The Slave Series

by Laura Frances

  “Deep. She may need stitches.”

  “I have to insist,” Solomon says slowly, his gaze sliding between Cash and me. To me he says, “Please, let me see your injury. There’s a real risk of infection here in the valley.”

  I turn to him. Stare at him. By the sincere look he gives me over his glasses, he doesn’t catch the ridiculousness of what he just said. He doesn’t catch the absurdity in making me aware that there’s a real risk for infection. As if I haven’t lived my entire life under that threat. I purse my lips and lower my eyes. In one movement, I slide the leg of my pants up and hoist my boot onto the table. A glass jar tips over, and Solomon corrects it before peering over my leg. Pain stings where the fabric of my pants brushed the cut.

  “Hmm, yes,” he concludes, lifting his glasses to see better. “Stitches it is.”

  He rises from his chair, patting my shoulder. Either Solomon is the most even-tempered person alive, or he is oblivious to my mood.

  “Cash,” he says. “Take Hannah to see Sarah.” He turns to me. “She is the best at stitches,” he says in a low voice, like someone might hear. “Best to have it over quickly, and some of the others are a bit—clumsy.”

  I swallow and nod. When I’ve needed stitches in the past, after cutting my arm on the corner of a metal piece of equipment, the nurse numbed my arm around the wound. It occurs to me now that they probably don’t have the same supplies available here. I feel suddenly nauseous, but I won’t let Cash see. He’s hauled his body from the corner chair and now stands behind me, waiting. I stand without looking up. Maybe if I take on old habits of silence and invisibility, we won’t have to talk.

  Before I leave the room, Solomon touches my arm. Cash continues into the hall.

  “I feel like I haven’t expressed this enough, so I want to make myself clear,” he says. I tense. This is it. This is the reprimand. He’s learned about my behavior in the factory.

  “What you did this morning was incredibly brave. I wish I hadn’t had to ask such a thing of you. You have been through real trauma, and sending you back into the thick of it was a difficult decision. I am so very proud of you.”

  I’m taken off guard. I find myself swallowing too many times. His words make me think of Norma. Missing her so suddenly drains me of my irritation. I nod. Look away. Fiddle with my hands.

  “And Hannah…”

  I look up.

  “Make amends while you can,” he says quietly. “This is a dangerous time. Let’s not hold to hard feelings.”

  He squeezes my arm and walks away, circling to the other side of the table, patting Edan on the shoulder. I stand still, following him with my eyes. Edan grins at Solomon in agreement to something, then glances at me.

  He mouths, You okay?

  I let my lips curve upward—just a little—and nod. He smiles again like he doesn’t really believe me. It hits me that he never told Solomon. None of the men said one word about my actions today. Takeshi patted my cheek and thanked me more than once. Edan reassured me, even while the panic was still hot in my eyes.

  Cash steps into the room again, his body filling the doorway. He meets my eyes, and I follow him into the hall. We walk in silence. He pushes his hands into the pockets of his black pants and ambles with his head down, eyes on the floor. His eyebrows are pulled low. When I peek up at his face, his eyes flick to mine…then away.

  I think I should say something. I’m thinking Apologize! I search desperately for something to say that will cut through this uncomfortable tension. But it isn’t in my nature to know what to say. At least not to someone like Cash. I could talk Norma’s ear off, but that’s only because she never posed a threat to me. Cash represents everything I was warned against as a child. With him, the words are sucked from my mind and I am left with only the instinct to survive his presence long enough to disappear.

  I don’t realize he’s stopped until I’m a few steps ahead. I look back and Cash is rubbing the back of his neck, glaring at the wall. After a few seconds of stillness, he lets out a breath, releasing the air trapped in his chest. His shoulders fall forward, like he’s tired.

  “It isn’t your fault,” he says, his voice a quiet rumbling from his throat.

  “What isn’t?”

  I shift, uneasy at the way he’s watching me. It’s a constant battle within myself to remember that these soldiers are on my side now. They are no longer my enemies.

