by J. N. Chaney
It felt like I had only just closed my eyes, when the shock of bright light struck me again. I sputtered, jerking up to sit. I growled, shifting my covers to the side and pulling myself out of bed. Clementine needed a bit more convincing, but she joined me after some complaining.
“Rise and shine, princesses,” Pearl said, a small smile on her face. “We’ve got another long day ahead of us.”
Once dressed, we marched back to the mess hall, but this time, there were other people there.
Some were dressed in the same green vests and heavy coats as Pearl. They gave us odd looks, and their conversations stopped as Clementine and I made our way to our seats, but the novelty soon wore off, and they turned their attention back to whatever they had been talking about before.
After enduring another serving of the meal mix, we followed Pearl through a handful of hallways. I rubbed my sore palms in response to memories from the day before, but the room that Pearl led us to wasn’t one that I had seen before.
There were two desks with work pads on them, and there was a screen at the front, with a chair in the corner. Pearl simply moved to the chair, indicating for us to sit at the desks.
Once we did, the screen lit up and showed the poorly rendered face of a man.
“Hello, Abigail. Hello, Clementine. My name is Angus, your instruction V.I. It is my privilege to take up your education and continue it to completion. You will note that your pads are already tuned to my instructional programming for easy access.”
I looked down, seeing the pad light up. Thankfully, Angus’s face was absent from my personal screen. The V.I.’s dead eyes were creepy enough just staring at me from the front of the room.
“I have a record of your academic achievements thus far, as well as a brief of your current educational status, and as such, I am fully equipped to handle your education as per Mulberry Pryar’s recommendations.”
I looked at it and then the pad in front of me. The sisters had handled all of our education in person. I’d heard about some schools that could afford a personalized V.I. for the students. Was this one of those places? It didn’t seem like a school to me. At least, it hadn’t resembled any school that I’d ever heard of.
“If you would kindly look to the pads in front of you, we can begin with a light review of what your studies should have covered thus far. We’ll be starting with mathematics.” Angus’s voice sounded vaguely human, but there was a robotic undertone.
Clementine raised her hand. Angus took a few seconds to respond. “How may I help you, Miss Clementine?”
“Can we keep the pads?” she asked.
My eyes widened. I had never had a pad of my own before.
“They are educational tools and, as such, should be kept on your person at all times. So, to answer your question…yes.” The V.I. smiled and immediately resumed the teaching program. I saw Pearl rolling her eyes as she pulled her own device out.
“If you’ll kindly look at the pads in front of you, we can start with a light review…”
We spent the next two and a half hours on things that we already knew: basic mathematics, quickly followed by a review of Osiris’s three official languages, as well as a history lesson, complete with a visual aid that replaced the creepy V.I.’s face for a little while.
Finally, the lesson ended. “Thank you for your attention, Miss Abigail, Miss Clementine, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Goodbye.”
The screen went dead.
Pearl stood up, taking a moment to stretch before turning back to us. “Thank gods that’s over.”
She motioned for us to follow her, and I rubbed my hands, expecting more cleaning to come. I was right.
Clementine and I had the task of scrubbing down the dining hall after lunch, and then we moved over to cleaning the dishes. The kitchen had its own regular staff, but they weren’t around right now. I guessed they only did the cooking. The cleanup apparently fell to us.
By the time Pearl escorted us to our room after dinner, I felt like I could sleep for a week. The door closed behind us, and I changed into my night clothes, placing my dirty clothes in the laundry basket. When I finally settled into bed, I pulled my new pad out of my pocket and activated it.
I pressed the button on the side, lighting up the display. Angus’s face appeared, but not moving like it had in the classroom. Instead of speaking, everything he said came up as text on the screen.
The face was still creepy, though.
I spent a few minutes fiddling with the device. I had never had one of my own, but I’d handled one before and had a basic grasp of how it worked.
