Cured (36 page)

I awoke one
morning, six days after we had arrived at the compound, to Ellina’s
singing. Crooning as she dressed herself had become her favourite
Avery alarm. She had already collected the pile of fresh clothes
that awaited us outside our door each morning, and laid mine at the
foot of my bed. I pulled my pajama top over my head and tossed it
into the corner of our room.

“Put it outside.” Ellina stopped her singing
to instruct me.

I picked up
the t-shirt and threw it out our door and into the hallway,
“Better?” I asked her with an inauthentic smile. Her cleanliness
irritated me.

“You are always so grumpy in the mornings. I
should just get out of the room before you wake up.”

“
Please feel
free to do so
,” I snarled.

“
Let’s go to
breakfast,” s
he said, then turned to me,
“You’d better do your hair first though.

“
It’s
done,
” I said, combing my fingers through
it. I ran into a matted knot and cried out in pain.

Ellina came over and spun me until my back
was facing her. She began tugging on my hair. I tried to stay
standing, but I was no match for her. My knees buckled when she
tapped the back of them so I sat backs of my heels and let her tame
my hair into a messy braid. This had become a morning ritual over
the last week. She woke me up, we had a tiff about how angry I was
in the morning, she did my hair, and then we were friends
again.

We walked to the dining hall together,
bickering like siblings about how roughly she had been doing my
hair. The dining hall was empty. I frowned at Ellina. Although we
didn’t know the specific time, our body clocks were tuned to know
when it was meal times.

“Where is everyone?” I paced the empty room,
stomach rumbling.

The boys entered, their expressions every bit
as confused as ours.

“What the…?” Felix muttered.

“Must be a holiday or something?” Theo
suggested.

“Back to bed?” Felix suggested, his eyes lit
up excitedly at the prospect of more sleep.

I wanted to sleep in too, but I didn’t want
to waste time that could be spent preparing, so I started off
towards the dogs.

“You guys go to bed. I will meet up with you
whenever breakfast is. I want to go see the dogs.”

I was an expert at navigating the corridors
now, twisting and turning as Jett did on his Segway. I reached the
dogs and found a figure standing at the cage already. The body was
much too big to be Jett. I approached the figure and cleared my
throat. Dom turned around.

“
Hello,
Avery,” h
e said quietly.

“Hi Dom. Why are you here so early?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

I hated that he never gave a straight answer.
“Well apparently it is some sort of holiday or something, because
breakfast wasn’t out yet. We didn’t know. I didn’t want to go back
to sleep so I came here.”

“
We have
brunch on Sundays,
” Dom said as though it
were obvious. “Why do you like these dogs so much?”

I whistled
and the dogs ran over to the fence, “I just like animals,” I said,
“They remind me of home.”

“
The
affection appears to be mutual,” Dom noted with raised eyebrows as
my favourite dog, that Jett had named Frankfurter after hearing me
talk about Meatloaf, began to lick my legs and whine until I
crouched down to scratch behind her ears.

“Yeah, Frank is my biggest fan.”

“
Frank?”
h
is eyebrows lifted higher, “You named
him?”

“
Her,
” I corrected. “Frank is a
female. It’s short for Frankfurter.”

“Like the sausage meat?”

“Yes. My last pet was called Meatloaf.”

“
I know,”
h
e said so quietly that I nearly didn’t
hear him.

I stopped patting the dog and spun to face
Dom. “How?” I snapped. “How do you know Meatloaf?”

Dom smiled. “Your inquisitive nature is both
a virtue and a flaw, Avery Rose. I imagine it is a large part of
the reason you are alive, but also probably a large part of why you
find yourself in this pickle.”

I ignored his spiel and stared him dead in
the eye, “How do you know Meatloaf?” I asked again.

“The cameras, Avery.” He sighed. “You
slaughtered your pet, Meatloaf, in front of our security
cameras.”

My breath
caught. I had forgotten that we had stupidly thought a sacrifice so
necessary to enter Tartarus. We had slain Meatloaf with no good
reason.
I
had slain Meatloaf with no good reason. I began to tremble
at the memory.

