Firstlife (6 page)

Ten tears fall, and I call...nine hundred trees, but only one is for me
.
Eight times eight times eight they fly, whatever you do, don't stay dry.

“—don't like that you're still alive, Vanniekins.” Sloan runs a fingertip down each cheek, mimicking tears. “Let me remedy the problem?”

An-n-nd as usual, he moves on without chastising her.

Seven ladies dancing, ignore their sweet romancing. Six—

“—spiders in my room,” a girl bursts out, as if she can't hold in the words a second longer. She shudders with revulsion.

Dr. Vans makes a notation.

Oh, honey. You have no idea what you've done.
Next time she's due for punishment, she'll find
thousands
of hologram spiders in her room. Her mind will think they're real, and she'll willingly peel the skin from her body to remove the critters.

“You have to send someone to remove them,” she adds. “I can't go another night—”

“Shut up,” I snap. Cruel to be kind. “Pretending to be afraid of spiders is—”

“I'm not pretending.”

Fool!
She doesn't get it.

Sooner rather than later, she will. She'll remember this moment and cry.

Dr. Vans focuses on me, his dark eyes narrowing. “Miss Lockwood, you seem eager to speak. Do you have any complaints about your treatment?”

I pretend my middle finger is a tube of lipstick and apply a first and second coat. I'll never willingly offer ammunition to be used against me. He knows this.

Still he says, “I'll give you five seconds to voice your biggest complaint. Continue to remain silent, and I'll be forced to penalize you.”

Finally. The sword I feel poised at my neck every second of every day will slash, and I'll experience the next round of torture.

I become the sole focus of every person in the room, but I keep my eyes on Vans.

“One,” he says.

“I think I'm going to barf every time I look at your face.”
How's that?

“Only a
legitimate
complaint will be heeded, Miss Lockwood.”

“Excellent. I was completely serious.”

“Two. Three.”

“She would like the guards to keep their hands to themselves,” Killian says. To pull attention from me? “I know I would. I'm more than a piece of meat.”

I kind of admire his balls. Figuratively! Only figuratively!

“Miss Lockwood?” Vans prompts.

I raise my chin in a mimic of Sloan. Denying him is one of my favorite indulgences. My hope is that, at the end of his life, when he's lying in his sickbed, choking on his own vomit—a girl can dream—he'll look back and bemoan the fact that I'm his biggest failure.

“Four, five,” I say with a smirk.

Sloan shakes her head at me, all
bless your stupid heart.
Maybe I should've played along. All I had to do was complain about something I hate, or lie about something I hate, but the truth is too important to me. I hate lies almost as much as I hate Vans. The worst of the worst lie. I won't emulate them, even to save myself from a boatload of grief.

A few inmates snicker. This enrages Vans, who leaps to his feet. He motions to Ben Dover and Colonel Anus with a tilt of his chin. “Take her.”

Killian jumps up and steps in front of me, shocking me. He frowns at me over his shoulder, as if he's in shock, too, then he scowls at the guards. “She stays. I'm not done talking with her.”

He, a stranger, is...guarding me? And he's doing it even after I refused to guard Bow. Way to rock my world.

I stand and give him a nudge into his chair. “Don't worry about me,” I whisper. I don't want him hurt on my behalf. “Worry about yourself.”

He glares but remains silent as Colonel Anus takes my left arm and Ben Dover takes my right. I'm hauled to my room. Bow is there already and she's still in a drugged sleep, but now she's on her bed, her wrists and ankles shackled to the posts with cuffs that glow more brightly than a lamp. Aka fetters.

Vans enters the room behind me. My stomach churns, as if it's trying to make butter from bile, but I swallow back pleas for mercy. This man has none.

I'm held immobile as he paces in front of me. “Ten, Ten, Ten,” he says and sighs heavily. “Ever the troublesome child. Why do you force me to hurt you?”

“Your choice. Your actions. Don't try casting blame on me.”

