Extraction (32 page)

“Any family?”

“None.”

“And what do you think of Commander Charlie?”

I open my mouth to respond, but something keeps my voice from working. Like I’m not sure what to say, only I thought I was, a second ago.

My brows furrow.

“It’s all right,” the doctor says. “Take your time.”

I try again, but find myself pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth, so hard it might form welts.

“Nothing?”

I shake my head. “Sorry.”

“Hmm.” He makes another tap on his tablet. The crease in his brow tells me I displeased him, but he’s trying to hide it.

“Is that bad?” I say.

“It’s unfortunate,” he says. “But not to worry. It will come with time.”

I nod and lick my chapped lips. “Anything else?”

“Not from me. I’m going to call the nurse in to give you a little shot. Nothing to fret about.” He smiles and shows me his pearly white teeth.

The nurse enters after he leaves. She doesn’t speak to me, but she hums as she snaps on plastic gloves and moves to a metal tin.

I bite my lip. “You’ll have to prick me again?”

“I’ll insert it into your drip bag this time.”

I lean my head back and tilt it to the side, ignoring the ache. A thin black tube connects a vein in my shoulder to a bag half full with clear fluid. The nurse turns to it, still humming, and the injection syringe comes into view. She prods the needle into a tiny hole on the side of the bag and presses the plunger. Silver-colored liquid mixes with the clear like small, expanding clouds.

I sigh and turn my head to the ceiling again. The aster smell thickens in my nostrils. In small amounts it’s light and fresh; now it’s tangy and putrid, and it makes me nauseous. Why anyone would keep a scent like this in a room, I don’t know. It’s horrid. Don’t they know I’m allergic?

My limbs freeze. My eyes widen.

Memories flood my brain:

Allergy—

Pollen—

Injection syringe—

Logan—

Moonshine—

Charlie—

I came from the Core. Charlie sent me.

“You all right, dear?” the nurse says.

My heart races to the speed of a ticking time bomb.

She takes a step toward me, her face lined with creases of concern. “Honey?”

My wrists and ankles are clamped in irons. I have no use of my hands.

She touches my side lightly and smiles. “Dear, it’s all right.”

I slam my head sideways, lift my upper body, and rip the tube from my shoulder with my teeth. It’s not as clean as I’d like it to be; my teeth catch my skin and set it stinging.

The nurse screams for help.

They’re on me in ten seconds, three guards and my doctor. I’m surprised they think they need that many, since I’m already tied down.

I gnash my teeth at their hands and shriek to give them trouble, but it doesn’t do any good. They shove a tube back down my throat, choking me. Their hands mask my eyes, and the blue lights disappear.

I know where I am now.

30

The world is dark when I open my eyes.

I’m curled up on my side against something hard and damp. My body trembles, and an aching dryness fills my throat, so much it hurts to breathe. One second, I’m ice, shivering in almost no clothes. The next I’m on fire, sweat trickling down my forehead. I’m a star burning up before it dies.

The darkness is hollow, without the tiniest speck of light. My eyes could still be closed, for all I know. The world could stretch on forever, or end, and I wouldn’t know it. Logan could die, and I wouldn’t know it.

I curl into a tighter ball. I wish he were here. I long for his face, his arms, his hands. His lips. The last time our lips touched, it didn’t last long enough.

I wish he were here, or Beechy or Oliver or Ariadne—the way they were before they abandoned me—or
someone
. Anyone.

Charlie has stolen everyone.

Tears threaten my eyes, and the hollowness sinks into my stomach. I clench my fists and try to ignore it. I wipe my eyes and try to stand, so I can find out where the world ends.

My hand finds a hard wall to my right. Wet and slimy, it leaves residue on my fingers. When I reach to my left and in front of me, all I feel is air.

Palm on the wall, I heave my body up, but my legs are shaky. They wobble, and weariness drenches my limbs.

My knees knock into the ground. I lie on my side, wishing I weren’t so weak.

My eyes must close without my knowing it.

*   *   *

I dream I’m a bird with silver feathers, perched on the high branch of a tree, casting beady eyes at the moon. A fierce gale knocks me off my branch. The wind throws me about, wrenching my wings this way and that. I plummet to the ground in a mess of fraying feathers.

