The Benders (9 page)

The guard’s mustache twitches up again. “Some of you benders got a chunk of concrete in your head instead of a brain,” he yells. He taps the baton on the top of my head, leans in, and whispers in my ear, “A little time in the powder will do ya.”

“Time in the powder?” I look to Nada, but she won’t meet my eyes. The cuffs bites into the flesh on my wrist with metallic clicks.

“Nada’ll tell you what to do. If you can stay alive long enough to learn that is.” The guard swaggers off, his baton tapping his thigh to the jagged rhythm of the machines.

My cuffs are metal, solid, and completely tamper-proof. A long chain gives me about three feet of movement in any direction before it’s stretched tight against the loop welded to the table. I look at my tablemate. Nada’s hunched over a large stone mortar and pestle, grinding black powder. I watch her for a while, her thin arms cranking.

I take a deep breath and yell over the percussive sound of machinery. “Is it gun powder?”

She keeps grinding, her eyes down. “I shouldn’t talk to you.”

“That guard said you’d show me the ropes.” I look at the other mortar and pestle. “This job’s not exactly intuitive.”

She says nothing. Her arm pumps up and down.

As I watch her, a fire begins to kindle in my brain. I helped her escape, probably saved her life, and the thanks I get is silence? “Hey!” I shout. “Hey!”

“What?” she asks, her eyes flaring as they meet mine.

“Ol’ Pokey over there—”

“Bukowski.”

“Bukowski,” I repeat, nodding toward the guard with the baton, “is gonna come back, and if I’m standing here with my thumb up my rear, he’s gonna take another whack at me with his happy stick. If he does, I’m gonna remind him that you’re not only a runaway, you’re an unhelpful one at that.” I throw my hands up, forgetting they’re cuffed to the table. The chain clangs against the welded hook.

Nada’s eyes linger on my chains. “I wasn’t talking to you because being seen with me is social suicide. Nobody respects a runaway who gets brought back. Plus, the guards’ll be heard on anyone who talks to me, so you best stay away.”

“The other benders should feel sorry for you,” I say, looking at her broken face.

Nada scoffs, her big eyes widening. “These lemmings?” She points around the warehouse. “They hate me. I remind them that there’s no way out.”

I shake my head. “That’s not true.”

Nada narrows her eyes. “You think you have the answer? You think you can get to the free colonies?”

I blink at her words. “Free colonies?”

Her expression darkens. She grabs the other mortar and pestle, shoves it in my direction, and nods at a bucket of black powder. “Grind,” she says. “But be careful.”

I think about asking about the free colonies, but Bukowski strolls by, twirling his baton on one finger. He twitches his mustache and winks at me. I drop my eyes and grind, the smell of charcoal and chemicals flooding my nose. It’s hard work. Before long, my arms and shoulders burn. Blisters form under my handcuffs and then pop and ooze. I look over to see if Nada’s having the same trouble, but she’s still grinding through batch after batch of gun powder like it’s the easiest thing she’s ever done. After an hour, she lets me stop and shows me how to measure out the three ingredients needed to make the powder. Then we grind some more. Though my arms ache, I get used to the hissing and chugging, the smell of explosives and the chains on my arms. It’s grueling work, but it passes the time.

When the sun slinks low, a bell clangs. All the benders look up from their work, set down their tools and shuffle single file out the door. Nada sighs and keep grinding.

“We get to eat?” I ask, setting down my pestle. My right arm feels like it’s about to fall off and my stomach’s flip-flopping at the thought of food.

Nada shrugs boney shoulders. “Maybe. If Doc can put in a good word.”

“You and Doc are close?”

Nada looks around. The sound of the machines has mostly died down, so it’s the first time it’s been quiet since I walked in. Everyone has gone and it’s just her and I in the big empty warehouse. She whispers as she measures out more powder. “He’s my brother.”

“But you’re both benders. I mean, he’s not even a he.”

Nada frowns. Clearly, I’ve offended her. Or him. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was the only bender in my town, so I’ve never spent a lot of time around others.”

“Guess you get to make up for lost time,” Nada says, setting her concoction down on the metal table.

“So, do you go by he or she? Or…something else?” I ask. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me. I’ll figure it out.”

Nada stretches her fingers slowly and then her neck. “It’s all right. You don’t mean to be stupid. It’s better than most that you even care to ask.” She looks me over and begins. “Around here, benders pick a gender. Usually you’re a little more male or a little more female. Up here.” She gestures to her chest. “Or down there.” She gestures to her pants.

