Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (22 page)

“You and Dr. Donna with that good-girl thing. I’m not five.” I stand and stretch, working my fingers to loosen them. Fitting blocks into their slots is surprisingly tough on your hands when you do it for four hours in a row without a break.

Dr. Billings looks startled, then speculative. “No. No, you’re right. Of course not.”

The cafeteria is standard. Tables with chairs, a steam table with trays you slide along a metal rack. I load my plate with tater tots and a tofu dog, extra onions and relish. Chocolate pudding. A dinner roll. Caesar salad. I’m a glutton, stuffing my face while Dr. Billings watches and makes more notes.

“What?” I say, mouth full of food, waving my fork at him. “If I have to sell my soul to you all for food, I might as well eat up, right?”

“Is that what you think you’re doing?” Dr. Billings has only a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of coffee on his tray. He drank the coffee but barely ate anything.

I swallow a mouthful of crusty fried potatoey goodness and lick the grease from my lips. “Isn’t it?”

“Food motivated you?”

“I was hungry.” I shrug, then add, “And if I don’t do what you want, will you kill me?”

Dr. Billings chokes on his coffee, face turning red. “Velvet!”

“It’s what they’ve been doing to the Connies since the first wave.”

“There were extenuating circumstances.” He looks solemn, but doesn’t deny it. “Now our goal is to try and help those people.”

“But you’re keeping me here against my will. This isn’t a hospital, where you took me to treat injuries I got in the fire. I didn’t have any, anyway.” I push the bits of hot dog around in a pool of ketchup, but my appetite is fading.

“Sometimes, what an individual wants has to be put aside for the greater good of all.” Dr. Billings sounds like he believes what he says.

“Why me?”

He won’t answer me, that’s clear enough. He pushes my tray a little closer to me. “Finish your lunch. We have more tests to do.”

I see him as Dr. Billings and I stand. He’s in the far
corner of the cafeteria, dressed in jeans, and a T-shirt I remember because I bought it for his birthday. I’m sure I’m imagining him, but he turns toward the woman he’s sitting with and smiles, and there’s no mistaking him, not even after all this time.

“Tony!”

“Velvet—” Dr. Billings starts.

Ignoring Dr. Billings, I get up from the table and head toward my ex-boyfriend. Tony looks up at the sound of his name. That smile gets wider. Somehow, we’re in each other’s arms before anyone can stop us, and I hold on to him so tight, he huffs out a laughing sigh at my squeeze.

“Hey, Velveeta.”

I’m so happy to see him that I don’t care he’s using that old nickname, or that he cheated on me and let me down and broke my heart. “What are you doing in here?”

Tony’s gaze shifts toward the woman he’s with, and for a weird, world-tilting second I wonder if they’re dating, or something. Then the details fall into place. Her name badge, like the one Dr. Billings wears. Her age, which makes it unlikely she’s Tony’s girlfriend, though I guess it’s not impossible.

“Tony’s a day-shift volunteer in our testing facility. Like you.” The woman smiles and nods toward Dr. Billings.

“I’m not”—But I cut myself off and lift my chin. Pride. I don’t want Tony to know I’m not here by choice—“a day-shift volunteer.”

“No,” the woman says, and I know she knows exactly what I am. “You’re one of our full-timers.”

“Cool,” Tony says.

He’s gotten taller and broader, grown into his features sort of unexpectedly. I see the boy I used to love, but he’s in a man’s body. There are shadows under his eyes, though, and his cheeks are a little hollow. I look at the tray on his table. He’d filled his twice as much as mine. I think I understand why he’s volunteering.

“Well. It’s good to see you, Tony. How’s your family? I used to see your mom at the ration distribution.”

Tony’s mouth works, but he doesn’t answer.

“Tony, we should be getting back to work,” his guardian says smoothly, with a narrow-eyed glare at me.

“Yeah. Hey, Velvet, it was great to see you. You look …” That’s the old Tony, sweeping me up and down with an appreciative look. “… really good. Really, really good.”

