by J B Cantwell
Good. Keep going.
“So, you’re telling me that you didn’t help them in the end. Is that true?”
That part of my story was true. I hadn’t actually done anything to help them. The plan to take out the transponder buildings was to take place eight months from now, not back then over the fall break.
“Yes, it’s true,” I pleaded. “After that, when I realized I was being followed, I tried to hide out. I thought that maybe Hannah wanted to kill me.”
“And yet you went back to the barracks. Why?”
“I guess I figured she couldn’t do it there without getting caught. But when we were out, she could have done it, could have arranged it to look like an accident.”
“I find it curious that she was the one who helped you get to Williams back in the tunnels. What do you think changed? Why would she suddenly be after you?”
“I don’t know. Orders? She seemed high on her orders to follow me, and I knew she was figuring things out, that I was hiding from her. I don’t know why, but she turned against me.”
The door suddenly slammed open, and Major Tanning walked inside.
“She turned against you,” he said, “because she knew you were trying to escape. A stickler for the rules, that one. All of the rules but for one: don’t injure or kill a fellow soldier. Doing so would make the Service lose an asset, in this case, you. Luckily for her, she didn’t take things so far. She instead did her duty as required.”
“You consider me to be an asset?” I asked, surprised.
Sure, I had led a couple missions, but I had broken the rules, too. I had let Lydia follow us in Edmonton even though she was injured. I had insisted that Alex, broken leg and all, should join us, too. And back at Lake Saint Jean, when the Fighters had captured me, I had told them how to take out the Primes.
Though, Tanning didn’t know about that.
Tanning didn’t know about a lot of things.
I was relieved to see Fraser pull out a small rag from his pocket and wipe the blood off the baton, then slide it back into its casing. I let myself breathe for what felt like the first time in an hour.
“I expect that we’ve heard enough, soldier,” Tanning went on. “It seems you’ve been played a fool by the Volunteers. They are known for making promises they can’t keep. Your connection with them, and the simple fact that you were trying to escape the Service without fulfilling your contract, is enough for me.”
My breath caught again as he drew a pistol from his belt. He stepped forward and cocked it, pointing it directly at my forehead, so close until it was touching.
This was it. It was enough. He didn’t need any more reason to kill me than what I’d told him. I was relieved that I had held onto the most important pieces of information. Maybe Alex could carry out the plan without me. Maybe he would find a way to get help from the Volunteers, if any of them had survived at all. Either way, my interrogators didn’t know the plan for the transponder buildings. I had kept it quiet so that there could be a chance for someone else to carry it out.
All that was left was me, Tanning, and that gun.
He pushed it harder against my forehead, and I held my breath, waiting.
Goodbye.
He turned off the safety and put his finger on the trigger. I closed my eyes.
He fired.
But no death came to me. No bullets left the chamber, only a metallic sounding click.
He stepped back and holstered his gun. I looked up at him, surprised.
“There is one other use for you,” he said, and he smiled. “I hear they are short staffed at the burning plants. I think that might be a good fit for you. You can serve your country, as you originally intended to do, after all.”
“No!” I cried automatically. “Please. You can’t send me there. I’ll die if you send me there.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “Though I think you could benefit from a slow, painful death. I won’t be giving you the luxury of a bullet. Not today.”
He turned to the glass and spoke.
“Jeremy,” he said. “Please come in and take soldier Taylor to the holding cell. She can wait there for transport in the morning.”
A crackling voice came through a speaker on the wall.
“Yes, Sir.”
A few moments later, the door banged open, and a practically giddy looking Jeremy came waltzing through it. He put his hands on my arms and pushed, forcing me to stand. Then, he turned me around, a wicked smile plastered across his pale face.
“Sounds like you got off easy,” he said, pushing me toward the door.
I left the room without a look back. I knew that begging would get me nowhere.
But I would have to survive. I could survive. I would.
Jeremy led me into a room down the hallway from the interrogation room and shoved me inside. He uncuffed me, and I rubbed at my bloodied wrists, turning to him.
“Maybe I did,” I said. “But, when the time comes, you won’t.”
“What are you talking about?” he scoffed. “I’m not the one going to the Burn.”
“Maybe not. But make no mistake; they’ll get to you in the end. Whatever they tell you now is lies, and believe me, you won’t fare any better than a quick death at the end of a long barrel. I just hope I’m the one holding the gun.”
He shoved me, and I fell to the cold cement floor of the empty room.
“You deserve what you’re going to get.”
And as he slammed the door on his way out, I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
Almost everything had evaporated, every chance of success. We wouldn’t have access to C4 anymore, and the EMP would be nearly impossible to obtain. But we did have one thing that nobody else on our team did.
The location of the weapons, pre-made and ready to go. Maybe there was hope yet.
September 21.
I wouldn’t forget.
EPISODE 5
Chapter One
The Burn.
