by Poppy Rhys
That had happened seven times so far.
Two hours of sleep wasn’t enough, but that was all they allowed me. Two hours of sleep on a paper-thin mat that offered no cushion. It was the only thing in my cell, except, well, me.
I was alone, but I could hear others in the cells around me. Many others. I’d tried counting, tried accessing my training to decipher unique voices, and walking patterns, but I couldn’t.
Lack of proper sleep was fucking with me; the drugs were fucking with me.
It required more strength than I thought I had to remain calm, to appear serene, like I wasn’t about to break.
They can’t break you, Charlie.
They won’t break you.
I could take whatever they threw at me.
“Inmate alpha thirty-three,” a guard spoke, his voice filtering through the speaker flush with the wall. I exhaled, feigning annoyance that he’d interrupted my meditation.
It wasn’t your run of the mill meditation. I wasn’t doing breathing exercises for my health. It was a farce to show the prison staff their torture didn’t faze me.
They wouldn’t win.
“Yes?”
“Keep your eyes open,” he commanded.
My eyelids lifted.
They would give me the zombie drugs if they thought I was sleeping.
Certain prisoners—myself included—committed offenses that came with extra punishments. They wanted the inmates to experience their sentences to the maximum.
One lifetime would feel like seven, if you survived that long.
If you started to doze, prison doctors and guards gave you drugs to keep you awake. Zombified, but awake.
I’d had the misfortune of getting a taste the first day. They made your skin itch, dulled your brain, and caused you to forget how to swallow your own saliva.
I didn’t think I’d drooled that much since, well, toddlerhood most likely.
The laws were different in space. Treatment of prisoners didn’t fall in line with Earth’s morally questionable guidelines. Laws barely existed at all in the black void.
I was sure I wasn’t the only inmate on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. Judging by the babbling and random screeching, others had already fallen apart.
“Can’t a lady meditate in peace?” I swallowed. My voice didn’t quiver, and I was thankful.
A derisive snort answered me, and the speaker went silent.
For sure, that would cost me later. The guards loved tormenting the ones who spoke back.
Especially Handsy.
That wasn’t his real name—I didn’t know his real name—but it was what I called him. A pervert, if you hadn’t guessed. Liked copping a feel when he thought no one else was looking.
At least, he tried.
Day two, on my way to the lab, he’d been my escort. I was preoccupied getting the lay of the security cameras when I realized we’d just entered a blind spot.
His fingers pawed my ass, and he got a good handful, too, thanks to the orange suit tight enough to give me a camel toe.
Handsy also got a deviated septum. Free of charge.
Since that day, I’d regretted it. Really regretted it. If I could, I’d go back and let him molest my flesh all he wanted.
Crack.
My left eyelid twitched as another piece of my psyche splintered at the idea of allowing Handsy to feel me up just to avoid the lab.
Avoid that which harnessed my deepest fear and rode it tirelessly.
Water.
Drowning wasn’t something I’d normally think of, because on Earth, I steered clear of water. Most of the lakes and rivers near cities were too polluted to play in anymore, but I avoided swimming pools too. Even the smell of chlorine made me sweat.
Did they know?
They couldn’t. No one knew that. Not even the US government knew I feared drowning above all else.
Only Dad and Preta knew.
Preta.
A little time in this abysmal existence seemed trivial to the months Preta had been here. What kind of torture had she endured in all that time?
I’d been lied to. My family had been lied to. The world thought Concord was a prison. Simply a prison. No one ever mentioned human experiments, and I couldn’t imagine the suffering my sister had been through.
The horror stories didn’t scratch the surface of what was really going on here.
Two more weeks was the plan. Two more weeks and then I could get off this floating nightmare with my sister. We’d never have to think of the Concord again.
I had yet to see her even though I watched for her every day. Each time they walked an inmate past my cell, I held my breath, hoping I could catch a glimpse through the wide, transparent, hexagonal-weaved forcefield door, and that it would be her.
It never was.
She had to be in a cell in another row, else I would’ve seen her whenever the guards came for me. If she was in a cell farther down row nine—my row—the guards would have to walk her past my cell to get to the lab. But I knew she was in this pod—alpha pod. The intel I paid for was solid.
As if summoned from my earlier thoughts, Handsy appeared on the other side of the hexagonal forcefield that stretched from wall to wall and acted as a door. It flickered, an electric blue tracing the geometric weave.
He looked angry.
I wished the technology had been older. Handsy would’ve suffered his broken nose a little longer, but it looked fine. As if it’d never been cracked five days ago.
“Inmate alpha thirty-three, get up.”
I hadn’t been called by my real name in a week. Maybe it was better for the prison staff this way. Made us all seem less human.
We weren’t people. We were numbers.
I pinched my thigh to stop myself from rushing a corner to get as far away from him as I could.
Handsy stiffly straightened the black collar on his wrinkle-free uniform that hugged his muscular frame. The shiny, gold-plated prison emblem in the shape of a razor-sharp daisy, mimicking the ship’s form, reflected in the bright light.