I feel a blush burn up my neck, but I nod, wanting to know more.

“Sometimes you can’t really tell if you’re more boy or girl, so you just pick. Or you decide you don’t care what your body looks like, you just wanna be one or the other.” Nada raises her eyes to the ceiling like she’s remembering something. “Jason always said I should just embrace my femininity, but women are the weaker sex. Everyone calls me ‘she’ anyway.”

“Jason?” I ask.

“Oh, I mean Doc.”

I look at her, suddenly wondering if she knows my secret.

Nada watches my face and finally nods. “Doc told me about you.”

“He told you!” Panic blares in my brain. “Who else did he tell?”

“Don’t worry. My brother and I don’t talk to the other benders.”

I flick my eyes around the room again just to be certain we’re alone. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“Why try to hide as a bender?” she whispers. “Tell them you’re a girl. Being a wife would be much better.”

I think of the gold ring resting under my shirt. Of Clay’s blue eyes. “I’m spoken for.”

Nada snorts. “You mean owned.”

I shake my head, almost angry. “Clay doesn’t own me. We’re…together.”

“Women aren’t free. No more than benders are.” She lifts her hands to show the chains.

I nod and go silent a while, mulling all this over. Finally, I take a deep breath and ask. “You mentioned free colonies?”

Nada’s face darkens and her body stiffens. “We shouldn’t talk about that here.” She picks up the mortar and pestle again and starts grinding. I watch, mulling over her words. If there are such things as free colonies, I need to know about them. When I find Auntie and figure out a way to break out of here, I’ll have a place to take her. Then I can go after Clay and Ethan.

Thinking about them forms a lump in my throat so big I can barely swallow. Tears prick at my eyes and I rub at them with my tired, dirty hands. I turn my thoughts to Bukowski and his beatin’ stick. The thought of me using it on him is enough to quell my sadness for a moment.

Like I’ve summoned him with my thoughts, Bukowski strolls in, twirling his baton. He walks over to us and produces a set of keys. When he unlocks my wrists, the sudden impulse to bolt out the door swells big as a tick on a dog. But that’d be stupid. I’d be shot before I even made it to the wall.

He unlocks Nada, who keeps her head down. Then he points to the open doorway. “March,” he says. “Let’s go, dummies.”

Nada starts walking and I follow. “We gonna eat?” I ask.

The guard jabs my shoulder with his baton again. “Did I say talk, idiot? Or are you mentally challenged? Don’t understand
Eng
-lish?” He enunciates the word, smirking.

I
hate
Bukowski.

We walk through the sweltering, dusty courtyard toward the back wall. A smaller warehouse has been converted into a cafeteria. Benders sit on the floor or in plastic chairs. They eat gray slop out of bowls with spoons or their fingers. My stomach growls, but what they’re eating, a mixture that looks like wet cement, does not look appetizing. I remind myself that I have to eat to keep up my strength.

Bukowski herds us to the front of the small cafeteria and up to a serving window. Two men in messy cook aprons wait for us with bowls. I accept mine and realize its cold. Whatever we’re eating either hasn’t been cooked or was cooked long ago. I flick a glance at Nada to see her reaction to the food, but her face is as expressionless as a corpse’s.

We’re shuffled into a corner and told to sit on the concrete floor. I fold into the floor, my legs grateful for a rest. It’s been a while since I did hard labor. The last time was in the garage with Rayburn and the grease monkeys at the mall. Another pang of loss and guilt hits me. Rayburn. He rests on the hill beside my Mama. How can so many people I love be dead?

Nada has begun eating and hasn’t dropped dead yet, so I try a trembling bite of gray goop. The texture is exactly like wet cement to be, but the taste isn’t…terrible. Something like oats and honey and flour. I chew slowly and swallow, the lump moving thickly down my throat.

“Eat up. Some days we only get one meal. Tastes like dirt, but it fills your belly.” Nada speaks through a mouthful of slop.

“Full belly’s nothing to sniff at,” I say, scanning the cafeteria. I wasn’t expecting to see Auntie Bell, but I am disappointed when there’s no sign. “Hey, you wouldn’t know what they’d do with an old woman, would you?”

Nada raises curious eyes to my face. “No. Why?”

I shrug, not sure if I can trust her.

