Enders (20 page)

Then I thought of Tyler, and my bravado melted. He would have Eugenia and a good life but zero family if he lost me. I had to find out what they wanted, find out if there was some way to negotiate for my safety. And for Michael’s and Hyden’s too.

The guard marched me down a hallway that had a projection of a rushing river and took me into a room that looked like a high-tech doctor’s office. A pine forest was projected on one wall, with birds flying through the trees. The guard sat me on an examining table and raised it with a foot pedal. The motor buzzed as I was elevated to the perfect height to be scrutinized.

A doctor entered. A short, plump Ender, he nodded solemnly to me.

“I’m just going to examine you.” He said it as if he needed my consent.

“And what if I say no?”

“I’m afraid that is not an option,” he said. “So can we proceed?”

“No. I refuse. I’m here because I’m being held prisoner.” I jiggled my cuffs. “You can see I’m handcuffed. But I’ve done nothing wrong.”

The doctor’s arms hung at his sides.

My voice softened to a plea. He might be the last reasonable person I encountered.

“Please do what’s right,” I said quietly. “Let me go.”

He exchanged a look with the guard. My words must have reached him. He had to see how wrong this was, holding me this way. He went over to her and whispered something. I hoped he’d asked her to undo my cuffs. They were so tight, and my arms ached from being forced in this position for so long.

Then they turned to me. The looks on their faces, those stone-cold expressions, were not ones of sympathy.

The guard held me down with all her strength.

“What’re you doing to me?” I screamed, struggling on the cold table.

The doctor had his back to me, but I could see that he was preparing an injection. He came over with a hypodermic syringe. The guard dug her bony fingers into my skin as the doctor stabbed my arm with the needle.

I dreamed of being back in my family home, the nice middle-class ranch house where my brother and I grew up. Tyler and I were in the living room, playing a silly card game on the floor, on a Saturday afternoon. It didn’t make sense, because he looked his present age. Then my father came into the room.

“Daddy?” I asked, surprised to see him.

“What, Cal Girl?” he said.

For some reason, he was wearing a black suit. Then my mother came in the room wearing a floaty evening gown and put her arm around his waist.

“Mom?” I said.

She cocked her head. “What, dear?”

“I thought you were both gone,” I said.

“No,” she said. “We’ve always been here.”

I awoke in a cramped room atop a thickly padded hospital bed. It reminded me of a baby’s crib. But instead of bars, I was encased on all sides with clear plexi walls.

Above me, stars twinkled. Projections. An illusion to calm? Or to confuse?

“She’s awake,” someone whispered.

I turned my head to the sound. A female guard was outside the room, her face bisected by the door.

An Ender wearing a tight, light-colored jumpsuit entered. In her hands, she held a small machine with a cord that she drew out and touched to my forehead, then my wrist, then my heart. It was then that I realized my wrists were bound to the bed with hospital restraints.

She checked her machine and seemed satisfied. She left without ever having met my gaze.

I turned my wrists and pulled on the cuffs to see if I could get out of them. Impossible. Panic crept in like water under a door. I twisted harder, but it just made my wrists raw.

Someone opened the door. This time it was Emma. The Ender guard remained in the hall as Emma entered and then shut the door.

She carried a shopping bag.

“Hi, Callie,” she said, all smiles and cheekbones.

“What do you want?” I didn’t trust her, but it wasn’t like I could get up and leave.

“I brought you a smoothie. Thought you’d like it.” She pulled it out of her bag. “Strawberry-banana.”

“I can’t hold it. If you untie me—”

“I’ll hold it for you.”

She came over to the bed and held the straw to my mouth. I wanted to refuse it, but I was so thirsty. And hungry. It flowed cold and sweet down my throat.

“Easy,” she said. “Not too much at once or you’ll choke.”

Emma looked a lot like her grandmother, up close. Helena must have looked like this when she was younger. That stately face, high cheekbones. Of course, Emma’s nose had been reduced at Prime.

She pulled back the smoothie cup while I swallowed.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

“What?”

“Act as the bait. You were the lure … for them.”

She looked down at the cup and fiddled with the straw. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said in a lowered voice. “They made me.”

“How?” I kept my voice low as well.

I wondered if she was being jacked right now. Could I trust what she said?

“They said they would hurt my grandmother if I didn’t do what they said,” she whispered.

“Your grandmother? Helena?”

“That’s right.” She winced, as if she couldn’t bear to think of Helena being hurt.

She pulled up a chair and sat with her legs crossed. I noticed she was wearing a large anklet, the latest style, her name in gold script around her ankle:

“That’s pretty,” I said, pointing to the anklet.

“Thank you. It was a gift from Grandma.”

I took a deep breath. Emma didn’t seem to know anything about me. She had no idea that her grandmother rented me to assassinate the senator. And when that didn’t work, her grandmother had come up with another plan: to find out what happened to her granddaughter. This seemed like a lot to unload on Emma. But she had to know the bottom line about Helena, especially since she was operating on the misconception that she could still save her.

This was, of course, if she was telling the truth.

“That must be your favorite piece of jewelry, that anklet,” I said. “What other kind of jewelry do you like?”

