All my energy has to be focused on getting Skylar and myself out of here, but I have to be patient. I’m good at being patient. You can’t discover a cure for the deadliest virus known to man without being patient. However, I’m on a deadline I didn’t have before. One wrong move in this prison and someone will kill me, and, according to Warden Black, we are all going to die here, it’s just a matter of time.
Time is my enemy. Still, an escape from a place like this seems less complicated than the meticulous study of a virus to find a cure. It’s the same kind of process. Identify the virus’ weak points. Exploit those weak points. Learn what you can and can’t do with the virus. Learn how it responds, how it doesn’t respond. Continuously test.
Test, test, test.
Testing will be the most challenging part of learning how to escape the prison. You can’t very well test the weak points of a three-layered prison fence in broad daylight without being shot. And like finding a cure for a virus, finding the weak points in a prison aren’t obvious.
Any problem in life can be solved with sound reasoning and patience. Considering this is only the first day, patience may be more difficult to maintain.
When it’s my turn to grab a tray and set it in front of the man to give me a ladle of soup, I am met with a dull stare almost as if the man’s brain had been left in his cell before he started his shift in kitchen duty. He doesn’t even look when he pours the soup half into the bowl, half onto the tray. It’s almost all broth with a tiny piece of carrot floating in the middle of the bowl. He grabs a piece of bread and splashes it into the bowl. Looking at the prisoners next to me, it seems my server only gave me half a portion.
I can’t say anything. Or I won’t. I know it will change soon enough, but I don’t have much of an appetite despite not eating for the past few days.
I turn from the man and scan the tables in front of me, looking for a free spot, preferably away from any of the other prisoners. There is an empty table a few rows down, and I make my way toward it. I’m hoping that with a shaved head and a uniform the same as everyone else, no one will really notice that I’m new.
I set the tray down and refuse to look up at prisoners filing by. I bring the bowl to my lips and sip the broth. There are hardly any calories in the soup. Barely any nutrients at all. I try sopping up some of the soup on the tray with the stale bread and stop when I hear a voice in front of me.
“Well, well, well,” the man says. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a newcomer.”
I keep my eyes fixed on the tray in front of me. Once the bread is sufficiently soaked, I bring it to my mouth and chew softly.
“Think he’s deaf?”
This time I look up and see two men standing over me. I try not to look surprised when I notice they are identical twins.
“No, I don’t think he’s deaf, Alex,” says the one on the right.
Alex nods his agreement but doesn’t say anything.
The man on the right points to his head. “The dried blood gives you away,” he says.
I look down, wanting to shake my head at my heedlessness. Of course I don’t blend in. A newly shaven head with dried blood all over it would stick out in a crowd. Maybe they were more gentle on Skylar.
“You’re welcome to have a seat,” I tell the men, motioning to the spot in front of me.
The man on the right grins and Alex maintains his scowled expression. “You hear that Alex? He says we can sit here. Our own seat!”
“I didn’t realize there were assigned seats,” I tell him. My pulse quickens. I don’t know if I have committed the sin of taking someone’s seat or if these two are just looking for trouble.
They don’t have trays. They’ve probably already eaten. If that’s the case, then they just spotted me and thought they would have some fun with a new prisoner.
“There are about twenty other new prisoners here looking for seats,” I tell them. “Why is it you’ve picked me?”
The man on the right shakes his head. “We didn’t pick you,” he says. “You picked us. You see, this table falls under our jurisdiction, don’t it Alex?”
Alex nods again.
“I don’t think you’ve got a permit to sit in our jurisdiction.”
“How do I go about getting one of those?” I ask, returning to my soup.
Looking away was my biggest mistake. Before I can react, Alex reaches for my tray and swings it back, throwing my bowl to the floor with a crash. He then brings the tray around with a quick swing that lands against the side of my face before I can even stand up.
My legs catch on the bench beneath me, and I’m on my back on the floor. Alex straddles me before I can roll away and continuously bashes the side of my face with the tray. I try to reach up to stop the blows, but Alex’s brother kicks me in the ribs every time I raise an arm. Being taken by surprise like this disables me from offering any defense.
All I can do is force my brain to concentrate on the pain receptors in my body and turn them off. Theoretically, this will give me enough energy to fight back without thinking about pain. There’s a catch. I may be able to stop the pain, but I can’t stop the perfectly placed blow that knocks me out cold.
My vision goes black. I hear and see nothing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Skylar
AFTER DINNER, EVERYONE filed into lines and marched back to their designated jobs. Since I hadn’t been assigned a job yet, the guards took me to my cell to sit in silence for a couple of hours.
I still can’t believe I’ve only been here for a day. My body is exhausted, but my mind continues to race, thinking about all the scenarios for escaping, unable to come up with anything that seems realistic. I know that if there is to be an escape, it’s going to be Papa who comes up with it. He wouldn’t want me to try and come up with something on my own, and I don’t want to mess up his plans.
Besides, it’s the first day. Papa would never want me to be looking for a way to escape on the first day. Right now is the time to learn about my surroundings—make sure I can survive today and tomorrow and the next day. If I were to ask Papa what he would have me do right now, he would tell me to lay low and try not to be noticed.
