They left Pearl and the man there as the door opened once again and a new group of slavers entered with four prisoners. They repeated the process three more times, wheeling new victims into line every half hour or so. Her legs grew weak from standing, but she didn’t have a choice. Eventually she let herself sag into the restraints, just a little, taking as much pressure as her limbs could endure to get some relief.
The morning passed into afternoon. Pearl studied the room for weaknesses, trying to keep her mind active. But there was little to learn from the cement box of a room. The lab coats and slavers interactions told her little she didn’t already know: these people deserved to be punished for their crimes.
By the time they’d wheeled almost two dozen new prisoners up next to her, Pearl was beginning to worry about the unconscious man, who hadn’t once made a noise or woken up.
Without warning, they tipped Pearl back and wheeled her at the front of the group out of the room. From this angle, all she could see was the top few feet of the hall’s white walls and the ceiling. The collar bit into her chin and held her head back when she tried to see ahead.
Rolling the humans into a room on the left, they parked Pearl along the side, dropping her into place so suddenly she gagged as her throat hit the collar. She felt bruises forming on her neck.
They parked the other prisoners just as roughly along the same wall. The room had a tile floor, and when Pearl twisted as much as she could to view the other prisoners, she found they were all situated under showerheads, with drains in the floor beneath them.
“Sanitize,” the lead doctor in the lab coat intoned. One of the women stepped up to the wall and pressed a switch. Liquid gushed out of the faucet above Pearl without warning, and she sputtered underneath the waterfall, shifting in her restraints as a strong smell similar to bleach filled her nose. It filled her mouth when she gasped for air. She spit the foul taste out, struggling to breathe, when the showerhead shut off. Gasping, she blinked to clear the stuff from her eyes, which burned. Her skin burned too. Even her hair felt singed.
“Again,” the doctor said. This time, Pearl managed to suck in a breath before the faucets turned on, holding it until her lungs were bursting, eyes squeezed shut against the flood of liquid pouring over her, soaking her to the bone. The fluid seeped under her clothes and into her shoes, covering her from head to toe. They were given a brief break to catch their breath and then doused three more times.
“Rinse,” the doctor said, without looking up from his chart. This time Pearl recognized the fluid that washed over her. The cold water soothed her irritated skin, rinsing off whatever they’d used to ‘sanitize’ them. As it ended, she sighed in relief.
The reprieve was short-lived. As the lab coats all left the room, Pearl and the others remained where they were, shackled to their carts, dripping identical puddles that flowed into the drains on the floor in this featureless, gray room until Pearl shook with cold. They stayed there, abandoned, for almost an hour, except for one guard.
Pearl wanted to talk to the other captives—to find out their names, where they were from, how they’d been captured—but whenever anyone opened their mouth to speak, the guard held up that menacing Taser in silent warning. So, they remained mute.
When the unconscious man finally woke up, he flinched at the weapon, shivering harder than the rest of them, and began to quietly weep. Pearl wished she could reach over and squeeze his hand in comfort. Tell him they’d get out of this place. But it was all she could do to convince herself right now.
When the lead doctor re-entered the room, Pearl spoke for the first time. “You can’t leave us like this. We’re going to get sick.”
His cold eyes passed over her. Without meaning to, Pearl flinched. Instead of anger or irritation, his gaze on her was apathetic, like looking at a bug that might need to be squashed and debating if it was worth the energy.
“Sanitize this one again,” he said to one of the lab coats who’d returned with him. “You know how the surgeon’s hate lice.” Pearl only barely sucked in a breath before they doused her with the foul liquid once more. The spray seemed to go on twice as long, before they finally shut it off, leaving her freshly soaked.
Lesson learned. Pearl stood with fists clenched, glaring at the sharp-faced man. She wanted to rip that freshly sewed-on hair from his head and stomp on it. Or use those clipboards he continued to review as he went down the line to smash him upside the head.
