Dark Metropolis

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  “I don’t know,” Nan said. “You sound rich, and I sound like a ruffian.”

  Sigi’s nose flushed. “Maybe I liked to spend time with ruffians, then.”

  Nan grinned, but all the while she was desperately trying to recall whether she had known Sigi.

  Sigi filled her spoon with soup. “We’d better eat before we run out of time, and you’d better drink that.”

  Nan sniffed her cup and immediately recognized the sickly sweetness of the medicine she’d been given before. “What is it?”

  “The serum.”

  “Serum?”

  “You’ll get sick without it. Besides that, you’ll get a reprimand.”

  “From who?”

  “Trust me, just drink it.”

  “Is this what causes us to forget things?”

  “It couldn’t be, could it?” Sigi said. “We’d forget each other every morning at breakfast. What a mess.” Sigi suddenly hunched into her bowl, and a heavy hand fell on Nan’s shoulder. She turned to see a man staring down at her, the only man wearing a suit and tie. In fact, everything about him was distinguished, with his slenderness and height, watch chain, and slicked-back hair.

  His voice, when he spoke, was gentle but not kind. “Is there a problem here?”

  “It’s my first day.” Nan lifted her chin. “So tell me what I’m in for. What does the serum do?”

  He squinted back. “What’s your name?”

  “Nan Davies.”

  “Nan Davies, you’re an impudent little thing, aren’t you?”

  “You tell me what I am—I can’t remember. Isn’t that the idea around here?”

  Sigi kicked her under the table, and it hurt. Nan shot her a look before she could think better of it.

  “You, miss, seem like a sensible girl.” He gestured to Sigi, who quickly looked at her soup. “Why don’t you take Nan Davies under your wing and explain matters.”

  Sigi grunted.

  He raised his brows. “Have we regressed to the primeval era down here? Well, Miss Davies, I will tell you, if you’d like to see what happens if you don’t drink your serum, you are welcome to do so.” He walked away, and she could almost hear a collective exhale around her.

  “You are in so much trouble,” Sigi said when he left, but there was a streak of admiration in her tone.

  “Who is he, and why are you so afraid of him?”

  “Don’t say it like that. I don’t want to be afraid of him, but it can hardly be helped. That’s Valkenrath. He’s the overseer of all this,” Sigi whispered. “And he’s heartless.”

  “What happens if I don’t take the serum?”

  Sigi hesitated. Now she really did look afraid. “You’ll get sick. Really sick.”

  “Like a fever? What does that mean?”

  “Just weak and…sort of crazy. You don’t want it to happen to you, believe me.” All the animation seemed drained from her face, like even having a personality was dangerous with Valkenrath prowling the room.

  Nan frowned into her cup for a minute and reluctantly took one sip.

  Sigi abruptly stood. “I need to use the powder room before we go to work.”

  Nan almost smiled at the idea of anyone needing a “powder room” in this place, but she wished Sigi wouldn’t run off. So many secrets around here.

  She finished her soup, but she didn’t touch the rest of the serum. When the speakers announced that it was time for the start of the work day, and everyone rose, she switched her cup with an empty one from another table during the commotion. Whatever that stuff was, she’d take her chances without it.

  “This is your station!” The man had to scream at Nan to be heard over the rhythmic cacophony of machines, steam hissing from valves around the beginnings of rust. There were no windows, just a sickly glow. “All you need to do is watch the lights on this panel, and if one of them comes on, you pull the lever next to it. Do you understand?”

  “What does that do?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You just need to pull the lever. If you have trouble with this, we can send you down to work in the slaughterhouse.”

  Nan sat down hard. He walked away, leaving her with the panel. There were six lights in a row, each one numbered, and each with a corresponding lever. She stared at them for a moment, and then number five lit up. She pulled the lever. It stayed down for a few seconds, and then it popped up again, but now the light was out.

  Now number two lit up. She pulled that lever. And number four.

