Select Few

by Marit Weisenberg

  But even from my vantage point, the energy felt like it was on steroids. It was like reaching the center of the maze I’d been feeling my way around in, lost, my entire life. This was what it had all been for. I couldn’t help but feel the pull, to want to experience this self-sustaining space that Novak had been working on for years.

  Instantly, I no longer needed to be held by Paul. “I can walk. What’s down on that level?”

  “That’s the best part,” Emma said. “That’s where we live.”

  Paul kicked open a door to a utilitarian bedroom housing a cot, with a neatly folded stack of clothing at the end. A small bathroom was attached.

  I knew I had to ask the question. “Are we sealed in?”

  In the moment of silence, I imagined this being the place where I took my last breath.

  “Not yet,” Paul said. “We’re waiting on him to acclimate to the heat and gases.”

  “So it’s not over yet,” I said, more to myself, feeling a sense of misplaced relief. Paul and Emma glanced at each other. “How sick is he?” Why had he stopped speaking to me?

  “Last I heard, he was pretty sick. The ventilation is better where he is, but they need to get him down here with all of us quickly.”

  “Paul,” Emma said, warning him to stop talking. What was the rush if their prized possession was at risk? There was something else going on. An outside threat.

  “How long has it been since I got here?”

  “Hours? Days? I’m not sure,” Paul said. “Time is different down here. We don’t care to keep track.” Then he instructed me. “Shower. Stay here and try to sleep it off.”

  Emma made a move to leave. Paul lingered for one second. “Where have you been?” he asked.

  It took me a moment to understand what he was asking. “All over. Colorado, Utah, San Francisco.”

  “That sounds nice,” he said and then began to follow Emma.

  “Where are we?”

  “I have no idea. We were given the same thing you were—some kind of tranquilizer and hallucinogen. Something to calm us and help us get down so deep.”

  He walked to join Emma who stood waiting in the doorway.

  “Paul!” I shouted, wanting more answers.

  He looked over his shoulder at me, his beautiful blue eyes glowing, but his skin tone was that same sickly pale as Daniel’s.

  “Someone will come for you when Novak is ready,” Emma said.

  “Tell Liv I want to see her.”

  Paul clicked the door shut behind them.

  AUGUST…Sometime…

  JOHN

  AUGUST…Sometime…

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Time did have a different quality here. Everything seemed slower, as if we were moving underwater.

  I’d changed into the clean clothes that were provided—a borrowed slip dress that dragged on the floor since I was far shorter than every female in the family. I could walk up and down the corridor by my bedroom, but the hall where the elevator was located was now sealed off. I spent all of my time by the door to that hallway, listening for signs of John’s arrival. I didn’t eat the food that was mysteriously left for me once I set foot outside the room. I didn’t sleep, waiting to catch the person delivering it. It was frightening to think I could be anywhere. On any continent.

  It became evident immediately that I wasn’t to have contact with anyone. That didn’t stop me from waiting for my sister.

  When a meal was delivered, it gave me a way to keep track of time. Three meals had been delivered, each the same—a small plate of raw fruit and vegetables served on bone china. They went back untouched.

  If the meals were any indication, three days had passed. I sat slumped with my ear against the wall near the elevator, listening for any movement outside the door. I was worn out from throwing myself against the door, trying to get to that large picture window I’d first seen when I’d left the elevator. It seemed as if the place was proofed against my abilities.

  I wouldn’t accept that John might have died. I would have—and thought I was—doing everything I could to keep John away from my family. Now I just wanted him to live.

  My vigil was interrupted when I heard whispers of someone entering from the door at the opposite end of the hall, closer to my bedroom.

  Jumping to my feet, I sprinted down the short hallway, knowing whoever had been picked to deliver the tray would sense me coming and slip out. I hadn’t expected to see anyone when I rounded the corner, so it took a second to register.

  Liv.

  My sister appeared in the same long, black dress she wore the night my family left. Her hand was on the door, her back to me. There was a moment when she could have pretended she didn’t know I was in the room and walked out. But she wavered.

  Liv slowly faced me. Instead of regarding me with hatred, Liv looked at me with utter nothingness, like she didn’t feel a thing. It was how we used to look at outsiders. But that was not just how we looked at them—that was how we truly felt about them.

  Liv’s blue eyes glowed, an aqua color against hair that had been dyed black. As I took in the black hair, a bell rang. I sifted through the drugged dream state I’d been in, picking at pieces that may have been real. I remembered her presence at the tennis tournament, seeing her through the back window of the white Mercedes.

  “Angus was with you. Wasn’t he?” I blurted, remembering I’d heard his voice on the plane.

  Traitor.

  For a second I saw a flicker of annoyance break Liv’s mask. I realized I hadn’t even said hello.

  I wanted to say, “I never thought I’d see you again.” I wanted to hug her. But my little sister was terrifying now. It was the way she was looking at me—the same way her mother did.

