Five floors up with the slow-moving, old elevator didn’t do much to ease either of their minds. While they stood, listening to canned music from another age, the time dragged. Impatient to arrive and yet dreading the instant the doors opened, Rue jumped once they actually did.
“Good evening, Citizen Doctor,” said the new nurse. Rue’s careless words had probably chased away the other girl, a blessing in disguise. If the previous person had been around, Rue would have a tough time explaining why Mason was wearing Yang’s ID.
“Good evening, Citizen Nurse.” Rue acted as casually as she was able. “Has Citizen Baby Houston’s room assignment been changed?”
“No, ma’am. He’s still in twelve.”
“And his health?”
“Citizen Doctor James signed his release two days ago. We’re waiting for the state to send someone for him.”
Bent over a chart, the nurse appeared to be actually doing her job, which was a welcome surprise. For once, the system was working in Rue’s favor. “I’ll pop down and see if everything is ready.” Rue could only hope the DOE didn’t take the crime she was about to commit out on the nurse.
Walking with a measured pace, the two of them moved toward the baby’s room. They passed rooms filled with tiny bassinets, each one holding a child born into this world of Equalization. In one corner, an unattended infant wailed. Rue ached to comfort the tiny bundle.
“Don’t even consider it,” Hubert said between clenched teeth, pushing Rue farther down the hall.
When they reached the twelfth room, the sea of wrapped bundles barely squirming with life came as no surprise. This room was reserved for the unhealthy infants and those without mothers to take them home. Too many times this room was filled to overflowing. If her plans worked, the hospital would have at least one free crib tonight.
She passed between the rows while Hubert waited near the door. Little Houston was sleeping peacefully among his fellow infant inmates. She reached into the crib and gently pulled him to her chest. His downy hair showed reddish under the dim halogen tubes.
“Got him,” Rue said as she neared the doorway. He was such a sweet boy she couldn’t take her eyes off his round face. And then she realized Hubert was no longer by the door. She took a tentative step into the hallway.
“I’ll take him, if you don’t mind.” The voice was a blast of ice water down her back.
Rue turned to discover the nurse standing a meter away. Beyond the girl’s white uniform was the face she’d been dreading all day.
“I told you not to trust anyone,” he reminded her.
All at once, the hope and the fight drained from her like air from a leaking balloon. “Hubert turned me in?”
He didn’t speak a word but simply pointed down the hall. Rue didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t stop herself. Sprawled across the tiles she had never been able to get clean was the duty nurse. A dark stain spread slowly out from the back of her head.
As she made the slow, dreaded walk, she couldn’t take her eyes off the obviously fresh corpse. There was no mistaking its identity or the fact this woman Rue had begun to care about was quickly growing cold. Her gray curls were barely mussed, but her brown eyes were developing a haze Rue had seen too often. If she had been able to go to Hubert, she couldn’t have done a damn thing. From the way her limbs were splayed, she hadn’t even tried to catch herself. The blow had killed her before she hit the floor.
“Why did you have to…?” She swallowed hard, unable to force the reality past her lips.
“Kill her?” He shrugged. “She tried to scream and my associate got a little overzealous. Doesn’t make any difference who did the deed, really. Unless I miss my guess, she wasn’t going to live long past tonight. The Unequal rarely do.”
Rue took a long, good look at this monster. The first time they’d met, he had been shrouded in darkness. The second, she had been too focused on escaping to study her predator. Before this, if anyone had asked her to depict Death, she wouldn’t have described this man who had come for her. Whenever she imagined the DOE agent who would eventually catch her, she pictured someone ugly and skeletal. This was almost more horrible.
His gray eyes were the sort she could’ve spent her life drowning in. The blond hair curling gently around his ears begged to be twisted around a woman’s fingers. Those lips were a mirror to the ones she kissed every night in her fantasies. Until they twisted into a sneer and his eyes grew cold. Then she understood what Death really looked like.
“Who are you?”
“Does it matter?” He tugged at the sleeve of his suit coat. When she didn’t answer, he let out a soft huff of breath. “Very well. I guess every condemned Unequal deserves to learn who brought its life to an end. I’m Citizen Matthew Jenner.”
“Citizen what?” The question quivered as it escaped her.
Jenner laughed. “You’re the first to ever ask my occupational title. For a pretend physician, you are not the sharpest scalpel on the tray, are you?” After another man strode up and tapped his shoulder, he said, “We really should be going.”
Rue’s curiosity held her firm.
“Very well. Since you can’t figure it out on your own, my full title is Citizen Executioner.” A shiver ran down her back. “Happy?”
Before she could stop herself, she bent at the waist and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the man’s shoes. As a sharp blow fell against her left ear and the world turned black, she wondered if she was on her way to join Hubert.
And she’d never asked the woman’s first name.
SIX
Rue opened her eyes, truly amazed to not be dead. Then she moved. The pain coursing through her made her wish they finished the job. She wasn’t sure what happened after someone died, but it had to be better than the agony shooting through her skull. Reaching one hand up to her temple, her fingers encountered a glob of sticky mess. She didn’t need to see it to know what it was. Blood was something she’d spent too much time trying to keep inside a human body and too much time mopping up from the floors to forget the scent.
