The Lost Kids: A Young Adult Dystopian Romance

by J. L. Smith

  Balen shrugged, “Semantics.”

  “We’re going to put a stop to you,” Aidan snarled, spitting on the marble floor, “if it’s the last thing we do.”

  Balen looked at the patch of saliva on the floor in distaste, before continuing in a drawl, “Dear boy, I have a feeling the last thing you do may be sooner rather than later. Especially if you continue to pollute my property.”

  “Property bought with blood,” Mabel hissed angrily.

  “What can I say?” Balen mused. “I’m a man of some enterprise.”

  Bea chipped in then, speaking for the first time, her voice high-pitched and irate. “Don’t take their disrespect, Balen. They’re mocking you. Spitting like animals. Talking to you like a commoner. Who do they think they are?” She tossed her knife onto her plate for emphasis.

  “What would you have me do, Bea?” Balen asked, almost smiling.

  “Kill them now. String their bodies up as an example.” Her voice rose in agitation, “Hang them from the towers for the start of the festival. It’ll send the right message.”

  I looked at the actors then, having to tear my eyes from the savage look on Bea’s face. I could not tell what Aidan was feeling, but Christal was an open book, the fear on her pretty face clear for all to see. Perhaps that was what she wanted us to see, but it looked too genuine to be merely clever acting.

  “I do like a message,” Balen considered.

  I cleared my throat before I knew what I was doing. “Balen, at the rally where we met,” I lightly stroked my arm as I spoke, drawing his attention, my heart hammering in my chest, “you said when these bikers were caught, you’d make sure their organs got harvested.”

  Balen smiled slowly, “Do you remember everything in such detail, Sara?”

  “The things that matter,” I continued.

  “So, Bea wants them killed now. What do you want, Sara?”

  I glanced at Bea, who was holding her knife threateningly. Trying to buy myself time to come up with a suggestion, I gave Bea a cruel smile for Balen’s amusement. Turning to him again, I said slowly, “The crowd wants to be entertained. So, entertain them. Bring the bikers out for the festival. Get the crowd to decide how they die. Or what organs to harvest.” I paused and smiled, “Make it a game.”

  Balen nodded, clearly pleased, “Sit next to me, Sara. A girl like you has promise.”

  Straightening my spine, I took my place in the chair beside Balen, trying not to cringe visibly at how near his body was to mine. I didn’t even look in Rayder’s direction, terrified of the expression on his face.

  Balen stroked my face leisurely. “Clever eyes,” he murmured, looking at me intently and my skin crawled as his finger traced my cheek. “You can always tell by the eyes.” Turning his attention abruptly to Grigor, he said, “Take them to the dungeon. I want them brought out again when the festival starts.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grigor saluted.

  “Coward,” Aidan muttered, glaring at Balen.

  “What did you say?” Balen tossed his chair back, his anger blazing immediately.

  “You heard me,” Aidan replied mockingly. “Getting your guards, your doctors and the crowd to do your dirty work for you.” He added challengingly, “Just kill us yourself. Right here. Right now.”

  I could not understand what he was doing. Rayder would probably have said something similar, but I could not comprehend why Aidan was tempting fate. The longer we prolonged their punishment, the more likely they were to get out. Perhaps, it was simply that he was intent on giving the best possible performance. Perhaps, he was simply a little mad. I thought it might be a bit of both.

  In no time, Balen was upon him, his thick hand squeezing Aidan’s throat. The cords of Aidan’s neck bulged and his complexion went from olive to bright red, as Balen’s grip tightened. Balen released him just as I was beginning to panic that he might not let go, leaving him spluttering and coughing on the floor.

  “I’ll decide how you die, mutt,” he snarled. “How it suits me. When it suits me. And it doesn’t suit me now.” He kicked Aidan in the ribs, causing him to grunt. “While you’re down there, lick up your filth.” He kicked him again for good measure and I had to force myself not to look away. Aidan pulled himself painfully up onto his elbows, before Balen shoved his head against the floor, “Lick.”

  I watched as Aidan licked up the saliva he had spat on the floor earlier, chancing a look at Rayder, who was smiling, as if enjoying the show. But, I knew better. I could see the way his arms were crossed a little too tightly over his chest.

