by Kitty Thomas
Instead, when I reached the door, it slid open with ease. Probably on a sensor. After all, who would venture down here to such a restricted and ominous area unless they were bringing down another expired carton of milk?
Beyond the door was an expansive room. Still not a dungeon. A bored woman looked up from a solitary isolated glass desk—an island in a sea of nothing but sheets of steel. She wasn’t human. Her eyes and fangs didn’t have to flash for me to know that things here were sharply divided between consumer and the consumed.
On the wall directly behind her were rows and rows of illuminated red numbers all counting down to…something. But none of the numbers counting down were the same. All were isolated countdowns of different things, though what, I couldn’t know.
“The spoiled never come down unescorted,” she said. Her name tag read, Luna. “Are you lost, dear? If you’re meant to be punished in the dungeon, you came down one floor too many. It happens.”
The spoiled. Milk. Expired.
“What is the retirement center?” I don’t know where the boldness came from. The wrist band made me brave because It was my get-out-of-anything card. I’d be taken to Gabriel first. He would show me mercy.
“Oh, you’re still quite young,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about retirement just yet. And it’s nothing really to worry about. You’ll be taken some place where you can live out the rest of your life in peace. Somewhere pleasant. You’ll see. You should go back to the common areas. You don’t want to be punished for coming down here, do you?”
Even without her touching me, I almost felt compelled to say, “No Ma’am”, tuck my tail between my legs, and scoot back upstairs as if nothing had happened. But I resisted the urge.
“What happened to the girl who was just brought down?”
Luna’s eyes narrowed. She no longer thought I was an adorable puppy that had tripped all over itself and wandered off the path.
“Go back where you came from,” she snarled. Her eyes glowed and quickly shifted back to normal. “Maybe you should be taken to the dungeon. How can you have lived in this place as long as you have and not understand the rules?”
“Take me to her,” I demanded. My boldness nearly matched my boldness with Gabriel when we’d first met. Only this time it wasn’t the boldness of a death wish. It was garden variety anger, made easier to display by my certainty that I was ultimately safe.
“Well, if you want to retire so badly…” Her smile held malice, and I knew beyond all doubt that retirement was not a good thing. Something bad had happened to that girl.
The fear started its slow seep into my veins. There was a time not long ago when I would have kept demanding, kept pushing because fuck, what did it matter if I died? I was tired. I was ready. I wanted out. And now…I didn’t.
I wanted to be brave for that girl. She might still be alive, and maybe I could save her. But instead, I backed toward the exit. From this side, it didn’t open immediately.
It wasn’t a sensor.
Luna held up a small glass key box as if there had been any doubt her life consisted of watching those cameras and opening the doors. She’d known I hadn’t belonged here. She’d just been curious.
“If you don’t let me go, the king will have your head.” I was sure I wasn’t bluffing. I was sure this was true.
She laughed. “Nice try. We have a queen—not a king—though not for lack of trying on her part. How have you managed to be so stupid and survive so long?”
I raised my arm. To a casual observer or the motorized cameras watching from above, it might look like a defensive posture, but I was offering the wristband for scanning.
“Scan the code. You’ll see I’m telling the truth.”
She laughed, but took a scanner from the desk drawer and passed it over the bar code.
“Scan error. Please try again.”
The woman scanned a second time.
“Scan error. Please try again.”
She shrugged. “Oh well. It’s not that I’m not curious, but they’re always leaving me with these nearly-broken scanners. I mean, what am I going to need them for down here? The guards always have an extra one for me to use to double-check for records. And between you and me, I think the record-keeping is just to give me something to do so I don’t go out of my mind with boredom.”
My gaze swept the room, searching, probably vainly, as if there would be an extra scanner lying around on the floor—one that might have fallen out of a pocket. One could hope. I couldn’t believe I’d put my faith in their technology when nobody knew me here. To them I was just a numbered food ration.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll look in the drawer.”
I stood awkwardly, waiting to see if something as inconsequential as a faulty scanner had sealed my fate. It was pointless to bang on the door or scream or try to run. Run where?
“Aha! Here’s one. All the way in the back.”
Luna passed the scanner over my wrist band.
“Scan error. Please try again.”
“Oh well,” she said. “Guess today’s not your day, Delicious.”
Panic unfurled, invading each cell of my body, grabbing control of each molecule of oxygen in the room. I wasn’t entirely sure the room wasn’t being sucked of its oxygen intentionally. Did she need to breathe the same as me? Crazy thoughts.
“Please! Just try one more time!” I dropped to my knees, unable to believe I was begging for my life. By this point I was certain they killed the people who came down here.
Gabriel’s face flashed in my mind, the feel of his hands on me, his mouth on me, his soothing voice whispering in my ear, and the trust I’d put in him despite my better judgment. I didn’t want to leave him. But I was angry he’d destroyed my death wish—my one true safety buffer in a world that didn’t favor me. It would have been so much easier if I just didn’t give a fuck. How could this be happening to me?
Something changed in her, as if I’d flipped a switch in her twisted little brain. Luna smiled and came closer, all graceful, sinewy predator. “Maybe I could play with you before I take you to the retirement center.”