“If you hadn’t killed Meatloaf, you might not
be here, Avery. Remember that. And it was one of the tasks, to slay
a bull, you know. It was for a good cause. His life was not
wasted.”

I looked at Dom. His face was deadpan and his
eyes still icy cold and hard, but the words coming form his mouth
were thoughtful and kind. Was there a real person in there
somewhere, underneath his robotic façade?

A pounding of
footsteps followed by Jett’s voice shouting my name sounded seconds
before the boy screeched to a halt in front of Dom and me. His eyes
flicked between us, and he swallowed, catching his
breath.

“Is everything okay, boy?” Dom asked him.

“
Aaaaah yep,”
h
e replied unconvincingly. Something was
up. Something he didn’t want to say in front of Dom.

“
You’re
hiding something,
” Dom said. “Look me in
the eye.”

Jett dragged his gaze form the floor and
locked it on Dom.

“What has happened, Jett?”

Jett’s
shoulders slumped, “Turn on the News,” he mumbled, before turning
to me and mouthing an apology.

Dom activated
the WallScreen and ordered it to show us the News. The picture
switched to a large crowd of Primes. Regina Quaint stood on her
usual stage and addressed them.

“Primes!” She gave a little finger wiggle at
the crowd. “Welcome to our annual champions ceremony!”

My mouth fell open. Surely Axil and Cecilia
hadn’t finished the tasks already.

“We have two new Primes to instate today! In
second place, we have Axil Phillips!”

There was a round of applause, and Axil
sauntered onto the stage. Regina presented him with a silver medal
and a certificate, as well as a set of house keys, to his new
mansion on Olympia.

“And in first place we have Miss Cecilia
Potter!”

Cecelia wore a self-satisfied smirk as she
skipped up the stairs and glided over to Regina. She bowed her head
to allow the gold medal to slide over her impractically coiffed
hairdo and held her hand out for her certificate and house keys.
“And as is tradition, our top ranked Prime will make a speech!”
Regina announced.

Cecilia cleared her throat, her smile growing
wider and even less genuine as she stepped up to the
microphone.

“Hello, good people of Olympia.” She spoke in
a painfully high pitch. She didn’t address anyone in the Fields,
ignoring her former family and friends completely. “What an honour
it is to be crowned this year’s winning Prime! I can honestly say I
was not expecting it. I owe much of this win to Axil, who has been
there for me through the tasks. He often made sacrifices to ensure
I won the tasks, and effectively handed me this first place
position.”

The audience clapped, some dramatic crowd
members even dabbed at their eyes.

“But, Axil and I will actually be sharing the
title of first place,” she paused for effect,

“
Because he
proposed to me after completing our last task. And I said
yes!”

Cecelia reached for Axil’s hand and pulled
him towards her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed
her temple.

There were a few delighted squeals from the
crowd, and a raucous applause, until Regina raised her hands to
quieten the masses.

“Hush please,” she said daintily, and the
audience fell quiet. She turned to Cecilia and Axil, “Well, well,
we haven’t seen a proposal during tasks since, well… since Prunella
and Apolleon!”

The crowd was silent and the camera fell on
my mother and father, who were standing together. They were very
good at their perfect lovey dovey act, with my mother smiling
adoringly up into my father’s eyes, and him reaching to entwine his
fingers with hers. I swallowed. I missed them.

“And that brings me to my next point.” The
smile was gone from Regina’s face, and instead she forced a look of
sadness, although her youth serum didn’t allow much facial
movement, so the result was an awkward grimace.

“
Ah, our
other five Newbies have not made it through the tasks. Farrah
Silverstone did not survive her second task, and the other four
Newbies appear to have failed to reach their eight task. They are
missing in action. We will be searching for them, but the outlook
is grim, considering their last seen location was in the middle of
the desert a week ago.”

