Glass Cage

by Emmy Chandler

  Tinsley leads me through a door into an inner waiting area, where one transparent wall looks out over a broad, open room on the floor below.

  Downstairs, in what I can only assume is the “main floor” stand dozens of hospital beds. Maybe hundreds. They’re lined up in row after neat row, each occupied by a form covered up to his or her shoulders with a clean white sheet. Most of them are attached to multiple monitors and machines.

  “Who are they?” I whisper as I stare through the transparent metal wall. “Patients? Is this a hospital?” If so, where are all the doctors? Why aren’t any of the patients moving?

  “Come downstairs and see for yourself. Did Ava tell you the rules?” Tinsley asks, leading me through another door into a stairwell.

  I shake my head as I follow him down a set of concrete stairs. “She just showed me around a little.”

  “Well, there’s only really one rule,” Tinsley says. “Do as you’re told. You’ve been assigned to the main floor, but occasionally you may be asked to help out with something else. Zone twelve has a small staff, and only ten inmate workers, including you.”

  “Ava mentioned that.”

  “Which means sometimes we’re all asked to something that isn’t officially in our job description.”

  I nod. As if I have any idea what that means.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, Tinsley pushes open a door, and I follow him into another office suite that seems to be laid out just like the one upstairs. Here, most of the doors are open and I can see into several offices, where men and women in lab coats—doctors?—are working on tablets and virtual screens.

  The woman behind the reception desk in the waiting area has an eye-level view of the “main floor” through a transparent wall just like the one upstairs. She’s wearing a cream-colored button-up blouse and silver earrings. Definitely not a prisoner. Or a guard. Probably not a doctor, either.

  Tinsley marches me up to the desk, where I can read the woman’s name tag. She’s Tara Phillips, the Administrative Coordinator of…whatever this place is. “This is prisoner Katerina Mathern, reporting for duty on the main floor,” he says.

  Ms. Phillips gives me a cold once-over. “The interns will be glad to hear that.” She waves toward the transparent wall. “Go on out. Dr. Herrington’s waiting for her.” She presses a button beneath her desk, and one end section of the transparent wall breaks away to slide open like a door, admitting us onto the main floor.

  It slides closed behind us, cutting us off from the office, and it’s as if we’ve stepped into another world.

  The main floor smells like antiseptic and feels very still. More like a morgue than a hospital. And it’s quiet, except for the soft beeping of various monitors and machines hooked up to the patients and the rustle of fabric as a man in prison-issued clothing folds back one of the sheets and begins carefully washing his patient’s left leg with a wet rag.

  My prison-issue sneakers are silent on the floor as I follow Tinsley across the large room toward an older man and a younger woman, both wearing white lab coats. They’re conferring about something on the tablet the woman holds.

  “Dr. Herrington,” Tinsley says, clearly addressing the man, but both Herrington and his colleague turn to look. “This is Katerina Mathern. Your new aide.”

  Dr. Herrington and I study each other. He’s in his mid-forties and is just beginning to go gray at the temples, in that distinguished-looking way that some men do. His eyes are an ordinary brown, accented by faint crow’s feet. His smile is kind, but non-committal. As if he’s happy to see me, but no happier than he’d be to see anyone else in my position.

  Men like Dr. Herrington make the perfect kind of boss for women like me: as long as I don’t mess up too badly, he won’t pay enough attention to me to notice small mistakes. Or small achievements. Bosses like Dr. Herrington are how I got away with pocketing dozens of little prizes from the store where I worked, for every one that got me caught.

  But there’s probably nothing here to take, other than cotton balls and tongue depressors.

  “Katerina.” Dr. Herrington pulls a palm-sized device from the pocket of his lab coat and gestures for me to hold out my hand. When I oblige, he scans the number on my palm, then reads whatever pops up on his screen. “You’re a thief?”

  I shrug, biting back a sharp retort. “All I am now is an inmate.”

