by Anne Tibbets
Dr. Durlin pointed to a plastic folding chair against the wall to the left, and Ric took my jacket and sat in the chair. The doctor then came over to me and used a cold antiseptic wipe to clean the inside of my elbow.
“If I give you this,” I said, “willingly, can you guarantee they’ll save my children?”
Dr. Durlin’s jaw set. “That’s not up to me.”
I bit my lip. This wasn’t right. But I had to do it, even for the slightest chance to save Clea and Adena.
I nodded, looked away and focused on the tops of my boots. They seemed dull and disgusting compared to the crisp and shiny shoes the medical staffers wore. I managed to say, “Just do it.”
The doctor took a thick rubber band and wrapped it around my bicep. Then she handed me a rubber ball. “It’ll poke for a moment.”
The medical staff surrounding the chair each pulled a handheld tablet from their lab coats and stood at the ready, their fingers poised over their screens.
“Insertion in three, two, one...” Dr. Durlin inserted the needle into my arm. It was attached to a rubber hose and a small plastic bag, which sat on the roller table.
The medical staff typed feverishly on their tablets as the doctor released the rubber band around my arm and asked me to squeeze the ball. “This will only take a moment.”
Blood flowed into the needle, through the tube and collected in the bag. I watched it fill, then looked over at Ric. He sat forward in his chair, trying to see what the medical staffers were looking at on their handhelds.
After the bag was full, Dr. Durlin removed the needle from my arm and sealed my skin using a medical laser, like in the van.
Dr. Durlin flicked a switch on the device with her thumb and pressed it against my arm. It hissed its release and I instantly calmed. I was suddenly without pain, and wide-awake.
She reached out and took my hand to help me to my feet. “You’ve had a long day. I expect you’ll want to be well rested for your meeting with Premier tomorrow.”
I clenched my hands. My last hope for the girls. I tried not to show my desperation, but Ric got to his feet and eyed me.
“What’s the premier like?” he asked.
Dr. Durlin pursed her lips. “It’s just Premier, no ‘the.’ When she assumed office, she took on that title as her name and identity.”
“That seems a bit...” I started. I was about to say ‘extreme,’ but given the doctor’s frown I shifted tactics mid-sentence. “Dedicated.”
“As a leader she’s very fair,” Dr. Durlin said a little too quickly. “She’s been in power four, maybe five terms. Smart. Tough.”
“Does she have any children?” I asked.
This question seemed to confuse Dr. Durlin. “No.”
“We’ve isolated the inoculation,” one of the medical staffers said, stepping forward and showing his handheld to the doctor.
“Excellent. Send the template to the replicator. Rest well.” She nodded at me, then at Ric. “Dr. Bennett, good night.”
With that, the door leading to the hall popped open and our escorts turned toward it. We exited the room, walked back to the elevator and one silent ride later, we arrived in the first hallway. We followed the guards as they marched through the sanitation chamber.
A van waited for us out front, parked at the curb. But a crowd had gathered at the door, and more guards were necessary to herd them aside so we could cross the sidewalk and get inside the vehicle.
People from the crowd shouted “Auberge girl!” and “Auberge boy!” and flashed lights in our faces from handheld tablets. For reasons I couldn’t quite place, I found it unnerving.
We got inside and sat on the bench to the left. One of the soldiers closed the door and tapped twice on the roof.
It wasn’t until the van pulled away from the curb and we started to drive down the street that I recognized Trev sitting on the bench directly across from us.
“Corporal Trevors,” I said in acknowledgement.
He smiled broadly. I still couldn’t get over how straight and white his teeth were. In comparison, mine were stained and crooked from years of neglect. How did a person get teeth that perfect?
“How’d it go?” he asked me.
“I have no idea,” I confessed. “Felt a bit...obligatory.”
Trev’s smile faded.
“Where are you taking us?” Ric asked, more to the point.
Trev cleared his throat. “They’ve set you up with an apartment just a few blocks from here. Real swank. I’m in charge of your security detail until things settle down.”
“Security detail? Is that what you’re calling it?” Ric sneered.
Trev seemed genuinely hurt by the comment, but I couldn’t help but agree. No matter what they tried to tell us, we weren’t free. They’d all but forced me to give them my blood, and now they were “guarding” us through the night. The whole thing smelled as foul as Auberge.
“You saw that crowd out there, right?” Trev asked. “Word has spread. You’re all over the ‘net. We just gotta get this part over with and then everybody will be on to the next thing in a few weeks. We can relax the detail a bit after it settles down. But I don’t think you understand. You two signify the end of an era.”
“Yeah?” I scoffed. “Lucky us.”
Trev smiled again, although this time it didn’t strike me as completely sincere. “You bet.”
* * *
After a few minutes, the van stopped in front of another tall, black metal building. With them being all the same, I had no idea how anyone was able to navigate the city. I was good and lost now.
No crowd had gathered out front, so the soldiers popped the door open and we quickly scuttled into the building. After a brief sterilization, we entered another elevator. This time it took us to a hallway full of doors.
