The Slave Series

by Laura Frances

  8

  At least Solomon had the decency to express how much danger we are all still in. He doesn’t say anything about a plan or what tomorrow will look like or even today. Only that we’ll be cared for and fed until the time comes to act. The meeting was short and full of promises that ring empty in my ears. No one can promise freedom in a place like this. I think of what the Council will do with us when they catch us; how much worse things will be.

  We aren’t allowed to wander near the rooms along the edges of the building. We are restricted to the interior, without windows. Except for the skylights, I think, peeking upward. A new energy still hangs in the air, but not everyone is convinced.

  The crowd is a mix of emotions—desperation and hopeful smiles and bitter glares. People gingerly touch bandages, absentmindedly staring at nothing—processing. A woman near my mattress hasn’t moved since we arrived. She lies on her side, her eyes empty, her mouth parted—as if words are sitting there waiting, but she lacks the desire to free them. An occasional tear leaks from the corner of her eye to the mattress. She’s in shock, mindlessly turning the wire ring on her finger.

  I take another shower, this time cleaning my body. Aspen migrates back to me afterward, and we sit against a wall in the sleeping quarters, eating cans of vegetables. According to Solomon, we’ll be fed meals frequently. They’re trying to make us stronger.

  “You’re quiet,” Aspen says. Her fork scrapes the aluminum can. I’m sitting with my knees up, arms resting on them, a can of carrots clenched in my hands. I stare at the label until my eyes blur and the words become a smudge of black. Inside, I’m full of anxiety so strong it hurts. Aspen bumps me with her shoulder.

  “Hannah?”

  “Yeah.”

  I drop my legs, crossing them. Sitting up taller, I take a bite of carrots. Aspen sighs and shifts beside me.

  “This is crazy,” she mumbles through a bite of food.

  I peek over and she’s looking at something across the room. I follow her gaze to Cash. He leans against the wall near the doorway. I can’t figure out if he’s protecting us, or keeping us in line. Another man walks around the room, talking and smiling with Workers. They respond with uncomfortable smiles and quiet nods. Their eyes are skeptical. I look back to Cash. I think of the countless lunches in cafeterias lined with heavily armed Watchers. I think of the never-ending paranoia, the ever-present panic.

  Do not talk during lunch. Do not look them in the eye.

  Cash looks up, and his gaze sweeps the room. He wears a scowl, his eyebrows heavy. It’s the face of a soldier. His eyes land on me, and for a second we’re stuck. I break away and dig a carrot from my can.

  “How are we supposed to trust them?” I mumble. Aspen shrugs.

  “Solomon trusts them.”

  “And we trust Solomon?”

  Aspen rolls her eyes. “Are you always like this?”

  “I’ve lived longer than you,” I say. “I don’t find it easy to trust any of them.”

  She huffs and slumps against the wall. “Fourteen years is long enough to understand how things work here,” she says. She’s younger than I thought. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “I know you aren’t,” I say gently, connecting with her eyes. I know that she’s been through a lifetime of horror. We all have. “But in twenty years, I’ve never met a kind Watcher.” My back falls against the wall again, and my eyes flick to Cash. “Not one.”

  Except for Edan, I realize.

  “You’re twenty?” Aspen squints one eye. “You don’t look that old.”

  “Almost. And I feel that old.”

  Aspen falls quiet. She scowls, pulling on the laces of her boots. “I want to believe them,” she says quietly, without looking up. “There’s nothing wrong with hoping it’s true.”

  I don’t answer her. She wouldn’t like what I have to say. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of color. Aspen secures her red hair in a ponytail. She drags her body from the floor with a grunt, and now she’s standing in front of me holding out her hand.

  “Let’s get the grand tour,” she says, wiggling her hand impatiently.

  I grab her wrist, she grabs mine, and I’m being pulled to my feet. “You mean the severely restricted tour?” I say, giving her a sideways look. Aspen is tall for fourteen, or maybe I’m short. When I stand to my full height, I look straight into her eyes.

