Captives (12 page)

“Shay, this is Kendall,” Naomi said, referring to the pregnant girl. “She’s very nice and has been trying to help us understand what goes on in this crazy place.”

“Hi,” Shaylinn said. “You’re so pretty.”

Kendall blushed. “They’ve done a lot of work on me.”

“Really?” Shaylinn couldn’t believe it. “You weren’t so pretty before?”

“Well, I don’t know.” Kendall sat on a chair at the table. “They’re very good at enhancing what you’ve got.”

Mama used to say that. Use what you’ve got. “Where’s Mama?” Shaylinn asked Jemma.

“We figured they’d be in a different suite, but the only other people from Glenrock that are here in the harem are Aunt Mary, Chipeta, Jennifer, and Eliza. They’re in the Fire Opal suite, if you want to go talk to them.”

“What about Penelope and Nell?”

Jemma started to clean Shaylinn’s other hand. “What happened to you, Shay? Where have you been?”

The way her sister changed the subject made Shaylinn wonder what she wasn’t saying. Shaylinn told them about waking in the medical room and how Ciddah said she’d get pregnant. And about running away and getting caught.

“That explains who was number one in their lineup,” Mia said.

Shaylinn held up her hand. “No, I’m number four.”

“Not that number,” Mia said. “The number you are in line to have a baby. Matron told each of us our surrogacy number. Chipeta is six. I’m five. My mom is four. Jemma’s three. Eliza is two.”

“And I’m one,” Shaylinn said. “Of course.”

Jemma clapped her hand over her chest. “They mean to force my baby sister to bear a child? That’s not acceptable. You’re not old enough!”

“When I first heard the word
harem
, I panicked. All I could think of was the harem in the book
Anna and the King of Siam.
You know, Jemma, the one you read to me a few years ago. That’s one reason I ran. But when Matron explained it, it didn’t seem like that at all. I don’t understand.”

“The people in the Safe Lands have trouble conceiving,” Kendall said. “Living in the harem is meant to be an incentive; giving women a posh environment, not to mention fame, so they’ll produce babies for the government. But lately every woman inside the walls has failed to bring an uninfected child to term. Even me.”

“What does that mean—failed?” Shaylinn asked. “Your baby is going to die?”

“No. Just that both my baby and I have the thin plague.”

Shaylinn looked to Jemma, suddenly chilled. “What Papa Eli warned us about.”

“They were hoping that, since I was uninfected, my baby would be healthy too. But the plague infected both of us instead,” Kendall said.

“I will
not
let this happen to you, Shay!” Jemma stood and paced between the couches. “We’ll find a way out before this happens. And of course Levi will come for us.”

“Who’s Levi?” Kendall asked.

“My fiancé.” Jemma fingered a necklace of small pink beads she was wearing around her neck, and her eyes filled with tears. “He’s the Westley to my Princess Buttercup. We’re to be married in two days.” She sniffed and smiled.

“They’re perfect for each other,” Naomi said, grinning.

Mia rolled her eyes.

“Marriage doesn’t exist in the Safe Lands,” Kendall said. “Lifers pair up exclusively, which is sort of the same.” She sighed. “There was a boy back home … Roger had golden hair that always hung down to his nose. I used to imagine we got married and that I kept his hair cut short enough so I could see his eyes.”

“You’re not from the Safe Lands?” Shaylinn asked.

“I’m from Casper,” Kendall said. “That’s in Wyoming.”

“How can anyone live so far from the safe water source?” Naomi asked. “Elder Eli—he was our village leader. He always told us the only safe water was near Mount Crested Butte.”

“There was a water bottling plant in Casper before the Great Pandemic,” Kendall said. “The survivors lived off that for years until they invented a water purifier that filtered the virus.”

Shaylinn hadn’t known that any other settlements existed. How many more might there be across the globe? “But if you can live there, why come to the Safe Lands?”

“My uncle traded me to drug lords, who traded me here.”

“Betrayed by family,” Jemma mumbled. “Just like us and Omar.”

Shaylinn’s heart tightened at the mention of Omar’s name. “What do you mean?”

“Only that Omar is responsible for everything that happened today,” Naomi said.

Shaylinn couldn’t breathe, but managed to ask, “How?”