I held my breath, but I knew it was pointless. I wondered how long I would be here, hoping.
But I knew.
I would be here until the day I died.
I followed behind a tall man who towered above me, but he was not a Prime.
Soldier Tom Price
Designation: Red
Not a sergeant. Just a soldier like the rest of us. And a Red. I wondered how he had been assigned to a higher level job. Maybe it was just for show, a consolation for having to live his days amid the horrid smoke and ash this place produced. Maybe that was the prize for anyone who could handle wearing the sticky-hot suits to protect them from the fumes for more than a couple months.
Or maybe it was a punishment.
His protective suit made a swishing sound with each step that he took. A mask covered his lower face, and over his eyes, goggles. I had been offered no such protection, but I knew that eventually I would be wearing a suit just like his.
But not for long, if the rumors I’d heard were true.
Already, my eyes were itchy, and I tried hard not to rub them as he guided me through the facility. We walked over a steel bridge that traversed around the tall, metal stacks that I knew burned the garbage harvested from the ocean and the city. Together, they made a sickening brew that conveyed upon long, canvas belts on the way to one of the four burning towers.
Down below, I saw the men and women who had been forced to work here, whose relatively healthy lives had been ripped from them. The faces looked up to see who the new recruit was, but their eyes didn’t stay on me for long.
I was just another prisoner, another fool who’d signed up for the Service in hope of finding a better life at the end of my three-year-term.
Now, I had just a year-and-a-half left. If they would ever let me go after what I’d done.
Price turned down a part of the bridge that led to a tall, metal door.
“This is where your barracks are.”
He opened the door and held it for me.
I walked thro
ugh into a narrow hallway. The door made a sucking sound as he closed it behind us. An airlock.
“Down here to the left.”
I didn’t have anything with me. No neatly folded stack of clothes. No blanket. No pillow. I looked back at Price, and he nodded as he took off his face mask and pushed his goggles up over his forehead.
Inside was like any other barracks, only several soldiers sat on their beds with their heads in their hands. Some were passed out in their bunks.
“Why are they all here in the middle of the day?” I asked.
Heads raised as we walked through the room to the end of the line of bunks.
“This is you.” Price motioned to one of two empty beds. Taylor was written on a piece of paper laminated in plastic and hanging from the edge of the bunk. Beside the bed was a large set of cupboards. I opened one, and what I found there wasn’t unexpected. Still, it was a surprise.
My own suit, complete with goggles and mask. And a large patch with my name sewn onto the breast pocket.
“Mess is at 18:00 hours. Get situated, and be ready to start work at 19:00 hours. Night shift.”
I looked at the clock. 17:00.
He turned and walked back in the direction we’d come, pulling his protective gear over his face as he went.
I turned my attention back to the suit, running my hands over it, my heart sinking into my stomach. The exterior was a smooth plastic fabric, but inside the material was scratchy, like fiberglass. I wondered how long I would last wearing it.
The face mask was a full respirator. I picked it up and tentatively put it over my mouth and nose. Instantly, I felt like I was suffocating. Air was getting in, but it took much more effort to breathe compared to without it. The moisture of my breath filled the mask, and I immediately took it away from my face.
I looked up again, questions I couldn’t voice on the tip of my tongue as Price made his way to the door. I opened my mouth, but no words came.
As he passed back through the room, I noticed a young man staring at me, a lone set of bloodshot eyes amidst the six or seven other sets. Theirs stared blankly into space. But his …
Blake Wilson
Designation: Green
We locked eyes, and he stood up from his bed as Price opened the airlock down the hall. I barely heard it when the door slammed shut behind him.
I raced for Blake, tears already spilling onto my cheeks. We opened our arms and hugged, me crying into his shoulder. Back at Fort Jamison, I hadn’t really liked Blake, but seeing any familiar face now, one that reminded me of easier times, was a comfort.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “How did you end up here?”
We broke apart, and when we did, I saw the awful truth on his face. His eyes were rimmed red, the lower lids sagging. His cheeks, doubtless unprotected for who knew how long, were an angry shade of red. On his chin, several open sores. On his hands, too, like a pair of red, seeping gloves.
He had only been at the Burn for a year-and-a-half.
I was looking at myself in the future. Only his term would end in another eighteen months. Mine, likely, wouldn’t.
I didn’t know what to say. Where could I even begin? Here was a boy, a man, whom I’d distinctly mistrusted. He had been arrogant, aggressive.
Until now.
“I got caught … doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. Why can I see your designation? I thought—”
“They put our chips back to normal here. Guess they figure we’re all in the stew together. Doesn’t matter since we’re not on the battlefield. May as well know who’s standing next to you.”
I looked around the room and easily found two cameras mounted to the ceiling. They were always watching. And listening, when they could.
“What did you do?” he asked. “Kill someone?”
Of course I had.
“Yes, but that wasn’t it.”
