by Snow, Sheena
She looked like she might have been beautiful, once. Her long, black, clotted hair looked like it used to be shiny and flowy, silky even. I stared down at my arm, now in her hand. The purple bruised circle of skin brought everything back—the needle, Alec, the gun.
I moaned and tried to get up. My body creaked and ached and cracked all over, making me feel like I had just been spun around in a tornado for two days. I collapsed back onto the bed, unable to move and practically unable to think.
My head drummed.
Pound-pound-pound. Pound-pound-pound.
“It could always be worse,” she said.
I didn’t even want to attempt a groan of response.
Pound-pound-pound. Pound-pound-pound.
I swallowed, and the dryness felt as if cotton had been stuffed down my throat.
The ceiling light flickered and cast a shadow over the man still huddled in the corner. The woman met my eyes and shook her head.
“I’m Paula.” She fidgeted. “And . . .” She looked over her shoulder, at the small, huddled man with empty gold-brown eyes. “That’s Dean.”
Pound-pound-pound.
“V-V-Vienna,” I rasped, and it felt like it took everything in me just to get that word out. I exhaled and sank into the lumpy mattress.
Thump-pound. Thump-pound. Thump-pound.
I closed my eyes.
“It’s the after-effects of the tranquilizer,” she said. “It takes about a day to get out of your system. So you’ll be safe”—I heard her walk over to Dean—“until then.” She settled next to Dean, murmuring soft words in his ear.
Thump-pound. Thump-pound. Thump-pound.
I pressed my lips together and wondered if she could actually see my head physically separating in half and if it looked as nasty as it felt.
“It’ll get better,” she said.
I wasn’t sure if her words were for me or him, for Dean.
The tinkling sound against the cement started again.
“Drop. Drop. Drip-Drop. Drop. Drop.” Dean repeated as if he memorized the exact cycle in which the droplets landed.
Thump-pound. Thump-pound. Thump-pound.
“There, there,” she soothed. “I’m with you. You’re safe now.”
“Safe,” he repeated, and I heard his slow rocking.
But he continued to repeat the melody of the droplets combating with the thrumming in my head.
“Safe,” she confirmed and it seemed like she rested his head on her shoulder.
Thump-pound. Thump-pound. Thump-pound.
The pattern of drip drops, the pounding in my head, and the rocking of the bed, all seemed to be beating the same sounds: In-time. You-will. Die-die. Will. Die.
Chapter 29
I woke to cement walls. Again. My head was calm with only a slight ache, for the most part.
“I told you,” Paula said. “It’s better, right?”
I listened and my head was silent. Empty. No pounding. No thumping. I relaxed, easing back into the sheets.
“But they’ll make you wish for it back,” she said.
I turned and glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. Her clotted black hair fell down to her waist. She sat on her bed against the gray cement brick wall.
Dean reclined above her, on his bunk.
I rubbed my head and enjoyed the relief. “Why are you h-here?” My voice was parched and cracked on the last word.
“For the same reason you are.” She shook her head. “Why would you think you’re here for anything different?”
She had bags under her eyes and what looked like dried blood trying to peak out from the cracks in her lips. When she narrowed her eyes at me, I switched to eyeing the flickering ceiling light that casted ugly dark shadows over all of us.
“I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what I’ve done,” I whispered.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “Now, you’re here. And that’s all that matters.” She dropped her head onto her knees.
I heard what she didn’t say all the same: And there’s no getting out.
“But it doesn’t make sense. They went through so much trouble to get me. It must matter.”
She shrugged. “I don’t think like them.”
“Why don’t they just kill us then?” I asked.
This time, Dean answered, “They are.” His words were so soft, I could almost have missed them, could almost have mistaken them for a whimper coming from the cell next to us.
“What?” I twisted on my bed.
The mattress was lumpy and the sheets were coarse between my fingertips . . . but they could have just left us on the bare floor. Why bother with the expense? “But why waste resources on us, if they just want us dead?”
Paula snorted. “They’re not wasting much.”
“To make us last longer. To give us little pieces of home,” Dean said.
I chewed the inside of my lip and dropped back onto the bed.
Last longer? For what?
But before I could ask, boots rebounded off the stone hallway outside of our cell. Dean’s hazy gold-brown eyes widened, and Paula’s almond-brown eyes squinted. They both stiffened, trying unsuccessfully to blend into the wall.
“Well, look who’s awake?” a dark voice said between the bars.
The door unlocked and in walked a man with a pale face in a dark-blue uniform with two metal pins decorating his chest.
