by H. J. Lawson
I turn to face the person holding me. It’s Abaven. “Oh, you made it,” I say, flinging my arms around him.
“I see you like the local brew?” Abaven says with a smile.
“Very much,” I reply with a grin. My throat is dry like the wasteland, and my mug is empty. I need a refill. “Do you like my hair?” I ask.
“I liked it natural,” he says flatly, stabbing me in the heart.
“You don’t like it?” I don’t know why I care what Abaven thinks.
“It looks lovely, Skylier, but I think you’ve had enough brew for tonight,” Abaven says, taking my empty mug from me.
I don’t want to release it; my body is craving more of the brew.
I will steal Rian’s. My mind drifts as I release the mug.
“No you wont,” Rian replies, gulping the remainder of the contents in his mug.
“Come, I will show you to your quarters,” Abaven says.
“But Abaven…” Enoch starts, then stops when Abaven shoots him a look of disgust.
“Oh, you’re in trouble,” Rian mocks, resulting in laughter from us.
“Enoch, you were meant to be with Gerel tonight. You can take the morning shift. Go to your quarters,” Abaven replies firmly.
Enoch’s face loses the joy and laughter that we have shared all evening, forcing me into sobriety
“What’s happening tonight?” I ask.
“Skylier, tomorrow, not now,” Abaven says, frowning.
As if the brew has drained from me in cold sweats, making me see clearly, I focus on my words, trying not to slur them. “Abaven, tell me what is happening tonight,” I say firmly.
“Those who weren’t Selected in the viewing room are thrown out to the wasteland, and left…” Abaven pauses. “The Chancellor and Xander place wagers on those that will die the quickest,” Abaven finishes.
My heart stops. “Is Madison one of them?”
“Yes.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Trinity
The warm, golden glow of sunshine flowing through my veins has been replaced with claws ripping through my body from the inside out.
I would rather die than spend another second craving the drugs the Chancellor got me hooked on.
I fling my legs out in front of me, and my muscles twitch uncontrollably as they start to cramp up.
“Trinity … Trinity,” I hear a low, gravelly voice call.
Turning toward the sound, my head falls sideways as everything around me begins to dance.
“Ha ha,” I laugh, as my head sways.
“Trinity—” The voice is getting louder. I have no control over my head … did I get more drugs, or is my mind going crazy? Or is it both?
“Trinity … it's Dax. Can you hear me?”
Dax? Oh, Dax … my rapist's son.
I can feel his cold hand under my chin as he tilts my head up toward him. I struggle to focus. “Trinity, I’ve got to find them … they have been gone too long,” he says, as he moves his hand. My head drops back down, unable to support itself.
I hear a scuffling sound as he moves toward a dark doorway.
Good bye, Dax.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dax
Trinity isn’t going to last much longer. She looks like her need for drugs is fighting against her body. Why are the guys taking so long? I glance over my shoulder as she shakes in the corner. I hate to leave her, but I know I have no choice.
I pull on the cold metal door handle, and the door creaks out angrily as if sending a warning that I’m coming. When I reach the first step, the door closes behind me, taking the light with it.
It is pitch black. All I can hear is my own breath, and a musty stench drifts up my nose. I wish Lowell had the same mind-reading powers as Skylier and me. Then I wouldn’t have to come down here. Where are you guys? A cold shiver crosses my body. Is this the Death that Trinity can feel?
The steps groan each time I place my boot on them, as if they are in pain. I hold onto the wall, using it as a guide. The stairs take a turn, and finally I make it to the bottom. There is a glimmer of light coming from beneath a door.
With my gun in one hand, I reach out with the other in front of me and push the door open. Peering through the gap, I see the room is empty. I step in and quickly glance around … how did they leave? There’s no other exit. The room is more like a closet where you would store clothes, but it has several shelves with jars on them.
I lean forward to take a better look at what is in the jars, and I jump back. Oh, I’m going to puke! It's filled with eyeballs bobbing around in brown water.
A shudder crosses my body … what have we walked into? Really! We’ve walked into a Caribe’s home. They hunt down people down and eat them.
I cannot help but inspect the jars closer—there are hundreds of them, as if this tribe has been collecting them for decades. All with different body parts: ears, fingers, toes … there is everything down here.
On one of the shelves is a pile of white Purenet bracelets. I wonder if these are Purenet soldiers in the jars?
I reach out and take the bracelets … it looks like the former owners won’t need them anymore. I shove them into my pocket, along with some tools.
There must be a way to get out of here, because they didn’t go back up the stairs.
I look around once again to see if I missed something … but there is nothing.
Damn … I drop one of the tools on the ground, and as I sweep it up something catches my eye.
There is a dent, like a track for a door—but there is no door. Tracing my fingers along the line, I start following the track—it leads toward a cupboard. This has to move.
Placing my gun on the side, I pull at the cupboard. It doesn’t take much effort, and it moves straight away. Luckily it doesn’t creak like everything else down here.
