’s body crumples to the ground beside the camera, and where there should be a head is nothing but a bloody stump of meat and bone.

  Gasps fill the room, and Doctor Ericsson leaps out of his chair. “What in God’s name!”

  What must be Dina screaming in the background echoes over a tug at my throat that begs for me to scream, too.

  The trembles begin mild, until my entire body is cold, hollow and shaking. The view begins to shrink before my eyes, the blackness widening it’s reach, pulling me into the void.

  Chapter 15

  Four years ago

  * * *

  From the window of the commissary, I stare out at the yard, where Bryani sits surrounded by her friends. Head tipped back, I watch a laugh rip from her throat, one that mirrors the other girls. They love her. Even if she looks thinner than when we first arrived at this place, it doesn’t seem to have broken her in the same way as it’s breaking me each day.

  Three times a week, I report down to the labs for testing. I’ve asked her if she’s had to endure anything like it, and she assures me she hasn’t. Those are the only moments, in passing, that I steal the opportunity to talk to her, to see what her life has been here.

  I can’t even say how long we’ve been here. The weather has shifted from scorching hot, to cooler in the day, so I’m guessing it’s winter, but the change from day to day is so subtle, I hardly notice anymore.

  “Hey, you gonna stand there, or are you coming with us?” Neela comes up from behind me, and when I turn, she peers out the window, undoubtedly aware of what I was looking at moments ago.

  “It’s better, you know,” she says, not bothering to look at me.

  “What?”

  “That you sever ties now. Makes it easier.”

  “Makes what easier?” I frown back at her, trying to determine if she has as much nerve as I think. I’ve grown to like Neela over the weeks. She’s welcomed me into her group of friends, which is a necessity in this place. A loner here is basically dead. Within weeks, usually. If the bullies don’t get them, the rejection will, eventually. But her comment is crossing a line to which not even the comfort of belonging is immune.

  Her gaze falls on me, appraising me for a moment, as if she’s gauging my temper, and she shakes her head. “Nothing. C’mon. They’re going to be gone.”

  Rolling my eyes, I give one more glance toward my sister, who meets my gaze from across the yard and waves back at me. With a solemn smile, I nod, and follow after Neela, who leads me down to the girls’ bathroom.

  A group of girls are gathered around a small hole in the wall, and Neela tells one of the girls to cut the lights out. Giggles echo through the stalls, cut short when Neela tells them, “Shhhh!” She kneels down and presses her face to the wall.

  Voices can be heard on the other side of the barrier, where the utility room lies. Neela waves me over, and I crouch down beside her, considerably less enthusiastic about this, and peer through the hole.

  On the other side, the lights flip on, and I see Shoshanna enter with one of the doctors I recognize as one of three who examine me every week. She strides across the room toward a table, and as if she’s done it a million times, she pulls down her pants and bends over for him. The doctor springs himself free, and seconds later, he’s buried inside of her, slamming his hips against her backside with the slap of skin, and grunts chasing each thrust.

  She can’t be more than thirteen.

  “I told you that bitch had privileges. Fucking a doc? When was the last time she was sent to the lab?”

  “I want to see!” one of the girls beside me whispers. When she nudges me out of the way, I let her. I can’t stand to keep watching a grown man using a young girl that way, but Neela’s words strike a chord of curiosity.

  “They don’t send her to the lab? She doesn’t undergo any testing?” I ask, scooting away from the wall to allow the other girls who gather for a peek.

  “Fuck, no, she doesn’t. Couple bangs a week, and she’s needle free.”

  I pause to absorb her words for a moment, and turn to see the girl spying on them pull away from the wall. “Done already. Can you believe that shit? Not even two whole minutes.”

  Not even two whole minutes a few times a week, and she’s excused from having to report to the labs. It’s something I dread every week, and t
he churning in my stomach tells me it’s almost time.

  “Every day at lunch they’re in there, fucking, done before the bell sounds.”

  “Are you sure?” I can’t take my eyes off the hole in the wall, imagining me on the other side, the source of curiosity for spying eyes. “I mean, no one gets out of the experiments, right? Everyone has to participate.”

  “Ask her yourself, if you don’t believe me. But guaranteed?” Neela crosses her arms over her chest. “That bitch will be in the barracks before any one of us gets back.”

