by Cronan, Matt
The room surrounding her echoed the same luxurious taste as the extravagant bed. The owner had hung elaborate are all over the walls. Everything from extravagant portraits of people Sam did not recognize, to more eccentric pieces like a statuette of two copper hands, palms facing the ceiling, which balanced a stainless steel heart wrapped in barbwire.
A six-foot tall armoire stood to her right. It looked like the best place to start the search for her belongings and Sam took a deep breath as she prepared for the hunt. She was almost too terrified to move. Afraid that the pain of being thrown from the truck was lying in wait and would pounce on her the moment she shifted the slightest inch.
She exhaled, expecting the shooting pangs from the self-diagnosed broken ribs and punctured lungs to wreak their havoc, but instead she was met with nothing more than a dull ache. She reached her arms under the covers and placed them on her ribcage and received the same result. Hesitantly, she slid through the sheets toward the edge of the bed. The intense agony that she expected never came, which led her to wonder how long she had been unconscious. The fresh track mark in her arm suggested another I.V. It could have been hours or days.
The sheets were smooth against her legs as she slipped through the bedding and her heart sank. Her hands darted to the appendages once covered in fine dark hair and found they had been replaced by hairless ones. They felt foreign to her. Her fingers ran up and down her calves searching for one iota of proof that these were her legs but they couldn't find a single follicle.
Sam hadn't shaved her legs in over a decade. She remembered that it always seemed like a chore and her mother had encouraged her to wait—
Her thoughts shifted.
Her mother.
It had been eons since she was able to dredge a memory of her mother out from the dark shadows of her brain. She focused, grasping for a detail, something specific that would bring the woman out of hiding, but the memory faded as quickly as it had resurfaced. Sam sighed, disappointed that the elusive thought wouldn't become something more substantial and continued toward the armoire.
She reached the edge of the giant bed, sat up and draped her legs over. Below her dangling feet was a Persian rug that spread out the entirety of the bed and a bit more.
Persian rug…Mahogany…Four poster bed. The words bounced around her head. Remnants of her past life. Echoes of buried memories.
She shook her head.
She had no idea at this point if these were things from a previous time in her life or rather manufactured memories implanted for some unknown reason. Either way, she didn't care. The only thing she cared about was getting out of this freak show. Her mission was to rescue Cole and Alex. Find the brother. And then get the hell out of Dodge. Everything else wou—
"I'm glad to see you're awake."
Sam's heart jumped into her throat and she spun to see a small woman standing in the doorway. The pain resurfaced and rocketed through her abdomen. Sam pushed it aside and dove back under the covers.
"Oh, don't be modest, darling," the woman called out to her. "I've seen all your bits and pieces. I mean honestly, who do you think shaved those two bushy cacti you call legs? Or that shrub between your legs?"
Sam swallowed hard as her fingers reached down and touched smooth skin. Her throat tightened and the nausea returned. Sam sunk lower in-between the covers. Her mind raced as she clutched the bottom sheet.
Why had they done this to her?
What else had they done to her?
Where was Cole?
"Are you still there, dearie?"
Sam peeked out from the safety of the sheets.
The woman in the doorway took a small step forward and her face emerged from the shadowed doorway. She had suffered the same fate as the doctor and Alex. Her face stretched upward, making her eyes wide in appearance like she was in a state of permanent surprise. A thick sheet of lip gloss covered her ballooned lips and dark shades of pinks and purples plastered her eyes and cheeks. The makeup clashed with the pale skin and made her look more like a crazed clown than a woman.
The woman's figure had been altered much like Alex's had. Humongous round breasts and a butt that stuck out way too far. A pencil thin waist and two thin sticks for legs. In contrast, the woman dressed in more moderate clothing than the young girl. The green dress she wore was form fitting, but not an inappropriate length or cut.
"If you keep staring at me like that, I'm going to charge admission." The woman's sing-song voice had the same southern drawl as Cole's.
