Red Fox (17 page)

The man Jacob holds his hand out towards me, and I gingerly reach out and shake it. He is a reasonably attractive man but plain-looking at the same time; there are no features that would make him stand out to me in a crowd. He looks like he might have been in the army, judging by his close-shaven head and the muscles bulging in his arms. Madison, on the other hand, is anything but plain. She is very slender and her long red-brown hair is flecked with strands that look like pure sunlight. She has fair, flawless skin and big, bright green eyes. She looks like she could have been a model when commercialism had still existed.

“I’m Freya,” I tell the pair through a mouthful. I swallow and manage a small smile.

“I’m sure Isobelle’s given you a bit of a rundown,” Madison says, touching my young roommate on the shoulder fondly. “But let me make it simple for you. Everyone here is okay except for Felix, over there.”

Discretely, she nods towards the opposite end of the table where a tall, lanky, yet obviously powerful man sits. He has mousy brown hair and very dark, almost black, eyes. His lean arms are folded over his chest and a hard, steely expression on his pointed, rat-like face. Two women sit beside him and look at him with big, gooey eyes like he is some sort of God. I cannot imagine anyone less Godly than the gangly, haughty man I see.

As if he feels me watching, his shadowy eyes dart to mine and a chill steals over my body. We hold one another’s gaze for a long time and I feel understanding course between us. Not the comforting understanding Whil and I had while in the Alps together; when we knew we were both trapped and needed one another. This understanding I have with Felix is a completely different sensation and it frightens me. I know instantly to stay away from him and his glassy stare says,
watch your back
. I look down at my food, feeling a rash of goosebumps course over my body. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so immediately intimidated by someone.

“Stay away from him, Freya. The two girls sitting beside him aren’t friendly, but they won’t hurt you. Felix will. He’s exactly what these people want in a B. Aggressive and forceful. We haven’t seen him do anything bad yet but he will when he gets,” she shrugs, unable to say the words, “you know.”

“Hmm,” I say, unimpressed. “He’d be in prison if we lived in our old world.”

“Better get used to it,” Madison says with a shrug. “Jacob here protects us but there is only so much he will be able to do eventually.”

“I thought there would be more men here. You’d think they would have higher adrenalin levels than females,” I say.

Madison purses her lips. “There were more. There were too many. They don’t want people pairing up into couples so they chose a select few males with particular traits: muscles, strength, energy, a sharp mind, and a keen eye. The others got sent to the As. Men can’t birth children and so they aren’t as useful as women in a facility like this.”

Jacob looks grave as we finish breakfast. He doesn’t talk while Madison, Isobelle and I discuss what our lives were once like. He seems very shy, not at all how I expected a male B to behave. My suspicions were spot-on: Madison was a model and she tells me Jacob was in the army. They had been dating and although separated when chosen for the Bs, they were both reunited in Facility One just a week ago. Isobelle doesn’t say much about her experiences in her arena, she just adds little comments here and there, so she isn’t forgotten in the conversation.

“So why did you get here so late?” Madison asks me, offering me some more bacon and helping herself to some. “The rest of us got here nearly a week ago.”

“I got out of my survival ring,” I admit. “The guards had to track me down. Plus, it sounds like you guys had rings that were close by your hometowns. Mine took a couple of days to travel to.”

“You got out?” Isobelle squeaks. “That’s amazin’.”

“Wasn’t hard,” I say dismissively but if it weren’t for Whil I would have remained in the ring. For some reason, I don’t want to mention Whil to these people just yet. “So, where are we anyway? Where is this Bs compound located?”

“We don’t know. We don’t get told those sorts of things,” Madison admits.

“The air is dry. We must be inland. A desert, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Madison says with a shrug, and I quickly realise she has little intention of escaping the compound. I want to know where we are and what my chances of survival are outside.

