She watched him and watched the light grow brighter as the postmidnight dawn broke at the bottom of the world. Lena thought these men couldn’t be manipulated, but Kelly wasn’t so sure. There had to be a weakness somewhere, as Dean had said. A hairline crack she could work into slowly, the way winter frost splits stones. She’d find it.
Lena paid for her meal in the morning.
She paid with blood and spit, and finally, as she was struggling against the gag in her mouth, she paid with the beat of her heart.
* * *
It began when two of the men came into the building carrying a narrow metal workbench between them. They kicked rocks and rubble aside until they had a level spot for it, and then they set it down. They left, and Kelly and Lena watched the dust settle while they stared at the new addition to the far side of their prison. It was waist-high and six feet long.
Once it had been painted white.
Now it was rusted through, its remaining paint clinging like dirty scales. Kelly had no idea what it had been built for or what the men planned to do with it today. But it reminded her of the cadaver dissection tables abandoned in the subbasement of her first hospital.
She took her eyes off it and turned to look at Dean. He was still skimming just beneath the surface of consciousness, so that for now he was out and gone. Whatever came next, she and Lena would have to face it without him.
She swung to look at the door when she heard footsteps.
Scarface, the man who’d strung Dean from the ceiling, came into the building. He was carrying a half dozen heavy webbing straps and a black duffel bag. He tossed them on the low shelf beneath the table’s main work surface. Afterward, he left again, his heavy boot steps crunching across the scree that had tumbled from the crater’s rim. They heard a door open and slam. Kelly noted the direction and the distance of the sound.
The men were using one of the huts a hundred feet inland.
Maybe it was where they slept. Knowing it wouldn’t do her a bit of good unless she could get out. After that, it might mean everything.
* * *
They were alone a long time.
Time enough to stare at the table and the straps, to remember the things David and his colonel liked to do. They stared at the black bag and wondered what was in it.
* * *
There was no measure of the time that passed. The light outside was dim and diffuse. The island was lost in sea fog and its own biting smoke. Beside the trap, Dean gasped and convulsed. Kelly moved her eyes from the table and the terror of what might be to her husband and the wide-open wound of what was already happening. He rolled suddenly onto his side and began a long spasm of coughing that fell away only when he ran out of air. She watched his muscles strain against his empty lungs. His lips were purple and blue where she’d cleaned them. She watched the cords in his neck flex, taut as the standing rigging on their boat.
Pneumonia, she thought.
One more item on the growing list of things that would kill him if she couldn’t get him aboard Freefall soon.
“Dean?”
When the fit passed, he looked at her. His eyes were blazing with fever, his pupils blown wide as galaxies.
“Still here,” he said. “But you … shouldn’t be. See a chance, you take it. You promise me you’ll take it … say it.”
“I promise.”
“And Lena.”
“I’ll take her, too.”
“You promise me.”
“I will. I promise.”
He slept again after that, so that he was burning under the blanket of his fever when the men came back. When she heard their footsteps approaching from the other hut, all five of them in a group, she thought it was better that way. Better he shouldn’t have to see this part.
* * *
They didn’t come straight in. Instead they stood in a huddle near the back wall, and Kelly could see their bodies through the cracks in the dry-rotted clapboards. Then she was listening to a one-sided conversation in Spanish. Some unknown question was followed by a long silence that was ended by another question. It was David, talking on the satellite phone. The other men crowded up to him so they could hear.
“What’s he asking?” she whispered to Lena.
“I don’t know. Asking how something works. How to use it,” Lena said.
Outside, David asked another question, and Lena closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her lips were moving, forming rapid soundless words.
“What? What’d he say?” Kelly whispered.
But Lena just shook her head, and then the men were moving in a group, the five of them striding around the corner and into the doorway side by side so that they were silhouetted against the yellow hazy light outside as they stood looking at the women in the cage. Then the man whose ankle she’d sliced came inside, with Big Hands following him. David came in behind them, and the other two stayed leaning against the doorway.
* * *
The Gimp held a steel pipe, and Big Hands held the key.
Other than that, there wasn’t much different about them. They might have been brothers. They wore matching new sweaters and had the same buzz-cut gray hair, the same hard leather faces. The Gimp, whose ankle she’d cut, pointed the pipe’s threaded end at her and dipped his chin once. A greeting, a promise. Big Hands knelt and put the key to the lock, then lifted the door to the trap. David was on the other side with his hand atop the cage’s frame.
“Lena,” he said. “Come on out.”
Kelly moved forward and pushed Lena behind her, away from the trapdoor. She spread her arms the width of the cage and held on to the chain-link walls.
“No! I’m calling them on Monday! I’m—”
The Gimp dropped to one knee and slammed her in the stomach with the end of the pipe. Then he reached in and grabbed her left arm, his hand going almost all the way around her bicep. He yanked her out of the trap in a single move, flipping her backward onto the rocks while he was raising the pipe with his other hand.
David shouted in Spanish.
“No en la cara!”
The man’s arm was already coming down, the blow aimed for her face. But at David’s cry, he glanced away at the last inch and the pipe slammed into the rocks beside her head.
