“Yes?” Gerik spoke as if he had no idea what Freddy was getting at.
“Well…why wouldn’t she go back to work after I revived her?”
“Oh, lad, you know she killed herself. When we give someone a second chance, we encourage them to start a new life, so that whatever happened to bring them to that point doesn’t happen again. That often means placement in a new job.”
“But her old coworkers don’t even know what happened?”
“Mr. Benson handles work placement. You’ve met him, haven’t you, at one of those terrible gatherings Rory calls parties? Maybe not. I’ll ask him, in any case, if he knows what became of her.”
“Thank you, I’d appreciate that,” Freddy said. Maybe he was overreacting, but whenever he thought of that girl, he felt her tie around his neck. He couldn’t imagine why she would try to strangle him.
If only he could have asked Thea what kind of girl Nan was. Prone to violence? Involved in questionable activities?
Of course, then Thea would wonder why he was asking those questions.
And he wanted to see Thea again. He’d been dreading going to the clubs, imagining how fake and stupid all the girls would be, but she was easy to talk to.
“Anyway, about Thea,” Freddy said. “She is a rustic. And aren’t rustics more likely to have magic? Couldn’t hurt to have magic running on both sides. But how am I supposed to get anywhere when you insist on chaperoning?”
“She likes the chaperone,” Gerik said. “It makes her feel safer. And it also makes her think about how she’d like to get you alone.”
“But still, I certainly can’t ask her to—do what you want me to do—with you sitting a table away.”
Gerik grunted thoughtfully. “Well, Freddy, I trust you, but Rory doesn’t think I ought to let you out alone.”
“You’re the one who always says you never tell him anything if you can help it. Why start now?”
Gerik’s eyes crinkled as a mischievous smile spread on his face. “Fair enough, lad. Fair enough. But you’d better work your charms quickly. People at those clubs like to gossip. I don’t want them to start wondering just who you are and what you’re doing there. Try to get her somewhere private and tell her the story we discussed, and we’ll take care of things from there.”
Nan woke in an unfamiliar place, with an unknown panic racing through her. Her head hurt, and her right shoulder, too, as though she’d wrenched something, but she couldn’t move. She was strapped down, under bright, sterile lights. It looked like a hospital.
A sign was posted on the ceiling, obviously intended for the occupant of this bed. It said, INDUSTRY IS THE BACKBONE OF CIVILIZATION; WORK, THE JOY OF MANKIND.
What had happened? Where had she been?
The more she struggled to think, the more confused she felt. She remembered commonplace things: words and numbers and streetcar schedules and how to bake a loaf of bread. But she couldn’t remember where she lived or whom she lived with. She remembered the world but not her place within it, which made it all seem hollow.
When she looked at herself, she saw only a white sheet, but underneath it, straps restrained her to the bed. She didn’t seem to be wearing much, maybe a hospital gown. Something papery. A glance around revealed bare walls with lights shaped like triangles pointing downward to linoleum floors. Rows of cabinets and a sink. No clues.
She started tugging her arms from her bonds by inches. The straps scraped her skin, but she hardly noticed any pain. She was bony enough to work her way free, and strong enough to keep trying as long as it took, which felt like a long time. Once her arms were free, she flung the sheet onto the floor—just as the door opened.
“Don’t do that, please.” The woman marched across the room, picked up the sheet, and spread it over Nan once more. “Please relax.”
“Where am I?”
The woman smiled in an automatic way. “You’re in a safe place now. Can I ask you a few questions?” She started asking them without waiting for permission. “What is your name?”
“Nan Davies.”
“And where are you from?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Where do you live?”
“I don’t remember that, either.”
“Do you remember anything?” Her tone was so blank Nan couldn’t tell if the woman expected her to remember anything or not.
“My name, clearly.”
“Anything else?”
“No,” Nan said. At least, she didn’t remember anything that seemed to matter.
“Count to ten for me, please.”
Nan did.
“Very good.” The woman turned back the sheet—Nan wondered why she’d bothered to replace it just for a brief line of questioning—and unfastened the straps from Nan’s waist and legs.
“I’m going to give you some medicine.” The nurse poured a little liquid into a cup and handed it to her.
“Where am I?” Nan asked before drinking.
“You’re in recovery at the hospital here. You tried to kill yourself, Miss Davies.”
“I did?” Was that something she would do? No. Surely it wasn’t.
“You’ve been here for twenty-four hours, but don’t worry. You’re fine. Drink your medicine, please.”
Nan looked at the medicine a moment. It smelled like something sweet beginning to ferment. She didn’t want to take it. “What does it do?”
“It will calm you down and ease your aches and pains.”
“I don’t think I need it. I feel all right.”
“Doctor’s orders. You won’t leave my care until you’ve taken your medicine.”
Nan gave it another suspicious sniff. The woman looked impatient and quite ready to force the liquid down her throat. If it was that important, she could have done it while Nan was still strapped down. Nan drank it in one swig under the woman’s waiting eyes.
