Nine

by Rachelle Dekker

  “We’re going to be okay,” Seeley said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t, but if I don’t stay positive then I place us all in danger.” He looked up at Zoe. “And so will you.”

  Zoe heard his message and nodded. She would do her best, though it felt impossible given their current circumstances.

  A stick snapped to their left, and Seeley dropped his project and grabbed his gun.

  Lucy’s frame came into the light of the moon, and Zoe watched his grip on the weapon ease. He grabbed the fallen stick and returned to whittling. Lucy released the pile of wood from her arms and dusted her hands against each other.

  Zoe opened her mouth to tell Lucy about Seeley’s tiny sword when Lucy jumped with a small gasp, like she’d been stung by a bee. A moment later she wobbled. Zoe leaped toward her just as she headed backward toward the ground. Seeley did the same, the two catching Lucy before she passed out.

  They moved in from all sides then, armed to the teeth, masked, black, and nearly invisible in the night.

  Seeley calmly laid Lucy on the ground, then stepped back. He didn’t even steal a glance at Zoe, and her mind continued to stumble over what was happening.

  “Agent Seeley,” a male voice said.

  Zoe turned to see a tall, suited man appear from the darkness.

  “Director Hammon,” Seeley said, looking surprised. “Out in the field?”

  “I wanted to oversee this one myself,” the director said. “It’s too important.”

  Zoe felt like her mind had gone numb. She was trying to process what was happening.

  “Take her,” Director Hammon said, indicating Lucy. “We can’t be certain how long that tranquilizer will last.”

  Several soldiers moved to hoist Lucy up off the ground.

  “Don’t touch her,” Zoe shouted, but they ignored her. She looked at Seeley for help, but he was just watching it all happen.

  “Miss Johnson,” Director Hammon said. “We finally meet. Take her too.”

  More soldiers started toward her. Zoe took a step back and nearly stumbled into the fire. She suddenly remembered the rifle that was lying along the short tree trunk where Lucy had been sitting before she went to grab firewood. She reached for the weapon and yanked it up. It caused her pursuers to pause. Maybe I could shoot them all was the last thing she thought before the end of a weapon touched her scalp.

  Seeley stood beside her, his gun aimed at her head. “Drop the weapon, Zoe,” he said calmly.

  The reality of what was happening crashed in fully. No, she thought. After all he’d promised. After all they’d faced. She’d known from the start. She’d known and she’d let herself get fooled.

  “Seeley,” she said against the truth pounding inside her head.

  “Weapon down,” he repeated. There were too many shadows on his face to see his eyes clearly, but she imagined they would reflect nothing. Because he felt nothing. He’d played her.

  No, she’d played herself.

  She lowered the gun, and the others rushed to apprehend her. The pain and hurt and betrayal inside her chest turned to rage.

  “How could you?” she said in barely a whisper. “You lying—!”

  Some invisible force took over her body, and she started thrashing at the men holding her. Their grips tightened, and she used all her core strength to pull her knees up toward her chest and kick out at the man who’d promised her safety, who’d even wormed his way into her heart. She shouted into the night, cursing him for his betrayal. He grasped her ankles with his hands and squeezed. The pressure sent pain racing up her calves, which made her thrust harder.

  “Control her,” Director Hammon ordered.

  Two more men joined the force trying to tame her rage, and all she could feel was the desire to slit Seeley’s throat. She was about to tell him so when a thick black bag came down over her head and a heavy hilt smashed into her skull.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  MY HEAD SWAM with stars as pricks of light started to filter back into my vision. My temple was throbbing, my ears muffled as if filled with cotton, and I could hardly feel anything from my shoulders down. Slowly my body started to return to me. Arms, torso, hips, legs. I curled my fingers and rolled my ankles.

  I was whole but confused. My eyes were wide but my vision not yet clear. Where was I? Where had I been last? I tried to conjure up my last memory as my surroundings started to come into focus.

