by Rajan Khanna
He looked up at me, utterly confused now, and I was suddenly very scared. More than I was for all of the run-ins with Ferals, more than for all the times we ran out of food, more than for every time we almost lost the Cherub. I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life.
I moved forward to grab his arm. If I could get him out and back up to the Cherub, back up to the air, everything would be okay, I thought. He could rest. I could get him medicine. Water. Hell, a doc to patch him up if it got that bad. But back up in the air, on the ship I’d have strength I didn’t have right there.
I was reaching for his arm, looking in his eyes, and I swear I saw it happen. One moment, I saw my father there, his eyes large and haunted and full of fear. His posture weak and suffering.
The next moment, he Faded.
He convulsed, then shook his head again. He blinked his eyes, and when they opened, my father was gone. In his place was something else wearing his body. This thing had hunger in its eyes. Anger. Violent need. And his posture changed. Went rigid. The shoulders raised, the fingers curled. His lips skinned back from his teeth.
Eli Gold was gone. All that he was, all that he ever was, vanished in an instant.
My hand was still reaching out, and I wanted to grab him. I wanted to take him, whatever was left of him. I wanted to reach inside and stop him from leaving, stop him from drowning in the Bug. I wanted to save him the way he had always saved me. I wanted to pull him out of danger and wrap him in my arms and tell him it was all going to be okay, the way he had always done with me. I wanted to take him up into the air and away from everything terrible and scary and violent.
But I couldn’t.
So instead my fingers curled around the chain that he wore. The one holding the Star of David. My gloved hand gripped a coil of the chain. And I pulled. It came away as I, even then, was turning and running for the door.
I didn’t look back. I couldn’t look back. I fixed my eyes on the door and thought about running through it. What was behind me was too terrible, too terrifying to contemplate. So I locked onto that exit and I ran, and then I was through.
I didn’t stop running. I ran as fast as I could. All the way to the Cherub. And the moment I was aboard, I slammed the door shut and ran to the controls. I took her up and as fast and as far away as I could.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FROM THE JOURNAL OF MIRANDA MEHRA
Dear Ben,
They won’t let me see you. Like I told you before, I know I have value here, so I tried to use it, by making a deal. I said that it would help me be relaxed and happy if they would let me see you, so they could assure me that you were alive and well and taken care of. I told this to Maya, the smirk only half hidden on her face. She said no. Just that. No. But that maybe if I was good, if they could start to trust me, maybe then they would let me see you.
Fucking cunt.
You know me, never one to take the first no as an answer; but I need to bide my time. Figure out what I can do. The Helix isn’t going to give me information, so I asked Carmen and Dimitri if the Helix had leverage on them. Dimitri told me he had just been press-ganged, meaning forcibly pressed into service. They didn’t have any of his loved ones. They just had guards.
There are lots of guards. This place is mostly Helix, but there are plenty of Valhallans here. We knew the two groups were allied, but I’m still unsure of the relationship. I’ve been watching them when I can, and they’re more like contracted help. That is, the Valhallans don’t seem at all interested in anything that the Helix is doing; and, if anything, they seem bored most of the time. Unless they get to threaten someone, or, worse, beat them.
There was a man, and I can’t believe it but I forget his name at the moment. We never talked, hardly ever interacted. I think I had my midday meal near him once and another time he dropped off a stack of papers at my desk, but other than that, nothing. But one day, he stands up from his station, and he says he’s not doing anything. Not until they let him see his sister. Maya was there, and she didn’t even say anything, just gave a look to her Valhallan thugs, and they moved in. They didn’t even take him out of the room. One of the guards grabbed his arm and twisted it, forcing this guy to his knees. Then . . . well, they began to systematically and thoroughly beat him into what I guess was a coma. That arm they grabbed broke early on. His face was bloody pulp by the end. I’m sure he had broken ribs, multiple contusions, internal bleeding. And we all had to watch. And listen. It was a lesson, of course, of what happens when you get out of line.
In that moment, I had to revise my opinion of my own value a little.
Which brings me back to Carmen. So this man I just mentioned, he had a sister. I have you. Carmen has, of all things, a daughter. It surprised me when she told me, not because it’s unheard of for someone like us to have a child, but, well, I don’t know many. Not after my parents’ generation. She said that she met a man, Matthew was his name, and while she studied biology, he studied technology and computers, and he would often help her out with her studies. He helped set her up with her own computer, and he was such a wizard with the stuff that she just fell in love with him. Madly. The way she tells it, she didn’t really have much choice in the matter. They were both clean, uninfected, and both knew it, so . . . soon after, she was pregnant. She delivered safely, of course, with the help of the people in her not-commune, and she had a baby.
I asked her how she dealt with her daughter when she was out teaching people. Traveling across the country. “I took her with me,” she said. “She’s like . . . she’s like a part of me. Her own self, of course. But a part of me. How could I not take her with me?”
“And you managed to keep her safe?”
There was a pause. “Yes,” she said, afterward. “I’ve been lucky like that.”
I chewed on all of this, my mind processing what she told me, and I asked a question that I maybe shouldn’t have. I’ve never been good at that—not asking things—so I asked her. “And what happened with Matthew?”