  Just when I thought she would leave without saying a word, Liv suddenly spoke. “You left your family for him.” She said it like it was the lowest act imaginable. She’d stumbled over the word family. What she had been about to say was “you left me for him.”

  “He’s alive?” I moved closer to her. She didn’t step back, but her whole body leaned away.

  Liv clasped her hands behind her. “For months, I’ve wanted to ask you why you left. I thought it was for Angus, not for him. You convinced me you were embarrassed and he was nothing. You treated me like I was dumb that last night at the show when I told you you’d found him and that he was one of us.”

  “I didn’t believe it! I thought it was crazy.”

  “You thought about yourself, not what that meant for me, not what that meant for an entire group of people. You made a conscious decision to let us die.”

  “How can one person save an entire species?”

  “Novak says he will.”

  I leaned my head back and covered my face with my hands. When I lowered my hands, for the first time in my life, I hoped Liv saw every raw emotion on my face.

  “John belongs with me out there.”

  “That’s not how Novak sees it.” Liv shook her head.

  “What if I told you Novak’s lying? You have no idea what he did to me, Liv.”

  Liv squinted her eyes ever so slightly. She’d been indoctrinated in this lifestyle, in these ideas, her whole life, just like I had. My sister hated me now. It was a joke to try to frame this as a choice between Novak and me. Still, I needed to find any crack I could because while chances were slim, she was my last hope for getting out.

  “Did you know he kidnapped me as a baby? And that he tried to take away my abilities? And the boys’? That’s why he separated our groups. He doesn’t want anyone to be as powerful as him. Especially not me because that will mean I’m supposed to be the next leader. And I represent something different.”

  A type of small black insect I’d never seen above ground scampered over Liv’s feet, and she hastily shook it off a pristine ballet flat.

 
“You knew I had power like Dad,” I continued, my voice hoarse. “You even wanted me to be the one to bring John to him.”

  “Why didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Because I don’t want this. Because I don’t steal lives. We didn’t used to be like this before Novak—kidnapping people.”

  “This isn’t an abduction. This is a prophecy. We can offer him something he wouldn’t have in his world. We have the ability to make him exceptional.”

  “What if there’s a possibility we could do that out in the world? I’ve met people like us, Liv. He’s not the only one.”

  Liv shook her head. “We’re finally safe. I’ve seen what we can do as a group, and the world would see us as a threat. We’re better, and we’re able to truly explore it down here. Finally, there’s nothing that can interfere.”

  “I’d rather live. I don’t want to know at age eighteen that I’m in the same place where I’m going to die. We’re really here because the group is scared. If you don’t evolve, you die. That’s what nature is telling us. But Novak wants to seal us away so we’re his, perfectly preserved.” My voice had grown panicky. “Help us get out, Liv.”

  “Why didn’t you try to take me with you that night?”

  I was so taken aback by the question, it took me a moment to answer. “Because you’re one of them. I never thought you would consider going with me.”

  “By doing what he did in public, Angus made the choice to leave. And then you were next.” Liv gestured with her hand as if Angus and I had flown off without a thought.

  “How long have you been talking to Angus?” I asked. “How was he willing to come without his family?”

  “Angus sees it differently than you. He’s learned he wants to be here.”

  I remembered the glint in Liv’s eye the last time I spoke to her in my bedroom on the day of Relocation. She had a look of determination I hadn’t liked. Liv got what she wanted, and indeed, she had somehow managed to gather the people she loved close. Angus and I were back by her side, whether it was because she was stubborn or because she still cared.

  “They were going to leave me behind, weren’t they?” I asked with a rising realization. I remembered standing at the tennis complex, waving to Liv as the fleet of white Mercedes drove away. “But you made them stop for me. I’m not supposed to be here.”

  She didn’t say a word. She just turned and left the room, leaving me alone again.

  I’d told Liv too much, putting myself in danger. Since I’d left the family, I’d assumed I was safe from Novak as long as he never knew I had gifts equal to his. The last time I’d seen him, he’d believed I couldn’t threaten his leadership, that he’d stifled my abilities by separating me from the other Puri kids for months.

  So now Novak might know I’d found the person he’d been searching for.

  I didn’t imagine myself as this leader my father seemed to have felt the need to suppress. I’d always handed the reins to my sister, the heir apparent, when asked. I’d even protected them from the FBI, withholding the little I knew. I would have gladly left them alone in their life.

  Except now I was being pushed.

  I tried to calm my boiling blood. Every instinct urged me to break out and find John. But then I told myself that I’d lost to Novak already and that going forward, it was about picking up whatever pieces I could. John needed me down here. I didn’t dare jeopardize that.

  Whether it was intentional or not, Liv had left the corridor open. At first I was too tentative to go near the glass wall. It took me time to creep out, down the hallway, feeling exposed. That fear gave way to a high that seeped into my bloodstream as I looked through the glass wall in that drawing room. It was the perfect climate, every cell of my body coming together to make me just what I was supposed to be: a part of the group. I felt a seductive pull I’d never felt before, a languorous complacency.