  She throws me a look, and we head for the hall, tossing our empty cans in the trash. At the door, Cash steps in our path.

  “We’re gonna look around,” Aspen says with no apprehension, grinning widely. I give her a wide-eyed look before slowly turning upward to look at Cash’s scowling face. He looks between us.

  “If…that’s okay,” I add. I know Aspen is frowning at me, but I don’t turn to see it. She doesn’t seem to understand how much trouble she can cause by acting entitled.

  “You can’t walk around by yourselves.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Okay, well—”

  “Why not?” Aspen sets a hand on her jutted hip. My insides knot into a mess. Cash crosses his arms.

  “Take it up with Solomon,” he says. “It’s for your safety.”

  Aspen’s lips fall into a pout. A second later her eyes light up. “So we can take a tour with someone to guide us?”

  Cash pauses, taken off guard by her persistence.

  “Yes.”

  “So guide us!” Aspen grins from ear to ear.

  My insides are dragging me down, begging to disappear into the floor. I can’t look at him. I shoot a look at Aspen and take her elbow.

  “No,” Cash says. My face snaps his direction. I can’t help it. He’s so miserable. His eyes flick to me, then back to Aspen. She arches an eyebrow. I met her mother earlier this morning. She was quiet and withdrawn, nothing like the bold girl next to me.

  “What a gentleman.” Aspen mutters. A quiet, panicked sorry breezes past my lips, and I pull her back into the room.

  “Aspen. You can’t talk to him like that,” I say, keeping my voice quiet. Aspen tugs her arm free. She glares over my shoulder at Cash.

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “You’re gonna get us in trouble.”

  “Oh please. He’s just acting like a Watcher.”

  “He is a Watcher,” I remind her sternly. “One who just betrayed the Council.”

  Even if they’re all delusional, these guys just signed their own death sentences.

  I see the realization sink in as Aspen’s face softens a little. “I didn’t think of that.”

  I glance over my shoulder at Cash while we cross back to our spot. He’s staring hard at the floor, leaning his back to the wall, hands in his pockets. He looks up, and I look away.

  9

  It surprises me how easily people forget that we’re still in the valley. I watch some Workers pass each day like it’s nothing. They make it look so simple—like a clear, unrestricted breath; limbs fanned over a mattress of feathers; a weightless, empty, carefree kind of simple. I catch them smiling, catch them laughing over cans of food, and I realize that many of them have forgotten. They’ve forgotten that we’re still walled in by white-capped mountains. We share the valley with heartless men who take orders from a panel of men without souls. We cower in our corner, and they point their guns at our heads, waiting for our first move.

  These walls are deceiving. Only twelve inches of concrete separate us from the world outside, but inside we feel removed from it all. I catch my own guard dropping. I’m exhausted on a level I never realized. My muscles are weighty and sluggish. Now that our daily labor has been stripped away, my body is greedy for sleep. I nap during the day, out in the open, surrounded by a hundred people. I close my eyes, and in seconds I’m drifting into a deeper sleep than I’ve ever experienced. It’s addicting.

  But sleeping brings dreaming. And dreaming means nightmares. Blood-thirsty men in black chasing us through dead-end alleys. Rain slipping up our boots and bodies crumpling in the puddles. Screams of mother
s and babies and fathers, and bullets filling my body, only to shock me awake with a gasp. I lie in the darkness, catching my breath, wishing away the images. But they’re too close to the truth and too possible to get rid of.

  I wish someone would tell me what’s going on. I spend my days pressed against the wall, my knees pulled to my chest, waiting. It’s been five days, and nothing. We haven’t met the other Workers. We haven’t been told what to expect. We only eat and sleep and shower, because we can. Aspen spends her time either grumbling at me for being so boring, or sitting with her mother, who never talks. Sometimes I sit by Aspen’s mother, searching my brain for something to say that will bring comfort. But I rarely think of anything, and Aspen fills the time talking about all the things she will do when we get out of the valley.

