The Superiors

by Lena Hillbrand

  But with the desire came something else, the unpleasant sensation of having a mass of warm flesh between his hands, the distasteful feeling he got when he touched a sapien now multiplied tenfold, and even her smell couldn’t quell his discomfort.

  He pushed her away, and his reaction to her touch must have been apparent, because she looked quite startled. Although it could have been from her own bold and unthinkable action, or from how hard he’d pushed her. Whatever the reason, she sat up away from the embrace and looked quite flustered, and he had that strange glimpse of something like embarrassment on her face.

  “I’m awfully sorry for having offended you, Master Superior,” she said, bowing her head. “My actions were very far from appropriate, but it was not my intention to cause offense. I am ready for punishment.” She kept her eyes down after her rehearsed speech. He waited for the last part of the line, if you deem there is cause, but she didn’t say more and her head stayed bent.

  “I do not deem there is cause for punishment.”

  She looked up at him, hope and fear mixing on her face. “Thank you?”

  “I should take you inside.” He didn’t move to do so.

  “I want to thank you,” she said, and she leaned towards him. This time he was ready to act if she got too close. She leaned quite close to him and stretched her neck, lifting her face towards the ceiling and pulling her short hair back. No one had ever offered him sap before, willingly, freely given. He found the prospect electrifying.

  He had heard of saps who grew to like being tapped, who longed for it. He’d even heard stories about some who liked it a bit too much, but he’d thought these last were urban legends. No one had ever liked his bite that much. The idea of a sapien approaching him to make an offering was empowering somehow, although at the same time it stripped every bit of power from the act.

  He tipped Cali’s chin up and gathered her hair with his other hand and slid his teeth into the slant of her vein. She tensed, but only slightly, and sucked in a quick breath, and then she relaxed slowly. He kept his body separate from hers very deliberately, not wanting to miss the small subtleties of her flavor by the unpleasant distraction of her warmth. He thought briefly of his distaste for sapien warmth, and how it clashed so completely with his love for the warmth of their sap. After all, that was one of the most appealing things about drinking straight from the source instead of buying canned sap. But he didn’t try to reconcile his two preferences. He just pressed hungrily into her neck and drew a bit longer than he should have, a bit harder. Cali’s hands wound into his hair, and she kept his face pulled to her almost too hard.

  When he finally forced himself to release her, she still held him against her neck, so he closed her wounds and cleaned around them, and then made sure they were closed again, and that she was clean around the pierced area, again. Suddenly it reminded him of a sapien he had once seen suckling her infant when he had gone to feed at the Confinement. He jerked back from Cali at the thought, and her hands wrenched at his hair before she let go. She had her eyes closed and when she opened them, she looked dazed and embarrassed.

  “Did I take too much? Are you dizzy or weak?”

  “No. No, I’m fine.” She turned away and Draven unlocked the doors and got out. Cali waited obediently for him to come around the car and take her in the usual authoritative hold. Hand around the base of her skull, he steered her into the admittance office of the Confinement.

  “Well, I’ll be. If it ain’t Draven Castle,” a booming voice greeted him. He turned to see a tank of dark brown flesh descending. “Ain’t it just my lucky day,” Bonnie said, gathering his thin body against her large one. “To what on earth do we owe this pleasure? You caught us another sap? We oughta just pencil in a monthly bonus for you. When you gonna come back and work for us again, anyway? You know this is where you belong.”

  He smiled at her warm voice, her warm smile and warm greeting. Now here was a woman who was warm in the right ways. Her embrace was cool as a night breeze.

  “I got her in a bad neighborhood when I was driving through the South End this evening,” he said. “She looks a little too healthy to have been working at one of the holes they call restaurants, so you might scan her ID. She probably belongs to someone.”

  “What you doing in South End anyway? You go looking for trouble, or it just find you its own self?”

  “I’m just doing my civic duty,” Draven said, wishing he hadn’t run into her. He had enjoyed working with her, but she paid far too much attention to everyone else’s doings.

  “Ain’t nobody in the South End doing they civic duty. I tell you what. You get lonely, you ain’t gotta go hookering around down there, cause you know just where to find me.”

  Draven laughed. “Yes, I do. But I’m pretty sure you’re the only Third Order woman left who doesn’t make a man pay, and I don’t always get time to come over here.”

  Bonnie laughed. “Ah, quit kidding. It ain’t that bad. You know what your problem is? You just a discontented soul. Can’t never be content to just work alongside the likes of me. Now come on in here and fill out them forms and let me look you two over. You be looking so good I’m half tempted to have me a bite outta both you and her.”

  Draven followed Bonnie into the office and watched her settle behind the desk. “I see you’ve been promoted,” he said. He began filling out the form.

  “Yeah, I been here a while now. You probably would’ve got my job if you stayed longer. But oh no, can’t never keep Draven Castle happy.”

  “Hey, come on, that’s not true.”

  “Oh yeah? How many jobs you had since you left here? Six? Three? I bet it ain’t less than three.”

  “Who’s counting?”

  “See, I tell you, and you just don’t listen. You gotta be content with your own self and then you’ll be promoted. You know you one of the best Catchers we ever had.”

