Caged (The Idyllic Series Book 1)

by Amy Johnson

  When I’m escorted back inside, the cybernetic’s eyes flit over at Knox, who is still not looking at me.

  “I have an idea,” Knox says, just as I’ve picked up my plastic tray of food.

  “Shoot.”

  Knox falls silent, making me glance over at him. What I see is sheer confusion. His eyebrows are turned down; the corners of his mouth tilt towards the floor.

  “Sorry,” I say, sighing. “It means ‘go ahead’.”

  “Oh, well, um,” he stutters, shaking his head, “I made this powder.”

  He lifts his hand up to the window, producing a small, plastic bag. It’s filled with a gray, fine powder that resembles ash.

  “Where did that come from?” I scrunch my nose up and scoot towards him as far as my chain will allow.

  “I told you. I made it.”

  Yet, his gaze drifts away from me. His shoulders tense up, and he clenches his jaw.

  Knox wouldn’t lie to me, would he? What reason would he have to trick me? Plus, what choice do I have? I’m desperate to get out of this room. Knox agreed to help, and he’s doing exactly that.

  “Okay, fine. What does it do?” I ask, watching as he tries to feed it through a gap in the bottom of the mesh. I squint at the hole. That wasn’t there last night. That cover was solid all the way around, unless I kicked it loose when I was throwing my tantrum. I couldn’t have. I’m not strong enough to dislodge metal that’s embedded in stone.

  “It should cause a rash,” Knox says, and the bag falls through onto the carpet. I stretch for it, barely snagging it between my index and middle finger. I flick it back towards me and catch it with my cuffed hand. “It is made from the food. It should absorb through the stratum lucidum, the granulosum, the spinosum, and the basale, which are layers of your epidermis. Once there, the bouncers won’t fight it off because of the organic material, which will lead to bioaccumulation.”

  I blink at him. The words make absolutely no sense to me.

  “What are you talking about?” I snap.

  “The powder, of course.”

  I shake my head. He sounds credible enough.

  I hold the bag up to the light. It glitters slightly like it’s made of crushed diamonds. Now I can see that it’s less like ash and more like dandruff--thousands of gray flakes mixed together.

  Can I trust Knox?

  He volunteered to help me, knowing there’s nothing in it for him. When I was at my lowest point, terrified to sleep at night, he sang to me and listened to my stories. He’s never tried to hurt me, never said anything out of spite, never ignored me. Sometimes, when he looks at me, his eyes go wide and his mouth opens, like he’s looking at a piece of artwork, which doesn’t make sense.

  I’m nothing. Surely, he knows that.

  He’s never given me a reason not to trust him, and so, I open the plastic bag, dip three fingers in, and pull out a lump of the flakes.

  “What do I do with it?” I ask, pinching the material. Some falls, feathers caught by a stray wind.

  “Rub it on your cuffed wrist and on your eye.”

  I sprinkle it over my skin and, then rub it over my face. It turns the skin under my cuff an ashy color that reminds me of a corpse. When the bag’s empty, I tuck it away inside my shirt for safe keeping. Already, my wrist tingles, soft pinpricks dancing across the surface.

  “How long will it take?”

  “I am not sure.”

  I look up at him, holding my wrist away from myself. When did he stop using the contractions? I was just getting used to them.

  Knox catches me looking and turns away from the window without another word.

  I guess that’s the end of our conversation.

  So, I flop back onto the floor, spread eagle like when the cybernetic came to get me this morning. I’ve nothing left to count or pick at. I pull my wrist up, turning it in different directions to look at it.

  The streaks left behind by the powder are fading. Whether it’s sinking into my skin or falling off is a mystery to me. Yet, my skin feels hot to the touch, and the pinpricks seem to be turning into something much stronger.

  Ignoring it, I let my wrist fall onto my stomach and close my eyes.

  Sleep has evaded me since last night due to the dreams. I intend on catching it tonight, regardless of everything going on. If I want to escape, my body needs to be in top shape.