After tinkering with it for a few minutes, I learned that the pad could only do the education stuff that Angus allowed. I decided to look over the list of study topics the pad had access to. They were almost identical to the ones we’d seen in class. But then I saw another category at the bottom, called Fiction and Supplementary Material. I tapped the words, and a drop-down list appeared. I scrolled through them, surprised by the number of available titles. There had to be at least a few hundred here. The Adventures of Marco Grim, The Renegade and the Duchess, Digging Forward to Tomorrow: One Man’s Journey into the Ground. The list went on and on.
I could hardly believe it. The tiny library back in the Church had been so small. We’d only had a few books, and hardly any of them had been fiction. The only exceptions were a few fables and a book of fairy tales.
My eyes stopped on one of the titles, and my chest fluttered. Tales of the Earth: Mankind’s Lost Homeworld.
I felt myself squeeze the sides of the pad in excitement. This was the same book that Sister Mable had read to us—my favorite book in the whole library.
“Time for bed!” barked Pearl from outside the room.
Clementine tossed in her bed at the sound of the woman’s voice.
I wanted so badly to ask if I could stay awake and read, now that I’d discovered these books, but I knew better than to upset Pearl when she was in a mood like this. I’d have to wait to get my story fix until later, maybe during class. Besides, I really was tired.
I flicked the pad off, turned onto my stomach, and closed my eyes. I lay there for a while, slowly drifting, but my mind stayed on the books inside the pad, and I found I was still too excited to sleep.
After a short while, I heard voices from outside the door. Clementine was asleep, and she let out a light snore with her leg hanging off the bed.
I couldn’t help but listen intently to what was going on outside, and the longer I did, the more familiar the voices became.
“It’s an iffy job,” Pearl said. “Still not sure why you took it. Strange choice, Mulberry, even for you.”
Mulberry? We hadn’t seen him since we’d first arrived. I got out of bed and crept to the door. “It tickled me,” he said. “Someone wants Michael ‘The Mako’ Dunn taken care of? It sounded like a joke at first, but the client was sure as shit serious about it. Guess you could say that made it even funnier.”
“Well, I ain’t laughing,” Pearl growled. “It’s going to take a lot of resources, and you know that’s too high profile for us. Can’t you just tell him to find someone else?”
“And ruin our reputation with the Kahns? They’re an untapped gold mine, and you know it. Most of their operations are done in-house, but they’re giving us a chance to capitalize on their recent…personnel problem.”
“It’s too risky,” Pearl said quickly.
I slipped out of bed, taking slow and quiet steps as I edged my way closer to the door.
“If you don’t want the job, give it to Rose,” Mulberry said. “You know how bored she’s been. She’ll do whatever you throw her way.”
“You don’t think I can handle it myself?” Pearl’s voice took on a sort of edge that had me leaning closer.
“On the contrary, you can handle anything the godsdamn galaxy throws at you. That’s why I gave those two kids to you.”
“Don’t remind me,” Pearl scoffed. “You ought to k
now better than to stick me in a house with a couple of girls and tell me to play Mother.”
“Shit, Pearl, I know that, but who else is it gonna be?”
“Someone who spent the last two decades baking pies instead of slitting throats.”
Mulberry chuckled. “Maybe so, but the way the world is changing, I’d say those two needs exactly the kind of lessons that only you can give them,” he told her. “And I think you know that.”
Their voices drifted as they began to move again, and I went back to my bed.
Slitting throats? I thought, letting the heaviness of my tired eyes finally get the better of me. I wonder what she meant by that.
4
Another day, another dawn wake-up call from Pearl. Another class from Angus after breakfast, and another few hours of cleaning before lunch.
The days came and went, and the blisters on my hands became calluses. My sore muscles, while still aching, seemed to be comfortable with the constant work. It wasn’t exactly hard labor, but I liked to think we were earning our keep.