“This isn't the way I like to treat my patients, but I'm willing to do whatever proves necessary to save you from the Realm of Many Ends...or an eternity as a Troikan slave.”

“
You
are Unsigned.” He must be. “I've heard you tell other kids you'll do anything to save them from eternity as a Myriad drone, one of countless souls overpopulating a dying realm.”

He shrugs. “What's right for one isn't right for another.”

No. No! He has an answer for everything and though this one sounds good, I cringe as if he scraped his fingernails over a chalkboard. There has to be absolute right or there isn't absolute wrong.

This place is wrong.

This
man
is wrong. He misleads and misdirects without regret, caring more about a monetary payoff than the long-term health of the kids under his “care.”

Troika would tell me to forgive him.

Myriad would probably tell me to attack without mercy.

That. I like that. Strike before he can strike at me.

With a roar, I lunge at him. The guards hold me in place, squeezing my shoulders so roughly the joints nearly pop out of place. Pain lances through me, and for a moment, I see stars. I don't care. I struggle with all my might, desperate to reach my target.

“Did you get your degree at Discount Psychology?” I throw at him. “You only make half a difference and even then it's a bad one.”

Direct hit! A muscle flexes in his jaw.

Two other guards enter the room. D-bag and Titball. How sad. No Comrade Douche today.

“Perfect timing,” Vans says, gloating now.

Both males carry a bucket of water and a rag. They stop in front of my blood-covered wall and dip the rags in the water—

Understanding dawns, and I gasp with horror.
Not my calendar. Anything but my calendar
. Those numbers have been the only constant in my life. My only friend. I can't lose another friend.

“Apologize for insulting me. On your knees,” Vans says. “I'll
think
about forgetting your behavior today.”

I actually consider it. My numbers...they aren't just my friends but my only diversion from the horrors of the asylum. My only real hope. Through them, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. My next birthday...and my ultimate escape.

But. There's always a
but
with me, isn't there? I won't be able to live with myself if I give this man—this travesty of a human being—what he wants. Because, if I do, the light at the end of the tunnel will no longer be so bright.

I lock my knees, remaining on my feet.

“Very well.” He nods, almost anticipatory.

The guards begin to wash the lines away, and my horror is renewed and redoubled.

Not ready to say goodbye.
“Stop. Please. You have to stop!” I kick out my legs, but I'm jerked out of striking distance. “You have no right to destroy my property!”

They continue washing, and my emotional pain cuts worse than any physical pain I've ever endured. Flesh heals. The soul can fester.

“If you don't want to lose anything else you value, Miss Lockwood, you need to leave Prynne. And soon. All you have to do is sign with Myriad,” Vans says, and the guards pause. “Nothing has ever been easier.”

A crimson drop of water trickles down the wall. A bloody tear. My beautiful calendar is dying, and with a single word I have the power to save what's left of it. How can I not just say—the—word.

Say yes.
Yes, yes, yes.

See? It
isn't
difficult.

The word bubbles up... “No,” I end up saying. “No, I won't sign.”

What is
wrong
with me?

Vans vibrates with rage, but quickly manages to calm himself. “I know that isn't what you planned to say, Miss Lockwood. Last chance. Sign with Myriad.”

Moonlight...castles...and one day, a return to the Land of the Harvest, Fused with another soul...living out my fate...

Might Equals Right.

Sunlight...wildflowers...an eternity of Rest after I fulfill my covenant duties...my mistakes my own...

Light Brings Sight.

Right now, I would rather know the truth—who is right and who is wrong? I would rather not ruin my future. As I've learned, the wrong decision can lead down a road with more bumps and slumps than I'm equipped to handle—can cost far more than I'm willing to pay.

“I won't,” I grit out between clenched teeth. I can't allow a momentary pain to eclipse an eternal decision. Feelings are fleeting, no matter how earth-shattering they seem; they never last, always change. A covenant is forever.

Vans curses at me. D-bag and Titball return to work. I go still and quiet, watching as every precious line disappears.