  He takes a step toward me. Instinctively, I step back. I see the flash in his eyes. He noticed.

  “Every time you panic. Every time you act on fear—it’s the way you’ve been conditioned to behave.” He looks away, and I see color rise in his cheeks. Is he ashamed?

  “I left them,” Cash says, looking me hard in the eyes. “I left them, because they do not own me. I will not…perform for them anymore.”

  I don’t miss the way the words snag on something. I shake my head, because it’s not my business. I shake my head as if I’m not curious, but I am. I want to know why a Watcher would choose to leave the position of power. Cash breathes a laugh, lifting the edge of his lips. It’s surprising to see him smile, so when he takes another step toward me, I forget that I am afraid. I forget to shrink back.

  “I know you want to know.”

  “No,” I say, too fast. “No, I’m…I don’t need to know anything.”

  He tilts his head, amused. “Maybe I want you to know,” he says. The strangest thing happens. His features soften. Kindness flashes across his face. A glimmer, there and gone, but I saw it.

  People pass us, glancing at our exchange. What a contrast we are: the terrifying Watcher talking with the trembling Worker. I’m still dressed in my old, threadbare clothes, covered in tears and blood stains. Cash wears his black fatigues, a loaded gun strapped to his leg. He pulls the knit hat from his head, and blond hair spills out.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt, my face hot. Cash stills. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” I glare at the floor. “I’m sorry for running.”

  Cash’s features harden, and the shrinking feeling returns.

  “No,” he says sternly. “Don’t apologize.”

  “But you were trying to help me.” I’m trembling, reliving the panic. “I almost ruined everything. If you and Edan had been caught—”

  I stop. Slowly I turn my head, staring down at the hand Cash just laid on my shoulder. Too heavy. Too big. The knotted muscles in my neck strain. I look up.

  “I told you,” he says. “It wasn’t your fault. Don’t apologize for being afraid. Not to me.”

  Cash drops his hand and presses his palms into his pockets again. He looks away. I think of this morning, how embarrassed he looked under the fire escape after he encouraged me. He wears that same look now.

  “All right,” I say quietly. Our eyes meet, and this time I offer him a smile. What would Norma say if she saw this? How would she react to hearing me converse with a Watcher? Then again, maybe the problem is that I still see them as Watchers. What if they are just men? What if she was right, and there is more than what lives in my nightmares? “All right,” I say again, a whisper. This time it was meant for me.

  I’m gritting my teeth around a stick, sweat wetting my hair line. Sarah, a woman in her middle years, slides a needle and thick thread through my skin again, and an animal noise rises out of my throat.

  “You’re gonna wake the babies,” Edan says, trying not to grin.

  “Shut. Up.” I glare at him from this makeshift bed, where I lie with my legs out, propped up on my elbows. Even though it hurts, I want to see. He holds his palms out and steps back. He found us just before the first stitch went in.

  “One of you hold her still,” Sarah says, disapproval in her tone. “Or I’ll be stitching the wrong stretch of skin.”

  Edan holds my leg just above the knee, where my pants are rolled. He looks over his shoulder at me and smiles apologetically, just as I feel the needle press through my flesh. My foot jerks in response to the pain, and now Cash is being instructed to ho
ld it down as well. He crouches at the end of the bed and holds my foot with both hands. Our eyes meet.

  “Three more,” Sarah tells me, frowning at me over her glasses. I nod and lie down, my hands pressed to my eyes, elbows out. “Are you ready,” she asks, though by her tone, I don’t think she cares if I am.

  “Just do it,” I mutter through the stick. I close my eyes beneath my hands, trying to distract myself by thinking of something else. But in the black behind my eyelids is Norma’s face. First, Norma smiling, touching my hand. Then her face twisting in fear, hands held up, pleading for mercy. I wish I knew what happened to her. I wish I knew that she was dead, so I could mourn her without hope. Hope keeps the pain always there, always squeezing at my lungs, pressing on my heart.