Grabbing my gun, I silently squeeze through the gap I just created in the wall. I don’t want to end up in one of the jars. The light shines into a small tunnel—I lower my head down and unwillingly walk away from the creepy room and into the unknown darkness.
Mumbled sounds echo off the tunnel walls, and I have no choice but to head in that direction, even though every part of my body wants to head back.
The tunnel begins to glow orange, with shadows bouncing off the walls. Looks like I’ve arrived. The mumbling sound transforms into cheers of excitement … how many people are down here?
I take a deep breath in preparation for what’s going to happen next … the smell of fire drifts up my nose as I peer around the corner of the rock tunnel.
“Brothers and sisters, today the Lord has brought us a gift,” an older, bald man announces to the people in the room. He is standing behind a wooden stand, and the underground cavern is filled with metal barrels of fire.
“Bring them out,” he orders.
From the darkness, Hayden, Lowell, and Reznor appear. Their hands are behind their backs. They must be tied up.
A group of men with overgrown hair and dirty faces shove my friends from behind … pushing them toward the older man. He must be the leader of the crazy people down here.
Cheers erupt around the underground room, just like in the stadium back at Purenet … they are cheering for blood for fun. But they look different; these people look hungry ... starving, in fact. They’re going to eat my friends. Their mouths are gaping open, revealing chiseled teeth—I guess to make it easier to eat the flesh off the bones.
“Quiet!” the Caribe’s leader yells out. Everyone instantly falls silent. He holds a silver cross into the air.
“Good people ... I told you if you prayed, your prayers would be answered. He brought them here for us … to His house … the house of God.” He leans over the stand and then flips open a large book and scrolls through the pages. Everyone stares at him, eager to hear what he will say next.
Then he begins to read a passage from the large book. “Jeremiah 19:9—I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and
they will eat one another's flesh during the stress of the siege imposed on them by the enemies who seek their lives.”
“Yes!” the people all chant.
The Caribe’s leader nods his head and continues. “These men came here with their modern weapons, just as the others, to capture and kill us. They are our enemies. As the bible says, we will eat their flesh.” How does he have a bible? All of them were burned by the founding fathers. No organized religion is allowed.
The crowd of crazy Caribes cheers with him. I guess no one told them that.
“Lord, we will send these bodies to hell—where they belong! Rid them from our planet.” He looks toward my friends … his prisoners. “May Satan himself welcome you at his fiery gates.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Skylier
Everything around me falls silent, and all I can hear are the words Abaven says next: “Madison is out on the wasteland.”
“We have to rescue her. What are we doing standing around here?” I say, leaving the cave, not waiting for anyone, then pause. “How do I get out of here?” I ask quickly.
“Skylier, we can’t do anything now. Come with me. Rian, you as well. Enoch, sober up, get some rest, and meet with Gerel,” Abaven orders. Enoch nods and wearily leaves the cave.
“Why can’t we do anything now?” I ask as Abaven swiftly glides down the cave path.
“Because they are still being watched,” he says.
“But the Chancellor and Xander are still dying, aren’t they? Who’s watching them? I thought this was their game?” Questions keep pouring from my mouth, craving an answer that will soften the thought of Madison out there alone.
“Xander has left the Sanction to find Dax.”
Frigging hell, he’s still alive! Dax, if you can hear me, Xander is coming, my mind screams out even though I know he’s too far away to hear me.
“And the Chancellor is in his private labs. Unfortunately, both shall live. Xander demanded that the unselected were exiled from the capital, stating that toxic people will no longer be allowed to survive,” Abaven says. “Look, I will show you.”
Abaven taps his fingers on a wall panel, so fast that I can’t make out the pattern. A white door clicks as it opens, revealing a small hallway, then another door, like the store back in the capital.
Abaven checks that we are both inside the hallway, then presses the wall on the hallway and the first door closes and a second one opens, revealing the hidden contents behind the two doors. The room is filled from floor to ceiling with monitors, each displaying different images of the Sanction. There are even images of the party happening down the path from us.
“Make it bigger,” I say, pointing to the screen that shows a group of girls huddled together against the Sanction’s wall.
Abaven points at the screen then swipes his thumb and forefinger apart. As he does that, the screen expands, projecting the image into all the screens in the room, making me feel as if the girls are in the room with me.
Abaven gracefully pivots his hand, and the view of the girls changes. I can make out Madison’s face from the lights on the Sanction’s wall.
Her eyes are scrunched shut. Tears fall from them and wash away the white makeup, revealing the warm brown skin underneath.
I place my hand on the screen. It’s warm like Madison’s skin. Her eyes flutter and open, revealing her brown eyes. She stares directly at me, as if she can see me. Warm tears pour down my face, and Madison’s image becomes a blur. Rian places his arm around me. “We have to help her,” I sniffle.
“Skylier’s right, we can’t leave them out there to die,” Rian says.
“Trust me, I wish we could rescue them right now, but we can’t. It would be a suicide mission because the guards are watching them,” Abaven says.