That’s exactly what I intend to do.
Though the air already smells like rot, the stench becomes more potent when the doors are opened in the corridors and the prisoners start filing back into the cell block.
Nine barely looks at me when she enters the cell and sits on the edge of her bed. I remain standing at the bars, watching as more prisoners file past. I almost get the feeling that I won’t find any trouble at all with the prisoners here because they seem too exhausted to cause a stir. That kind of thinking is dangerous. It’s the kind of thinking that will allow me to be relaxed when I should be on my guard.
I am unsure of how much Nine is willing to help. She seems like someone I can trust. That said, Warden Black is the one who put us together. Maybe Nine is supposed to feed him information about me. Perhaps he’s hoping to find out about my parents. He didn’t seem to believe me when I told him I was an orphan.
Questions burn in my mind, but I don’t want to pester Nine too much. She already seems unhappy to have a new cellmate. But my words can’t be held back. Looking across the way and listening to the echoing voices throughout the corridor, it doesn’t seem that the guards are too strict on talking at the moment. So, I take a deep breath and turn towards Nine.
When I look at her, my mouth hangs open as if the words get stuck in the back of my throat and I’m choking on them.
Nine cocks an eyebrow and sighs. “Yes?”
“I just…”
“Have a lot of questions?” she finishes for me.
“Yeah.”
She looks out into the corridor. “It all happens so fast in the beginning,” she says. “It almost feels like you will never be able to keep up. Everyone around you seems to know what they’re doing.”
“Yeah,” I say again.
“Then, one day it all just
slows down. Each day is a slow crawl into the next. It’s the same thing every day. Your job never changes. Your fear of death is only rekindled when someone close to you dies. But it’s impossible to live in constant fear. Somehow, we adapt even to this.” She looks at me, her blue eyes sunken underneath her darkened brow. “Our lives could be gone tomorrow, but is it not the same outside these prison walls?”
“Are you saying you would rather be here?”
She shrugs and looks back toward the corridor. “It isn’t easy, but life out in the Containment Zone isn’t easy. At least here I can know what to expect most of the time. I’ve never given the guards a reason to kill me.”
“Warden Black seems fond of you,” I tell her.
“Warden Black likes me because I don’t cause trouble,” she says quickly. “That doesn’t mean he won’t have me killed. They don’t need a reason, you know. He may decide I’m too old or my shift supervisor will tell someone I’m not as an efficient worker as I used to be. In a place like this, you get nervous when there are younger, newer inmates brought in. All of you make it look like the rest of us are getting too old and tired, which is the truth, I guess. Anyway, Black likes to meet with me once a week, but I'm not a rat. I just tell him the general mood of the camp most of the time.”
“What is disposal like?” I ask.
“It all happens in the fields,” she says.
“Outside the prison?”
She shakes her head. “The fields are still within the gates, though they’re some distance away. It’s basically a landfill. But when we take the bodies to be burned, we go outside the prison gates.”
“Why are there greyskins here?” I lean my back against the stone wall and slide my butt to the floor. I’m not sure Nine wants to answer all my questions, but she hasn’t waved me off yet.
“There are a lot of theories going around,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I know the real reason.” She stands, looks through the bars as if to see if there could be anyone nearby listening. She turns back to me and lowers her voice. “This is a testing and sorting site for greyskins.”
“Are they looking for a cure?” I ask, probably sounding a bit too eager.
Nine lifts an eyebrow. “Maybe that’s part of it, but no, that’s not the main reason they’re here. They test greyskins in many different ways. They test their resilience. Their strength. All the things they’re able to withstand. They inject the greyskins with other viruses. Anything you can imagine.”
“Why?”
“Well, I don’t really know,” she says. “That’s the part they keep a secret the most.” She looks through the bars again and falls silent as a guard walks by slowly. Once the guard is safely out of hearing range, she talks again.
“But if you really think about it,” she says, “you can deduce what is happening.”
Now, Nine squats next to the bars and sits about a foot away from me, lowering her voice even more as she talks.
“There is a man in charge of all of this,” she says. “In charge of the prison, in charge of the Containment Zone, in charge of everything beyond the Containment Zone. His name is Jeremiah. Have you heard of him?”
“Yes.” The name had come up in our home on occasion but was never discussed much. Papa had mentioned that someone named Jeremiah ran the government such as it was, but wasn’t really sure because Jeremiah had been around since he was a child. Either Jeremiah had been really young when he came to power or the world had lost its ability to communicate so much that news of new leadership had never reached a lot of people.
“Papa always said Jeremiah might not be a real person,” I say. “Or that he used to be, but we just never learned what happened to him.”
“Papa?” she says, her dark eyebrows rising.
I try not to let my shock show on my face. I shake my head quickly and look at the floor. “Before he died, I mean. Three years ago.”