The food tastes so good and makes my stomach gurgle noisily. Even though I could eat twice as much, I eat only enough to fill my stomach and then stop, unlike the other people around the table who have a three-course breakfast. How can the managers of this facility set out such huge portions of food when people in my old town are dying of starvation? Didn’t the people at this table have people in their community dying from malnourishment too? Why do they just scoff down the food like it’s endless when others die because they have nothing to eat?

Ten minutes later, when everyone has finished, some people dressed in grey clothes come in and begin clearing the dishes away. I watch them carefully. They’re all armed but really unable to use their pistols because they each wheel around an aluminium bench to stack the dirty dishes on. When they disperse, leaving a perfectly clean kitchen, Warden enters the room and stands by the door.

17.

My back gives a blister of pain when I see her, as if my body is sending me a reminder to not get in her way. Everyone moves away from the kitchen counter and lines up in front of her like soldiers. I hang back, unable to bring myself to bow to her authority despite all she has done to train me to do otherwise. Yes, perhaps she got me out of the branding room before that brutish man could do anything horrendous to me, but she was the one who put me there in the first place, knowing the man was twisted in the head. She isn’t my master. I’m not her dog.

If she’s miffed by my lack of discipline, she doesn’t show it. Her attractive but pinched face is stern, and she takes a stance where her legs are set wide apart. I’m sure the men in this facility, minus Jacob who lingers beside Madison at every moment, are all wishing Warden were one of the Bs too. With all of the people lined up neatly, I see what a mixture we have. Isobelle is the youngest by far, and I’m probably the next eldest. Then there is a motley group of people, ranging from Madison’s mid-twenties to Felix, who can be no older than thirty-five. No one looks over forty, probably because the younger you are the better you conceive.

Now that I really look at my inmates, I notice they are extremely different in appearance but all have that same flare in their eyes that I see in my own: as if the colours within their iris’ are alive and flaming. We are the people of the country who would once have been successful and brilliant, always fighting to succeed and change the world; most of us for the better, but the swirling charcoal black in Felix’ eyes makes me think he would have changed it for the worst. I’m saddened to think that we’ve all been gathered and locked up when with our combined drive and passion, we could be a brilliant team.

Sneering, I sit at the table, chewing on the crust of my remaining toast as I wait for Warden to speak. I’d like to go back to bed and sleep away the events of the past twenty-four hours. But I think wandering off and locking myself in room three would get me in trouble. Warden has proved herself someone not worth defying. Not openly anyway.

“So, my Bs,” she says, clapping her hands together in delight. “Our final additions arrived this morning.”

Madison, Jacob, and Isobelle all turn to look at me with confused expression. The last
additions
arrived today. They’re wondering who the other B is if I am alone. I try to hide the hurt on my face and look into my empty juice glass. It feels like Warden said it specifically to upset me.

“Now that we are all here, I see no reason for hesitation. If we don’t start getting results within the next week, and we
will
know if we are getting results or not, there will be trouble. We have given you a beautiful facility with the freedom to do as you please…”

Yes, freedom so long as we stay inside the walls and do exactly as we are told.

“…So we expect you to help us in return. You all know why you are here. You are here to breed and to create a new race of human beings who can survive on their own in the wild, who are both cunning and wild just as nature intended. We’ve given you the choice to do this naturally, but if it doesn’t begin to happen soon, we have other means of doing so. We have the technology and facilities here to do artificial insemination, and we will do that by the month’s end if you lot aren’t trying to conceive. I suggest you find someone you get along with and get it out of the way. Put your relationships aside,” Warden casts a look between Madison and Jacob, and then her eyes land on me, “Forget about your old loves. You’re here for one purpose only. I’ve told those here before that Isobelle Chasing is not to be touched by any man yet. She is too young, and she is here simply so she bond with you and learns your ways. When she’s had her first blood, then she will be ready. Any questions?”

Every hand in the room goes up, including mine. Warden scowls. “Madison?”

“How long are we expected to do this?” she asks. “To stay locked up here and have children?”

