Beyond the Red (5 page)

Or at least, I won’t be there.

I’m not sure if I even believe the whole spirit thing—that by cremating the dead we’re doing anything more than turning their bodies to ash. But Nol and Esta sure did, and Day used to say it was a nice sentiment—that we were releasing our loved ones so they could watch over us from the unending expanse of night.
We’ll be with you
wherever the stars reach,
Esta told me once with the softest of smiles.

More than anything, I want to see the stars tonight and wish them well, but I doubt we’ll get out of this port before the suns rise.

Leaning my head against the cool wall, I fight the lump in my throat as I picture their faces. I see Esta’s smile, the laughing lines on Nol’s tan face, and the mischievous glint of Day’s eyes as I breathe their names to the ceiling.

“Go to the stars,” I whisper through the pain in my throat and the burning ache in my chest.

Go to the stars. I love you all.

It’s hard to sleep standing up, but eventually exhaustion wins over and I nod off. It’s not exactly a sound sleep—every turn and whisper startles me awake—but I do manage maybe an hour. Maybe less.

Regardless of how much sleep I actually get, all it manages to do is confuse my sense of time. I’m not sure how long we’ve been standing in this blazing port, but my legs ache and my head feels light and the pain constricting my neck is a vice of red-hot agony. It almost hurts worse than the actual strangling.

Eventually the port stops and the cabin falls quiet. One of the mothers starts sobbing and squeezes her young son tight to her chest, but otherwise the darkness is eerily silent. The murmur of voices slips through the walls, but their words are impossible to distinguish, especially as they’re speaking rapid Sephari. Most of the women and children here don’t speak Sephari. I learned it during my military training, all of our soldiers do, but otherwise it’s not a common tongue among our people. As useful as it is, it’s a dirty language. No one wants to be anything like a Sepharon. But now they’ll have to learn, and learn quickly.

The doors open and sunlight floods the cabin. My eyes water and adjust all too slowly, but thankfully I’m in the back. It’ll take time to get everyone out, and hopefully by the time it’s my turn, I’ll be able to see.

The soldiers are shouting and more people are crying now. Screams begin outside and I don’t have to see to know what’s happening—they’re separating mothers from their children. My stomach twists. I wish I could do something, I wish I could stop this somehow. But standing here cuffed in the back of a port—I’ve never been so powerless. Thank the stars Aren isn’t here.

These children will probably never see their mothers again, but at least Aren is safe with his.

When my turn comes, I step out of the port before someone can grab me, and a soldier beside me mutters, “
Vejla ora’jeve.
” Vejla greets you.

We’re in Vejla, the Eljan capital.

My moment of independence doesn’t last—I’ve barely stepped foot in the sand before a hand grips my arm and yanks me away from the rest of the crowd.

I recognize the dark, bearded soldier the queen called Jarek.

He doesn’t say a word, but he jerks me forward. My guess is he’d like me to fall so he’ll have an excuse to drag me, but I keep up despite my dizziness. The shouting dies away behind me as he pulls me onto the gleaming white street, then past the gate of the impossibly tall imported white sandstone wall surrounding the palace grounds.

Everything here is white and red. Endless red sands stretch far into the horizon. Strong, smooth white walls reach to the stars. Glistening white stone buildings shimmer different colors under the heat of the suns, all draped in red flags and banners with the Eljan insignia. Eljan citizens of all ages walk quickly down the streets, doing whatever they voiding do in the city, every adult marked with varying degrees of black unreadable text on their bodies. All the buildings have darkened windows and closed doors—the people here are just
so
friendly. Reflective black spheres the size of my fist zip in and out of the crowd, ducking around buildings and between heads. Paved white pathways wind between the buildings, around the wall, and into the palace complex, where I’m sure it’s even more disgustingly elaborate, but we’re not headed there.

Jarek pulls me behind a small building just out of earshot from the port. There’s no one here, and there aren’t any windows on the back of the building that someone might peer out of.

It’s just me and a soldier who stands head and shoulders above me—a mountain of ridiculous, dark, tanned muscle that the Sepharon soldiers are so well known for. And I’m handcuffed.

It’s obvious why I’m here, but at least I won’t go down quietly.

“I take it these aren’t part of your orders,” I say in Sephari.

If he’s surprised I can speak their language, he doesn’t show it. Instead he shoves his forearm into my throat and slams me against the building. Pain ricochets into my skull and heat gushes out of the side of my neck where the knife was earlier this morning. I blink back tears and take short breaths through my nose—he hasn’t cut off my airway. At least not yet.

“
Ken Avra
may have ordered you alive, boy, but in the name of
Kala,
I will make sure you pay for the lives of my men,” he hisses. His breath rolls hot over my face and smells like meat and some kinduv fruity brew. “Starting now.”

“Do you require assistance?”

Jarek freezes. My mouth has been known to get me in trouble, but the question definitely didn’t come from me. A low whirring noise fills the air as a black orb hovers over Jarek’s left shoulder, spinning slowly in the air.

“Do you require assistance?” it chirps again. Not sure if it’s talking to him or me, but I don’t dare answer—any “assistance” would probably involve more Sepharon soldiers and major retribution from a fuming Jarek. I almost want to laugh, but somehow I don’t think it’d improve his mood. Plus it’d probably hurt like prickleplant venom.

“
Naï
,” Jarek snaps, swatting at the thing. “Get away from here.”

It dodges his hand and races away.

Jarek releases me and I try to duck out of the way, but his hand grabs my shoulder and his other fist finds my jaw, then stomach, then nose. I drop to my knees, gasping for air, but he yanks me to my feet again and shoves me back toward the port. “You should be more careful,” he mutters to my back. “Another fall like that may very well kill you.”

