The Line Book One: Carrier (7 page)

The old woman gazed at me and Shirel one last time and closed the door, locking the bolts behind her.

It was suddenly quiet. The bulb flickered and buzzed.

I felt so strange.

I wanted to cry. But I wanted to laugh at the same time.

I did neither.

I was so happy for Evie but so sad I was never going to see her again.

Girls had come and gone off the Line so many times, the only friend I’d ever had for more than a few months had been Peni. Yet here I was, aching over a kid I’d known a week.

Shirel coughed nervously, sniffed and wiped her nose on her only sleeve. “Come on.”

I followed her down the stairs and out the door.

Shirel knew me well enough now to step aside as the smell hit me and my meal erupted from my belly and splattered onto the pavement.

I wasted more credits that way.

* * *

The medical clinic was ten blocks to the north. Shirel took me. She wanted to walk, but the thought of the three men who roamed around the old woman’s apartment building sent my hand into the air. I flagged a taxi and hoped my credits hadn’t been canceled yet. Luckily, they weren’t.

The clinic was inside a grey stone building. Just inside there was a waiting area full of folding chairs. It smelled of ammonia and wet dog. Two people sat on the chairs, and another woman was behind a table on the back wall by a green swinging door.

Shirel walked me just inside but refused to go in farther. “I hate doctors.” She walked off in the other direction. “I’ll see you later.”

“Want some credits for a ride back to the boarding house?” I shouted after her, but she waved me off and disappeared around the corner.

Somehow, I wasn’t worried about her.

Inside the clinic, I approached the lady at the folding table. She grinned at me. The table was piled high with old plastic tablets that had long ago been outlawed and inkless stylus pens.

“Just one moment,” she said to me. She shuffled around the tablets, picked one up and read a name aloud.

From the folding chairs, a man limped over, took the tablet and went through the green door into the back. The lady turned back to me.

“Can I see the doctor?” I asked.

“You blind?” She had frizzy red hair that was tucked behind both her ears and a crooked pair of glasses perched on her red ball nose. Her face was expressionless.

“What? Oh. No.”

“Then you’ll see the doctor!” The lady burst out laughing.

The woman patient chuckled.

“Get it?” the red-haired lady said. “
See
the doctor?”

I forced a smile and made the closest thing to a laugh as I could.

She looked at me in disappointment and shook her head but handed me a tablet and a stylus. I heard her mumbling something about today’s youth not having a sense of humor as I went across the room and sat in an empty chair in the corner.

The questionnaire wanted my name, my address and my prints, but seeing as how I didn’t know my last name and my address was a boarding house, it didn’t take long for me to finish. Where it asked why I was there to see the doctor, I wrote “pregnant?”

When I handed the tablet back, the lady glanced it over and told me with a smile to sit.

I went back to my seat in the corner.

Across the aisle from me was a woman in her thirties. She was obviously far into a pregnancy. Her belly was so large and round she looked as if she’d split open any moment, like an overripe melon. Her swollen feet were perched onto a chair she’d placed in front of her.

I watched her read from a palm tablet and tried to envision myself large, round, swollen and full of babies.

She must have felt my gaze and glanced up.

I forced another smile. “How far along are you?” Since Shirel had asked me that, I guessed it was a common question.

“Too far,” she said.

“Oh.” What was that supposed to mean? I cleared my throat. “What’s the worst part about being pregnant?”

The pregnant woman smirked at me again. “Shoes with laces.” Then she laughed.

Was she making a joke?

I didn’t get the chance to find out. The red-haired lady stood from her table and with a tablet in her hand, she motioned the pregnant woman through the door.

“Come on, Dolore,” the new mother moaned as she plopped her feet to the floor and pushed herself up, using the arms of the chair for balance. “Last chance.”

Dolore stared at the pregnant woman’s belly as she shuffled to the door. “I say it’s a boy.”

“Five credits say it’s a girl,” the pregnant woman said.

“Five credits? Hardly worth the effort.” Dolore grinned from ear to ear and handed the woman her tablet as she disappeared through the doorway.

Dolore’s eyes met mine and her smile faded slightly. She went back to the table and shuffled more tablets around.

I put my head against the wall and resigned myself to waiting.

