The Wanted (29 page)

ROSA

Judith held a dress up in front of my body, so just my scowling face stuck up from the frill-necked collar. “I think this will please him.”

I wanted to ask her how she could be so calm when she was about to witness her father’s death, but I held my tongue. There was something chilling in the way she moved around the room. The way she meticulously did her hair and makeup. I tried my best not to engage.

Snatching the dress from her fingertips, I went to the bathroom to change.

In the mirror, my reflection held too many secrets. I needed to compose myself and change my face. I stripped down and put on the hideous dress, the taffeta fabric ringing my throat intimidatingly. My roots were starting to show. Dark brown, almost black, hair ran in a stripe down my part. I smiled, a small part of me was returning. Then I took a cavernous breath that scraped the bottom of my diaphragm and tried to convince myself that it was going to be okay.

A knock signaled it was time to go.

I was surprised to see Denis’ face when I opened the door. His nose set in plaster, his eyes ringed with deep purple bruises. He tipped his chin at me, and winced at the effort. He held the door open for his sister, each movement controlled and calm. We joined him in the hall and walked towards the lift.

There were no nervous glances exchanged—nothing. Just calm breaths mixed with my panicked ones. They were ready for this. I was not. I smoothed my dress and tried not to see rivers of blood running between the delicate folds of fabric.

When the lift opened in the garage, Grant and his wife were waiting by a car. The green one. We were told to turn around while the guard helped Grant into the driver’s seat.

“Get in,” he barked, while I stood there agape, agitated and itchy. I scratched my neck, and he rolled his eyes at me.

Judith got in, then Denis opened his arms and ushered me inside. The engine roared to life and I shuddered, wedged shoulder to shoulder with Grant’s murderous children.

Grant grinned as he revved the engine. It looked strange on him. Like the Cheshire cat had loaned him his teeth. Camille, his wife, patted his leg. “Shouldn’t we blindfold the girl, dear?”

Grant pressed a button on the dashboard, and the car rolled backwards. “No need.” His eyes found me in the rearview mirror. I gulped at his gaze. His plans for me were in that gaze, cutting me into bite-sized pieces like a laser. He didn’t need to say more. It was clear my time was nearly up.

Camille wrapped the fur around her shoulders a little tighter. The fox’s glass eyes stared at me in the backseat, seeming to say,
You don’t belong here
. We drove out of the garage, followed by another car filled with soldiers.

Judith picked at her nails and Denis sat upright, rigid. His earphones were missing.
He
was missing.

Grant drove at a snail’s pace, cursing every splash of mud that sullied the paintwork and every squeak of the windscreen wipers. It was sleeting until it turned to flurry. I shivered as ice pelted the windows, barely paying attention to where we were going, only that it was away from Grant’s home. We went through gates, which the soldiers had to open for us, futilely covering their heads with their arms as they tried to shield themselves from the weather. I exhaled sadly, missing the forest, fires, and wolves. Wondering if this was my last winter.

Suddenly we dipped, the suspension creaking. Grant drove down a well-lit concrete slope into an underground park. He slammed the brakes on when we reached the bottom, our heads surging forward, and ordered us to leave the car. He seemed a little nervous. A guard quickly came to Grant’s door with the wheelchair. We turned before being asked this time.

Grant was arranged in his chair. He wheeled ahead of us eagerly. “Come!” he said excitedly. I could tell he was picturing himself walking, striding proudly out of this place. Guilt. Displaced, misplaced guilt crept up my skin like ants searching for a crumb.

We followed, with ten guards in our wake, their boots thudding on the concrete in unison.

This was the end, the beginning.

I crumpled my dress in my hands and held my breath as the lift shot upwards. Mirrors lined the four walls, so all I could see were many sets of Grant’s excited eyes dancing under the harsh light. He turned his head slowly to me and his lips spread wide. His glare was cruelly triumphant. I let out a small, hysterical laugh, wondering if he wanted his legs back just so he could kick me with them.

The doors parted, and the smell of a hundred dishes twirled together into one delicious stream hit my nose. A banquet flush with flowers toppling over vases as centerpieces and tall candles wavering in the air conditioning slapped my eyes.

People were gathered in small groups but when Grant rolled into the room, they all turned and started clapping. Beaming, proud faces with an undercurrent of fear of the terrible man glistened in the warm light. I stared down, hiding behind the siblings. Diamond shapes and messy scratches printed on the garish carpet greeted my eyes.

The Grant family stepped forward and I followed like a baby elephant holding the tale of its mother, taking in the table, the plastic chairs with brown velvet cushions, and the glass window that enveloped one whole wall of the large room. Below the window, metal glinted and the glass coffin hung suspended in the air. We were in some sort of amphitheater.

He was going to have a party and then make us all watch as he died.

Two guards grabbed my arms relatively gently and took me to a chair. The eyes of the guests trailed me across the room.

One guard leaned down and spoke to me slowly, like I was slow myself. “Now you stay put, Miss.”

I nodded briefly, distracted by the party and the guests. I recognized with shock that both Superior Sekimbo and Superior Poltinov were present. They looked older than their posters, but still. I shrank smaller into my chair as Sekimbo noticed and approached me, rolling over like a giant dark pudding. He held a plate of food in front of him like an offering.

“So you’re
the
girl?” he bellowed, his voice like smooth stones being rubbed against each other.

“I am
a
girl. I don’t know if I’m
the
girl,” I said, leaning away from his alcoholic breath.