Permeating beyond the pungent stench, citrus wafted to her nose, followed by something too close to the inside of a portable toilet to want to explore further. Wherever she was, someone had attempted to clean, but the stench left behind was too powerful for the strongest, lemony deodorizer. If she had to guess, she’d say this was the last room many of the Unequal saw before they went to wherever the DOE disappeared them to.
She pushed herself up, surprised to feel the floor give way beneath her hands. Turning her head hurt, but it was the best way to survey her surroundings. The floor hadn’t moved, she discovered. She was lying on the world’s hardest bed. Whoever dumped her there had been kind enough to not put her on the concrete, amidst stains Rue’s years of janitorial duty couldn’t identify.
One corner of the cell held an ancient toilet encrusted with unimaginable filth. As desperately as she needed to relieve herself, merely considering the possibility made her want to vomit. Taking stock of herself, she noted they’d left her in the stolen scrubs, but they’d taken her shoes and socks. Even if she wanted to brave the disgusting lavatory, she couldn’t imagine touching her bare feet to the fetid floor. A bubble of hysteria rose at the irony of losing her actual belongings while being allowed to keep what she’d stolen. The bubble broke and a sound erupted from her chest, so far from laughter it scared her.
Outside the grim little room, she heard someone say, “She’s awake.” The reality of that one voice choked off the sick sounds she was making. Any minute, someone would arrive to take her to the end of her life. Dirty feet didn’t seem so important in the face of losing control of her bladder.
Walking on the tips of her toes, she crossed the room and made use of the facilities allowed to her. A tiny sink hung haphazardly from the wall nearby, but the brown ooze would’ve been worse than not washing her hands.
Germs kill, she thought. But so does heavy metal poisoning. The idea almost made her lau
gh again, but afraid of what such a sound meant for her sanity, she choked it down. In her readings on the diseases of the body, she’d also read some about the diseases of the brain. With her nerves so frayed, she teetered on the edge of hysteria. Or maybe it was gallows humor attacking her. That her life had come to this was ludicrous. Death by dirty floor versus death at the hands of the DOE—one way was as farcical as the other.
“If you’re quite finished,” Jenner said from beyond the metal door.
“You don’t need my permission to enter.” It wasn’t the time for the smart mouth her father always accused her of having. But if not now, when?
The door swung inward, its sharp crack against the wall making Rue jump.
“Whatever you may think of me,” Jenner said as he strode into the room, “I’m not an animal. There are certain courtesies among civilized people.”
Marshalling what little courage she could find, she gave a little curtsy. “Whatever you say, Citizen Executioner.”
“As I said, think what you will.” He held a pair of disposable slippers out toward her. “Put these on and follow me.”
Rue crossed her arms over her chest. “And if I choose not to?”
His eyes darkened. “Then I will behave like the animal you imagine I am. If these men have to drag you kicking and screaming behind them, so be it. Suffice it to say, it will be neither pretty nor pleasant.”
She snatched the slippers and slid them on her grungy feet. “If you’re taking me somewhere important, you might want to offer a shower. I’m not exactly presentable for civilized people.”
Her barbed words had no effect. “You needn’t worry about your appearance, Citizen Janitor Logan. The council is aware of your occupation.”
His barb struck her like a slap across the face. He nodded toward the stains on the floor. “Besides, the council has seen worse. Much, much worse.”
Rue didn’t need an overactive imagination to understand his meaning. Tamping down the images that sprang unbidden into her head, she preceded Jenner out of her cell and into a brightly-lit hallway. Once her eyes adjusted, she found herself in front of an entire bank of windows. One glimpse revealed their location—square in the middle of the government sector of the city.
Although she’d never seen them up close, she couldn’t mistake the buildings occupied by the Department of Equalization. Her worst nightmares hadn’t brought her here. Those bleached-bone structures were in enough video feed to make each as familiar as her own face. They had been the face of her nightmares since the kitten…
Pets weren’t on the proscribed list of what was considered equal but at the age of eleven, Rue had found a lame kitten. She hadn’t had the heart to simply leave it to limp away and die. Instead, she smuggled it into her home inside her jacket and hid the furry thing in a box in the basement. She’d face another round of gray tape and videos if her father discovered this additional sign of her inequality. She had been too shortsighted to consider what might happen to the cat. Before too long, it disappeared. Unable to muster the courage to ask after her pet, she assumed the government absconded with it the way they took everything else.
If only her assumptions had been right.
A few years later, torrential rain flooded the back yard and she discovered tiny kitten bones jutting through the mud. The exact color of the damn DOE buildings.
Jenner stepped in front of her, blocking her view. “Shall we?” The question came out as though he’d asked her to dance. His slender hand, held out for her to precede him, was as beautiful as his face. Once upon a time, men had written books about angels and gods and miracles. And devils. Jenner appeared to be an angel. Such hands as his might have worked miracles in surgery. Unfortunately, the person attached to them wasn’t any sort of heavenly or miraculous. He definitely wasn’t in the business of saving lives. Far from it.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked him. “You aren’t Equal any more than I am.”