She was silent for a while after that, and I wondered if maybe she had fallen asleep. It sometimes happens in the middle of conversation. They work us hard, and sleep is valuable. But after a while, she said, “I wasn’t as lucky with him,” and left it at that.
“So they have your daughter?” I asked. “Do they let you see her?”
“No,” she said. I could hear the tears in her voice, even through the wall. “But they sometimes send me notes. Or pictures. Not often enough.”—she was almost sobbing now—“But I know she’s alive.” She cried some, after that. Then said, “I just wonder who’s taking care of her. What they’re teaching her. It drives me crazy.”
To tell the truth, it drives me crazy, too. So I not only feel a renewed interest in getting to see you, but I want to help Carmen see her daughter. And I want to shut these bastards down so much.
So much.
Beck. That’s what that man’s name was, the one who got beaten by the Valhallans. As in “beck and call.”
I wonder if he’s still alive.
* * *
I’m so sorry, Ben. I’m sorry. I don’t—
You have to let me explain.
I pressed the issue with Maya. I had to. After hearing Carmen’s story, I needed a note from you, something. Anything. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you write something, but just to hold something that you had written on would have been something. Some connection.
They refused the first time, telling me I didn’t get to make demands. The second time, Maya set her jaw, then walked out. I didn’t see her for the rest of the day. I even felt a little satisfied that I got her out of the lab for the day.
So stupid.
When I saw her the next day, she held out her hand. In it was a bundle of cloth. “Here,” she said. “Take it.”
I hesitated for a moment, unsure at first, but then of course I grabbed it. I unwrapped it, and it was one of your shirts. I recognized it immediately. The one with the red checks, faded now, int
o a kind of gray-pink. The one with the pocket flap that had come loose, which, I never told you, I sometimes had to force myself to stop staring at. For some reason it always distracted me.
Only this time the shirt was redder than I remembered. Stains, still wet. I dropped it when I recognized it as blood. I looked at Maya in horror. “What the fuck?” I asked.
She smiled at me. “Push me again, and next time I’ll bring you a finger.”
It was only because she said that that I didn’t leap at her and break her neck. I know I could have done it. But I didn’t know what they would do to you. Or maybe I knew exactly.
When they took me back to my cell, I wished that I had examined the shirt more, evaluated the volume of blood on it. Because I couldn’t tell if they just gave you a bloody nose, or if they . . . if they did something else.
Now it’s all I can think about. What they did. How you are. Are you still in pain? Did they at least stop the bleeding? I can’t stop thinking about it. And the fact that I can’t help.
I’m so sorry, Ben. Truly I am. I never thought . . . and that’s just it. I never thought. I thought I had some leverage here, that they needed me, but they’re the ones with the leverage.
They’re the ones with you.
I hope . . . I hope you can forgive me.
* * *
It’s been days and I still can’t shake this sense of panic. This sense that I’m mired in something inescapable and the monsters are at the door. There’s so much I don’t know. Which they use to great advantage.
I don’t even know where I am. I never see outside the building, just the lab and my cell and the hallway between them. I don’t know if I’m still on Tamoanchan or Gastown or halfway across the country.
I keep thinking about your shirt. The one with the blood on it, and the red checks. You left it in the house with me. It was maybe a day or two before the attack. You came to check on me and brought me some broth, because that was all I could get down at the time. I never really thanked you. It was so nice of you to sit down on the bed next to me, ready to feed me. Then I had a twinge of pain and jostled you and it spilled all over your shirt. Hot broth.
So you took off the red-check shirt and grabbed another one, one Diego had lent you, which was, of course, way too big on you but at least meant you didn’t have to walk around shirtless, which I imagine would bother you more than almost anything.
That red-check shirt hung from the corner of my bed for days. I think it was still there when they took me. It doesn’t mean anything. But it’s given me all these dark thoughts. If you were wearing it when they took you, or if they somehow got it from the house, then . . . they must have won. They must have taken the island.
I suppose I should be glad that you weren’t killed. In the attack. But then I start thinking about everyone else. All my people. The labs. Rosie and Diego. What happened to all of them? How many people were killed?
I think I had somehow convinced myself that everyone was okay. That they stole me away and then you’d won. But I have to come to terms with the fact that it’s more likely that they took the island, using their Valhallan allies. And that a lot of people I know are probably prisoners. Or dead.
But you are a prisoner. And while my compliance is keeping you alive, it’s also keeping you a prisoner. Who knows how they’re treating you. They won’t say. So do I go along, hope for the best? Or do I try to resist in hopes that I can get free and get you free? Get you safe. Can I even talk about it here? Because if they find this before I’m ready, then they’ll know. So just know that I’m thinking and I’m worried about you and, no matter what happens, I will do my best to find you.
* * *
It’s all my fault. Oh god, it’s all my fault.
I was
I wanted to
I needed to try something. I had to. But I didn’t know what that was. Then, I just . . . I had enough. Enough of feeling like I was in an experiment. An animal, caged, with a carefully designed maze. So I decided to leave, to try to find my way out of the lab and to figure out where I was and if there was a way out.