  A few minutes pass, and the pinpricks have morphed into bee stings.

  I jerk my arm up, sitting up as my wrist comes into view.

  The skin under the cuff is bright red. Massive lumps rise from the surface like hills, coming to white heads. They look like huge pimples, but the burn that spreads up my arm is anything but pubescent. The bumps have pushed the cuff down my wrist, and it presses my thumb against my hand and digs into the bone there.

  Every time I blink, a dull pain spreads across the bridge of my nose. My hand goes up, and I wince as I press on the sensitive skin there. It feels as though the hills sprout there too--hot and tight.

  “Knox,” I say, poking at one of the larger mountains on my arm with a finger. “Is this supposed to happen?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Knox?”

  The lights click off, and I’m left in the darkness with my fiery arm to keep me company.

  I wrap the blanket around myself, curling up with my arm clutched to my chest. The heat sinks through my shirt and increases the temperature inside by a hundred degrees.

  Like the night before, sleep skips around the edge of the room, occasionally jumping into my brain before doing a few more laps around me. I envision that she’s a dancer, pirouetting around the wall on her tiptoes, wearing the same clothes as me and a smile more complex than the Underground.

  When she finally stops spinning, she nestles down, holding my head in her chest, whispering unintelligible things into my ear. Her inhuman voice is musical--like rain falling onto the water of the river. I sink into her being, basking in the cold breeze of sleep.

  Then, a door slams, and I jolt awake.

  She goes back to dancing, and I’m forced to watch, held back by the chain.

  When the lights return in the morning, I can’t move.

  My entire body breathes heat; my muscles are stone. I peel my eyes open and glance around the room through slits as it tilts and swims under me. The blanket smothers me, kindling the fire building in my chest.

  No, not my chest. My wrist.

  I clench my eyes closed and hold my breath as I push my wrist away from my body, emerging like it’s the end of my metamorphosis.

  The hills have bred into craters, leaving gaping holes all the way up to my elbow. My skin is tinted yellow, crusty from the pus that leaks from the holes decorating my arm. The cuff cuts off the circulation of my wrist, and my hand appears swollen and purple.

  I can only imagine how disgusting my face looks.

  “What is this?”

  I look up at the cybernetic that entered the room. He kneels down in front of me, knees hissing.

  “What did you do?” he asks as he grabs my pulsing hand. A strangled cry comes from somewhere deep in my chest.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper, fighting the urge to pull my hand away from him. His touch repulses me, but all I feel is the weight of his hand on mine. That alone sends ripples of pain up my arm.

  “Get up,” he says, disarming the lock on the chain and letting go of my hand. It falls like a club to my side as I attempt to stand. Every inch of me has turned to lead. I follow behind him, dragging my body like I’m treading water.

  No--water would be easier.

  I walk through honey, thick and sticky.

  When we pass Knox’s door, he meets my eyes for the first time in two days, nodding once before he steps across the hall towards the exhibit door. I would nod back, but my neck is a tree trunk.

  His powder worked.

  Knox proved that I can trust him.

  Chapter 12: Relieved

  Eden

  The cyber
leads me to the prep room, lowering the table to a height that I can crawl onto. For once, I don’t fight back. The pain spreading up my arm and swelling my eyes closed serves as inspiration to do whatever he tells me.

  “Lay back,” he says, and I do, arching my back away from the cold surface. He places a heavy hand on my stomach, forcing my body flat. He unhooks the long chain, dropping it to the floor with a deafening clank.

  He moves around the room, speaking to the machines in the language of the Artificials. The service machines wake up with a crescendo of sound that ends in a minor plateau. Their digital interfaces come to life, and one by one they enclose on me, leaving just enough room for the cyber to fit between us.

  “Give me your wrist,” he says, coming back to me from the far end of his room. He holds a white cube with a small hole in one side. The material inside appears to be black fabric, but it resembles something and nothing at the same time.

  What choice do I have though?

  He could chop my wrist off and I wouldn’t mind at this point.