I’m not sure she believes me, but I also think she might not care. “Jeremiah is very much a real person,” she says, “and he is still alive and in power. He resides in Screven, which is the place we are supposed to call our capital city. That’s why we call the soldiers we see Screven soldiers. And the guards here are technically Screven guards even though Screven is many miles away.”
“Well, I know that much,” I say. “But how do you know he’s real?”
“I’ve been alive a long time, Skylar. I know a lot more than I wish to know.” She looks away when she says this, staring at nothing in particular. She quickly recovers and looks me in the eyes. “But Jeremiah is not our fight, nor will he ever be.”
“What do you mean by that?” I ask.
She looks out for guards again. “Our first priority, our only priority, is to figure out a way to escape.”
“You’re trying to escape?” I ask.
Nine smiles. “Skylar, if you’re a prisoner here and you’re not trying to escape then you’re suicidal. I, for one, have not given up on life. I’m not even sixty, after all. I intend to at least make it to my eighties.”
“You’re not exactly doing so great, considering,” I say.
It’s the first time I’ve heard Nine laugh since I met her, and it’s loud enough to echo through the corridor, though no one seems to notice. She sets a hand over her mouth and lowers her head.
“Right you are,” she whispers.
“You still haven’t told me what you think is happening here,” I say.
“Well, Screven soldiers bring in new herds of greyskins every few days,” she says. “Somehow they sort through them, keep the strongest, experiment with some, then decommission others for whatever reason. Those are the ones I make sure are dead and won’t get back up and wander into the camp. Those are the ones we burn.”
“Where do the herds come from?” I ask.
“I don’t want to scare you,” she says.
“How can I be more scared than I already am? I’m in a death camp.”
“You have to grow up fast in this world, don’t you?” She says this with sadness in her eyes—a look that shows she knows what it means to have to grow up quickly. Given her age, she knew the world before it was filled with greyskins. She knew that world better than Papa could even remember. She had experienced an entire childhood without so much as a whisper of this kind of horror.
“Well,” she continues, “I now come to the reason why my cellmate was killed before you got here.” She swallows and takes a deep breath. “Her name was April. She had escaped a place called Concord only to be captured and brought here. They didn’t realize she had been in prison, they just thought she was another person trying to escape the Containment Zone. Concord is a camp much like this one, but for a much more terrible purpose.” She pauses, closes her eyes and shakes her head.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I can handle it.”
“If our purpose here is to weed out the weakest greyskins, the people of Concord are there to become the greyskins.”
I don’t know how many times my face can drain of color, but it happens again and my stomach begins to churn. “What?”
Nine’s voice lowers to a softer whisper, so I have to lean in to hear what she says. “She told me when people are captured and taken to Concord, they’re put in a cell to wait until it’s their time to be injected with the virus. They are locked up, put in cages and shipped here. Some of us then have to determine who the strongest is. Those greyskins are then shipped off somewhere else. The others remain here for testing or disposal.”
“But why?” I ask. “Who would do such a thing?”
Nine shakes her head. “A virus like this shouldn’t have lasted forty years,” she says. “It would have died out on its own or we would have found a way to eradicate it. But if you can keep the virus going, and if you can offer people protection in exchange for their freedoms, why wouldn’t you?”
“Because it’s horrible. It’s wrong.”
“Some people don’t care about right and wrong. Jeremiah is one of them. He wil
l send shipments of greyskins to attack town after town, village after village until the whole world is begging him for salvation.”
“He needs to be stopped,” I say.
Nine snorts. “Again, that’s not our fight. Everyone has to play their own role in the war against tyranny. Some have to take on the leaders, others have to survive long enough to make the world right again.”
That makes me think about Papa and the cure he created. Maybe that’s all he has to do. Maybe he won’t get a chance to save the world anytime soon, but if others can stop evil people like Jeremiah, then Papa will be able to provide a cure for humanity when the fight is over. He will be able to make the world right again.
“If you ask me,” Nine says, “I think there are a lot of places like Concord and Vulture Hill throughout the Containment Zone. I think that’s the whole purpose of the Containment Zone. They say they created it to keep out the overpopulation of greyskins from the rest of the world.” She shakes her head. “There’s only a large population of greyskins here because the government is making them.”
The lights instantly shut off in the corridor, and the whole building is covered in darkness. Guards shout, “Lights out!”
Nine doesn’t have to tell me that the conversation is over for now. There is no talking after lights out, and I don’t want to test the guards.
My mind is reeling, however. I can’t imagine everything Nine tells me is true, but what reason would she have to lie? It all makes sense. Sort of. I still can’t believe that one person could be so evil—to gather up people and turn them into greyskins?
It’s an evil so horrendous I can’t understand it. It makes me want to do something. It makes me want to fight somehow. But as Nine said, that probably isn’t my fight. I’m just a twelve-year-old girl stuck in a death camp who isn’t allowed to see her father. Nine is right. We have to figure a way out of Vulture Hill. Then we have to find a way out of the Containment Zone. From there, I don’t know.
Any other night Nine’s stories would have kept me up for fear of nightmares. Tonight is the exception. My body is so tired, so bruised, so exhausted, I’m asleep the moment my head hits the pillow.
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