by Liahona West
LIAHONA WEST
Copyright © June 2021 by Liahona West
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
Image/Art Disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
Editor: Riley at Rosebud Editing
Cover Artist: Danielle Fine of Design by Definition
ISBN 978-1-7368206-1-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-7368206-0-5 (eBook)
Published in the United States of America.
liahonawestauthor.com
For those who are still here,
despite all you have been through,
this is for you.
I see you.
You matter.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This story is about trauma. It is also about the beautiful endurance of those who go through great trauma in their lives and push themselves to heal. Just as with the victims you, dear reader, come across or have in your lives, please remember that the characters you are about to read about are trying to navigate their trauma and what healing means for them. Be patient. Be kind. And most important of all, read to understand.
CHAPTER ONE
Eloise
Through the grimy window, Eloise watched a magpie preen on a bare branch. The bird, black as night with a white breast and bathed in moonlight, puffed out its feathers, turned its beady eye upon her, and let out a single caw. She clenched the leather-bound hilt of a kukri knife in her fist.
The magpie, now joined by three more, eyed Eloise. She stepped away from the window and placed the kukri on a side table. Six more knives waited there, one for each year since her sister’s death. They were her insurance in case something went wrong. Her blood boiled; she knew she couldn’t take them with her.
Bali mewed, rubbing her bare skin across Eloise’s leg. She picked up the piebald, hairless feline, and a noise of protest escaped Bali’s throat. Eloise placed her on the bed, then slid on her leather boot.
Her eyes flicked back to the crows, and her skin crawled. A fourth one sat upon the branch. Even though she wasn’t the superstitious type, the history of the birds as ill omens, along with the beady stare of their tiny, round eyes made her stomach churn.
Damn birds.
Before leaving her room, she banged her fist against the tall glass window and the birds, except one, scattered.
Aware of the growing pit in her stomach and sweating palms, Eloise walked down the hallway lined with old classrooms toward a curving staircase.
Once outside, she took in a deep, cleansing breath, then released it. Going back was dangerous, she knew that, but until Seth’s health improved, she would never stop. Eloise made a promise at her sister’s grave years ago that she would watch over Ada’s best friend like he was her own brother.
Eloise waded through the grass that peeked through the hairline cracks on the road leading away from her home, an abandoned high school called the Compound. Stuck between a spit to the north that supplied clams, mussels, and various edible sea life, and a river to the south that offered salmon during their runs with fresh water to use in cooking, bathing, and washing clothes, the Compound was the best location within miles.
She loved her home.
In Eloise’s past few visits, Joy had grown hostile and unpredictable, and Eloise chose to ignore it, assuming Joy was simply having a rough day. But now that she looked upon the red brick building from the bottom of the hill, a sense of dread came over her.
This is the last time I’ll see the Compound, isn’t it?
With a wave of her hand as if to physically push the thought away, Eloise turned and walked toward her final destination: the lab. She only had to get through the abandoned vehicles and forest beyond.
For the next two hours, Eloise maneuvered through the endless graveyard of forgotten cars, rough with rust and covered with blackberry plants and ivy. Even with the moonlight, sight was difficult. More than once, she slammed her knee against car metal until it developed its own heartbeat.
“Damn it.” Eloise leaned against the tailgate of a Ford pickup missing its “F” and rubbed at her knees.
I need to be more careful.
Several more minutes of walking, avoiding the extended trailer hitches on some of the cars, brought her to a looming line of trees.
A dark and murky forest swallowed Eloise whole as she entered. The expanse of pine, cedar, and hemlock reached to the stars, their bare branches looming. Since the nuclear war ten years ago, the world had grown colder.
Trees and plants, fooled into believing winter approached, lost their leaves and never attempted to grow new ones. Aside from the plants the Compound grew, Eloise hadn’t seen a leaf bud or needle in close to seven years.
She knew what waited for her on the other side of the forest and as she grew closer to the end, her heartbeat amplified, her throat dried out, and she chewed on the inside of her lip. Every three months she completed the same ritual: leave after dusk, walk two hours alone, donate her nanite-laced blood to help Seth, and come home to wait three more months to do it again.
Eloise kicked a rock with a grunt. It clanged against a metal drum lying on its side. When is he going to get better?
She wanted, more than anything, for Seth to get better. If he were better, she would never have to see Joy again, never have to be subject to her belittlement. Joy made it clear Eloise was an object, a device for housing nanites for her son. Nothing more.
Seth will get better. He has to. I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.
The glow from a lone lantern acted as a beacon. She paused. Her hands trembled, and she swallowed hard. Once she walked around the trees and caught sight of her escort, that would be it. She would begin another exhausting cycle of going to Joy then going back home. Except she wasn’t sure that this time she’d make it home. Something loomed in the air Eloise couldn’t quite pin down, a sense of dread, triggered by the magpies outside her window.
