Captives (21 page)

Shaylinn looked at Jemma. “That’s a scary story, isn’t it?”

“Very. Let’s just do it so we can go, huh?” Jemma said.

They walked over to the kitchen set and found Byran. He was a small man, dark-haired, with a thin face covered in scruff. He wore a black shirt with all of the buttons undone so that his bright yellow tank top showed. A thick gold chain hung round his neck.

“I’ve got the script on the prompters,” Byran said, “so you can just read it. We’re still trying to get a feeling for which lines are the best for this scene. Think you can act this out?”

“It’s not much of a stretch,” Jemma said. “We are kidnapped people, after all.”

Byran’s laugh sounded forced. “Let’s take you first, lovely. That’s a pretty dress.”

“Right on top of the trends,” Naomi said.

“Let’s have you sit on the stool, femme,” Byran said. “We’re going to come in close on your face, but try not to fidget, because we want
you as still as possible. Willa’s going to put a little makeup on you, pale that tanned face a bit, give you some fake tears.”

“Let’s see, you other two …” He looked to Shaylinn and Mia. “I’m just going to let you read how you want to. Try to sound mean.”

Once Willa had finished applying makeup to Jemma’s face, Byran said, “Both cameras are already rolling, so we can edit later.”

“He’s recording now?” Shaylinn asked, suddenly feeling awkward.

“Yep,” Byran said. “I’m going to ask you all some questions to loosen you up a bit, help you get comfortable. Tell me, Jemma, how old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“And do you have a partner?” He looked at the script. “A uh …
boy
friend?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you do, lovely little flame like yourself. And what’s your trigger’s name?”

“Um … Levi.”

“Feeling a bit more comfortable?”

Jemma tittered and rocked in her seat. “No.”

“How about you … Shaylinn, is it?”

Had Shaylinn made a mistake? “You didn’t ask me anything!”

Naomi snickered, and then Jemma laughed for real.

“No worries. Jemma, go ahead and read the lines off the prompter screen,” Byran said, “Shaylinn, you read the kidnapper, but stand back by this microphone, out of the way. We’re just filming Mielle now.”

Shaylinn was relieved to stand out of the way. She and Jemma spoke their lines. Shaylinn didn’t like the kidnapper’s part. His words embarrassed her.

When they finished, Byran said, “Okay, that’s
reading
the lines. This time, I want you to act them out. I want to hear your fear. I want to see real tears in your eyes. But I want a real fake laugh, okay? Make it sound like you’re trying to make light of this horror you’re living through. Make your lover believe it. Make Kale scared for you. Pretend it’s your Levi, if it helps.”

And so they read the lines again. Shaylinn tried hard to pretend she was an evil man, but it made her stomach tighten. She just wanted it to be over.

“Great!” Byran smiled at Jemma. “That was great, really great. Can you repeat that last line for me? But this time say, ‘You were right about him. About everything. You were right.’ ”

Jemma repeated the line the way he asked.

“You’re a natural, Jemma. Naomi, you’re up. Shaylinn, let Mia stand where you are to read the kidnapper.”

When they finished with Byran and the acting station, Naomi insisted they leave. Once they were out in the cooler hallway, Naomi said, “Can we go back to the room now?”

“Tyra said we could,” Jemma said.

“But we haven’t done the singing room yet,” Mia said, “or the instrument one. I know neither of you are very good at either of those things, but I happen to have some talent.”

“Who cares?” Naomi said. “We’re prisoners in this place.”

“So we shouldn’t have any fun?” Mia asked.

“My father was killed, Mia,” Naomi said. “Our mothers are missing. The children are probably terrified. You should treat this like a vacation.”

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty because my mom is here and yours isn’t? Fine! Go back to the room and cry. I’m going to have some fun.” Mia stomped away, her tiny steps reminding Shaylinn of the way Matron Dlorah walked.

“I want to stay,” Shaylinn said. “I mean, you’re right, we are prisoners. But all I can do in my bedroom is feel bad about what happened. Here at least I can forget it for a few more hours.”

Jemma hugged Shaylinn. “Okay, Shay. You stay with Mia. And keep her out of trouble.”

“I heard that!” Mia yelled.

Shaylinn and Mia went to the dancing room next. It had six stations, three on each side of the room. Instrumental music was playing at the station to the right of the entrance where a ballerina danced,
seeming to float across the floor on her toes, sweeping her arms from side to side. A small crowd had formed in front of the station, and the girls stopped to watch. When the song ended, the crowds applauded and the ballerina curtsied.