  “Get them out of my sight,” Balen snarled, giving Aidan one last kick in the ribs and causing him to fall down again.

  Lunch resumed then, as if nothing had happened. Everyone else joined Balen, Bea and me at the table and we all proceeded to finish the plates of food set before us. I had to force the food down my throat, the meat sticking to my gullet as Balen casually stroked my knee, while asking Rayder about the runs we supposedly commanded. Rayder managed to deflect attention rather well, without raising suspicion. He answered questions briefly, before asking Balen questions in return, no doubt fueling Balen’s ego for the little kingdom he had built up.

  When there was a brief lull in Balen and Rayder’s back and forth, Kieran chipped in, sounding almost exactly like an overeager child, “Balen, sir, what’s our reward? We brought them in, so don’t we get something in return?”

  Balen smiled indulgently, “And what did you do to help bring them in? I can see how Damon or Sara might have been useful, but I’m not yet sure about you. Name?”

  “It’s Sim, sir,” Kieran replied, and I almost wanted to smile for how unlike himself he sounded. Gone was any hardness from his voice. One would simply write him off as a fool, which was obviously exactly what Kieran wanted.

  “Well, Sim, how were you of use?”

  “I’m okay with a gun, Balen, sir,” Kieran said, smiling widely. “I gave one of them kids a good whack on the head when Damon had them down on their knees.”

  Balen laughed, “I’m sure you were absolutely instrumental to the capture. What would you like as a reward, Sim?”

  Kieran seemed to ponder this for a few moments, before breaking into a smile again, “Can we stay with you for the start of the festival? Later, I mean, when you bring them bikers down to decide how to kill them. We could be behind the scenes, like behind a wall or something, while you talk to the crowd.”

  Drumming his fingers casually on the table, Balen replied slowly, “I don’t see why not.”

  I could feel Bea glaring at me as Balen spoke. While she couldn’t see his hand, still positioned on my knee, I was fairly certain the last thing she wanted was me spending any more time with Balen. The feeling was mutual, but she was not to know that. And, besides, Kieran had got us exactly where we needed to be: right by the action. If I had to sit next to Balen like a prized poodle while we gradually got what we wanted, I would do it.

  “Thank you, sir!” Kieran exclaimed, slapping the table in excitement. “You won’t regret it, Balen, sir. We’ll be quiet as mice.”

  “Good, boy,” Balen replied, bored already, as his gaze moved on to assess the rest of the group. “Are they always so quiet?” he asked me.

  “I think they’re in awe,” I responded, raising my eyebrows suggestively.

  “Are you in awe?” he said, his voice low.

  Forcing flirtation into my tone, I asked, “Do you want me to be in awe?”

  He laughed, squeezing my knee and all at once I could not think of anything else but where those hands had been: the young girls whose spirits he had broken, as those hands had roved their innocent bodies. I felt the bile rising in my throat.

  Neal spoke then, saving me from further conversation with Balen. “Where does the harvesting happen, sir?” he asked, his accent altered to sound far less sophisticated than he was. “Do you have doctors and stuff here?”

  My tension eased off slightly with Ne
al’s use of the word stuff. Under normal circumstances, the word would not have crossed his lips, as it was far too common and simple. I almost wanted to giggle, likely due in part to my nerves. We were all adjusting our personalities and clearly Neal had decided that he could not come across as overly clever. Intelligence, after all, spelled danger.

  “We’ve got a facility in the basement,” Balen replied, plucking a red grape from the fruit platter sitting before us.

  Neal’s eyes grew large beneath his glasses and I wondered if he was genuinely interested. As a scientist, I assumed he had to be. “Is there any chance...?” Neal hesitated, as if uncertain.

  Raising an eyebrow, Balen said, “You want to see it?”

  “Um, yeah,” Neal nodded enthusiastically, “that’d be unbelievable. We’ve heard stories, you know, so we all wanna see it.” Neal always spoke like a gentleman and enunciated his words perfectly, so this new version of him was strange to watch.

