Tarnished (17 page)

My heart pounded faster. “Should we try to match them up?” I scooted up next to her, pulling out the drawer underneath the one she was looking through. My head was spinning, all those numbers bouncing in front of my eyes. Were they the numbers they assigned us? How many girls were born? Or… “Wait, what was the highest number that you got to on the files?”

Missy shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t check the bottom drawer.”

I yanked open the bottom drawer. 1-32, 2-32, 3-32. Thirty-two? They’d really been breeding pets for that long? If so, it shouldn’t be too hard to find my own file.

Missy yanked on the bottom drawer of the next cabinet. “This one’s locked.”

I ignored her. I needed a pen and some paper. We’d learned a little bit of math at the training center, simple addition and subtraction. It wasn’t much, but it was all I needed right now. I scanned the room. There were a million crazy items, but nothing that I actually needed.

“Did you hear me?” she asked. “What do you think is in this one that they don’t want people to find?”

I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the numbers in my mind. If I was sixteen and the program had been creating girls for thirty-two years… I tried to line up the figures, thirty-two over sixteen.

“Grab me that knife,” Missy said, jiggling the handle of the drawer.

“What?” I couldn’t concentrate with her talking to me.

“That knife.” Missy pointed toward the shining instruments on the table in the middle of the room. “I need it.”

I picked it up. It was slender, like a pencil. The blade at the top was small, but I didn’t want to think about how sharp it could be.

“Stop staring at it and give it to me,” Missy snapped, snatching it out of my hand.

She jammed the knife into the keyhole, jiggling it.

I whirled back around to the cabinet I’d been searching through. My own small history was in one of these drawers. Those letters, littering those pages, dots of black against the stark white page, might tell me something about myself that I didn’t know yet.

I wanted that file. Needed it.

Behind me, there was a small click and a drawer popped open. Missy started to speak, maybe to boast about being able to open locked drawers, but before she could get out any words, a deafening alarm blared out.

“The drawer!” I yelled, lifting my voice over the screeching. “There must be an alarm on it!”

“Don’t yell at me!” She pulled the drawer open anyway, snatching up files, each marked on the front with an angry red stamp. “These have to be the ones. Why else would they lock them up? Hurry up and help me get these.”

The noise filled up my whole head. How was I supposed to figure out what file I needed if I couldn’t even hear myself think? I closed my eyes and covered my ears. Thirty-two minus sixteen. Twelve minus six was six. Two minus one was one. Sixteen. The answer was sixteen.

I pulled the drawer open, shuffling wildly through the files. Where was the one that I needed? 8-16. 8-16. 8-16.

“Ella! Are you out of your mind?
These
are the ones we need!” Missy said. Her face was red, her eyes wild, as she shoved files from the locked drawer into a plastic garbage bag she’d found.

Finally, I saw it. There wasn’t time to linger over the letters that had been printed in front of it. I grabbed the file I hoped held all my secrets.

“Ella!” Missy yelled, slapping me. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

The alarm was so loud that we didn’t hear the orderly coming until the door crashed open. His whole body filled the doorframe.

“What the hell?” he said. His groggy stare took us in, traveling down our bodies to the files we clutched in our hands. “Put those down right now.”

Missy’s fingers tightened around the files.

“I said drop ’em.” His voice boomed as he lunged toward us.

The file I was holding fell to the ground and my hand darted to my pocket. A second later the orderly was barreling down on us, his face red with rage as his gigantic hand clamped around Missy’s neck.

“No one disobeys me,” he spat. His grip tightened and Missy sputtered for breath as he lifted her by the throat. “Especially not one of you bitches.”

Chapter Seventeen

I
n one quick motion, I uncapped the syringe and threw my body against him. He was a wall. The force of my body hardly budged him and he moved his arm to flick me away, but before he could, I raised my hand, bringing the needle down into the exposed skin of his neck.

He bucked, dropping Missy and smacking me with his fist. I fell back and he turned to face me where I lay on the floor. His eyes flared with rage as he lifted his hand to his neck. A drop of blood fell from the hole where I’d stabbed him. His finger grazed it. Ever so gently, he pulled it away, peering down at the red smear on his hand.

“I’ll kill you both my—”

His eyes glazed over and the next moment he was falling, landing with a thud against the side of the table before he slid to the ground.

I scrambled to my feet, backing away from him.

Missy stared up at me from where she knelt on the floor. “Quick, close the door,” she wheezed. “We don’t have long before the rest of them get here.”

I slammed the door shut. For a moment, our eyes met. All the terror and adrenaline that I felt were mirrored there as perfectly as if I was staring into my own eyes. As if we were connected to the same brain, our eyes moved in synchronicity toward the door.

“They’re coming,” Missy said, staring at it as if she could see through it toward the hallway behind.

I turned back toward the room, hoping that another exit had magically appeared.

“What’s that?” Missy said, staring over my shoulder.

There was a long, metal drawer built into the wall. It was narrow, maybe two feet tall and three feet wide, almost the exact height of the table in the center of the room. At the top of it was a wide handle.

A strange look crossed Missy’s face.

“We can’t hide in there,” I said, shaking my head.

