The Slave Series

by Laura Frances

  “Oh,” I murmur. I lie on my stomach beside him, propping up on my elbows, and stare at the picture. Sam has captured his father’s sadness, drawn in defeat even in simple, childish strokes.

  “How did you get separated?” I ask carefully. He’s already drawing the image, so maybe my question won’t be prying too deeply with the memories already floating at the surface.

  Sam pushes off the floor until he’s sitting on his knees. There’s something reverent in his posture: straight back and hands on his legs. His eyes stare ahead, glazing over in remembering.

  “A man came to our room,” he says quietly. “I’m not sure what he told my dad, but then they took us to the street and said we had to run.”

  Tears pool in his eyes, but he doesn’t move. “The Watchers were shooting people. I saw them. Dad said to cover my ears, but it was too hard to run that way.”

  I lift from the floor and set a hand on his back. His eyes jerk to mine.

  “They took my dad,” he cries, the reverence collapsing, lips trembling. “He fell and said we had to keep going and that I had to protect my brother and sister. He yelled at me.”

  My throat tightens. It must have been the only time his father yelled at him. The hurt is still fresh.

  “He was scared for you,” I say softly. Sam nods and looks away. I ask, “What about your mother?”

  He folds in on his grief until he’s hugging his legs, head resting sideways on his knees. Just the mention of his mother, and the pain is too big to keep him upright.

  “We lost her on the stairs. Dad said we couldn’t go back to find her.”

  “Sam, I’m sorry,” I whisper. He falls into me, and I hug him close while he cries.

  A man enters. He sits on the floor a few feet away, and Sam extracts himself from my arms to hand him the drawing. His badge says Greg.

  “It’s my dad.” He wipes his nose on his sleeve.

  “Wow, Sam,” Greg says, his tone soothing. “You did a great job with this.”

  Sam jumps to his feet. “I have more.”

  He grabs a pile of papers from his bed and brings them over. Greg takes them, fanning them out across the floor. Colors leap from the images, yellows and greens and blues. Pink and red and purple. Drawings of him with his siblings, playing with something I can’t decipher. Sketches of bodies lying down, with straight lines for eyes. Guns. Soldiers. Simple mathematic equations, drawn in black and red and gray.

  The colors seem to follow a pattern. Dark, striking colors for bad things. Soft, cheerful colors for the good.

  “Are these your parents?” Greg holds up a drawing of two people hugging, their stick arms wrapped unnaturally around each other. Purple hearts float above them. Sam beams through leftover tears.

  “That’s Hannah and Cash,” he says. Greg’s eyes bounce to mine, then back to the boy with the grin.

  “Is this Hannah?”

  Sam nods. Greg turns his attention back to me.

  “I’ve been hearing your name for the last couple days. Sam has told me all about you and Cash. He was a soldier, right?”

  He says it kindly, and he means well. But my defenses rise when he uses the word was. It must show on my face. His confidence wanes the longer I don’t answer.

  “Yes,” I say. “He’s a soldier.” I force a smile to relieve the awkwardness.

  “And he’s well?” Greg asks. I never told Sam what happened. This can’t be the way he learns it. I give the easy answer.

  “He is. He’ll join us as soon as he can.”

  Greg continues sorting through Sam’s drawings, inquiring about them, and I listen for a while, admiring the patient way he encourages the boy to open up.

  When I leave, I pause by the fish tank, standing a minute in its soft glow. The fish swim in graceful patterns, cutting through the water in a pointless dance. They can’t go anywhere. They are bound within the glass—hopeless, captive. My chest tightens, and I walk away, unable to watch their fruitless search for open water.

  Late in the afternoon, a woman finds me in the cafeteria where I’m eating sweet rolls with Aspen. The bread’s richness sends my stomach over the edge, and I push the last of it away.

  “Hannah Bakker?” the woman asks. I tell her yes, and she hands me a thick brown envelope. “From his Highness the prince.” She smiles and leaves.