* * *

“Naya?”

My head shot upright and I nearly slipped off my chair. I’d fallen asleep in the waiting room at the clinic.

Dolore stood over me, a tablet in her hand. “The doctor will see you now. He’s not blind either. Ha-ha!”

I faked a laugh and took my tablet. The clinic was empty besides me.

The red-haired lady showed me through the green door. Inside, there was a long hallway with doors leading into examination rooms.

I saw a flash of white.

Suddenly, I was in the hall of the infirmary at the Line.

The long green hallway, the double silver doors, the nurse, the hose, the blast of cold water.

I felt my plastic mattress in my sleeping compartment. I saw the bed and dingy grey sheets in my appointment room. The silver door where the appointments entered. The blood on the walls after Lover Boy...

My skin went frigid with cold sweat. I dropped the tablet to the floor and rocked on my feet. Someone grabbed my arm.

“Hey, you okay?” It was a man’s voice.

I shook the arm off. “Let me go.”

His hand released me, and I gripped the wall for balance.

“What’s the matter? You feeling faint?” the man’s voice asked.

I couldn’t look to him. My eyes were glued on the long hallway of the infirmary.

I blinked twice, and it was gone.

I was actually in a grey hallway. Framed digital posters of puppies and kittens hung on the walls. Brown doors in the hall had large red numbers painted on them.

I felt lightheaded.

The red-haired woman came up behind me. “What’s going on, Doc?”

“I’m okay,” I lied.

“Can you make it to exam three?” he asked.

I nodded, though the walls seemed to move as I inched forward.

Dolore helped me stagger to a room a few doors down. Inside, there was a shiny metal examination table too small for a person to lie on. The room was painted a soothing grey-blue. More kitty and dog posters hung on the walls.

I slumped onto a bench in the corner. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s okay,” Dolore said, pouring some water from a pitcher by a deep sink and handing me a glass. “No big deal.”

“I saw...” I killed the sentence before it could escape. I had sworn not to tell anyone else where I was from.

“It’s all right,” she said. “No harm done. You sure you feel okay?”

I sipped the water. “I’m fine, really.”

“Looked like the start of a panic attack,” said the man’s voice. He was in the doorway. He had short brown hair that covered his ears and a large mouth full of straight teeth. But he didn’t wear a doctor’s coat and seemed young to have graduated from medical school. Almost my age. Maybe a year or two older at best.

“Panic attack?” I asked.

“Dolore, maybe you’d better stick around,” he said, and the woman nodded, sitting next to me on the bench.

“What did you see when you went through the door?” he asked. He stayed in the threshold. “You saw something. What was it?”

I didn’t answer. I hadn’t thought about the doctor being a man. All the medical staffers on the Line were female nurses. The guards and the managers were men and gawked at you with their beady, leery eyes, but it was the women who took care of you. In their distant, cold sort of way. But nevertheless, aside from taxi drivers, Benny the bartender, a couple of marketplace workers and the three men who’d chased me my first day out, he was the only guy who’d spoken to me outside of the Line.

I didn’t know why it bothered me so much.

Maybe it was because he was so...handsome.

Besides, if I told him what I saw, he’d know where I was from.

He saw my hesitation. He watched me intently as he entered the room, trying to read me. He put a tablet on the counter by the sink and washed his thin hands with some foul-smelling soap.

“What did you see?” he asked again.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

Dolore patted my leg. “It might, dear.”

I couldn’t help it but I jumped at her touch and dropped my drink. The glass shattered, and water splashed all over the black tile floor.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Dolore got to her feet. “Don’t you worry,” she exclaimed. “I’ll clean this right up.” She got up to retrieve a broom and a dust pan from behind the door. But the man didn’t move from the sink. He turned his head to the side and studied me.

The intensity of his eyes made me squirm.

“What did you see?” he asked again. He was completely calm and looked me square in the eye, which irritated me even more.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” I sighed. “I said it doesn’t matter.”

He obviously disagreed. “I can’t say whether or not it matters unless you tell me what you saw.”

My frustration boiled over. “All right! I saw the infirmary, okay? I’m from the Line. And I saw the infirmary. But it doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do with why I’m here. Can we just get this over with?”

“We’d better take her to my office, Dolore,” he said.

