HIDDEN: A Dystopian Science Fiction Adventure

by Troy McLaughlan

  “You still love him?”

  She bowed her head. “Yes. Before he sent me away, he was always very kind to me. Sometimes it almost felt like he loved me back, and then she came.”

  ~~~

  A few days later, Merrick and I went on a hike to the top of the mountain above our compound. He wanted to show me something. My body tingled with excitement as we left.

  I wonder if he’ll kiss me today.

  At the summit, he motioned to me and pointed south.

  Out in the distance, just past a dense forest, another valley stretched its patchwork quilt of alternating shades of green and yellow. A river emerged from the forest and lead to it sweeping around and heading east.

  “That is Devron City,” he said. “It’s where we get our tools, meats, potatoes, and other things. Many slaves live there that are not from our world. They call themselves Exgolio, but we called them Exogs.”

  “I’ve never seen another species beside the Targs. How do you know this?”

  “They used to work in our compound and lived in the abandoned area behind the whipping post. But the Targs didn’t like how close we became, so they moved them there.”

  Below Devron, in the middle of the forest, a greenish gray splotch sulked, like a stain that shouldn’t be there.

  “What’s that gray patch?”

  “It was a human city. One of the last to be conquered.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Nothing but old bones and forgotten ghosts.”

  He took a deep breath. “Come, you asked me once where all the other slaves go.” He turned north and pointed to an area behind the walls of our compound. There, in a tan desert wasteland, sat row upon row of vast pits; each one the size of a small lake.

  “The Targs are looking for something very fragile and very precious hidden within the earth.”

  He pointed to another spot of gray scraped earth. “The new ones are there to the northwest. All ten thousand two hundred and thirty-four slaves go to dig the pits; except for the thirty or so I have at the house. If I’m lucky, I’ll only lose two or three a month.” He sighed. “I try to be as good to them as I can without raising suspicion. I eat the same food, give them one day off a week to rest, medicine. I’ve even worked side-by-side with them in the pits, but they still hate me.”

  He sat on one of the lichen-covered rocks. “Since I became overseer, I’ve had seven attempts on my life. It’s how I got this.” He slapped his left leg.

  A question gnawed at me. Something I couldn’t understand.

  “Why ‘The Choosing’?”

  He looked off into the horizon. “Before you were born, each time Draks would enter the camp, he’d randomly kill five or ten slaves at once. There were years I’d lose a hundred or more to his blood-lust.”

  His eyes teared up. “Then he killed Lumenara when she stopped him from going into the cellar and discovering you. I was devastated for weeks, but his random killings didn’t stop. I knew the Targs loved to hunt big game. The thrill of the chase seems to cure them of their blood-lust, at least for a while. So, I came up with ‘The Choosing’. Draks and I agreed that twice a year he can come into my camp and select any slave he wants, even me, and they become his prey. During the rest of his visits, he promised to leave them alone. In return, I’d report his hunts to his superiors as escaped slaves.”

  He turned to me and smiled. “But you and your little fiasco changed all that.” He sighed and his mouth drooped. “Now, I must choose who becomes prey.” His head bent toward the rocks. “I’m going to burn in hell, Fives, for what I’ve done, but I’ll have no regrets. I’ll save every slave I can, however I can, even if they can’t see it.”

  He took off his backpack and handed me my lunch. He looked older, the lines in his face deeper, his back hunched like he had the mountain on his shoulders. I began to pity the man and to see his actions in a different light.

  I put a hand on his shoulder and stroked his back. When he turned, I stared deep into his eyes, hoping, wanting. It was the perfect moment or so I thought.

  He smiled, took my hand, and squeezed it before turning back to his lunch. He didn’t say another word to me while we ate.

  Afterward, he nudged my shoulder with his. “Come on,” he grinned. “I’ll race you back to camp,” and he limped off down the summit.

  ~~~

  When we got inside the house, Indigo cornered me in my bedroom and closed the door.

  “Where were you this morning?” she asked. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “I was on the mountain with Merrick.”

  Her eyes flashed then narrowed to slits. “He took you outside the compound, again?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  “Fives, what you’re doing isn’t safe. You’re attracting too much attention to yourself.”

  I scoffed. “First you’re upset because he beats me. Then, when he starts showing me a little kindness, you get upset as well… Wait a minute.”

  All the stares, the poignant questions…

  It dawned on me. “You’re jealous aren’t you?”

  Her shoulders relaxed, and she folded her arms. “I’m just trying to help you.”

  “Are you?”

  “Draks is asking questions about you.”

  That sent a shiver a fear down my spine. “What kind of questions?”

  “The kind that can get you killed.”

  I shook my head “You’re lying.” I fidgeted with my hair, turning it into knots. “Merrick wouldn’t allow it. He’ll protect me.”

  “Like he protected Lumenara?”

  Lumenara’s scream echoed in my mind and my stomach clenched. I lowered my head and remembered the guilt. The forgotten days spent crying on my pillow in the dark.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Indigo’s arms loosening. I could almost feel her soft brown eyes searching me.