  I lift up my cuffed wrist, twisting my face as I strain. The weight of the metal sides with gravity, and by the time I’ve succeeded in placing my wrist inside, sweat beads form on my forehead.

  The box exhales, blowing chilled air in all directions, and suddenly, the black nothing inside swells and smothers my hand. It’s soft fabric, like I expected, and it swallows my wrist whole. I feel heat, but it doesn’t hurt any more than it already did. A smell fills the room--one of flat, earthy tones, a mixture of burning metal and melting plastic.

  With a ding, the box inhales, sucking air through the hole. My arm hair follows the stream of air. Then, it’s done, and the black fabric pulls away. I pull out of the box, turning my hand over several times.

  The cuff’s gone.

  I’d almost forgotten what my wrist looked like without it.

  The skin where the rash hasn’t spread is pale white, untouched by the sun that is amplified through the glass. It’s a strand of snow in the desert of the rest of my beige skin. Where my wrist bone protrudes, the skin is red and raw from the second cuff they put on and my desperate rage when I was brought back in. The cold air stings as I let my weightless wrist fall back down onto the table.

  “Do not move,” the cyber says, taking a step back and turning to a screen on the wall. “Even an inch of movement and the machines will misread your injury.”

  His fingers move with untraceable speed on the screen, hopping from dialogue boxes to diagrams of the machines with ease. The diagrams light up, and whichever machine he taps moves towards me.

  One zooms in on my wrist and emits a minuscule clicking. Another bends close, dotting my face with a needle that makes me wince at every prick. Another blows constant cold air, providing a temporary relief. Now, the pain resembles a terrible sunburn--more annoying than life changing.

  “The results show you are having an allergic reaction to some unknown material,” the cyber informs me without turning to look at me, “but they cannot conclude what the source is. The irritant must have already exited your system. Have you emptied your bodily fluids since this started?”

  I glare at the back of his head and curl my upper lip at him.

  “Wouldn’t you know? You take me everywhere.”

  He turns his entire body, staring at me with not even a twinge of annoyance.

  “Watching you is my job, Subject 23, not healing you,” he says. “I could have let you die in that room. Your mortality is very fragile.”

  While he talks in a long, low tone, my mind wanders. Would another cybernetic have done exactly that--left me to die of my own idiotic plan? Was my guard being kind? I shake the thought away. Cybernetics can’t be kind. They can’t be anything.

  “You will need to stay here for the day so that the machines can administer medication to reverse the effects of the reaction,” he continues.

  I let my head fall back on the table and stare at the white tiles overhead. They’re the same as the ones in my room. I wonder how many more there are in this room.

  “Without the cuff, you cannot leave this room,” he says, walking towards the door. Already, a service machine is attaching itself to my elbow and sanitizing the tender inner skin with a small blue laser. I wince as it inserts a needle. The seamless white liquid inches toward the end. “Which means I do not have to sit with you. I have other exhibits to attend.”

  With that, he faces the door we came in. It opens, lets him through, and then closes again.

  His tone holds anything but kindness. I was right to begin with. He’s salvaging the product, not going above and beyond his job requirements. He doesn’t pity me or want to help me. I’m a set of eyes--a potential enhancement one day.

  I am property.

  Time passes as I count the ceiling tiles, listen to the slow dripping of the water, and tap my free fingers on the metal table. Eventually, fatigue catches up with me, and I close my eyes. There’s no means of escaping the prep room--not without my cuff. Plus, I want my wrist and face healed, and that won’t happen if I pull the needle out of my elbow. I’ve had enough pain from the rash; tearing a needle that resembles a pencil’s point doesn’t seem like a smart idea.

  The machines stop moving. The liquid ceases to come down the tube, and the one that blows air holds its breath. With the noise of the machines absent, everything falls into intense stillness.

  I open my eyes and glance around the room.

  Will the machines detach from me on their own, or will the cyber have to come back?