“Not in the face, you dumb shit!” David screamed.
The man dropped the pipe and balled his fist, his face never changing. There was no anger there. There wasn’t anything there. He punched Kelly twice in the stomach. She gasped for air, and her flailing legs drove her in a circle on the loose rocks. The men ducked into the trap and dragged Lena out. Then Scarface was atop Kelly, stuffing a dirty rag in her mouth and tying a bandana around her face to hold it in. He flipped her onto her stomach and bound her hands with rough cord, then shoved her back into the trap and locked it.
As soon as Kelly could breathe again, she struggled to sit. With her hands tied, she couldn’t use the blanket. But it didn’t matter. There was no need to shield herself now. The five of them were busy.
She watched them lift Lena to the workbench, watched as they held her down on its metal surface. Two of the men took her legs, and two were at her arms. When Lena saw David come up with straps, she bucked her hips and arched her back, and she never stopped screaming. David put a webbing belt around her middle and cinched it tight to the table. Then he bound her legs above and below the knees and bound her chest with her arms locked at her sides. She was pinned to the workbench with all six sets of straps and could only roll her head from side to side, and clench her fists, and cry.
Sour Breath was holding the black duffel bag. David took it, put it on Lena’s pelvis, and unzipped it. His back blocked Kelly’s view, and she couldn’t see what he took out. It looked like he was holding something close to his chest, working on it with his hands. But she couldn’t be sure. He dropped something on the ground by his feet but didn’t reach for it. Cardboard and a small metallic bag. He’d unwrapped something, but she didn’t know what.
He spoke a few
words in Spanish.
In response, two of the men went to the end of the table. Big Hands clamped his giant palms on Lena’s temples. Kelly saw the man’s biceps flex as he bore down on Lena, holding her head still. The Gimp stroked her face with the back of his hand, then clamped her lower jaw and squeezed until her mouth opened. David reached around, jamming something into Lena’s mouth. She saw him work it past her lips, then deeper.
Lena’s screams turned to gags.
A moment later, David knelt and put the object on the shelf under the table. The men let go of Lena’s head and jaw and looked to David for instructions. He spoke to Scarface, who reached into the duffel bag and brought out a cardboard box. He knelt on the ground with it, and Kelly saw him take out a postcard-size piece of cardboard. Another man handed him a small vial. Scarface opened the vial and poured drops of water onto the card, carefully hitting it four times.
David had been watching him, but now he turned to the other men.
“Dame un cuchillo,” he said.
Kelly didn’t know what it meant, but Lena clearly did. Her cries turned into a scream so fierce that each of the men took a step back. Sour Breath looked away, but Big Hands dug into his pocket and came out with a folding knife. He opened it, the five-inch blade bright and serrated. He flipped it and caught it by its blade and passed it over the table handle first to David.
Kelly began to pound against the side of the trap with her shoulder, hitting it so hard that the trap began to rock. Behind the gag, choking on the filthy rag and the gorge of her vomit that couldn’t come out, Kelly was screaming.
The men didn’t even glance at her.
David took the knife and held Lena’s hand. He stood holding it, and Kelly couldn’t see what he was doing. Lena grew quiet.
“Not even to the bone,” David said.
Lena gasped once and lay still and didn’t make a noise. David handed the knife to the man who owned it, who wiped it on his sleeve and put it back in his pocket. Scarface gave David the postcard, and he worked with it over Lena’s hands for a minute or two, his back still to Kelly. The other men watched David’s hands and didn’t move at all. After a while David turned and took a few steps from Lena. He was holding the postcard in one hand while he rubbed at it with a four-pronged comb. Lena was breathing hard and quickly on the table, but there was only a little bit of blood coming from one of her fingers. She’d smeared it across the outside of her thigh, the blood dark against her pale skin.
Now Kelly understood. The thing in his hand wasn’t a postcard. It was an Eldoncard.
They were testing Lena’s blood type.
When David came back to the table, he knelt by Lena’s side and put the Eldoncard on the shelf next to the other thing. Kelly realized that if they were testing her blood type, they must have been testing something else when they’d forced open her mouth. Many tests worked off saliva.
David stood and said something to the men. He reached into the duffel bag and found a long strip of cloth. He gave it to Big Hands, who’d forced Lena’s mouth open earlier. Then he took a stethoscope from the bag. He fit the ear tips in and held the diaphragm between Lena’s breasts. For a long time, he just stood and listened, moving the diaphragm to the underside of her left breast and around it and back to the center.
Lena began to cry again, and David nodded at the man holding the cloth. Big Hands nodded back. He stood behind Lena’s head with each end of the strip wrapped around one of his fists. Then he forced the cloth hard across her mouth, leaning down on it to stifle her cries.
The building got quiet until Kelly heard the sound of the phone dialing.
David took the ear tips out and put the phone to his face.
“Hello … sir? Can you hear me? Good.”
He listened for a moment, nodding his head to whatever he was being told.
“Okay. I’ll let you listen now. Are you ready?”