I’m not even sure that they have Ben at this point. They won’t let me see him. You. But are they manipulating me? Or do they not have you? Oh, god, I don’t even know who I’m writing this to anymore.
But I knew just running for it wouldn’t work. One of the Valhallans would grab me and I would become another example. Beaten. Maybe raped. So, I needed a plan. For weeks I’ve been watching those around me and charting the movements of the lab. Recording them in my notebook in a cipher. It’s run by scientists, so they keep everything on a schedule. Every morning they come to get us at a certain time, escort us to the lab, break for midday meal at the same time every day, then back to the second work session. Then, after the lab, either to wash or to exercise, then back to the dorm. I don’t have any way to tell time, but it’s like clockwork. I knew when the shifts changed. I knew when we had breaks. I knew when our guards and our Helix watchers would be distracted.
I sabotaged one of the machines, a trick I learned for, of all things, a prank back on Tamoanchan. On Crazy Osaka. I did the same thing here, I rigged one of the machines so that it would spark and catch fire. It took some doing. It actually took me days. A few minutes here while no one was looking. Another couple there. And so on. But eventually I had it set, and when the time came, I set it off and the box caught fire and there was . . . chaos. Delightful chaos. In that one moment, I felt like I had power again.
Using a path I chose because it had the most cover, I slipped out the door, staying low, moving as quickly as I could. There weren’t any guards outside. The passageway on one end led to the dorms, so I ran in the opposite direction. The way they dressed us, in normal clothes, worked in my favor. Because as soon as I got some distance, I started walking normally, like I belonged there, and I headed for where I guessed the exit was.
I passed a couple of Valhallans on their way in, and I almost ran. But their eyes flicked over to me, and then back again, as if bored. They passed me, and I saw the door they had come through, and I moved as quickly as I could (without looking suspicious) toward it. And out into daylight. Glorious daylight. It was the first time I had seen the sky and the sun in weeks. I inhaled the fresh air, and it was cold and burned my nostrils. Something about the smell was all off. I wasn’t on Tamoanchan, I knew that. Something about it reminded me of Gastown.
It was one of the more obvious options. That I was on the floating city. I knew that the airships are all lashed to the edges of the city, so taking a moment to orient myself, I ran, hoping to get to the edge as quickly as possible.
I saw flashes of Valhallans, which didn’t really shock me much, since they had taken over Gastown, hadn’t they? But I wasn’t looking clearly. Something about the balloons above our heads was different. Something about the sky was different. The buildings. And I remember thinking to myself, have I really been gone that long?
Then, heedless of whether anyone was watching me or chasing me, just needing to get away, I neared the edge. Only there weren’t any airships here. Just a simple rope band to protect people from falling over, anchored by posts. The planks swayed beneath my feet. I moved closer to the edge, and could see, down below me, buildings. A city.
I realized in that moment that I wasn’t on Gastown.
I was on Valhalla.
I fell to my knees. There was no escape here. I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Maya bearing down on me, flanked by four Valhallan guards.
“So now you know,” she said. “There’s no way out.”
I don’t know if I nodded or not, but I felt tears. I tried to hold them back—I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction—but something leaked out. I searched myself for some kind of defiance and didn’t find it.
For a moment, just one moment, I thought about jumping. It was at least some kind of escape. But that wouldn’t help you. They grabbed me and dragged me back to the building I had escaped from. I struggled for
a moment, but then a fist closed on my throat and they marched me back like that. I tried to take in a little of the city around me, even through my teary eyes. The structures were all similar, far more so than Gastown, and mostly better built, with better materials. The lab building, where we were headed, was impressive. Several floors, with windows in places, though of course nowhere that I had seen from the inside.
We didn’t stop until we reached my cell, and they literally dropped me on the floor, like a sack of old junk. I didn’t even look up at Maya.
“You want to know what that stunt cost you?” she asked.
“You going to torture me now?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “That would be too easy.”
“What then?”
“Wrong question.” The barest hint of a smile touched her lips. “Not what. Who?”
Before I could even get to my feet, she left, the door closing heavily behind her. I wondered what she meant, who she meant, but it became obvious a moment later. I heard Carmen in the next room, heard her astonished cry, then her screams. Desperate and scared. I yelled at them to stop, and Dimitri joined me, but Carmen’s screams continued. I heard the pain in them. It got to the point where I tried not to hear them, where I took my fists from the wall and jammed them over my ears, but the screams went on and on, louder, more desperate, shrieks of absolute pain.
Then Carmen stopped. Abruptly. For a moment all I could hear was the heaviness of my breathing, then the door to my cell opened and Maya stood there, blood on her hands, a scalpel held in her right one, the Valhallans flanking her. “Every time you step out of line,” she said. “We’ll kill someone. Probably someone you know. Almost always someone who won’t deserve it. But it will be because of you. Remember that.” She flicked the scalpel at me and the blood on the end splattered me, my face and chest. I flinched, out of habit, even while knowing that it wouldn’t be infected, that she would never risk such a thing.
Maya smiled. Then she reached forward and grabbed my arm, dragging me out of my cell and into Carmen’s.