In a deep, dark trench, I land in human form, my body trembling. Bony arms reach for me, their muddy fingers tugging on my dress. “Help,” they cry. “Please help us.”

Before I can do anything, they sprout slick navy suits. They morph into Developers who point guns at my temple.

“There is nowhere to hide,” they whisper.

I wake shaking on the hard, damp floor of my Karum cell, drenched in sweat and darkness. Go away, I tell my dreams.

My fingers fumble to touch the wall again. It’s a little easier to stand today, tonight, whatever time it is. In the dark, time is a trap for insanity.

My legs still wobble. Every step, I grit my teeth and push through the ache, the fire, the glass shards ripping through my body. My cell seems to be small. I find no cracks in the cement. No door. It’s like they threw me into a hole in the ground and built a ceiling over it.

I drop to my knees and press my palms into my forehead, breathing hard. I’m afraid they’ll never let me go. That the moon or KIMO will kill us all and I’ll never see Logan again.

I’m about to let a river of tears down my cheeks when a loud, echoing clang startles me, coming from inside the wall. I hold my breath.

In the silence, I hear another sound: a slow, shaky sob, somewhere beyond the cement. My heart flutters. There’s someone there.

“Hello?” I say, crawling and pressing my ear to the slimy wall.

I don’t hear anything at first. Then it’s there again: the quiet sobbing that isn’t coming from me. Relief floods my body.

It doesn’t matter that whoever it is doesn’t say a word. It’s enough to hear them and know I’m not alone in Karum.

I’m not alone.

*   *   *

A creak overhead jolts me awake. The roof makes a great scraping noise, and a ray of white light seeps through a crack in the ceiling.

I scramble to my feet as the light blinds me and envelops my cell. I throw my hands over my eyes and press my body against the wall.

Go away, I think. Not yet. I’m too weak to fight, if they’ve come to take me back to the metal table and the injection syringes, or to kill me. But I have to fight.

I spread my fingers apart and glimpse a metal ladder lowering into the hole. A guard climbs down, followed by an adult in a skirt, a blouse, and red high heels. I try to ignore the soreness in my legs that makes it hard to stand.

The woman steps onto the ground. Her eyes look almost yellow in the light. They trail over my figure, and she purses her lips. “Hello, Clementine.” She hates me. I can hear it in her voice.

Good, I think. I hate you more.

“I’m here to discuss some things the staff finds intriguing about you.” She crosses her arms and taps her foot. “Let’s cooperate, shall we? I’d like you to explain why our calming injections don’t work on you.”

I bet she already knows the answer. She’s trying to see if I’ll be honest. “I don’t know,” I say. “Doctors said they’d figure it out.”

“And they will. At first it was thought that you’re merely strong-minded, but…” Her eyes trail over my petite figure. “I don’t believe that’s the correct reason.”

She thinks because my body is weak, my mind is weak. She knows nothing. I want to strangle her, but instead I latch on to what might help me more than that—weakness.

“It—it’s not the reason.” I curl into myself against the wall. “I can’t … I’m not…” I force a whimper.

Confused concern forms a crease in her brow. “Yes?”

I shake my head and clutch my knees to my chest. “I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble. I just want to go home.…”

She studies my face and taps her chin with a fingernail. “You know, Clementine, the only reason you’re still here is because you keep refusing to set your faith in Commander Charlie. If you were to change your mind and not give us any more trouble … a return to the Core would not be difficult to arrange.”

I stare at my knees. In the light I see how dirty they are, how bony. I could do it. I could keep up an act, looking like this. My body is frail, and they’d believe me if I cried. I could convince them I’ve had a change of heart and agree to never again question Charlie. I could do it, and they would send me to the Core.

But KIMO would still go off. The preparations must be almost ready—Charlie said it would take only a week or two, at the most. Logan and everyone else in the outer sectors would be destroyed. If I went back to the Core, I’d be safe, but they’d be dead.

Maybe that’s better for me than this, but it’s not good enough.

I lift my head to the woman.

She observes me with her yellow eyes. “Well?” she says.

I lunge at her, and she gasps. Pain cuts through my legs, my arms, my hands, but my fingers grab her throat and squeeze. I press red welts into her skin.