Trev led the way, and we followed him to the door at the end. He popped open the screen on the right, had his face scanned, then turned the handle. “Welcome home.”
Ric stepped aside and let me go first.
The inside was palatial.
The first thing that caught my eye was a large light fixture made of a shining yellow metal and clear stone prisms that reflected the light across a solid, dark wooden floor—polished and sanded to an unnatural shine.
To the left was a kitchen, complete with a full-size refrigerator and an oven as large as the one that had been in Vira’s restaurant. The countertops were made of an odd-looking stone, not granite, but solid in color, which also shone and reflected the lights from above.
Directly across from the kitchen was a full-size dining table with six chairs. To the right, there was a cushioned sofa and a screen on the wall directly across, with side tables made of shining plastic on either side, and one low table in the center of the room. A bowl of fresh flowers sat in the center, and I went to touch them.
Then I saw the stairs. “There’s two stories?”
Trev smiled, obviously enjoying the look of awe on my face. Ric nodded at me, urging me on. Having come from money, opulence was nothing new to him. I’d gotten a taste of that once when we’d hidden at his family estate, but I was having a hard time believing that living conditions in the capital city of Flora could be so vastly different than those in Central. I imagined Ric was thinking the same thing.
Different. Yet somehow similar. As though I’d been upgraded to a nicer prison.
I passed through the living area and climbed the stairs, conscious how my filthy boots left prints in my wake. On the top floor I found two bedrooms and two full bathrooms. One room had a double bed, large enough to sleep four people. The other had two smaller beds.
The dark wood floor was throughout, and tiny soft rugs were beside each bed, as if stepping on the wood in the morning when you awoke wasn’t good enough.
The second bathroom was just off the larger of the bedrooms and had a shower stall, a bathtub with a small waterfall behind it and a large soft carpet in the middle of the room.
None of it seemed real. I didn’t belong in a place like this, and I knew it. It was like walking through someone else’s dream.
Imposter.
When I arrived back downstairs, Ric was at the door, ushering Trev and the other three soldiers out. I caught a glimpse of Trev’s smile as Ric closed the door in his face.
“’Night, Naya!” he called.
“’Night, Trev.”
Ric bolted the door, then pulled across a tiny chain from the jamb over to a hitch on the other side.
“This isn’t terrible,” I said. “Do you think they meant what they said? That we’ll live here, in Flora City? There are two bedrooms upstairs. One has two little beds. If we get a place like this, it’d be perfect for the girls.”
If we ever see them again...
My heart throbbed, but I kept that last part to myself. I refused to believe it would end like that. Somehow, I was going to get them back. No matter what. I just didn’t know how.
Yet.
Ric turned from the closed door and pressed his lips together. His eyes sagged with exhaustion. “I can’t even think about that now. We should get some sleep,” he said.
I nodded. He was right. We were probably both too overwhelmed to see straight. I knew I was. There was too much to consider. “I think I’ll take a shower first. See if maybe there aren’t clothes in the closet we can wear.”
“We’ll talk everything through in the morning,” he said, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand.
We went upstairs in search of a change of clothing. Both chests of drawers in the largest bedroom were stocked full of Flora attire in our sizes. Sleek but tight black slacks of synthetic and stretchy fiber I didn’t know, and a tight white top and jacket made of the same. I found shoes on the floor of the closet, also our size.
Ric fingered the fabric and frowned. “That’s a little creepy. How’d they know our sizes?”
“Suppose they knew we were coming because of Sonya?”
Ric shrugged. “I’m going to turn on the screen downstairs. Maybe we’ll learn a thing or two before our meeting with this ‘Premier’ tomorrow.”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
I went to the biggest bathroom and stripped off my grimy clothes, laying them beside the large carpet in the center of the room. Then I turned on the water in the shower with a wave of my hand and took my time, immersed in the warmth of the flowing water.
Soothing.
I listened to the water rush down my body and I closed my eyes, allowing all of Auberge to wash away, even if for a moment. But then my thoughts returned to the girls and my heart ached again.
It wasn’t right. I shouldn’t have been enjoying anything, even a shower, without them with me. It was too hard with thoughts of them so raw in my mind.
I used the soap and shampoo, and when I noticed my fingers were wrinkled, I waved my hand in front of the censor again and the water shut off. I realized too late I’d forgotten to get a towel.
Stepping out of the shower, I tossed back the curtain and scanned the room. There wasn’t anything I could use to dry myself, except the fluffy carpet. But then there was a quick knock at the door and it swung open.
I moved to cover myself with the shower curtain, but it was made of a clear plastic, so I didn’t see the point in that.
“I found clean towels in the linen...” Ric began, but his words caught in his throat when he saw me.
I was naked and dripping wet, standing just outside the shower, one foot inside the stall, the other on the floor.
Ric swallowed thickly and reached out his arms, extending the towels toward me. But he didn’t look away. His eyes devoured my body, every curve, and his face flushed to his ears.