“This one’s incomplete,” he said, stopping in front of the nervous man next to Pearl. “Did anyone do bloodwork?” He swiveled to the other lab workers, all of whom shook their heads. “Well, do it now,” he snapped, moving on to Pearl.
Each of the prisoners were categorized and filed by the time a lab coat returned holding a piece of paper in one hand and a syringe in the other. Deep worry lines creased her forehead. “The bloodwork results are in.”
“And?”
“Incompatible...”
“What a waste of money,” the lead doctor mumbled, holding out a hand and accepting the syringe she placed in it. Stepping up to the nervous man, the doctor ignored his questions and the rising tone of the man’s voice, stabbing the sharp needle directly into the man’s chest. The poor man gasped in pain, even as the doctor squeezed the syringe, injecting a foreign substance directly into the man’s heart. Within seconds, he slumped over, words dying on his tongue. What had they done to him? Was he dead? Unconscious? Pearl swallowed hard, finding herself suddenly thankful for the contraption that held her up, as her limbs went weak.
“Use the parts for testing,” said the doctor, handing the empty syringe back to the woman. Parts. Pearl struggled to be still when everything in her screamed to escape now while she still could. He was dead. Like an animal, put down. Less than an animal. “You’d better hope some of it is useful, or I’ll be noting this inconvenience in your employee evaluations.”
For the first time, Pearl felt fear push past her carefully maintained control, threatening to take over. Breathe, she told herself, you’re not dead yet. She had to get out of here. No more waiting for the perfect opportunity. These people were trained. Prepared. She needed to grasp the first break that came her way, no matter how slight.
“I think we’re done here,” the lead doctor was saying, as he opened the door to exit the room. “You know what to do.” No hints? No clue where they might be taking her next?
The rest of the lab techs stayed behind, presumably to wheel each of the prisoner’s out of the room, but they remained by the wall as the disgraced tech moved back to the shower buttons once more.
Pearl instinctively drew a deep breath and held it, thinking they were to be doused yet again. But instead, a blast of hot air shot out of the large showerhead, transforming it into a dryer. The heat felt amazing as Pearl’s clothes billowed around her, drying out in less than a minute. That would’ve been nice an hour ago.
Finally warm, Pearl fought to stay standing in the restraints, when her body felt weak from exhaustion and lack of food and water. But if she gave in and slumped into the restraints, she felt fairly certain she’d start choking. Locking her knees, she bit the inside of her lip to wake herself up, and focused on the techs.
The techs had their backs turned, but Pearl caught sight of a strange tool with a bundle of needles on the end. Her knees threatened to give out and she swallowed hard. She’d always hated needles.
As the techs turned toward them, Pearl’s fears were confirmed: those needles were for them. She clenched her fists to keep from shaking, averting her eyes. But that didn’t help. No matter where she looked, her eyes fell on other prisoners, and a tech holding that strange machine up to their necks.
Unable to help herself, Pearl struggled against the restraints now, pulling in all directions, slamming herself into them, tugging at them, trying to get her wrists and ankles out, but with no luck.
Her tech was a red-headed, freckled man who shoved her head to the side without remorse. She felt the bundle o
f needles on her neck. At this angle, she was forced to either close her eyes or watch the tech next to her use his needles. She didn’t close her eyes in time.
The prisoner next to her yelped as the needles shoved into his neck all at once, making a harsh thunking noise as they clicked forward and the same noise as they clicked back in, leaving a bloody, dark stain on his neck. They wiped away the blood with a cloth, and Pearl startled to see a glow coming from the man’s neck, where a circular barcode rested, full of numbers and lines that didn’t mean anything to her.
Her tech’s machine touched Pearl’s neck and without any further warning, the needles ripped into her skin. She bit down on her lip hard, struggling not to yelp. The needles pulled out, leaving a stinging sensation in her neck that made her ache to press her hand to it, but of course, her arms remained forcibly held at her sides.