  I don’t have the heart to tell her that probably won’t happen.

  Nighttime is the worst.

  At night, I can’t distract myself with Aspen and with watching the people who fill this giant room. I can’t weave my way through a maze of beds and find an elderly woman to talk to, wishing she were Norma.

  At night, I have only the sounds of breathing and snoring and wheezing. I have only the skylights that to me look like great weak points in the structure of this facility. Glass shatters. Everyone knows that.

  I lie awake with my eyes wide open, listening past the sleeping sounds. My ears strain against the heat pumping through the vents; push past the din drifting through the halls from the Infirmary. I try to catch the shift of fabric and the squeak of polished boots. I listen for the sound of bullets clicking into place and the rush of air when silent hand signals instruct men with bad intentions to infiltrate our hideout.

  It’s been seven days now. Seven days, and nothing. The nothing is torment.

  “Hannah.”

  I must have fallen asleep. I don’t remember closing my eyes, but now I’m slowly cracking them apart, reacting to a hand gently shaking my shoulder. A figure looms over me, and I startle. A second later, I recognize the stale mint when he talks.

  “Wake up.”

  I push up, rubbing my eyes.

  “Edan?” I whisper.

  “Hey, kid.” In the darkness, I can see the white of his crooked grin. “We need to talk.” I follow him through the maze of mattresses, toward the dim light of the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” I say when we’re a good distance from the snoring. Edan shakes his head and waves me forward.

  “Come on.”

  I stumble along, fighting the urge to turn back toward the mattress. My legs are sluggish and heavy. Sleep still pulls at me, making my reasoning slow. The halls are darker at night. The main lights that run along the ceilings are turned off, leaving only emergency lights mounted high in the corners. We walk through patches of darkness, and I consider grabbing Edan’s hand so I don’t get lost. I decide against it. A part of me still remembers that not long ago he was a Watcher. It keeps me trapped between trust and fear.

  We’ve made so many turns that I don’t think I’ll be able to return to the sleeping quarters on my own. We stop in front of a metal door. My thoughts are clearing, shedding off sleep, and I look at Edan in the dim light, confused.

  “Ready?” he says.

  “For what?”

  Edan steps close, and in a low voice says, “I’m under orders not to tell you. You’ll have to decide if you trust me. I can’t make you do any of this. But it’s important that you remember, it is your choice.”

  My words falter. There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach. I pull in my eyebrows. “What are we doing, Edan?”

  “Are you ready?” He asks again. Of course I’m not ready. That is what I should say. Instead, I draw in a breath, hold it a few seconds too long, and nod as the air blows past my lips.

  Edan gives me one more small smile as he pushes the door open. I linger on his eyes a moment as he passes me. They hide a weighty emotion. Worry stirs in my belly.

  I squint as we step into a small room with a single lamp. The glare is piercing without a shade to mute the bulb. The walls of the room are stacked brick, a strange change from the rest of the factory, which are all solid cement. It’s as though this room was built as an afterthought, or out of later necessity. The uneven light of the lamp casts shadows on the faces of three men standing around a square table. One is Solomon. One is Cash. The other makes me do a double take. He tips his hat and smiles.

  I’ve seen him before.

  “I know you,” I blurt out. His smile droops like he’s thinking, trying to draw up a memory of me. “I mean,” I blush, embarrassed. “I don’t know you. I saw you. The last day.”

  He considers me for what feels like an eternity with everyone staring. His dark eyes light up. They match his jet-black hair. “That’s right,” he says, grinning. “You smelled like chemical cleaner. No offense.” He winks. I blush deeper. I remember scrubbing the drains just before leaving that night. I smile a little.

  “This is my good buddy, Takeshi,” Edan says, slapping Takeshi on the shoulder. He gestures to me. “This is Hannah.”