He pushes his fingers together and the image of Madison shrinks, and all the other images return. Abaven points to different screens and they all come together on the central wall. “These are the screens from which the Purenet guards are watching. Xander also gets these images screened to his ship,” Abaven informs us.
There are images of the girls against the wall and of dark shadows moving across the wasteland. “People are trying to cross the wasteland at night. This is normally what the Bazis do, and the Hosts stay close to the wall until first light. The Bazis argued with the Hosts, telling them to walk as a group through the night because their Cueva night vision will help them. But they are helpless across the wastelands without a weapon. The Hosts are wise to stay by the wall, since the night predators normally stays away from there unless they smell a reason to go there,” Abaven explains.
“But if they stay there they have no chance of making it to the Grounders’ community,” I say.
“Skylier, none of them have a chance of surviving the wasteland and making it to the Grounders’ community. It’s impossible on foot,” Abaven says.
“It’s not impossible. Others have made it across,” I tell them, thinking of my mother and then Dax, who were able to make it across the wasteland on foot.
“I stand corrected. A few do, but many die trying,” Abaven adds.
“How are we going to rescue them?” I ask.
“We have to wait until they enter the wasteland, and then in the night we can try to rescue them,” Abaven says.
“But half of the group is already in the wasteland, so why can’t you rescue them?” Please let him say we can, and then I can find a way to get Madison.
“We are only able to rescue one group, and I choose the Hosts,” he says.
I look at the monitor displaying the dark shadows. Death is walking among the Bazis as they disappear into the wasteland.
“Why only one group?” I ask.
“Because the Chancellor and Xander will demand to see images of the bodies of those that didn’t survive, so they can see who won. We are able to control the screens just long enough for one rescue, and show them what they want to see, that everyone is dead.”
“You’re leaving the others to die?”
“I’m choosing to keep some alive. I can never allow another Host to walk alone on the wasteland, not after you and your mother,” he says softly.
“The people of Purenet aren’t repopulating. Those that want to can’t, and the others don’t care, opting to stay young forever instead of passing their genes on to the children. They are too vain to see the problem that stares back at their wrinkle-free face each morning: Their kind is dying off because of their self-absorbed nature. They have been this way for too many years to reverse the effect of the chemicals their bodies absorbed,” Abaven explains.
“Where is Gerel?” I ask.
“She’s getting everything prepared for tomorrow night,” Abaven tells us.
“I’m going with her tomorrow.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Trinity
My mind blocks everything out as I bite down on the skin on my fingertips. The scratching pain feels like rats are chewing on each muscle in my body. Dax, you should never have gone.
I freeze, with my fingers still in my mouth. Something is moving in the darkness. Bright white dots are moving toward me—what are they?
My eyes twitch as I try to focus, but it doesn’t help. The dots just dance about, like the wild animals that roamed around our tribe’s boarders.
“Shoo…” I mumble. They continue approaching, just as they would back home.
I pick up an old cobweb-covered shoe from the ground, and throw it toward the shadows.
The sound of laughter comes from the dark … these are not animals, they are men. They are coming for me. I’m not going back….
Springing to my feet before they can react, I dive toward the laughter and the whiteness of a pair of eyes. I plunge my dagger into a man’s neck and swiftly pull it out. Then I dive into the darkness again.
My only friend, Death, is with me … His intensity makes it hard to breathe. It’s as though he’s crushing my lungs.
He is helping me—d
on’t breathe, I tell myself.
“Arh!” the man screams out as he runs around the room.
“Get her,” a deep, gravelly voice says from the darkness. I can hear them moving, and their shadows betray them.
Silently I jump up again and stab … then hide into the darkness.
“Arh!” the man yells out. There is one left.
The last one stays silent … he’s not as dumb as the others. I can feel their wet blood dripping down my hand. My mouth is painfully dry, and I have the urge to lick my hand to relieve at least one pain in my body.
Taste it….
I shake my head.
Death, I will not let you take me.
He will expect me to go for his neck. I run toward him and drag the dagger across the back of his ankles. Blood instantly squirts into my face, and his body crashes to the ground with a thud.
“You little bitch!” the man yells.
Within a split second I jump on him and punch the dagger into his chest with all my force.
He grips hold of my arms, and his nails rip into my flesh. He slams my body down, and my head rings out in pain as it crashes to the ground. But I know it's nothing compared to the pain I will feel if he gets hold of me.
That fear takes over me, and I dive at him once again, plunging the knife into his eyeball.
“Arh!!” He thrashes his body as he tries to throw me off again. I squeeze my legs around him, and I pull the knife out, bringing his eyeball with it.
With my free hand I swiftly slide the eyeball off my blade, and plunge the knife into his neck. He tries to push me off him, but he is too weak and I don’t stop.
His body stops moving, except for the blood squirting from his dead veins. A drop lands on my lip … my tongue dances over the top of it, playing with the idea of tasting it. Just one drop to coat the dryness of my throat … I dip my tongue to taste the bitter stickiness.