When there's nothing left, the group leaves, though Vans pauses in the doorway to say, “I want to be your advocate, Miss Lockwood, and yet you insist on making me your enemy.”

“
You
insist.” My eyes burn with tears. I blink away, refusing to give this man the satisfaction of knowing he broke me. “I simply oblige you.”

He taps his fingers on the door frame, the only indication his irritation hasn't faded. “Perhaps one day Myriad will decide they don't want you, after all. Kind of like your parents decided
they
didn't want you, yes?”

A sharp pain nearly slices open my chest. Vans knows just how to wound for maximum damage. “Has torture ever worked for you?” I ask, but I already know the answer. I've noticed the fast turnaround. Most kids stay only a month or two.

“More often than not.”

“Might Equals Right, eh?”

My derision causes him to tap faster. “One decision can change your circumstances, Miss Lockwood. Just one.”

I smile a little too sweetly at him. “One bullet can change yours.”

The smile he gives me is just as sweet. “Up to this point, I've been easy on you. Keep pushing, and you'll see my worst.” He reaches into his pocket and throws what looks to be a black button at me. A button that hits the floor because I don't even try to catch it. “Almost forgot. This is from your mother.”

Why would she give me a button?

He leaves at last, locking me inside the room.

My tears long to break free, and my knees long to buckle, but I maintain my tough-as-nails attitude. The cameras...

With a trembling hand, I pick up the button. A flash-scribe, I realize. A way to send a recorded message. Now I'm even more confused. What does the mother who abandoned me, not visiting for seven months, wish to say to me?

Ignoring a swell of eagerness—
have to know, now, now, now!
—I stuff the device in my own pocket and stumble to Bow to check the fetters for locks. I find none. Good. I can free her, but oh, it's going to hurt.

What's a little more pain, right?

The outside of both cuffs is heated, and—I hiss—by the time I press the release button on each one, seven blisters decorate my fingers and palms.

The glow of the metal dwindles, the needles on the inside of each device detaching from bone and ejecting from her skin.

Clink, clink.
The cuffs fall away, but she doesn't wake. I'm glad. I'm not in the mood to deal with her.

With a curse, I tumble onto my squeaky mattress and stare up at the ceiling. Life sucks.

A muted scream suddenly echoes from the floor, and I jolt.

Isn't Clay, isn't Clay, isn't Clay. He's safe. He made it out.

Will I?

The flash-scribe is practically burning a hole in my pocket, my eagerness overtaking me. I withdraw the device and press my thumb into the top. As soon as my print registers, my mother's voice fills the cell.

“Hi, Ten. Bet you never expected to hear from me, huh?”

My heart thumps against my ribs, and my gut clenches.

“I know I haven't come to see you in forever, but there's a very good reason for that. A beautiful secret. One that's taught me how to be a mother again. I'm sorry, sweet girl. I'm sorry for everything, and I love you, I really do. Your dad loves you, too, but he's scared of losing his job and—well. That's not your problem. We'll be coming to visit you soon, and it's my hope we'll take you with us when we leave.”

Hope flares, only to die a quick death. This is a trick. Has to be.

A baby cries in the background. My mom says, “Shh, shh,” as if there's a human being with her rather than a television, and I frown. No one under the age of eighteen—besides me—has ever been allowed inside the house. My mom's rule.

And I get it. She prefers not to look at what she isn't allowed to have: another kid. She wants one as fervently as I want a sibling—someone to love me unconditionally, just because I'm me, not because of what I can do. But, long ago, the realms made a deal with the human governments. To prevent overcrowding in Secondlife, where spirits can live for centuries, even millennia, there is a one-child-per-family limit during Firstlife. In return, the realms share their advanced technology, like this flash-scribe.

My mom clears her throat. “I've got to go, sweetheart. I know I screwed up with you, but I'm going to give my—child a better life. You have my word.”

Why the hesitation before
child
?

I toss the device across the room. She doesn't love me. She can't. And there's no way my dad even likes me.

Are you sure about that?