by D. N. Hoxa
“I can't walk. I can barely move. Handcuffs are really unnecessary. I just need you to get me to Anthony Bush,” I hissed.
“Okay, I’ll help you walk. What happened to you?” he said, nodding and sweating, with no idea what to do. He looked back at the people around us, at his gun, and then at me, trying to decide if he should buy my words or not. When even my good hand gave and I fell flat on my stomach in front of his feet, he seemed to make up his mind.
He took my arm and pulled me up, wrapping it around his neck. I stood on my good leg, head down, tears in control. I was in enemy territory.
“What happened to you, ma’am?” he said again, putting his arm around my waist to support my weight and lead me. I started hopping forward.
“Don’t call me ma’am. I fell.” I grunted.
“You fell,” he repeated.
“Yes, I fell,” I said. “Take me to Anthony Bush. I need to see him. It’s an emergency,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time to me. People started to move to make way for us. They looked at me like I was a disease. I tried my best to ignore them.
Nothing new there, actually. Even though they were people just like us, the fact that we were outside the ROB’s protection made us slums, viruses. I wondered if they ever thought that they could’ve been on the other side, too, if they hadn’t lived where they lived. Probably so, but they were too afraid to say anything. In a way, I couldn’t blame them.
“Base, we’ve got an outsider who crossed the wall.” Another soldier had appeared to my right, and he spoke on his tiny microphone attached to the almost invisible earpiece around his neck.
I rolled my eyes but kept on dragging my feet after him, already away from the crowd of people, though I could still feel their eyes on my back. A car, black and dark green, was parked in front of us, huge and dusty. Another three soldiers dropped out of it. They immediately walked behind me, guns pointed and ready. As if they couldn’t see the state I was in, the blood all over me. I probably looked like shit.
“Let’s go.” The soldier unwrapped my arm from around his neck and pushed me towards the backseat.
“Stop pushing me. I’m not going anywhere,” I hissed. He ignored me and sat right next to me. “Are you taking me to Anthony?”
“We’re going to check on some things—” he started to say, and all I heard was hell no.
“There’s no time to check anything. I need to see him right away.”
“There are procedures to be followed, ma’am,” he insisted. The others were already inside, and we were moving ahead to the center of the city, where the metal building of the ROB stood proud and ugly.
“I don’t care about procedures,” I shouted.
“Do you know Mr. Bush personally, ma’am?” he asked, his voice calm despite the anger I could see in his eyes.
“Yes, I do. And stop calling me ma’am. Do I look like a fucking ma’am to you? I’m twenty-one years old, you twit!” I struggled to move away from his grasp. When I saw that there was nothing I could do, and I was too weak to break his hold as it was, I forced myself to calm down and try again. “Listen, mister…” I started, and looked at him, waiting for a name. He watched me with his brows raised like I’d just asked for his ROB security number. But I swallowed my pride and gave him a smile, and waited patiently until he spoke.
“Sergeant Major Vince McCarran,” he mumbled reluctantly.
“Sergeant McCarran, I do know Mr. Bush. Can you please just tell him Morta Fox wants to see him? I can assure you he will look for me immediately. And he would not appreciate it if you take me in and don’t tell him right away.”
As soon as Anthony heard my name, he’d come running. He thought I was dead, just like everyone else did, so he was going be curious, to say the least. I was the daughter of his mistress, and he was my only hope.
“What kind of a name is that?” the driver asked, then flinched, like he just realized he thought out loud.
“Death,” I answered, keeping my head high. It wasn’t my fault for my name. I didn’t name myself, but I wasn’t going to be embarrassed about it. The two soldiers in front of us chuckled and grinned, probably thinking this was funny. But not Vince.
“Do you have a RSN?” he asked me instead.
“Do I look like I have a RSN?” I did have a security number when I was living inside the wall. But to the ROB, I had died together with my family two years ago. I doubted they’d saved my RSN.
“It’s procedure. I need your answer, yes or no,” he continued, his face as hard as cement.
“No.”
“Do you live inside the ROB?” I rolled my eyes but gave him a curt ‘no’ again. “Do you have any relatives who live inside the ROB?”
“No.” They’re all dead.
“Do you have any relatives who live outside the ROB?”
“No.” I was starting to get really pissed off.
“How did you pass the wall, and why?” Now we were getting to a more serious matter.
“I climbed and I will tell the reason only to Anthony Bush.”
“You climbed?” the driver spoke again and flinched. I could see Vince giving him the eye through the rearview mirror.
“Yes, I climbed,” I repeated. My voice showed loud and clear how annoyed I was. And I was hurting so damn much.
The car stopped. We were already there. Under other circumstances, I would have felt good having the door opened for me and having three soldiers walking behind me while I dragged my bad leg forward. It almost made me feel special and important.
I was pushed to the entrance door of the ROB. I knew the procedures that were waiting for me by memory. I’d been there with Mom once for my picture for the RSN card. I had been eighteen at the time.
I was thrown against the guards who shamelessly put their hands all over me and took out my two knives, leaving me almost naked without them.
Next was the sterilization box. It was made of steel, and I had to stand still in the very middle of it while a thousand smells hit me at once from all sides.