“Well, that depends on you and how quickly you get started. Obviously AI or test tube babies would be a much faster and, in some ways, more pleasant for all of you, but it defeats the purpose of having infants that are natural and wild. We can’t claim to have children that are of nature if they were produced thanks to lab equipment and technology. We require at least one hundred healthy human babies. If each woman in this facility and each woman in Facility Two have five children each, we will have one hundred and twenty. We expect around ten percent will be unsuitable: stillborn, or born with undesirable illnesses or disabilities, so that will give us one hundred and eight useable infants. With some extra numbers, we can take our pick of which we want. So to answer your question, Madison, five babies. Have five children and you can leave.”

“Five?” Madison shouts in disbelief.

My jaw drops open too, but due to a different form of disbelief. I had honestly expected to be locked up in this place until I was a sixty-year-old woman who could no longer reproduce. I could have five children in five years and be free, but Madison seems appalled by the figure. Of course, being forced to give birth and then having to leave those children behind is beyond cruel, but something inside me says if I were to have a child in this facility, sired by a man I hardly know, I would care very little for the youngster. I would happily walk free after rearing baby number five. I glance at those around me and they are murmuring and exchanging dark looks, but they don’t look particularly unhappy. Perhaps they think birthing five children is reasonable compared to our assumed thirty or forty.

“Five children to each woman?” Madison demands. “That’s ridiculous!”

“Be grateful, Madison! Five isn’t many at all. We would have had more if we could but the compound doctor feels it would be too much of a strain on the mothers to have more than that, and we do want you to be able to leave and continue spreading your genes throughout the As population as well. Next question!” Warden orders over Madison’s shouts of disapproval.

“What happens to us when we’re done here?” someone else asks.

“You’ll go to the A settlements around the country. To your families, if you wish. Where you can procreate with whomever you want. Next?”

“What’re the A settlements?” Isobelle asks in her tiny, piping voice.

“They are settlements where all of the As have been placed. Families are generally placed together. Every family is given a job to do based on their skills. Most people in the As were farmers or blacksmiths, people with useful jobs.

“Others who were perhaps doctors will be the settlement doctors but will use only natural medicines to fix patients. Anyone who wasn’t useful was obviously in D.” At this point, I wrinkle my nose and feel a horrible pang in my chest, as if someone has plucked a tendon of my heart. Does everyone here know what happened to the Ds—all of those innocent people who unfortunately had the wrong job, or faith in a deity, or were simply different to other human beings? Judging by the way everyone’s faces fall into grimaces of pain, they do know what became of the Ds, and they all had a loved someone who they were not able to protect. Just like me.

“The settlements will have their populations controlled,” Warden continues. “Selective people in the settlements have had a birth control shot that will prevent them from reproducing for some time. We have eradicated half of the country’s people and have the population at a good, world friendly level so we don’t need more than a minimal number of As being born. Questions?”

Most people’s hands have gone down now, their questions answered in Warden’s responses. Mine remains up.

“Walker?” Warden snorts.

“What are you going to do with the children we have?”

I don’t know why I care. If I’m going to be forced to have a child of a man I don’t even love, I don’t particularly want to keep it, but Warden looks as if this is a question she would rather have avoided.

“Well, we are going to take them, raise them, and train them in the arenas you were all tested in. There they will be trained to be the leaders of the settlements. They will teach people to be properly wild, without settlements, houses, or livestock. People will become hunters and foragers like they were meant to be.

The government debated long and hard about settlements, and whether we should just put people in the bush and expect them to live. They eventually figured that would more likely just kill everyone since the human race is useless at the moment. Our method of breeding leaders—alphas, as we call them—who are raised to live off the earth, is fool proof. They are bred to survive naturally, and then they will teach the rest of humanity to do the same. We want you to be like those Amazonian tribes you used to see on documentations on the Discovery Channel. Completely reliant on only the natural world, and completely oblivious to anything else.”