I’m doing this for Seth.
Resolved, Eloise squared her shoulders and walked around the trunk of a tree.
Underneath the lantern light sat a man she called Smith. He refused to share his name, so Eloise had given him one. Smith’s blond hair brushed against his shoulders as he glanced up. He wore a green canvas jacket, the high collar folded over to allow a frayed scarf room to wrap around his neck, and a beige tee tucked into whitewashed jeans. His brown, deep-set eyes regarded Eloise, and he walked forward to meet her.
“Hey, kid. Ready?”
“Yeah.” Eloise removed her boots, emptied her pockets, and opened up her coat so Smith could pat her down. “I left the knives at home.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
He pulled the lantern off the branch and used it to illuminate their path through the quiet forest. Silver moonlight sliced through the darkness, broken into strands by gnarled branches, to touch the dark earth. Eloise stepped over an exposed root, then used the rocks as natural stairs. Some smaller pieces broke free and tumbled down the hill, cracking echoes bouncing through the forest.
The eerie silence gave Eloise goosebumps. She pulled her jacket close to her body and jogged to catch up to Smith.
“I’m curious,” Eloise said. “How come people don’t stop Joy? She’s done human experiments and literally everyone knows about it, but she’s
allowed to carry on as if it doesn’t matter.”
Smith shot her a curious glance. “She has a lot more power than you know.” He cleared his throat. “What you know of Joy is a small part of a much bigger and darker picture. Some of those experiments survived and are living in a village far from here. They’re safe from Joy, and now that you’re working with her, she has no interest in those who survived her torment. But, no one wants a repeat of what happened. When the five clans tried to get people to rise up and fight, they failed. They all remember what she did to their friends and families, how she wipes their memories and promises a reversal if they serve her for however long she wants.”
“That’s horrible.” An angry knot formed in her stomach.
Smith shrugged. “Once in a while, someone is stupid enough to try and stop her again, but they quickly learn how painful it is to come home to a family who doesn’t remember them.”
The light of the lantern cast shadows across Smith’s face. He made a strange noise in his throat and Eloise almost missed the quivering of his lips. “Is that…what happened to you? Did she do something to your family?”
He didn’t speak.
The forest opened up to a view of the ocean and a ghost town. Sailboats, forgotten by their owners After the bombs, remained moored and useless against the disintegrating docks. The torn-off rooftops, crumpled buildings that once lined the hillside, and cars laying upside down in a few large trees showed the remnants of a hurricane, unheard of in the entire history of the area.
They hiked down a hill and climbed over the hoods of two cars smashed into each other with a rear-facing infant car seat abandoned in one.
A twinge of sadness hit her stomach and Eloise’s gaze found Smith again as she jumped into the grass. “Do they…”
“They don’t remember me.”
Eloise blinked.
“My family,” Smith explained. “I tried to stop Joy several years ago. Her men beat me senseless and tossed me in the river. I think they hoped I would drown. When I found my way home, my wife and two daughters—” Smith’s voice broke.
Unsure how to console a man she barely knew, Eloise scratched the inside of her wrist and they continued in silence the remaining hour of their journey to Joy’s lab.
Hidden behind a row of shrubbery as long as a football field and overlooking the harbor, with a solitary lighthouse flanking the entrance, sat the facility. One piece of a wrought-iron gate hung by a single hinge, and the opposite side rested on the ground. Beyond it lay a courtyard of concrete tiles, grass, and various weeds pushing through cracks. A collection of twenty solar panels sat atop the roof. As far as Eloise knew, the facility was the only place with them, since they were rare in the Pacific Northwest even Before the war. Joy used them for one thing: powering the machines for nanite extraction.
“So, why go back to the person who destroyed your life?” Eloise picked a tall weed with a tare of seeds at the top and played with it in her hand.
A darkness passed through Smith’s eyes. Eloise’s throat tightened.
“If I serve her for nine years, she’ll restore my family’s memories.”
Eyes widening, a tingling wave crashed through Eloise. “How could someone be so cruel?”
“At her core, she’s a mother who is desperately trying to save her dying son. She just took it too far.”
“But,” Eloise said, scrambling for words, “someone needs to force her to face what she’s done.”
She jumped at Smith’s burst of laughter.
“And who do you suggest? The ones able to stop her won’t to protect their families and the ones stupid enough to make it to her facility disappear. Nothing is stopping this woman. Promise me, kid,” Smith put his hand on the door handle attached to the glass door, “once you get the opportunity, you will run as far away from here as you can. We’re all doomed. No sense for you to get snatched up in all this, too.”
Smith held the door open. Eloise paused, her heart sinking as she processed the tragedy he had shared with her, and swallowed despite her tight throat.
“You know where to go,” Smith said, his words gruff.
“Smith,” she paused at the door. “Why did you wait so long to tell me about your family?”