  “I know, Big Bonnie. You tell me every time I see you.”

  “Which ain’t never, cause you afraid I’ma suck you right back in and you know I’m right, too. So how about it? What you doing right now?”

  “Bouncing at a restaurant.”

  “Bouncing?” Bonnie laughed so hard her big body shook. “You ain’t no bouncer. Your scrawny ass? I could break you in half. You born a Catcher and you always gonna come back.”

  “I did favor my paycheck here.”

  “You see? The Confinement takes good care of us. And boy, I’ll take good care of you. You come on back anytime. Now get on back to work before you get fired. Again.”

  “I never get fired, Bonnie. I just switch.” He handed her the tablet with the completed form. He might have skipped it, but he needed the money, and he didn’t want to bring any suspicion on himself by skipping the paperwork necessary for collecting his payment.

  “You just switch a lot,” Bonnie said, turning the tablet to check that he’d completed the file. “Alright little sap, you understand what I’m saying?”

  Cali, silent until now, nodded. She had been studying their conversation with apparent interest.

  “Alright then, turn around and pull up your shift there and let me scan your code.” Draven watched Cali do as she was told. Her heart began beating wildly when she lifted her shift, although he didn’t understand why she’d gotten frightened. Saps had their hindmarks scanned often enough. He watched Bonnie scan the code on the upper part of the sapien’s buttocks. “Yeah, she’s in the system. Belongs to a restaurant. We’ll get her back. Thanks, Mister Castle. You come back by here and visit a lady now and then, you hear?”

  “Yes, I hear you.”

  “Alright, go on then. We got her.”

  When Draven turned to go, he caught a glimpse of Cali’s stricken face. If he could, he would have told her that she wouldn’t have to go back, that she’d stay at the Confinement. But of course he couldn’t say that in front of Bonnie, and he wouldn’t be left alone with Cali anyhow. Bonnie had to take her statement and she’d hold her until the end of the
night when they would recheck all the saps. By then, Enforcement would have put the raid into the system, as well as a list of all the saps and where they had been relocated, mostly in rehabilitation clinics for a few days and then back to the Confinement.

  Cali had spent her rehabilitation at his house instead of a clinic. It wasn’t so different. He was going beyond the call of duty, really. He had taken on the job and responsibility of a sap’s care instead of letting the state pay for it. They ought to thank him for that.

  Chapter Nineteen

  For the rest of the night and one whole day, Cali sat in a little white room with one other guy. He didn’t say much, just mostly slept, and after a long time, the fat lady Superior took him away. Then Cali was by herself. She didn’t care though, not very much. She was still tired from the awful restaurant where she hardly ever ate and had to let Superiors eat from her all night. So she slept on the cold hard bench, white like the rest of the room.

  When she woke again, someone had left a little chamber pot and a plastic cup of water and a plastic plate of food. Cali ate all the food and drank all the water and used the chamber pot. She put the picture back in her underpants. It was the only place she had to keep it. And now what would she do with it? Most people at the Confinement didn’t know anything about Superiors. And she’d been so scared they’d see it when she’d lifted her shift for her hindmark scan.

  After a while, she slept again. When she woke up, she paced around the room. She knew what happened next—they’d take her back to that awful place and she’d probably really die this time. She couldn’t expect a Superior to come to her rescue every time. Sooner or later she’d stop getting lucky. She sat down and held her hands tight between her knees and kept looking up at the walls, halfway expecting a little window to appear like the ones she’d had in all her rooms. But every time she looked, the wall stayed the same. This room had no windows, and she couldn’t tell what time of day it was. But every day ended, and when night started, that’s when the Superiors came back.

  One of them opened the door just then, like he’d waited for her to think of him so he could show up. He looked like all the Superiors, or most of them, anyway. The only difference between Superiors and people, as far as Cali could tell, was that Superiors dressed in a whole lot more clothes and were a whole lot cleaner. She was thankful she’d gotten to take a shower at least. The bad restaurant only let the workers shower once a week, and she’d gotten nasty and grimy the last four days before the sometimes-nice Superior had taken her home.

  He didn’t seem to care when she showered, so she’d done it a lot—when he’d gone to work, when he’d been home and sleeping. All the time. She hadn’t told him she’d never had a warm shower before. He might have realized she wasn’t supposed to and turned off the warmth somehow. Even at the nice restaurant, cold showers only. She’d heard about warm showers. It seemed like humans knew about everything Superiors did, even though she didn’t know how. Kind of like all the legends about what Superiors could do. Cali only believed about half of it. She hadn’t even known for sure if warm showers existed until she’d had one.

  The man who opened the door to the little white room had hair about the color of Cali’s, and he wore glasses, another thing only Superiors had. He had on the blue pants and blue shirt with the pens in the pocket, and she knew him at once even though she’d never seen him before. He was a doctor. They all wore that in the clinic. Another Superior, a girl one who looked about the same age as Cali, stood right behind him. She had black hair under one of the nets all the Superior girls wore, and she had the hugest nose of anyone Cali had ever seen. She started saying stuff to Cali in another language.

