“Donald, you next,” said the Beekeeper.
Ressler glared at Dr. Griffin. “I don’t—”
“Just do it, Ressler,” Keen put in quickly. “Please.”
The drone behind him raised the taser. Ressler cut himself off and took the central chair, his handcuffed hands in his lap. His blond hair was a mess, and his eyes were rimmed red.
“Three sins,” said Dr. Griffin. “You’ll feel better once you confess, Donald.”
“I don’t know what a sin is,” Ressler said, not quite growling.
“Anything that keeps you apart from the group,” Dr. Griffin explained in his even voice. “Deeds or thoughts about food you aren’t allowed to have, sexual desires, forbidden behaviors and thoughts leading to the same.”
“What behaviors are forbidden?” Ressler asked.
Keen recognized his tactic. He was stalling, trying to buy time. Standard FBI procedure. But in here, those rules didn’t work. No one knew where they were. Except Reddington. And anyway, Keen reminded herself, she wanted to be here. She wanted to find a way to bring this smug bastard down.
“Anything that goes against the direct orders of the Hive is forbidden,” Dr. Griffin said.
“And direct orders come from… you?” Ressler said.
“Now you know!” crowed Pug.
“I often speak for the Hive,” said Dr. Griffin. “Its voice is my voice. Confess, Donald. What sins are you hiding?”
Ressler chewed on his lip. “I… wanted some of Keen’s soda.”
Everyone, including Keen, pointed and shouted.
“Filth!”
“I felt tired and didn’t want to come here to this circle,” Ressler hazarded.
“Filth!”
“I want to go home,” Ressler finished.
“Filth!”
“Nicely done, Donald,” said the Beekeeper. “Quite orderly. Don’t you feel better now?”
“Sure,” Ressler said tightly.
“Uh oh,” said Pug.
Calmly, and without apparent rancor, the Beekeeper stood up and slugged Ressler across the jaw.
Keen jerked upright and almost scrambled to his defense, handcuffs or no. Only the movement of Mala’s taser out of the corner of her eye held her in her chair.
“What the hell?” Ressler snarled.
“You lied,” the Beekeeper boomed, standing over him. His powerful presence pressed Ressler into the floor. Tension tightened the room. “You didn’t feel better. Never, ever lie to us, Donald. We’ll know. Ask for the Hive’s forgiveness.”
Ressler glared up at him. He remained silent for a moment.
Keen held her breath.
Ressler said, “Will you forgive me for lying?”
The Beekeeper beamed and the tension was broken. “Of course, Donald. All you need do is ask.” And he gave Ressler a packet of cheese-spread crackers and a cup of apple juice.
Ressler clearly tried to hold back, but he ripped through them like a child at snack time anyway.
“Stuart?” the Beekeeper said.
Stuart gravely took his place in the center chair, as if he were attending a group therapy session. In a twisted way, Keen supposed, he was.
Stuart didn’t hesitate. “I was angry at the people who shot my friends,” he said.
“Filth!”
“I wanted more food and drink.”
“Filth!”
Keen found herself shouting louder than before.
“I wanted a shower. Still do.”
“Filth!”
“Excellent!” The Beekeeper clapped the old man on the shoulder. “Do you feel better?”
“Actually, I do,” Stuart said, looking surprised. “Who knew?”
“Now that was the truth.”
The Beekeeper gave Stuart crackers and soda, which Stuart took back to his chair with dignity.
“Elizabeth?” the Beekeeper said.
Slowly, with reluctance she didn’t have to feign, Keen took the center chair.
“I… wanted more food and drink,” she began. That seemed safe.
“Filth!”