She set down the broom and the dustpan and walked to me, gently taking my elbow. “Come on, dear.”

“Wait, where are you taking me?”

Dolore ushered me down the hall, farther into the building. I tried to take my arm back, but she held tight.

“Wait a second. Where are we going? Let me go.” I pulled against her, but she didn’t release her grip.

“It’s all right, sweetie,” she said, as sweet as honey. “You’ll see. Just stay calm.”

“Hey! Let me go!” I dragged my feet and tried to grab something to stop us. I ripped a puppy poster right off the wall, and it landed with a crash. But Dolore didn’t stop, pulling me down the hall.

My sneakers slid across the floor as if it were ice.

“No! Stop it! Let me go!”

Chapter Seven

I tried to yank free, but the doctor was following right behind us, blocking my escape. Dolore dragged me to a black swinging door at the end of the hall and kicked it open with the ball of her foot.

“Would you stop this?” I yelled. “Where are you taking me?”

Inside was a carpeted office with faded flower wallpaper and a large bright window. In the window was an air conditioner that hummed loudly and blew cold air into the room. Dolore walked me over and stuck my face right into it.

“What the...” I started. Then I inhaled, and my lungs sucked in a delicious cool breeze.

Fresh air!

It was heavenly.

No stench. No humidity.

Clean.

I don’t know how long I stood there breathing, enjoying my lungs full of freshness.

It was a while.

Eventually, Dolore let go of my elbow, and I leaned into the air conditioner, taking deep breaths. The air filled my lungs and felt cool in my nose and mouth. I had all the crisp air I could hold.

When I’d had my fill, I felt much calmer. I turned around.

The doctor sat in a rocking chair next to a desk, typing feverishly onto a tablet and rocking back and forth. Dolore looked at me with great concern from a folding chair by the black door. There was a glass aquarium full of brown mice on a table in the corner. They squeaked and rolled around the container like balls in a bowl.

“I’m all right,” I said. “Really.”

The doctor didn’t look as if he agreed. “Hardly. I’d wager you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That would explain the panic attack before.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

He ignored my expression and continued. “How long were you on the Line?”

“Nine years,” I said without flinching.

Dolore’s mouth gaped open.

The doctor glared at her. She clamped her mouth closed.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-two, I think.”

“Oh, heavens,” she cried.

“Dolore,” he warned, and she sighed. Then he turned back to me. “Is that where you got the facial bruising?”

“Yes.”

He typed on his tablet. “You wrote on your chart that you’re pregnant?”

“That’s what they told me.”

“Who told you?”

“The Line.”

His face clouded. “So, they
let
you go?”

“Y-yes.”

He flushed and his eyes hardened. I didn’t think he believed me. “Dolore,” he said. “If you could get me a—”

Dolore was on her feet and down the hall before he could finish the sentence. “Pregnancy test...got it!” she hollered.

The doctor stood from the rocker and placed the tablet on his beaten desk. “I’m going to need to examine you. Is that all right?” His voice seemed softer now. I couldn’t help but notice his hands as he rolled up his shirtsleeves. He was careful not to crease the fabric, and folded them over as if they were silk.

Gentle. I liked that.

“Sure. Okay. I-I can do that.” I should have figured it would be like an inspection. I turned from my position in front of the air conditioner and pulled my shirt up over my head. I’d been naked in front of many men. Too many to count. This was no big deal, I told myself.

I pulled the drawstring on my pants. They dropped to my ankles.

The doctor inhaled deeply and blushed to his ears. He stared at me in such a sad way. It wasn’t the look I was used to getting from men when they saw me naked.

The room was frigid from the blasting air conditioner, and I felt goose bumps crawl across my skin.

He held up his hands, then turned away. “Uh, that’s not what I... It’s not that kind of... Let’s wait for Dolore to come back. You should get dressed.”

“Oh.” I pulled the shirt back over my head and got my pants up, a little embarrassed. I crossed my arms across my chest, suddenly ashamed I wore no undergarments.

Dolore scrambled into the office with a small cardboard box about the size of the palm of her hand. She handed it to the doctor.

He opened it, pulled out a black electronic device the shape of a spool, and then he handed it to Dolore. “You should do it.”