  The man Superior said, “You speak my language or hers?”

  “Yours,” Cali said. “Is it time to go back? Do I have to?”

  “Just come with me,” he said. “That man who brought you in, didn’t he tell you that you’d get to stay here?”

  “Yeah, but…I guess I thought…he just said that so I’d be good.”

  The doctor Superior shook his head. “Come along. I know the conditions were bad where you’ve been, but you’ll be fine here at the Confinement.”

  Cali nearly screamed with joy. She wanted to hug that man too, but she figured she’d been lucky that the Man with Soft Hair hadn’t punished her for that. So she held back her excitement at the thought of going back to the Confinement. Back home, after all this time.

  She followed the doctor and the girl down the hall and outside. The smell of the evening at the Confinement rushed to greet her like an old friend. She hadn’t even known it had a smell. But when it came to her, she knew she’d never forgotten it at all. It was like she’d only left last night instead of over three years ago.

  The Superiors kept talking in that other language. She wished she knew what they said, if they talked about her. The language sounded pretty though. Lots of Superiors talked in the other language, but the humans mostly used hers. She wondered why Superiors would need a secret language. It wasn’t like her people could do anything with Superior secrets even if they’d understood the language.

  The doctor led Cali to the clinic. She’d gone to the clinic plenty when she’d lived in the Confinement. She’d had exams, and once she’d gotten sick and had to go every night for five nights and take awful-tasting medicine. She didn’t mind the medicine as much as the exams. The doctors always talked in other languages to each other and sometimes laughed while they poked around under her arms and on her stomach and back. They mostly used her language to tell her what to do. When they did talk to each other in her language, they used all these words she’d never heard before so it sounded almost like a different language anyway.

  The doctor pushed Cali to a tiny little room and made her go in. She didn’t like it when Superiors led her by the back of the neck like she was a dog or something. Like she couldn’t have understood if he just told her where to go. They always had to hold onto her. She wondered what would happen if just once she did what she wanted and shrugged his hand off and told him she could figure out where to go without his hand pushing her along.

  “Okay, just go ahead and undress for me,” the man Superior said. The girl started tapping away at that little black square that Superiors always carried around and looked at.

  Cali sighed and undid her shift and let it drop around her feet. She crossed her arms across her chest and waited for him to start scanning her with his little scanny-wand thing and telling her to do this or that, lift her arms, jog a minute in place, twist this way and that, bend this way and that.

  Instead, he said, “Okay, good, now just get on that table. And take off your underpants, too.”

  Cali just stared at him. Did he know about the picture? What if it was something big and important, not just a picture? What if she got killed for it, or sent to the blood bank again? Or maybe he didn’t know about the damp, bent picture at all. Maybe he wanted the other thing inside her underpants.

  She knew what that was all about. She’d heard girls at Estrella’s talking about it. She’d even had to learn how to tell her bouncer to make the nasty-thinking Superiors go away when they said stuff about renting her. At the dirty restaurant, she’d heard a lot more about it. And she’d thought she was safe, that she’d escaped that. The Man with Soft Hair hadn’t done anything nasty to her, and she’d thought she’d gotten lucky for once. But now someone else wanted to do bad things to her—and at the Confinement, of all places, where she should have been safest.

  “Go on,” the man Superior said. He didn’t look very happy to have to repeat himself. Cali did what he told her, turning around while she hooked her thumb under the picture and the band of her underwear. She folded it inside and put it on her shift. Her hands shook, her legs, too. But the doctor didn’t even glance at her pile of clothes.

  He gestured for her to get on the table, and then he put on some blue gloves that just matched his clothes. She tried awfully hard not to cry while he looked at her every
where and poked around everywhere, asking her the whole time what the Man with Soft Hair had done to her and if he hurt her or touched her private places. Then the doctor poked even in her most private places, which did hurt, and then she cried. A little. But he didn’t do the worst thing to her.

  She sat up and got off the table and dressed while the doctor Superior and the big-nosed Superior talked in the other language and smiled a lot. Cali bit back her tears and wished she had something a lot bigger to put on, something that covered every inch of her body and didn’t come off. Maybe covered her head, too. The doctor Superior sat on a chair and started tapping on his little black thingy, and the big-nosed Superior put her black thingy in her pocket and led Cali out. She didn’t say anything, just took Cali outside and left her with another Superior, a skinny boy one who also looked about as old as Cali. Actually, most Superiors looked about the same age, as far as she could tell.

  This one made her lift up her shift, and she thought someone else was going to do bad stuff to her, but he only scanned her hindmark and brought her in near the beds and told her where she’d sleep. She’d wanted to come back so bad, and now she had made it back. But some of her excitement was lost now that someone had molested her. She went outside, and the boy Superior pointed to the communal buildings, like she didn’t remember from three years ago where to go.

  She went in and got in line to get her food.

  “Hey, you’re new,” a woman behind Cali said. “What’s your name? Where you from?”

  “I’m Cali. Or, I mean, Aspen. I was Aspen, but then I worked at a restaurant and they made me change my name.”

  “You worked at a restaurant? Wow, that’s lucky. I heard restaurant workers have it way better than us. That true?”