by Terina Adams
The doors opened to a rowdy room of prisoners already eating. A wave of the sweeper’s weapon at the doorway ushered me into the dining hall. The room was full, the air thick with body odor and the rich aroma of roasted fatty meat slathered with spices. I hovered in the entrance, my head going light, my vision wavering for a flash, until my stomach’s churning, driven by the delicious smell, grounded me back in place. The hush was brief. Being no one new now, the chatter resumed soon after as everyone dismissed me.
My eyes scanned the rows for my friends. Through a gap between two men sitting on the nearest row of bench seats, I spied the long plait of Ishren. Rather than head to the front for a plate of food, I squeezed along the aisle toward him. Fethon sat next to him and Jerome across from him.
Jerome saw me first, eyes widening a fraction before he said something to the other two. Both turned; on seeing me, Fethon scooted over, saying something to the man on his other side, making him shuffle along so both Ishren and Fethon could create space between them for me. I sat heavily, feeling like I’d only just made it into my place before a dark wave swallowed me up.
“They got to you, didn’t they?” Jerome asked, dropping the bone he was holding back onto his plate.
“Your face is whiter than our plates,” Fethon said. “You need something to eat. It will make you feel better. You wait here.” He pushed to his feet and headed back through the row then up to the front of the dining hall.
“I don’t remember what happened.” I sounded panicked.
“It happens,” Jerome said, his tone like a shrug. “You got all your other memories?”
“Everything, right up until I left you guys in the corridor. What time is it?”
“Dinnertime same day. I s’pose you’ve been out for the whole of today. That happens too. Don’t worry. You’ll feel fine after some food.”
I glanced at his plate piled high with hunks of meat and bone. Beside me, Ishren had half the serving size plus some added greens, which looked like chopped spinach or seaweed. I covered my mouth, not knowing if the gurgle in my stomach was hunger or the threat I was about to throw up. The pain that hatched in the center of my brain had not gone away, and now I felt a tingle running down my arms. Not running, sprinting, moving so fast my skin should be turning red or catching fire with the friction. I pulled the sleeve up on my left arm to take a look, amazed the skin remained pale.
“You sure you’re doing all right?” Ishren said, staring down at my forearm to see what it was I fixated on.
“Am I supposed to feel bodily effects?”
“Like what?” they chimed in unison.
“Headaches.”
“Maybe,” Jerome said. “I’ve never had a problem, but a few have mentioned something like that.”
“How about tingles on my arms?”
“Never heard of that,” Ishren replied.
“Maybe it’s nothing.”
Fethon returned carrying a plate stacked high with meat. Bone stuck out from between the meaty layers, along with gristle and a healthy dose of a rich, thick gravy, which added depth to the smell. The gurgle most definitely turned into a cry of hunger as the spiral of steam wafted up my nose once Fethon set the plate down in front of me. “The meat’s a bit tough, but I doused it in plenty of sauce, so you shouldn’t notice overly. Make sure you eat it all. Get some color back in them pale cheeks of yours. Looks like you could do with a decent feed as well. I know meat can be a rare commodity in the fringe for some.”
I didn’t bother to reply, spearing the fork he’d brought back with him, which looked like a miniature trident with its deep-grooved prongs, into the topmost layer and hefted a chunk into my mouth. Suddenly, I was starving. Perhaps that was why I felt so lightheaded. The flavor of the meat was strong, stronger than our usual meat back home. I’d never tried game meat, but the flavor was likely closer to that than cow. And it was good. So good, I speared another large hunk and tore a mouthful away. Sauce dribbled down my chin to drip to the plate, and I didn’t bother to clean it away.
“You still thinking those dangerous thoughts?”
I’d been too interested in my food to notice Jerome had leaned across the table. His elbows rested either side of his plate, his head ducked in a conspiratorial whisper. The other two had also moved close giving the discussion an intimate and dangerous feel.
