by Keri Lake
My stomach twists when he dons a pair of gloves and opens the alcohol packet, wiping down my arm in circles. I’m familiar with this routine, which usually takes place at the end of the day, to check for any progression of Dredge. “Doctor, I’m certain it’s just something I ate.” I won’t tell him about Ivan and risk the retaliation. Ivan has made it clear to me every night that, if I say a word, he’ll have me and Doctor Falkenrath punished. I’ve also come to learn that Ivan’s father holds a higher position than Doctor Falkenrath, so he certainly has the power to do that.
Ignoring my comment, he wraps the tourniquet around my arm, and I have to look away.
“Have you menstruated yet?”
The question sends a shot of warmth to my cheeks, and I shift in the seat. “No.”
A sharp sting hits the crook of my elbow, creating a tickle in my gut that threatens another round of vomit. I choke it back, as a minute later, he withdrawals the needle, holding a small square of gauze at the puncture.
“What is this for?”
“Ordinarily, we keep HCG tests as tumor markers. High levels of HCG in males indicates the presence of cancer.”
Eyes wide, I watch him secure a Band-Aid over the cotton ball he’s replaced for the gauze. “I doubt I have cancer.”
“In females, high levels of HCG indicates pregnancy.”
My mouth goes slack, and I can’t spit out the words as I watch him pulse the tube in the tabletop machine that agitates the liquid.
“I … I don’t know what you mean.”
“At the officer’s table during lunch last week, I overheard Ivan bragging about a girl. One who seemed … agreeable to what I consider some rather sadistic forms of entertainment.”
“He … promised. He said he wouldn’t …”
“Exhaustion. Lack of appetite. Vomiting.” He sets an object to my temple, and after about fifteen seconds, it beeps. “No fever.”
“Please don’t say anything. He’ll punish you. And me.”
“It seems you’ve endured quite a bit of his punishment already. You’ve managed to evade suspicion up until now. But if you’re found to be pregnant, I don’t even know what the consequences of that may be in this place.”
“I’ll hide it. I’ll wear a bigger shirt and come straight here after meals every day.”
He crosses his arms and strokes his chin. “Let’s just wait for the results and go from there.”
I lie in bed, staring into the pitch-blackness of the small room. The cot below me doesn’t help the ache in my lower back, where a cramp blossomed earlier in the evening. My entire body is weak, exhausted from heaving and lack of food. I forced myself to eat the broth at supper, but the smell of yeast in the bread brought everything back up.
I’ll starve if I can’t find a way to keep the food down.
A new sickness claims my gut as the night sets in, rolling deeper into the hour when I’ll be expected to show up to S block. An hour I’m dreading.
Ivan promised a wonderful surprise will be waiting for me, but his surprises aren’t enjoyable, or welcome. At times, they’re food, and on other occasions, they’re some new and twisted form of entertainment for him, that usually results in pain for me.
If I deny him, though, he’ll go to his father, and I want nothing to do with Ericsson Sr. The fact that I’m still here means he hasn’t yet ratted me out—perhaps the only secret he has managed to keep.
Breathing deeply through my nose, I push myself up from the bed, a movement that sends dizzying swells to my head. I crack the door open, so as to discern whether my eyes are open, or closed. A lightness in my chest accompanies the narrowing field of view, and I watch the walls spin around me. Faster and faster.
Until the floor crashes into my spine.
Doctor F sits across his desk from me, fingers entwined, eyes stern as always. “You’re pregnant.”
Those two words weigh down on me like anchors in a deep pool.
“It’s confirmed.”
This news only adds to the churning in my stomach, and a cold sensation moves through my veins, branching into my lungs. “What am I going to do?”
“You have two choices. The first is to terminate it. I can assist with that.”
Terminate. The word sounds so cruel, as it echoes inside my head, reminding me of Abel’s record.
“Kill the baby? I can’t …” I shake my head at the thought of another child dying in this place. Perhaps the only one I can save. “I won’t.”
