Immurement: The Undergrounders Series Book One (A Young Adult Science Fiction Dystopian Novel) (22 page)

Sven comes up beside me. His amber eyes have the look of a wounded animal. “Let’s get out of here,” he mutters. He turns abruptly and marches out of the room, dragging Lyong behind him.

Tucker sticks his nose under the bed, whines, and backs out hurriedly. I kneel down and ruffle his neck.

Glancing up, I catch sight of the underside of the frame. A life-sized 3D medical body chart of sorts, organs half-wired with metal valves and rubber tubing like the makings of a clock. My eyes drift to the metal axis that turns the bed frame. A jackhammer tremor goes up my spine. I lurch sideways, my body shaking uncontrollably.

“What is it?” Mason asks.

I gesture to the control panel at the bottom of the bed frame.

Mason frowns and hits the rotation icon. The young man turns from us slowly, like a carcass on a spit, revealing the underside of his body—cut away to display it’s new mechanical innards
.

Mason swears softly, rocks backward on the soles of his giant feet.

My breath comes in short jabs. I stare at the web of exposed arteries and blood-spattered metal parts in horror. The back of the man’s head is a human fuse box, wired to control the implants. Tucker barks sharply and paws at me. Stomach heaving, I scramble to my feet and stagger out of the room. I lean back against the wall in the corridor, slide to the floor, and bury my head in my hands. I’ll never forgive myself if anything’s happened to Owen. I should never have trusted Mason to keep him safe.

“Derry!” Mason barks. He shakes me, and not in an anemic sort of way.

I straighten up, my shoulder pulsating with pain.

“They’re coming!We're out of time!” He gestures to the far end of the long corridor. “There’s a supply room back there we can hide in.”

I wipe my trembling hand across my mouth. Tucker races off down the hallway after Sven and Dr. Lyong, as if there’s nothing more he’d rather do than put as much distance as possible between himself and the room we just vacated. I pull myself up with Mason’s assistance, and stumble after the others.

Inside the storage room, I gulp a few deep breaths of stuffy air and slump back against a rack overflowing with linens, scrubs, and boxes of medicine. I blink as I take in the vast inventory. All stuff we could have used in the bunkers a million times over. My eyes settle on Lyong, leaning against a shelf of plastic tubing and oxygen masks.

“Why are you doing this to them?” I say, through gritted teeth.

He leans toward me. “Not
to
them,
for
them.”

I glare at him. “If you believe that, you’re the one needs your brain rewired.”

Satisfied he has my attention, he sits back. “Sektor Sieben is a pilot recycling plant for humankind. Before the meltdown, brain-dead participants were donated to cybernetics research by the world government.”

“The government donated
people
?”

Dr. Lyong cocks a sparse eyebrow at me. “Left to the good will of mourning families, we would never have received enough donations. The supreme leader believed in advancing the boundaries of humankind. As a result, the government had special arrangements with reeducation centers.”

“What kind of arrangements?”

Dr. Lyong shrugs. “They handled procurement. Our assignment was to work out the kinks in cybernetic implant technology.”

“You’re insane!” I shrink back from the doctor’s foul breath that lurks like a poisonous gas in the air between us. “You’re extracting Undergrounders to continue your implant research, aren’t you?”

He laughs, and his eyelids drift to half-mast for a moment. “The extractions are strictly to retrieve uncontaminated DNA for cloning.”

“I don’t believe you. This isn’t science, it’s murder.”

He sighs. “Murder entails malice. I, on the other hand, have sacrificed my life to provide a service to humankind.”

“You’re completely out of control!” I yell.

“No.” He shakes his head sadly, as if to draw attention to my outburst. “I am very much
in
control now. Thanks to the strides we have made in cybernetic implant technology, some fortunate participants will have the chance to live again.” He twists his lips into a sliver of a smile. “Perhaps even your brother.”

My jaw trembles. I leap to my feet fully prepared to claw the rotting flesh from his face. “What have you done to him?”

Mason stomps a massive steel-toed boot in the space between us. “He doesn’t even know who your brother is, Derry. He’s just using the information you give him to get under your skin. You need to stay focused.” He gestures at the scrubs hanging on a rail behind him. “Put these on. If we have to make a run for it, anything’s less conspicuous than what we’re wearing now.”