  I walked within ten feet of the window and began to observe below. If, when, John made it down, this would be his home.

  Novak had always bragged, hinting at paradise. From what I had seen so far, this was his masterpiece.

  The living room was filled with white sofas with straight lines and priceless kilim rugs in decorative patterns. The ceiling of the main gathering space was high, giving way to offshoots with much lower ceilings that must lead to other sections of what was beginning to take shape in my mind as a giant beehive. One grand glass chandelier was hung at my level to dangle as the centerpiece of the great salon. The people below were gathered according to the old groups I remembered. Victoria’s father, mother, and others of their generation sat at one end of the great room near the waterfall. Victoria and Novak’s peers were in the middle, taking up several sofas with Victoria seated at the center. At first, there was no evidence of the kids. Almost beyond my line of vision, I saw them along the perimeter of the giant room.

  The separation between the two groups of kids—the Lost Kids and Novak’s chosen ones—appeared to have dissolved. Paul and George walked next to each other, shoulders almost brushing. The Lost Kids had retained their sleeves of tattoos, but otherwise they looked nearly identical to the other half of the kids, as if the entire group were morphing to become more and more alike, pulling each other into a homogeneous center. Their hair was still light brown, but the gold streaks were gone and their skin was nearly translucent now.

  To stop my mind from spinning, from looking for any possible escape route, each new day I focused below. I studied the structure of the room, the twelve arteries that presumably led to living quarters and the food source. Different members of the group carried in silver trays laden with produce, and crystal pitchers of water were set on every side table. Novak had bragged that his paradise would be self-sustaining.

  As I observed, I began to recognize that the days of my former friends had a pattern.

  When the kids weren’t playing games, reading books or listening to music, they walked a giant circle around the perimeter. They did this for many of their waking hours—only the younger people. They walked until the lights dimmed and everyone stood, streaming to different exits, leaving the center of the hive. They returned after a number of hours and resumed the same activities. Wondering if it was normal, I no longer slept and I didn’t feel the need.

  It could have been for exercise, but I wondered if maybe, just maybe, the walking was a coping mechanism. Something devised to stay sane in their prison yard. That would mean there was discontent.

  After a while, Angus appeared. He was the first to look up to the glass, staring at me piercingly. Had they all seen me this whole time? If they had, they’d ignored me completely. I held Angus’s look and sent back waves of hatred. He looked away. John was my soulmate, but Angus had been my best friend. These last weeks, from Austin to California, I thought he stayed by my side because we were each other’s solace.

  All of our old friends surrounded him like he was a king. He’d reestablished his place already. I wanted to ask him if he was happy. Of everyone, Angus had seemed the most open to living on the outside. Even more than me. The hope that began to enter my brain was put out before I could entertain it. Even if he tried, Angus couldn’t go up against Novak. We were under Novak’s microscope now.

  …Sometime…

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “It’s time,” a voice said as my door opened.

  I rolled over to face him, my nemesis in Austin who had tried to corner John that night before Relocation.

  I’d felt a presence coming, and I was ready—for whatever was to come. Because George didn’t know how right his two words were; it was time to end this torture and know what lay in store. The best possible scenario was watching John from afar as he tried to forget his old life and adapt to this new one. Most probably with my sister.

  George seemed to hesitate.

  “What?” I asked, rising from my cot.

  He didn’t
look well. His skin had the pale cast like the others, but there was also a grave look in his eyes.

  “You want to leave,” I said.

  The words left my mouth and traveled to the ears of the number-one rule follower of all of us kids. George had never had a reason not to follow the rules—he’d inherited the best of everything. In a group of perfection, he was the tallest, one of the strongest, the boy the girls had always wanted. He had always been a favorite of Novak’s.

  I thought I saw a flicker of hope, but then, probably paranoid, George directed his gaze toward the observation window and seemed to close in on himself.

  The last time I’d seen George, the night he tried to subdue John and bring him back to Novak on Liv’s advice, he’d been pissed at me for messing up his plans to be a hero. I’d sworn that John was just a normal person, which I’d fully believed at the time. Now, I’d expected George to lord it over me that John had been apprehended and I’d been caught in a lie.

  “We outnumber him,” I said, fishing.

  “Shhhh,” was all George said in response. Then, “He said this would be paradise. What do you think?”

  “It’s a tomb.”

  “I can’t hear that.” George actually put his hands over his ears. I understood what he meant. Once you thought of it as a tomb, it would be easy to lose your mind.

  “I have to take you to him,” George said. “Come on.”

  I walked behind him back through the narrow hallways to the elevator Emma and Paul had brought me here in. How many days had it been? How much longer until John’s parents realized he wasn’t coming back?

  The area grew less polished as we neared the elevator, bits of debris and fallen rocks on the floor. I looked up at the wooden support beams crisscrossing the ceiling as if it were a hasty patchwork job on a problem area.