She grabbed the handle and the drawer swung open, hinged at the bottom like a mailbox. We both paused, bending over to stare inside. I’d expected a drawer like the ones on the filing cabinets, but it wasn’t a drawer at all. The inside was lined with shiny metal, like the table, and after the first foot, the metal slanted down at an angle, like a slide, disappearing into darkness. It wasn’t a drawer at all. It was a garbage shoot of some sort.

“Hurry!” Missy said, shoving the bag of files through the hole.

I grabbed her arm. “Wait! We don’t even know what’s down there.”

“You’re right,” she said. “But I know what’s out there.” She pointed toward the door. “And I’m guessing you don’t have enough needles in your pocket to take them all out.”

Over the scream of the alarm, I heard the pounding of footsteps. Missy took a deep breath and dove into the dark shoot. My legs trembled. Behind me, voices called out in the hallway.

I scrambled into the hole, the smooth metal icy cold against the bare skin of my legs. The ramp slanted but not too steeply that I had to fight to keep my body from slipping. I grabbed the front of the metal door and pulled it closed before I pushed off, sliding down the tube into the darkness below.

The ramp tapered off at the bottom, sending my body slipping across the cement floor and directly into Missy. The file that I’d been clutching tight flew out of my hands. The papers fanned out, some of them sliding beneath a dark crack underneath the far wall.

Next to me, Missy moaned, clutching her side where I’d just crashed into her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “Where are we?”

An orange light cast the room we’d landed in with an eerie amber glow. It was a small room. There were a few metal tables, similar to the one in the room we’d just come from, but these tables were bare. No straps. No instruments. Besides the tables, the room was empty other than a few large metal cabinets that ran along one of the cement walls and a tall brick fireplace.

Slowly, I propped myself up. The faint shriek of the alarm still sounded above us, but it no longer pounded in my ears. Missy’s garbage bag full of papers had stayed mostly intact in the fall and I scooped it up as I crawled past it, snatching up the scattered papers from my file.

“Just leave them,” Missy said, getting to her feet. “We’ve got to find a way out of here.”

We both knew they’d have found the orderly’s body by now. They would have figured out that we’d stolen their files and guessed where we’d gone. Even if they didn’t fit down the metal shoot themselves, it wouldn’t take them long to get down to us.

On my hands and knees, I scrambled to reach underneath the tall metal cabinets where the papers had slid. The space beneath them was hardly big enough for my arm to fit. I lay down on the cold cement, straining to grasp them. The very tips of my fingers brushed against the edge of a sheet of paper.

Missy paced the room. “This can’t be the only way out,” she said, tugging the handle of the steel door. It rattled in her hand. Locked.

I pressed down with the pad of my pointer finger and pulled. The paper slid ever so slightly toward me.

“Ella!” Missy shrieked. “Help me!”

“Hold on. I almost have it!”

Missy threw her hands up and kicked the door before she spun around wildly, looking for any other way out.

The paper slid closer to me and I finally grabbed ahold of it. It was too dark to see if there were any others that I’d missed, and we were out of time.

I eyed the brick fireplace on the other side of the room. A steel door covered the front of it. I scrambled over and threw it open, leaning into the deep box.

“Is there a chimney?” Missy asked, standing beside me. “Maybe we can climb out.”

I pulled my head out, wiping the black ashes that clung to my hands across the front of my jumper. “The opening is too small. It isn’t more than a foot wide. We won’t fit.”

“Well, maybe if we go back up the shoot,” she said. “They might not be up there anymore.”

I looked at the rows of steel doors across the room. “What about those?” I said. “Maybe they lead somewhere.”

Missy nodded hopefully, tugging open the one closest to her. “It’s dark and really cold. I can’t tell if there’s…” She jumped back, dropping the bag of folders “
Noooo
...” she moaned. “No. No. No.” She brought her hand to her mouth and turned away.

In a second I was beside her. The door to the cabinet was still wide open and as soon as I stepped in front of it, I was met with a puff of icy air. It was a gaping dark hole easily big enough for the two of us to climb inside.

“Missy, what’s—” I started to ask.

My breath fogged the air in front of me. The cabinet was deep. On the bottom, there was a rolling metal shelf that my gaze followed back into the dark. And then I saw. There, more than an arm’s length back, was the ghostly outline of two pale feet, still and stiff and cold. Wrapped around the big toe was a paper tag marked with black ink.

I gagged and turned away, slamming the door shut.

“You don’t think all those…” Missy’s voice trailed off as she stepped further away from the metal doors that lined the wall.

All those doors. All those shelves. Were they full? Full of bodies?

Above them was another row of smaller doors, too tiny for one of us to fit in, but big enough for… Oh God.

I stared down at my black hands. Ashes. It was their ashes.

“They burn them,” I cried, trying to wipe away the remnants that clung to my skin. I could feel them coating my hands, my throat where I’d breathed them in. Penn was right. This was the way the kennel disposed of girls. They stuck them in an oven and they let them burn until there was nothing left.

I snatched the garbage bag off of the floor. We had to get out. I’d break that stupid door down if I had to.

Missy tugged on the handle again and looked desperately around the room. “There has to be something that we can use,” she said.