  Three seconds passed by. Four. Five. Six.

  Number two lit up again. She pulled the lever.

  One. Two. Three.

  Lever five.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

  Lever two. Stubborn thing.

  One. Two. Three.

  Lever five.

  Lever one.

  Nan fell into a rhythm, just like the machines that churned and hissed and thumped and clacked all around her, almost the way she imagined dance music sounded to other people. Nan had never been able to hear music properly. It sounded like off-kilter noise. The only time music ever sounded right was in her dreams, but it wasn’t like any other sound in the world. It was slow and haunting and heartbreakingly beautiful. She could never remember it exactly when she awoke, but it was never entirely forgotten, either. Nan had often felt so alone in the world, but whenever she woke to the fading sound of that music, she knew she was not alone in the universe.

  As the moments went by, the music of the machines seemed to blend into the song of her dreams, a pattern of slow, resonant tones underneath the clamor. The more she focused on it, the calmer she felt, but it was a purposeful calm.

  I have a reason for coming here. I’m sure I do.

  I know what this place is.

  At least, I did know. If only I could remember….

  A memory floated, like cream, to the top of her mind. This was a stronger memory than the one of Horst. She’d been walking with a friend of hers—her only friend, she thought, a girl who always seemed a little sad but quick to laugh.

  Thea.

  I always had a hard time relating to people, but not to her.

  Nan remembered Thea telling her that her mother was sick. Bound-sick. The spell, Thea had said, sounding almost ashamed. It went wrong somehow. The term bound-sick had been unfamiliar to Nan then.

  At first, Thea said, it had not been so bad. Her mother insisted her father was alive, and seemed out of sorts, but life still went on as it always had. The bound-sickness grew worse each passing year. Thea didn’t even know how long she’d be able to work. Thea, who always seemed so strong, had let Nan see her cry. Nan never cried, but she also had never comforted, until that day. It was a powerful feeling, to comfort someone.

  Nan remembered feeling an almost overwhelming urge to do something. She’d wanted to rush home with Thea and grab her mother and…and…fix things. Somehow. But Nan hadn’t known what she could do. She had never even heard of this magic before that moment.

  It was a familiar feeling, that stirring of fire inside her. She felt it now, too.

  A buzzer squawked behind the panel, making her jump, and the light blinked. Quickly, she pulled the lever, and it stopped. Nan’s mind had wandered too far away, but at least she had one memory now, and if she ran her mind over it again and again, maybe it would lead to more.

  Her arms burned. The levers had enough resistance that pulling them once or even ten times was hardly an effort, but after a hundred times, she dreamed of being anywhere else.

  A dozen other girls were in the same row, performing the same rote task, all under the inanimate glare of the hulking machines, with their buzzers and lights.

  One of the girls kept setting off the buzzer, and after a number of mistakes, the supervisor stalked over. Nan couldn’t hear the conversation until the end, when
the man barked, “Get up!”

  Meekly, the girl rose and followed him out. A few moments later, another girl took her place.

  Nan’s arms shook with exhaustion as she pulled the levers. She wanted to do something about this. She wanted someone to fight.

  Two days passed just like the first. In the morning, Nan was given serum and thick, tasteless soup. She pretended to sip the serum, but she quickly realized that at the end of the meal, all the workers gathered their trays and tossed them into a bin to be washed, and in the chaos no one would notice a full cup of the stuff. She always ate with Sigi, chatting about other workers. Then she pulled levers for hours. For dinner they were given bread, milk, and more of the same soup, but no serum. Nan was beginning to dream of roasted pork and apples, but she didn’t feel sick, weak, or crazy without taking the serum at breakfast.

  On the third day, when the workers shuffled back into the cafeteria for dinner, Nan heard a concerned murmuring that swept back through the room to where she stood.

  “Oh, no, who is it this time?” a girl asked, glancing around.