With a huff, he lets his gaze fall from mine, and for the first time since I arrived at this place, Doctor Falkenrath reaches for the glass bottle set out on the bookshelf behind him, pouring the amber liquor into a glass. I’ve seen the whiskey many times before, but never actually witnessed him drink it. Staring into the glass, he swirls the fluid around. “Then, I’ll help you escape.”
My breath catches.
The words fail to breach the confusing haze that hangs over me like a storm cloud.
Escape? What does that even mean? The only ones who escape are those thrown to the Ragers, or sent to the incinerators. There is no other form of escape.
“How?”
Tipping the glass to his mouth, he sips the drink, and his throat bobs with a swallow. “I don’t know, yet. I’ll think of something. In the meantime, it’s business as usual. No rousing suspicion. Are you able to assist today?”
In truth, probably not, but I will, anyway. I have to keep up this charade, and the fact that I missed my appointment with Ivan the night before is unsettling. I don’t even know what the consequences of that will be.
We finish up the case for the afternoon, and I peel away the mask Doctor Falkenrath gave me to help with the smell. He also provided some crackers earlier, to help keep the dizziness from claiming me.
“Are you well enough to wheel the body down? Or should I fetch someone else?”
I’ve learned that Doctor Falkenrath doesn’t like going down to the incinerator himself. In the beginning, I thought the reason was that he felt it below him to carry out such tasks, but as I’ve gotten to know him, it’s clear that it’s all those bodies, subjected to cruel and unspeakable torment, that he can’t bear to see.
“I can do it.” Saying anything else would leave me feeling helpless and crippled, and I’m neither. Thankfully, the crackers staved off the nausea and provided enough energy to function without the overwhelming fatigue.
He gives a nod and heads toward the door, doffing his suit into the receptacle beside the door, before he disappears into the anteroom.
I pull the sheet over the mutilated remains of the body and push the bed toward the elevators. Once inside, I press the button to the basement, staring at a spot of blood that’s been wicked by the white cotton sheet. In an effort to save resources, they’ve begun to salvage the sheets. Instead of being burned along with the bodies, they’re laundered and sterilized, but still carry the stains of death.
The doors open to the line of beds waiting to be wheeled into the incinerator. The scent of burnt flesh hits me like a curtain of nauseating fumes, and I cover my nose to keep from vomiting. One-handedly pushing the cart, I set it in line with the others, and gag when a sour smell reaches my nose.
Pulling back the sheet on the cart in front of the one I wheeled down reveals a man whose eyes are white and glossed over. His abdominal cavity is cut open, and as if it’s been cut out and haphazardly thrown atop his body, his liver sits half hanging out of the hole, blackened and covered in small bumps that indicate cirrhosis.
Oh, God.
I throw the sheet back over him and bend forward, beside the cart, just opening my mouth in time to expel a blast of clear fluids that splash against the cement floor.
My muscles quake with the nausea gurgling in my belly, and I vomit again—nothing but bile and the acids that sting my throat.
Standing up from the mess, I glance around for Mike, but he’s nowhere in sight. The rancid stench goes straight to my nose again, and if I don’t get th
e hell out of here, I’m going to throw up whatever miniscule amounts of stomach fluids are left in me.
I spin toward the elevators and halt in my tracks.
A shadow edges toward me—big, menacing, and familiar.
I breathe through my mouth to keep from panicking, but when Ivan steps into the light, there’s no denying the fact that he’s angry. Shoulders bunched and lip snarled, he strides toward me, his boots clomping like the hooves of a demon against the concrete.
“Ivan. I’m sorry.” I stumble backward into the carts behind me, as he closes the space in seconds.
His palm slams against my throat, trapping my breath, as he grinds his teeth in fury. “Where the fuck were you last night?”
Eyes blazing with fire, he squeezes tighter, until stars float in front of my eyes and I can’t answer if I wanted to. My hands fly to my throat in a futile attempt to fight him, but dizziness is settling over me, making me weaker.