The camera
turned back to my parents. Mother was in tears and my father looked
furious. They mustn’t have been told until now. I watched the
screen as Dad pointed and yelled, ordering people about, before the
camera switched back to a news presenter.

The WallScreen went black and Dom chewed his
lip. He was biting so hard that he had drawn blood, but didn’t seem
to notice it running down his chin. He was nervous. But why?

“
We always
knew this would happen, right? I mean, of course they were going to
come looking for us after we were reported as missing,” I said as I
watched his expression carefully. He released his lip from his
mouth, and wiped at his chin absently.

“
Yes. Yes of
course. This changes nothing,” he muttered, although his voice was
not full of his usual confidence. “Nothing at all has changed…
nothing at all. Don’t you worry. All is fine…”

He continued to murmur as he walked out of
the cages and down the tunnel. I frowned at his retreating figure
and turned to Jett.

“Everything is not fine, is it Jett?”

Jett shook his head. “Everything is not fine.
Our other leader is coming back. The one I told you about, Leo. He
was meant to be away for three whole months, but now he is coming
back. We have to get you out of here.”

I swore, and ran to find the others. We had
to make a plan. The brunch bell rang and I waited for my friends
outside the hall. People filtered into the dining hall. I tapped my
foot impatiently for a few minutes, before deciding they must have
gone back to sleep. I decided to go and wake them, so we could
start hatching a plan. I turned to make my way to the boys’ room
when Dom appeared out of nowhere. He stood uncomfortably close.

“Going somewhere, Avery Rose?” his voice was
back to normal, his lip covered with medical tape.

“Uh no…” I stammered, as a young girl of
about fifteen approached us.

“Dom,” she said hesitantly.

“Not now.”

“But Dom, I was told to tell you that the
euthanasia serum is ready.” The words tumbled from the girl’s mouth
with such speed that Dom could not stop her.

His eyes widened and darted over to me. I
frowned. I wasn’t sure what euthanasia was, but Dom didn’t want me
knowing about it. “I said not now, Delilah, you incompetent
fool.”

“S…sorry Dom.”

“
Go and get
me two Segways,” h
e snapped at her, and
she sprinted back down the tunnel. “I am going to need you to come
with me, Avery Rose,” he said, turning to face me
instead.

Something in his voice was off. It was shaky
and uncertain, a tone that was almost entirely unfamiliar compared
to his usual obnoxiously superior front. I frowned at him. There
was a drop of perspiration between his furrowed brows and beads of
sweat dotted the stripe between his nose and moustache. As I
watched him, his eye twitched a little in the corner. He was hiding
something.

“
Where are
you taking me?” I asked. Feet glued firmly to the floor, ready to
run in the opposite direction. Dom didn’t answer immediately, but
stood stock still as Delilah returned with two Segways that she was
maneuvering awkwardly down the passage. Dom took them from her
without a word and shooed her away. He passed me the handlebars of
one of the machines.

“
Stupid
machines,” h
e said, “Almost entirely
useless for the very purpose they were invented for. A mode of
transportation so slow and impractical that they were basically
ignored as soon as they were invented. Luckily, they are the
perfect size to use through the narrow tunnels of our
compound.”

He stepped up onto the platform and I copied
him. Dom pressed his start button on the handlebars and twisted his
left hand, starting off down the tunnel. I mimicked his actions and
my machine began to follow him. I wondered why he was not bringing
the others with us. “Are we picking up the others?”

“No, they will meet us there.”

“Where?”

He ignored my question.

“What is euthanasia?”

He ignored me again

“
If you don’t
answer me I will turn my Segway around,” I said in a final attempt
to get some answers.

Dom smirked, “And go where, exactly?” he
snarled. His tone was condescending, and much more harsh than his
usual robotic voice. But I knew he was right, there was nowhere to
run. I felt my stomach seize up prophetically and groaned. This was
not going to end well.

Chapter 33

We drove the
Segways for a long way. After a while there were no more
intersections to choose from. Instead there was one long straight
corridor. Eventually even the lights went out and Dom had to
illuminate the darkness with his handheld torch.