“Really?” she protested. “But usually you—”

“Please,” he said, and looked away from both of us.

Dolore frowned but then turned a soft eye to me as she approached and indicated I should lift my shirt just a little. She put the spoollike sensor to my belly, just under my navel, and compressed a green button at the end.

The spool heated on my skin then beeped.

She removed it and held it out to the doctor, who took the spool and checked the green light.

“Positive.” His face had lost all expression. “You’d better lie down.”

I lay on the couch, pulled up my blouse to just under my chest as Dolore asked. The doctor put a scanner board over my belly button, pressed the screen a few times and watched it. He pressed another button on the board, and then I heard them.

Heartbeats.

They were soft little thumps, overlapping each other, as if fighting over who got to beat first.

The doctor punched his fingers a few more times on the touch screen, studying the visual images. His face hardened again. The smile that had been creeping onto my lips shriveled. I wanted to be happy about hearing the babies. It suddenly made all this trouble seem worthwhile. But he seemed so furious, it was killing the moment.

He held up the scanner to show me, and two little white beans rolled around in black jelly.

There they were. And they were mine.

I grinned.

I couldn’t wait to meet them.

What they would look like? Would they resemble me? I certainly didn’t want to cringe each time I gazed into the faces of my children, remembering how they’d been conceived.

I would never tell them, I told myself. They would never know.

It was a promise and my gift to them, and the least I could do, given that I didn’t know what else I had to offer them.

For now, all I could do was reach out and lightly touch the tablet, as if I were able to feel the warmth of their skin on the screen. My eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” I said to the doctor.

My emotion caught him off guard. He nodded. Then the corners of his lips curled into a brief smile, but he didn’t look at me as he took the scanner and shut it off. He went to his rocking chair and typed on the tablet, rocking back and forth, deep in thought.

“You knew you’re having twins?” he asked, his eyes on the tablet.

“That’s what they’d said.”

Dolore seemed confused and was working hard not to cry. Every time I caught her watching me, she gave a little jerk.

“You’re having girls. Two of them,” he said. “Fraternal.”

Girls. I had two daughters.

The doctor finished typing and locked eyes with me.

Green.

His eyes were bright green and they were hard and serious. The gentleness was gone. “Were there any conditions for them letting you go?” he asked point-blank.

“Uh.”

He knew. But how could he?

This could turn bad.

My face must have showed my panic. He didn’t look away.

“Dolore,” he said, “Naya and I are going to need a moment alone. If that’s okay with you, Naya?”

I hesitated, but only for a split second. I nodded, though it wasn’t true.

I glanced at the window with the air conditioner and wondered how far the drop was. If this turned worse, maybe I could make a run for it.

Dolore got up and closed the black door behind her. I could hear her crying as she walked down the hall. “The poor lamb!” she moaned, and then the cries grew distant.

“My name’s Ric Bennett,” he said. “But everybody calls me Doc.” He was stern, but I could tell it took effort on his part. “I’m not an obstetrician. You’ll need to see one in four weeks. Can you manage that?”

“I...I...wasn’t planning on being here in four weeks.”

“Where are you going?”

“South. Maybe.” I was actually thinking West, given Shirel’s history with South, but I also wasn’t sure of this guy’s loyalties.

“You have family there?”

“I don’t know where they are. Look, I appreciate the help, but I’m not staying in Central. I’ll find a doctor in South, that’s all.”

He nodded, his expression softening again. He rocked some more. “The conditions?” he pressed. “They asked for a replacement, didn’t they?”

He
did
know.

I tried to appear calm despite the fact I was internally rattled. “That’s none of your business.”

This took him by surprise. He shifted in the rocking chair, his expression somewhere between amused and annoyed.

He had a dimple in his left cheek. For some reason, this irritated me.

“You’re not the first pregnant girl who’s come to this clinic from the Line,” he said.

“So, wait. They’ve done this before?”

He nodded.

“But the manager said...”

Anger flashed across the doctor’s face, and in an instant he turned crimson. “Don’t believe anything they’ve told you! Not a word. Got it?” He slammed his hand against the desk for emphasis. “They’ve lied to you. They’ve lied to all of us.”

His temper caught me off guard. “Okay. Got it.”