They took my fingerprints, my picture, my body’s x-ray, and I found that I had two fractured ribs, and of course my right ankle was a mess. Broken, but not all the way through. I barely stood on my feet.
They made me undress, burnt my clothes right in front of me, and then gave me a robe. It was white and blue and smelled like plastic and medicine. I didn’t mind. This would all be over once I talked to Anthony.
Or so I told myself.
When they thought I was clean and decent enough, they let me in the hallway of the first floor. The space was huge, metallic, and cold. Nothing had changed from the last time I’d been there. The windows were bulletproof, the square pillars reinforced with many layers of steel, everything as safe as it could be. I never understood why, though. The place was a fortress, as if designed to withstand a war and keep the enemy outside. I didn’t know who they were trying to protect themselves from, but it sure as hell wasn’t from the people outside. They didn’t have the means, though they might have had a motive.
A soldier that wasn’t Vince pushed me inside an elevator, and he and his friend walked in with me. They were taking me down. When I saw them push minus 4 on the panel, I knew that they weren’t going to take me to Anthony.
And there was nothing I could do. Even if I wasn’t injured so badly, they were men with guns.
“I need to see Anthony Bush.”
My words fell on deaf ears, as expected. The soldiers ignored me completely.
The building had eighty-three floors. Anthony was probably on the very top. I looked around for something I could do to cause enough panic and alarm to reach his ears. If he would ask what was going on, and they’d tell him my name, I would be saved.
I didn’t know why I was so sure he’d come. Maybe because every time he was around the house, he smiled at me. No one ever did that.
The two soldiers walked by my sides through the hallway, so dark that I couldn’t see the end of it. There were othe
r soldiers, posed like statues in front of every beeping door along the sides. They didn’t move an inch while we passed them, not even their eyes.
At the very end of the hallway, the soldiers stopped, put their hands on the scanner by the door, and it finally opened with a whoosh. Behind it was an entirely different world.
The room was bright and white. The people were all dressed in white doctor robes. There were white tables and white beds, some taken, but most empty. At least forty people were in there. Bile rose up my throat when I saw that none of the ones lying on the beds were conscious. They didn’t look dead, just unconscious. I knew that that fate was waiting for me, too. I froze in place, and the soldiers had to drag me to put me on one of the leathery white, cold beds.
“Hello, there.”
The voice came from above my head. I looked up to see a man, probably around fifty, with a grey beard and dark eyes, and thin glasses that made him look like a professor.
“I need to see Anthony Bush,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Sure. But first, we need to run some tests and fix you up,” the man said, smiling. He looked delighted to see so many injuries on my body. “I am Doctor Laskaris, and I will attend to your needs.” He grinned proudly. My needs? I only had one of those, and I said so one more time.
“All I need is Anthony Bush. Please, this is very important. Just tell him—”
“Sure, sure. All in due time. First, health. You won’t feel a thing, I assure you,” he cut me off, and went around the bed with a syringe in his hand.
I sat up as my body trembled with pain. I wasn’t going to let him do what he wanted to me. Before my legs touched the floor, the soldiers laid me back down, hard. Pain cut my breath in half, and I couldn’t even move while they tied my wrists and ankles with leather cuffs to the bed.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” I shouted, but it was too late.
“Oh, we’re not kidding. But I can tell you this, when you wake up, you’ll be as good as new,” the doctor said, a second before I felt the cold, sharp tip of the needle right above my knuckles.
I hated needles. I hated blood. I hated being pierced. I felt nauseated. Alarms went on in my head. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and chanted the word no to myself, as if that would make the reality change.
Someone began to shout. Footsteps, running away from me. I opened my eyes, and when I did, the alarm in my head didn’t stop. No, it hadn’t been in my head at all.
It had been in the room. Loud, piercing sounds came from the door. Everyone who was conscious ran for it before it closed. It closed and left me alone with fifteen unconscious bodies.
“Hello?” I called. They couldn’t just leave me there, could they? “Hey! Let me out of here!” I shouted. Other than the alarm, no sound came through.
Apparently, they could.
“Hey, you fuckers! I’ll show you…” I shouted again, though what I was going to show them was very much unclear at that moment.
I looked down at my tied hands and legs, then looked around for something sharp that could help me cut my bindings. The small metal thingy with wheels and lots of sharp things on it, things that made me sick to my stomach, was too far to reach. But maybe I could undo the leather cuffs with my teeth. It looked easy.
I rose to my elbows, and once I decided on the right hand first, I doubled over. A scream escaped my lips. My gut hurt like it was being torn open. I struggled to draw in air to my lungs and stayed that way, because I knew if I lay down, I wouldn’t be able to try again.
Tears blurred my vision as I stretched my neck towards the cuff around my wrist. Good thing I was small. By the time my teeth could graze the ends of the leather, the pain in my gut had turned me numb. I worked with my tongue and teeth, and each time the taste registered in my buds, bile rose to my mouth.
In what felt like hours, I managed to free my right hand.