“Anyone interested in learning the steps of ballet?” the ballerina asked.

Mia raised her hand, naturally, and the next thing Shaylinn knew, she and Mia were learning “ballet positions.”

After the ballet station, they visited a station for a dance that required them to move very quickly to thumping music, one where they made noise using their feet, and one for what they called club dancing, which forced them to do some things the elders in Glenrock might have frowned on. Mia seemed to pick them all up quickly, but Shaylinn’s feet seemed too big and slow to do any of it right. Until they got to the one called ballroom dancing.

The flashing screen on the wall said their instructor, Maroz Zerrik, was a famous dancer. He had short blond hair, perfect posture, and broad shoulders. Every time he looked at Shaylinn, her cheeks tingled. He explained the waltz, the tango, the foxtrot, the jitterbug, performing each with a woman named Nelessa Kade, who looked almost naked in a light brown sequined dress.

“Now,” Maroz said, “I will waltz with each of you.”

Mia squealed and rushed up to Maroz as if he’d called her name. “Me first!”

Maroz chuckled. “As you wish, pearl.”

Mia gasped at Shaylinn. “Did you hear that? He said ‘As you wish.’ I’ll have to tell Jemma. Maybe I’ve found my own Westley.”

By the look on Nelessa Kade’s face, Shaylinn doubted that very much. As Maroz waltzed with Mia, however, she looked just as good at it as Nelessa. The longer their dance lasted, the more Shaylinn worried about her coming turn.

When Maroz’s gaze fell on Shaylinn and he held out his hand, she nearly melted. Mia had to push Shaylinn onto the station floor. The man’s touch made her stomach flutter. She couldn’t remember
if she was moving her feet or if Maroz had lifted her up for the entire dance, but somehow she glided along with him, both mortified and enthralled.

When the dance ended, Maroz looked at her with a wide smile. “With more practice, you could become quite good at this. You just have to —” But Shaylinn never learned what she would need to do, as Mia dragged Shaylinn to the singing room, which had one stage and a long line of people who wanted to sing. Shaylinn had no desire to sing in front of people, so she sat and waited for Mia, who, when her turn came, crooned on the center stage.

Neither of them had much success in the musical instruments room, but making funny sounds out of a trumpet made Shaylinn laugh.

“I have my cosmetic consultation tomorrow morning,” Mia said. “What time is yours?”

“Nine thirty.”

“Mine’s at nine. You want to come earlier with me? I’ll wait for yours to be over.”

“Okay.” It would be nice to have someone there to talk to, and she was enjoying spending time with tonight’s kinder Mia. “I think I want to do it.”

Mia laughed. “Do you even know what ‘it’ is?”

Shaylinn smiled. “Making me thin, I think. Why are you going? You’re beautiful.”

“I know, but there’s so much I’d like to improve, and if these people are willing to do it, I’m not going to fight it.”

Shaylinn understood. Everything about this place seemed wonderful. The food, the buildings, the beds, the showers, the clothes … Granted, she was afraid of being pregnant and of catching the thin plague. But she was beginning to wonder if Papa Eli had been a bit mistaken about what happened inside these walls. She could get used to living here.

T
he Safe Lands Rehabilitation Center, also called the RC, was located just north of City Hall. Omar arrived twenty minutes early for his meeting with General Otley, anxious to see what Skottie had wanted to show him. He checked in with the enforcer at the entrance, then waited in the lobby for Skottie. Pictures of people hung along the wall. Brass nameplates had been mounted under each, displaying the person’s name and task.

Daniel Miller: TRST founder
Born 1983 —Final Liberation 2033

Taylor James: Founder of the enforcers
Born 1995 —Final Liberation 2045

Poet Levon: Theater entertainer
Born 2016 —Liberated to Seven 2066

Joie Champion: Communications anchor
Born 2021 —Liberated to Three 2071

Bristol Cruz: Engineering
Born 2032 —Liberated to Five 2072

Liberated. So strange. And too bad for Bristol Cruz. Skottie had said they’d changed the liberation date to forty back in seventy-two. Bad timing to lose ten years of your life, even if you were supposedly born into the next one.

When Skottie showed up, they took the elevator to the sixth floor. “You’re going to love this,” Skottie said. “One of my femmes tasks in Surveillance as a gatekeeper over the RC.”