  “His Highness the prince,” Aspen repeats, exaggerating the words and laughing. “Yeah, that’ll take some getting used to.”

  I peel apart the envelope and pour a device like Takeshi’s, black and shining, onto the table. A paper falls out with it. Aspen grabs the device, studying it while I silently read the note.

  “Cash has a phone now as well. Use the number at the bottom to call him. Any of the staff can help you. See you soon, Takeshi.”

  A ten-digit number lines the bottom of the paper.

  “It has your name on it,” Aspen says, handing me the phone. I turn it over and see my name inscribed on the back. She reads the note, then exclaims, “You should call him!”

  Her excitement has more to do with the device than anything else. I tuck it in my pocket, along with the paper. “I will. Later.”

  She flops back on her chair, disappointed.

  Shouting hits our ears, and we exchange a look before jumping from our chairs. In the lobby, a small crowd has gathered, watching wide-eyed through the front doors and windows. Some turn, noticing me. Recognizing. I follow their eyes to where a man in a hospital gown is being dragged back to the sick ward. His mask has flown off, and he fights them, screaming something I can’t make out.

  “Stay here,” I tell Aspen before rushing through the door. My shoes pound the pavement. The nurses both hold out a hand, telling me to stay back, and I skid to a stop ten yards away. The man spots me.

  “She knows!” he screams, writhing against their arms. Coughs erupt from his chest, and he doubles over, gagging. His skin is pale, but his cheeks are flushed deep red. “Tell them!” he begs me. “Tell them we’ll die if we stay here! We have to leave! Have to get out!”

  “We’ve made it out,” I call to him. “These people are helping you. Please, let them take you back inside to rest.”

  His screams turn to sobs. “They killed my wife for being sick!” he cries. “You think they’ll let any of us live? We’re not safe in there! They’ll bomb it while we sleep!”

  I hear footsteps behind me and turn back to find a dozen people staring past, gaping. Terrified by the things he’s saying. Emily runs from the hospital.

  “Everyone back inside!”

  “Don’t go in there!” screams the sick man. They’ve managed to get him another five yards closer to the door. His bare feet drag along the ground.

  “You’re safe here!” I call to him, but there’s no point. He’s beyond sense. A few more feet, and he goes limp, worn out. The nurses strain to catch him before he hits the ground. One of them, a man, lifts him in his arms, and they disappear into the sick ward.

  The crowd behind us shrinks back with murmurs and whispers. Emily catches her breath.

  “Is that how it was?” She asks, angry. “Did they really kill people for being sick?”

  “They killed people for many things,” I say.

  Emily paces a few steps, back and forth as she calms. As for me, I am eight years old again, and my parents are dead on the street.

  40

  She isn’t here.

  Emily searches the database again while I pace, but this is the third time. Nothing will have changed.

  “I’m sorry,” she tells me. I shake my head. I would know the second Norma’s heart stopped beating. I’d feel it. She isn’t dead.

  “She was separated from the others,” I say. “Cash hid her on the mountain. Maybe she hasn’t arrived.”

  Emily closes her computer and sets it on my bed at her side. “I’m sure that’s it. We’ll know more as time passes.” She leans back, arms holding her weight. I can tell she’s tired. And fearful. I drop to a chair, my gaze stuck on a
window.

  “Can I ask you something?” Emily asks quietly. My gaze slides to hers. “Are you surprised when people remember you?”

  After a few beats, I say, “I’m not sure.”

  “When the woman in the sick ward recalled a memory,” she presses, “you changed the subject. I thought maybe you were uncomfortable being regarded so highly.”

  Silence follows, and I get the sense she won’t force me. I lean back, sinking into the chair.

  “Some of the things I hear in sessions,” Emily murmurs, “make me wonder how you survived it at all.”

  Don’t name them, I’m thinking. Don’t list them out.

  “Yesterday a man told me you were dragged into the center of a gunfight by a Council member, and that you barely flinched when he pressed the gun to your head.”