"I'm sorry," Sam whispered.
"Oh, you don't have to be sorry, hun," the woman said, "not unless you plan on staying in bed much longer. Then you're going to have something to be sorry about."
Sam removed her head from the sheets.
"That's better," the woman cooed. "We've got a lot to do to get you ready for the General's dinner tonight. Hop up out of that bed and get your skinny little behind into the shower. Chop chop."
Sam didn't budge from the protection of the covers. "Who are you?"
The woman moved closer and into the soft glow of the room. Her light accentuated her facial features, revealing deep wrinkles despite being pulled to what looked to be its maximum tautness. Heavy bags loomed under the layers of makeup and the neon pink hairdo looked much thinner than it did in the dark.
"My name is Gretaleene Rivers, General Soto's Chief Fashion and Beauty adviser, at your service, darling. But you can call me Greta."
Sam said nothing.
The old woman frowned. "I also do a little interior design, do you like the room?"
"Where's Cole?"
"The big ape with the giant hands and hairy back?" Greta asked, a playful tone in her voice. "He's getting ready himself."
Sam couldn't help but smile, just a little. Not only at her friend being okay—alive at the very least—but also at the comparison. It fit and it made her miss him even more.
"Now, Ms.…"
"Samantha. Samantha Albright," then added, "but you can call me Sam."
Greta smiled at this. "Well, Sam, it's such a pleasure to meet you. And now that we've gotten the rigmarole of all these pleasantries out of the way, how about you be so kind as to march your little fanny into the restroom and get in the shower. If we don't get a move on, you'll be late for supper. And one thing the General does not tolerate is tardiness."
Greta took a step toward the restroom and then paused. "Well two things, tardiness and insubordination. Make a note, dear." She walked the rest of the way to the restroom and stopped in the doorway. She raised an eyebrow, "Are you coming?"
"The girl," Sam said. "What happened to her?"
"What girl?"
"Alex." Sam watched as the polite smile faded from Greta's mouth.
"What about her, dear?" Her voice was cold and the words bitter.
"Will she be joining us at dinner?"
There was a long pause as Greta seemed to mull the question over. "No," she said. She didn't wait for Sam to ask any more questions and entered the restroom.
"Can I at least get a bathrobe?" Sam called out.
"I've already told you," Greta called from the restroom, the cheery tone resumed. "I've seen the goods. Now, hurry and get in here. We've got a lot to do to make you fabulous and I don't like working against the clock."
A couple minutes later, Sam reveled in the hot water as steam fogged the frosted glass door. This wasn't the two minute shower she had grown accustomed. The stone-inlayed shower was far removed from the New Hope models with the piss-poor showerhead shooting sporadic bursts of freezing water. Instead, she stood under a gold-plated showerhead and the water was as hot as she could stand it. It rained down, turning her olive-colored skin pink, and Sam wished it would wash away all the pain and horrible memories. She wished it over and over until Greta knocked on the glass door and demanded her to hurry.
After the shower, Sam wrapped herself in a cotton towel, perhaps the softest that she had ever felt, and took a seat at the vanity. In the mirr
or, she stared at a stranger. The bruises on her face were an ugly shade of yellowish-purple and the spot where the General had hit her was still swollen. The memory of the General's giant fist colliding with her face replayed in her mind. Sam gritted her teeth and ran her fingers over the bruise.
"I swear, dear," Greta said, as she combed the tangles out of Sam's hair, "it's like you've never even heard of a brush."
"It's not a priority where I'm from."
"And where is that? Where did you and the Neanderthal come from?"
"New Hope," Sam whispered as the image of the burning city flashed in her mind.
"Is that the name of the bunker your people are in?"
"We're not from a bunker," Sam said. "We're from the up-top."
Greta stopped brushing and looked at Sam through the reflection of the mirror. The woman's lips sunk into a frown. "Don't be silly, dear," she whispered. "No one's from the up-top. Not anymore."