“Good. Now you can get dressed.” The woman opened a drawer and took out a pile of clothes and some work boots. “In a moment, someone will come to show you to the dormitories.”
“Dormitories?”
“Where you will live.”
“Where did I live before?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s safer, in light of your suicide attempt, if you remain here. You will be well taken care of.” The woman stared at her for a moment, as if daring her to ask another question, but just as Nan opened her mouth to ask one, the nurse quickly went out the door.
Something was very wrong. But without her memories, Nan couldn’t grasp exactly what it was.
Nan saw the world in what people called black and white, like a film, and yet the sprightly contrast of dark gray flowers on the light gray background of a pretty dress was a world away from the lifeless gray of the clothes the nurse had left for her. She slipped her arms and legs into the one-piece work suit. She had never worn anything like this before. She was sure of that.
The door opened again without any warning—good thing she had changed quickly—and now a man entered. His hair was no longer than the stubble on his chin, and he had a small scar on his cheek. He didn’t look like he worked in a hospital. His outfit looked more like a police uniform, except it had no badges or insignias. “Follow me,” he said.
They walked down a hall blank of anything except the triangular lights. No windows. They passed through a door and turned a corner. Nan kept looking for landmarks, but there was nothing to go on except numbered doors: she had come from thirteen, now down this hall were the twenties….She tried to keep track of the twists and turns, aware of a slight downward slope.
The man didn’t say a word. They took another turn and went down a long hall. A steady hum grew louder, and periodically Nan heard clanging and hissing, and then some shouting.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“We are pas
sing by one of our factories.”
“Our?”
“The city’s.” He was not a man of many words.
Nan heard an approaching rumble on the other side of the wall. It sounded like a subway car. But the subways had been shut down after the war, when she was young…hadn’t they? She knew this as a fact, like the streetcar schedules, but the knowledge was disorienting when she couldn’t remember what the war had meant to her or where she used to ride the streetcar.
The man noticed her change of expression and gave her a severe look. “Are you feeling all right, lad?”
Nan laughed. “I’m a girl.”
“I can’t tell the difference anymore,” he muttered.
“It might help if I wasn’t wearing this shapeless rag.”
His eyes turned on her again. “I’d keep comments like that to yourself from now on. They’ll decide what you are now.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Right now, I’m ‘they.’ You ask too many questions.”
After another few minutes of silent marching, he finally stopped at one door in a hall full of doors. “I’ll put you here, then, since you’re a girl; there’s been a vacancy in this room. Your roommate will show you where to go and what to do. My advice is not to cause trouble, or they’ll find a better place for you.”
He opened the door to a room no larger than a closet, with one electric light hanging from the ceiling. Then he gave Nan’s back a small shove and shut the door behind her.
Nan’s roommate stayed huddled in the corner of the bottom bunk. She murmured a brief introduction—her name was Helma—and directions to the bathroom, and that seemed to be the extent of her interest.
“So what do you do around here?” Nan asked, trying to get something out of her.
“Work. Eat. Sleep. That’s about it.” Helma picked at her nails. “You should probably get ready for bed.”
“Bed? I just woke up.”
“Well, it’s almost bedtime, so you should try to sleep. You’ll be glad you did tomorrow when you’re working.”
Nan knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she wasn’t sure what else to do. She changed into the pajamas that were folded on her bunk, made from cheap cotton that held sharp creases even after she put them on. Helma turned out the lights, and within moments her breathing turned deep and slow.
My name is Nan Davies.
That felt like all she had. Just a name.
But the memories weren’t gone completely. They were close enough to taste. They were hidden around a corner. If she could only find a path to them, she would understand what had happened and why she was here. Commit suicide? That couldn’t be right. Nan had never wanted to die. There must be some mistake. An accident, maybe.
Horst will worry about me. He shouldn’t, but he will.
The thought burbled to the surface as though it had slipped through a crack. Just a name. She felt as if he was the person who had raised her. He wasn’t her father; she was quite sure she didn’t have a father or a mother.
But what had Horst looked like? What did he do for a living? What sort of things did he say? She couldn’t remember.
She was breathing fast in the still of night because she needed this memory back, needed all her memories back. She felt almost as if there was something she had meant to do.
But after what seemed like a long time of struggle, all she could recall was the smell of his cigarettes.
She had to escape from this strange place. The memories would come back if she could only see the real world teasing at the edges of her mind. There must be a way. If she’d gotten in, she could get out.
In the morning, a crackling voice on a speaker in the hall announced that it was time for the day to begin. Twelve girls shared a bathroom. They had to stand in line just for the privilege of using a toilet and sink, and even looking in the mirror.
The hall was lined with bedrooms, their doors hanging open to show identical bunk beds. A stairwell led down.
“Where do the stairs go?” Nan asked the girl standing in front of her.
“Tracks for the old rail lines, but they don’t go anywhere anymore. They’ve been walled off,” the girl said. “And the tunnel’s full of rats.”