“What then? You’re designation … it’s Black.”
My heart fell into my stomach.
Black. No one had told me, though I should have already known.
They would never let me go now.
Why hadn’t they killed me?
“I don’t want to go into it,” I said. “I— I don’t think it’s a very good idea.”
I eyeballed one of the cameras, and he nodded his head.
“On the floor, then,” he said.
“On the floor?”
“It’s pretty loud down there.”
He raised his eyebrows at me, then turned away. I looked up at the camera again, and I understood.
There was room here, room for stories to be traded without anyone being the wiser.
A tiny bubble of hope fluttered in my chest.
Maybe there was a way.
“But don’t even think about trying to escape,” he said as he walked back to his bunk, his voice louder than normal. “There’s no way out of here. And if they catch you trying to get out … well … it’s over.”
He turned around and sat back down on his bunk. I followed him and took an uninvited seat beside him. We sat in silence for a few moments. There was so much to take in. I didn’t know what to say.
“I remember the last time I saw you,” he began. “You were sitting on my bunk that time, too, consoling me when I found out I’d be headed here.”
I stared down at my boots.
“I’m sorry. I should have been … I don’t know. Nicer.”
“Are you kidding? You were the only one who said a word to me that day. And you were nice. Plenty.”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and forced himself to smile, though it looked more like a grimace.
It was the thought that counted.
“I didn’t know, though,” I said, “what you’d be facing. I didn’t understand.”
We had all just been scrambling on top of one another, then, fighting to stay as close as we could to the top of the pile, letting others fall away as their failings caught up with them. And those who fell the hardest, those who weren’t strong or big or murderous; they were sent here.
And, of course, nobody could understand until they lived it. Not really.
Well, I was an hour in, and I had more of an understanding of this place than I would’ve wished on anyone.
“The food is better,” he said, trying to console me, now. “We get butter in our mash. And sometimes chicken, even. And the nutrition squares, they’re the sweet kinds, you know, the more expensive ones. We could never afford those growing up. They’re not bad with a bit of water to wash them down.”
Food. He was trying to make me feel better because of the food. One of the things they must have doled out in a place like this, just enough of something good to give the people here to counter the horror of their residency, their misfortune, their bad luck.
I wasn’t hungry.
“So, what’s it like?” My eyes fell onto his lower lids, and I put my hand to my own face. “How long?”
“For the eyes? They last the longest. The goggles aren’t so bad.”
I gently picked up one of his hands, raw, like uncooked meat.
“How did this even, I mean, what even does this to a person?” I asked.
He carefully took his hand away and hugged it to his chest.
“This was my own fault,” he said. “I was caught in a part of the building that was off limits. I’d gotten lost.” He raised his eyebrows again, and I understood. A lie.
That little bubble of hope in my chest grew the tiniest bit.
“They punish us here, you know, for cheating the rules. My hands took a beating from an acid wash, my punishment for wandering across an invisible line.”
Oh, my God.
“But don’t worry about that. They provide us with gloves. Good ones. As long as you stay on the straight and narrow, this won’t happen to you.”
“What is it, then?” I asked. “The worst part?”
Blake laughed.
“Too many to count.”
W
e sat in silence for a few moments. From across the room, one of the sleeping workers started coughing, waking himself from the force of his coughs.
“That’s one right there,” Blake said. “The stuff gets into our lungs.”
Yes, I had heard about that, the cancer that came. And though most cancers were a thing of the past, treatable and survivable, there was something different about the kind people got from the burning plants. The fumes were the culprit, the main problem. Forget the skin rashes. The melanoma. The blindness. It was the air we all sucked into our lungs that would do us in in the end. It had become the new smallpox of our generation. The new, dreaded way to die, with your airways filled with fluid, drowning you until you breathed no more.
I tried to smile.
“It’ll be different for me,” I said, determined. “I’ll keep my mask on.”
Blake looked at me sideways.
“I hope you do. You should.”
“How long did you last?”
He paused, looking down at his hands, thinking. Then, finally, he looked up.
“Six months.”
Only six months.
“I guess I figured it was pointless to fight it. I’m probably going to die anyway. Or go blind. Most do. May as well breathe freely and go fast.”
“Oh, Blake.”
So terrible.
“But hey, like I said,” he elbowed me jovially, “sweet nutrition squares.”
And buttered mash.
I thought I might be sick.
“Listen, you’d better get moved in over there. When you’re done with your shift, you’re going to want to have a bed ready.”
I looked across the room to my waiting bunk.
Yes.
I stood up.
“Thanks, Blake. When are you on next?”
“Not until tomorrow. 0800. The shifts are six hours. I’ll see you early morning. And maybe we can get a shift together sometime. After you settle in, they sometimes let you make schedule requests.”
The man across the room started up another coughing fit, and my breath caught in my chest.
It would be different for me. I could do this. I was stronger. Stronger than any of these people.