“Other jewelry?”

“Yeah, what do you wear, collect?”

“Lots of stuff. Pins. Things my mother gave me. Things my grandmother gave me. A charm bracelet that Doris gave me.”

I nodded. She wasn’t being jacked. This was the real Emma I was talking to. I’d seen the bracelet in her bedroom when I first went to Helena’s house, when I was a donor.

“I had one just like it,” I said. “From Doris too.”

“It was pretty.” A wistful look came over her face. “Wish I still had it.”

Her expression and the way she spoke made me aware something was wrong. She seemed off, the way people do when they’ve been kept captive for a long time. I’d seen that look in some of the institution girls—even in my friend Sara. Emma was submissive and dreamy, not fully present.

“Emma, when did these men get to you?”

“When?”

“You did the body bank rental; then what happened?”

“I couldn’t go home. Grandma would have been so angry. I couldn’t lie. She would have seen my makeover.”

“So you ran away?”

“With my friend Kevin.”

My focus sharpened. Kevin. That was the name of Lauren’s missing grandson.

“Did Kevin also go to Prime?

“Yes. He said he wanted the makeover, but I think he went there because I did. He liked me, but he wasn’t my boyfriend. We pooled our money from Prime. We were going to get an apartment.”

“But the man with the leopard tattoo found you?”

She nodded. “Dawson. He was the man who said he owned the apartment.”

“I see.”

“Kevin was supposed to meet me there, but he never showed up.”

I wondered if Brockman’s men found him. But she wasn’t ready to hear any of that.

“How long have you been with these people?” I asked. “Dawson’s people?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “What day is it?”

She was really out of it. She could have been here a week or a month.

“Emma, these ties are so tight. They hurt,” I whispered. “Could you just loosen them?”

The guard opened the door wider to let us know we weren’t alone. Emma glanced in the woman’s direction. She straightened.

“Callie, they need to perform some important tests on you.” Her voice was louder now.

She sounded like she’d rehearsed a speech. I let her go on.

“They are required of all of us. I went through them,” she said. “They’re fine.”

I could see in her eyes she was lying.

“Maybe for you,” I said. “But I’m not doing them.”

Her shoulders dropped. “Callie, please, listen to me. You have to; you really don’t have a choice.”

The leopard man—Dawson—came in the room.

“You can go, Emma,” he said.

He spoke sternly and firmly as though to a child. She looked afraid but didn’t move.

“Emma, go,” he said.

She took the drink with her and left. Dawson leaned on the wall of my bed, his white hair falling down around his shoulders like some evil wizard’s.

“So how do you feel?” he asked without a smile.

“How do you think I feel, tied up like this? Like an animal,” I said.

“If you agree to cooperate, we can release you. No shackles whatsoever. But you have to agree.”

“I want to be untied and set free. There’s nothing else I’ll agree to.”

He sighed and pressed a button. The walls of my bed slid down to the floor with a heavy
thunk
. No safety codes here. He pulled a large knife out of his pocket, flicked it open. The long blade gleamed in the light as he turned it. I tried not to flinch as he brought it closer.

He slipped the blade under my restraints and sawed through them until I was free. He pulled them away, closed the knife, and slid it in back into his pocket. I rubbed my sore wrists.

I got out of bed. I was still in my clothes.

“Where are my shoes?” I asked.

He grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me out of the room. Barefoot.

The guard followed us down the hallway. We came to a turn and he went right, dragging me roughly along the tiled floor. “You’re hurting me,” I said.

“Really? So sorry, Your Majesty.”

Muffled screams reached us as we approached the end of the hall.

I recognized the voice. Hyden.

Terror shot through me. “What are you doing to him?” I yelled, struggling to pull myself from Dawson’s grasp.

He gripped me harder and shoved me in front of a large window, pressing my face against the glass. Inside a room sat an enormous tube-shaped machine. A projection of a tranquil forest on the wall was in direct contrast to the violent scene being played out in front of it. Two Enders held on to Hyden’s arms as he tugged and twisted, trying to get away. A third Ender stood against the wall, watching. He had an amused look on his face, which disappeared as soon as he spotted Dawson.

This would have hurt anyone, but for Hyden, who felt pain just from touching, it must have been torture.

Dawson nodded curtly to the men. Instead of being more gentle with Hyden, they began to push him back and forth between them, as if they were tossing a ball. Hyden struggled to stay on his feet.

“Stop it! Stop them!” I pounded my palms on the glass. My insides were being twisted.

Sweat beaded on Hyden’s face, and his skin had never looked so pale. Dark circles ringed his eyes. Had he been beaten?

“You don’t understand. This could kill him,” I said.

“Only you can stop it,” Dawson said. “You know what I want to hear.”

Hyden fell, but the Enders caught him as he slumped and pulled him back up on his feet. They dragged him over to the window, right in front of me, and pressed his face flat against the glass.

“Hyden.” My heart felt like it was going to crack in half.

“I’ll do it,” I said to Dawson. “I’ll do your tests.”

Dawson smirked and nodded to the Enders behind the glass. They let go of Hyden. But he stayed against the glass, his hand moving up to match my palm.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN