Escape (Alliance Book 1) (6 page)

"I need to know something. Something I can't make sense of. Why did it hurt you so badly when I was just washing your back? It was worse for you than the stitching. I could feel it, you going rigid, not breathing. You did that before too. I need to know what I did wrong, or whatever it is that happens to you when you stop breathing like that. It just doesn't make any kind of sense..." She was looking at his face now, trying to read him.

How do you explain something like that to a frightened little girl that you've already made cry twice and you'd only just met her? How do you tell someone so safe and sheltered that the washing made you feel like a little kid again, a happy little kid who still hadn't lost anybody? He didn't know how to do that. He could have maybe explained it to Brody, and he would have nodded in that way he had, to show he was listening and that he got you, and then he'd let you be. Brody would know how to explain it to her or to anybody. He always knew just how to say something, but Brody, too, was gone.

So he let her stare at him, for as long as she needed to, and it hurt, that look of hers, the needing to know, and then simply shook his head. He was ready for the rest of it now. He wanted her gone, as quickly as he could make her go. He walked over and sat in the chair again, nodding to her that he was ready if she was, grabbed onto the back with everything he had, and closed his eyes.

The loft was completely dark when he woke up. The sliver of the window that he could see from his bed was black. It was definitely night. He didn't remember getting into bed or even making the bed. Somehow this wisp of a girl must have done this. He was lying on his stomach under a pile of blankets, his head on a clean-smelling pillow. He was barefoot, and apparently only wearing his boxer shorts. His jeans, socks and shoes were missing. He half-expected the lights to suddenly come on and to be staring into the smiling face of Hassinger. He waited for the fear to pass, listening for any human presence but his own. He was definitely alone.

He spotted a candle on the shelf and a small book of matches. The girl must have put them there. It was safer than turning the lights on at night. He lit it, inhaling some ancient aroma, something he couldn't quite place. Of course they would have scented candles in this wife-making factory, he thought, without humor. Rosemary, he was smelling rosemary. For the first time in over ten years he was smelling a piece of his mother's garden. And for the first time in just as long he couldn't hold it all in anymore.

He snuffed out the candle with his fingers, crawled into bed and cried silently into his pillow. He lay there for a long time, tears soaking into the fabric, dark splotches on white, counting, as was his habit when nothing else made sense. 23 dark spots. 44. 82. 110.

These girls all looked almost alike. Every one that she saw had the same large, blue-gray eyes, light hair, fair skin, as if they had never been outside at all. But they seemed carefree enough, normal for their age. Blabbering about whatever it was that girls that age giggled over, or cried over when no one was looking. She wished she was better at remembering the faces of people who never spoke to her. People she didn't know. That way she could tell if something changed. But she wasn't, and there was no point in dwelling on it.

This wasn't so bad. The slave band would come off in another week or so, if she kept to her tasks without complaining. That was one of the first things they told her when they took her voice away, to never complain, no matter what. She found it ironic then. In a way, she still did, only now she missed the intimacy of conversation. She missed being able to respond to someone, no matter how trivial the question. And she missed her singing. The old songs, mother's. It was one of the few bridges she still had to the little shack with its unfortunate people, and its unfortunate never-quite-making-it plants. The smell of father's pipe in the kitchen mingling with too much rosemary or mint. She preferred the smokiness of the tobacco. It seemed so full of secrets, the blue clouds twirling their scented way to the roof and out through that unfixable bit.

And Samson, with his bad breath, licking her hands, her face, anything his tongue could reach depending on how she was sitting. She missed talking to him in that way she had where he'd calm down and just curl up on top of her feet, keeping them soft and warm. Riley she never thought about. That would be too much. Too much to bear just yet. She let all these years slide by without mentioning him to anyone, not once, not since she was taken. She felt he had a better chance of being safe out there if he had no part in her thoughts.

She swept the already clean tile floor, closing up for the night. She dusted all the desks, deliberately not thinking of where he was now or if. She washed the windows, pushing all thoughts of Riley out of her head. Mom and dad and Samson remembering was somehow different. She could think about them and miss them and wish she could see them again. But they were gone. She didn't know if Riley, who smelled like tea and the sugarless mint cookies mother baked, Riley who liked to stare into the souls of bugs, she didn't know if he was gone.

She heard her before she saw her, one of the little wives in the making, standing there, timidly knocking on the glass door. Nobody ever came here in the middle of the night, as far as she knew. Something must have happened she didn't know about. They usually were the last to know about anything, and even then, it was by overhearing whispers and notes hastily scribbled and passed around the maid quarters. The girl meant business, as she kept knocking. She might as well let her in then.