I blink, reeling from Lyong’s words. The possibility that Owen is in one of these cattle stalls horrifies me. But if he’s not, we’ve got another problem on our hands—he could be anywhere in the Craniopolis. Or he could be dead.

Mason grabs a set of oversized scrubs and pulls them on.

“We can’t just walk out of here and pass ourselves off as scientists,” Sven says.

Mason glares at him. “Got a better idea?”

Sven shrugs and hands me a set of scrubs. Tucker sniffs at them curiously. I pull on the billowing pants and tighten the drawstring waistband. The macabre thought comes to me that these might end up being my burial clothes. Except they don’t bury bodies down here, they rewire them, or cremate the botched ones. I glance around at the contents of the room in a last-ditch effort to come up with a better plan than waltzing past the Schutz Clones brandishing a scalpel.

Somewhere inside my head, a light snaps on. What we need is a diversion. I lock eyes with Dr. Lyong. “I’m guessing the stadium is the emergency muster station down here.”

He narrows his eyes at me and casts a furtive glance over my shoulder, tipping me off to exactly what I’m looking for.

I turn and scan the room. Several oversized supply carts line the back wall. I scurry back and yank the carts out from the wall one by one.
Bingo!

“There’s a fire alarm back here!” I yell to the others. “It’ll buy us enough time to look for Owen and get out of here.”

Heart racing, I reach for the T-bar on the pull station. I grab Tucker’s collar, and tug hard on the alarm. A shrill sound goes through me like a knife. The hairs in my ears vibrate. “Go!” I yell, shoving Mason in front of me. Sven grabs Dr. Lyong and we dash back out into the main corridor. “Search the left side on your way out,” I yell at Mason. “I’ll take the right.”

I sprint to the nearest room and wrench open the door. The expressionless face in the bed has a peculiar ivory sheen to it, more like a plastic mold than skin. Light-brown hair. It can’t be Owen.
Or Jakob.
I back out, and gather my wits enough to open the next door. Several ashen, half-refurbished faces with empty eye sockets, contemplate the ceiling. I beat a hasty retreat, a fresh wave of nausea surging up from my stomach.

Outside, I lean against the door and hold my hands over my ears to deaden the relentless blare of the alarm. The longer Owen's missing, the less hope I can drum up in my heart that I’ll ever see him again. As for Jakob—I have to believe he’s safe, somewhere far from here. Any other option would be the end of me.

“Derry!”

I jump out of my skin at the muffled sound of Mason’s voice. I can tell by the way he’s frantically waving me over that he’s found something. I force my jellylike legs across the corridor, dreading what’s coming.

He motions through the open door of the stall. I frown at a sleeping figure curled up on the bed with his back to us. The room is empty apart from the bed, no medical equipment, no monitors, not even a drip line.

Cautiously, I step toward the sleeping figure. Tucker emits a low growl that rumbles at the back of his throat like an engine about to throttle up. I plant my eyes on the man’s face and freeze.

It can’t be!

Thin mustached lips, parted in sleep, pierced brow, cleft chin—the same sinister face I grew to dread in the short time I knew him. I reach into my pocket, flip my wrist, and ready my switchblade.

I feel as if I’ve wanted to kill Rummy for a very long time. Three days can morph into a heck of a hankering for revenge. My mind flits back to when I last saw him—sprawled on the lodge steps in Lewis Falls, suctioned to a Sweepers’ tube, limbs flailing every which way. I tried to save him, instinct I suppose, but I didn’t feel sorry for him when I couldn’t. Only relieved I would never have to look at him again.

I test my thumb gently against the tip of my blade. I could slit his throat now and he wouldn’t feel a thing. We’d be even for what he did to Owen—and to me. My jaw still throbs when I press my fingers to it. I stare down at his still form. I’m not afraid to kill him, not after everything I’ve been through.

But, now that I’ve seen what goes on inside the Craniopolis, I can understand the fear that drove him to do what he did to us—the kind of fear that consumes a mind like a flesh-eating bacteria. The Rogues knew what was really going in the reeducation centers. No wonder they’d stop at nothing to ensure they’re never taken captive again. Rummy knew someone was ratting them out to the Sweepers. Owen and I showed up in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

“What do you want to do?” Mason asks.

I pocket my knife and take a deep breath. I shake Rummy and slap him several times, but it’s no use, he’s too heavily drugged. “We’ll have to leave him.” I turn my back and whistle for Tucker. “We came here for Owen and Jakob. We can’t save them all.”

