by Tarah Benner
Lark scrunched her eyebrows together in confusion. Something was definitely off.
“I think you and I can help each other,” said Mercy, her voice settling into a more dulcet tone. “You’ve seen things that no one in this colony has seen in more than a year. You’ve been on the outside.”
A strange thought began to work its way around Lark’s brain, but she pushed it aside and focused on what Mercy was saying.
“You’ve been out there, but now you’re in here . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “In my domain.” She studied Lark for a moment, as if to see if Lark had gathered the subtext of what she was saying. “I can make things very easy for you, or I can make things very difficult. You can choose how you’d like our relationship to be moving forward.”
Sitting there across from Mercy, it was all Lark could do to hold back a laugh. Mercy wanted information — she wanted it desperately. And she was willing to wipe the slate clean to get it.
For the first time since she’d been in San Judas, Lark had leverage. Then again, Lark needed Mercy. She needed her to remove the target she’d placed on her back and call off her goons. But, more than anything, she needed Mercy to trust her if she was ever going to get her hands on the seeds she needed.
“I know something is going on,” said Mercy. “Guards disappearing . . . the mail stoppage . . . supply delays . . . These things all started around the same time, and I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Lark hesitated. She knew she had to be extremely careful in what she told Mercy and what she withheld.
“You’re right,” she said finally, surprised by the hoarseness of her own voice. “It isn’t a coincidence.”
She launched into the same explanation she’d given Kira, leaving out the part about being captured by Homeland Security and agreeing to help them steal from GreenSeed. She described the scene they’d found in Loving, New Mexico, and repeated the story the Baileys had told them.
As she talked, Mercy’s face was completely motionless. She was staring at Lark as if all her worst fears had been confirmed. For the first time since Lark had known her, Mercy actually seemed human.
When Lark had finished, Mercy sat in silence for several minutes. Only her eyes let Lark know that her mind was still active. Her mouth was pursed in a thin, tight line, and her hands were clasped around the arms of her chair.
Finally, she seemed to come to a decision. She let out a sigh and got to her feet, crossing the den to the room beyond. “Come with me,” she said quietly. “I want to show you something.”
Lark blinked. None of this was going the way she’d imagined. She’d expected to be ridiculed. She’d expected Mercy to call her a liar and then summon her daughters to beat her until she retracted her story. She certainly hadn’t expected Mercy to take her into her circle of confidence.
Driven by a sense of perverse curiosity, Lark got up and followed Mercy into a room off the den where some of the daughters slept. Most of the floor space was occupied by cots and the daughters’ personal effects. But just beyond that room was a wide hallway, and at the very end was a heavy wooden door.
Mercy led Lark through the door and into her private suite, which Lark recognized from the time she’d stolen the key to the toolshed. Mercy’s office was attached to the bedroom, and Mercy went straight to her desk and began rifling through a stack of papers.
The office was shockingly untidy for someone who ran such a tight ship. A teetering pile of notebooks were stacked on the floor, along with a few dozen books that she’d probably stolen from other inmates. The desk was cluttered with odds and ends: writing utensils, rusty tin cans, an ancient-looking calculator, random papers, and a few dusty volumes propped up with big round river rocks.
Lark’s eyes scraped over long columns of handwritten numbers. From the looks of things, Mercy had been tracking crop yields and inventory, but there were also pages and pages full of cramped, untidy handwriting. Lark guessed that they were her personal notes on inmates — their histories, past offenses, and whatever favors they happened to owe her.
“I want you to look at this,” said Mercy, slapping a sheaf of papers down on the desk.
Lark stared at her for a moment, but then her curiosity got the better of her. She crossed the room to Mercy’s desk and bent to read the page Mercy had put in front of her.
It seemed to be some kind of weather report. Mercy had been meticulously tracking the temperature, wind patterns, precipitation, and humidity, and at first, Lark wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking at. Then she felt an agonizing blow.