  “Are they punishing someone?” Another girl turned pale and covered her eyes with her hand. She grabbed the arm of the girl beside her. “I won’t look!” she cried, a frantic note in her voice.

  “You can look,” the other girl retorted. “It’s only been a day. It won’t be bad until tomorrow, at least.”

  A cage like a prison cell had been placed just past the cafeteria line, so everyone would see it. A guard stood beside it, his eyes resting briefly on each worker who passed by with dinner. A girl sat on the cage floor, sobbing, arms clinging to the bars above her. A boy was hunched behind her. When Nan got closer, she realized it was Helma.

  Most of the people moving through the line tried to pretend they hadn’t seen, but a few stopped to look at the pair with sympathy. Helma wailed at anyone who would look her way, “Help! You know I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.” One of her arms reached out between the bars, her fingers waving desperately.

  A passing man took a step closer and shook his head. “You’ll get through it,” he said, rather insistently.

  “Move along,” the guard said.

  “Is this really necessary?” Waving his hand, the man looked at the guard. “I mean, she is young! They are both young, and they’re very new here. Look at—”

  “Move along.” The guard poked the man with the end of his nightstick.

  The man huffed, abruptly turning away.

  Helma looked at Nan. “She’s my roommate,” she said, gesturing to her. “Tell them! Tell them I wasn’t sneaking around seeing any boys!”

  Nan wasn’t sure what to say. She’d known Helma only a few days—and known was a generous word to use. Nan had been sleeping too heavily to notice what Helma did.

  Sigi’s hand hooked Nan’s elbow and dragged her away from the scene. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Don’t get involved. I’m surprised it took this long for her to be caught. When she didn’t have a roommate for a couple of weeks, she was even inviting her boyfriend into her room. Talk about asking for trouble!”

  Nan drew back from the grip. “But why are they in a cage?”

  “There aren’t enough guards, so…this is how they keep us in line.”

  Nan could still hear Helma screaming as though the world were ending. “Why is she carrying on like that? What will they do to her and the boy?”

  Sigi grabbed an empty seat. She tore her bread into several pieces. “They’ll—go without their serum for a few days, that’s all.”

  “And get sick,” Nan said. “That’s what you said earlier. But it doesn’t make sense.”

  Sigi’s voice was low. “They are going to…decay.”

  “Decay?”

  She nodded. “As if they’re dead. And then…they’ll get some serum, and they’ll come back.”

  Nan rubbed her arms. All her hair stood on end. “Has it ever happened to you?”

  Sigi shook her head vehemently. “No. No. Hopefully never. I don’t even let myself think about that happening. You can’t go around in fear of it. Sometimes they punish people for what seems like no reason at all.”

  “So are we dead, then?”

  Sigi averted her eyes. “I don’t know for sure, but…I feel like I am.”

  “And there’s no way out?”

  “Well, Brigitte said…” She trailed off.

  “What?”

  “She said she tried to run away. She said the rails beneath the men’s dorms are still in use, and if you follow them left from the platform, they eventually split. You can go from there. At least, you can try, if you aren’t afraid of rats and bones and well…getting lost without any serum.”

  “For someone who doesn’t want to escape, you certainly remembered those directions.” Nan thought she recognized a bit of the rebel in Sigi.

  Sigi half-smiled, half-winced. “Well, sure, I’ve thought about escaping, but even Brigitte decided burning to death was a better way out. What am I to think of that?”

  “Better think you’d be more successful at escaping than Brigitte was.”

  “Maybe.”

  Nan didn’t press Sigi. She didn’t want to say that she had yet to drink another full dose of serum since her first day.

  Nan could hear the moaning and screaming before she even reached the cafeteria.

  This morning Helma and the boy were both at the bars, reaching out with awkward, flailing arms. Their eyes were beginning to sink. Their skin was discolored, darker and sort of shriveled, so their bones stood out. The change had been alarmingly rapid.

