Daughter of Nothing

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  Girls’ Hall smelled of anxiety and fear, as heavy as the scent of a coming storm. It was four hours past lights-out, and the hall lay in darkness. By chance, Jacey had chosen a moonless night to break into the medical ward. The single light that shone over the quad barely reached the windows of the dormitory.

  Wanda stood watch at the front doors, peeping through occasionally to see if the boys were coming. It took all of Jacey’s self-control to maintain an outward appearance of calm.

  The magnitude of what they were about to attempt made her stomach churn. Not because her commitment had wavered, but because she had dragged others into her scheme. Dr. Carlhagen had spared her so far, but she doubted he would do the same for the others.

  “They’re here,” Wanda said. She opened the door wider, letting a waft of cool evening breeze cut through the hall.

  Two dark figures squeezed through, followed a few moments later by a third. Wanda shut the door behind them.

  If the tension in the room had been thick before, having boys in Girls’ Hall magnified it tenfold. Jacey dropped from her bunk.

  “Why is he here?” Kirk asked, pointing at Elias, who had come in last. He took a menacing step toward the Eagle from Vaughan’s Nine. Horace’s tall form kept close behind.

  Elias dropped into a fighting stance, and Jacey had to cut between the two boys. “Everyone in this room is on the same side, Kirk. We all care about Vaughan.”

  “How are your legs doing, Jacey?” Kirk’s voice came softly. Jacey thought she heard a note of regret in his tone.

  Elias put his hands on Jacey’s shoulders and tried to move her out of the way so he could get at Kirk.

  She shrugged his hands off. “Stop it. Both of you. We need to get this plan in action. Did the girls have a chance to fill you in?”

  Kirk stared long and hard at her before nodding. She glanced up at Horace, but his face was unreadable in the darkness.

  “Wanda, fetch Nurse Smith.”

  Wanda took a deep breath and darted from Girls’ Hall. Through the open doors, Jacey could see her dark form, like the fleeting shadow of a passing cloud, cross the grass toward Nurse Smith’s villa.

  She closed the doors. “Into the corners,” she said to the boys. Kirk and Horace went to one corner, and Elias to the other.

  “Girls, get in your bunks.”

  They obeyed, even those from Belle’s Nine. Jacey went to the end of the aisle and sat on Livy’s bed and stroked her hair. It was too dark to see Livy’s expression, but Jacey knew the girl was wide awake.

  Time slowed. More than once, Jacey got up to peer through the door and see if Wanda was returning with the Nurse.

  “Are you going to kill her?” Livy asked as Jacey returned to sit on her bed.

  “Of course not.”

  The door creaked open, and Wanda’s whispering drifted to Jacey, followed by soft footsteps coming down the aisle. Nurse Smith’s wide form emerged from the darkness and into the faint light coming through the east window.

  “This is the child?” Nurse Smith asked. She put her hand on Livy’s forehead. “She doesn’t even feel warm.”

  “She was throwing up,” Jacey said. “We should take her to the medical ward.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Nurse Smith said. She pulled a small bottle from her pocket and dumped two white pills into her meaty palm. “Take these.”

  Livy moaned and took the pills. “What are they?” she asked, making her voice croak. Jacey admired the girl’s acting.

  “They’ll soothe your stomach.”

  Jacey reached past Nurse Smith and tapped Wanda. That was the signal. Wanda stepped back to communicate with the boys.

  “This is very strange, Nurse Smith,” Jacey said. “I don’t recall a time when a Scion threw up and you didn’t take her to the medical ward.”

  “It’s not for you to decide what treatment I give a patient.” The woman had never been friendly, but since Jacey’s request for an exam, the nurse had become downright rude.

  “Take the pills, child,” Nurse Smith said. “If you’re still feeling poorly in the morning, send one of the girls. I will return to examine you further.” She turned and headed back down the aisle.

  Jacey followed her, keeping her footsteps quiet.

  “Now, boys,” Jacey said.

  Nurse Smith stopped. “What?”

  The boys were on her. They grabbed her arms, and Kirk put a thick hand over the woman’s mouth. Her scream came out muffled, but it sounded horrendous in the silence of the night.