She picked up the key and pressed the button, and the girl came inside. She was a tiny looking thing, like all of them. It didn't make any sense that they'd choose such fragile creatures for making babies, but they did. The girl stared at her, as if she'd seen a dead person or insides of a bird for the first time. Something shocking enough for the two huge eyes to stare at her in that way.

"Uhmmm, I need some pain meds and some HealX. My friend has this cut on her arm, and it looks infected, but she doesn't want to lose her chance at the selection, with it being so close... Can you please help?" Her voice sounded kind and full of concern, but she was a lousy liar. She blushed at her own words, looking down, afraid to get caught.

She grabbed a med pad, and in her still neat handwriting jotted down, "What's your friend's name?" She passed her the note, looking at her face, reading her. Confusion, thinking, trying her best to figure out a way out of this. Then, shaking her head, "I can't tell you that. Will you help me?" There was a genuine plea in her voice. And she didn't want to lie to her again, that much was clear.

Whoever it was likely had a lot more than a cut on her arm, but for some reason couldn't go to the med floor during the day, when the doctor was here. She knew she would help her from the first, but something about this girl being here didn't feel right. Something about her felt too desperate. Barging into the med floor in the middle of the night was far too risky for someone who only thinks via that implant they all had and who has been a wife in waiting her whole life.

The girl was still staring at her, "What is your name? I don't know if you have one now, but I imagine you were born with one. Will you tell me?" she asked in a small voice.

Nobody ever asked them their names, for what was the point. They were mutes, and asking them anything really was a waste of effort. And even before they took her voice, no one addressed slaves by their names, there was no need. It's been so long since she had heard her name spoken by anyone, she wasn't sure she still liked the sound of it. "Ella," she jotted down quickly on the pad and handed it to the girl. The girl spoke it back to her, smiling. Ella knew she would give her the meds long before this, when she told her that ridiculous story about her friend, but this, her speaking her name like that, it made her want to hurry up and be rid of the girl. She was making her think about things she didn't want to think about. About Riley, and the warmness of Samson, and the blue smoke of father's pipe.

She raced to the back and put together a temp kit of pain meds, HealX and as many bandages as she could steal without it being noticed. She handed it to the girl with a nod to take it and run to whoever was in trouble, before anyone stumbled on them here. But the girl didn't run. She kept looking her over, as if maybe she'd known her in a past life or something. It was getting unnerving, being stared at like that, but she knew the girl meant her no harm. There was something there, in that look. Recognition. But she didn't know her. She didn't know any fair headed fair eyed people but Brody, and Brody was gone.

She picked up the key and pointed it at the door, as good a sign as any that she needed to leave, but the girl didn't move. Instead, she ran up to the desk she was standing behind, and said, "Riley... That's the name of my friend," and then she ran with her kit through the door, too fast for someone without a voice to stop her.

She plunked down in the chair. She wanted to run after the girl and ask her, ask her everything. The girl knew her Riley. He could be here somewhere, hiding in this giant compound, injured. She could help him. She was trained in this sort of thing. Nothing scared her anymore, not even someone's insides spilling out of their belly. She could certainly take anything that just called for some pain meds and a tube of HealX.

But the girl was long gone, and she was still wearing her slave-band, so she couldn't get very far within the compound without them knowing where she was. Even if she were lucky enough to find the girl again, to recognize her amidst so many girls that looked just like her, she'd never get away with it. And if she was his friend, and he was actually here, she might put him in danger. The girl. She will tell him. She looked around her desk, just now realizing that the pad she wrote her name on was gone. She took a bit of her with her, her handwriting. But Riley wouldn't know her handwriting now, if he ever knew it at all. He was far too young to worry about those things then. Far too young to worry about anything. But worry he did.

The day Brody's parents were gone, he insisted they walk every block of every street in Waller, looking for them. He'd walk into the shops and the pubs and abandoned apartment buildings. He'd ask total strangers if they'd seen his friend's parents, just like that, "Excuse me, but have you seen my friend's parents anywhere? We are looking for them now. So if you see them, please tell them to come home. My friend's name is Brody. Thank you. Thank you so much." He did it for days, and she tagged along. She had to. It was too heartbreaking for him to do it alone, and Brody wouldn't talk to anybody then. He stayed locked up in his room, letting nobody in, not even Riley. He knew they were gone. At the age of six, that kid just knew. And it damn near killed him.

Nobody could get him out of that room, until that uncle of his showed up and didn't ask him anything. He just packed up his stuff and moved him, just like that. And then Brody was Brody again, only his wisecracks had malice in them at times. She'd hear him say something truly mean and cringe, but she couldn't chide him. The kind of mean she thought he was when he made Riley cry like that when he brought him that bug he killed...