Lark’s vision skewed as her body collapsed. Her chin hit the edge of the desk on the way down, and as she turned her throbbing head, she caught a glimpse of the object in Mercy’s hand. It was one of the river rocks, and it was covered in Lark’s blood.
Lark hadn’t known that anyone could survive for more than a minute with a shattered skull, but evidently they could. A moment later, she awoke to the most excruciating pain she’d ever felt in her life.
Her head was pulsating like a thumb that someone had smashed with a hammer. She could feel the blood dripping down the back of her neck, and someone was dragging her across the floor.
She opened her eyes and saw a long orange skirt billowing just beside her face. Someone was dragging her by the arms, and she felt as though her shoulder had been dislocated.
She wasn’t sure where she was — only that she had been in Mercy’s den talking about the end of the world. Mercy had been looking at her with unmistakable fear, but Lark had no idea what had happened after that.
Mercy dropped her arms, and Lark’s face slammed into the ground. Her neck was too weak to support her head. The room was spinning, and it was all she could do to stop herself from vomiting.
She probably had a concussion. That was the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario was that she had bleeding in her brain and that these excruciating moments would be her last on Earth.
Something large and heavy slid onto the floor beside her, and a moment later, Lark felt a pair of arms wrap around her waist.
With enormous strength for someone her age, Mercy heaved Lark up off the floor and deposited her on something hard and springy. It was a metal bed frame without the mattress. Mercy’s hands gripped Lark around the shoulders and flipped her onto her back.
“I’m sorry to have to do this,” said Mercy, seizing Lark’s arm and stretching it over her head.
Lark felt something stiff and scratchy slide over her wrist and then tighten. Then Mercy seized the other arm and stretched it out in the opposite direction.
A dull alarm bell sounded in the back of Lark’s brain. She was being tied up, but she couldn’t summon the strength to fight it. Mercy grunted as she leaned over to tie Lark’s ropes, and Lark caught a strong whiff of baby powder and gardenias.
Lark moaned as Mercy stretched her upper body into a crucifixion pose.
“I know, baby,” Mercy crooned, lifting Lark’s ankle to straighten her legs — one right next to the other.
Lark watched in a daze as Mercy wrapped another length of rope around her ankles, binding them together so that Lark couldn’t move.
Finally, Lark’s brain came back online, and she began to struggle in earnest. She bucked and flailed on the bed frame, but Mercy’s restraints were solid. There was nothing she could do.
“You fucking bitch,” she growled as Mercy tied off the knot.
“You should show a little more respect.”
Mercy watched Lark struggle for a few more seconds, only moving when Lark lifted her bound legs and attempted a two-legged kick to the side of Mercy’s head.
“You bitch!” Lark screamed, yelling as loudly as she could.
Mercy frowned and produced what looked like a long strip of material that she had ripped from a bed sheet. Lark knew what she was about to do and let out a shrill, blood-curdling scream.
If Mercy didn’t want her to make a sound, Lark would make the biggest racket she could. She continued t
o yell, scream, and flail, shouting nonsensically until Mercy grabbed a pillow off the floor and smashed it into Lark’s face.
Darkness pressed in around Lark as the pillow enveloped her nose and mouth. She tried to scream, but her airways were muffled by cotton and buckwheat.
She couldn’t yell. She couldn’t see. Most importantly, she couldn’t breathe. Mercy was smothering her with a pillow. This couldn’t be how it ended.
In an instant, Lark’s brain flew into survival mode. She thrashed around on the bed, trying to dislodge Mercy, when all of a sudden, Mercy’s weight seemed to double.
Lark gasped for air, but it felt as though she were being buried alive under five tons of dirt and rock. Mercy pressed her deeper and deeper into the bedframe, and Lark began to feel lightheaded.
Then the lights came back on, and cool, glorious air flooded into her lungs. She gasped for more, savoring the delicious feeling of oxygen inflating her lungs and rushing to her cells.
But just as the darkness began to recede, Mercy shoved a wad of cotton into her mouth and wrapped the length of fabric around her head. It stretched Lark’s lips to the side, and she choked. Saliva pooled in the corners of her mouth, but Mercy only tightened the gag.