Her fingers trailed through my hair, stroking the base of my neck. She gripped my hands and pulled me up to stand. Razor-sharp red fingernails clawed at my throat. She pressed me against the steel wall, lapping at the spilling blood like a kitten with cream until she’d healed the damage she’d done. Her hand slipped underneath my pants and panties, stroking me in the same way Gabriel had not too long ago. My hips arched involuntarily toward her, seeking release, imagining it was my master’s hand and none of this was happening.
“Do you want to come one more time before you retire, my dear?” She removed her hand. “Beg me to let you come.”
I stood frozen, unsure which outcome would be worse and knowing this option only stalled the inevitable. My hands were pressed against the wall at my sides, bracing myself, trying to support my own weight. Her hips pressed against mine, grinding on me in a mockery of the sex act. I heard a small click as the broken scanner in her pocket lit up and caught the bar code at my wrist.
“Guest 352. Personal property of the king. Unavailable for feeding or play. Touch on penalty of death. Only bar code scanning allowed. Guest 352 has no restrictions and may occupy the same spaces as the king. If lost, return to the palace immediately.”
The speakers down here were weaker—or else the connection between the speaker and the scanner weren’t working well. But Luna heard it. I knew from the scared look in her eyes as she slowly backed away from me.
“How did you hack into our system?” she demanded.
“What?”
“How did you do it, you little cunt? We don’t have a king. You had to have messed with it. You’re one of the rebels aren’t you? I should drag you up to the queen for public torture and execution.”
The urge to tell her Gabriel was here and that her queen wasn’t was strong, but if she wanted to take me up to the queen, more power to her. I’d be
safe if I could just get upstairs to the ground level.
Couldn’t Gabriel feel me? He had before. I’d felt it, too. It was as if the sharing of blood linked us in some metaphysical way where he just knew if something was happening to me.
I laughed. It was a weak, unconvincing laugh, but I needed to goad her. “Fuck the queen,” I said and spat on the ground for good measure.
Luna backhanded me, and her ring caught my cheek. She didn’t bother to lick up the trail of blood moving down my face or heal the burning cut she’d made.
“That’s it. I’m taking you to her. It’s been a good long time since we’ve had a public execution party. Maybe the citizens need to be reminded it’s not wise to defy us.”
Something must have shown on my face. Hope? I don’t know what it was that gave me away, but Luna turned suspicious. She saw the trap as if it had been sprung in slow motion, giving her plenty of time to leap out of the way to safety. As if to be sure, she grabbed my wrist and bit down into my arm, drinking, while her free hand pressed against my face as if to read me, sucking the thoughts from my mind. I tried not to think, but it was useless.
She pulled back, horrified. “Oh my God. Oh my God. It’s true.”
She paced, glancing at me every few seconds with a wild, paranoid expression as the blood trailed down my arm.
“If you take me back to him, I’ll explain things. I’m sure he’ll spare you.” Lies. I was sure he’d paint the walls with her blood and hang a coordinating painting on top of it.
Luna’s panic attack ran its course, then seemed to fade all at once. “He doesn’t know you’re down here. He has no way of knowing where you are. Does he?”
“He’ll sense me. He’ll know. He’ll find me. If you want any hope of survival, you better take me back to him right now!” My voice trembled. Why wasn’t Gabriel here? Maybe the sensing thing he did was only short range. Maybe it didn’t span the distance from the queen’s wing all the way down here. Maybe it couldn’t pass through steel.
Luna laughed. She gripped my wrist and dragged me through the giant empty room to a door at the other end. The door slid open, and she pulled me through as I struggled to twist out of her tight grasp.
“Look, bitch,” she hissed, “I’m not letting you go. I’m not going to die for some trivial human toy. You can die in a brutal way or a pleasant way. Because right now, I want to start tearing you apart in strips and gorging on the blood until it’s gone.”
The violent imagery made me stop fighting. My anger was at Gabriel, for bringing me here, thinking to use me in the power plays his kind had used to subjugate mine. Whether it was Gabriel’s methods in our city or Amari’s methods in this one, it was all the same game where humans were chattel and disposable food products—whether we knew it or not. There was no way out of this enslavement.
Collars or wristbands or the illusion of freedom, it didn’t matter. It was all a Gordian knot that only a fool wasted their energy trying to untangle. I desperately wanted back the indifference to my own life that I’d had before—the comforting wall no one could scale or penetrate. I couldn’t cope with wanting to live. With begging to live.
I couldn’t believe I’d gotten on my knees and begged this bitch for my life. Now that the curtain was pulled back, and I saw how truly hopeless it all was, how could I be so afraid of losing it? Damn Gabriel. That stupid fucking asshole. I’m going to bring you back to life. I could hear his smug, arrogant, self-assured voice in my head.
The hallway went on for what seemed like forever, but this time there were many doors along the way. Luna selected a room and unlocked it with the glass key box.
“Lie down on the bed,” she said.