Jemma shook her head. “I don’t know. But when he and I arrived at the meeting hall, the enforcers knew him. And they gave him some fancy gold paper.”

“A golden ticket,” Kendall said. “That’s what they call a special provision from the task director general himself. Still, I doubt this Omar is wholly responsible. They would have come for you at some point anyway. Most of the people who live inside these walls don’t know how bad off things are. Since the government raises the children elsewhere, people tend to forget the kids even exist.”

Wait. “They raise the children where?” Shaylinn asked.

“There are no families in the Safe Lands,” Kendall said. “Children are raised by those tasked to caregiving. And the older children live in the Safe Lands Boarding School.”

“That’s where they took Glenrock’s children,” Jemma said, meeting Shaylinn’s gaze. “Penelope, Nell, the boys and girls—all of them. Even the babies went to a nursery.”

“We about had a riot when we figured it out,” Naomi said. “And half of us got shot with those electrical guns. We tried to start our own war, clawing and lashing out at the guards with whatever we could get our hands on, but we lost.”

“This battle only,” Jemma said.

“Yeah, Eliza and Chipeta and Jennifer are probably plotting their next attack,” Naomi said. “Mary just cries and cries.”

Shaylinn wished she could cry. It was all too horrible to be real. Children taken from their parents? Forced pregnancies? She prayed for God’s deliverance and protection, that Levi would come, along with her father and brother, and rescue them before she received Ciddah’s summons. And she begged God that Jemma was wrong about Omar, that he’d had nothing to do with any of this.

Y
ou sure he’s awake?” a man’s voice asked. “We’re practically carrying him.”

Mason was cold. He opened his eyes, and a dim hallway came into focus. The walls were gray. Halos of yellow light gleamed from the ceiling. Black doors lined the hallway. Where was he going? He was thirsty. He blinked and fought the nausea in his gut. His feet were moving across the floor as though they were disconnected from his body. He tried to stop his forward momentum, but someone jerked his arm.

“Keep moving, shell.”

He blinked. Two enforcers were pulling him along. “Where are you taking me?” Mason asked, his voice raspy.

The enforcer on his right chuckled. “He speaks!”

“We’re having some trouble with your peer, shell,” the enforcer on his left said, “and we want you to talk to him.”

“My peer?”

The enforcers stopped in front of a black door that had a silver number seven on it.

“We’ve had to stun him. Twice.” The enforcer on Mason’s right was
thick with muscle. His face was thick too, with a wrinkled forehead, thick brows, and curly black hair. The name on his uniform claimed he was named Hale. “The task director general wants you and your peer in there to become nationals. When you agree, we’ll take you to the Registration Department. Until then, welcome home.”

The slender guy on Mason’s left nudged him slightly. “Just calm him down enough that we can explain things.” His name tag read Bentzon. Mason looked at the man’s face and saw he had gray camouflage skin.

He blinked and squinted at the man again. Still camouflage. As his vision cleared further, he also noticed both men had iridescent numbers on their right cheeks. Mason looked down the hall to the right, then left. Both directions looked identical: black doors, halo lights, gray walls.

Where was he? The Safe Lands? Was he actually inside the compound?

“E72 to Highland Gatekeeper, requesting entry to holding cell seven,” Hale said.

“Please verify identification,” a muted woman’s voice replied.

Mason looked both ways again. No woman. Where had the voice come from?

Hale set his fist against a black square on the wall next to the door marked seven. Bentzon lifted the side of Mason’s hand against the square, then dropped it and held up his own.

“Identifications verified,” the woman said. The door clicked and swung inward.

“Here we go,” Hale said.

“Let me out of here, you maggots!” Jordan’s voice called.

What was Jordan doing here? If Jordan was the man they thought would listen to Mason’s words, the guards were in for a surprise.

“We’ll be back in ten, shell.” Bentzon pushed Mason inside. The door clicked shut.

Mason reached for the handle but found none. He stood in a gray icebox with a hard, concrete floor. He blinked again and discovered
he was wearing a thin gray jumpsuit and black canvas slip-on shoes. Who’d dressed him? There were two metal chairs in the room. Jordan was bound to one. Shackles held his wrists to the sides of the chair, and a chain belt encircled his waist.

“Mason! Unhook me, quick!”

Mason stumbled to the chair and studied the shackles. “They’re locked.”