I lowered my fork. He took that as an invite to keep talking. A quick look either side of himself and he continued. “Made a few enquires—”
“We may be able to help you out,” Fethon cut in. “Didn’t want to say too much this morning because…well, you can’t tell who’s your friend and who’s your foe in this place. But we, as in us three, have been discussing things and we figured you’re just what we need.”
This had to be related to this morning. We’d talked, but I couldn’t remember what we’d said. Introductions but that was all? “What was I saying?”
The three sat up, the eagerness in their expressions gone. Instead of replying they repeated their conspiratorial glances around them, making me follow their lead. Everyone seemed intent on their food and chattering to their neighbors rather than paying us any attention. “Nothing. Forget I said anything at all.” Jerome resumed his eating. I looked to Fethon then Ishren when Jerome stared at his food.
“What were we talking about this morning? I have no memory of it. I thought I remembered everything until the sweeper took me away, but I don’t remember saying anything to you that could be dangerous.”
Jesus, did I mention Jax and Elva?
“You didn’t, love. No one is that stupid,” Fethon said, casting Jerome a frowning glance, which told me he was lying.
“Please, I know you’re lying. I want to know the truth. There is enough lying done by the people who run this place. It’s not going to help if we lie to each other.”
The faces of all three shadowed, shutting down or feeling ashamed, I couldn’t tell.
“Give it until tomorrow. If you remember everything by then, maybe we can talk,” Jerome said.
I wanted to argue with him, but when I opened my mouth a lump from my stomach rushed up my throat. I slammed my lips closed, smacking my hands over my mouth as the tide rose up then receded.
Ishren touched a finger to my elbow. “You going to be all right?”
I closed my eyes as a hot wave simmered up to the top of my head. My pulse pounded through my ears. After a couple of swallows and a calming breath I removed my hand. With the settling of my stomach, the heat washed out leaving me feeling cold. My hands felt clammy against my cheeks.
“Some get effected more than others,” Fethon said.
Three pairs of concerned eyes met mine when I opened my eyes. Concern, that was not good. If it happened to enough people there should be no concern. Did this mean it was only happening to me?
Too late to worry any further. My stomach turned again. Like a giant tidal wave, the contents of my stomach rolled up my throat. This time with enough force I knew closed lips and a hand over my mouth would stop nothing. I spun from the table in time as I heaved my guts out onto the floor behind me. Gasps and moans of disgust filled my ears, bench seats scraping as those around me darted to move clear. The heat rushed upon me again, as too the horrible clammy feeling, all over my body. My clothes under my overalls felt plastered to my skin. Another wave. But the damage was done the first time, so what came next was a weak watery after flow.
Coughing and swallowing my way through the after effects, I raised a shaky hand to press against my forehead. The violence of being sick triggered my headache. The dull throb turned merciless, jackhammering through my skull. Following the pounding, rippling down my neck, racing across my chest and out to the ends of my fingers, the tingles started again.
Chapter 30
My eyes fluttered open. The light was too bright, so I slammed them closed again. My stomach felt raw. How many times had I lost everything in my stomach? In front of everyone. At least that was something I did remember from yesterday. It had
been yesterday, right? I’d not blacked out again, surely, losing yet more days, more of my memory?
I remembered two sweepers descending on me, hitching me under my armpits and dragging me out of the dining hall. It would be a mercy to forget the faces of the prisoners as they dragged me down the aisle between the rows, everyone craning to have a good look. Residual saliva dripped from my mouth while my clothes clung to my clammy body and my hair to my forehead.
They wanted to take me back to the medical room, back to Martimon, but I protested, attempting to right myself in their arms so I could walk on my own. At one point, Archon intercepted us, his usual cool charm in place. Had he been watching from through the glass paneling overlooking the dining hall? Maybe they monitored the prisoners with higher tech surveillance. He’d seen; they’d all seen, and this would have me back on the trolley table, Martimon anticipating another shot at experimenting on me.