Keen wasn’t prepared for her own reaction. She had been sure she was ready for the assembled group to yell at her. It would just be empty noise. But the shouted word punched through her with unexpected power. For a split second she was back in high school, wanting to be part of the popular girl group that sat at the center table in the cafeteria, but the pop girls laughed her aside, and she slunk to a table in the corner instead. Keen hadn’t thought about that incident in years, had thought she was long over it, but the disapprobation of the crowd brought it crashing back to her, and she felt ready to slink off to her corner again. Her shoulders slumped. Forcing her thoughts to change direction, she tried to reassert herself. She was an adult, and had done nothing wrong. These people had murdered a dozen agents, including Agent Gillford, and kidnapped her. Why would she care what they thought? She started to straighten herself—
—and remembered why she was here. Ressler might be here to fight. Keen was here to infiltrate. She allowed her shoulders to slump back down, the picture of unhappy timidity. She cast about for something to confess, something that would help her cause. Her eye lighted on Mala and an idea came.
“I envied Mala her beauty,” she said. “I wanted to look like her.”
Mala looked startled, and she missed the Filth! admonition. She cocked her head, and smiled a little at Keen, who shrugged.
“And your third sin?” the Beekeeper prompted.
Keen opened her mouth and, to her horror, realized she was going to say something about her daughter. Give that up to the Beekeeper? Never. Not even to ingratiate herself. Her fingers found the Y-shaped scar on her left hand and she traced its outline—up one side, in and out of the valley, down the other side. Her will strengthened a little. Her words changed before she could say them.
“I wanted to take Stuart’s crackers,” she said.
“Filth!” the group shouted.
The stress was over. Keen accepted the packet of crackers and the juice from Dr. Griffin and took her original seat with shaky legs.
“Doesn’t that feel better?” said Dr. Griffin.
And Keen had to admit she did feel better, in a weird way. It was no doubt caused by a small endorphin rush when the stress was lifted. However, this allowed her to nod truthfully, and the Beekeeper accepted the gesture gravely.
“You’re becoming part of the group,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Yay!” said Pug.
Keen tore into the food and gulped the juice without comment. John the Bodysnatcher was up next, but Keen barely listened to his confession and shouted “Filth!” by rote. She was sleepy now, and wondered what time it was. The disorientation made her feel unnerved and restless, off-balance.
“Nicely done, all of you,” the Beekeeper said. “You’re well on your way to becoming full members of the Hive. We’ll protect you from our enemies, the ones who want to hurt us, who want to stop us, who want to bring us down. Remember, you—we—are strong together. No one can stand against us. Follow the Hive, and you will have strength beyond your imagination. Together, we will take this country back to its rightful place. We are love! We are life! We are the Hive!”
Everyone in the room tapped their chests twice and repeated, “We are the Hive!”
Ressler did it a little late, but he did it.
“Now it’s time for work,” the Beekeeper said. “That’s Rule Number Three: Work keeps the hands busy and the soul happy. The drones will show you. Off you go!”
Mala and the rest of the outer circle prodded Keen and the others to their feet. They shuffled out of the room, leaving the Beekeeper and his wife behind.
“Where are we going now?” Keen asked Mala, who was walking beside her down the tunnel.
“A side chamber,” she said. “They always need work. If you do well, you can be promoted to working in the main chamber, under the Great Tree.”
“I love the Great
Tree,” Pug said. “It’s so beautiful.”
“The Great Tree?” Keen echoed, confused.
“The stone one, carved into the side of the cave,” Mala said. “You must have seen it when you came in. Dr. Griffin found it in this cave. It was carved long ago by the Great Elders. They spoke to him, and told him this was a sacred place. They gave him the wisdom to start the Hive, and we have been here ever since.”
“I would like to examine this Great Tree in more detail,” Stuart spoke up. “It sounds like a transformative experience.”
“It is,” Mala agreed, “but that privilege must be earned.”
“What’s transformative mean?” asked Pug.
“Quiet now,” said another drone. “The Great Elders judge us by our actions, not our words.”
“Yes,” said Mala, ducking her head.
“Sorry,” added Pug.
“What time is it?” Ressler asked.
In answer, his accompanying drone jabbed him in the ribs with a taser. Ressler grunted and went down. Keen suppressed an urge to reach down to help him and instead schooled her expression into one of disinterest. The drones pulled the others up short to wait until Ressler recovered enough to drag himself to his feet. He stumbled against a drone for a moment, and the drone had to help him upright.