“I heard you had them going in circles trying to catch you but . . .” He walked closer to me, his boots thumping on the concrete floor. My toes curled. “We always catch ’em. They can never escape us.” His breath wafted my way, and I stifled the cough forming in my throat from his after smoke. “For too long. Too bad today’s not your lucky day.”
He tapped Dean on the shoulder. No words, no commands were needed. Dean automatically stood up and exited the door with the guard, no protesting, no whimpering. In fact, he displayed none of the characteristics of the Dean who had previously occupied my cell.
I waited until the echoes of the boots and Dean’s footsteps faded. “Where are they taking him?” I whispered.
“We don’t talk about it. This is our safe place.” She turned away from me. “It has to be.”
Oh. My. God.
I was going to die here. I really was.
“Why does he just go?” I tapped my fingers against my lips.
“It’s better that way,” she said, curling into the bed.
“When does Dean come back?”
“I don’t know.”
My heart started beating faster in my chest, rising with every question I asked and with every answer she gave. “Will he? Come back?”
“He has so far.”
“Why?” I whispered and laid my fingers on top of my heart, trying to calm the frantic beating. “They don’t always?”
“To them, Vienna, we’re worse than nothing.”
But we can’t be.
“I don’t understand.” I rubbed my fingers over my heart, trying to soothe it. “Why does he so willingly comply?”
“What good does fighting do? It’s the same result. Every time.”
They take you no matter what.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
It’s like I’m already theirs. Water trickled down some wall, somewhere—slipping and sliding.
“Dean might not come back this time.”
“Why? Why this time?” I asked.
“He used to tell me”—I heard the rustle of sheets—“that sometimes they don’t come back. Sometimes, they never come back. They were already gone, he said.”
“Is Dean almost . . .” The words stilled in my mouth.
Gone?
�
�He used say it was like they died inside. Like their spark, it was gone.”
“What do you mean? Like their personality disappeared?”
“More than that,” she said. “It’s like his presence was disappearing.”
I swallowed. “That’s not going to happen to us. We won’t let it.”
“That’s what I said to Dean.”
I pressed my lips together. Of course that’s what she would have said to Dean.
“And what’s worse,” she said, her voice louder and clearer than before, “is that now you’re here.”
I tilted my head, inch by inch, until I could see Paula. Her almond eyes became laser beams, focused directly on me.
“What do mean?” I whispered. But I already knew. As I said the words, the pieces clicked into place.
I was replacing Dean.
“How-did–they-get-you?” I asked instead, the words rambling out of my mouth.
I’m replacing Dean?
But there are three beds in here. For three people. I’m not replacing Dean. I’m not. Why would there be three beds then?
I closed my eyes and slid my hands down to my sides. My fingers brushed against something soft and crunchy in my pocket.
My breath caught. And my heart finally sped up for a good reason.
“They caught me too easily,” she whispered. “I had no idea. I wish I could have kept them running in circles, like you did.”
My fingers caressed the half dead ridges, the holes, and the long thin stem.
My leaf.
Alec. Spinning. Spinning. Spinning. Sunlight. His smile.
His roar.
My name raging off of his lips.
The robots jumping on him.
His voice diminished in my head and I felt water fill under my closed eyelids.
It’s amazing how one day can bring you such happiness and then the next, such pain—such an overwhelming sense of joy and completion and then such an overwhelming sense of loss and hopelessness.
All in one day.
I turned my head away from Paula and let the hot tears fall down my face.
“I was walking to my car after work.” Paula continued. “A van pulled up, grabbed me, and threw me inside. No one the wiser. And the next thing I remember is waking up here, in this same exact cell. Thirteen months of staring at these walls. I know every stupid little nook, niche, cranny, and scrape.”
Thirteen months? I swallowed, trying to shove the growing sense of hopelessness back down. My fingers brushed across the tips of the leaf and I breathed in and out, in and out.
“How’d they catch you?” she asked.
Catch me?
My heart pounded. “It’s, umm . . .” I coughed and tried to clear my throat. “It’s a long story.” I used the moment to rub my face and smear away the trail of hot water the tears left behind.
“In case you haven’t noticed, all we have here, is time.”
My muscles tightened. Odd how it was the opposite of what the robot in New York had said.
“It was more like I was lucky,” I said, and I told her about my room and being on the run, by myself, and how they eventually caught me and I landed here.
“They flew through your bedroom window?” Her mouth dropped open and she became alive, her almond eyes twinkling as she popped off the bed.
“Umm . . . no. Not really. I think it was more like jumping through my window.” They can’t fly, can they? My breath hitched. What if they did?
“No wonder you’re like some prize for them to show off now.”
I winced.
She leaned in close. “They call you The-Girl-Who-Didn’t-Get-Away.”
Oh. Crap.
