He laughs and shakes several curls in front of his face. "That'd be nice though. I haven't seen sunlight in weeks."
I look down at my tray and lose the small amount of appetite I have. This isn't a treatment facility—this is a prison.
Chapter 7
Knocking at the glass wall wakes me from another night of restless sleep. I roll over in my bed and spot Atticus lowering himself to the ground in his usual spot on the other side of the plexiglass. His skin glows a shade of off white that makes my heart leap to my throat. “Are you alright?”
“I’ve been better,” he adds a half smile for good measure. “Testing kinda—” He looks away from me; his curls fall, obscuring the look that passes over his face. “I’m just tired.”
“Well, are you getting better? Or worse?” Atticus doesn’t turn back toward me. In that moment, we both know the answer to my question. “What happens next?”
“They’re coming to test my blood, and if the results come back with what they want, I go back to Testing.”
“What happened in there yesterday?”
The door swings open again making us both jump. “Cell B,” someone says over the intercom. Two men in hazmat suits walk by my cell and open the door to Atticus’s.
“I’ll see you later, kid.” He smiles, but it disappears from his face as he heads toward the door. The two men wait for Atticus to move in front of them and walk in unison behind him. It reminds me of those videos I watched of slaughter houses when I still went to school; cattle walking in single-file with no where to turn, no where to go, except forward to their death.
“Salvatora!” Atticus stops and turns his sunken face toward me. The men in hazmat suits almost bump into him. One curses at my neighbor and pushes a hand into his back. “My name is Salvatora.”
He smiles and nods before disappearing behind a gray door leading to the part of the facility I can only assume is dedicated to Testing. I’m alone in a thick silence with one slam of a door.
As much as I don’t trust anyone here, I want Atticus to be ok. He’s the only person who hasn’t abandoned me in the past week. I pace in circles around my cell—I’m starving. The door from before swings open and the man from yesterday with the green eyes walks through the doorway carrying a tray of food.
“You looked hungry on the monitors,” his voice comes out muffled through his suit. He places the tray into the box. The food’s color is off, almost like the very first color television ever invented. From my guess, it’s a bowl of oatmeal, a small milk carton, a mixture of peas, carrots and corn with applesauce on the side. “I know it doesn’t look that great—”
“That’s an understatement,” I say under my breath.
The man laughs. “She speaks! Looks like I just lost a bet.”
“You think this a game?” I look up and meet his green-eyed gaze. “I’m dying on the other side of the wall where you and the other Negatives are watching from a safe distance. You’ll never have to be me. You’ll never be a Positive.”
My appetite vanishes in an instant. I pace back to my bed and curl up on the stiff mattress. The seal to my doorway depresses and footsteps follow shortly after. I hear the click of the box attached to my cell and the clatter of the tray hitting my lone table in the room. “I’m sorry—”
“An apology means nothing to me at this point,” I respond. “Your bet proves that I’m just another number—another thing to chat with your buddies about.”
“That’s not what I meant by the bet—”
“Then what did you mean?” I shoot up in bed, my tangled hair floating into my eyes. “You’re watching us on camera, but we can’t have human interaction? We can’t have someone to talk to? We get thrown in a cell after seeing your parents give up on you—why? Oh, that’s right, because of what we are.”
The man’s shoulders rise and fall with a sigh. He pulls a needle and glass slide from the pocket of a satchel strapped around his shoulder. “I’m not supposed to have any contact with you. I’m supposed to collect your blood and feed you through that decontamination box on your cell. That’s it,” he responds. “Is that what you’d rather have?”
I clench my jaw.
“I’m sorry if I offended you about the bet. It’s a joke between my coworkers and I, but I realize that it’s extremely inhumane of us to do that now,” he responds. “May I have your hand please?”
I turn my head away and hold out the finger he pricked yesterday. With my eyes closed, I feel the small pinch of the needle and a moment of pressure. By the time I turn my head around, a liquid bandaid dries against my skin. “Was there any change yesterday?”
“I’m afraid not.” The man fixes a small clear square on top of my blood and packs it away into his satchel. “The only thing I noticed from yesterday was your blood sugar being low. So please eat. Even if it looks nasty.”
I scoop a spoonful of the soupy oatmeal into my mouth and force it down my throat. It’s not so much the taste that bothers me, but the consistency is awful. My hunger takes hold, and I scarf down the meal in seconds. When I look up at the man again, a pained expression flashes across his face. “What?”
He makes eye contact and his furrowed brow lifts into a smile. “Just tired. I work a lot.”
He pushes himself off the wall to my cell and lays a soft hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I look back down at my empty tray and feel nauseous out of nowhere. After the my door seals shut and the man in the hazmat suit disappears behind the doorway he came from, the thick silence falls down on me again. I hug my knees into my chest and press my back against the glass.
My thoughts wander to my parents—I hate them for leaving me here.
* * *
I hear the clink of the gray door after hours of silence in my cell. Atticus shuffles toward his door with two NGs struggling to keep him from collapsing. Once they get his door open, they push him into his cell. He collapses to the ground and stays there, crumpled in an uncomfortable-looking heap. Both guards shrug their shoulders and let the door close behind him.