Blinking away tears, Pearl hissed in pain as they swiped a cloth along her neck as well with some form of antiseptic that burned. Eyes still watering, Pearl lifted her eyes to the other prisoners again, and blinked in shock. Everyone’s neck glowed with a new round barcode.
She struggled yet again to pull her hand out and touch the side of her own neck, to no avail. But the pain, the sting of the needles, was right where her old Number tattoo had been. The one she’d gone to such great lengths to have removed, enduring the agony of extracting all the ink from the old tattoo. Because she’d never again wanted to be labeled.
And now. Here in this room… she’d been given just that.
A new Number.
And if the numbers on the other prisoners’ barcodes were any indication, they were far, far lower than anything you would ever find in Eden. A hundred times lower. None of these prisoners were valuable, or even considered human anymore. They were just a commodity. To be bought and sold.
Pearl wished she could tear the skin off where they’d injected this Number. But all she could do was stand there, neck throbbing, until finally the techs tilted them back and wheeled them out of the room into a massive service elevator. The elevator rose for what felt like a full minute before stopping on a dark, mysterious floor.
Pearl tensed.
They had to let her off this cart eventually, and when they did, she’d be ready.
From this awkward, tilted angle, she still couldn’t see what was in front of her, only to the left and right. The hallway was full of doors with small, rectangular windows and a room number by each door, but nothing else to give away what might be inside.
She heard a beep and the sound of a door opening in front of her. They wheeled her inside, setting her upright abruptly in a way that was now familiar.
This was her moment.
She twitched in her restraints, tensing in preparation, but the cuffs held her to the dolly so tightly that she doubted the techs even noticed her fidgeting.
They set her free like she expected, but instead of unlocking the manacles one at a time, they fell off her limbs and neck all at once at the press of a button. Before she had time to react, they shoved her forward with the back of the cart, hard.
The momentum from the forward free-fall and extra shove for good measure threw her off-balance, and she stumbled off the platform, barely catching herself before she hit the ground. Pearl swung around to attack, only to find the dolly already retracted from the room and the door swinging shut.
She sprang toward it, grasping for the handle as the last two inches closed the gap. But where a handle should be, there was only a flat surface. With nothing for her to grab onto, the door fell shut with a crash.
“No!” she screamed, banging on it with her fist, scouring the edges of the door for something—anything—that she could grip. “Let me out!”
“You gonna do that all day?” a low female voice grumbled from behind her. “Because I’ve got a headache.”
29
Evalene
COULD IT BE HER? The words echoed in Evalene’s head. Noble frowned between the four of them. The bus idled on the side of the road, and since they were low on gas, Sol turned off the engine. “What’s going on?” Noble repeated himself, searching their faces for clues.
“Is Pearl a common name here?” Olive asked him.
But Evalene shook her head before Noble could answer. She rested her elbows on her knees and cradled her head in her hands, closing her eyes. “It’s her,” she whispered to Olive. “Remember, when we met, he told us she was from Eden.”
“Yeah, but he said she came here five years ago,” Olive whispered back, “Not ten.”
Despite the whispering, Noble heard them clearly. “Ah, that’s a misunderstanding on my part... I thought you were asking when she came to Seguro Falls, which was five years ago. But she came to the Divided States with the other refugees during that rebellion ten years back.”
Evalene couldn’t breathe.
“This is good news, Evie… right?” Olive knelt next to her, forehead wrinkled in anxiety.
Jeremiah took over, turning to Noble. “Could you describe your wife for us?” Evalene immediately looked up at the man’s scarred face.
Brows raised, Noble glanced at Evalene. “Do you know her?” he asked.