  He surprises me with a smile. “True enough. I’m the attending physician, in charge of the main floor, and in addition to my medical duties, I supervise all staff members who are not guards or doctors. Which includes interns, clerical workers, and prison employees. So if you have any questions about your job itself, I’m the one you ask.” He slides the device back into his pocket and crosses his arms over the open front of his lab coat, watching me expectantly. “Any questions?”

  “Just a couple. First, what is my job? Who will I be aiding? You?”

  His smile returns, along with an odd tilt of his head. “Not me. Them.” Dr. Herrington takes me by both shoulders and turns me to face the main floor. The sea of motionless bodies lying in hospital beds.

  “And who are they, exactly? What is this place?”

  “They’re organ donors. Your job is to keep them clean and in good shape, until they’re no longer needed,” he says with a glance at the male prisoner now working with his patient’s other leg. “This is Emily Weller, the intern who’s been filling in while we waited for you.” He gestures to the woman standing next to him, holding the tablet. “She’ll be training you, and I’m going leave you both to it.”

  I can only stare out at the main floor, horrified, as Dr. Herrington heads back into the suite of offices. Are all these people prisoners? How did they get here? Did they volunteer for this, or were they…recruited?

  “Remember that one rule we have?” Tinsley leans down to whisper to me. “Do as you’re told?” Numb, I nod. “Better hop to it. And Katerina?”

  “Yes?” I say as he walks backward toward the exit, still facing me.

  “Welcome to zone twelve.”

  2

  KAT

  “So, what’s it like on the main floor?” Ava meets my gaze from across the cafeteria table designated for prisoners’ use. All of the other tables are round and freestanding, with room for six chairs apiece, but our table is a rectangle bolted to the floor. Five stools are bolted to the ground on each side, too far away from the table to be truly comfortable for me, unless I sit on the front edge.

  Other than the two of us, the table is empty so far, except for Jack, who’s at the other end. He’s hardly said two words to me since I met him on the main floor, but I get the feeling he’s watching me, when I’m not looking.

  “It’s depressing,” I tell Ava. “All those…bodies. I mean, they’re not actually dead yet. Not that you can tell that from looking.”

  “They’re unconscious, right?”

  “I sure hope so. They’re definitely sedated, anyway. Have you ever been in there?”

  She shakes her head as she tears open the large brown envelope on the table in front of her. I’m holding an identical envelope, which the dispensary spit out at me after scanning the number on my palm. “Sounds creepy.”

  “Yeah. And the quiet doesn’t help. They’re not dead yet, but it might be a mercy if they were.”

  Jack’s gaze meets mine with a solemnity that says he agrees.

  “What are we talking about?” A blond woman in prison-issued clothing identical to mine takes the stool next to Ava. She’s a couple of inches taller than I am, but not so tall that the clothes in our shared closet won’t fit her, obviously.

  “You must be Nanette. I’m Katerina.” I stand and offer her my hand, over the table, and she seems surprised by the formality.

  “Call me Nan.” She drops her meal packet on the table and accepts my hand briefly. “I hate ‘Nanette.’”

  “And I’m Kat,” I tell her as I sit and tear open my own meal.

  “Kat works on the main floor with Jack
,” Ava says. “We were just talking about how creepy it is, because it’s so quiet.”

  And because the patients lie as still as corpses.

  “I’d give anything for a little quiet, after the clang of pots and pans all day.” Nan throws an irritated look over my shoulder at the line where all the other staff members are being served. Behind the food line, I can see part of the kitchen, where more staff members are hard at work. “Thanks to Officer Tinsley’s ‘needs,’ I only have fifteen minutes left to eat, then I have to go scrub pots and wash trays.”

  “If it were up to me, I’d trade with you,” I tell her, and Ava and Nan both give me a strange look.

  “Not for Tinsley,” I clarify, somewhat horrified by the misinterpretation. “For the kitchen, rather than the main floor. The quiet down there isn’t peaceful. It’s creepy.”

  “And you have to wash them, right? The bodies?” Nan frowns with a glance at Jack. “Lara said you two have to wash them.”