He grabbed my cheeks and squeezed them. “So small, so thin,” he muttered, his large cheeks wobbling as he shook his head. “Here, take a cake.” He shoved a small cupcake at my face. I shook my head. I felt too sick to eat.

He placed his hand on top of my head, his broad, flat fingers squeezing as he tried to hold me still. I could feel the violence in his voice as he said, “Wyatt said you were… uncooperative.” He was going to shove that cake down my throat.

Grant’s stringy voice sailed over the crowd and Sekimbo released me, the cake tumbling to the floor. He leered and swayed from drunkenness as he twisted to face Grant.

“I’d like to thank you for coming to this meeting and this celebration.” People clapped. “We’ll discuss business first. I know you are concerned about recent developments in the towns. It is true we are struggling to keep control of Radiata and Birchton. We have lost Palma. Helicopters have been unable to approach, and a significant portion of our army has defected. The citizens of Palma have weapons and are firing.”

The crowd murmured, and Grant’s face showed slight frustration.

“Please, please…” he started, pumping his hands. “We are still in control of the majority, and I have complete faith that we will regain it in the towns that are rebelling. All is not lost. We know the terrorists have recruited some of our residents. But,” he put his finger to the air, “we have our own operative and have just received word of the terrorists’ next target.” I leaned forward.

His eyes found me and bored into my head like black drills. “Isn’t it wonderful when everything just clicks into place?” he said, ignoring the confused faces of the other guests. “Like it was simply meant to be.” He swept his arm in an arc and looked to the ceiling. “Written in the stars.”

Sekimbo laughed heartily, holding his belly and slurring, “Get on with it, Wyatt. I have women waiting for me at home.”

Grant’s eyes snapped to him in irritation. “As we know, the terrorists have been projecting a video showing a very one-sided view of what we are trying to achieve here. It has upset the community unnecessarily, but I fear it is too late to use reason to calm the situation. No…” He shook his head like he was sorry. But I knew he wasn’t. “We must send a clear message that uprisings will not be tolerated.” He paused for effect.

“Tell them, Daddy,” Judith encouraged.

“I suggest we make our own video,” he said, weird mischief in his tone.

Everyone was still very quiet, hanging on his every word, and he loved it. He clicked his fingers and someone brought a large roll of thick, blue paper to the front, laying it down on an empty table to Grant’s right.

The guests moved in like moths to a flame and Grant hungrily absorbed their attention, grabbing at their silken wings and shoving them in his pockets. “I had already selected Pau Brazil as the site for personal reasons.” My hands dug into the underneath of my chair. It felt gummy and strange. “But now that our operative, Olga, has told us Pau Brazil is the rebels’ next target, it seems like the perfect opportunity to strike. We can show the terrorists what we’re capable of and issue the most severe of warnings to the other towns before the terrorists have a chance to reach them.”

Olga? No, no, no. That can’t be true.

“No,” I whispered, feeling everything I knew being shaken and poured down the drain.

Poltinov spoke, his aged voice slipping over his words. “Er, how do you propose we, er, strike?
Cough, cough, ahem.
We don’t have their kinds of weapons.” Then he muttered, “There never, er, seemed a need,
cough
, to develop them.”

“And Wyatt let the one man go who could have whipped us up a few bombs and high tech guns,” Sekimbo shouted.

Grant’s stare was the sharp end of a knife when he looked at Sekimbo, who in turn, was unflappable.

“Come,” Grant said, beckoning with his finger, which then flew in semicircle and landed on the large drawing. “These are the original drawings President Grant commissioned before Signing Day. See here…” I couldn’t see what he was pointing at. “We haven’t had to use this before, but I think now is the time.”

“Which Ring and how many people are we talking about, Superior Grant? We can’t afford to lose too many workers,” someone I didn’t recognize asked.

Again, Grant’s eyes slid to mine when he said, “Ring Two. Roughly three thousand citizens.” My mother’s Ring. I stood to try and see what he was pointing at, to understand the plan, but a guard pushed my shoulder down.

“If you think, er, it will work then that, er, seems like an acceptable loss.”

Acceptable loss? I screamed on the inside until my lungs started to peel away from my ribs.

“How does it work?” Sekimbo asked, pushing himself to the front like a barge.

Grant smiled, though it was more like a snarl.

“It’s very simple. But it must be done manually from beneath the town. I will do it myself. We already have cameras all over the Ring that can record the incident. We simply flick the switch and show the people what happens when you rebel against the Woodlands.”

What switches? I couldn’t see anything from where I was forced to sit; all I knew was thousands of people were about to be killed in a ‘simple’ way, and my mother and sister were part of that number of acceptable losses. It was my fault he chose Pau. Mine and Olga’s. That unassuming, egg-shaped woman had deceived us all.

I writhed in my chair, impotent, and clamped my mouth over the indecision hooking into my lips.

The three remaining Superiors voted unanimously for Grant’s plan.

After the vote, they strolled around the room, eating, drinking, and socializing like it was easy to kill. They didn’t see us as people. We were numbers, workers, losses and gains. We were the foundations they stood on with their swollen, over-fed bodies. That was all.

Judith approached me, squatting down to reach my eyes, which were wide and panicked like a gun was to my head. She placed a plate of food on my lap.

“Rosa, eat, you’ll need your strength,” she crooned as she pulled out her lip gloss and applied it while she spoke. “You know I’ve enjoyed having you around. I might actually miss you.”