  It wouldn’t have been as awful if they weren’t moving, if they simply decayed quietly like the dead. But the pair didn’t really look dead; they were something else entirely. Their desiccating flesh moved; their pathetic, shriveling eyes darted; their mouths opened. “Help…help…” Helma sounded hoarse, as though she’d been screaming all night.

  The boy clutched the bars now, lunging his body against them when he saw Nan’s eyes on him. “Just a taste…so hungry…”

  The guard never looked at them, never stopped them from reaching out or screaming, and he didn’t stop the workers from staring, either, although few did. He just kept the workers from getting close enough to touch the prisoners.

  Nan watched for a long moment. She wasn’t even sure why. It didn’t do any good, but she stood there as if she could do something about it, if only she had a moment to think.

  Sigi tugged on her sleeve. “Nan, come on. Let’s eat,” Sigi said. “I’d hate being looked at if—”

  Helma’s eyes rolled to Nan. “Please…” she breathed. “Please. I’m so hungry….”

  Nan’s fingers clenched her cup of serum. She fought an urge to throw the cup or yell at the guard. Her insides felt all twisted.

  She noticed Sigi’s eyes move to a point behind her. Valkenrath was at her shoulder. “Miss Davies, would you come with me, please?” A guard stood with him.

  “Why?” Nan asked, as she felt Sigi squeeze her fingers.

  He gave her a tight smile and no answer. The guard put a hand on the pistol at his hip. Nan got the message. Sigi reluctantly let go of her, then almost dropped the tray she’d been balancing on one hand.

  “I’ll be fine,” Nan said softly. Sigi seemed so worried.

  Would they put her in the cage with the couple? Their withering fingers reaching for her…She forced this thought back as she followed Valkenrath down a maze of halls and finally through a door. The guard had followed them and now waited at the entrance. Valkenrath handed her a pile of clothes—nice ones: a dress, stockings, and heeled shoes.

  “I need you to do something for me, Miss Davies,” he said. “I’m going to take you to see the boy who brought you back from the dead.”

  “So, I am dead?”

  “Well, no
t anymore,” he said impatiently. “And very lucky you are, after what you did to yourself. But this boy wants to know that you’re well. He’d be upset if he realized the extent of our program.”

  “What program?” Nan struggled to grasp exactly what Valkenrath meant. “And what did I do to myself, anyway? Just tell me what the hell’s going on!”

  “Calm yourself,” he said, sounding excruciatingly calm himself. “It’s very simple. You committed suicide. Freddy brought you back from the dead. You are in our work program, and your memories have been taken from you, because if you went right back to the mental and physical place that caused you to kill yourself, you might do it again.”

  “So all the workers back there killed themselves? Do they ever get to remember anything, or do anything else? I’ve heard some of them have been there for years!”

  “Some of them have no place to go.”

  He was lying, and it was plain to see, because none of this made any sense. But he was a very good liar—she’d give him that. He spoke as if he believed all he said, and he never lost his cool. “Maybe you should let them die, then,” she said. “What kind of life is this? Who are you to decide they should live?”

  “Would you like to die, Miss Davies?” For a moment, his eyes came alive with threat. “I could arrange it, if it’s what you truly wish.”

  “No,” she snapped.

  “Get dressed, if you would, and I’ll tell you what to say when you see Freddy.”

  I made my own dresses, and they were better than this one.

  She remembered the satisfaction of putting on a new creation. Of following a pattern. She liked patterns. Everything laid out so clearly, and yet it felt like art at the end. Nan had such trouble with art most of the time—her world was colorless, and music jarred her ears—but the symmetry of sleeves and seams made sense.

  Even though she hadn’t made this dress, wearing silk again was nice. Not that she had much time to enjoy it.

  The guard tied a cloth around her eyes so that she couldn’t see and led her down more corridors and up some stairs. When he removed it, she was in a house with sunshine streaming through glass windows. The outside world, just steps away from where she’d been.