Evalene just whispered, “Please…”
“Okay, okay.” Gesturing to Evalene, he said, “You remind me of her, actually. She’s a little darker, but I guess that’s from spending so much time in the sun. Brown hair and blue eyes, like you actually… Um, she’s about your height. She told me when we got married that she used to have a fam—oh…” He studied Evalene closer, frowning. “It can’t be.” But recognition sparked in his eyes and he spoke more to himself than to them, “It can’t be…”
“I think it could,” Evalene answered. “Your wife is my mom.” Saying the words out loud made them far more real and overwhelming.
Now it was Noble’s turn to test her, frowning. “What was your mother’s last name?”
“Vandereth.” Evalene said immediately.
Noble paled slightly, making his scar stand out more. “Okay, yeah,” he murmured. “That’s my Pearl.”
It made sense. Evalene’s mother had been helping people ever since she could remember, fighting for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves. In fact, that was the entire reason she’d fled Eden, for her involvement with the rebel group. Of course she would have found a group of people with a cause that she could fight for, here in this new land.
But Noble had called her his wife. That stung. How could her mother have remarried? Had she forgotten Evalene’s father completely? Had she forgotten her own daughter?
Evalene shook off the thought, unable to dwell on the possibilities. Jeremiah wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him, as Noble spoke haltingly. “The last time I saw Pearl—your mother—we were scoping out tech territory for the first time since the failed mission.” He knelt to sit on the floor with them as if suddenly exhausted. “On the way home, we came across a slaver convoy. We managed to save a few victims, but the exit was rough and some of ours were injured or killed.”
Evalene tried to imagine her mother fighting a group of Lakelanders like Skye and the others. Did she use a weapon? Or did she fight with her fists? All Evalene could picture was the sophisticated high-Numbered lady she’d known as a child who’d fought her battles with words alone. The memory didn’t line up with what Noble described.
Sol leaned intently toward them where they all sat on the floor, taking in the description of the mission and those involved, as Noble threw his hands up in frustration. “Everyone knows if we ever get separated, we always meet up back at home base. Pearl is one of our best. She’s been with us for years. I never worried about her for a second. But she never made it back to the rendezvous point.”
Evalene felt Jeremiah tense beside her. She glanced up to find him and Sol both frowning. “That’s a bad sign,” Olive stated the obvious. “Why didn’t you go after her?”
Noble’s mouth tightened as he said, “I did. The policy is to give them a
full 24 hours. But I couldn’t wait,” he blew out a breath of air, and Evalene held her breath in anticipation. “I went out on my own to find her. There’d been some shooting, and I thought maybe she was injured. Took me a few days to get answers, but I found an eyewitness who saw a slaving convoy take her.”
Evalene’s hands flew to her mouth. Was her mother trapped in a cell somewhere at that very moment, just like they had been? Olive rubbed Evalene’s arm in silent comfort, and Jeremiah squeezed her from the other side. She couldn’t speak around the lump in her throat and was grateful when Sol asked, “What did you do?”
“I started hunting convoys down, trying to find her,” Noble’s brow was furrowed deeply. “They’re all different, but there’s not that many in the grand scheme of things.” Fury rippled off him, muscles standing out in sharp contrast as he tightened his grip until his knuckles were white. “I was scoping out this last one. The vehicle description didn’t even match. I was leaving when they got wise and managed to catch me off guard.” He shrugged, though the topic was anything but light. “As you know, I spent this last week in a cell.”
Out of nowhere, he punched the cabinet next to him, roaring in anguish. Evalene winced, startled by his outburst. Jeremiah tightened his grip, leaning in front of her, worried. But Noble wasn’t looking to fight. He sank into himself where he sat, dropping his head into his hands. “I should’ve rounded up some help. We could’ve taken them,” he groaned. “But I was so worried, I couldn’t wait.”
He lifted his hands helplessly, unashamed of the tears streaking down his face, creating tracks in the dirt and disappearing into his beard. “At this point, it doesn’t matter which convoy had her, she’s no doubt been sold by now. But I still have to try… she’s my wife.”
Pearl's Number: The Number Series Page 20