My skin erupted in gooseflesh, but I didn’t think it was because of a chill. I found his eyes with mine, and he inhaled deeply. He was overcome, I could see. Something about my body unnerved him.
I felt a pressing need to soothe him, to touch his skin, to hold him to me and smooth away the creases of his anxious face, to reassure him that we weren’t ruined. Not forever. I needed to tell him that he didn’t have to look at me as if it hurt to do so.
Stepping out of the stall, I crossed the bathroom.
He took a step back, his eyes widening in panic, and I stopped. My face went hot and for just a moment, a flash of anger filled my head. He wasn’t just unnerved, he was afraid of me. As though I was a ticking time bomb, and maybe I was. I supposed I couldn’t blame him. Given what had happened between us last time, he should have been scared of me.
I was.
But the contrast on his face confused me. He looked excited and horrified, all at once.
I found the longer I stood there, the more I felt the same.
I stepped closer, swallowing thickly and watching his face. His lips parted as if he was about to speak. When I reached him, he stiffened. I took the towels from his hands and used them to hurriedly wipe my face and tousle my dripping hair.
Without a word he bolted from the room, closing the door behind him with too much force.
I stood there, dripping, a bit shocked at his reaction.
And then sadness enveloped me.
I was a reminder. I was the very reason Ric had been dragged into this mess. And I had crushed his heart in the process.
If I was him, I would have run from me too.
Chapter Eighteen
After I dressed in a pair of pajamas I found in a drawer in the bedroom, I went downstairs to see if Ric was still watching the screen. I found him in the kitchen, munching on a piece of fruit I didn’t recognize.
It was orange.
He leaned against the gleaming countertop and wordlessly handed me a slice, although his eyes refused to meet mine and his cheeks were still flushed from our episode in the bathroom.
I bit the fruit. The flavor was sweet and sour and made my mouth hurt, but it was good. “What’s this called?”
“It’s an orange. We used to get them sometimes in South, but they’re really rare. There’s an entire bowl of them in the refrigerator.”
“That’s a dumb name. Orange?”
Ric chuckled.
“Anything about Premier on the screen?” I asked between bites.
Ric sucked on a slice and shook his head. “No. But there’s an ancient art exhibit at the historical museum. I learned all about that.”
“Not much help.”
“Not for us, no.”
“What are we going to do?”
Ric chewed, looking deep in thought. Eventually he swallowed and smacked his lips. “Let’s just see what Premier says. There’s no point in formulating plans until we know that.”
I nodded. This was true. Everything depended on that. There wasn’t a point to speculating about where we’d live, if we’d settle in Flora City or anything the admiral had told us until we knew where Premier stood on the issue of the girls. “Okay.”
He tossed the rinds of the orange into a trash receptor under the sink, then ambled upstairs. I didn’t follow him.
He seemed distant. Distracted. As if he wanted to be left alone for a few minutes.
Truth was, I felt the same. The past few days were almost too much to comprehend. Overwhelming.
I needed a moment just to breathe, to remind myself who I was and where we were. Safe.
Maybe. Probably not.
After I finished my part of the orange, I washed the sticky juices from my fingers, went upstairs and crawled into the big bed in the largest bedroom. We hadn’t discussed sleeping arrangements, but I wasn’t about to squeeze into one of those tiny beds
in the other room.
I heard Ric taking a shower in the adjoining bathroom. I snuggled into the slick sheets and tried to stay awake, waiting for him to finish so we could perhaps talk afterward. But I fell asleep almost instantly.
I did not dream.
* * *
When I awoke, it was light outside and Ric lay snoring with his mouth open on the other side of the bed. He looked scruffy and adorable. One of his arms was tossed over his face. I left him there, undisturbed, and went to the kitchen.
I made coffee, then boiled a couple of eggs. After eating one and saving the other for Ric, I went back upstairs. He was still snoring, so I left him alone, got dressed in my Flora clothing and exited the apartment. There was no way I was going to wake him, and there was also no way I was going to wait a moment longer before exploring the city. I told myself I was just going to take a quick look around, then I would go back and get Ric.
Out in the hallway, two soldiers stood watch outside our door. Large rifles hung over their shoulders and rested on their hips.
They both looked shocked to see me.
“Tell Ric that I went exploring and I’ll be back soon,” I said, walking straight by them and pretending like I didn’t notice when one of them followed me into the elevator. It wasn’t Trev, but a young soldier with dark chocolate eyes. I pressed the button for the lowest floor and eyed him. “You going to follow me all day?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Am I under arrest?”
He seemed perplexed at this. “No.”
“Then why are you following me?”
“For protection, ma’am.”
I scoffed. “Keep telling yourself that,” I said. “And don’t call me ma’am. My name’s Naya.”
His face flushed. “I know what your name is.”
“Well, if you’re going to be my babysitter, the least you can do is show me around.”
“Around?”
“Flora City.”
He blinked a few times. “What do you want to see?”