Then, she went outside as I quickly changed clothes and put on my new shoes; my new outfit wasn’t the exact fit and I didn’t think I would be the next model, but as long as I got the heck out of this place it didn’t matter.
I walked over to the door, knocked on it and the nurse came back in.
“Who are you and why are you helping me?” I gestured.
“I don’t have the time to explain everything now,” the nurse motioned. “We only have a short amount of time before the camera is turned back on. I need to get you out as this is the only chance we may get Marinette.”
I decided not to pressure her to answer me, but hoped again this wasn’t some kind of trap. “I know there are other women being held here who are being used as test subjects so that I will tell Dr Liverfield whatever she wants. Can we at least help them escape too?”
The nurse shook her head. “I know who you are talking about. You mean like Cecilia, right?”
I nodded, but doubted if what I was suggesting was even possible.
The nurse continued. “I am sorry we don’t have the time. My only assignment is to get you out of here silence breaker. You must follow my instructions carefully, okay? This will be our only chance.”
I nodded reluctantly and knew I was leaving behind people whom I couldn’t save, but I promised myself I would return for them. I was surprised she called me “silence breaker” as if the title was officially mine.
“Follow me and stay as quiet as possible,” the nurse signed as she led me outside into the corridor.
The nurse walked quietly two steps in front of me as I followed her without making any sound. We went down one corridor, then another and then another before she opened an emergency exit door and we started going down some stairs. I figured this must be the fire escape stairs and we kept going down floor by floor for a good five minutes. At the tenth floor the nurse stopped and pushed me against the wall as the door one floor below us opened and two military men walked out, looked up and down, and then went back in.
The nurse didn’t move for another few minutes as I assumed she was trying to listen and then the alarm bells started ringing.
“Run now!” the nurse motioned as we started running down the remaining ten floors.
The nurse was super athletic as she ran down the steps and I didn’t know if I could hang on as I was breathing like crazy and my legs were getting tired, but I pushed on.
Then, we heard footsteps from above us as obviously the men must have seen us and we started leaping several steps at a time in our rush to the basement and I didn’t know how I managed to stay from tumbling down the stairs and breaking my neck. Once we reached the basement the nurse opened a door, peeked outside first, then pushed me outside without saying anything and closed the door separating us.
What was she doing? Before I could bang on the door an arm grabbed me, pulled me away and something was put over my eyes blinding me as I was dragged away.
SEVEN
I didn’t resist and let myself be dragged because I had no choice left and hoped this was the right decision I had made since the alternative was Dr Liverfield and her killing of innocents to get the truth out of me.
After being dragged for what seemed like several meters, I heard a door being opened, I was shoved in, the mask over my head was removed and, as my eyes adjusted, I realized there were two faces in front of me: a man and a woman. Both of them wore dark clothes, seemed to be in their late twenties, at least the woman, and the woman smiled briefly at me.
I discovered I was sitting inside the back of a van which had all the windows blackened so I couldn’t see what was going on outside and neither could anyone outside see anything inside.
“Stay quiet Marinette we are here to help you,” the man signed and then banged on the side of the van and it started moving.
I obeyed their request, waited as the woman took out two blue pills and a water container and passed them to me. “Please take these now and wash it down with water.”
“What are they for?” I signed.
The woman pointed again at the pills.
I had to trust them since there was no one else I knew in Vinder and I swallowed the pills and drank the water, which tasted a bit unusual. If they were trying to drug me it would be no different from whatever Dr Liverfield had done to me.
No one said anything more until a few minutes passed by and then the man signed. “My name is Sam and this is Lara. The pills we had you swallow is to help stop the tracker they injected into you. The pills will neutralize and shut down the tracker. I am sure you know the Council would have inserted a tracker inside of you when they captured you. It is their standard way of watching over their captives. Just give it a few minutes for the pills to do their work.”
I felt so violated again by Dr Liverfield and I didn’t know what else they had done to me since I couldn’t remember much of my time with them. I felt my anger rising, but did my best to control it as I didn’t want to release a sound here.
After a few minutes Sam turned to Lara. “Can you check her now?”
Lara pulled out a black device and positioned it towards me. “Yes, she is in the clear. The tracker has been deactivated.”
I felt relieved at her words, but unsure whether Dr Liverfield had injected anything else into me that these two people wouldn’t know about.
Sam then banged on the side of the van twice and I felt the van jump forward at a greater speed.