“What the he—what was that for?” Ressler demanded.
“Rule Number Four,” barked the drone. “There is no time.”
“No time,” John repeated. “That sounds… enlightened.”
Ressler tightened his jaw, but said nothing more. The masked drones led them the rest of the way down the tunnel to a small room that was definitely a work in progress. The walls were rough-hewn stone, the floor was uneven, and only a single bulb on an exposed cord provided light. Pickaxes, hammers, chisels, and other tools littered the ground.
“Put these on,” a drone commanded, handing each of them a goggle-eyed mask. Keen realized it was meant to protect her eyes and lungs from dust. “Start chipping. Enlarge the room.”
Keen picked up a pickaxe and swung it against the wall. The shock clanged through her hands and wrists.
“Not like that!” said the drone. “Together. I’ll make the rhythm. Orderly, now. One, two, three, go!”
The group chipped at the room in unison while the drone chanted and the others stood guard with their tasers.
Keen swung her pickaxe like a good little drone.
Pug beamed. “You got it!”
CHAPTER TEN
Time passed in a fog for Keen. She couldn’t tell how much time, couldn’t even guess at hours or days. She never saw sunlight or a clock, and the Hive interrupted her sleep patterns so badly, she couldn’t keep track of anything through the haze of fatigue. She suspected they weren’t letting her have more than three or four hours of rest at a time. And food was a continual problem. Whatever they gave her, she snatched up and gulped down. The food was high in carbs, and protein was in rare supply, so she was always a little hungry, a little light-headed. The initial rush of sugar always made her feel a little better, even grateful, and she fought against the feeling, recognizing it for the manipulation it was. But it was difficult when she was so damned tired all the time.
The mind-numbing labor forced her to work in unison with Ressler, Stuart, and John, endlessly chipping out the room. It was an eerie sensation, working to the rhythm chanted by the masked drone with Ressler and the others in masks that made them look like goggle-eyed insects.
And every day—if she defined a “day” as the time between sleep cycles—she endured the Circle sessions with the Beekeeper. The litany of “sins” began to sound the same.
“I wanted to talk to my mother.”
“Filth!”
“Last night, I had a dream about sex.”
“Filth!”
“I snarled at one of my fellow drones.”
“Filth!”
“Yay!” said Pug.
During these sessions, Keen always angled to sit near Dr. Griffin so she could get a better idea of the man than she already had, learn to read what was behind his words, but this was proving difficult. The fatigue and hunger were taking their toll, as was the constant fear of punishment. She’d been tased five or six times for sins and mistakes, and the thought of breaking one of the Beekeeper’s rules was already making her flinch—which, she knew, was exactly what he wanted. Often Mrs. Griffin watched the sessions, always wearing the same gray dress, though she never reacted with more than a nod or a tiny smile. The one time Dr. Griffin addressed her directly, she only shook her head and backed away.
Keen did her best to show she was defecting away from Reddington and to the Hive. She answered questions about past sins, even though a number of them were awkward or embarrassing and she saw Ressler flush deeply. She did the nasty chipping work until blisters rose on her hands and her arms were covered with scratches and bruises from flying bits of rock. She pretended to be hesitant, then caved in and said what the Beekeeper wanted to hear. And yet, she sensed he hadn’t quite warmed to her, though neither did he seem to suspect she was anything but another captive drone on the way to full brainwashing.
Mala, however, was another story. More than once, she smiled at Keen while slipping what passed for breakfast through her cage bars. At one point when they were on a break between work and circle time, Keen found herself alone with Mala some distance from the others. She glanced about, then decided to take a chance.
“This place is incredible,” Keen said in a low voice, “and Dr. Griffin is a smart man, don’t you think?”
“Oh, he is.” Mala nodded. “We are the Hive.”
Keen tapped her chest. “We are the Hive. Look, I know it’s kind of frowned on to ask this kind of stuff, but just between us women—do the men here, you know, do stuff to you?”