“I feel fine. I just need to lie down in my room,” I told him.
His eyes meandered down the splash marks from my vomit on the front of my drab uniform, then to the moisture on my lips, the sweat caking my hair to my forehead. I wrenched myself out of the sweepers’ hold and wiped my mouth using the back of my sleeve.
“Leave us.” Archon motioned with his head, sending them in the other direction. Archon waited, eyes on the backs of the sweepers. Once their heavy smacking boots receded, his eyes moved back to me. “What triggered this?” This ugly display were the words used in his expression.
“Maybe you should ask the people who run your experiments.”
“Did you manage to eat anything?”
“Why is that important?”
“You’ll feel a lot better once you do.”
I remembered asking myself if he was really concerned about that. “What I ate is being cleaned off the floor as we speak.”
His nose and top lip crinkled—subtle, but I saw it. The idea made him squirm.
“I just want to go to bed. I’m not too bad now, and I’ll feel better after I sleep.”
“It’s likely a minor aberration due to your biosystemic structure. It is something we’ll have to study in greater detail.”
“Does that mean more experiments?”
Archon had signaled for me to go in front. As I passed him, he said, “We’ve only just begun.”
My mouth tasted like I’d eaten rotten meat. My body smelled like I’d never washed. I swung up, putting my feet on the floor, and my door hissed open. At the railing, I looked down to an empty cellblock. Good, Archon wasn’t lurking.
I hurried down the stairs and beelined for the showers. As was the way, a new set of clothes waited for me in the chute. I undressed and took a whiff of the clothes I arrived in, the ones I kept on under my uniform. As expected, they stunk of sweat. Leaving them in the pile along with my worn uniform, I stepped onto the plate that started the water flow. Maybe it was time to ditch my clothes and just wear the gray scrubs.
I lathered myself hard, scrubbing my hair and body with the liquid that came out of the dispenser on the back wall of the shower. Soon, I became buried in a foaming lather, smelling of chalk and flowers. I arched my head back and filled my mouth with water, swilled, then spat, repeating a few times. Skin pink, I placed my hands on the wall, head bowed, allowing the hot spray to rain down my back. The needle jabs of the water massaged along my spine, soothing and hard, so hard it felt like they were penetrating through my skin and into my body. But it wasn’t just on my back. The needle-jabs were hammering at my chest, the part of my body protected from the spray by the curve of my body.
I pushed away from the wall, stepped off the plate, and stood staring down at my naked body. Now that I was no longer under the hard jets, I felt the sensation within, a seething, restless motion punctured by jabs pricking at my skin as if something inside wanted out. My concentration on it now, the intensity built, racing around the top half of my body, churning my stomach into wanting to heave once more.
I slammed my palms together. Just like closing a circuit, the wild motion took flight across the link formed by my hands. My heart staccatoed a heavy beat, bam, bam, as if it had no ribcage to keep it in.
I closed my eyes and pressed my fisted hands to my temple. The energy was so great I could practically feel it penetrating from my hands to my skull. Slowly, I lowered my hands to my lips and kissed the knot of knuckles, felt the tremor on my lips, felt the current flooding below the skin, felt the tickle of tears in my eyes.
Destruction was back.
Somehow, it had burst through the control of the graft. This had to be related to the experiment. The grafter had done its job initially, but whatever they had done lessoned the grafter’s effect. This had to be an abnormality in the experiment and something that had only happened to me, or the experiments would’ve been stopped, surely, if everyone’s grafts were made redundant as a result.
Destruction was back, and as much as my joy was bursting to overload, I had to keep it a secret. This was my advantage, and I would find the greatest joy turning it on Archon.
I swiped the towel from the recess in the wall and used little care drying myself. There were places still damp, but I dumped the towel and climbed back into my clothes, my arrival clothes, and then the uniform. I had the edge that would get me out of this place, and I meant to do it in my normal clothes. Their sweaty stink was like the best perfume, because it came from me. The smell was my body, now strong and capable, and not the antiseptic odor of gray scrubs they forced me to wear.