"Hey!" I slam my fists into the glass. Both NGs turn and look at me; their masks obstruct my view of their expressions. "You're supposed to help him!"
They look at each other, a muffled laugh escapes both of them and then, they leave the way they came. I sink down on the opposite side of the glass from Atticus. The steady rise and fall of his back sends a waive of relief over me. He's alive. Despite all the bad things that have happened over the past few weeks, Atticus is one of the sole good things. I can't lose him. I'm not ready to be alone in this place. Part of me thinks he senses that which is why he keeps trying to be my friend.
Friend. I laugh out loud at the thought. It's been months since I even thought of the word let alone called someone that. But Atticus is only one left. He's my friend and protector here. I think we both can feel that.
To see him lying on the ground, half alive at best, made me realize that. I'll be damned if I'm going to let the NGs and NDs take that away from me.
Chapter 8
Atticus lays with his back to me on his cot. He hasn’t had the energy to get out of bed for days now. After the last incident with the guards, they've been helping him to his bed after Testing. I’m scared that the virus is going to kill him. It’s odd that I cried for him as the sleeping agent misted down through my room last night. I know we don't really know each other, but I feel like because of what we are, we know each other on a whole different level.
“Atticus?”
His head lifts an inch off the pillow before falling back down. A rattling cough makes it through the clear walls. I push my hair back into a ponytail. It’s hotter in my cell today—I don’t know if that’s because of the weather outside or because I have a fever.
“Atticus, please come talk to me.”
Tears splatter against the concrete floor. Each day brings me no answers. I tried asking the men in the hazmat suits about my parents
. As much anger as I have toward them, I’m lost without them here. Fear becomes a very real thing with no one to tell you what’s safe.
Before the world of Positives and Negatives, everything was perfect. My grandmother’s diabetes disappeared, my little sister didn’t have severe asthma anymore—what wasn’t there to like about the chip? Be healthy for the rest of your life until you pass from old age. It was an amazing work of science, my dad always said.
“You ok?”
My gaze travels up the glass walls until I meet Atticus’ sunken-in stare. “I could ask you the same thing.” I clear my throat and draw shapes into the tiny puddle of tears on the concrete.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I’m remembering things. Things I should probably stop digging up,” I say, clearing my throat. Atticus’s hand twitches on the other side of the glass. He must know that I’m about to tell him everything. Days in this cell make any type of human interaction bearable. “Did you have anyone—that you—”
“Lost?” We make eye contact for moment and I already know the answer. “The entire floor of my residence hall on campus. My friends. My parents. I guess the rest of my family too. I never spoke with them once the chips started malfunctioning.”
His wheezing is the only sound in the thickness of the air. I swallow and picture a building filled with hundreds upon thousands of people—elderly, middle-aged, children—crumbling to the ground in a heap. That’s what the chips’ malfunctioning was like. People gone in an instant.
“My sister got sick.” I close my eyes trying to remember her; the raspy laugh that carried through the house during Christmas, her dark complexion soaking up the sun at the beach when we went to Florida. The first time she was able to run without having an asthma attack—her smile could've lit up the sky at night.
“When did it happen?”
“It was right after the mass recalls on the chips hit the news,” I respond, rubbing a chill out of my skin. “I remember thinking that maybe it was fake, you know? Like one of those movie trailers that look like they’re filmed with a cell phone or something."
“That’s what I hoped for too.” Atticus coughs several times before clearing his throat. He leans his head against the glass—beads of sweat press outward from his skin.
“My mom and dad sat on the edges of the couch, glued to the tv. I was the only one who noticed my sister struggling down the hallway. Her cheeks were flushed, sweat drenched her clothes, and she was wheezing. It sounded different than an asthma attack. It was a deep, hoarse rattle coming from somewhere in her lungs.
When I called her name out and I tried to reach out for her, my parent’s pulled me away. I screamed at them to let me go. I had to help—it was my job to help her. When my parents stepped in between us, I could see the panic fill my sister’s eyes.”
Atticus’ hand raises to the glass. His palm presses against it, turning whiter from the pressure. I don’t make eye contact, and I don’t raise my hand to his. The gesture makes the story of what happened easier to tell though.
“Her breathing quickened to the point of hyperventilating. She begged my parents to help her. But what could they do? We’d thrown away her inhalers years before that,” I say, my eyes trailing to the ground in front of my knees. “The malfunction didn’t kill her—her asthma did. She had an asthma attack and none of us did anything to stop it.”
"You tried to help—"
"What good does that do though?" I look up from my hands, but avoid eye contact with Atticus. I can feel the guilt on my face.
The door in the hallway swings open and another Positive kicks and screams their way into the cell where Atticus’ neighbor died. The NGs leave without a word. Our new cellmate is an older man with a bald spot on his head. Neither of us attempt to introduce ourselves.