Luna pushed me into the room and closed the door, blocking my exit. As if I could escape her. She was orders of magnitude stronger than me, and she was the only one with the keys to anything down here. And I still didn’t know how to kill them, nor did I think they left such handy tools lying around for their quick disposal.
I backed away but didn’t lie down, trying to delay whatever this was for a few minutes longer.
“It won’t hurt. It’s like a dream—a very real, vivid dream. You’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted. You’ll see anyone you want. It will be perfect and wonderful and every good feeling you’ve ever had. It will seem to last forever, and then it will slowly fade away. You won’t see death coming. You won’t feel any pain. You must know how merciful this is. It’s the best death you’ll ever be offered.”
I screamed in my mind for Gabriel to come for me, even though I was still so angry with him.
“You know I can make you,” she said. “I can get into your mind and turn you into a robot to get you in there like the girl who came down here before you. It’s better for you to comply. Where is your pride and dignity?”
Where, indeed. Gabriel had stripped it from me in the cell when he’d peeled back all the layers of me to find the fragile, vulnerable core inside. He’d laid it bare, stripping all my protections and safeties. And this was the price.
I started for the bed.
“Wait. Undress first. We send the bodies straight to the incinerator after, and I like that outfit.”
There was a lascivious glint to her eyes, and it had little to do with what I wore. She wanted to stretch this out, to further humiliate me, to punish me for putting her in danger by being here at all.
“Whatever I say will happen, will happen anyway. Be a good girl and spare yourself the extra suffering. The sooner we get you in that bed, the sooner you can have the peace and happiness I know you crave.”
My hands trembled as I unhooked the fastenings of the corset and removed it. My fingers strayed to my bare throat, missing the gold band. I wanted to scream at Gabriel for tagging me like an animal. How did he expect these uncivilized barbarians to treat me like anything else with a fucking code on my wrist, being scanned like a product at the grocery store?
I stepped out of my boots and undid the pants and slid them down.
“Panties, too,” she said.
When I’d complied, Luna approached my naked form, trailing her fingertips over my throat, my collarbone, my breasts, the curve of my hips.
“Such a shame,” she murmured.
I got underneath the covers in the bed, relieved to be away from the scrutiny of her gaze. She locked my wrists into cuffs and stuck patches with wires coming out of them to my forehead.
“Don’t worry,” she said, stroking my hair, “it won’t hurt.”
She turned off the light and shut the door. A cool white misty smoke moved into the darkened room, not unlike the smoke in the tube when I’d been tagged. But whatever was in this smoke was a much different substance.
My eyelids closed. I tried to fight, but they refused to stay open under the onslaught of whatever I was being dosed with. There was a brief moment of panic, but then everything changed.
Luna had spoken the truth. At first I knew it was a dream, but then the other reality faded away, and the only thing that existed was the dream.
My new and much better reality.
The sun was insanely bright and warm. A gentle breeze stirred the air and rustled the brightly colored flowers on the trees. I’d never seen trees like these before except on screens, or the rare education visits to see how things grew and were kept alive inside lit glass domes in a world with so much night.
Birds chirped and chattered back and forth to each other in the trees while smaller animals moved about in the bright green grass. There was a family of greyish brown creatures with long ears and twitchy noses. They had huge hind legs for their size and hopped around. I couldn’t remember their name.
“Helene! What are you doing? Get over here!”
It was Simone. As I walked toward her, knowledge of Luna and Gabriel and the terrible world I’d known dissipated behind me. As I moved toward my sister’s voice, it seemed as if the second city and everything before it was a dream, and a moment later I forgot it existed at all.
> This was all that was real. And it was wonderful.
Simone wore a striking yellow sundress, and her shoulders were tan. Freckles dotted her nose and cheeks from all the sun she’d gotten, and her long blonde hair blew out behind her in the breeze. Hinkly rolled in the grass, then ran toward me, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth as he bounded closer, happier than I’d ever seen him.
My parents came into view. They had a large blanket spread out, lying in the sun cuddled together, shoes forgotten several yards away. There was an open picnic basket and several plates and cups and half-eaten food.
My mom sat up and used her hand to shade her eyes from the sun. “Helene, where did you run off to? You’ve been gone for a long time.”
Where had I run off to? I couldn’t remember.
“I saw her napping under that big tree over there,” Simone said pointing to a huge oak that looked as if it could only have been constructed out of the strongest magic.
I looked down to find myself in shorts and a tank top. I reached into my pocket. “Where’s my countdown clock?”
“Your what?” my dad asked.
“You know, it’s the clock we have that warns us how much time we have until night.”
Simone’s nose scrunched. “What’s night?”
“When it gets dark outside?” I didn’t know where that thought had come from. I wasn’t even sure what happened at night or why it had given me a moment’s fear and hesitation.
“Oh, honey, I think that was just a dream,” my mother said. “Are you ready for strawberry pie? It’s your favorite.”
I was about to ask what a strawberry was when I remembered, yes, that’s my favorite. I really must have had some dream. It still interfered with reality. As I moved closer to the blanket and took the pie from my mother, the images of night began to fade to the point that I couldn’t remember what I’d been trying to describe. Even the concept of something being dark seemed nonsensical.