  Jacey stepped close and whispered into Nurse Smith’s ear. “You had your chance. The more you struggle, the more painful it will be. We are going to the medical ward, and you’re going to let us in.”

  Nurse Smith thrashed, and she had enough weight that it took the combined boys’ strength to hold her. They couldn’t risk having her break free enough to let out a good scream. Sensei would come running, and that would put an end to their plan.

  “Gag her,” Jacey said.

  Belle appeared and quickly wrapped a girl’s uniform shirt around the nurse’s face. Kirk forced it between her lips. With vicious jerks, the pale girl knotted the gag tight.

  By the sound of the nurse’s breathing and whining, she was terrified. Good, Jacey thought. Fear would make the woman more cooperative. “Let’s go.”

  The three boys half-dragged Nurse Smith through the door, at which point she must have realized she was going whether she wanted to or not. Resigned to her captivity, she started walking under her own power.

  Jacey’s Snake, Bethancy, stayed behind to look after Jacey’s Nine. Belle left her Eagle, Leslie, in charge of hers.

  “Make sure no one leaves,” Jacey said to Bethancy. “I suggest you have the older girls read to the younger ones. That will help keep all of them distracted.”

  Jacey, Belle, and Wanda followed the boys and Nurse Smith across the quad. Though the moon hadn’t risen, Jacey felt terribly exposed until they passed into the cover of the trees. They paused a moment, scanning their surroundings to make sure that Sensei wasn’t around and that none of the boys had discovered Elias, Kirk, and Horace missing.

  Seeing no one, they continued to the front doors of the medical ward, which were always unlocked. The real challenge was getting through the steel door behind Nurse Smith’s desk. They pushed her into the entry hall and guided her to the door.

  “Where’s the key?” Jacey demanded.

  Nurse Smith shook her head.

  “Where’s the key?”

  Belle was already at the door, rattling the handle. She thumped it with her fist. Turning, she pushed Jacey aside and pressed her face so close to the nurse’s that their noses nearly touched. “Do you honestly think we would do this much and just turn back?”

  Eyes bulging, the stout nurse shook her head.

  Light from across the quad was cutting through the front doors, making Belle’s face glow, white as the moon. Her lips drew back, making her expression fiercer, more animalistic, than it had been when she’d lashed Jacey with the thornskipple branch.

  “Search the desk,” Jacey said.

  Wanda pulled the drawers open and rifled through them. “Nothing.”

  Belle yanked the gag from Nurse’s Smith’s mouth. The woman started to scream, but Belle slapped her across the face. The impact knocked the woman loose from the boys’ grip, and they scrambled to pick her off the floor.

  “Not so rough, Belle,” Jacey said. Perhaps involving Belle had been a mistake. Jacey hadn’t expected the girl to be as vicious with the nurse as she had been with her.

  Nurse Smith moaned. “You’re devils, all of you. You shouldn’t exist, not one of you is natural.”

  Belle grabbed fistfuls of Nurse Smith’s nightgown, pulled her close, and growled, “Where is the key?”

  “There is no key, girl. The lock is computer controlled.”

  Wanda tapped the screen on Nurse Smith’s monitor. “It’s asking for a password.”

  Belle
shook the woman. “What is it?”

  “You’re all devils!”

  Belle slapped the Nurse again. “What’s the password?”

  Nurse Smith blubbered; tears and snot ran down her face. Belle raised her hand again.

  “Sandy Jane! The password is Sandy Jane.”

  Wanda keyed it in. “I have access, but I don’t see how to open the door.”

  “Show us,” Belle demanded. With the jerk of her head, she motioned for the boys to drag the nurse around to face the monitor.

  “Unlock it.”

  “I told you, I can’t,” Nurse Smith cried. “No matter how you torture me.”

  “You have no idea about torture,” Belle said, raising her hand to strike again.

  Jacey caught Belle’s wrist. “Stop, Belle. We can’t beat something out of her if she doesn’t know it.”

  “She’s lying,” Belle said. “I can tell.”

  “Oh really? Just like you could tell I was lying about Vaughan waiting for me in the tower?”