  “You did talk about a reward,” Rayder said, looking Balen directly in the eyes, “the night you told us to catch the bikers.”

  Balen scowled and said reluctantly, “I did.”

  “We’d assumed money,” Rayder continued, seemingly oblivious to Balen’s rising irritation at what he surely saw as an arrogant young man. “But a trip to see where the harvesting happens would be good too. That and a few key runs officially allocated to us, maybe.” He shrugged at Balen, before chewing on a piece of bread with his mouth open.

  I leaned towards Balen, and whispered in his ear, “Maybe I’d get to see you a whole lot more that way.”

  The effect was as I had hoped, for he smiled, raising his eyebrows provocatively and seemingly forgetting Rayder’s so-called impudence for a moment. “I could arrange that either way, love.”

  Before I could respond, Stef spoke for the first time since arriving in Balen’s chambers, “I’d like to see where the harvesting happens.”

  Balen lifted his wine goblet and toasted her, “She has a voice!” He looked at Susie then, as if in question, “And you? You look almost the same as that one, just fatter and uglier.”

  I hated him, if possible, even more for his insult to Susie. I watched as she tried to smile at him, before replying self-mockingly, “What can I say? I ate our triplet. That’s why I got a bit more meat on my bones than my sister.”

  Balen roared with laughter, “She’s a keeper! You’ve got to love a big girl with a big mouth, hey Sara?”

  He had turned to me and it seemed he expected an answer, “Well,” I hesitated, trying to think of something clever to say, without adding further insult to Susie.

  “Are we going to go, or what?” Bea spat out suddenly, glaring at me. I sighed with relief for her interruption to what she obviously saw as further flirtation between Balen and me.

  “What’s the rush?” Balen snapped. “I haven’t even said yes yet and already you’re nagging me. I swear, woman, just looking at your haggard face today is starting to irritate me.”

  Bea, who although harsh-looking, had a stunning face and could not have been more than twenty-five years old, reddened in response to Balen’s comment, before piercing me with another fierce scowl. Breathing in deeply, she said, “I’d just like to go down there, is all.” Softening her tone, she added, suddenly gazing at Balen adoringly, “You know how it gets my blood pumping, being amongst the harvest.”

  Smiling then, as if acknowledging a secret only known to them, Balen said, “That I do know.” My stomach churned in disgust as I looked at them both, the king and queen of blood, their hands awash in the stuff. Drumming his fingers on the table, Balen appeared to think over our request briefly, before responding, “I suppose there’s no harm in going.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rayder smile and, only because I knew him well, did I know exactly what that smile meant. All of us could only be hoping that nothing but harm would come from our visit to the medical facility: in the form of the tiny bombs planted in Neal’s boots.

  Within fifteen minutes, we were in Balen’s medical facility. I could not help but shudder as we walked into the underground basement, all metallic surfaces and silvers and doctors in white lab coats. It was perhaps ten times the size of our bus, with at least a dozen people buzzing around, looking busy and important. Operating tables lined the walls, with sharp-looking instruments and vials of clear liquids beside them. I sighed in relief seeing that there were no victims on those tables.

  “Are we going to see any harvests?” Kieran asked excitedly.

  “Slixon,” Balen called to one of the doctors closest to us, a middle-aged copper-haired man with hard blue eyes, “anything new today?”

  “Just completed, sir,” the doctor replied, his tone devoid of any emotion.

  “What’d we get?” Bea asked, her eyes alive with pleasure.

  “Hearts, kidneys, lungs, livers, the usual suspects,” he rattled off, as if discussing the weather. “And interestingly, we’re experimenting with removing just the irises from the eyes. It’s intricate work, so rewarding when you get it right.”

  “Let’s see,” Bea said eagerly.

  “Of course,” the doctor replied. “Follow me.”

  He led us towards the back of the medical facility, through a doorway into a room which, if possible, was even more sterile that the last. Lining the walls was a series of tall glass refrigerators and I peered at them, before realizing exactly what I was looking at. Each refrigerator was filled with transparent containers, housing red, meaty-looking things sitting in a clear solution, all meticulously labeled. Heart. Eye. Liver.

  I looked at the floor instead, feeling my mouth fill with saliva.