He scratched at his chin. “You didn’t need to know until now. Something’s coming and you’ll find out my part in it soon.” When she opened her mouth, Smith shook his head. “I can’t tell you more. Go. Don’t keep her waiting.”
His expression was one of urgency, so Eloise bit her tongue and jogged down the stairwell into the lower level of the facility. She rubbed her sweaty palms on her thighs.
I need my knives.
Without them, protection turned from sharp objects to fists, kicking, and biting, all inefficient compared to knives. Eloise shuddered and turned a corner.
Joy waited for her by a door halfway down the hallway. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. The woman held her body how Eloise imagined a noble would: head high, shoulders square, and hands clasped in front of her. She wore an emerald, shin-length dress, the sleeves cut off above her elbows, and her hair in a chignon. If it were not for the thick spread of grey hair at the front of her scalp, Eloise would have a hard time believing the woman was older than forty.
A boiling anger bubbled inside Eloise. She looked at the woman, regal and emotionless, and only saw the faceless people Joy had ruined. Families separated. People dead. Eloise’s fists shook.
“I trust my guard escorted you without incident?”
Eloise nodded.
“Good.” Joy turned and began walking further into the facility. Over her shoulder, she said, “Let’s begin nanite extraction.”
After years of walking the same path to the same room, following Joy was more ceremonial than necessary. The door creaked open and Eloise’s chest constricted. Inside the room was a hospital bed with plastic-coated railings and handlebars and a side table with twelve rubber capped glass vials. They clinked as Joy set them on a metal tray beside a clear, stout machine the size of a coffee maker.
Eloise rubbed her thumb.
Joy motioned to the bed.
For Seth. I’m doing this for Seth.
Joy stroked the vein in Eloise’s arm and she gritted her teeth as the nanites, separated from the others, set off small electrical impulses. Her skin stung and itched, and the muscles in her torso, limbs, and face twitched. Biting back embarrassment over the small involuntary movements she made, Eloise focused on the fake skylight with an image of clouds above her.
You can do this.
As a child, a car accident caused a ruptured spleen and when she became ill with a blood infection, her parents took her to Joy, begging the scientist to use the untested nanites to save her life. The tiny robots acted as her immune system, but they were attached to her organs, unable to be removed in large quantities. According to Joy, after the internal bleeding led to the discovery, extracting all of the nanites at once would tear her insides apart and she would die. So, they took only a small number at a time.
Eloise’s head grew heavy.
“Done.”
Joy pulled the needle from Eloise’s arm and transferred the vials of her blood to the centrifuge to separate the blood, plasma, and serum. Eloise’s head rocked back and forth as she tried to stay focused but heavy, invisible bricks weighed down her arms. The room tilted. The musky, sterile scent brought bile up her esophagus.
“Take her into recovery,” Joy said to a waiting assistant then looked at Eloise. “You can go see Seth now. Come back in three months.”
Two metallic thunks from the bed’s wheel locks sounded. Eloise laid prone on the mattress as the bed moved through the hallways. Residual electrical impulses poked at her body. Her skin hurt, and her bones ached.
She dozed, exhausted from the nanite extraction, and soon fell asleep. When she awoke in a windowless room, she had no way of knowing if it was the next morning or a few hours after the extra
ction. The irresistible urge to stretch came over her and she put her entire body into it, groaning and adjusting until her bones creaked.
“You’re late,” a slurred voice said.
Weak, Eloise turned her head to look at Seth. She forced a smile in greeting.
With a bit more meat on his bones, Seth would be the talk of the town. If a town existed. Sparkling grey eyes, curly brown hair that always seemed to fall in front of his eyebrows, and full lips sitting right under a Grecian nose. At seventeen, his sickness stripped the color from his skin, made it hard to breathe, and caused balance issues. The nanites Seth received from Eloise extended his life, but spending it locked up in the facility with no escape and only his mother’s mercenaries to talk to, prevented that life from ever blossoming.
Eloise chuckled, and the room spun. “What do you mean?”
Seth pulled a calendar off the wall snuggled among countless pieces of original and detailed architectural designs. He pointed to a red ‘X’.
“You’re…never late.”
Eloise nudged him when he came close. “What can I say, I’m a creature of habit.”
“Not in…the mood for jokes.”
The poor kid was desperate for clean air. She wanted to give him everything a seventeen-year-old deserved, but Joy kept him on a tight leash, allowing him supervised, temporary moments outdoors. As a result, he had grown irritable.
“Sorry,” Eloise said. “Your mom seems extra pleasant today.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. When is she not? I’m so…tired of being cooped…up here.” Seth thought for a moment and then his eyes lit up and he turned to Eloise. “We could sneak…out.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not…like you haven’t done…anything rebellious in your…life.”
“It’s not that. Your mom would be furious.”
Seth crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