  Belle’s nostrils flared, and she snatched her wrist free from Jacey’s grip.

  Wanda continued to work with the monitor, pressing icons at random, searching for a way to override the lock or, at least, find out how Vaughan was doing. “There’s nothing here, not even our own records.”

  Nurse Smith had regained some of her composure. She sniffed and tried to look down her nose at Wanda. “I told you. The AI controls access at this hour.”

  “Socrates controls it?”

  “No.”

  “Madam LaFontaine?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Just have her tell the AI there’s a medical emergency,” Elias said, voice soft.

  “I don’t want her talking to any AIs,” Belle said. “She’ll scream for help.”

  Jacey was surprised to learn that there was an AI persona on campus that she hadn’t met. But it gave her an idea. She brushed Wanda away from the monitor.

  “Socrates, can you appear here?”

  The professor’s face blurred into existence on the screen. “What are you doing in the medical ward, Jacey?”

  “I need to get through the door behind Nurse Smith’s desk. Can you unlock it?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t open the door for you.”

  “Who controls it?”

  “My guess is that it’s one of Madam LaFontaine’s alter egos, but I have never met any of them. I don’t even know their names.”

  Before Jacey could ask her next question, the professor held up a hand. “In accordance with my programming, I am notifying Sensei that you’re trying to break in.”

  Wanda raced to the doors and slammed them shut, but there was no lock, no way to keep Sensei out if he wanted to come in.

  Jacey turned to the steel door, studying it, trying to figure out some way to get through. Sensei would arrive in moments.

  “I have to see Vaughan,” Belle screamed and slapped Nurse Smith again. “I have to!” She repeated her demand again and again, each time striking the nurse.

  “There’s no point, there’s no point,” Nurse Smith cried at last. “The lad’s gone. He’s gone. He’s dead!”

  Belle staggered backward as if Nurse Smith had struck her.

  Jacey met Wanda’s eyes, whose stricken expression had to be the reflection of her own.

  “I killed him,” Elias said with a moan. He let go of the nurse’s arm and backed away. “I killed him.” With a sob, he crashed through the entry doors and disappeared into the night.

  Belle collapsed to the floor, a high-pitched wail pulling from her throat.

  Kirk and Horace let Nurse Smith drop to her knees. The woman held her hands over her face and wept.

  Jacey could not suppress the hatred bubbling up from her heart. “You kept this from us. You knew and you kept it from us.”

  Nurse Smith sniffled and drew a deep breath. “Not one of you has a soul in your icy hearts, so what difference does it make? You’re all dead anyway.”

  The doors swung wide, revealing Sensei’s silhouette. “Out!”

  With that one word, he broke their paralysis. Horace and Kirk fled, but not before receiving cuffs on the backs of their heads, causing them to stumble and fall as they exited the building.

  Wanda, too, ran out, hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs.

  Jacey collected Belle, who leaned so heavily against her that Jacey considered picking her up. She tried to squeeze past Sensei, but he grabbed her arm.

  She tried to pull away. “Vaughan’s dead.”

  Sensei tugged her closer and put his mouth to her ear. “Foolish girl.”

  “But—”

  “Go!” He pushed her out.

  When she and Belle got into Girls’ Hall, all of the girls were standing around Wanda’s bunk. Jacey’s second lay with her hands over her face, sobbing.

  “What happened?” Bethancy demanded. “Wanda won’t say anything.”

  “We did not get in,” Jacey said. “But Vaughan is dead.”

  Belle let out a moan and threw herself in her bunk, where she lay face-down and shuddering.

  Stunned faces melted into tearful horror. The weeping went on a long time that night, and once the loudest cries subsided, sniffles came from here and there for hours.

  But not from Jacey.

  She would allow herself to grieve later. For the time being, she tucked the grief into a dark corner of her heart. The rest of it was filled with distilled anger, centered around the image of Dr. Carlhagen’s face.

  A small form climbed up to join Jacey in her bunk. “What’s going to happen now?” Livy whispered.

  Jacey didn’t answer, but she was certain punishment was coming, probably even for her. She sent Livy back to her own bed, then lay awake, trying to make sense of the disaster their lives had become.