I march nonchalantly past Mason, but inside I’ve never felt more hollow. Leaving Rummy behind is a death sentence. It’s a lame way to kill a man, and I know it will haunt me. Maybe I
should
slit his throat, it would be more merciful than what’s in store for him.

I busy myself checking the remainder of the rooms on the right side of the corridor, half of which are unoccupied, and half of which house more wired cadavers. To my relief there’s no sign of Owen.

I throw a cursory glance at the monitors, and give the dead scientists’ bodies a wide berth on my way back out to the Crematauto. Mason gives a grim shake of his head when I throw him a questioning look. “If we can get to the biotic pods, I might be able to find out from someone if he’s in the Intake Sektor,” he says.

I reach for Dr. Lyong by the scruff of his neck. “I should have known you were lying.”

“He was as good as dead when we extracted him.” Dr. Lyong flashes me a dark look. “There’s only one reason he’s no longer here.”

Mason lays a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t underestimate your brother.”

I bite my bottom lip. At least Mason’s optimistic Owen's still alive. I have my doubts. How long can anyone survive in a place like this?

Mason shoves Lyong toward the vehicle. “Time to go,” he says. “The fire alarm will only buy us so much time. Once the Schutz Clones find the bodies in here and realize Lyong is missing, they’ll put patrols in all the tunnels. We have to find Owen and get back to the docking station before that happens.”

I hesitate before climbing into the Crematauto and throw a furtive glance back down the eerie corridor. The steel doors line up on either side like nails in a giant coffin. My decision to leave Rummy behind weighs on me, my own words haunt me:
I don’t leave a man, even a scumbag like you, to the mercy of animals.

“Wait!” I say. “I've changed my mind. We’ll bring Rummy with us.”

Mason’s eyebrows shoot upward. Without a word, he turns and hoofs it back down the corridor. A moment later, he reappears, Rummy slung over one shoulder like a kill from a hunting trip.

The tightness in my chest lets up a notch. I’ve reassured myself that I’m not a monster, but will I pay for this decision later? Rummy’s not in any shape to handle a weapon and make himself useful. He’s an added burden in an already precarious situation, and on top of that, we can’t trust him.

He doesn’t even twitch when we lay him down in the back of the Crematauto. Lyong wrinkles his nose in disgust, and scoots as far back from him as he can.

“Something stink?” I ask, looking pointedly at Lyong. “Other than your curdled cells.”

He eyes me with an air of irritation, like a predator sizing up prey beyond its strike zone. “When the Schutz Clones apprehend you, which they will, Miss Connolly, I assure you I will take great pleasure in using
your
tissue in my regeneration.”

His concrete-colored flesh contorts in a sneer. Something cannibalistic in his eyes makes my heart falter. My brain feels probed, as if he’s sucking out my thoughts. He’s a broken man, but the intellect inside that shell terrifies me more than all the Rogues’ brutality.

I tear my gaze away and bury my face in Tucker’s neck. The familiar scent rushes through me like a healing balm.

“We’re pulling out,” Sven calls back to us.

The Crematauto shudders briefly and glides forward.

“Stay down,” Sven says. “And shut Lyong up.”

Mason pulls a filthy flannel shirt from his pack and rips several strips from it. He stuffs the doctor’s mouth with a fistful of fabric, and then ties the bulk of the shirt firmly around his head. The only sounds Lyong can make now are muffled grunts. Tucker flops down on his paws, apparently satisfied the doctor’s no longer a threat.

“Gear up,” Mason nudges me.

I pull the charging handle of my gun to the rear and lock the bolt. Tucker’s ears prick up at the sound.

“Not yet, old boy.” I lean over and rub his head. It’s just another hunting trip as far as he’s concerned. But everything’s about to change for me.

I insert a loaded magazine and slap it with the palm of my hand to make sure it holds. I’ve never killed a human being before, let alone a clone. I slide my finger into the trigger housing and trace the metal outline. We won’t get out of here without some kind of showdown, and when it comes, there won’t be time to second guess myself.

The Crematauto slows to a stop and Sven punches in the security code at the doors. “Exiting Sektor Sieben,” he says. “Get ready.”

I shift my position, squished between Mason and an unresponsive Rummy, and finger the safety selector on my gun. I tell myself there’s nothing I won’t do to save Owen.