Beside the door, above the light switch, was another metal box, hinged at the top. I flipped it open. Inside was a keypad.

“These are just like the ones on the doors upstairs.”

“It’s a security system,” Missy said. “It’s not going to do us any good unless we have the code.”

My fingers trembled against the plastic keys.

Please, please let this work.
I took a deep breath, trying to imagine the man in the white coat as he’d led us down the hallway yesterday. It seemed like an eternity ago, but if I concentrated, I could remember.

2-9-4-6. I pressed each number slowly, deliberately.

“You can’t just start typing numbers,” Missy said.

My finger hovered over the last one. Eight. My number. For my whole life, that number had connected me to the kennel, but maybe not anymore. Maybe, this time, it was the key out.

I pressed the button.

The lock clicked. There was a small hiss followed by the puff of air releasing from some cylinder that had kept the door tightly closed and it cracked open.

“Ella…” Missy’s mouth hung open. “How did you—?”

“It was your idea. Your owner’s safe, remember?” I snatched the garbage bag off the floor and pushed the door open. The hallway was dark and silent. And then, somewhere far away, I heard the echo of voices.

“Which way?” I asked.

The hall split in three different directions. It was a maze of corridors down here and I was completely turned around. Upstairs, I at least had some idea which way would lead to the outer wall of the building, but not down here.

“Go straight,” Missy said, shoving me forward.

“Are you sure?”

“No,” she said. “But we can’t stay here. Move.”

We ran down the hallway, past more doors like the one we’d just come out of. I didn’t want to think about what else might be hidden down here. At the end of the corridor, it split again and without stopping to ask, we both turned right.

“There!” Missy pointed.

This hallway was shorter than the others and at the end, a small cement stairway led back up to the main level. At the top of the landing there was another door, this one even bigger than the one we’d just come through. On the front of it hung a large plastic sign with bold red lettering and a picture of a dot with three curved lines radiating off of it.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

Missy shook her head. “I don’t care,” she said, shoving her arm against the push handle.

The rush of fresh air startled me as we stumbled out onto the side of the building. The night was dark. Only a few small white lights shone down off of the windowless side of the building. From inside, a new alarm buzzed.

I had no idea which direction we needed to turn to get to the front of the building. In front of us, a long stretch of grass slanted down toward a row of trees. I swung the bag full of files up over my shoulder and let Missy drag me forward. The plastic slipped in my sweaty grasp, and I held on tighter, the tips of my fingernails biting into my palms. The sharp edges of the folders dug into my back as I ran, but I couldn’t stop.

We reached the bottom of the hill and the sharp sound of voices cut through the night somewhere behind us. Suddenly the tops of the trees lit up in front of us and I screeched to a halt.

“Don’t stop!” Missy grabbed my arm and pulled me after her.

The trees only stayed alight for a moment before the beam swept across the hill and then looped back around to the other side of the building.

“It’s a searchlight. I don’t think they saw us.”

A few more steps and we disappeared inside the trees. The trunks were spindly and tall and we darted between them, running in as straight a line as we could away from the kennel. Through the branches above us, the wedge of moon flickered in and out of view. If we were in the open, we would have been able to see the stars. In Ruby’s books there were people who could find their way using the constellations. I didn’t understand how. Maybe they could read them, like words?

Someday, I’d learn to read the stars, too.

“How are we…going to find…Penn?” I panted.

Missy slowed, holding her side. “I think we should just keep going straight until we come to the road. It seems like we’re almost there, right?”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t so sure. The people from the kennel knew this property. Maybe they even had ways to track us. If we didn’t find Penn soon, they’d find us and kill us. I was sure of it.

Our feet were raw, but we stumbled forward. One minute we were in a dense pocket of foliage and the next…we were in the open. I blinked up at the stars, half expecting there to be a big arrow flickering in the specks of light, pointing us toward Penn.

“Which way?” Missy asked, looking in either direction down the wooded road.

I looked to the left and then to the right. This stretch of road looked the tiniest bit familiar. Had we passed this on the way to the kennel? Or was I remembering a long-ago drive from the kennel to the training center?

“We should stay in the trees,” I said.

Missy nodded, following me back into the cover at the side of the road.

“Are those lights?” she asked after a minute.

We both stopped. She was right. Through the trees I thought I saw a faint glow. I held tight to the nearest trunk, trying not to move as I waited to hear the snap of sticks and the crunch of big boots, but the woods stayed silent except for the chirp of frogs and the rustle of the wind through the branches.

I focused on the light, expecting to see the beam sweep over us, but its glow was as still as the moon’s in the sky. We pushed through the trees and stumbled into a small clearing.

There was a car there, all right, but it wasn’t Penn’s. A dark blue van sat parked on the slight slope, its front tires pointing up toward the road, as if it were ready to take off at a moment’s notice. But for now, the engine sat silent.

The back doors were cracked open just enough to send a bit of light from the single bulb out onto the trampled dirt.

Missy and I backed carefully into the cover of the trees.

We held still, waiting for someone to emerge from the clearing, but it was empty. If someone had been here, they must have heard the sound of the sirens and left.