  Thunder rolled above, and a rain squall swept over the island, roaring and pounding at the roof. Her thoughts turned to Humphrey, who suffered out in the pit.

  She stared at the rattan fan as it spun overhead. As she listened to the rain, she reviewed the questions circling in her mind. Why wouldn’t Dr. Carlhagen tell them the truth about their parents? Why, if Vaughan had died, hadn’t Dr. Carlhagen told them about it?

  The answers had to be in the medical ward.

  But the door was locked, controlled by some unknown AI. One that wouldn’t even let Nurse Smith in. Which made no sense at all.

  Unless there was another way in.

  If there was, Jacey was determined to find it. This time she’d go alone.

  She waited for an hour, then slid from her bunk, taking a blanket with her. The rain was loud enough to mask her opening the door and slipping out.

  She didn’t care about getting wet. The rain refreshed her, cleansed the grief from her body. She kept the blanket tucked under her arm, though it didn’t really matter if it got wet.

  She ran through the quad to the pit. “Humphrey,” she called. “Are you okay?”

  A moan drifted back to her.

  “Humphrey, I brought you this.” She stuffed the corner of the blanket through the grate and poked it through bit by bit.

  “Climb up and take it.”

  The blanket slipped into the grate as Humphrey started pulling it through. Jacey couldn’t see him in the darkness, but she knew he was near the top of the ladder.

  “Humphrey, are you okay?”

  He said something, but she couldn’t make it out. The rain was draining from the quad into the pit like a waterfall.

  Seeing nothing else she could do for him, she ran to the medical ward. She circled to the north side of the building to try the window. Like all windows on campus, it was screened on the outside, and inside were horizontal glass louvers. A crank would raise the louvers to allow fresh breezes in. She pushed and pulled at the screen until the bottom corner popped away from the frame.

  The louvers were shut tightly. She pushed on them, but even if she managed to wedge them open, she’d never fit between them.

&nb
sp; She went around the back of the building, but there were no windows there at all. The medical ward was nearly as long as the dining hall. Jacey had only been in the front third of it, though she’d always assumed the rest was a storage area.

  As she continued around, she came to the back of Nurse Smith’s villa, which shared a wall with the medical ward. In fact, from the outside it looked like a small wing of the main medical ward building. Jacey hurried to the front of the villa and stepped onto Nurse Smith’s tiny front porch. It was hardly deep enough to hold the woman’s rocking chair and a small wicker side table. Nurse Smith often liked to take her tea there in the evenings and keep an eye on the Scions in the quad.

  Jacey grasped the handle of the front door and twisted.

  It opened.

  The space beyond was small and dark, a living room and a kitchen all in one. She crept into the kitchen and noticed a hallway leading toward the rear of the villa. That had to be where Nurse Smith slept.

  To Jacey’s left was another hallway ending in a door. Heart in her throat, Jacey went to the door, grasped the latch, and twisted it. It was locked.

  Cursing under her breath, Jacey studied the door. Unlike the one behind Nurse Smith’s desk, this one was wooden. Jacey gave the handle a tug.

  The door didn’t even rattle. It might as well have been made of steel.

  A light flashed to her left, and Jacey instinctively dropped to the floor.

  It had come from right next to her. She looked up to find a small computer monitor. The face of a serious-looking man peered out.

  “Do you need to get into the ward, Nurse Smith?”

  The AI!

  Jacey cleared her throat and pitched her voice high like Nurse Smith’s. “Yes.”

  “Why can’t I see you?”

  Thinking quickly, Jacey said, “I’m on my hands and knees. I need medicine. That horrid girl beat me mercilessly.”

  “Should I send for Sensei or Dr. Carlhagen?”

  “No! I just need some painkillers, and I’ll be right as rain.”

  “Your voice is off. Please give me the password.”

  Jacey closed her eyes. “Sandy Jane.”

  The door clicked.

  “Thank you,” she said, then reached up to twist the handle. The door swung silently in.

  Jacey scrambled through and pressed her back to the door. Her breath came in gulps, and her heart felt like it was about to burst.