"I'm not being silly. We're from a town, one not too far from here. It's surrounded by concrete walls and no one's allowed to go in or out because of the—"
"The halfways?" Greta interrupted.
Sam remembered Alex calling them that…the infected. She nodded her head.
"Well, I never."
Sam swallowed and asked a question that she was only half ready to hear the answer to, "How long have you been here, Greta?" She held her breath and waited for the answer. Before Holden Deckard and Jeanette Robertson, before the mass execution in New Hope, she would have thought the number to be around 10 years, the underground bunker a result of pre-planning. She hoped it would be close to a decade. Hoped this was all just a misunderstanding.
"All my life, dearie," Greta chuckled.
Sam's heart dropped. She bit her lip, terrified to ask the next question, still wanting this to all be a horrible nightmare. "How long has this bunker been here?"
Holden had told them it had been 300 years since the RIZ-4 weapon detonated and the burning city and David were just implanted memories. She knew, deep down, that Holden hadn't lied. But still, in that moment she held hope for something, anything, less than three centuries.
"Oh, your guess is as good as mine." Greta ran the brush through Sam's hair and then paused, the bristles still intertwined. "It all depends on who you ask, I suppose. The General says a thousand years or so. But when I was young, my folks led me to believe that it was much, much longer than that."
The world seemed to disappear from underneath and Sam gripped ahold of either side of the chair to keep from dissolving with it.
A thousand years.
Perhaps, much, much longer.
"Are you okay, dear?" Greta asked. "You've gone pale."
"I think…I think…" Sam's voice trailed off and her eyes grew blurry.
Greta yanked the brush down and Sam snapped back to reality. Tears swelled in her eyes. It was less the pain of the brush and more that she had no clue about the world around her. Greta had pulled hard and it hurt.
"Sorry, dear." She ran the brush through the same spot. "A little tangle was all."
"It's okay," Sam heard herself say. Her voice sounded as vacant as the two glassy eyes staring back at her in the mirror.
Greta didn't say another word. Instead, she worked the brush furiously through Sam's thick brown hair. Sam's head yanked back hard with each brush-stroke and she wondered if she had angered Greta talking about the up-top.
Greta brushed and trimmed Sam's hair. Then she wrapped pieces of it in aluminum foil coated in some sort of creamy substance that smelled like cat piss and dried it with a hair dryer. It burned, but Sam didn't complain.
Her eyebrows were waxed along with her underarms and a subtle layer of makeup was applied. Sam didn't protest, but she was terrified that the result would be clown-like—or worse Greta-like. But the final result wasn't bad at all. Sam stared at herself in the mirror, the bruises under her eyes were invisible, the swelling barely noticeable.
Greta removed the foil pieces and revealed subtle strands of crimson intertwined with her normal brown. It was like she was staring into the eyes of a stranger and as much as she hated to admit it…she looked beautiful.
Her heart sank at the thought. She was supposed to be heading to Concordia, supposed to be rescuing her friend, not playing dress up, and every passing moment was an injustice to both Jordan and Cole.
"What's wrong, dear?" Greta asked. "You look upset. Don't you like my work?"
"It's not that. You've done a wonderful job."
"Then what, dear?"
"I need to find Cole and we need to be on our way."
"But you just got here. Why so eager to leave?"
"We're on a journey to a town named Concordia," Sam said. The words sounded foolish to her, but she continued anyway. "It's a city at the center of the country and—"
"Well," Greta interrupted and then gave a nervous laugh. "I'm sure after dinner the General will help get you back on track."
"Do you really believe that?"
The old woman glanced around as if someone else was in the room with them. After a moment, she bent down and whispered in Sam's ear. "If you get the chance, run."
"Greta?" Sam asked, but was answered by a firm tug of her hair.
"Of course I do," Greta said. "General Soto's a wonderful man."
Sam understood at once. They were being monitored. She bit her tongue. She had more questions but knew asking them would only put Greta in a difficult spot. Instead, she remained quiet as Greta finished the touchups.