“Do not worry about the tracker anymore,” Lara signed. “It is harmless now that it is ineffective.”
I didn’t know anything about trackers, but, at least, I understood what was going on with the pills and wondered what I had gotten myself into coming here to Vinder.
I nodded, but was still confused as to what was going on here except for the fact that they had helped me to escape from Dr Liverfield’s facility.
“Who are you?” I signed.
Sam smiled. “Oh, we forget to mention that part. Sorry about it. We are part of the Resistance here in Vinder.”
“Resistance? What is that?” I indicated, even more bewildered.
“We are an organization which is fighting against Dr Liverfield and her plans to use the process to find silence breakers like you while killing parents,” Lara gestured. “The Resistance is the name of our group and actually we are just one part of the group. The Resistance is large and spread out over many areas in Vinder and the surrounding towns.”
“So, you know what is the process then?” I signed.
Sam continued. “Oh, I thought you knew about it already?”
I shook my head and waited in anticipation for him to explain everything.
“The process is a way by which parents voluntarily come in for a special treatment with the hopes of having children born with the larynx intact,” Sam motioned. “The parents are very hopeful when they join the programme because they know it is experimental and there could be a chance for their newborn to be able to speak. The special treatment is a combination of many drugs, but at the center of it all is a special purple liquid.”
Finally, I found the answer that had brought me all the way to Vinder and I realized what the woman in the car explosion wanted me to stop, but I still didn’t know how I could even do it.
“But I thought there was no way to grow back the larynx?” I highlighted.
Lara smiled. “This is what everyone has been told, and which is true, but people never stopped trying to find ways to fix the problem. The process is the biggest scale operation we have ever seen. It is the biggest because it has many supporters in high places and has been going on for years.”
“How long have you been part of the Resistance?” I signed.
Sam smiled again. “I told Lara here that you were going to ask this question.”
Lara nodded. “The Resistance has also been around for many years, but for a long time we were never able to prove anything about Dr Liverfield because she is powerful and had ways of shutting us
down and keeping us on the run. Then, we heard about you Marinette through our Resistance sources working in the Magistrate in Thomson and everything changed. We had been waiting to meet you, but didn’t expect it to happen in this way or this soon.”
“Sources like the nurse who helped me escape just now?” I motioned. “What will happen to her? Will she be okay?”
“Amanda will be fine because she has been working there for a few years now and has earned their trust,” Sam replied back. “She has also learnt how their cameras and security systems work. So, you don’t have to worry about her. We were surprised when we heard from her of your arrival in Vinder because we didn’t anticipate it and neither did Dr Liverfield. I think it took all of us by surprise when you suddenly appeared. Once we were informed of what Dr Liverfield was doing with the test subjects we had no choice, but to get you out of there quickly before it got worse. Dr Liverfield is well known for using extreme measures to get what she wants and she will stop at nothing.”
I hoped Amanda would be safe inside that horrible facility because it wasn’t a place I would wish anyone to work at ever.
“I wanted to help those test subjects escape too,” I gestured.
“It is impossible and too risky,” Sam indicated abruptly.
Lara smiled. “Don’t get us wrong. We want to help everyone caught up in this process, but we needed to get you out first. With you out here those test subjects in there will hopefully stay alive for now.”
Lara did have a point.
“You are the first sign of hope for all of us and your existence proves what we have been fighting for so long has not been in vain,” Lara motioned.
The van came to a stop, Sam opened the door, we all got out and I found myself standing in front of a faded building and the neighbourhood around me appeared to be dark and run-down, which was completely unlike the Vinder I had encountered when I first arrived here.
“I know this isn’t the Vinder you were at earlier or even the one you had heard of,” Sam indicated as if reading my mind. “Vinder isn’t all about sky high buildings and high speed trains. There is a lot more poverty in Vinder than most people know about, but it is mostly in outlying areas, which are neither shown in the media nor talked about by the Council. The Council pretends to ignore these areas and hope one day they will simply vanish from their city. In fact, many such places are being destroyed by the military even as we speak.”
“Destroyed?” I signed. “Then what happens to the people who live in these places?”
Sam exchanged glances with Lara. “I am sure you can guess Marinette.”
I couldn’t believe the Council was destroying homes and lives, getting rid of people who didn’t live up to their pristine status and there was no one who could stop them.
“There must be someone who can stop all this,” I signed.
“There are a few people in the Council who think differently, but Dr Liverfield and her supporters control everything and it’s very hard for these few people to change anything,” Lara gestured.