After lunch, instead of cleaning the mess hall, Clem and I were back in the kitchen again on dish duty. From the look of the plates, I guessed they were too dirty for a simple run through the machine. We were given heavy gloves, massive brushes, and told to make them sparkle.
I still wasn’t sure how many people lived in this place. So many came and went, and only a few had grown familiar. I didn’t know who any of them were, and when I asked, Pearl only shrugged and said they had gone or returned from assignments.
“Assignments for what?” I had asked.
“To do things that need doing,” she’d told me. “Like that floor over there that needs sweeping.”
I hummed a ditty Angus had played for us to help with our learning process, then grabbed a scrub brush and worked the bottom of a pot that looked like someone had cooked the beef stew an hour too long.
I was almost panting by the time I finally dug deep enough to reach the bottom of the slimy gunk inside the pot.
“Darn it, now I have that song stuck in my head too,” Clem said as she wrestled with a cast-iron skillet. She dipped it into a sink filled with sudsy water and pulled it out again for more.
“Angus did say that learning it via song helps us retain the knowledge,” I answered. “Then he started talking about the human brain-something or other, and I spaced out.”
“Well yeah, you attach anything to music that annoying, and you’ll never forget it,” Clem said.
“You’ll have nobody to blame if you get to test day and draw a blank. All you have to do is hum all the songs that you have stuck in your head, and you’re golden.” I looked up from my pot and smiled.
Clementine shuddered as she put a deep fryer basket up to dry and picked up a bunch of dirty cooking knives. “But that means that we’ll have to have Angus’s creepy singing voice playing on repeat in our heads. I can’t imagine a worse punishment. People will beg to be sent to the mining colonies after about an hour of that.”
We both laughed.
“Chatty ones, these new girls, wouldn’t you say?” asked a voice from the back of the kitchen. “Damn pretty, though.”
I hadn’t even heard anyone enter the room, but there were a couple of boys standing in the opposite corner of the kitchen. One, a shorter blond, was leaning against the wall. The other, heavier and taller than his friend, was sitting on one of the counters. He had a knife in one hand and a piece of fruit in the other.
Both looked like they were in their late teens. The black-haired boy seemed like he was almost old enough to be an adult, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Just ignore them,” Clem said, shaking her head and digging back into the dirty skillet.
“Boy, ain’t that the truth, Alonso,” the blond one said, tucking his pad into a pocket and leaning closer to the counter that his friend was sitting on. “You two sure are beautiful. What are your names? I’m Bart. This is Alonso.”
Clementine rolled her eyes.
“Nice to meet you girls,” Alonso answered. “I gotta tell you, I bet you both could use a break from all this cleaning, huh? Maybe spend a few hours with a couple of guys like us. We could show you a better time than this.”
“No thanks,” said Clementine.
“Aw, come on,” Bart said, frowning. “You ought to thank us for being so nice to you. This place ain’t made for girls as pretty as you two. We can protect you. Maybe bring you back something nice whenever we’re out.”
“That’s right,” Alonso said, walking up to Clementine. I could almost feel his eyes on her whole body, and it sent goosebumps down my back. “I bet it’s hard staying inside all day, doing chores. We’ve heard about you two. Heard you can’t leave.”
“Your skin looks so soft and pretty,” Bart said, getting close to me. “Has anyone ever told you that before?”
I felt like something sank down into my stomach, making me sick, making my hands cold, even though they were under the steaming water.
“I didn’t think so,” Bart continued. “I bet no one ever tells you nice things like that.”
Alphonse smirked. “If you ask me, you’re the prettier one,” he told Clementine, but she didn’t seem to react. “Your butt is way better than hers, and that dark hair makes your eyes really pop.”
“Go away,” Clementine muttered.
“Huh?” Bart asked. “Are you listening to us? We’re paying you a compliment. That’s no way to treat a guy who’s being nice to you.”
“We didn’t ask you to be nice to us,” Clem said.