“I’m sorry, Lark,” said Mercy, sitting back as Lark gasped for air. “But I can’t have you blabbing this story to the other girls. If they knew the truth, it would be anarchy, and I can’t have that.”
She frowned down at Lark, and for a moment, something like worry flashed through Mercy’s eyes. But it was gone as soon as it had come, and Lark realized that it wasn’t remorse or compassion — only concern for herself and her crooked way of life.
Mercy got to her feet and waltzed out the door, leaving Lark alone in her own private hell. Lark heard a bang and the scrape of a key, but she just lay there in silence and stared at the ceiling.
As she listened to the steady drip of blood still oozing from her head wound, one thought kept repeating over and over in her brain: I am not going to die. I am not going to die.
twenty-two
Lark
Lark lay on Mercy’s bed for what felt like days, watching the sun move across the room. She’d tried to free her arms from their restraints to no avail. She’d tried throwing all her weight to one side of the bed frame in hopes of tipping it over, but it was no use.
She was trapped, and it was only a matter of time before Mercy returned.
As the hours passed, the light spilling in from the crack in the shutters shifted from white to gold to a bloody shade of orange. Nighttime settled into violet, and then everything went dark.
Lark was exhausted. Her body was tired and sore, and she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and take a brief respite from her ongoing battles with Mother Mercy and San Judas. She was weary from defeat, and she couldn’t imagine things getting any better. Her situation had gone from bad to worse in less than a day, and now Mercy wanted to make an example of her.
But just as Lark was drifting off to sleep, she heard voices trickling into the compound. They were high pitched and relaxed — the easy chatter of friends who considered themselves above everyone else. Mercy’s daughters were settling in for the night.
But instead of fading to quiet bedtime murmurs, the voices seemed to grow louder. A few spurts of giggles turned into raucous laughter, punctuated by the occasional drunken shriek. Mercy was having a party.
An explosive, burning anger rose up inside Lark, and for a moment, she thought she might explode. Her mouth was dry. Her stomach was twisted into a hungry knot, and she desperately needed to go to the bathroom. She’d been lashed to Mercy’s bed frame for more than twelve hours, and her bladder was about to explode.
Lark’s anger turned to dread when she thought of the microchip she had yet to pass. If Mercy let her out to use the bathroom but insisted on guarding her the entire time, Lark would never have a chance to retrieve it.
She groaned around the gag, trying to block out the sounds of shrill laughter bleeding through Mercy’s walls. Then, suddenly, she heard something else: a dull, quiet scratching coming from the wall behind her.
At first Lark thought she might be hallucinating. She was woozy from her head injury and a lack of food. Then her thoughts turned to rodents.
She imagined rats crawling all over her body, their little claws poking into her skin and their long tails dragging up her arm. It was just the sort of torture that Mercy would think up — right after whipping, beating, and public humiliation.
Then Lark realized that the sound was coming from the window. She craned her neck to look over her left shoulder and saw a thin piece of metal protruding from the wooden shutters.
Mercy was one of the few inmates who always locked her windows when she wasn’t in the room. She was greedy and paranoid that someone was always trying to steal from her. And considering that Lark and Bernie had done just that, it wasn’t a ludicrous idea. Mercy just hadn’t had the foresight to lock the shutters in her den.
As Lark watched, someone on the other side of the window worked the piece of metal between the shutters until it reached the bottom of the wooden latch. They fiddled with the latch until it swung up and over the peg and the shutters cracked open.
A hand appeared between the shutters and groped around the sill. Then a head materialized in the window, followed by a torso, and the stranger swung her legs inside.
It was too dark for Lark to immediately see who it was, but as the figure dropped to the ground, she fell into a puddle of moonlight. It was Kira.
Lark shouted around her gag, managing only a weak, muffled mew. Kira’s head snapped around, and when her eyes locked on to Lark, a look of relief swept across her face.