“The-The w-what?” I stuttered.
“I can’t believe you managed that. You’re like my . . . my hero now.” She hunched over me, her face in front of mine. “How’d you do it?”
“The girl who didn’t get away?” I couldn’t stop it. The hopelessness burst through my body in full force, sucking out energy from every single bone in my body.
She snapped her fingers in my face and I jerked.
“Did you have help? Who helped you along the way?”
I shook my head. “I-It was more luck and a little bit of help.” I was so screwed. Completely screwed.
“So someone helped you?” Her brown eyes went wide and we were almost nose to nose.
“No one. No one helped me.” I shifted out from underneath her and crawled to the back of the bed. I was never going to get out. Never. They would make sure.
“That’s not what you just said.”
“Just”—I shook my head—“no one. A bunch of random people.” I rubbed my face. “That’s what I meant.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?” She sat up, studying me.
Umm . . . I looked around, hoping to see the guards pop out at any moment.
“Because”—I kicked the covers between us—“I’ve never seen you this interested in anything before?”
Her head cocked to the side, as if she were thinking, calculating, and connecting different parts of my story.
“You had a robot helping you. Didn’t you?”
How could she have come to that conclusion? Of all conclusions?
“What? No.” I shook my head. “Of course not.”
“You’re lying,” she whispered. “And why would you lie unless you’re protecting one. And why would you protect one unless . . . you feel for him?”
Oh. My. God.
“What are you talking about? There is no robot,” I said. “And how do you just make these jumps in conversation from one idea to the next?”
“You did.” She leaned back. “I’m right. He helped you?”
How in the world did she piece that together?
“Paula, it isn’t—”
She recoiled. “How-How could you ever feel for one of them? They’re dead. They’re useless machines. Useless machines made to take over our race.”
“It’s not all like that.”
“What’s not?” she whispered. Her eyes widened, turning into full brown circles.
Oh, mother.
“Paula, that’s not what I meant. They are different than what we expected. They are more like us than—”
“No!” she screamed, her voice piercing my ears like a gong chiming off in the tiny cell. “It can’t, it can’t be. It can never be like that.” She scrambled to the other side of the cell. “What do you mean? Human?” Her brown eyes became the only thing visible on her face. “And how could you have feelings for one unless he . . . No.” She wailed again and again, holding her head.
My ears rang with her shrieks.
“Paula. Calm down.” I slid toward her, holding my hands up. “Relax. It’s not what you think.”
“Not what I think! You just told me that in addition to there being regular robots all over the world, that now there are human-like robots as well! Or”—she rose on her bunk—“Are. They. All. Human-like. Robots?” Her voice rose with each word, her pitch so high on the word robots, the light flickered, almost shattering.
“Paula, please,” I begged, my hands outstretched. “That’s not what I said. That’s not what I meant.”
“And now you want me to be quiet,” she said, standing on her bed, rising over me. “After you just drop this bomb on me?”
“Paula, please. Calm down.” I glanced at the door. “Don’t do this. It’s going to be—”
“Nothing’s going to be fine,” she screeched. My hands flew to my head. “Paula, they’ll hear you. Paula—”
“The human race is coming to an end and now you are just one of them, one of their supporters. They’re going to replace us.” She paced back and fo
rth on the bed. “They are going to take over. And you don’t even care.” Her face stopped moving, becoming level with me. “You’re just like all the rest of them,” she whispered. “You don’t even care that we’ll crumble away.”
“Paula”—I lowered my hands—“we won’t crumble away. We can fix this. Together. We can—”
“How could you? How? Could? You?” She spat, her hot saliva landed on my cheek. I stumbled backward, wiping it off with my jacket.
Boots echoed off the walls. The footsteps coming closer and closer.
“Paula, please.” I pointed at the door, where the drumming footsteps were moments away. “This isn’t what you want. This isn’t what I want.”
“Don’t you ever—”
The guard burst through the door, causing it to bang into the concrete wall and Paula all but threw herself at him.
“Paula . . .” I reached for her. “Don’t do this. Don’t let them take you. You didn’t even let me tell you the truth.”
“Enough!” The guard with the brown mustache looked between us and then hauled, or more like escorted, Paula out of the cell.
“Paula?” I pleaded.
She never took her cold, angry, brown eyes from mine.
Traitor, they screamed, imprinting on my memory.
Traitor.
The door locked, clicking shut behind them and I wilted to the floor. Her eyes burned through the metal door.
Traitor, they bubbled, wielding through the steel.
Traitor.
Chapter 30
My body buzzed, almost shaking. And my mind couldn’t stop reliving Paula’s screams, reliving her words, reliving the accusation in her eyes.
Traitor.