“So what?” Alphonse asked with a huff. He placed his hand on her shoulder, swinging her around. He was a head taller than Clem, towering over both of us. He ran a finger across her bangs, moving them out of her eyes. “Don’t you like it when a guy does that?”
She stared at him, a firm look on her face, totally devoid of any fear. “Not really,” she said.
He snickered. “We both know that’s not true.”
I dropped the brush, pressing my fingers into the dirty bottom of the pot, trying to stop them from shaking. This feeling was too familiar, too fresh and horrifying.
My mind started wandering, jumping elsewhere. Mother making walnut and chocolate cookies, wrapping me up in her arms and telling me that everything was going to be all right.
It was getting easier and easier to slip into that daydream.
Bart touched my waist, and I felt my throat tighten. “I bet you’d like to get out of here, huh?” he asked me. “Alonso, maybe we can take them to our room.”
“Good idea,” he answered.
I kept ignoring them, but it was getting increasingly difficult.
Clementine turned away from Alonso, saying nothing. She seemed to be handling it better than me. She just kept on scrubbing that skillet, taking the time to clean deep into the grooves where grease had accumulated. I wished I could be that calm.
“Playing hard to get, eh?” asked Alonso. “I bet you’ll drop that act when I get you in my room.”
“Miss Pearl told us to get these dishes clean,” said Clem, her voice totally relaxed and casual, as though this was all so routine and simple. As if these two boys weren’t about to do something terrible to both of us. “If you don’t mind, that’s exactly what I’d like to get back to. You wouldn’t want to get on Miss Pearl’s bad side, would you?”
I looked over at Alonso, who laughed when he saw my face. I wondered if he could tell how scared I was right now. He had that same hungry look that Mackavoy had back at the orphanage when she sat me on that couch.
Alonso leaned over Clem’s shoulder, his annoyance starting to show. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll treat you the way you should be treated. I’ll give you a real good show too. I know you want it. No one else is going to be this nice to you.”
I caught him looking back at me. I found my brush buried deep in the sudsy water and gripped it tightly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Clementine s
miling as she dipped the skillet back into the steaming water. “That’s a very generous offer, Alonso,” she said, her voice soft and sweet as she kept her hands in the water. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline. As I said, Miss Pearl will be angry if we don’t do our jobs.”
Alonso laughed again, but this time, it felt forced, like he was trying to control himself. “Okay, sweetheart, let’s go. Bart and I only have about twenty minutes before we’ve gotta be somewhere, so I wanna make this quick. We can play games later.”
He grabbed her arm, squeezing it tightly. I gripped my brush, turning towards him. It was probably better than just my bare fists, but my hands were shaking so much, I wasn’t sure I could do anything right now.
Maybe I could get the soap in his eyes. Maybe distract him long enough to get away.
My heart hammered inside my ribcage like a rabbit trying to get out.
Something in Clem’s hand glinted in the light. It looked vaguely like a cheese knife, but I couldn’t see it well enough under the water.
Alonso leaned in closer, bringing his lips to the side of Clem’s neck. “You act like a bitch, but you just need a good man to teach you,” he whispered. “I’ll do that for you. It’ll be a favor. You can pay me back later. Don’t worry. I can show you how to be a good little—”
Clem swept around to face him with a swift, single motion, burying a knife in Alonso’s shoulder. All of this before anyone could react.
It took Alonso a split second to realize what had happened as the force of the blade caused him to stagger back. His eyes fell in shock as he spotted the metal in his flesh, and he let out a terrible scream. It was so loud, it hurt my ears.
Clem said nothing.
He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything, and then took a step towards her. She shoved him back, and even though he was bigger, he lost his balance and stumbled into the nearby counter.
Clem backed away, gripping my hand and tugging me towards the door.
“Y-you bitch!” Alonso shouted, his voice cracking. “Get back here! Y-you fucking bitch! Bart, stop them! Don’t let them leave.”
