The Hourglass (14 page)

The guard had
barely left Sarah’s side when the Queen’s subjugates came and collected her.
They led her over to the Queen’s table and then retreated to a distance where
they would have trouble overhearing what was said.

“Well,”
demanding the Queen, “any progress?”

“I have
confirmed that the safe is there,” offered Sarah.

“That’s it?”

Sarah wanted to
scream at her that the task was impossible. That she had picked the wrong
person, that she had never stolen anything in her life. Instead she said, “the
doctor practically never leaves his office and I have no idea what the code
it.”

“You’ll work it
out,” said the Queen, her eyes narrowed slightly. “You know the consequences if
you don’t. Three days.” She waved a hand in dismissal and Sarah left feeling hopeless. 

Marland and
April sat with her at dinner that night. They were particularly nice and stuck
to safe conversation. It was almost like they were treating her as if she was
on her deathbed.

Holden Dennings

She was unpacking
a box of bandages under the bored gaze of Talbot and Dalton when they brought
in the new patient. It was a boy, only about twelve, and he was carried in over
the shoulder of a guard before being unloaded onto one of the empty beds. He
was pale and sweaty and there were huge dark bags under his eyes. There was a
slight tremble to his hands, but Sarah wasn’t sure if that was because of the
sickness or because he was in the dreaded infirmary. The doctor sent the guard
away quickly this time. It was obvious, even with Sarah’s limited medical
knowledge, that this boy would be staying in the infirmary for a while. The
boy’s name turned out to be Holden Dennings, and he was twelve and a half. The
doctor took Holden’s vitals and then took some blood samples before attaching
him to an IV drip, running fluids into the boy’s veins. When he finished the
doctor pulled the curtains shut around Denning’s bed and ordered Talbot, Dalton
and Sarah to stay away from him. He was not to be disturbed. He could, said the
doctor, be contagious. Sarah wanted to ask what from, but she figured that
wasn’t the point. The boy was to be left alone. Much to Sarah’s frustration the
doctor then disappeared into his office and settled in, presumably to run tests
on the blood samples he had taken. She had been hoping that he would have had a
separate place where he would do those things, like a lab somewhere. Marland
had mentioned something the night before about people getting their passwords
and codes from their surroundings, and while she doubted that the doctor would
leave the code out there in the open, she didn’t have any better ideas. Besides
some barcodes and dosage numbers on jars of medications, there were no numbers
that she could find in the patient area of the infirmary. If she wanted clues,
she would have to get inside his office. It made more sense as well. He would
have been in the office when he made the code, so it stood to reason that was
where he gathered his inspiration from. But now her hopes of getting into the
office were dwindling. Talbot and Dalton did as they were ordered and treated
the curtained off area as if it wasn’t there. Sarah finished unpacking the
bandages except for one, which she left at the bottom of the box. She picked up
the box casually by one hand, as if she was done and so had no reason to hold
it carefully upright. As she walked past the curtained off bed she adjusted her
grip on the box. The adjustment caused the bandage to roll out of its confines
and under the curtains. She cursed softly under her breath for the benefit of
Talbot and Dalton, in case they were watching. Then, holding her breath, as if
she feared to breathe the contaminated air, she ducked through the curtains. The
boy was looking a bit better. Probably because he was no longer getting lugged
around in a fireman’s lift, she thought.

“Hi,” she
whispered, “I’m Sarah. Are you ok?”

Holden nodded at
her warily. Kindness wasn’t the norm on this ship.

“What happened?”

Holden shrugged.
“Dunno. I’m just sick.”

“Just sick
today?”

Holden shook his
head. “For weeks. It’s been getting worse. I’ve been getting weaker. Are you
sick too?”

“I help out with
the cleaning.”

“Oh. Look, I’m
tired, I just want to sleep.” He rolled over on to his side, turning his back
against her. Sarah felt disappointed. She had clearly said the wrong thing.

“Ok, if you need
anything just let me know.” Holden didn’t reply. Sarah picked up the bandage
and slipped back out into the main room. Talbot and Dalton were looking at her
suspiciously. She held up the bandage. “Got it.”