“You can’t blame yourself for what’s going on,” Atticus says. He swallows, his eyes wincing as his Adam’s Apple moves with his saliva. “I did that for months after my boyfriend died. But the way I see it, is that we were born into this life. We didn’t have a choice of who we are. We were Positives way before the chips went bad.” A coughing fit ends our conversation early. Atticus drags himself to his cot and lays in the same position he was before he woke up.
The door in the hallway opens up once again and an ND holds the trays with the slides for our blood, plus one small white cup with the number one written in thick black marker. He starts at our new neighbors cell, briefly explains the procedure and then moves on to Atticus’ cell.
“He’s not gonna be able to get to the door.” My voice barely comes out as a whisper, and I want to kick myself for it. I need to sound tougher than I feel right now. These people want us scared—it’s easier to control us that way. “Whatever you’re doing to him is wiping him out—”
“She speaks again!” My cheeks heat up when I realize who the man behind the mask is. The man’s chuckle that follows sounds muffled behind the layer of his hazmat suit. He walks to my box outside of my cell and places the slide and needle inside. “Once your symptoms show, you'll be happy that you're heading to Testing.”
“I'm sure all the cool kids say that..”
“Not exactly,” he says, closing the latch to my box. He taps the window and points to the slide. The corner of his eyes pinch in sympathy to what I’m assuming is my fear of needles. “If I had my way, you’d all be released right now.”
“Why can’t you make them let us go then? This wasn’t my choice to be locked away in here. I didn’t choose to be a Positive.” The man makes eye contact with me, and I feel the world stop for a moment. A look flashes across his gaze. Was it anger? Sadness? I couldn’t tell because of the briefness of it, but I settle for a combination of both.
“Please place the slide in the box when you’re finished,” he says, leaving in a rush through the door in the hallway.
I prick my finger and watch bright red blood drip like a leaking faucet onto the glass slide. The weeping of Atticus’ new neighbor reaches my cell—I don’t know how much longer my hope will hold on in here.
Chapter 9
"Positive!"
My eyes spring open to two guards standing outside my cell door. A vacuum sound fills my room, and my cell door opens following it.
"Exit your cell."
"Where-where am I going?"
"That's none of your concern," the guard on the right says.
"Exit your cell."
My palms fill with sweat. Something about this moment sends me back to when my sister died. I see her eyes screaming for help. The walls close in around me. My breathing quickens as I back away from the doorway. The cells around me are empty. I don't even have Atticus to protect me.
A light shines on a red door at the end of the hallway. The faces on the guards warp into ferocious grins; their teeth stretch like a Cheshire Cat's. I'm pinned underneath fear and anxiety in the corner of my room. The walls are within arms reach now. The red door creeps nearer. I close my eyes and wait for it to take me too.
* * *
"Salvatora!"
A dull banging pulls me through the grogginess. I roll and see Atticus slamming his fists onto the glass. The skin is raw from the amount times he's been shocked, but it doesn't seem to phase him.
He rests his head against the glass and let's out a muffled sigh. "You looked like you were having a seizure or something," he said sliding down the glass until he was sitting. "I freaked. Sorry."
"Night terrors have kinda been my thing since the chips failed," I say, rubbing the raw spot on my neck from the tattoo. "You try seeing the things I have and live normally."
Atticus smirks and looks out the front of his cell. "I guess you could say we come from different sides of hell."
"Did they come by with food? I'm starving."
"Not yet," he says, looking towards the door with what I can only assume is hunger. "But I feel your pain."
Blood pushes up against the glass wall betwee
n us. I close my eyes hoping this nightmare will just end already, but when I open them back up, the pool has gotten bigger. The trail of the deep red leads back to Atticus' hands; tiny drops fall silently against the concrete floor.
"Atticus, your hands!"
He looks down at them and nods. "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you," he responds. "It seems my chip is attacking my nervous system. I haven't been able to feel anything in my hands for the past couple of weeks."
"Should I call for help?"
He shakes his head. "The guards will be coming soon. It'll get taken care of when I'm brought to Testing."
"What do they do to you in there?" The question catches both of us off guard. I can tell in the way his posture changes—his shoulders straight, the muscles in his neck strain just enough to show he stopped breathing for a second, his hands remain in tight fists despite the blood that falls from them. "Every time you come out of there, you look worse than before."
"Some things aren't meant to be told," he says, avoiding eye contact. "I wouldn't wish anyone going to Testing here if they didn't have to."
"Why is that we have to go to Testing, but the Negatives walk around here without a care about what happens outside of those—sessions?"
Atticus looks behind him at his neighbors cell and then to the gray doors at the end of the hallway. "If you ask me, I think it's all fake." He looks down at his hands and squeezes them; more blood drips onto the floor. "But then again, I'm the one with the chip that's killing my nervous system, right?" He laughs and then, clears his throat.
I've never really knew what it was like to live on edge. Before the chips malfunctioned, I never had to care about anything. The only scary things in the world were getting hit by a bus or bombs. I never worried about anything else until now. Each second I'm alive is on borrowed time. I heard the doctors talking after my failed surgery. I heard the urgency in my mother's voice for them to rip the chip out if need be. Each second the chip stayed inside me was another second closer to death. I didn't know how it was going to happen. I didn't know when.
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