Whatever I did from now on, I had to do with care. No mistakes, no accidental slipups with destruction. They must never know. Never, ever, know. This was my only chance to escape and find Mum and Ajay. I slowed for a moment, head bowed as the reality washed over me. I was one of them again. I was like Jax and Elva and all the rest. I was back amongst them again, not physically, but I could be a weapon. I could do what they needed me to. Azrael and Nada were prisoners of the senate because of me, and now I could undo what I had done.
I left the shower area and found the door to the cellblock open. I headed out into the corridor and found it empty. Forward was the only way I could go, right to the lifts. They too opened as I neared. Were they following me through surveillance cameras, some sensitivity to footprints on the floor, heat sensors through the walls? Big questions I needed answered if I hoped to prevent every move I made being monitored.
The doors opened soon after I felt the subtle change under my feet, the signal the lift had arrived.
“You’re late.”
The sight of Archon had destruction rising in a wave, washing up out of the depths. I inhaled the beauty of the feeling, wild and restless, aching for release. If it were physical rather than a feeling, I would caress it like a treasured possession. “For what?”
“The arrival of another mislead soul. The utility will be docking shortly. We need to be in place.”
“What does that mean?” What did this have to do with me?
“You’ll have to wait and see.” As an afterthought, he said, “I hope you’re feeling well.”
“I would feel better after something to eat.” And a chat with my three friends. Should I tell them what happened? Would they be willing to follow me out of the compound? Escaping was one thing, but surviving the desert was another. Since all three were from the outer provinces, they would make the perfect companions.
“There will be time for that after this.”
Why did he insistent on me being there? The only thing I could think was the capture of one of the fringe people I’d met. Islia or Alithia, someone like that. But how would they know I had links to any of these people? Unless they were able to get something out of Azrael. If they did, it would be Alithia. She was grafted, so why would they want her? She knew things, things about Jax and his father. Did she know about Dominus? And perhaps there were other secrets she could spill the senate would find fascinating, links to rebels, plans, how far the rebellion reached.
The trigger r
eleased the moment I chased Arlo out of his safe room, giving the children an excuse to go too. I should’ve known Azrael would never obey me. She didn’t even listen to her mum. And now the fringe would unravel, the people exposed. People Jax cared about, everything destroyed.
No more. Right the wrongs. Do what needs doing. Keep going. Be smarter. Learn what’s on the other side of my fear. Jax said those words. My dad said similar words. I had to embody those words. Because I was capable now. Destruction was me.
Archon was staring at me, using those splintering eyes to chisel out answers to his ever-consuming fascination with me and need to master me. For a moment, I stared back, leveling my eyes on him, my daring enabled by my secret, the powerful feeling of a hungry ache to destroy, the addictive understanding that I could end him if I wanted to, sabotage the neurons in his brain, sever his ability to function, terminate his biosystem. For a moment, my mind raced through the delirious knowledge of my power then quelled those thoughts, wrangled destruction behind the barrier, and looked at his feet. The expected action for me to take. “I hope it doesn’t take too long. I’m feeling pretty hungry.”
“Once this is over, you can have your breakfast with me.”
He didn’t give me a chance to catch his expression before he marched away down the corridor. I’d rather eat snails.
Now was not the time. There were too many obstacles, too many questions about how they ran the compound, security, number of employees, routine. I’d need to make a mental list of everything challenging I’d possibly encounter that I would need to know prior. I needed to learn, be smart. Most important of all, I needed friends. People who knew how to survive in the desert and direct me which way I should head.
Archon led me back to the vast open space I entered when I first arrived. Was he going to take me all the way out to the docking platform? If my wish were to come true, he would. That way, I’d get another glimpse of the desert and what waited on the horizon. I would look differently at the view than I had when I first arrived. Back then, the desert was the final barrier. Now, it was my escape route.