  “Does Medusa know?”

  “Doubt it. She doesn’t believe in special favors.”

  The horn blares, sounding the end of lunch, and all the girls scatter out of the bathroom, but I’m not so anxious to leave. It means I’m to report to the lab.

  Back flat against the wall, I allow one of the medical technicians to record my height. “Up a half an inch from when you first got here.”

  But down about ten pounds, too, and it’s not like I had much meat on my bones to begin. I follow her into one of the examination rooms in a routine I’ve become all too familiar with. Handing me a gown, she smiles, as if she hasn’t done this a dozen times before, as if she doesn’t know what happens when I slip this gown on and she closes the door. Accepting the garment, I stand in the room and wait until she leaves. A low-lying vibration hums in my chest, sending a quiver just below my skin. At three times a week, I should be used to this now, but nothing can make me immune to these studies.

  A little over a month ago, I walked in for a checkup, and the doctor told me I was to be sent to the incinerator within two weeks time. It was only after the two-week timeframe, when I suffered a panic attack in the hallway and blacked out on the way to what I thought would be my final check up, that I was told it was nothing more than an observation. To see how my stress levels affected my reproductive and menstrual cycles.

  They toy with us here because they can. Because there is no regulatory entity that tells them what they do here is wrong or unethical.

  We’re savages to them. Animals, basically. The experiments they perform on me, in their eyes, are no different than them being performed on a rodent who happens to talk.

  Slipping out of my uniform and into my gown, I wait to hoist myself up onto the examination table, eyes on the stirrups that spread me open for the doctor. Before I arrived here, I’d never been looked at down there by anyone, especially a doctor. I didn’t understand why that part of my body was so important to their studies of finding cures. It isn’t, really. As I understand, the third generation serve as nothing but a means to observe and create predictive models of how the Dredge will affect future generations. Which in turn, feeds their quest for the cure.

  My role is so insignificant here, so obscure, I don’t even matter.

  The door clicks open, and I turn to see Doctor Samuels holding a file in his hand that has grown thicker with each passing week. He adjusts his glasses and smiles, taking a seat at the end of the examination table, but all I can think about are his hips railing into Shoshanna’s behind.

  “C’mon now, up you go. We don’t have all day.”

  My stomach twists as I climb up onto the table and lie back, setting my heels in their proper place on each rest. Gathering my hands atop my gown between my thighs does little to shield what is completely exposed to him.

  “Any changes from last week?” he asks, slipping on a pair of gloves that he snaps against his skin, reminding me of those slapping sounds from earlier.

  “None.”

  “No bleeding, pain, difficulty in urinating.”

  “No.”

  “Any pressure, or discomfort, while sitting, or performing physical activity?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now, let’s have a look.”

  The moment he says the words, my heart picks up speed. I know what’s coming. Pokes. Prods. And then the injection, which is the most excruciating of anything. The pain is so intense, it often causes me to black out, and the hours that follow are miserable. Worse than whatever they do in the surgical ward, where they put me to sleep first.

  “Doctor ...” I interrupt, and immediately regret it. I don’t know how to formulate the words that beg to spill from my lips. Ones that leave me feeling both sick and hopeful. I’ve spent the last hour imagining a week when I wouldn’t have to come in for these checkups.

  “Yes.” The tone of his voice is both expectant and perhaps a small bit irritated. “What is it?”

  “I .. um.” What is it, Cali? What do you say? I saw you violating another girl. I understand you made a deal with a girl. I want to be used, so I never have to lie on this table again.

  “Well, what is it, girl? I have other subjects waiting on me.”

  “Is there … some way I can be … excused from this?”

  His brows furrow, and he tips his head. “Are you not feeling well today?”

  I could tell him no, but I’d be right back in here next week. “I, um … that’s not what I mean.” I wish I could set my feet down while I do this, because there’s something quite undignified about propositioning an older man with my private parts flashing in his face. It makes my stomach twist, to imagine his wrinkled face, set below graying hair, twisted up in pleasure while he slams his hips into me, and I have to school my face to keep from grimacing. “I saw you with Shoshanna.” The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them, and when he lifts his nose in the air, jaw shifting with obvious discomfort, I have to turn my gaze from his. “I won’t tell anyone. But ... I know she’s been excused each week.”