My eyes slowly traveled back to his face where I was met with cold, dead, green eyes. He was, unfortunately, the standard military type: hard body, cleft chin, shaved head—Uncle Sam’s idea of perfection.
The military was like a hive, and they all shared the same asshole personality. I would know. I’d been around it my entire life.
I stood, taking my time. I knew why he was here. It was the only reason I got to leave my cell, the only reason anyone got to leave their cell: the lab.
THREE
NO MORE!
I couldn’t form the words to scream them aloud, couldn’t swallow my saliva as it oozed from the corner of my mouth, and I didn’t have the strength to lift my head to glare my bone-deep hatred into their eyes.
I wasn’t sure I could survive two more weeks of this torture. If I died, Preta would be stuck here until they ruined her completely, if she wasn’t already dead.
She was alive a week ago—the intel had been sound—but seven days felt like seven years in this place. She could be dead and incinerated by now, and all of this would have been for naught.
Cold, gloved hands pressed against my neck, forcing my head to the side.
“They haven’t manifested,” the woman—Dr. Hale—said.
The IV in my arm fed more of the fluorescent red liquid into my veins.
I moaned and tried to clench my fist, but my fingers wouldn’t cooperate.
So much pain.
A scalding heat swept through my body with every pump of my fast-beating heart.
“Careful,” a deep male voice cautioned, his German accent thick and phlegmy. Dr. Friedrich.
I fucking hated him.
“We do not want to lose this subject like that last one.”
My labored breathing grew faster. It was the first time he’d said that.
Friedrich had warned Hale every time she jumped the gun and drugged me more than what he thought was appr
opriate, but he’d never mentioned another person—subject. Whatever.
What happened to her? Him?
My chest burned like a fire lit within me that tried to eat its way through the muscle and sinew of my entire being. It was the drug, I knew, but the hovering threat of death, and knowing what was coming next, shoved my senses into overdrive.
“Administer serum C-thirty.”
Please! I wanted to moan, my mind warring with my body.
I wouldn’t beg them!
I wanted to beg them.
I couldn’t decide!
They can’t break you, Charlie.
They won’t.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the syringe was picked up and the needle slid into the IV injection port. Clarity returned within seconds, the lethargy the red drug induced receded and brought me back to full control of my body.
The spittle on my chin and down the side of my neck grew cold. I itched to wipe it away, but my hands were strapped down.
I could glare though, once I lifted my head.
“If I weren’t tied to this fucking chair,” I growled at Friedrich between clenched teeth, “I’d slit your belly and play with your entrails while you bleed to death!”
He smiled indulgently, and I screeched, belting my frustration as I balled my fists and rallied against the straps at my wrists and ankles futilely.
They let me struggle. The assistants in the lab went about their business like they dealt with this every day and death threats and screaming were their version of normal.
I suppose they were.
My body ached as my screech died on a tired, helpless moan that I hated myself for.
“Shall we continue?” Friedrich asked Hale, though it wasn’t really a question.
Dread filled me. Another whimper slid from my throat as they tipped my chair backward over a small, portable tub and pulled out a cloth.
My struggle began anew, my head thrashing from side to side when the damp black cloth dropped over my face.
I inhaled, exhaled, and waited. Every second ticking by, blinded and unable to determine when I should stop drawing air, was agonizing.
My nails cut into my palms, cracking open the sore flesh that didn’t have a chance to heal over from last time.
Then it came.
The deluge of water.
I held my breath for as long as I could, but it just kept pouring down over me.
I gasped, water burning down my throat, up my nose, causing me to choke and sputter for the air my lungs so desired.
Drowning.
I was living my nightmare, my fear being brought to life by the mad scientists who viewed me as nothing more than an animal to be poked and prodded, and I had no idea what for!
They can’t break me.
Filled with desperation, I grasped at that hope.
They won’t break me.
HANDSY SHOVED ME INTO my cell. I tripped and my cheek slapped against the cold floor with a wet thud.
My drenched, tangled curls curtained my sight in dark, auburn-tinged waves, blocking the bright light.
I felt so exhausted.
The strength to brush away the strands, sit up, and remain awake evaded me.
“Get up, inmate alpha thirty-three!” Handsy barked at me. “Don’t make me come in th—”
“I believe this inmate deserves a moment of rest, Officer Meyers,” I heard Friedrich say through the speakers.
I was too weak to be shocked, or to care if Handsy got the itch to come into my cell and administer the zombie drug to keep me awake.
The strength to give a fuck just wasn’t there. It got drowned in that lab where Hale waterboarded me like it was her mission to make me breathe liquid.
My eyes slid shut and blackness overtook me.
FOUR
MY EXHAUSTION WASN’T sated with the little extra sleep Friedrich allowed. I wasn’t sure how much time passed, how much sleep I stole, but it wasn’t enough.
I imagined the living dead felt better than I did.
That extra time though, it wasn’t free. I was hauled to the lab for a second session sometime later. Another round of torture.