People aren’t listening to her anymore. Ever since she mentioned children being taken, the people around me started muttering and gasping.

“Quiet! Any more questions?”

“Y-you’re going to make us give birth to them, and then you’re going to… take them from us?” A woman in her mid-thirties asks, hand over her heart.

A couple of women look absolutely appalled and sick to their stomachs. Given their age, they may have already had children. They know the joys of raising a child; a normal child who loves them. Having new life you’ve carried for nine months snatched away as soon as it’s born… I can think of nothing more barbaric than what the Biocentrics want to do.

“That’s the only way. We know you will all just raise them to be normal children, as you were raised, and we don’t want that. Normal children are vulnerable and helpless, but these will not be like that.”

As a few women cry out in disgust, my mind reels back to something I learnt in my earlier schooling days during ancient history lessons. My class had been learning about Sparta, an ancient civilisation of warriors who were supposed to have an austere lifestyle and had no other goal except to grow soldiers for their army. The government in Sparta divided up the land equally between its people, just like our government had with the settlements. People were expected to work on farms and have useful skills—things like arts and crafts were supposedly not valued at all. And in Sparta there were a group of young men named the Krypteia, who were supposed to be ruthless killers. Most of the boys who joined the Kryptiea became leaders of Sparta later in life. And the Kryptiea group was invented so they could control the populations of the slaves in the area: or, in other words, the people in the A settlements.

“It’s Sparta,” I say, just loudly enough for people to hear me. I look at Warden through the faces that have turned to look at me curiously.

“Well, yes,” Warden says, looking at me with wide eyes. She seems impressed by my deduction and clears her throat before continuing. “Sparta was indeed our model civilisation.”

I shake my head with a bitter laugh. “Did your government never hear of the Spartan mirage? Sparta wasn’t really only focused on its military. Archaeologists found evidence everywhere to point towards them being cultured people.”

“Well, their culture isn’t really what we are interested in,” Warden says clinically. “Anyhow, that’s all for today. I’ll see you all within a week.” She gives a quick scan of our faces. “A week in which we expect compliance to our goals.”

With that Warden turns on her heel, exits, and locks the steel doors behind her. We all stare after her, unable to speak. It isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but in reality, being forced to mate, give birth, and have your child taken is still several years of emotional hell.

I know why Warden left so quickly. She left so that she wouldn’t have to answer the question one of us was bound to ask, the question that would surely cause a riot: What would happen to the ten percent of babies that were not suitable from the original crop of one hundred and twenty? In Sparta, they used to throw any weak or deformed babies off cliffs and train the strong infants to be killers. I won’t be hanging around to be impregnated just so my child can either be murdered or turned into a vicious monster. I’ll escape this place just like I did the first arena. But how? Without Whil it doesn’t even seem possible. And I can’t leave him here.

“Well, let’s get down to business then,” Felix says with a chuckle.

His two floosy sidekicks giggle like idiots while the rest of us move away from him, sneering. I give him a sidelong glare. What a sick a man…

Isobelle takes my hand. “I wanna show you outside!”

I just want to sleep and forget about all that has happened today, but the young girl leads me over to the wall of windows and opens a heavy sliding door. The warm breeze that blows across my face restores my spirits. Tingling warmth fills my body, and I close my eyes for a moment, reassuring myself that things will be okay. I inhale deeply but don’t recognise the dry, earthen smell of the air.

The courtyard outside the facility is more like a park. There is springy, soft green grass underfoot and rows of colourful flowers growing around a stone water fountain. A few wooden park benches sit around the yard, shaded by weeping willow trees, which have unfortunately grown well away from the ten-foot high, metal fence that encloses the area. The fence looks exactly like the one in the Alps but more formidable and the mesh is so tightly woven that I can’t see through to the other side. Even if one of the willows were to fall, they wouldn’t flatten it—the fence would hold its weight.