Throttling my neck with one hand, he gives a harsh yank of my pants, pulling them down to mid-thigh. “I brought friends with me last night. Promised them a good time. And you made me look like a fucking fool!”
“Please,” I rasp, and my circle of view closes in from the edges.
Pushing into my space, he bends me backward, until I’m lying across the man we dissected earlier. I focus on the dark ceiling above me, the thick pipes that blur, as the oxygen fails to fill my lungs. Pressure slams into my thighs, and the sharp sting between them is his merciless thrust into me.
“Ivan!” My voice arrives no higher than a whisper, and the pipes continue to blur and sharpen, blur and sharpen. Tears fill my eyes when his grunts reach my ears, the angry sounds with each violent drive that slams me against the dead body below me. “Please!”
“Fuck you, whore. That’s what you are. A whore. A dick-loving slut.”
In minutes, he finishes inside me and releases my neck. The second he pulls himself out of me, a cold hard crack smarts my cheek and kicks my head to the side. A tingle of fire radiates from the ache in my jaw.
“I’m … sick. I got sick.”
Eyes wide, he looks me up and down and, tucking himself away, takes a step back. “Sick?”
Catching on, I shake my head and pull my pants up. “No. No not like that. I’m not—”
His hand slams against my throat again, pushing me backward onto the cart. I kick to slide off, and he gathers my legs, swinging them atop of the body beneath me, until I’m lying across the dissected man. Writhing beneath his grip only sends him into a furious spell, and his fist collides with my cheekbone, rattling my teeth.
“You’re a fucking Rager? You better not have infected me, whore!” The wall moves in my periphery, bodies slipping past me as he wheels me toward the incinerator doors. “You know what we do with the infected.”
“No!” Flailing my arm knocks his hand away from my throat, and I lift my head, screaming.
His palm smacks my mouth, fingers digging into my jaw. “Shut the fuck up, whore. Nobody cares about a disease-infected piece of shit!”
I claw at his hands and bite his palm, a move that earns me another rail of his fist.
He draws back for another punch.
“I’m pregnant!” The words come out on a sob, and he pauses, mid-swing.
“What did you say?”
“I’m … pregnant.”
The dark shadow behind his eyes terrifies me, and when his lips peel back, a twinge of panic climbs my spine.
He shakes his head and drags me off of the cart. Cold concrete hits my thighs as I tumble to the floor, and my shirt bunches up around my neck, my feet slipping along the cement, while he hauls me through the doors. Intense heat blasts across my skin, and I kick and scream, scratching at his arm.
“No! No!” Rough concrete scrapes my heels as I dig them into the floor, while the heat of the ovens flares hotter still. “Stop!”
The glow of the flame through a small box window on the door flickers a warning that urges me to fight. Fight him while I can.
I swing my arm out, hammering my fist as hard as I can into his calf, until he stops and jerks me violently, still clutching the back of my shirt.
The creak of the door opening sends out another wave of heat, and Ivan tugs me to my feet. “You won’t be the first burned alive.”
Hot pulses of heat singe my back, as he holds me in front of the ovens.
“I would have kept you alive, if only to stick my dick in you for a while. But I don’t fuck the diseased. They would’ve killed you, anyway.”
Shadows shift behind Ivan, and in the next breath, he releases me and his body falls to a slump. Behind him, Mike stands holding a shovel, his eyes wide and brimming with panic.
“I … I couldn’t let him hurt you. Go, Danny. Get out of here!”
Through a shield of tears, I nod, giving his hand a squeeze as I pass him. I race back through the basement, to the elevators, my pulse counting down the seconds as I wait for the doors to open, and when they finally do, I rush inside and back myself as far against the wall as I can. My whole body is shaking, a line of terror branching out like frost along my spine. The rush of adrenaline that slams through my veins stamps out the ache between my thighs.
When the doors finally open to the surgical suite, I dart across the open space to the doors of the anteroom, where I crash through and keep on to Doctor Falkenrath’s office.
He’s sitting at his desk, when I throw the door open and fall to my knees to catch my breath.