He struggled to calm his fury.

His anger concerned me. Too often a temper turned physical. I’d seen it a million times, in a million appointments. I considered asking Dolore to return, but I didn’t want to witness any more of her weeping. Besides, the doctor seemed to know something about all this. I told myself to give him another minute, and then I would leave.

“What happened to the other girls?” I asked.

He shook his head angrily. “Let’s just say it didn’t end well.”

“How did it end?”

“They died.” He ran a hand through his hair. His anger had been replaced with pain and upset. I wondered if he’d known them personally. “The pregnant ones—their babies were taken. We still don’t know where.”

I had an idea. The children were probably on the Line, awaiting puberty and having their levels assessed. I didn’t think it was the time to tell him, though. He was unstable enough already. Plus, he’d said “we” didn’t know where the babies went. To me, that meant there was more than just him who’d met pregnant girls from the Line.

That could be useful.

There was a moment he remained angry, but then he turned a lesser shade of bright red. He seemed to consider something.

I watched him think.

When he’d sufficiently calmed down, he rocked again. “You can’t run. They’re tracking you.”

“I know.”

“Then you won’t get far.”

He hadn’t known me for more than ten minutes, and already he’d decided I was incompetent. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“None that I’d tell you.”

“Fine.” Doc stood from the rocking chair and leaned against the desk. “Look, unless you want to end up dead like the others, you have to let me help you.”

“Help me how?”

“I know people. There’s this group of us...” His voice trailed off.

Group?

His eyes narrowed and he leaned toward me. I leaned back. I didn’t like having him so close.

He noticed this and his eyes went sad again. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and sighed. He sat back into the rocking chair. “I need to know if I can trust you.”

“Trust
me?
I’m wondering that about
you.
”

He grinned at this and his dimple reappeared. He looked attractive when it did. For reasons I couldn’t place, it made me uncomfortable.

“Why do you need to trust me?” I asked.

He rocked in the chair for a moment, considering this.

I waited. I hoped he didn’t take all day. If this turned out to be a bust, I needed to get back to the boarding house before dark. I was planning to pick up a bulletin before the kiosk closed so I could look for work in West. But the doctor was looking at me quite seriously and was thinking so hard he had begun to perspire.

“Because I don’t want to bring you in and then have you blow it and put us all in danger,” he said. “The last girl cracked and made a mistake.”

“
A
mistake?”

“One is all it takes.” He leaned forward again and his jaw clenched. “If you’re in, you’ve got to do exactly what you’re told, how you’re told and when and where you’re told. Your loyalty and obedience must be total. And you’re never to tell anyone about this. Ever. One error, and Auberge will be all over you, and us.”

“You mean the Line will be all over us.”

“The Line is owned by Auberge. You go against the Line, you go against them. Now do you understand why I’m so serious?”

I should have figured that. I should have known.

It was more than getting away from the creepy manager and his private security. If the Line knew where I was, so would Auberge. I couldn’t just get travel orders to West and work in a commune. Even if I deactivated the tracking chip, they’d track me in a second using the credits I earned on the job.

I couldn’t open a bank account. They owned all the banks. I couldn’t buy a thing. They ran the credit company.

Auberge was a larger enemy than I was prepared to escape. I realized then that breaking the deal and hiding wasn’t going to work at all. This was much bigger problem. Truly escaping was a daunting task, and not one I could conquer alone. I was running out of options, and the best one I had was this doctor in a rocking chair with a bad temper.

“I don’t have a choice,” I said. “They’ll take my babies.”

Doc was enraged again but held it together. “They want your...” The rest of the sentence died. I waited as he got a grip. “Is that where the other babies went?”

I didn’t answer. That said enough.

“All right,” he said, his chest moving up and down a little quicker than before. “Give me your ankle.” He went to his desk, opened the top drawer and pulled out a surgical tray with shiny silver scalpels.

“Why?”

“I’ve got to cut out your tracking chip.”

“Now?”

“How else am I going to get you out of here without them knowing?”

“They’ll know the moment my tracker stops working.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s true. But we have ways around that.” He pointed at his desk. “Come here and sit down. I can give you a local, but honestly, it’ll be a lot quicker if you just let me cut it out. If you can sit still, that is.”