  I was in a dark room, the boundaries hard to define, but a very bright white overhead light lit my immediate surroundings. I was strapped down to a cold, hard table. I wasn’t in the clothes I remembered. Instead I was covered in itchy, lightweight, gray-colored pants and a matching T-shirt.

  I smelled like lemons. I’d been bathed. My heart rate started to rise. My eyes completely clear now, I searched the room for anything else and found very little. It was just me, strapped in place, clean and alone. I yanked at the restraints and found they wouldn’t budge. They’d been locked with heavy-duty silver links only a superhero could bend.

  Maybe I was in my own mind. In level two, since I’d survived the glass box. This was an odd way to begin.

  Something squeaked across the room, and the tight clicks of something sharp hitting the paved floor echoed around me. A door, I thought, and shoes. Heels.

  Her face came into view, and I felt a moment of relief. “Dr. Loveless,” I said.

  “Number Nine, you’re awake,” she replied.

  Number Nine? Why wasn’t she calling me by my name?

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re at site CX4-B, known to most as Xerox.”

  I looked back and forth for anyone else. “Where are Agent Seeley and Zoe?”

  “Close, don’t worry. You’re safe here. This is where you were born.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happening.” I could feel my panic growing. This was wrong. Something wasn’t right. “And why am I restrained?”

  “It’s for your own safety and the safety of everyone else,” Dr. Loveless said.

  “Agent Seeley said you were compromised.”

  “Agent Seeley lied.”

  No, I thought, this can’t be real.

  “Is this real, or are you in my head?”

  “Oh, this is very real, Number Nine.”

  “Why are you calling me that?”

  “Because that’s who you are, who you were created to be. You will see.”

  “I wanna see Zoe. Where is she?” I asked, all of my warning senses firing at once.

  “Fair enough,” Dr. Loveless said, and as she lifted her hand another spotlight flashed to life. Beside me on a similar table, Zoe lay strapped down just like me.

  “Zoe,” I called out. “Zoe!”

  She didn’t respond. Her body stayed still as stone. Unlike me, she hadn’t been cleaned or changed, and she had thick black wires like tentacles clinging to her in a dozen places. Little round suction cups pressed tightly against her flesh.

  “Zoe!” I cried again. “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing,” Dr. Loveless said. “Yet.”

  For the first time, I saw her as monstrous. “Who are you?”

  “Who I have always claimed to be, just with different motivations than I let you see. I needed you to trust me, Number Nine. I needed your help in your own memory recovery.”

  “My name is Lucy.”

  “No, that was a title given to you by Olivia Rivener. You are Number Nine, the last of your group. And the only one remaining, but you know all of that. Agent Seeley told you.”

  “Where is he? What did you do to him?”

  “Agent Seeley? Nothing. How do you think we found you to begin with?”

  She was claiming Seeley had been working with them the whole time. “No,” I said. “You’re lying.”

  “Believe what you want, it makes no difference to me,” she said. “Either way, you and I have a common goal: to get your memories back
. And together, we’re going to.”

  “I won’t help you do anything.”

  “I doubt that very much. With the help of Agent Seeley we discovered something about you, a breakthrough in understanding your memory recovery.” She came closer to the side of my table and sat delicately on the edge. “How did you break out of the glass box?”

  I tried to inch away from her, but I was tightly secured in place.

  “DOT showed very different neurological activity that time. Instead of the irrational scattered sense you usually display, there were collective thought patterns, which resulted in illuminated memories. So, tell me what happened.”

  “I had to get back. We were under attack,” I said.

  “Yes, and maybe we could think self-preservation was the cause of such focus, but you’ve clearly displayed that self-preservation isn’t key. So something else was being threatened that caused the breakthrough.”

  I knew where she was going before she said it. All the pieces started to click. Snap. Why I was fastened to this table. Snap. Why Zoe was strapped down beside me. Snap. What was to come for us. Snap.