  “Yeah.” In fact, learning how to give a sponge bath took up the majority of my training this morning. Jack and I are supposed to work our way across the room bathing the donors every other day. On the days when we’re not giving sponge baths, we exercise the donor’s limbs and turn them, to keep them from getting bed sores. The ones who aren’t hooked up to too many machines to be turned, anyway.

  “Hey.” A third woman in prison clothes sinks onto the stool next to me, as another man sits at the other end of the table. “I’m Lara. I suspect I’m your bunkmate.”

  “Kat.” I hold my hand out for her to shake. “I promise I don’t snore.”

  She laughs. “Well, Ava does.”

  Ava throws a cheese puff across the table at Lara. “Hey!” Lara throws it back at her. “I’m going to have to clean that up, you know!”

  “Ladies…” A uniformed guard meanders closer to our table, his hand on the butt of the laser pistol at his waist. “Keep it down.”

  “The rest of the staff can get as loud as they want,” Nan whispers, when the guard has wandered away. “But we’re not allowed to have any fun.”

  “That they know about,” the new guy at the end of the table leans over to whisper. “I’m Logan.”

  “Keep it in your pants, Logan,” Ava says, then she turns back to me. “We’re not allowed to ‘fraternize.’”

  “With our fellow inmates, anyway.” Nan tears into a packet of pasta, then shoots a bitter look across the cafeteria, where Tinsley appears to be watching us from the doorway.

  “I thought there was only one rule in zone twelve.”

  “There are a million rules,” Lara says. “They just don’t tell you what those rules are until you break one.”

  For several minutes, we eat in virtual silence, and I pretend I don’t see Logan and Jack sneaking glances at me. I seem to be a source of curiosity for the guards and several of the men in lab coats as well.

  It’s just because I’m new. I’m sure it’ll blow over.

  “So…” I finally say as I scrape the last of the sauce from the bottom of my pasta pouch. “Who are they? The donors? I assume they’re not volunteers.”

  “They’re prisoners,” Jack says. “That’s all I know.”

  “I figured that much. But are they prisoner volunteers, or are they here against their will? Were they injured?” I’d feel better about this whole operation if I knew the donors were brain dead before they got here. That Universal Authority is just facilitating donations these prisoners signed on for, before they got hurt.

  “I highly doubt UA is motivated by altruism,” Jack says. “But we don’t know anything about the donors, other than that they’re here.”

  “All I know is that my break is over.” Nan stands and shoves all of her smaller wrappers into the larger brown envelope. “I’ll see you ladies tonight.”

  I watch her drop her trash into the recycling bin, and as she heads toward the kitchen, I realize she’s making an obvious effort to avoid Tinsley.

  He realizes it too, and he beats her to the kitchen door, where he blocks her way until she smiles up at him.

  “She’ll be okay,” Lara whispers. “He’s an ass, but he isn’t violent. And he’s generous, when he likes you.”

  “Generous, meaning…?”

  “He gives her treats,” Ava explains. “Things we can’t get here. Soda. Fresh fruit. A fucking pillow, when she makes him really happy.”

  I’m not sure that means Nan is willing, exactly. But she isn’t bruised, so it could definitely be worse. Still, I’m glad I’m not blond. And I hope none of the other guards has a thing for redheads.

  The organ farm. That’s what I’ve started to call this place. Privately, anyway. Though I did accidentally say that out loud last night, and my roommates seemed to think the name fits.

  “And then you just lift the leg like this, and move it back and forth, as if he’s riding a bicycle,” Emily says as she demonstrates. “That’ll help keep his muscles from atrophying.”

  This morning, the long exterior metal wall of the main floor is transparent. Evidently all of the walls have that capability, and someone, somewhere deep in the bowels of this building is in charge of whether or not I’m allowed to see the outside world. What little there is of it to be seen.