“What’s a gatekeeper?”

“She’s in charge of the locks. Nothing opens unless she says so. Now that, my peer, is a position of power.”

The doors opened to the clamor of voices. Surveillance consisted of rows of narrow hallways lined with massive Wyndo monitors, three screens down and a dozen across, each screen divided into nine or twelve images. People wearing headsets sat on rolling chairs facing the screens, one person to every six screens.

Skottie led him to the far left of the room where there were several little offices behind glass walls. He walked straight ahead to the office in the left corner and tapped on the glass.

A curvy woman looked up from an L-shaped desk. She had lots of curly black hair that poofed out around her face. She grinned at Skottie and waved him in. Skottie opened the door and entered. Omar followed.

“Hey, Camella, how you doing?”

“Just working, trigger. Kind of quiet this morning. Who’s your friend?”

“This is Omar. He’s new to our world.”

“New?” Camella’s eyes shifted up and down Omar’s body. “You look good, Omar. Where you from, baby face?”

Omar’s chest filled with heat at her scrutiny. “Glenrock.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I don’t know where that is.”

“Cammy, show Omar what you do,” Skottie said.

Camella rolled her eyes. “Come on back, then.”

Skottie grabbed Omar by the sleeve and dragged him around behind Camella’s desk. She had three screens. One huge one hung on the wall on the long side of desk. It had nine images up at once, but
they were changing every few seconds. The other two screens were side by side, built into the GlassTop desk. One showed a close-up of a door, and the other showed a screen that said
SimTag Authorization System
and had a keyboard beneath it.

“What happens is, I get a tap when one of the enforcers needs a door opened. Then I pull up the location on my GlassTop. The enforcer has to verify who he is, and I check each name in the Authorization System. Once I’ve cleared them all, I code in the entry, and the door will open. Then I log it in.”

“No one can open a prison door without you?” Omar asked. “Not even Otley?”

She chuckled. “Much to Otley’s chagrin, no. Even he needs —” Camella touched her ear and turned away. “Please verify identification.”

“Who’s she talking to? I don’t hear anything.”

“SimTalk. You should get one. They shoot it in your ear just like a SimTag, then you can talk without your Wyndo.” Skottie waved Omar over to the office door. “Hey,” he whispered. “Wait outside for me, will you? I want to talk to Cammy alone for a minute.”

“Yeah, sure.” Omar slipped out of the office and turned around. He didn’t want Skottie to think he was eavesdropping, so he strolled down one row of monitors, then another, looking at images of pedestrians, streets, offices, medical facilities, holding rooms, and stores.

This must be where enforcers monitored the feeds from all those yellow cameras.

A man tapped Omar’s arm. “Sir? Harem women in the hallway.” He glanced up from his screen long enough to realize Omar wasn’t the “sir” he’d been looking for. “Sorry.” He called out to an enforcer at the end of the hallway, “Sir, the harem women?”

Omar leaned in to study the image of a group of women walking down a wide hallway. He recognized Naomi, Jemma, Mia, and … was that Shay? His heart thudded inside his chest. It was his first look at anyone from home. And they looked good, dressed in Safe Lands clothes. Omar felt a little lighter—clearly they were much happier here than Glenrock. His bringing them here had made it possible.

“There should be four heading back to the dormitory from the spa,” a nasal voice said. “Tyra Grant and Kendall Collin should be with them. Can I help you?” the enforcer asked Omar.

“I’m just looking,” Omar said.

“On whose authority?”

“Uh … I’m meeting with General Otley in a few minutes.”

“Then you should wait in the reception area on the first floor, Mr. Strong.”

A rush of heat seized Omar. Was he in trouble? How’d this man know his name? “I’m sorry.” He hurried to the elevator. Forget waiting for Skottie. He glanced back at the enforcer, wincing when he saw him talking to himself. Hopefully not speaking to Otley with one of those SimTalk implants.

Omar went straight to the first floor reception area, announced himself to the woman behind the desk, and sat down.

By the time the woman called him, he’d waited forty minutes.

Otley’s office was plain and a tenth of the size of the task director general’s. Bright lights glared down on a cracked GlassTop desk, three mismatched metal file cabinets, a set of black chairs on Omar’s side of the desk, and Otley himself, sitting behind his desk with his beefy arms folded across his massive chest.