“Wash your hands
before you touch anything else,” said Dalton.

Sarah rolled her
eyes but did it anyway. The boys were neutral towards her at the moment. She
didn’t want to make them enemies. Finn came in later as usual to collect his
pain medications. He raised an eyebrow at the curtained off area.

“New patient,”
explained Sarah.

“Any luck?” he
was referring to the safe, of course, but he couldn’t be too specific with the
others listening in.

Sarah shook her
head as the doctor strode out of his office to administer the medication. He
sent Finn away and then turned to look at Sarah.

“Um,” he clicked
his fingers at her, thinking.

“Sarah,” Sarah
supplied.

“Right, Sarah. I
need you to wipe down my room with the alcohol. Wear gloves, there may be some
trace amounts of blood left. Make sure you don’t disturb anything though. Just
the desk area, understood?”

Sarah nodded and
the doctor passed her as he left the infirmary completely. Sarah couldn’t
believe her luck. Not only was he leaving, but he had actually given her
permission to be in his office. She entered the room quickly, not quite
shutting the door behind her. The rubbing alcohol was sitting where it was last
time. She poured some onto a cloth and slowly started wiping down the desk, looking
around her as she did so. There wasn’t much to work with. Except for a few
medical looking apparatus littered across his desk, there was nothing much
there to indicate who he was. There were no family photographs or mementoes.
Carefully, so as to make as little noise as possible, she slipped open the desk
drawers one by one. They were mostly filled with stationary and what could have
been research papers. She wished that she was better educated in science so
that she could understand what they said. Oddly, showing the only indication of
personal preference that she could see in the whole room, one of the drawers
was filled with five different varieties of biscuits. Sarah, who had been
living on protein bars and the strange prison mush, itched to steal one, but
she was too nervous that he would notice. None of it, however, looked like it
would have served for inspiration when creating a safe code. One of the papers
caught her eye. It was an order form for a shipment of bandages. There was a
scrawled signature down the bottom of it. Sarah folded it up and slipped it in
her sock. They would need something for Finn to work from if they ever got into
the safe and a bandage receipt didn’t look like it would be missed in a hurry.
In desperation she wet her cloth and started cleaning the filing cabinets,
peering into each drawer as she cleaned around it. They contained the medical
files of her fellow inmates. Just as she was about to close one of the drawers
she caught sight of the Queen’s real name, printed neatly on the edge of a
folder. She was just about to reach in when she heard a thud hit the window.
She turned quickly, peering through the windows and shutting the drawer behind
her at the same time. Talbot and Dalton were waving at her to get out. She
quickly made sure all of the drawers were shut and everything was where it
should be. She swept one more glance around the room and then the door to the
office opened and the doctor walked in. He looked surprised to see her. “You
took your time,” he said, his eyes sweeping around the room, making sure
everything was in place.

“Yes, I also
wiped down the cabinets,” she said quickly. He raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“I thought you might have touched them as well as the desk,” she explained.
“Just making sure everything was clean.”

“Right, good
job,” said the doctor vaguely, clearly not paying her any further attention. He
stepped out of the way so that she could exit through the door behind him,
which she did quickly with her head down. She closed the door firmly behind
her. Once outside she glanced back in through the window. The doctor was seated
at his desk, having pulled out a paper from one of his drawers, munching
thoughtfully on what she now knew was a biscuit. It didn’t look like he had
suspected her of anything. Below the window, lying on the floor, was a bandage.
Talbot or Dalton must have thrown it to get her attention without yelling.

“Are you
completely stupid?” hissed Talbot. “He could have come back at any second and
you still decided to go and rifle through the files? Do you know what he would
have done if he had caught you? Why were you even looking at the files? I
thought you needed to get into the safe?”
Sarah stared at him, surprised.

“Oh c’mon, don’t
look so surprised. Everybody knows the only way to get off this boat is to get
medically transferred. Winter’s already told everybody where they’re kept. It
was just a matter of time before someone would make a play for them.”

So much for
Winter’s secret being a secret. Sarah wondered if the Queen was aware that
everybody else knew. Sarah glanced at Dalton. He looked unsurprised by Talbot’s
statements. She figured that they had worked it out together.