“You mean like rape?” Mala said, shocked. “Dr. Griffin would never allow that. It’s why he asks all those questions about sex. We have to control our impulses for the good of the group. If we aren’t a good group, they will destroy everything we’ve worked for here.”
“Right, yeah,” Keen said. “That’s a relief. I was really worried, you know?”
Mala touched her shoulder. “You can set that aside.”
“You’re a good friend.” Keen paused. Now that they’d established a sort of intimacy, she could continue. “You mind if I ask how the Bodysnatcher got you here?”
“How?” Mala asked, puzzled.
“Yeah. How he grabbed you up without anyone noticing.”
Mala stared at her in increasing bewilderment. “He didn’t grab me up.”
“He didn’t?” Now it was Keen’s turn to be confused. “Then—”
“I hired him to bring me here.” Mala gave Keen a beatific smile.
“You—” Keen stopped herself, though her mind was whirling. Mala wanted to be here. “Why?”
“Most of us want to be here,” Mala continued. “Only a few are transplants.”
“Transplants?”
“People who are… selected. Pug, for example. He played college football, I think, but the Beekeeper selected him and had the Bodysnatcher bring him in because the Hive needed his strength. It took a lot of work to make him see things the right way, but the Beekeeper is really smart. He’s always working to make the Hive strong.”
Keen’s jaw dropped and goosebumps crawled over her skin in cold prickles.
“Did the Beekeeper make Pug… the way he is?”
“He was majoring in English or social studies or something unimportant, but here, he’s making a real contribution,” Mala said. “I know it’s a little hard for you to understand right now, but Dr. Griffin—the Beekeeper—is a great, great man. You can see his inner light. He protects us from them, the ones who suck away our souls like hornets stealing honey from a hive.”
“Right,” said Keen. “No, I get it. I’m… still learning. I want to learn more.”
Mala took her hands. Keen still wore handcuffs.
“I�
�m glad, Elizabeth. Here there’s no need to worry, no need to think about the outside world. Dr. Griffin protects us all. You’ll be ready to help us in the main chamber and make honey and—”
“I saw the beehives up there.” Keen pointed to the roof. She had learned not to say outside some time ago. “Is that what you mean by making honey?”
“Oh! No, no.” Mala giggled a little. “That’s just Dr. Griffin’s hobby. It’s how he started. Those apiaries—that’s what they’re called—are generations old, and he’s nurtured them for decades. Just like us.”
“And you—we—make honey, too?”
“Well…” Mala glanced around conspiratorially. “I shouldn’t, but… you’re coming along, right? You’re entering the Hive, right?”
“We are the Hive,” Keen said, tapping her chest.
“We are the Hive,” Mala agreed. “The others are busy. Put your mask on and come on.”
Keen obeyed, heart pounding now. Mala led her down other tunnels, and Keen tried to keep track of where she was. The warren was incredibly complex. Some of the caves were obviously natural, others had been dug from the stone—incredible, what slave labor could accomplish—and still others were natural caverns that had been enlarged. They passed a barrack lined with beds and lockers, a huge kitchen, a game room or lounge, and even what looked like a research lab filled with electronic equipment on one side and jugs of chemicals on the other.
A group of drones, unmasked, came toward them down the wide tunnel. Keen’s breath caught in her throat and she tensed, but Mala continued walking, unconcerned. Air rattled in Keen’s stuffy mask, and she pulled her sleeves down farther to hide the handcuffs. They would recognize her. They would drop her to the floor with painful tases, and then Dr. Griffin would punish her. Already her skin prickled with the anticipation of pain. Then Keen’s fingers found the Y shape of the scar. Her heart slowed, and she straightened. Walk with confidence, she told herself. If you look like you have something to hide, they’ll suspect you.
The drones passed by, chattering as they went, without giving Keen or Mala a second glance. When they were a few steps down the hall, Keen let out a long breath into her mask and her knees wobbled a little with relief. They hadn’t recognized her. She—
The Blacklist--The Beekeeper No. 159 Page 10