She'd heard rumors a few years ago that he went to some big city on one of the few X-planes that still flew. He saved and then sold everything he could to get on it, and when he got to where he was going, he rented a room, and shot himself through the head. She never believed it. She didn't think Riley ever believed it either, but that's what they said about Brody. And if he had done that thing, with Riley hurting so bad, she'd never forgive him.

The girl brought all her Riley memories flooding in. But she also brought hope, hope that Riley was still alive and close by, close enough for the girl to know him. And these girls didn't get to know boys until after the selection, which was still 62 days away. Those boys, too, wouldn't be Zorin-born. They'd be fair-headed, light-eyed boys that never quite seemed to grow enough hair on their chests to turn into men. And then it hit her, the thing that she should have thought of so much earlier... Drake. Drake was guarding the damned compound. He'd know. He was a mute too now, if he was here, but it didn't matter. If her Riley was here, Drake would know.

She put what little dust she collected off the floors in the chute, locked up the cleaning supplies, and ran from the room to the guard tower, making sure she stayed in the shadows of the wall. She couldn't risk it now. She had to be careful, and so she was.

The light in the cabin at the top was out. Drake was likely asleep at his post, not an uncommon thing for him to be doing in the middle of the night. She climbed, ignoring the sick feeling in the pit of her belly, daring herself not to look down. She forgot the whole fear of heights thing, but there was no other way to get to Drake's. If nothing else, she'd know the girl was lying for some reason, and she wouldn't have to worry about it so much anymore. She would go back to this life she was now inhabiting, not quite hers, but not as terrible as some had it outside these walls.

She made it to the door, still not looking down, and knocked, not too timidly. She had to wake him up. He owed her at least that for letting him cheat on his exams and for telling everyone in school to lay off of him. And the damn kitten that she had to pull off his roof and make pretend he did it, because she didn't want them to keep picking on him. Drake was far too nice and far too easy to pick on. The door swung open just enough for her to see two sleepy brown eyes staring at her, and immediately swung all the way open. He knew her. That was a start at least.

"You've come about Riley?" He didn't mime it or write it down. He said it, just like that. She knew she was staring at him. But this, this didn't make any sense. Everyone working at the compound but the essentials were mute. Everybody knew that. They sat you down in this white room, strapped you in and talked the speech right out of your voice box. They talked you to sleep and you couldn't fight it, and so you went to sleep with your voice and woke up without it. Just like that. It only took a few minutes for them to do it, too. They were all about efficiency with non-essentials. Yet, he just spoke to her. Asking her something. Something about Riley.

She looked about frantically. She needed a piece of paper and a pen or anything really to write with. She didn't think to bring one of the pads from the med floor. She hoped Drake had something. He did. "Is he here? Is he injured?" She handed the crumpled up sheet back to him.

"He came looking for you a few days ago. Hassinger got him. She hurt him, Ella. I'm so sorry, but she did, and I couldn't stop it. And then he ran, back outside the wall. He had to, but he meant to come back for you. He will come back for you."

She grabbed the paper from him again, "A girl came to see me seeking HealX and pain meds. She said it was for Riley. If he is back here already, where would he hide? Where would you hide?" She shoved it at him, impatient with her inability to speak getting the better of her. She needed to calm down. Drake was a friend. An old friend.

"I'm not sure, El. The library or the loft. Nobody here ever uses either. The loft would be better to hide in, it's higher than anything else here but the roof. But I don't think he is back. I would have seen him coming over the wall. He would have needed my help to do it. They will kill you if you aren't where you are supposed to be. Your being here now isn't so smart. These things, the bands, they track you. I'll go looking for him, but you can't, not yet, not until the band is off. Please..."

For such a big man, he sounded like a pleading child. Or maybe he really cared about what happened to her. She wished she had that gift - to care about what happened to her - but she lost it years ago. Riley, him she could wrap all her caring around. She could spend every moment of every day looking for him. She could find the girl again, maybe. She had to. She looked at her old friend. He was shaking his head, in that way he used to as a kid, when he didn't want the kids to ruin his screens that had his lessons on them. He'd shake his head, slowly, smiling at them, and they'd do it anyway. They'd stomp on his stuff, grinding the thin glass into the coal dusted street, sneering at him. She didn't want to do that to him. To make him feel like that again. So she nodded, and then walked over and wrapped her hands around his neck, wishing she didn't have the band on and could hug him properly, waited for him to register that she understood, and that she will wait, and left.