He handed the phone to the man next to him, then put the stethoscope’s diaphragm back against Lena’s breast. The man held the phone, and David used his other hand to hold the ear tips to the phone’s mouthpiece. The Gimp leaned quietly over and cupped his palms together above the mouthpiece to help block the sounds in the building. They stood that way for sixty seconds, and then David took the phone back.
“Sir? Could you hear it?”
He listened. Then he turned and smiled at Kelly.
“That’s very good. That’s excellent.”
He listened again.
“We will, sir. Good-bye.”
He put the phone in his pocket and spoke to the men in Spanish. Then he walked out. They stood listening to his footsteps work away from the building and turned back to Lena, loosening the straps and lifting her off the table. When they stood her up, she collapsed in a faint. But they caught her before she hit the rocks and carried her the rest of the way to the trap.
Lena took off Kelly’s gag, pulling the wadded rag from her mouth and tossing it into a corner of the trap. Then she spent ten minutes struggling against the tightly knotted cord binding Kelly’s hands until finally she freed them. They covered themselves again with the blankets and lay against each other in exhaustion. The air was close and thick with the smell of sulfur and burning rock, as though a new vent had opened somewhere nearby. Kelly watched the clouds of yellow haze drift past the door and thought about what she’d seen.
“I thought they’d kill me,” Lena said.
Kelly was too far away in her thoughts to speak. She hoped to calm Lena into silence by holding her, by giving her the warmth of human hands that didn’t hit or hurt. It didn’t work.
“But they didn’t,” Lena went on. “They didn’t kill me. What’d they do to me?”
Kelly looked at Dean, watching him breathe as he floated beneath his fever. She looked to him for strength. She’d done that since meeting him. Now it was a part of her, she supposed. A habit, like using the left side of any bed she slept in or standing at the window with her coffee on winter mornings, blowing the steam so it would catch on the glass. She took the strength Dean offered, and then she turned to Lena and used it to tell her an outright lie.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve no idea what they were doing.”
They were silent a long while after that. Kelly measured the time by her growing hunger, by the creeping cold. Eventually, Lena stopped trembling, and Kelly sensed she’d somehow taken her fear and her pain and put them aside. She’d seen other women do this. Women in the grip of their first labor sometimes would fall back and drown their fears in the stream of the inevitable and then flow with it. Watching Lena do it now was calming. Kelly felt her own heart slow, felt her mind gather and focus.
In the confines of the trap and in their need for warmth and for each other, they were as close as a pair of lovers. Kelly ran her hand up from Lena’s hip and touched the scar she’d seen. It was eight or ten inches long and tracked just below the floating rib on the right side of her back. She knew what it must be, but she asked anyway.
It would pass the time; it might tell her something.
“This scar,” she said, tracing the rise across Lena’s skin. “How’d you get it?”
She waited while Lena kicked up from the current she was riding. Her face changed as she brought herself from wherever she’d been to the time and the place that gave her the mark Kelly was tracing with her fingertip.
Lena nodded slowly and then whispered.
“It was when I was eighteen. I used to have a sister. Did I tell you?”
“No.”
“She was two years younger. She had a problem called PKD. I can’t think what it stands for.”
“Polycystic kidney disease.”
“Yeah, that. And she was really sick. Like, she was dying. She needed a kidney, but they needed to find one that’d match.”
“So they came to you.”
Lena was whispering into Kelly’s neck.
“My mom was—she was overweight, and her health wasn’t so good. And sh
e drank a lot. So even if she’d been a match, she couldn’t have been a donor. So, yeah, they came to me.”
“What happened?”
Lena thought about it, her thumb rubbing a circle on Kelly’s back as she remembered. Kelly could feel the blood David had drawn from Lena’s finger with the knife. It was wet and sticky against her spine as Lena moved her hand along it.
“They took it out and gave it to her. Like a transplant. And it was fine, at first. But Megan had a lot of problems. She wasn’t, you know, she wasn’t well. She was supposed to take all these drugs, immuno-somethings—”
“Immunosuppressants.”
“—so her body wouldn’t reject the kidney. My kidney. But she didn’t. She had a boyfriend in Glasgow, and she ran off with him. They were staying with friends at first, but then maybe they were living on the streets. Shooting up, all that. I guess you know how she was getting the money.”
Kelly nodded, her cheek moving against the nest of Lena’s hair.
When she’d met Lena for the first time in Peru, treating her chlamydia with antibiotics from Freefall’s stores, she’d sensed all this. This hidden history and Lena’s scrabbling fight to walk away from it with her head up. To look at the settled world and think: I belong. Maybe that was why she could love this girl, and hold her close under a blanket, and listen to her whisper while they were locked in a cage together at the mercy of men who had none.
It was like talking to herself.
“They found her in the basement of an old factory. She was in a sleeping bag. Had been there maybe a month. Down in the dark, with the rats. I saw the boyfriend once while I was at university. Two, maybe three years later. He was in a bar, and I asked him—I asked why he didn’t take her to a hospital when the infection set in. And you know what?”
Kelly shook her head.
“He just looked at me. He didn’t know who I was, and he didn’t know what I was talking about.”
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