A sly smile played across him firm lips. The disparity of his beauty and the darkness within him was enough to make Rue dizzy. He gave no answer as he fell into step beside her, and she somehow knew better than to ask again.
The hall ahead was clear, a dazzling white and cleaner than she’d ever been able to get the hospital floors. Judging from the footsteps behind her, they had at least two guards. Probably armed, their weapons probably pointed at her head. Unless she could force herself to jump out a plate glass window and survive a fall of several stories, she had no way out. Part of her had to admit the mystery Jenner had swirled in front of her back in her basement home was tempting. Oh, she would take Hubert’s advice and run at the first opportunity, but she did want answers. She needed to clear up the contradictions and the confusion.
Unless this was a sick, little game. Like a cat with a baby mouse—torment her before closing in to snap her neck.
As they shuffled her past door after door, Rue had little to do but put one foot in front of another and brood. All her life, she had wondered about what happened to someone who was disappeared. Soon, she would find out. She assumed disappeared meant dead. If her assumption was correct, the DOE would have no need for all these rooms.
“What’s the point of this place?” she asked, not expecting an answer.
Jenner let out a soft snort. “The populace really should thank the DOE for making you a janitor instead of a doctor. If you had half a brain, the point would be perfectly obvious.”
“A jail?” She’d read about them. She’d seen pictures. But in the world of the Equal, breaking the law was an admission to the world you were Unequal. “You keep the disappeared here? They aren’t killed?”
“For a time, the Unequal are housed here. But some are, in fact, terminated. As your friend Hubert can attest. Or rather, she would if she wasn’t in the process of being incinerated.”
A shudder passed through her so hard she feared her collarbone would snap.
“If you were Equal, a single death wouldn’t affect you so much.”
How dare he? She couldn’t let herself believe the Equal were unfeeling. They were simply better at hiding their feelings.
Rue’s hands clenched into fists. One good swing and she could knock Jenner’s teeth into the back of his throat. One good swing might give her time to run. Then again, it might also encourage the guard to put several bullet holes in her back. “She wasn’t meaningless.”
The words she threw at Jenner in place of a punch weren’t nearly as satisfying and were totally ineffective. Instead of rocking him back, they amused him. “Of course you don’t think so. You and she were sisters in kind, weren’t you? Two ladies of mercy working diligently to save mankind—even if mankind doesn’t want to be touched by Unequal hands.”
Anger swept through her until a red haze distorted everything in her sight. Her commitment to saving lives wasn’t generous enough to include this insect. Fingernails dug half-moons into the skin on her palms and her teeth gritted so hard, she felt as if her jaw would break. She couldn’t escape, but maybe she could calculate a way to stop Jenner. If she was going to lose her life anyway, maybe she could take him with—
“We’re here.” He jerked her to a stop. “Maybe you’ll have more success getting your questions answered inside.” He smiled again, and Rue couldn’t believe she ever considered this man physically attractive. The evil inside him colored everything he was a dingy brown.
Pushing the door open, he turned toward her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “In you go.”
He hadn’t pushed but, in the space of an instant, her legs turned to jelly and she stumbled into the room. Any slight bravado she may have found in the certainty of her death fled as quickly as it had come. Once the door clicked closed behind her, she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a little ball and cry.
Inside, a cold light glared. From where Rue stood shivering, she could vaguely see a table with three people seated behind it. As her eyes adjusted, some of her paralyzing fear dissipated. She faced nothin
g more than a trio of normal looking people. They couldn’t match the evil Jenner exuded.
The man on the left sat forward, settling his rotundity on elbows inadequate for the job. In the center, a man younger than Rue tried his best to tame a cowlick. On the right, a plain woman folded her hands on the table in front of her. Rue could’ve passed any of them in the hospital’s hallways and not blinked twice. She never would’ve suspected these people worked for the DOE.
“Sit down, Citizen Logan.” The command came from the woman’s face, but her lips had barely moved. Obstinacy kept Rue standing. Until strong hands shoved her forward and pushed her onto a plastic chair.
“Thank you.” The woman sounded as if sitting had been Rue’s idea.
“I don’t understand. I haven’t done anything wrong.” The words burst from Rue. As truthful as they were, she longed to draw them back. She hadn’t done anything wrong, except be more than Equal. And every word out of her mouth underscored the fact. “What do you want with me?”
“You’re smart enough. I bet you can guess what we want.” The portly man levered himself into a more casual position.
Of course, she could guess. They wanted everyone to be equal, even if it meant weeding out certain people to reach full equality. “If you’re going to terminate me,” she said, resigning herself to the eventual outcome, “this all is a waste of time, isn’t it? Have your boys do what they always do already and be done with it.”
The young man left off his attempts to tame his hair and leaned forward. “What is it you think our boys always do, Citizen Logan?”
“Terminate the Unequal.”
The woman pinched the bridge of her nose. “I believe you misunderstand. We aren’t interested in terminating you.”
“You’re not?”
The rotund man chuckled. “Certainly not. The country needs people with your skills, Citizen Logan.”
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