Joy, until I sat up. I was far from numb. My bones were shaking from the intensity of the pain in my body. I didn’t stop to think. My hand was free now, and it freed the other the next minute. I removed the needle that was still in my knuckles. The syringe was still full with clear liquid. The doctor hadn’t used it.
I freed my legs, and I took the needle with me. It could come in handy for my attempt to get the hell out of there.
I stood up and ignored the instinct to double over from pain, knowing how much more pain that would cause me. From the small shelf on wheels, I chose two knife-like objects, the biggest and sharpest I could find.
The man, the unconscious man closest to my bed, looked just a bit older than me.
“Wake up,” I said and took his hand to shake him. He wasn’t tied to the bed. None of them were. “Wake up!” I shouted, but he wouldn’t move. I went to a woman, and I shook her, too, harder. I even slapped her. Nothing. They weren’t going to wake up any time soon.
I headed for the door.
The blue light of the scanner mocked me as I put my palm on it. I had no idea if it was going to work, and I held my breath. My heart was in my throat. And then the light above the door turned green.
The door opened with another whoosh, and I felt like I could cry from joy. Only, when I stepped in the hallway, I found it completely empty. Just minutes ago, it had been filled with soldiers. Now, no one.
Voices came from the other side, and I dragged my feet forward to find a door that didn’t have a scanner to the side.
I finally found one, and it led me to a stairway. I started up, but then I heard voices coming from above me, and I went back.
On the floor below was another door just like the one that had led me there. I opened it slowly, heart in my throat, and I stood silent for a second. Nothing. Complete silence.
The hallway was the same, too. Completely deserted. I dragged my feet forward, looking for an elevator. Anything that could help me get out of there.
I froze when I heard a cry. A scream. I turned around with my eyes wide, praying and hoping and begging that it was nothing, that I’d heard nothing, and it was only my imagination. I held on tightly to the syringe in one hand and the knives in the other, and waited. Until I heard it again. As clear as day.
The cry was filled with pain. The last time I’d followed one like that, I’d run into a monster, and it had led me there. I looked at the elevator, not ten feet away from me. I looked back to where the cries were coming from. The fifth door to the right was the only one half open.
I should’ve just run for the elevator. But the thought of another person tied to a white bed, just like I’d been, made me sick. I swallowed the fear that was vibrating in every cell of my body, and I turned around. I dragged my feet to the door and inside it, sure that I would see a room filled with white beds and unconscious bodies.
I was wrong.
What I saw there made me want to claw my eyes out. A monster, same as the one I had seen outside the wall, was on his knees, face buried in the neck of a bald man wearing a doctor’s robe. He was white as a sheet, not a drop of blood left in him. His fingers twitched, and he let out another moan, his eyes wide and filled with terror, like they’d seen all the evil of this world.
I stepped back and fell against the door, because my leg gave up on me. Bile rose in my throat when I saw another body, dressed in a white robe, lying just a few feet behind the monster’s back. I moved back the wrong way with my working leg, farther inside the room. My brain couldn’t function well enough to know that I should’ve gotten out. I trapped myself.
And then the monster looked up. Its teeth, razor sharp and two of them longer than the others, glistened with dark red blood. I wanted to scream, but my throat was dry, my heart racing, my voice gone. I froze and watched him watch me, knowing that a death as terrible as that of the two doctors was waiting for me as well. I was going to get sucked dry by a sharp-teethed monster.
He stood up, looked at me for a couple of seconds, and then turned around. A scream finally escaped my lips. If I could make a loud enough sound, the soldiers wo
uld know where to look. They would come to take the beast down. Wouldn’t they?
But before they made it, the beast turned around to face me. Only now, it wasn’t a monster. It was a human being. A beautiful human being.
His dark skin and his green eyes made a scary, yet perfect contrast to his jet black, shiny hair. His full lips and his high cheekbones made him look like one of those actors I’d seen in the pictures from the nineties. He was short, barely taller than me, but he was wide enough to hold three me’s in between his arms. And then he smiled.
His teeth were those of a normal human. Nothing out of the ordinary. He took a step forward.
“Stay a-a-away from m-me,” I managed to say, only it came out as a pleading.
“This keeps getting better and better. They keep throwing snacks at me. I feel special,” he said, his voice a liquid melody that reached my ears in a caress. I backed farther away against the wall, though there was nowhere else to go.
“You monster. What did you do to them?” My voice broke, but I didn’t care. It was the end, anyway. If I was going to die, I was going to do so insulting him.
“Monster?” he asked in surprise as he came closer to me. “I am not the monster here, silly human. Your kind is the monster.”
I drew in air and hated every slow step he took toward me. Where the hell were the soldiers with their big guns? I wasn’t going to make it out alive, and that was fine, but there were others in there. There had to be.
The good leg gave up on me, too, and I slid down to the ground, shaking, cursing the life I’d been given, over and over again. What the hell had I done to deserve it? As far as I knew, I’d never hurt anyone intentionally in my life. Except for my mother, but no matter how hard I tried, I knew I never caused her any pain. She never even gave me the chance.
“You drank them d-d-dry, you…monster.” There really wasn’t any worse thing I could call him. It only made him laugh as he kneeled before me.
And then, white smoke sprayed from all four corners of the square room.