Jordan screamed and pulled against the bindings until his face flushed red and veins popped out on his neck.

Mason noticed a pale number four on Jordan’s right cheek. The milky color seemed to move, as if the number were made of liquid that had been imbedded under transparent skin. “You have a number four on your face. How did that happen?”

Jordan stopped struggling and looked at Mason. “You have a number nine. And you tell me. What’s with these people?” He yanked at his shackles again.

Finally, Mason’s brain began recalling what had happened in the village. Gunfire. His father was dead. Uncle Colton was dead. Shaylinn was hurt. Then Otley had shot a sleeper into Mason’s back.

Mason sat on the other chair. “We’re in the compound?”

“How’d you guess, genius?”

“What happened?”

“I woke up tied to a table in some hospital. I screamed and yelled until the doctor came and untied me. Then I ran. They didn’t like that, though. Some enforcers chased me and shot me with some kind of electrifying gun. They brought me here, told me I was being given the great honor of becoming a national, and that my cooperation would save their pitiful world. And when I tried to get away, they shot me again and hooked me to this chair. End of story. Why’s it so cold?”

Mason looked up at the ceiling and located a vent. “Must be air-conditioning. Papa Eli told me about it once. It used to be everywhere before the Pandemic.” He also noticed a bright yellow camera looking down from the corner of the ceiling. “I wonder if they implanted these numbers while we were in the hospital.”

“Pull me to the door,” Jordan said.

“What?”

“Come on! Get me close.”

Mason got up and dragged Jordan’s chair over to face the door, cringing as the metal legs scraped over the floor. When Mason got him close enough, Jordan lifted his leg and kicked the door.

“Jordan.”

Jordan kicked the door again. “Open this door, you bowels of a dead skunk!”

“Jordan, stop,” Mason said.

But Jordan kicked again, growling this time.

Mason sat back down and watched Jordan kick the door a few more times. Even though Jordan was nineteen years old, he had a tendency to act like he was five. “The enforcers are well aware of your displeasure.”

“Good.” Jordan lifted his feet and kicked the door so hard that his chair tipped back. It paused on two legs for one second before gravity won out. Mason winced as the chair slammed against the floor. Jordan kept his chin against his chest and managed to keep his head from hitting anything.

“Feel better?” Mason asked.

Jordan eased down his head. “No.” He slammed his feet against the door, one at a time, like he was running.

What was he trying to accomplish? “You do realize the door swings inward?”

“Shut up, dog face.”

So Mason did. He could think of nothing helpful to say anyhow. His pulse was still throbbing in his ears; it had been since the first gun had fired. Shock, no doubt. His body trying to compensate for the horror of seeing so many killed. He thought over the stages of grief that he’d read about in his psychology book. How could shock not be one of them? And when would he start denying that any of this had taken place? “Why are we alive? Why kill some of us, but not all? I don’t understand.”

Jordan let his legs fall limp and turned his head, craning his neck and rolling his eyes up so he could see Mason. “Think she’s okay?” he asked, his voice a low croak.

Mason didn’t know if Jordan meant one of his sisters, his mother, or his wife.

“I mean, she’s already pregnant. So they wouldn’t hurt her, right?”

Ah, Naomi, his wife. “You saw them take the women?” Mason asked.

“The enforcer said the women were going to bear children for the Safe Lands. Do you think
all
of the women? And
whose
children, huh, Mason?”

Mason cringed. Surely, they didn’t intend to force the women … Only monsters would do such a thing. Almost as unsettling: the Safe Lands enforcers, though violent with their gunfire today, hadn’t bothered Glenrock in seventy years. Why now? And why were he and Jordan so important?

Mason thought through what had happened. “The last thing I remember … Papa Eli!”
Please, Lord, let someone have helped him.
Mason looked at his hands. They were clean. No blood. “Someone washed my hands.” He held one out to Jordan. “I was trying to stop Papa Eli’s bleeding when I got shot.” His eyes stung, his vision clouded. He coughed and sucked in a breath.

“Hey!” Jordan said. “None of that. We have to keep it together. My dad’s dead too, but do you see me crying? Huh? We’ve got to get out of this place, find the others. As hard as it is … buck up.”

Jordan’s dad? Elder Harvey dead too? “What if there are no others? And why didn’t they kill us?”