  “Tell me, Hannah,” Solomon says, drawing all our attention. His voice is gentle, fatherly. Every time I hear him speak, I find myself wanting to trust him more. That doesn’t mean that I will. “What is it about you that Edan trusts so wholly?”

  I hesitate, glancing at Edan. He pushes his hands into his pant pockets and looks down, then back up, forehead wrinkled. He waits to see what I’ll say. Eventually I say, “I don’t know.”

  Edan breathes a quiet laugh and shakes his head, amused. I don’t know why. Edan has no reason to trust me. Just like I have very few reasons to trust any of the men that surround me. Edan being the exception. He saved my life, and I think that should count for something.

  Solomon smiles and nods his head, watching me. “Have your accommodations been comfortable? I know it’s a little cramped. I hope you are able to rest.”

  “I am.” Which is sort of true. But who am I to complain? “Thank you.”

  Solomon pushes his palms to the table and leans forward. “Rumor has it that you arrived with two boys who were not your own. That you saved them, leading them to our compound while running for your own life. Is that true?”

  I wish he wouldn’t look at me like I’ve done something miraculous. The attention knots my stomach.

  “Yes.”

  He straightens and says very seriously, “You have my deepest gratitude, young lady.”

  Cash clears his throat, severing the moment. “Sir,” he says. “Tell me again why we need her.”

  “Come now,” Solomon says. He smooths his hands over a map that lies spread across the table. “Cash, you know very well why we need her. Don’t be offended, Hannah.” He glances at me. “Cash is only concerned for your safety.”

  “I’m not offended,” I say, but I am, and it probably shows in my voice. I glance at Cash, who glares at the map. That sounded nothing like concern.

  “Why am I here?”

  “We find ourselves in a situation in which we need a little help,” Solomon says, pacing a three-foot stretch, hands folded behind his back. “A hiccup in the plan.”

  Cash clears his throat again. Solomon raises a hand and continues.

  “We need your thumb print,” he says frankly. “We need access to something. And we need the help of a former Worker. None of these men,” he says, gesturing around the room. “Would get very far unnoticed.”

  Oh.

  The sinking feeling drags at my stomach again. Thumb prints mean factories. Factories that require them are in the Council-controlled corners of the valley. I try to swallow. Try to breathe. Everything feels tight.

  “Why?” I finally manage to squeak out.

  “I’m afraid I can’t give you the reason,” Solomon says. He settles in his chair and scoots close to the table, leaning forward to examine something on the map. I study him while his eyes are diverted. There is nothing about him that I disapprove of. His beard is trimmed, his skin
aged but well cared for. He wears the same green knit hat. His body is thin, in a way that suggests he never over-indulges.

  “That is, not until you make your decision. Need to know, you see?”

  He picks up a pair of wire glasses, sets them low on his nose, and peers over the map.

  I nod. I think of Edan’s comment outside the door. I’m under orders not to tell you. Was that because I might not come if I knew? Or because this place isn’t as secure as it seems? They might be looking for traitors among the deserters. I don’t envy that job. I sneak a glance at Cash. He’s watching me with his arms crossed over his chest.

  I become aware of the silence around me as all the men wait for my answer. It would be easier to go back to bed—let someone else do the hard job. I haven’t been told anything yet. I don’t yet bear the burden of knowing. This feels like a last chance to stay safe.

  But, I think, I’ve never been that safe anyway. And how do I know that this factory will be secure for much longer?

  “How long?” I ask, grasping for a question to buy me more time to think. “How long will I be gone?”

  Solomon looks between Takeshi and Cash. Takeshi looks to me.

  “If everything goes as planned,” he says. “One day. But things don’t always go as planned, so I can’t make any promises.”

  “You will be risking your safety, Hannah, and possibly your life,” Solomon says. I stare hard at my feet, biting my gums. “These men will do everything in their power to protect you. But they are men with targets on their backs. This whole operation could end badly. I won’t tell you lies. This is dangerous.”