I won’t lie, the compliment warms me. It’s not until later, in my room, when I feel like I should be guilty for liking it. I stare at my reflection, wondering what it was about me that Tony saw.

My hair’s longer. Thicker. I haven’t plucked my eyebrows since before they brought me here, but they’re sleek and shaped. My lashes, long and full. My cheeks are hollowed, too, but not from hunger. It’s like I’ve grown into my own features, too. Becoming a woman.

Is that what Tony saw?

Or is it more? The sleekness of my muscles, bulging and flexing? My flat stomach, taut with the faint outline of abs that I trace with my fingertips.

I strip myself naked and try to see all of me in the mirror over the dresser. My body’s changed. The parts of me that used to be soft, then just scrawny, have tightened. I don’t have a bodybuilder’s shape or anything like that. It’s subtler than that. But I’ve definitely changed.

I flex my fingers, making fists.

“Your results were inconclusive,” Dr. Donna had said.

I think about the day I’d intimidated Opal’s principal when I told him I’d be taking her out of school. And of the day in the woods with the cheerleader, what feels like so long ago. Then later, in line for the rations, how that woman had backed away from me. Afraid.

I touch the twin spots in my eye sockets where they slid the needles in, no longer sore or black and blue. No sign they’d ever tested me at all. Inconclusive, I think.

But that’s not true. I feel it in my gut, and the flex of my muscles, and the push and pull of my breath, and the rise and fall of my grief and anger.

I’m Contaminated.

“I want to see my mother. I say this after the usual morning drills. “And what about Dillon?”

“Your … husband.” Dr. Billings laughs a little.

“You think that’s funny?”

His smile quickly fades. “It’s just that you’re so young. To be married.”

I put my foot on the chair and stretch my leg, feeling the pull of muscles in my thigh and lower back. “Things are different now.”

Dr. Billings usually smiles a lot, but this time, he looks a bit sad. “Yes. Yes, they are.”

Then he has me do a whole other round of jumping and running, and he tests my reflexes all over with little rubber hammers, and everything that the wires connected to my head tell him, he writes down.

“Does he know where I am?” I ask. “Why hasn’t he tried to see me?”

Dr. Billings shakes his head. “C’mon, Velvet. Let’s get these tests over with for the day, shall we?”

“Is Opal all right?” I’m desperate to know, and it must be obvious in my voice, because he looks sympathetic.

He pats my shoulder. “She’s fine, I’m sure.”

“Why did they all get taken to displacement housing, but not me?”

“You fought” is all Dr. Billings has to say for me to understand.

I’m quiet for the next hour or so while he has me do stupid stuff like jumping jacks. Then he makes me blow into a tube to measure my lung capacity. They feed me lunch from a tray. Fruit. Oatmeal. Nuts. All the portions look
carefully measured, and he takes notes on how much I eat and in what order.

“I need to use the bathroom,” I say. “Are you going to measure that, too?”

And he does.

By the end of the day, I’m worn out physically and mentally, so glad to hit the sheets of my hard hospital bed that I’m asleep before I remember I didn’t brush my teeth.

They get me up again in the morning for more of the same. Breakfast on a tray in my room, the same bland stuff with some tofu bacon strips added, and a glass of orange juice. Greedily, I gulp it. It’s been so long since I had fresh orange juice—we’d been drinking powdered orange drink mix, and had run out of it months ago.

When an orderly takes away the tray, the soldiers come in. Not always the same ones. I’ve been paying attention. They have names sewn onto the fronts of their uniforms, but I call them all Jeff and George, except if they’re girls. Then it’s George and Martha. Only once was it Martha and Bertha, and mostly it’s Jeff and George. The biggest they can find. None of them talks to me.

“Is it because you’re not allowed to talk to me? Or what?” I oblige them by holding out my elbows so they can grab them. “Wouldn’t it be easier to cuff me or something? I mean, what if I try to get away?”

“Don’t try it, and we won’t have to cuff you,” says the one I’ve mentally called Jeff.

They take me down the corridor, past all the closed doors, heading for the elevator.

“Am I the only one on this floor?”