Afterward, I sat in my cell, hair soaking wet, and blinked. I was determined to ruin Handsy’s day. He wouldn’t get to give me a zombie shot or put his hands on me again.
Friedrich said his name before, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
My motions were heavy, like my arms weighed an extra ten pounds as I brushed soggy tendrils from my face. Legs that seemed just as waterlogged as my lungs drew up and folded so I once again sat cross-legged.
Handsy sneered, activating the forcefield that would keep me locked in, and walked away.
My gaze centered in the middle distance and my attention dozed as I rested.
The ground below me lurched.
My body swayed to the left and I tipped over like an unbalanced teapot, thudding against the floor.
What—
Another lurch.
The lights flickered and alarms blared.
Unease filled me in a delayed rush of adrenaline when the ship began to vibrate beneath me. Mental images of the prison falling to Earth flashed before my wide-open eyes.
An earsplitting roar of metal rending from metal split through the warbling screams and cries from unseen prisoners around me.
The lights went out on another lurch so fierce it threw me to the ceiling. A searing pain cut through my forehead, and my consciousness grew thinner and thinner until nothingness encased me.
“GENERATORS, FIFTY-SEVEN percent.”
The mechanical voice drifted through the ship and I opened my eyes. A spark popped on the speaker close to my head and I jerked away.
Confusion hit me as to why my cell was only half lit and tilted on an angle. My gaze immediately shot to the forcefield enclosing the cell and my lungs deflated.
It was still intact.
“Hello?” I shouted, wincing at the sting in my forehead. I gingerly touched what felt like a small gash and my fingers came away with dark, sticky blood.
I knew the signs of a concussion and counted my symptoms. Confusion and a headache, though waking to a tilted cell would confuse anyone. I would have to be careful and pay attention to my body.
I made my way to the forcefield, hand sliding along the angled wall.
“Hello?” I yelled again.
Moans and the occasional jittery wail returned my call. Mental images of the prison falling from the sky bombarded my mind again.
Was that where we were? Earth? If that was the case I needed to find Preta quickly. This could be our only chance at escape, because if we weren’t orbiting Earth any longer, the plans I paid for were shot to hell.
I took another breath. There was oxygen. So if something happened in space and the pod’s hull suffered a breach, I doubt I’d be alive right now.
“Generators, seventy-eight percent.”
Generators were working. Which was probably keeping the forcefield on. The weave flickered weakly, its electric blue current reminding me not to touch.
The sound of booted feet stomping down the hallway drew my attention. Handsy was at the head of the guards that traveled in two single-file rows.
“What’s going on?”
Handsy approached me as the others continued down the hall.
“This one’s dead!” a guard announced as they moved along, checking other cells.
“Step back inmate alpha-thirty-three,” Handsy muttered without any of his usual assholery bark.
Something was definitely wrong.
I stepped back from my cell door. The idea of attacking him as soon as the forcefield was down teetered in the back of my brain. I wouldn’t though, not when so many other guards were nearby. Not when I didn’t know the situation I was walking into.
“You will be escorted out with the rest of the prisoners.”
The cut on my forehead stung once more as my brows drew together, reminding me it was still there. “Escorted whe
re?”
He didn’t answer. Instead I was cuffed, the cold metal held together by an inflexible bar. Only a guard’s thumbprint would open them.
I hadn’t been cuffed since they escorted me from the courtroom after my sentencing to load me up on a shuttle and ferry me to the Concord.
He shoved me ahead. This was the same route we used whenever he took me to the lab. I caught sight of other prisoners—cuffed as I was—being escorted by a guard and led in the same direction.
I smelled something different. Not the usual sterile chemicals of the prison, not the vomit from the prisoners, or the mash of sweat and cologne from the guards.
It smelled like fresh air. Not a lot, but just enough that I could catch a hint of it.
We had to be on Earth.
Determination swelled inside of me. It was a confirmation that the plans I had were no longer any good.
I was kicking myself because I still didn’t know where Preta was located. I didn’t know if she was the one the guard announced as dead either.
I looked around. Where are they taking us?
“Eyes forward,” Handsy ordered.
How long had I been out? What happened after I hit my head?
“Where are we going?” I asked aloud.
He didn’t answer, not even after I repeated my question.
Handsy squeezed my upper arm. “Quiet inmate alpha thirty-three.”
Just another number in the fucking prison system.
He turned down a hallway I had only seen once. The hallway that led to the bay. The bay where the shuttle docked that had transported me from Earth.
It was open.
I gasped. I shouldn’t have but I did.
I was right. We were no longer orbiting Earth.
“Don’t get excited,” Handsy grumbled and leaned down to whisper into my ear, his faintly minty breath fanning my cheek and solidifying my resolve to forever hate the scent. “You’re the guinea pig.”
His words threw me. “What?”
He simply chuckled.
So much for his assholery disappearing.
My soft-soled prison shoes hit the plush ground under the shadow of night and I immediately took in my surroundings. My confused mind was bombarded with sights and smells I didn’t recognize.