  Does she know it was my fault?

  My eyes teared up.

  She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and my eyes met hers. “I just don’t want to see you hurt again. You’ve become like a daughter to me.” She held out her palms to embrace me.

  My hands hesitated before I reached out and she hugged me.

  “Remember your whipping, child. Merrick betrays those he cares for. Always has.”

  My head swam. I was so confused and I didn’t know who to believe. “What am I supposed to do?”

  She stroked my hair. “Just trust me, and I’ll protect you.”

  ~~~

  Despite her warning, Merrick and I continued to train. I tried to tell him several times what she said, but I didn’t know how to start. Maybe I was afraid of how he would react. That it would bring up forgotten memories better left buried.

  A few weeks after I turned eighteen, I finally defeated Merrick and the other two slaves. I had to be defensive most of the time, using the entire space of the training room to evade their attacks. Patience was the secret. To wait for Merrick or another slave to make a mistake before I attacked and struck the three blue patches.

  Merrick grinned from ear to ear. “You’ve done it!”

  He lifted me up, and twirled me around in his arms. “I always knew you could do it. You’re finally ready to meet your destiny.”

  “And what is that?” To be one of his wives? If he asked, I’d accept.

  “Soon, very soon you will know, my dear Fives, but now we will celebrate. Name me your desire, and if it’s within my power, you shall have it.”

  A question stirred within me. Something I had always wanted to know. I motioned my head to the other two slaves.

  “Leave us,” Merrick said to them.

  The door closed, and he looked at me with his eyes aglow.

  “Where are the children?”

  His face scrunched up, confused at my question.

  “In the books you gave me, I read of people who fall in love and have babies, and yet there are none in our compound. Where are they?”

  He looked a
lmost disappointed. “I should have expected this. Come with me.”

  He led me to the cellar, past the hidden gate and into the stone room. In the farthest cavern of the room, he reached inside a stone box and handed me a clear oval container with a black box attached to one end. Numerous tubes snaked inside and on the surface of the box was a touchscreen.

  “When the Targs first came, they slaughtered nearly all our people. But they still needed us as slaves. So they removed the sperm and eggs from those that remained and sterilized every single one of them. Then they killed their children. They did this, to break their spirit and pacify them. Afterward, they had the Exogs build these.” He handed it to me. “It’s an artificial womb.”

  I ran my fingers down the strange device and tried to absorb what he had told me. I pictured the slaves leaving their mud brick houses. That’s when I realized that the slaves never returned to the same home at night. They were being mixed up each time. In horror, I began to grasp the lengths the Targs went to control us.

  “You see,” Merrick said, “there are no families, no babies, and no children. When the Targs need a new slave, they simply have the Exogs make and train another.”

  He shook his head. “We are not born Fives, we are grown.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it.

  “No! I—I remember being a small child. I remember the song Lumenara played to me at night.” I started shaking. “I remember—”

  He took me by my shoulders and shook me. “Listen to me. You are unique. Your DNA resequenced from your parents’ cells and placed into your mother’s womb. The first to be born naturally in this compound. Your childhood was hidden from the Targs, and they must never find out.”

  “But my skull star, my slave number—”

  “I embedded that shard in your head when you were born and falsified the records to give you a number.”

  A question jolted me like electricity. “Where are my parents?”

  His eyes widened, and he took a step back. “I can’t tell you. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Please, I have to know?”

  “You know too much already.”

  CHAPTER 7

  For weeks I pressed Merrick for an answer, but he refused, telling me he shouldn’t have granted my wish. He also warned me never to speak of it to anyone, especially Indigo. To keep us separated, he moved her to the servant’s room on the bottom floor and never let me out of his sight.

  Yet my yearning to know who my parents were consumed me like a starving man gawking at a feast behind a barred window. So late one night, while he slept, I snuck into the stone room and ransacked part of it before putting everything back exactly as I found it. Night after night, I did this, looking for a drawing, or a scrap of paper that might tell me who I was.

  But the only thing I found was a small scrapbook, hidden within the hollowed-out pages of a history book. It had a cracked, worn leather cover with the corners of each page bent or stained with a gray smudge.

  Inside were delicate, hand-drawn pencil sketches. “Fives” was inscribed in calligraphy on the first page, thus I assumed the sketches were of me when I was a baby. A few notes were written next to them in English, telling of the date and the event that inspired the drawing.

  One of the first contained an infant’s hand clutching the muscular index finger of a man’s hand. On another finger, gleamed a wide silver ring with three round dark stones set an equal distance apart. The note read “January 14th, 2265: My beautiful baby girl held my finger for the first time.”

  I pressed the scrapbook close to my chest while tears streamed down my face.

  My father’s hand.

  It had to be him.

  I took the book to my room and searched for anything else that might tell me more about him, but found nothing within its beautifully drawn pages.