Nada acts like she’ll probe further, but then her eyes are drawn to the figure striding in the open doorway. Doc walks in, looking fresh in clean jeans, a fitted blue T-shirt, and boots. His hair is damp and combed back from his forehead, giving him a fresh out-of-the-shower appearance that makes me crave the feel of water running over my skin. Seeing him makes that angry fire rekindle in my belly. I could take a swing at him right here, but it’s a terrible idea. Still, my fists ache to connect with his face. I take a drink of water to quell the feeling.

Doc walks past the guards with a nod and heads our way. When he reaches us, he squats down in front of Nada, one palm to the concrete floor. Nada looks around nervously.

“It’s okay,” Doc says, his face soothing in its calmness. “They know it’s you. There’ll be no further punishment other than powder duty. And I’ll try to get that down to a week, max.”

Nada licks her busted lip. “So, I did this to myself for no reason?”

Doc shakes his head in frustration. He glances around the cafeteria to make sure there are no guards nearby and speaks in hushed tones. “I never told you to bust up your own face. What I did tell you was not to run, but you did it anyway. What d’you want me to do, Nada? Anyone else, they’d just take you out back and shoot you.”

There’s anger in his voice and a flush in his cheeks. Nada glowers from her place on the floor and they’re silent for a while. Finally, Doc seems to remember I’m there. He looks me over, a frown creasing his brow.

“You all right?” he asks.

I scoff. “Beaten bloody, thanks, but maybe that’s what passes for a warm welcome ’round here.”

Doc puts on an apologetic look that I am sure is for show. “I had to,” he whispers, looking around again. “They can’t think I’m favoring you. We took so long in that office there was no other option.”

“How about,” I say leaning in, “you took your sweet-ass time? How about you weren’t feeling well?” My spit flies in his face, but I don’t care. “No, you go with beating. Thanks,” I hiss, “for the help.”

His eyes flood with shame, but I don’t feel sorry for him. A guard swaggers our way and Doc Cretends to wipe something off his boot. When the guard is gone, his wet eyes search my face. Is he crying? I refuse to get all sappy for his obviously fake display of affection.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

I don’t say anything. Instead, I fold my arms over my chest like a barrier.

“What’s your name?” he repeats.

“Riley,” I hiss.

“I owe you a favor, Riley. Use it wisely. It’s a very valuable commodity around here.” He swallows hard. “Deal?”

I stare at his smooth, pale face. He looks genuinely sorry for what was done to me. I still don’t trust him, but what choice do I have?

“Be ready to pay up when I ask.”

He nods and there’s a hint of a smile. If I weren’t so mad at him, I’d think he was handsome. Not gorgeous like Clay, but almost…pretty. I stare down at my slop and wait for Doc to slink away.

There’s shuffling near the door and Doc stiffens. All heads turn. Chairs squawk against the concrete as everyone stands. Nada grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet.

“Get up!” she shrieks. “Hurry.”

“What?” I say, stumbling up. My spoon clatters to the floor. The room falls deathly silent. There’s a pounding in my chest, but I don’t know why. “What’s happening?” I whisper to Nada.

“It’s Lord Merek,” Nada says, her face white with fear. “He’s coming.”

My brain wakes, but my body don’t. For a moment that seems to stretch for eternity, I think I’m dead. Dead and gone to meet my pa wherever the end of the path may go. But then there are sounds and smells that seem…familiar. Where was I before I fell asleep? An image of that woman, smilin’ dangerously with a needle in her hand, comes swimmin’ to focus. Goddamn Nessa. She was gonna operate on me. The thought sends a wave of alarm blastin’ through my brain. My eyes flicker open.

A ceiling of white plaster, cracked and hastily repaired, floats above me. The room is small and hot; a monitor is beepin’ beside me. One fluorescent bulb flickers on the ceiling, givin’ the room an artificial glow. Slowly, I tilt my head. The door across from me is closed. Locked, too, by the look of it. I’m lyin’ in a bed and hooked up to a couple of hospital monitors and a bag of fluid on a silver pole. Other than that, the room is completely bare. No windows. No furniture. I’ve got no way of knowing where I am, how long I’ve been out, or what’s happened to me.

I really could kill Nessa. Squeeze her pale neck with my bare hands.

Speakin’ of hands, fresh pain pulses from my injured one. I try to flex it and more pain springs up, new and raw. What’d she do? I try to look, but can’t sit up. Something’s strapped across my chest, arms, and legs.