“And worse!” said Helma, behind Nan. “Monsters and ghosts.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” another girl said.
Nan got to the front of the line and met her own face in the mirror. She remembered it, but not so pale and exhausted. Her cheeks and jaw were angular, lips thin, hair cropped very close to her head. In the real world, she had worn dark lipstick and lined her eyes; she remembered doing it—just yesterday. Yes. She was sure that yesterday she had been free. Now she could see why that man had taken her for a boy.
Nan followed the crowd to a huge cafeteria roaring with voices. This room had once been a juncture of the subway system, Nan thought. Probably a hub, judging by its size. All the signs were gone, and all the stairs save one had been blocked off, but Nan recognized the shape of the room—the arched ceiling, the places where there would have been benches and a shop or two and a map posted on the wall. The stairs would have led down to the tracks. In fact, just as she thought it, she heard the rumble of an approaching train below. “Are the trains still running?” she asked Helma.
“Only the workers’ rail,” Helma said. “It takes some of us off somewhere. A slaughterhouse, I heard. If you do anything wrong, they’ll threaten to send you there.” She was peering around the crowd, spotted a boy across the room, and wandered away from Nan without another word.
Nan rolled her eyes and followed the crowd by herself, taking a bowl and a cup and holding them out to be filled with drink and soup, as everyone else did. The servers, bored-looking women in white dresses, talked very little. The soup was lumpy and clotted. The drink had a slight syrupy thickness to it.
At the center of the space were long tables in rows, where several hundred men and women in identical work suits hovered over their bowls. Their voices echoed in a din among all the tiles and concrete.
She hated having to choose someone to sit with, but there weren’t any spots completely apart from other people. As she scanned the rows of people, her gaze paused on a girl with a head of unruly dark curls. That tumble of hair, she felt, almost seemed familiar. The girl was sitting near a column, so there was no one to her left, and she wasn’t talking to the woman on her right. The seat across from her was empty, so Nan took it.
“Hello,” Nan said.
The girl looked up. “Hello.” She didn’t look entirely pleased to have her solitude among the masses disrupted. Her accent was unexpectedly aristocratic. But after a moment of studying Nan, she said, “I’m Sigi,” and offered a hand to shake.
“Nan.” Nan shook the offered hand, even if the gesture seemed formal in this coarse place. Sigi had a strong grip that matched her stocky build but not her socialite voice. Her eyes, under long lashes, turned slightly upward at the corners. She looked like the kind of girl who could throw a punch or care for an abandoned kitten with equal skill.
“You’re new here, I take it?” Sigi asked.
“Yes. I came last night.”
“Who’s your roommate?”
“Helma.”
“Oh. Helma. With the boyfriend? Watch out for that one.”
Nan shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t think we’ll be friends.” She mucked her spoon around in the soup, trying to summon some kind of appetite. “How long have you been here?”
“About three months, I think. Brigitte marked the days—she was my roommate—but I haven’t kept up.”
“What happened to Brigitte?”
“She threw herself into a fire.”
“Into a fire?” What sort of place was this?
“At her work. They didn’t tell me details.” Sigi shuddered. “I can’t imagine, but Brigitte w
asn’t quite right in the head.”
“But why would she do that?”
“It’s the only way to kill yourself. They do something to us, so we can’t easily die. Hanging doesn’t work, I heard. Some people have tried it.”
“Is this…some sort of mental asylum?” Nan asked.
“Good question. I’d love to know, myself.”
“Do you remember anything from before?”
“Nothing important. Sometimes I’ll have snatches of memory—a dress I used to have, or someone’s face, or bits of a song. But it’s not anything I can really go on. They don’t want us to remember anything. One girl started to remember her husband. She was going on and on, crying to the rest of us. A guard overheard her. They took her aside for a day, and when she came back, she’d forgotten him again.”
“What’s the point of all this?”
“Oh, come on, they don’t tell us that, either. They just tell us what to do. They say that they saved our lives, and now we must work and work. That’s about all you’ll get out of anybody in charge.”
“Do you believe it?” Nan asked, although Sigi’s tone was already cynical.
“They said I tried to kill myself and my family doesn’t want to see me anymore. Maybe it’s true.” Sigi shrugged. “But I certainly don’t believe they saved my life. All this? It’s not a life.”
“They told me I tried to kill myself, too, but I wouldn’t do that,” Nan said. “I don’t do things without a good reason.”
“Do you remember anything?” Sigi asked.
“No…not really.”
“You seem to be very calm for having just arrived. Most of the time, the new girls cry buckets of tears.”
“I don’t cry.”
Sigi smirked. “Ooh, how very rugged of you.”
Nan felt chastened. “I just…don’t, that’s all; it’s not that I’m proud of it.”
“I bet you are proud of it,” Sigi said, still smirking. “But it’s an admirable quality. I wish I didn’t cry.”
“I could swear you seem familiar,” Nan murmured.
“Oh?” Sigi said. “That’s funny. Do you think we knew each other before?”
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