  ~~~

  The week before ‘The Choosing’ came, we continued to spar like in years past, but this time Merrick’s heart wasn’t in it. He was always quiet before ‘The Choosing’. The heavy task of picking a slave to die depressed him, but never like this.

  Had I done something wrong?

  “Master,” I lowered my staff, “have I displeased you?”

  “No!” He put a gentle hand on my cheek, but his eyes looked past me. They began to tear up. “I’m always pleased with you.”

  He dismissed all of us and retreated to his bedroom, locking himself inside.

  ~~~

  At dawn, on the day of ‘The Choosing’, Draks gathered all the slaves into the center of the compound behind the whipping post. He stood there, leering over them with his staff, surrounded by his guards. Merrick had four Targ guards as well for his own protection while he made the choice. He hesitated. His face cold and impassive, like it was carved from stone. He plodded over, straight behind me, and placed his hands on my shoulders.

  “I choose you, HU-645-555.”

  A gasp rose from the other house slaves.

  My mind raced, and I hyperventilated.

  It must be a joke. How could he choose me?

  Draks stomped forward. He lifted my chin with the end of his staff and looked me in the eyes. His heavy gnarled brow curved inward. “I know you. You’re the slave who ruined my hunt.”

  “So, she is,” Merrick said in a flat and emotionless voice. “She’s no longer so dim-witted and as you can see, much stronger. She will give you a good hunt.”

  My body became numb. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  Draks turned his steely gaze toward Merrick. “I thought she was your favorite?”

  “I’ll find another to please me.”

  His words pierced me to my very soul. Tears welled up in my eyes and I shrank down. I didn’t want him to touch me.

  The Targ bellowed a series of deep throated grunts. “You, my Hu-man friend, never cease to surprise me.” He pounded his staff and dirt exploded from under it. “See to it she is made ready, but if she fails,” his long tongue licked his rows of yellow dagger-like teeth, “you will serve as her replacement.”

  ~~~

  After ‘The Choosing’ I ran to my room. Merrick followed behind me.

  He closed the door and put a hand on my shoulder. I slapped it off.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Fives, you have to understand—”

  “Understand what? That all this time; the bone crushing hours with the staffs, tortuous pain sessions, endless miles of running were all for what?” Tears fell from my eyes. “So you can make me into the perfect prey?”

  “No—”

  I clenched my fists. “I have done everything you have asked. Everything! How could you betray me?”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I thought you loved me!”

  There, I said it. At the time, I wished I hadn’t, but I did.

  He gave me a look, like I had just stabbed him through the heart. “I do, Fives. More than you know.”

  Rage burned within me and more tears fell. “Get out. Tomorrow I’ll be dead, and then you can pick a new favorite.”

  Then he, my master, bowed his head and left my room.

  ~~~

  All day I stayed in my room. Merrick left some food by the door, but I wasn’t hungry.

  How could I have been so stupid?

  Indigo cracked open the door. Her face was long and her eyes wide with worry. “May I come in?”

  I didn’t know why, but the sight of her brought me hope.

  “How could he…” my lip quivered. “How could he do this to me?”

  She rushed inside and held me tight.

  “I don’t know. We’re all surprised. I felt certain you were going to become another wife.”

  “I thought he loved me.” My body heaved as I sobbed. “I thought—”

  “Shhh…” She stroked my hair. “I told you he’d betray you. You need to become hard if you’re going to survive this.”

  She had been right all along and my tears soon turne
d to hatred.

  “What am I going to do?”

  At that moment, I wanted to tell her everything. The training, the secret room where I learned to read and write, the book with the pencil sketches. My father… Maybe she knew who he was? Maybe I could say goodbye.

  “Indigo!”

  Our heads snapped to the doorway where Merrick’s piercing blue eyes seemed to burn right through us.

  “Don’t worry child,” she whispered. “I’ll speak with him, and this time I’ll make him listen.”

  Merrick’s eyes followed her as she stepped into the hallway. He closed my door.

  I moved to the edge of the doorway and cracked it open, peering into the hall.

  “I thought I told you to stay away from her,” Merrick said.

  A sarcastic grin formed on her face. “Funny, I remember you once telling me to look after her.”

  He scoffed and took a step down the hall, but she cornered him.

  “You’re not leaving. Not this time. You’re going to tell me why you picked her.”

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “Like hell it isn’t. She was my responsibility, then something changed.”

  He moved to the right, and she stepped in front of him with her arms to either side of the hallway.

  “Stand aside—”

  “Or what?”

  He snatched her arm and yanked it up. “Remember our deal. The only reason you were in this house was to look after her. You’ve done your job, now I need to do mine.”

  She yanked her hand back. “Your job? Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  He turned his back to her and folded his arms.

  “That’s it isn’t it? You know Draks has been asking questions about her because of your little excursions. Is this your way of fixing a problem you created?”

  She slipped around and put a gentle hand on his cheek. “You’re the Overseer. Stand up to him. If you save her, you’ll earn the respect of every slave in this compound.”

  He took her hand and shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”