  They loom around me like a kettle of vultures. The skeletal birds circle the cities, hidden by the smog, even when all of the other birds have long left the metropolis. I am the carcass of some animal, starved to death and dehydrated. Gravity glues my body to the table as they descend toward me and steal the oxygen I need.

  Logic kicks in; machines can’t steal oxygen. Service machines can’t circle around me. They aren’t alive.

  I repeat that last part over and over in my head, forming the words on the edges of my lips but preventing them from falling over. To let them slip out would require oxygen that I need to conserve and defend from the machines.

  No. That’s not right. Service machines can’t steal air from me.

  Yet, they’re coming toward me and surrounding me with their shadows, limbs armed with tools to dismember me. I clutch the table with my free hand, trying to stop my body from shaking.

  One.

  Cyrus always tells me to count to ten when I start feeling claustrophobic.

  Two.

  How many days are left until my surgery?

  Three.

  Maybe that’s not the best thing to think about right now.

  Four.

  I suck in a breath of air and clench my eyes closed.

  Five.

  I feel my heartbeat in my shoulder blades, reverberating through the table down to my ankles. My chest rises and falls like a tremor.

  Counting isn’t going to work. My second option is to distract myself. Pain. I need pain.

  Taking a deep breath, I turn my head to my right, away from the service machine attached to my skin. With one swift movement, I pull away from it. A wince escapes my lips, but the pain’s no worse than getting pinched by an older brother who bites his fingernails into jagged nubs.

  Covering my mouth with my hand, I glance down at my elbow, which is now purple and red. A trail of blood crawls toward the table. It hurts, as if Cyrus still has his nails digging into my skin, but it is tolerable. More importantly, it’s just enough to push the creeping claustrophobia away.

  Pushing the machine away from me, I sit up and hold the still-bleeding limb close to my chest. I can’t go anywhere with blood gushing out of my arm, so I search the room for something to stamp out the bleeding.

  There’s nothing, of course. Why would the service machines need towels or spare clothes? I push my legs off the side of the table, dangling them in the air for a moment. The feeling rushes back
into them and pins cascade over my skin. I freeze, waiting for the horrific feeling to pass. Wiggling my toes only makes it worse.

  When my legs are both awake again, I scoot off the table and stumble forward against the dizziness passing through me. My good hand reaches out for the machine in front of me as I search for anything to balance on. I stagger forward, dragging my feet along with me toward the door to the clothing room.

  I press my hand against the door, waiting for the beep, but it doesn’t happen. The doors don’t slide open; a rush of stale air doesn’t kiss my body. So, I sag forward, flattening myself into the icy metal.

  I am Eden Cavalleri. I’m seventeen years old and the younger sister of Cyrus Cavalleri, a boy who doesn’t read books but is wiser than his years. My best friend’s name is Linux, and he’s waiting for me to get out of this room.

  My father trained me in hand-to-hand combat when I was ten. My mother taught me how to grow vegetables from scraps and turn two-dimensional words into worlds. I’ve blown up buildings, stolen from the Artificials, and almost escaped the Anthros.

  A door can’t hold me back.

  I flip myself around, facing the room. How am I going to get out of this? I need a cuff to activate the door, and I can’t produce those out of thin air. When mine was installed, the cybernetic made me put my wrist into the hole in the wall, similar to the box.

  My eyes wander across the room, landing on the circle cut out from before.

  There’s no way I’m sticking my arm in there again, but maybe if I used something shaped like an arm.

  I push off the door toward the machine that was blowing air at me before. The end is a long hose, smaller than my arm, but it’s made of soft, skin-like material. I wrap my hand around it and jerk the hose out of the service machine. It pops free with ease which sends me reeling backwards.

  Collecting myself, I rush to the cut out and shoving the hose in. The walls clamp down, bending the plastic inward. Machinery grinds together and, with a rush of air, the walls release the hose, hissing.

  When I pull the hose back out, a new metal cuff rests on the end. The needles that once dug into my skin are now inserted into the plastic to hold the too-big cuff up.