  Norma used to tell me that pain is temporary. That while we feel it we think it will never stop, but eventually it will fade, usually when we stop focusing on it. I thought for a long time that she might be right. Years have passed since my parents were killed, and there were long stretches where I felt nothing. But I realized that the nothing I felt was actually emptiness—lack. So I’m not sure I’m any better off.

  “Done,” Sarah says, sighing. She peels off latex gloves and tosses them into a bin. “Come back in a couple days so I can check for infection.” She moves to leave, grabbing up the towel that holds her supplies, but at the last second touches my arm. As if to prove that she’s not as callous as she seems, she says,

  “Don’t feel bad. Most of the men cry like babies.” She leaves.

  Edan helps me sit up, and I touch the swollen skin around my stitches. I sniff, wiping moisture from my face with the back of my hand.

  “Happy?”

  I level Cash with a look, and he grins from the corner of his mouth. It’s his fault I went through that. If he hadn’t spoken up, I would have bandaged it and let it heal into a jagged scar, less dainty than the one I’ll have now.

  “I won’t lose sleep,” he says. Edan snorts.

  “Since when do you sleep?”

  “Since I convinced Takeshi to give you first watch tonight,” Cash says, slapping Edan’s back. Edan groans, rubbing the spot where Cash made contact.

  “Thanks, jerk.”

  Edan offers me his arm. I don’t need it, but I decide to take it. I’m beginning to associate Edan with safety, and it feels good holding on to a strong arm. It reminds me of my father, though he was never as built as these men.

  Together the three of us make our way to the hall outside the sleeping quarters. Edan deposits me on the floor, and the two leave to grab food. A minute later, Cash hands me a can of apple slices in syrup and cinnamon. My stomach turns at the idea of eating apples, but I smile a little and take it. Edan drops to the floor beside me, so close I can’t move my right arm. Cash settles on the opposite wall, but his form is so big his boots are pressed to the wall on my other side. We share the food, apples and corn and beans, until we’re left scraping the sides of the cans. The silence between us feels more comfortable as the minutes stretch. Sounds of utensils scraping cans and murmured chatter hang in the air around us as lunch is served. Not long ago, I would be sitting in the cafeteria of the Cosmetic factory, surrounded by the barrels of guns and the shifting of eyes. Now I lean my weight against one Watcher and smile shyly at another when our eyes meet. Cash presses the back of his head to the wall and watches me openly until my face burns. I wonder what he’s deciding about me. His eyebrows pull in, and his gaze drops to the floor.

  16

  I haven’t seen a rise in illness. We’ve been back for three days. I want to ask about it, but now that I’ve played my part, I feel like I don’t have a right to information anymore.

  I finish in the shower and comb through my hair, staring mindlessly at the hazy glass over the sink. I can remember specifics about my face now and can almost imagine that I’m looking into my true reflection. I’d like to revisit the mirror Takeshi showed me.

  The sweat pants I wear are my favorite of my new clothes. Unlike other things I’ve had to wear, these might actually be my size. I wear a pale blue shirt and thick gray socks.

  “That’s a serious cut on your leg,” Aspen says, arching an eyebrow at me. She watches every time I change the bandage. Her elbows bob in the air as she secures her hair in a braid. I feel bad not telling her, but she is young. My instinct is to protect her, and she has dealt with enough.

  “It’s not that bad,” I say. Her eyes roll.

  “Must have been exciting,” she mumbles.

  “Not really,” I smile.

  “Whatever.” Her hand lands hard on the sink beside me, making me jump. “You leave for a whole day, come back with a stitched-up gash on your leg, and you’re friends with the scary Watcher guy? Yeah,” She returns to straightening her hair. “Nothing to tell at all.”

  “Come on, Aspen,” I say, turning to her. I try another smile. “Why do you want to know so bad?”

  “Because you won’t tell me.” She crosses her arms and raises her eyebrows. In moments like these, I can see her young age clearly.

  I sigh. “I just had to do something—nothing big—and I was clumsy. I cut my leg and ended up being more of a nuisance than anything else. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” she retorts. Her face calms a little, and her voice quiets. “I miss everything.”