  “And where exactly did you … see what you think you saw?” His response is exactly as I expected, and if I’m not careful, it might be cause to send me off to the incinerators for real this time.

  “In the girls’ bathroom outside of the Commissary.” I rub my wrist, my stomach churning with what I plan to ask him next. Much as I wish I could go back and rewind this awkward exchange, I can’t. At this point, he may think I’m trying to blackmail him, or threatening him. “Can I … make a deal with you, as well?”

  He lifts up off his stool just enough to scoot it forward, and leans in, his proximity stirring the nausea in my stomach. “There is no deal with Shoshanna,” he says in a low voice, his eyes brimming with warning. “And even if there was, you’re an Alpha subject. I’d be out of my mind to do such a thing.”

  “What … what do you mean by that? What makes me so different from the others?”

  “You serve a different purpose. That’s the only thing that makes you different from the other savages here. Now …” Keeping his eyes on me, he reaches for my hand, resting his palm over top of it. “Should you say a word of this to anyone …” His palm tightens around my hand, crushing my bones, and when I let out a whimper, a flash of amusement dances across his otherwise stern eyes. “I will see to it that you are sent to the incinerators by day’s end. Are we clear?”

  Attention shifting between him and my crushed hand, I fervently nod. “I won’t say a word.”

  “Good.” Wheeling himself back down to the foot of the bed, he takes his place between my splayed legs. A cold metal object is inserted into me, more harshly than before, and I shift with discomfort as it scrapes over my insides.

  “Hold still!” he barks up at me, as he cranks it open. Jabbing his fingers rougher than usual, he performs his exam, and I lie staring at the cracks in the ceiling, feeling the trickle of tears slide down my temples. He reaches for a long needle set out on the counter and removes the cap.

  My breaths shudder out of me, while the rush of panic slams through my veins. One quick pinch, and the burning sets in, reaching up into my belly, like a flaming snake, making its way toward my chest. I cry out, seizing with the agony that radiates over my womb. Like broken glass scraping across my insides, the pain intensifies, shooting through my thighs and back.

  “I’m not going to lie, girl,” he says, sniffing his gloves before he removes them. “Under any ot
her circumstances, I would’ve made a deal with you.” He pats the inside of my thigh and pauses to run his hand up and down my skin. “But I suppose I’ll just have to keep that to myself.”

  Another zap of pain jolts me off the pillow, and when I come back down, his face is the last thing I see before the blackness closes in.

  Chapter 16

  Present day

  * * *

  “Did you allow him to touch you?” Doctor Ericsson’s eyes drill into mine, as I lay bent over the round wooden barrel, my bare breasts pressed against the hard and unforgiving wood.

  “No,” I answer through tears. Burns slice across my back, the damage only partially numbed by my body’s need to push the pain away. “He … approached me. In the kitchen.”

  “And did you not tell him you were part of the Alpha Project?”

  “I did.” I sniff and swallow, closing my eyes, as what must be blood trickles down my naked rib cage.

  “And?”

  “He forced me to touch him, anyway.”

  “Lies,” he says through clenched teeth. “Lies!” Gaze angled upward, he gives a sharp nod.

  “No!” My words fail to halt the searing flame that strikes my back, and I grip tight to the wooden barrel beneath me, tensing as the agony radiates along my spine, like needles jabbing the bone. I cry out, tears spilling onto my arm, as my whole body trembles.

  Doctor Ericsson steps out of view, and I catch sight of Valdys, flanked by two Legion officers at either side of him, and Medusa, both sitting on chairs across from me. An audience to my humiliation.

  The easy rise and fall of Valdys’s chest tells me he’s unaffected by my flogging. Perhaps even enjoying it, and I’m grateful for the helmet, so I don’t have to see his smug face.

  “Because of you, we lost a very promising soldier. Because of you, we lost a female subject.” Apparently, Valdys let Dina go, and suddenly, I don’t feel so sorry for her anymore. “And because of your carelessness and curiosity, our Alpha was distracted. Do you realize the gravity of that? How many could’ve been hurt in his absence?”