  “Where’re they?” Bea asked and I tried to zone out as the doctor showed her and Balen what he had accomplished.

  Rayder and Kieran were right beside them, shooting questions at the doctor a mile a minute. It was a distraction, of course, but Balen and Bea, and the doctor too, for that matter, were too vain to see it. I fixed my eyes on the lower shelf of a refrigerator, feigning interest, but really watching Neal surreptitiously. I noted the way he leisurely inspected a refrigerator up close, apparently enthralled by what he saw. Slowly and ever so carefully, without anyone taking much note of him at all, he was doing what we had hoped he would do. He was planting bombs, right out of the base of his boots.

  I felt Susie’s arm brush mine and I half turned towards her. This time, there was no witty comment from her and I was surprised to see the shine of tears in her eyes. She blinked them away quickly, in response to my questioning look.

  “You alright?” I mouthed silently.

  She nodded, “My dad might be up there.”

  I heard what she did not say. What would I have felt if my own father had been mixed up in all this ugliness? Would I have hated him, or wanted to forgive him, just so that I could save him from what we were about to do?

  Without having an answer for her, I simply squeezed her hand and felt her squeeze mine in response. For now, it would have to be enough. Perhaps, later, when this was all over, she could say the things she wanted to say as we took in the hundreds of organs lining those walls.

  Fortunately, our visit to the medical facility was brief, as it was interrupted by Grigor, who informed Balen that the crowds were gathering in his courtyard, eager for the celebrations to begin. While I could not get out of that room fast enough, my heart sped up in anticipation, knowing that the time was not long until all hell broke loose in that fortress.

  As we followed Balen and Grigor from the basement, up spiraling flights of stairs, Bea caught up with me, her dark presence adding to my sense of unease.

  “Hey,” she hissed, and I gave her a brief backward glance, before speeding ahead up the stairs. “Bitch!” she ground out, jerking at my arm so that I fell down a step. She caught up with me, standing right beside me in the narrow passageway. The others were ahead of us and so it was only me and her. “Just so you know,” she tugged hard on
my wrist, “Balen might be temporarily amused by you, but it’s my bed he’ll be warming tonight.”

  I pulled my wrist free from her grip, glaring at her with all the supercilious fury I could muster. Of course, I could not wish Balen further away from me, but she could not know that. “Not if I can help it.”

  She smiled arrogantly, “Trust me, red head, you’re not his type.”

  “Oh yeah?” I replied. “And what is?”

  “You’re far too old, sweetheart,” she snarled. “He likes them young. Real, real young.”

  I tried not to swallow my revulsion, as I imagined Saffron as a young child in that hideous place. “Looked in the mirror lately, honey?” I asked, forcing my voice to sound confident and not the slightest bit shocked. “You’re not exactly all that fresh yourself. What,” I peered at her, “are those crow’s feet around your eyes? Not quite his type either, are you?”

  Her face went red, becoming a mask of pure rage and she gripped my arm painfully, “You little slut! I’ve been at Balen’s side longer than anyone and I’m not going anywhere. No little good-for-nothing whore is going to get in my way.” I tore my arm from her grip, but she pushed me roughly against the wall, my head knocking on the stone behind me. “I know what he likes and I make sure he gets it. When he wants a young one, I fetch the little bitch myself. Get her nice and drugged up, so that Balen can have his fun. I even watch. He likes it when I do.” I felt as if my throat would close as she continued, smiling now, “No one understands him like I do. No one knows the depths of him like I do. I’ve killed for him before. Little social climbers just like you.” Her face was so close to mine, I could smell her breath, sweet with meat and wine, “Don’t think I won’t do it again.” She shoved me once more, hard, against the wall. “I’m warning you, whore, stay away!”

  With that, she marched off, leaving me leaning against the wall, my head throbbing where it had hit the stone, my breath coming fast. I had known of the depravity within those walls. I had known that nothing but evil lay here. But, hearing those words come out of her mouth had done something to me. It had stirred my hatred and, for the first time, I smiled thinking about pulling the trigger and putting a bullet into each of their heads. I just hoped it was me who got to do it.