"There," Greta announced. "Not too shabby if you ask me."
"I agree," Sam said.
"Now, stand up, dearie," Greta instructed and Sam did as she asked.
Greta crossed the tile floor to the closet across the room and removed a short black dress, a pair of heels, and a fresh pair of undergarments. Sam protested but the old woman shook her head.
"Put this on," Greta said. "I'll give you a moment."
Sam took the clothes and Greta left the room and closed the door behind her. She stared at the foreign reflection for a long time before removing her towel. In the mirror, Sam gawked at the bruises covering her body. Remnants of the vicious wreck. How long had it been now? Two weeks? More? Sam didn't know. Time seemed to be an illusion.
The faintness of the bruises suggested it had been at least a week and a half. Ten days since the last time she spoke to Jordan. Since the last time he held her. Tears stung at her eyes, but she forced them back. She had to stop crying. There was no time for weakness.
She pulled on the undergarments. They weren't the traditional pair of Ministry-issued cotton panties and bra. These were lace and satin. These were the type of undergarments that were meant to be seen. She blushed as she caught a glimpse of the thin string disappearing into her backside. And again at how far the bra pushed up her breasts.
Sam's skin turned to gooseflesh as she thought of the General and his unknown intentions. But if she was honest with herself, she knew damned well what they were. The underwear was a dead giveaway but so was the conversation with Alex about how the men treated the girls here.
She stepped into the black dress and pulled the straps over her shoulders. It was a short, black cocktail dress—incredibly short. It hugged her waist and her breasts spilled out of it regardless of how much she adjusted the neckline.
Six-inch shiny black stilettos accompanied it. Sam shoved her foot into the narrow opening of the first shoe and then the second. They were uncomfortable and Sam felt awkward wearing them. She couldn't remember ever wearing anything other than the grimy pair of tennis shoes. These would make escaping that much more difficult.
She looked herself over once more in the mirror. She shuddered as the word prostitute flashed through her mind. Seeing the final product and knowing deep down what the General had in mind…she would have settled for clown.
Clumsily, she exited the bathroom where Greta was waiting for her. She stood next to the uniformed man with the perfect skin and perfect h
air. He offered a wide smile and Sam's gut instinct screamed to return to the safety of the bathroom. Lock the door and barricade it.
Instead, she approached him.
"You look breathtaking," he said. He offered a slight bow, took her by the hand and then raised it to his lips. "Allow me to formally introduce myself. My name is General Alistair Soto." He kissed the back of her outstretched hand.
Despite the growing urge to knee him in the groin, Sam offered a terse smile and said, "Your fist looks like it's healing nicely, General."
5
The two sauntered down the hall of the complex followed by two armed guards carrying automatic weapons. Sam held onto the General Soto's arm, partially for balance but also because he had insisted. The heels clicked and clacked and each step echoed down the marble hallway.
"I do apologize for the rude welcome," Soto said.
"I have no interest in your empty apologies, General," Sam said. "The only thing I want is to see my friend and then be on our way."
"In due time, my darling. But first a tour of our great city and perhaps an exchange of pleasantries along the way."
The General guided her down elaborate hallway after elaborate hallway. The green and gold marble floor had been buffed to a mirror-like shine and Sam blushed as she caught a reflection of herself in the revealing costume. After years of being resigned to the thick coveralls in New Hope, she felt naked in anything else.
They strode past an endless parade of fine art, each piece framed in elaborate gold and hung to the polished stone wall. Mixed in were countless portraits of more men and women Sam didn't recognize. More decorations. More wall art. More posturing. Sam stopped paying attention to the brash pieces as they proceeded farther into the labyrinth of corridors, but something else had caught her eye.
At first, she had dismissed the small security cameras suspended in each corner. But upon reaching the end of the fifth or sixth corridor—she had lost track at this point—the frequency of the red dots tracking them was too much to overlook.