  “Believe me,” I say, touching her shoulder. “You’re better off missing out.”

  “Not likely,” she mutters, pushing past me into the sleeping quarters. I sigh, my hand falling to my side.

  We head into the sleeping quarters, ready for bed. I eye the others as we pass. I’ve picked up the habit of looking for symptoms that might be the start of an epidemic. When I hear a sneeze, my face jerks in its direction.

  I say goodnight to Aspen when we reach her family. I wave at her mother, who regards me with a gentle nod.

  I reach my mattress at the same time Edan does. He sits beside me, leaning against the wall. He’s chewing on something. It smells minty when he turns to me. I’m getting ready to tease him, ask him what in the world he’s doing here, when I notice the heaviness in his eyes. He shoots me a little smile when our eyes meet, then looks down.

  “What is it?” I say, trying to be quiet. “What’s wrong?”

  Edan shakes his head. He doesn’t answer right away, and I can tell he’s thinking of something else to talk about. Anything else, besides what’s really bothering him. I know I’m right when he says with a grin, “How’s that leg?”

  “It’s all Aspen can talk about,” I say, sighing. Edan’s head nods in a silent laugh. He fiddles with the laces of his boot.

  “She’s pretty determined, huh?”

  “Very. Maybe it’s because she was unconscious for most of the escape. I don’t know. Maybe she needs more excitement.”

  “To be young,” Edan says.

  “I feel so old.”

  “Tell me about it.” He winks. “You are old.”

  I push his arm, and he limply falls to one side, laughing quietly. Even his teasing is lifeless, tired. When the air between us quiets, I try again.

  “Edan, what’s wrong?” This pointless banter is a distraction. This is a new side of Edan, one I’ve not seen. He is distant.

  He chews his mouth, looking out over the room. There are eyes on us, curious people who are probably wondering what it must be like to be friends with a Watcher. Maybe they think I’m a traitor for it. Some of the faces wear furrowed eyebrows and tense jaws.

  When Edan doesn’t say anything, I ask the question that’s been turning in my mind for three days. “Edan,” I whisper, so quiet it sounds more like a breath. I don’t want the others to hear. “Why did we steal the medicine?”

  Edan lets out a heavy sigh, a hand running down his face. After a long stretch of silence, he stands.

  “Come on,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “I want to show you something.”

  I slip into my boots and follow him into the dark hall. This time, I don’t resi
st when he reaches back, grabbing my hand to guide me in the places where it’s hard to see. Edan has proved his friendship. Trusting him feels like my own small act of freedom.

  I don’t know where we are once we stop. The hall continues on until the darkness swallows it. We stand by a door, and I get that sinking feeling I did before Edan led me into the brick room. But this time, there is no whispered conversation to prepare me. He simply opens the door, gesturing for me to go ahead.

  We step into a long, wide corridor. The entire outer wall is covered in windows. My breath catches at the sight of it. Three days ago, I was outside in the open air, but it already feels like an eternity.

  Cash is standing with his back to us, facing the glass. His form is bathed in the glow of street lamps. He stands with his spine straight, feet slightly apart, hands folded behind his back. Another man stands to his right, arms crossed. The second man sees us approaching, and murmurs something to Cash. We’ve just interrupted a conversation. The man nods to us, then leaves, disappearing through the door we entered through.

  When Cash sees us, his arms relax and he smiles. It’s a small thing, his smile—barely more than a corner of his lips. But it changes everything about his features. When he smiles, it softens the lines that run across his forehead. His eyes brighten, and gentle creases frame his mouth.

  I step up to the glass, peering out into the night. This glass is thicker than the glass in my living unit, but it doesn’t keep out the chill. I am standing close enough that one more step forward, and my nose will touch it. A chill seeps through the seams along the frame and it crawls up my spine, raising bumps on my arms. I embrace the feeling. I am grateful to be separated, even if for a time, from the oppression of the Council. But I miss the open air, no matter how cold.

  “You see those men?” Edan says, gesturing toward the building across the street. Soldiers stand post on the rooftop, peering through the scopes of their guns.