“Dani!”
Palms to the floor, I drag in as much air as my locked lungs will allow in all of my tight-ribbed panic.
“They’re … Ivan … he’s going to … kill me.”
“Slow down.” Falkenrath’s arms squeeze my shoulders, as he urges me to stand and helps me to a chair. “What’s going on?”
“Ivan … tried to. He … was going to … in the incinerator.”
His thumb brushes over a tender spot on my cheek, and I flinch at the pain. “Ivan did this.”
Shame gnaws at my stomach, and I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze, so I nod.
“Then, we’ve little time. Come with me.”
His hand slides into my periphery, and I reach out for it, allowing him to pull me up out of the seat. He leads me into the laboratory and points to the same stool I sat in for the pregnancy test.
Glass rattles as he throws back the door of the small refrigerator, where we store the vaccines, and lifts one of the mysterious objects shaped like a gun. For weeks, I’ve studied it, trying to decide its purpose, and here he was approaching me with it, as if to use it on me.
“It’s easier if you talk. Distract yourself while we do this.”
“Do what?”
His brows furrow as he tears away the plastic from the gun. “You must trust me, Dani. No matter what.”
“I do. What is it?”
“It’s for your protection.”
“The baby, will she be okay?”
“You’re assuming it’s a girl.” He lifts my shirt and sets the barrel of the gun in the center of my armpit. “In answer to your question, I’m not aware of any ill effects. But then, I’ve never had the opportunity to test on offspring.”
A sharp sting hits my skin, which feels as if he’s torn it away from the bone. Tears well in my eyes at the burn that lingers after he removes the injector gun from beneath my arm.
“That’s one. There are four.” His words send an anchor of dread to the pit of my stomach, while he settles the gun at my other armpit. “What would you name this girl?” The conversation is so forced and out of place it’s almost laughable, but I go along with it, because he’s right. I need distraction while he gives me the shot.
My body tenses for the next shot, while the first fizzles away. “Wren.”
Another thump and the burn sears my skin, this one perhaps more intense than the last. Or maybe I’ve forgotten the pain already.
“Wren’s an interesting name. How did you come ab
out that one?”
Horror washes through me when he lifts my leg and grabs hold of my foot.
I tip my head back, wondering if it’s easier not to watch, and instead focus on the fluorescent bulbs overhead. “It was my mother’s. She always hated it. That’s why they named me after my father. But I loved her name. I’ve always loved her name.”
The thump at the bottom of my foot sends an involuntary whimper past my lips, and I squeeze my eyes closed to hold back the tears.
“Last one. Have you ever heard of the Juniper tree?”
“I’ve … heard of them.”
“They’re rare out in Deadlands. But I know of one. If you keep the sun on your right shoulder, it’s about a good three-hour walk at dawn. Should you ever need shelter while on your travels, there’s water inside the trunk of it, and a small bit of food.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Some say it’s haunted by the voices of children,” he prattles on, ignoring me.
Without warning, the final injection pierces the bottom of my foot as if I stepped on glass that’s broken through the skin.
“These injections are—”
“Doctor Falkenrath!”
The voice casts a ripple of fear down my spine, and I slide from the chair, ducking below the table, as Doctor Falkenrath discards the injection gun.
“In here, Doctor Ericsson.” His voice is eerily calm, which should serve to ease my rattled nerves, but the thought of what will happen in the next five minutes sets my teeth chattering.
The clamor of shoes against the tiles tells me there are multiple men standing inside the lab, but I don’t dare peek. Not until I know what’s to come of me.
“I understand there’s a girl working for you.”
“A girl? I’m afraid you’re mistaken—”
“He’s a liar!”
Ivan’s voice has me slapping a hand over my mouth to contain the scream trapped in my throat.
“He knew Dani was a girl. He’s known all along.”
“My interactions with young Daniel have been on a professional level. The sex of my assistant has remained inconsequential, as it is my understanding there’s little risk for girls sneaking past Legion officers, when they’re collected from the hives.”