My stomach is aching, my head is pounding, my face is burning, and my lips are sticky and salty. But there’s little I can do like this, so I walk in silence back to the line of weeping, cuffed women. The kids are gone now.

Jarek shoves me to the back of the line and nods to his soldiers, who lead us forward onto palace grounds.

Those who aren’t crying stare in awe at the grounds—at the fountains glistening with jewels, the thin white trees with glimmering silver leaves reaching toward the clear purple sky, the stark white pathways cutting through the crimson sand. In another situation, when I didn’t feel lightheaded and vaguely like throwing up, and I didn’t have blood pouring down my face, I may have appreciated the landscape. I mean, most of us have never seen anything but waves of endless sand, so the complex is impressive.

But as the red gates close off the walls behind us, I can’t help but think we’re walking through an elaborate prison.

They lead us around the side of the main building—a glittering white palace with tall, twisting spires and nearly as many windows as there are white bricks—and past several smaller, but equally extravagant buildings. We stop before a long squat building bordering the far end of the wall. There aren’t any windows.

The women go quiet as we’re led inside. Cold tile nips the pads of my feet and frigid air blasts around us—they have a cooling system, I guess, except it’s on way too high. The building itself looks like an enormous tiled hallway with rows of metal doors. A person stands beside each door, still and silent as stone. Their silence isn’t what sends a chill over my skin—it’s their appearance. Their heads are shaved, their eyes are a clouded gray, and their skin is so white, I’m sure it must be painted or powdered over with something.

Then there are the tattoos. They all wear the same matching black bands of illegible, circle-like text on their arms. Signs of slavery.

They wear the same white knee-length skirt and the women have their chests wrapped in some sortuv white silk cloth. Are they clones? No, there are differences in their facial features and slight variations in height and build. They aren’t clones, but they’re made to look like them.

This is what we will become. This is what they will turn us into—hollow, nameless copies. We lose more than our families, our homes, our freedom.

We lose our individuality. We lose ourselves.

I linger in front of the room for just a mo, making eye contact with the servant across the way. His stare is expressionless. Have the nanites that clouded his eyes made him blind, too?

Then a soldier gives me a shove and I stumble inside.

The door slams shut behind me. The lights are brighter in here, and the artificial whiteness makes us all look two shades too pale. There are three chairs at the front of the room with three metal bins of some sort beside them. A larger container is in the center of the room, and on the west wall is another door.

The cuffs demagnetize as Jarek steps to the front of the room—I’m not sure if he deactivated them or if someone else did, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Most of the women have stopped crying now, so he doesn’t need to do anything to make sure he’s the center of attention—no one utters a sound.

“Take off all of your clothing, handcuffs included, and place it in the bin in the center of the room.” He points to the bin. “After you have undressed, stand against the walls. Anyone who disobeys will be punished severely.” No one moves, and he scowls. “Begin.”

Still, no one makes any immediate movements. The women glance at each other and a couple whisper, but no one is undressing.

And then it hits me—they don’t understand him.

Jarek pulls out a red-barreled phaser and shoots the woman nearest him in the forehead. She drops like a rock and the women all scream. “Silence!” he shouts, but his voice is lost in the hysteria. He points the phaser at another woman and I shove my way to the front of the room.

“WAIT!”

Jarek’s eyes narrow as I step in front of the targeted woman. “If you think I won’t shoot you, half-blood, just because—”

“They don’t understand you,” I say. “They don’t speak Sephari.”

“You speak it well enough.”

“I was taught, but I’m an exception. Most of my people are not.”

He scowls. “Then they’ll learn quickly enough.”

“Just let me translate. No one else has to die—I’ll explain.”

He hesitates, then nods and lowers the phaser. “Instruct them incorrectly and you won’t be the only one to suffer.” He gestures toward the dead woman with the phaser.

I grimace and face the women. I don’t like standing up here, like their spokesperson. I don’t like the dirty looks and the glares—if they didn’t see me as a traitor before, they do now.

I take a breath. “We have to obey him, or he’ll kill us.”

Silence. How can I put this delicately? There’s really no safe way to tell a room full of women to strip naked, so I point to the bin in the center of the room. “He says we need to put our clothes and handcuffs in there.”

Uncomfortable understanding passes through them like a rolling sandstorm. I half expect them to resist or argue—our women are not known for being docile—but after more than a couple of glances at the dead woman on the floor, the first few begin to pull off their clothes. Then others follow.

I glance at Jarek, and he nods once. Then he gives me a pointed stare and nods to the bin and—oh. Right.

I’m not exempt from this order.

I’m already shirtless, so I start with the cold cuffs around my wrists. They pop off at my touch and clatter on the tile. Then I move on to the scarf tied tightly around my neck. It’s stiff in some places and so soaked in others that my fingers come off a deep purple-red just brushing past it. My muscles ache as I gingerly unwrap the scarf and bundle it into a ball, but I don’t feel a rush of warmth down the side of my neck, so at least I won’t bleed to death. I slip out of my pants and toss the clothes into the bin in the center of the room, trying not to feel self-conscious.

Of course, when you’re the only naked guy in a room of naked women and clothed Sepharon soldiers, it’s a little hard not to feel every glance. And I do get glances—from the women, mostly. One stares at me openly, which is awkward, but most turn away—though whether in disgust, modesty, or embarrassment, I’m not sure. Some of the guards give me disgusted looks, but that probably has more to do with the faded light lines mapping my body than my stuff. I think.

I stand at the front and face Jarek with my shoulders pulled back and my eyes boring into his. He smirks and I keep my face expressionless. This may be uncomfortable, but I won’t let him see just how much I’d like to reach into that bin and put my pants back on.