  The view is nothing but a field of weird red grass, at least thigh-high on me. And in the distance, I see a long stretch of something smooth and shiny, reflecting the bright morning sunlight. I think it’s a wall. We flew over lots of those, on the long flight to zone twelve from Station Alpha, and the officer in custody of me said they divide one prison zone from another.

  “Katerina? Are you with me?”

  I nod and make myself turn away from the window-wall.

  Emily-the-intern seems nice enough. She’s certainly happy that once I’m trained, she won’t be stuck helping Jack bathe and exercise all the donors.

  “Does any of this matter?” I ask her. I’m trying to train myself to focus only at the patient I’m working with, because it’s depressing to look up and see an entire huge room full of people who can’t open their eyes or move their own limbs. People who’re only being kept alive so that their parts can be harvested.

  Most of them are hooked up to a bunch of weird-looking machines, and it took me almost an hour yesterday to figure out that those machines are functioning in place of the organs they’ve lost. To keep them alive long enough for even more to be taken out of their poor bodies.

  Short-timers, Emily calls them. Because no matter how long they’ve been here, they don’t have much time left now.

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “I mean, does it matter if their muscles atrophy? Unless their limbs are up for grabs too? Does that happen? Are you exercising that guy’s leg, so they can cut it off and put it on someone else? Someone who will need it to be in good shape?”

  Emily’s hands go still as she frowns at me. “Well, no. I mean, there are some special cases, but mostly we deal with routine organ and simple tissue transplants here. But the healthier a donor is, the healthier his organs are, and the healthier the organ, the greater the chance of a successful transplant. The organs aren’t isolated, you know. Every biological system influences and is influenced by all the others. So it’s important to treat the whole patient. Er…the whole donor.” With that, she puts down the poor unconscious man’s right leg and gestures for me to lift his left one.

  I go through the motions she’s taught me, carefully exercising a man who’ll never move on his own again. Trying not to think about that fact. But that’s easier said than done. “Who is he?”

  “Um…” Emily taps the headboard of the bed, and a section of it lights up like a screen. A second later, a file appears on that screen. “Edward Borneo. Convicted of armed robbery on planet Bura. He’s donated a kidney and both of his retinas, so far. As well as quite a few of his hair follicles. Though you can probably see that for yourself.”

  Well, that certainly explains the angry red bumps all over his scalp
.

  “I mean…how did he get here? Did he volunteer?”

  Emily gives me an odd look. An uncomfortable look. “He’s a convict. He gave up his rights when he held a family at gunpoint and demanded they empty their credit accounts for him. There were children there.” She sounds defensive. As if she personally put Edward Borneo in this bed and cut out his organs.

  Maybe she did do part of that. Or maybe she’s just as uncomfortable with this as I am, and she’s trying to justify her participation to herself. And to me.

  “I’m a convict too,” I point out as I lower Mr. Borneo’s leg onto the bed. Though it’s really more like a cot, because there’s no real mattress or bedclothes, other than the sheet folded up at his hips. I lower the sheet to cover his legs. “Does that mean I could just as easily have wound up on this bed, having my organs cut out one at a time for stealing a tube of lipstick?”

  Emily’s frown deepens. Then she shakes her head, as if she can physically shake off that thought. “Just be glad you aren’t on that table. Not that you’d know it, if you were.”

  “They don’t know they’re here?” I follow her to the next bed, where she folds back the sheet covering a woman to reveal scars where her breasts used to be, as well as a gruesome, recently closed incision over her upper abdomen, fully visible beneath a transparent protective film.

  I don’t ask what was taken out of this poor lady. I no longer want to know.

  “Well, they’re kept heavily sedated, of course,” Emily says. “So I suspect they have no real concept of where they are or what’s happening to them.” She lifts the butchered woman’s arm and begins moving it back and forth, flexing each of the joints in turn as she works her way toward the woman’s fingers. “Though I guess there’s no way to know for certain.”

  I’m not sure whether I should be bothered or relieved by how guilty she looks.

  “I hope they’re dreaming,” I tell her. “Of something happy. Something far away from this fucking place.”