  “You’re a smart girl, I’ve seen your file, so I imagine you know where I’m going with this,” Dr. Loveless said. “The idea that the one person you love was being threatened gave you the strength to break free from the glass box. She is the key to unlocking what you’re hiding behind the facade of Lucy.”

  “If you hurt her—”

  “No,” Dr. Loveless snapped, “you misunderstand. I will hurt her until you succeed. You will remember who you are, Number Nine, but as long as you believe you are Lucy, your weakness lying there beside you will serve as proper motivation for remembering. Do you understand?”

  “But I can’t remember.”

  Dr. Loveless raised her hand again, and I heard the charge rumble through the thick cords that covered Zoe’s body. Before I could protest, voltage scorched her skin. Her eyes snapped open, and her mouth emitted a guttural scream. Her lower back arched off the table, her neck craning and contorting against the ravages of electricity.

  “Stop!” I screamed over the pulsing buzz. “Stop!”

  The sound cut out, and Zoe’s body fell limp back to the table. She was gasping for air, her eyes still wide, and turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were filled with terror. She was trying to say something but couldn’t get her words past her throat.

  “Zoe,” I called, tears filling my eyes.

  “Lucy,” she weakly huffed.

  “We will begin like always,” Dr. Loveless said.

  With her words, a white-coated tech rolled in DOT, and another followed with a simple medical cart, a blue cocktail of capsules inside a white paper cup.

  “The more you resist, the harder and longer this will be for Zoe,” Dr. Loveless said.

  “And what if I can’t remember?” I asked as Dr. Loveless connected DOT to my scalp.

  “You will, Number Nine. Zoe will ensure it.”

  I knew from her tone that all she could see were the end results. She didn’t care whether it cost Zoe her life. Dr. Loveless would do whatever was necessary to get what she wanted. That made her the worst kind of threat.

  “Are you ready?” she asked as she held out the small cup. I took the blue pills without water and felt the cold steel of the table against the back of my head as Dr. Loveless lowered my skull. I could feel the drug’s effect almost immediately.

  The doctor pulled a simple black stool forward and placed it beside me. She sat and began, as the heaviness of blue heaven took me into darkness.

  I GASPED, DRAGGING air deep into my lungs, and my eyes shot open. My heart was racing. I could hear it thundering against my eardrums. My breathing was short and crisp. I wasn’t where I’d expected to be.

  The place was dark, black, from the firm place under my feet and as far as I could see in all directions. It was cold, like an icy wind moving across my skin, but everything was still.

  The only thing besides me here was too far in the distance to make out. But it stood out against the darkness. I moved toward it, my bare feet making zero noise as they met the surface. The sound of my pulse was all there was. It sent a shiver down my spine.

  As I approached the object, its features started to crystalize. It was a wall. Tall, triple my height, made of vertical wood panels and stretching several yards in either direction. Along the base, running as long as the wall, was a line of doors. All identical, with small round cutouts at eye level.

  I approached the door directly in front of me and placed my hands on its surface. Light wood, smooth with delicate trimming. The handle was copper, heavy, with a large knob. I twisted it.

  Locked. I glanced up through the cutout, which was covered with textured glass, and peered through. Something was happening on the other side, and the stillness of the black space vanished. Sound waves entered my atmosphere, like a sealed door had sprung open and with it the world had been let back in. It rocked me on my feet. A hundred sounds hit me at once.

  Laughter, children’s. Feet shuffling, running, pounding pavement and dirt. Playing, spinning, tossing one another around. Screaming, crying, punching, falling, whimpering, muttering. Orders being barked, words I couldn’t make out but I knew deep inside. Rushing water, wood being chopped, gravel being dug, sweat and blood dripping to the ground.

  More sounds than I could handle all at once, as if each one were louder than the one before, and specific. They assaulted me. I covered my ears, which had no effect. The vibrations were penetrating deep enough to shake my very bones.

  And then they vanished. Once again all I could hear was my pounding heart. I unclasped my ears slowly, thankful for the relief, and backed away from the wall.