“The only question
is,” said Talbot, “who sent you? Was it the Queen or King? It couldn’t be you,
you haven’t been here long enough to make the connections that you need, but
why would the King and Queen need it?”

“Are you going
to tell anyone?” asked Sarah nervously. If they did her friends and she were
screwed.

“We couldn’t if
we tried. Visitors are never allowed. Winter was an exception.”

“Do you,” Sarah
paused, uncertain about how much she could trust them. “Do you guys know about
anything happening in three days time?”

“No,” replied
Talbot earnestly. “What is it? Something bad?”

“I don’t know.
It might be nothing.”

“But it might be
something,” said Talbot, thinking. “Dalton?”

Dalton shook his
head. “I haven’t heard a thing.”

“Maybe something
to do with what the doctor does?” she volunteered. She was disappointed to see
their faces darken again.

“We told you to
leave that alone, it’s for your own good.”

“But if it is…”
Sarah protested.

“He only…”
Talbot paused, hesitating. His eyes flickered to Holden’s curtained off bed and
back again. “He only takes people who are a certain kind of sick, or if they interfere.
We,” he said, gesturing at himself and Dalton, “know nothing, understand? And
we want to make sure it stays that way.”

Sarah nodded. It
would be unfair to ask more of them, especially as the consequences sounded so,
well, dark, terrible and mysterious. She looked back at the doctor through one
of the windows and then realised that she should be working. She started
straightening the already straight covers on the spare bed absentmindedly. The
rest of the day passed without much interest. She read to Justin again, with no
success. At about four o’clock the doctor came out of his office.

“I called the
guard, he’ll come pick you up early today.”

“Oh,” said Sarah
blankly, “ok.”

The doctor
hadn’t waited for her reply. Gragur entered the infirmary behind her. The
doctor parted Holden’s curtains and entered the small space around Holden’s
bed. Sarah heard a chair scrape as he pulled it up near the bed. The doctor had
been clutching some papers when he went in and she could hear him smooth them
out on the bed.

“Holden, how are
you going?” asked the doctor.

“Fine,” said
Holden. He sounded terrified.

Gragur had bent
down and was tying up a loose shoelace. Sarah glanced over at Talbot and
Dalton. They were both asleep. Dalton was snoring gently. As she watched she
thought she saw Dalton’s eyelid flicker open and then shut again. They were faking
being asleep, she thought, bewildered. What was going on?  

“Holden,” the
doctor was saying gently, “we got your results back. They aren’t good, I’m
afraid.” There was a sharp intake of breath. Sarah stood, transfixed. “They say
you have a type of disease that, with our current medication, is hard to treat.
However there are researchers out on the mainland who are currently working
hard to find a cure, and they need people with the disease to try-” Sarah’s
eavesdropping was interrupted by a grunt form Gragur. He had finished tying his
shoelace and was now waving his hand at Sarah, telling her to come with him.
Sarah couldn’t believe it. She was getting solid proof that they were using
prisoners to experiment on and she was being summoned back to the factory
floor. Trying to walk as silently as possible to maximise her chance of hearing
more she joined Gragur and they left the room. As she walked silently next to
the guard she wondered for the first time if maybe the experiments weren’t a
bad thing. What if they really were trying to find a cure? Wouldn’t that be a
good thing? If you were going to die anyway, was there really a risk? But what
if the experiments weren’t about curing the disease? She had heard something
about them using diseases to try and infect others. But of course, it was all
hearsay. She would probably never really know. She thought back to Talbot and
Dalton. They were trying to let the doctor know by their snoring that they
weren’t listening, that they weren’t witnesses and wouldn’t interfere. They
didn’t want to be taken as well. And despite some mangled limbs, they were
healthy, but they still feared being taken. Maybe the experimenters were doing
some good, she decided, but they were definitely doing some bad as well. Before
she even realised it she found herself sitting in her old seat on the factory
floor. Evidently they hadn’t replaced her.

“You’re back,”
said Finn, surprised.

“Just for a
bit,” said Sarah. She focused on him for the first time since sitting down. One
of his ears was bloodied. It looked torn.