No answer.

“Is this a pretty good job? Or do you like other assignments better?”

On my left, George snorts softly, but neither of them replies. The elevator’s taking forever to get here. I shift from foot to foot, waiting for one of them to relax his grip on my elbow. Not that I’m planning on running or anything. But you never know what you might do when you’re offered an opportunity.

“You like working the roadblocks? Checking people out? I bet you get kind of excited when you get to pull someone out of their cars, right?”

Jeff’s fingers tighten on my right elbow. Not hard enough to hurt, but I wiggle it a little to make him think maybe he did. He doesn’t look at me. Neither of them does.

“Do you like it when you have to run someone down? You like it when you have to shoot someone because they’re trying to get out of town? How about when—”

“It’s a job,” George snaps, “to keep people safe and protect them. It’s a job. We do what we have to.”

“Shut up. You don’t owe her an explanation,” Jeff says to him. “Not her, especially.”

“What’s that mean?” They’re both so much bigger than
me, I have to tilt my head back to get a good look at their deliberately blank faces. “Not me, especially?”

“You’re one of them,” George says. “Aren’t you?”

I don’t know how to answer that. The elevator doors open, and they shove me inside so that I stumble. I’m shaking. Jeff sees it, and his hand goes to the gun on his hip. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

I get the warning.

“
I WANT TO TALK TO OPAL.”

Dr. Donna has been watching me eat my breakfast, and she’s creeping me out. As usual, she’s dressed more like she’s on her way to some kind of fancy corporate fund-raiser than to work in a research facility. Or a hospital, as she insists on calling it, even though I know the truth. She’s half sitting with her butt propped on the edge of the dresser, and the toe of her black high heel tap-tap-taps on the tile floor.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t allow that just yet.”

I stab my spoon into the oatmeal, which is thick enough to keep the utensil standing upright. “When Opal and I were living in the assisted housing, we got an allotment of oatmeal every week. Enough for ten kids. We never finished it, and every week we got another carton, and I always took it home because I figured we had to. I really, really hate oatmeal.”

“Funny how being hungry can change even the strongest preferences.”

Her smirk makes me wish I’d been strong enough not to give in after three days.

“I’ll eat it, but I’ll never be hungry enough to
like
oatmeal.”

“Funny,” Dr. Donna says, “how a few good meals can make it so easy to forget what it’s like to be hungry.”

I nibble at the tofu bacon and drink the orange juice, but I leave the oatmeal alone. “You think a lot of things are funny.”

“I guess maybe I just have a good outlook on life.” She tilts her head to study me. “Unlike you.”

“I have a great outlook on life!” I wave my fork to prove my point.

Dr. Donna’s eyes narrow. “You think because you’ve … what. Survived? Had hardship? That your outlook is good? You’re not the only one, you know.”

We stare at each other, long and hard, but she doesn’t give me one of her normal shifty-eyed looks.

“You think,” she says in a low voice, “that you’re the only person who’s lost someone precious? You have no idea, Velvet, what it’s like to lose everything and yet know you hold the key to getting it all back. That somehow, if only you’d been smarter, faster, stronger, if you’d been able to convince them to—”

She breaks off, clears her throat. Her gaze is glittery.
Bright. With an impatient shake of her head, she checks her watch and stands up straight. “It’s time. Finish up so you can get started.”

I don’t hurry. Not for her. I take an extra long time brushing my teeth and washing my face until she raps on the door. I open it to face her. She’s taller than me in those shoes, but if I knocked them out from under her, she wouldn’t be.

“I want to talk to my sister.”

“Your sister is fine. She’s been placed in displacement housing and doing very well there. You’d only upset her if you called her.”

“How do you figure that? She saw me get dragged away by armed soldiers. Gassed and hit on the head. Don’t you think it would make her feel better to know I’m all right? Dillon, too. And Mrs. Holly. And my mom.” I fall silent, thinking that my mom might not even know enough to miss me. I give Dr. Donna a long, hard look. “You’ve got me doing your stupid tests. I want to talk to my sister. And Dillon.”