  “That isn’t true,” I say as grief pricks another hole in my chest. Solomon died that day.

  “What isn’t? That he dragged you or that you barely flinched?”

  Her eyes hold only gentle curiosity, and it cracks a little at my wall.

  “He did drag me,” I tell her, “but I was terrified, especially when I realized Cash wasn’t there. I was only alive as bait.”

  She studies me a moment, maybe judging the truth of my story. She must see it, because her gaze falls to the floor before she asks, “Will you tell me about Cash?”

  An ache grows in my throat and jaw, and I bite down against it.

  “It was his father,” I say, and a tear slips free, slicing a warm path down my cheek. “The man who dragged me. He was Cash’s father.”

  “The Councilman,” Emily says, working out the details. I nod.

  “He hated Cash for deserting.”

  “And Cash loved you,” she guesses. “That’s why you were the bait.”

  Loves me, I think, but my reply is another nod.

  “Where is he now?” she asks softly.

  I swallow a couple times, until the words yield. “He was shot. He’s recovering at another facility.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers, as if she’s uncovered the mystery of my pain. How do I tell her she’s only scratched the surface? But her next words are, “What about your parents?” and I wish the chair would swallow me.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she says when I don’t respond.

  After ten seconds of silence, I share with her the story of their deaths. After the first few lines, the words spill, pouring out of me in a rush. Emily listens, flinching when I describe the gunshots. She doesn’t hurry me or suggest with her body that she needs to leave. Instead she lies back, legs dangling over the edge of the bed, and interlocks her fingers against her forehead.

  I’ve told this before, when asked. But this time feels different. As the words come, grief sweeps over until I’m struggling for air. My entire body radiates loss and sadness, so powerful I think it will shatter me. My parents died in the valley, and now I am somewhere else. I’ve left them.

  Emily crosses to where I sit and kneels. I’m hunched over, breaking under the pressure. She clasps my forearms in gentle hands and speaks so soft the words slip through the fog.

  “I can’t begin to understand what you’ve been through. I can’t pretend to know what your pain feels like. But I can tell you this: whether you meant to or not, you have touched countless lives.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “Your loss made you compassionate,” she continues. “Grief made you see the pain in others, and you acted. I don’t have to have been there to know it; enough people have told me just in these few days. I talk with several of them every day, Hannah, and always a handful mention the girl with the burns and the Watcher she loved.”

  I swallow a sob and whisper, “I was trying to be like my parents. Trying to make them proud.”

  I open my eyes when she doesn’t answer, and through the blur of tears, I see her eyes are wet like mine.

  Her hands squeeze my arms. “I’d say you did that. Well done.”

  This mattress holds me gently, but I can’t stay still.

  Sharing with Emily unleashed something deep, and now a flood of emotions shove to the surface, pressing at me from the inside. My blood screams with longing and grief, and it hurts to lie here. It hurts to feel this all at once…and all alone. I thought I’d be free of this pain now, but fear and grief…the symptoms are the same. I toss under the blanket, eyes wet, gripping at the burn and ache in my chest.

  In the darkness, I reach for the phone and note sitting on the bedside table. When I press a button, the screen lights up, blinding. I enter the code Emily created for me, then the ten digits that will connect me with Cash.

  My thumb hesitates over the call button. It’s late, hours after sunset. I sit up, resting my back to a pillow, and stare into the shadows of the room. If he’s in pain, I should leave him to rest. But would he want me to call? If he knew I was struggling, would he expect it? Ask for it?

  My finger chooses for me, tapping the call button like a reflex…a need to be near him somehow. I lift the phone to my ear and listen to ringing on the other side until it stops.

  “Hannah?”

  I cover my eyes. His voice sounds just like it should.

  “Hannah,” he says again, softly. Kind.

  “I miss you,” I whisper. I worry he’ll think I’m foolish. We were just together. But I still see him falling every time I close my eyes.

  “I miss you too,” he murmurs. “Are you okay?”

  I lie on my side, curling into a ball. I could sleep now, hearing his voice. But there are things he needs to know.