I signed. “So what is this place?”
“Let’s go in and you will see,” Sam motioned.
EIGHT
As the van disappeared around a corner, Sam led me inside the building, which looked like one of those in the wasteland areas of Thomson where I had been reunited with Oliver after the explosion at the bookstore.
The moment we walked in, I realized it was far from such a building because inside there was a buzz of activity with groups of people standing around. The center of the floor had a large table, there were pockets of chairs spread out around, a kitchen could be seen in the back with several doors, most likely leading to other rooms.
“Everyone please gather around,” Sam signed.
About ten to fifteen people of different age groups, most of whom were young and some even younger than me, all gathered around us.
“This is Marinette, the world’s first ever silence breaker,” Lara indicated and started clapping.
Everyone joined in the clapping and I was quite uncomfortable with all the attention being given to me because I hadn’t really done anything yet, I didn’t know what I was expected to do and I didn’t want their expectations of me to be so high. I smiled at them briefly and then the clapping stopped.
Lara continued. “Marinette will be staying with us. So, please give our special guest some time to rest and you will all have your chance to talk to her during the next few days.”
I was thankful Lara said it because I wasn’t in the mood of making a speech despite the fact I sensed they wanted me to say a few words. To be honest what could I say to them as I was just a girl from a town who was only able to make sounds and not even properly speak yet.
As the people returned to doing their own things, Sam went away to talk to a group of men and Lara led me to a corner and we sat down.
“Thank you,” I signed. “It was too overwhelming just now and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Based on the last several days I wasn’t ready for this and the silence breaker title is still something I am getting used to.”
Lara continued. “Yes I noticed and it is understandable. Being a silence breaker isn’t something anyone would want I think. I know I certainly wouldn’t. I cannot imagine the pressure you are under because of all of this.”
“Where did this whole thing about the silence breaker come from?” I gestured.
I was glad to have someone older like Lara here with me and I hoped she could help me understand everything going on. Vinder wasn’t Thomson and everything was so different here and I needed someone to guide me a bit.
“I think it was a term which came during the early days of the outbreak of the sickness that wiped away our speaking ability,” Lara motioned. “In those days people were looking for a person who could break the vicious cycle and some how they started using this name for anyone who was able to speak again. People thought they had found such people and as you can expect it excited everyone in those days, but upon further investigation by the authorities, these people were all fakes just trying to get attention. Over time people stopped searching or expecting to find any silence breaker and silence became the norm. Despite all of this, the silence breaker became a mythical name which was passed down the generations.”
“Who are all these people here? I mean I realize some of them are even younger than me,” I signed. “Where did they come from?”
“These people are like you Marinette except they cannot make any sounds,” Lara started. “They were born to parents like yours who went through the process, but in the end they were normal like all of us, meaning they couldn’t speak. We managed to get them away from Dr Liverfield before they could harm them.”
“Harm them?” I signalled in confusion.
Lara continued. “Dr Liverfield’s men not only kill the parents after the child is born, but after the child reaches the age of completion and Dr Liverfield realizes the child is unable to speak, her men quickly get rid of the children. Some are fortunate to disappear into the fabric of society; others we rescue, but many don’t make it beyond the age of completion.”
“Oh my gosh!” I motioned. “Who are they to kill people?”
“Like the test subjects inside the building you escaped from Dr Liverfield doesn’t care at all,” Lara indicated. “She considers those children who cannot speak as evidence if they grow up to be adults and start asking questions about everything. So, it was the quickest way to dispose of the evidence because, if not, there would be so many people who could share what the process was about.”
It also meant if I hadn’t begun to make sounds by the age of completion I would have been eventually killed by Dr Liverfield’s men. I felt nauseated thinking what could have been.
“I know you are probably thinking you would have been killed too,” Lara gestured.
“It did cross my mind,” I signed.
“We don’t need to care about what could have happened anymore since now you can make so
unds,” Lara motioned. “With your arrival I think Dr Liverfield will stop doing it because she doesn’t know why you can make sounds and why others cannot.”
I was hopeful that such changes would save the rest of the children who were reaching the age of completion this year.
“Do you know how many such children exist out there?” I signalled.
Lara shrugged. “We wish we knew, but we don’t. My guess would be hundreds possibly.”
I couldn’t believe there were hundreds of children like me living everywhere.
“Was the woman who died in Thomson someone who found out the truth about all this?” I signalled.
Emerging Above the Silence Page 3