“Shit,” she murmured, bending over and reaching through the window to grab a small cloth bag.
When Kira came around to the side of the bed, Lark realized that she’d never seen her friend without her kitchen smock before. Kira was dressed in a dark-purple tunic that fell to her knees — Bernie’s work, no doubt. It was cinched with a blue sash and revealed the wealth of burns and scars that covered Kira’s arms.
Dropping to her knees, Kira pulled a serrated knife out of her bag and began to saw at Lark’s bindings. Her dark muscles twitched as she worked, and Lark noticed that Kira had several small round scars dotting her forearms. They were nearly lost in the patchwork of burns and scrapes that she’d earned in the kitchen, but Lark recognized them immediately as cigarette burns.
Kira’s knife made quick work of Lark’s restraints. When the ropes fell away, Lark sat up, and Kira’s hands went to Lark’s head to release the gag.
As soon as it was gone, Lark let out a gasp and worked her mouth to restore feeling to her lips and gums.
“Shit, Lark,” Kira murmured as she moved to Lark’s ankles. “What did you do?” Her voice wasn’t accusatory. It was filled with dread.
“I . . . It was stupid,” Lark muttered, her hands and voice shaking as Kira handed her a waterskin from her bag.
Lark drank greedily, shocked at her own thirst. Kira kept glancing at the door, but at that moment, Lark’s biggest concern was filling her belly with as much water as she could drink.
“Easy,” said Kira. “We have to get you out of here before Mercy comes back.”
Lark eyed the door. She could still hear the daughters’ voices and intermittent shrieks of laughter coming from the den. She figured Mercy would have to wait until the daughters went to sleep to deal with her, but it was getting late.
Lark slid off the bed and turned toward the window, but as she stood, a sudden wave of dizziness hit her like a sledgehammer. She swayed dangerously on the spot, and Kira’s arms flew out to steady her.
“What —” Then her eyes settled on the back of Lark’s head, and she let out a hiss. “What did she do to you?”
Lark closed her eyes, shaking her head slowly and trying not to be sick.
“Come on.”
Kira guided Lark over to the window and helped her swi
ng a leg over the sill. Lark tumbled drunkenly into the dirt, narrowly missing a patch of cacti.
Kira jumped down much more gracefully than Lark had and led her away from Mercy’s compound. They clambered over the courtyard wall, and Kira yanked Lark into the bushes.
“One second,” said Lark, stumbling over to a tree to relieve herself.
By the time she finished, Kira was holding a small clay bowl that she must have hidden nearby. She handed it to Lark, and Lark caught a whiff of dirty rice and Kira’s famous rosemary potatoes. She immediately began to wolf down the meal, so happy and grateful that she wanted to cry.
“Lark, what did you say to Mercy?” asked Kira. Her eyes were flashing in a way that told Lark she meant business, and Lark groaned around a mouthful of rice.
“I told her what I told you . . . minus the bit about me working with the Department of Homeland Security.”
“What? Are you crazy?” Kira hissed.
“Apparently,” Lark mumbled, still inhaling the food. She didn’t think she’d ever tasted anything so good in her life.
Kira frowned and handed the waterskin back to Lark to wash down all the starch. Lark took a few big gulps and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Listen,” said Kira. “You have to get out of here . . . now.”
“I can’t,” said Lark.
“No, you listen to me,” said Kira, talking low and fast. “This isn’t like the last time. Mercy isn’t gonna throw you in the pit to teach you a lesson. She’s gonna kill you.”
At those words, Lark’s blood ran cold. It wasn’t anything she didn’t know already, but hearing it from Kira made it all the more real.
Mercy was a murderous, conniving bitch who’d shivved girls just for looking at her the wrong way. She didn’t tolerate being shown up and humiliated or having her power thrown into question, and Lark had already done all three.
She opened her mouth to tell Kira that she couldn’t leave yet, but Kira was already rummaging around in her bag. She produced a small canvas pouch that looked as though it might be filled with rice and handed it to Lark.