I grit my teeth—gasping—

The woman falls to her knees, choking for breath and clutching her throat. Go on, squeeze, I urge her. Finish what I started.

The guard binds my wrists with rope.

Yellow Eyes collects herself and stares me down, her teeth clenched. “I didn’t think she’d cooperate. Throw her in with the others.” She grabs a ladder rung and heaves herself back up with trembling hands. The guard shoves me after her.

I scare her, I really do. I scare all of them, and that’s why they seek to control me. I’m not weak.

I am powerful.

31

They haul me through tunnels of cement and stone. My heart beats too fast in my chest, threatening to shatter if my body doesn’t stop aching. If the Karum guard doesn’t stop digging his hands, fingers, and nails into my body.

Here and there, I glimpse a high window where a speck of red sunlight blooms. It must be daytime in the world outside. It feels like I’ve been trapped in night.

We come to a round metal door. The woman taps a code into a lock-pad—only three digits long, I notice. With six numbers on the lock-pad, that’s two hundred and sixteen possible combinations to get it open.

The hinges swing to let us in. Beyond the doorway, the walls are jagged rock. Icy air drifts through the cave, and muffled, hollow sounds like voices emerge from the three tunnels that branch off. Whispers.

The woman and the guard take me down the left-hand tunnel. The ground slopes, and we turn a corner. The end lies ahead. Relief floods me. My arms hurt from the guard wrenching them. My legs hurt from dragging on the floor. I grit my teeth to keep from crying.

We come to a wide circular space. Doors formed by iron bars lead to six separate cell compartments. I can’t tell which ones are already filled. The dim bulb hanging from the ceiling in the circular space doesn’t cast much light.

The guard takes me to the middle cell. Keys jangle in his pocket, and there’s a click as the key goes into the lock. The barred door opens. He throws me inside. My knees scrape on rough floor. A damp, rotten smell bleeds into my nostrils.

“Welcome to your new home, Clementine,” the woman says. The bulb light glints on the pale pink shade of her cheeks. “Try not to rot too quickly.”

The lock clicks, and she is gone.

I swallow, shivering in my thin rags. My eyes flit to the other cell doors. I can only see two from here—the two on the edges of the circle. The others sit too close to mine. But I can tell some of the cells are occupied. I can hear people breathing.

Dangerous.
That’s what the instructors always called Unstables. Adults said they’re dangerous, brutal people consumed by insanity. That they would kill everyone if they were allowed to escape.

But Charlie said that too. I don’t believe anything he says anymore.

Still, it takes me at least a minute to work up the courage to speak. “Hello?”

There’s nothing at first. Just that soft, slow breathing.

Then a bony hand wraps around a bar of the farthest cell to my right. A face comes into view. A woman covered in blotches of bruises. Gray hair grows in uneven patches on her otherwise bald head. Her eyes are dead, dark as my old cell. She’s an old one—a strong one, to have survived in Karum for so long.

She smiles at me. The wrinkles deepen around her mouth and her eyes. “What’s your name?” she asks.

I try to speak, but it’s hard when my lips are numb. The air is a block of snow. “C-Clementine,” I manage.

“What did they get you for?” another, hollower voice says. A second Unstable wraps his hands around the bars of the farthest cell to my left. An old man with dark skin and a scar on his forehead so jagged it must’ve been done on purpose.

“Their injection,” I say. “The one that makes everyone submissive. It didn’t work on me.”

The old woman smiles. “That’s a good one. Easy to prove.”

I nod and pull my legs against my chest, thinking of warm things. Of sunlight and blankets and fire. Hollowness fills my stomach, and I latch on to it. Anything but the cold.

“Do they ever give us food?” I ask.

“In the morning,” the old woman says. “Barley bread, cheese, and a water skin.”

My hands tremble from hunger. I’m not sure I can last until morning. But I’ll have to.

“H-how long have you been here?” I ask.

The old woman laughs, soft and light. “Who knows? A long time for some, even longer for others. I was young when they brought me.”

“My age?”

“A bit older.”

“How…” I bite back what I was about to say:
How are you still alive?
“What do they do with us? They could just kill us.”