  “The people are sick,” I say. The line goes quiet for a moment.

  “How many?”

  “More than half now.”

  “The boys?”

  “Sam is okay,” I tell him. “But Ben…”

  I try to keep my tears quiet, but he hears my sniffling.

  “He’ll be all right, Hannah,” Cash says, and I imagine him holding me the way he did after Edan died. Offering empty promises, just like this. I close my eyes and shut out the room. The din from the hall. Just his voice. I won’t say what I’m thinking, that the Council might win after all. If we die anyway, what was it for?

  “Tell me something,” I whisper into the phone. “A good thing.” I hear his soft breathing and nothing else for a while. I expect something simple, a named thing I can think on as I drift into sleep.

  “I was there when Edan told Solomon about you. He said what unit you came from, and for some reason, Solomon knew it. He knew who you were.”

  His voice drifts in and out, and I picture his eyelids falling low. Picture him fighting it to keep sharing the memory.

  “He knew my unit?”

  Solomon told me he knew my parents, but to know where I lived is a specific piece of knowledge. Did he know I survived there alone? Was he aware of me all that time?

  “He said your father gave him hope because he believed strongly.”

  I wait anxious in the quiet for him to go on.

  “Solomon made it possible for your parents to be together.”

  I sit up fast. “What?”

  “Choosing had ended,” he says, “but he told us he entered their names into the system as a couple. He changed the information and assigned their unit.”

  “He said that?” I whisper.

  Quiet follows, then he says gently, “Solomon taught me how to be a man. To be brave. And he gave me you. Without his intervention, you wouldn’t exist. I owe him everything.”

  I hold the phone in my hand long after we end the call. In the dark of my room, I think of my parents, of the people they were. Even before being paired, they were rebels, resisting the pull toward fear and defeat. So much so that Solomon was moved when he met them. I think back on the things they taught me.

  We’ll do anything for the people we love, my father once said. Go any length to prove it.

  I understand at last who my parents were. I understand what they believed and why they c
hose what they did. My father proved his words in the instant he lunged for my mother. It was instinct, years of spoken vows suddenly called upon. And though he left me alone, I don’t resent him for it. Maybe I love him more.

  41

  I stand in front of the mirror in my bathroom, smoothing my fingers over the last layers of burns on my face. They’re fading, along with the bruise on my cheek, which is green and purple. I think of the purple hearts floating over Sam’s drawing of Cash and me, and smile.

  “Where are you?” Emily appears in the bathroom doorway, her face flushed like she’s been running. “Grab a mask. Takeshi’s here.”

  We’ve all been instructed to wear masks now. The illness has spread farther, claiming another dozen overnight, including both of Sam’s siblings. Soon the sick ward won’t be big enough to house them all. I’m aware of every cough and sneeze, every finger scratching at skin. My own skin itches when I see it.

  I keep pace with Emily as we make our way downstairs. Takeshi waits on the lawn with another man who hangs back a few feet, a gun holstered to his belt. The sky is gray, heavy with clouds in the evening light.

  “I’m heading north,” Takeshi says when we get close enough. “Why don’t you come with me?” The sadness hasn’t lifted; his eyes aren’t as bright as they should be.

  Anticipation shoots through my middle. Maybe I can see Ian and Percy. But my eyes dart to the sick ward. “I can’t leave without seeing Ben.”

  Emily gives me a heavy look but nods once. “You can see him through the glass. You have to wear a mask and gloves. Don’t touch anything.”

  Takeshi walks backwards a few steps. “We’ll leave in thirty minutes,” he says without meeting my eyes again. Without smiling. “Pack for two days.”

  I watch him leave, marching across the lawn to the far side of the building with the man at his side.

  “He’ll be okay,” Emily murmurs beside me.

  “Yeah,” I whisper. Drew teased Meli on the mountain for preferring a single life. I wonder now if she knew how much Takeshi loved her. Maybe it was all a front, and an understanding existed between them.