  Number Nine, what do you see?

  Dr. Loveless’s voice cut through the muffled cotton feeling and dragged at my insides. Rage washed up my chest like fire. I wanted to ignore her, but I knew the risk to Zoe was too great.

  “A wall with doors,” I answered.

  Open them.

  “I can’t, they’re locked.”

  Just like you couldn’t escape the glass prison. Another mental block to overcome. Try again.

  I was weary. I didn’t want another onslaught of sound, but I didn’t want to imagine what would happen to Zoe if I didn’t try. I stepped forward and tried the same door again. Still locked, but no sound. I stepped right and was met with another locked door. Then to another one. Locked. I moved left to find three more doors just the same. They were all locked.

  Mental blocks, as Dr. Loveless said.

  Open the doors, Number Nine.

  “I can’t.”

  You can.

  A beat passed, and then a new sound entered the place. Terrorized screaming, familiar and horrific. My heart dropped. Zoe. My mind filled with the image of her contorted body being electrocuted, her skin taking fire, her nerves being roasted.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “They’re locked, all the doors are locked!”

  Open them, Number Nine.

  Another burst of Zoe’s screams penetrated the darkness. I rushed forward and yanked on the knob. I pulled, twisted, shook the handle. It didn’t waver. I moved to door after door, all firmly secured.

  She’s in great suffering, Number Nine.

  Another wave of wrenching pain exploded from Zoe’s mouth. Terror unlike any I had ever heard. As it died off a moment later, her painful sobbing replaced it.

  “Stop it! Stop it.” I rammed the wooden door before me, hunkering down and putting all my force behind the hit. It hardly shook.

  Open the doors, Number Nine.

  Again and again I pounded the surfaces. I throttled them with my fists, stomped them with my heels. Pressed, tore at the handles. Tried smashing the glass panels. Nothing. They were unbreakable fortresses. Panic overtook my senses as Zoe’s cries continued to blast overhead and I continued to fail.

  Sweat dripped down the sides of my head. Blood from my fingers started to stain the light wood. Pain pulsed
throughout my limbs. But the doors wouldn’t budge. I rushed toward the far edge of the wall.

  Go around it, I thought. With all my speed I reached the end and stepped to the other side. Shock filled my senses. The other side was identical. Filled with more doors. No, not more, the same. I could see my blood, the scrapings of my fingers, dents from my pounding. I rushed back to the original side. The same. Both sides were the same.

  I couldn’t breathe. Another guttural cry pounded against my brain.

  “I can’t open them! I can’t! Stop it!”

  Open the doors, Number Nine.

  I let out a vicious cry. My scream rose, filled with madness and hate. I slammed my open palm on the wood. Over and over, until my arm went numb and tingling started to spread into my shoulder and back. My own wailing mixed with the echoes of Zoe’s, and I couldn’t get a breath.

  I stopped hitting the door, let my forehead fall forward against the surface, and cried. I tried to control it, see through it, outsmart my circumstance. For Zoe’s sake! But I couldn’t. I was losing to my fear, my distress and hopelessness consuming my fight.

  The world started to spin, and my knees gave out. I fell to the base of the door, weeping like a little girl. Zoe was crying, and I was worthless to help either one of us. I didn’t even try to muster more strength. I didn’t have any left. I just let the darkness take me and passed out, Zoe’s pain the last thing I heard.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  SEELEY STOOD AS Hammon entered the small lobby. He followed the director into his larger office and shut the door softly behind him.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Seeley said.

  After the girls had been apprehended in the woods, he’d come back to Xerox with the rest of the unit. He’d showered and run through his detailed account of all that had happened, answering the questions of a small, mousy man who showed zero expression and viciously typed everything Seeley said as a small recorder captured his words. He’d then been told to wait outside the director’s office.

  “You’ve fully debriefed?” Hammon asked.

  Seeley nodded, and Hammon walked around to take a seat in his large desk chair. “Take a seat, Agent.”