CHAPTER SIX
A cloud has settled on my brain. I feel a memory trying to surface...swirling and swirling like a whirlpool, but being sucked farther and farther away. I’m sure I had the most horrible nightmare, but I can’t remember it. I feel a hand pressed to my head, voices whispering just out of earshot and then nothing. The hand and the voices have vanished. I struggle to move, to wake up.
I. Can’t. Move.
My eyes shoot open.
I’m tied to a bed. A hospital bed. Am I at the clinic? Why am I tied down? I struggle against the restraints, but they’re tight.
The door opens and a perfectly polished Violet and Victor enter. Each dressed in black suits, with crisp white shirts and those SCI scarves. In the harsh lights of the hospital room they look older than they usually do. Both look like they’ve had a little bit of work done to fight the aging process, but it looks fake. They look exhausted and unhappy. Despite the fact they’re looking a little under the weather, Violet’s bright-red lipstick still looks freshly put on. For some reason that annoys me. I watch as a large, burly man, dressed in the Henley-form comes into the room.
“Raul, get her restraints off and then wait outside the door,” Violet says. Her expression stays soft, but her bright-green eyes look upset. “We need to have a conversation with Ms. Knight.”
Raul adjusts the bed so I’m sitting up. He unties me and gruffly tells the Blacks to signal if he’s needed and then exits the room. I rub my sore wrists.
Violet starts the conversation. “Hello, dear. What a mess we find ourselves in.” I’m so confused. Victor has his arms crossed and taps his foot impatiently.
“What happened?” I ask. “Why...these?” I point to the untied restraints.
“I’m afraid you stuck your head where it doesn’t belong. You were found in a most compromised position, so we had no choice really …” she explains, gesturing back to the shackles.
“I was at the Reallocation ceremony. And then …” I fight against the block in my brain. I’m able to pluck a thought from the shadows. “Adam. Adam got called up.” I pause. What happened next? I went to see him off at the buses. He kissed me.
Violet decides to help jog my memory. “You followed Adam’s bus.” Her simple statement unlocks the cell holding the unwanted memories. The floodgates open, and I gasp for air. I begin to dry heave. It’s impossible, too terrible to be real. Surely I dreamed it. Imagined it. But I remember that Joshua offered to show me. He told me I’d regret asking.
I want to push the rewind button. Unlearn what I know. Fifty people were killed before my eyes. Why would the SCI be murdering innocent people? Reallocation’s supposed to be about increasing the SCI’s numbers, not decreasing the world population a busload at a time.
“I see that your memory has returned.” Victor sneers. I look over at him. He’s got slate-blue eyes and he’s using them to glare at me. “What were you doing there?”
Getting answers, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. Why isn’t Joshua here? What has he told them? How did they find me? Catch me? Did Joshua turn me in to save himself? Was this part of his plan all along? Get me to trust him? So many questions, but I’m afraid to ask any of them. To say the wrong thing. To be burned and melted like the others. My body involuntarily shudders at the thought. How fast did they die? How much pain did they feel? My heart feels like it has been put through a shredder.
“Adam,” I say softly. “I wanted to find out where he was going. I didn’t know... I didn’t think …” It’s horribly ironic that Adam defended the SCI—his killers—until the very end. No betrayal could be bigger.
Victor gives me a murderous look that chills me through and through. I’ve spent most my time with Violet and haven’t really gotten to know him at all. His wife puts her hand on his arm, as if to say, “I’ve got this.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen, Alexa. We’re going to keep this little incident between us. I am hoping you understand the precarious situation you find yourself in. We have your mother. We have your brothers. And well, we have you. Your understanding of the things you saw is...limited...by your narrow view of the human condition. I assure you that Adam and all his bus mates continue to be in the care of The Second Chance Institute.”
She just called mass murder, “a little incident.” Threatened my family.
Something in me snaps. I don’t think. I just act. I lunge at Violet, knocking her back and pinning her to the ground.
I wrap my hands around her neck like the drug addict did to me. Let’s see how much she likes her dead body being in the care and keeping of the SCI.
“What did you do? Put the suctioned up ashes in a giant urn?” I spit at her. She needs to—they need to—pay for what they did to Adam and the others. And those who were “reallocated” before them, like Perry.
Tighter and tighter I squeeze. A brute force yanks me back, but my grip’s so tight on Violet’s neck, that she comes with me. For the first time perhaps ever her lipstick’s smeared. I consider that a personal victory.
Victor’s pounding on me, while his gargantuan sidekick peels my fingers off her neck. Muscle Man’s quick to slam me back onto the bed and get me back into shackles, while Victor screams for medical staff to tend to his wife.
Raul takes no chances. In addition to the shackles, he gags me. When I wrestle against my restraints, he points a gun at my head. I stiffen. What have I done? Are they going to hurt my family because of me?
While Violet’s being attended to, I’m given ample opportunity to think through my short list of alternatives. I can go along with whatever they have planned, which may result in my death and my family’s death. Could I get to a phone? Call the police? The FBI? Who would handle something like this? How could I prove what I saw? I don’t even know how to get to that warehouse, as I rode the entire way on the floor of the black SUV. Violet’s brother is a senator. Does he know what his sister has been up to? Is he involved?
I think about Joshua. How does he fit into all of this? It seems a bit convenient that I ended up as his roommate. His friend. Something more? I never trusted him, but that didn’t stop me from crushing on him. Enough so, that I kept Adam at arm’s length. How many evenings did I make excuses to hang out on the couch with Joshua, listening to him sing and chatter? What if it was all a setup? Joshua showed me the warehouse of horrors. And now suddenly he’s nowhere to be seen.
My mind’s at war with itself. Joshua’s a traitor. Joshua tried to warn you. Didn’t he sing the lyrics: “Better watch out or else you’ll die. At the hands of the SCI?” I go over everything Joshua’s ever said in my mind, searching for clues, for answers.
Eventually, Victor and Raul return, with sheepish looking Joshua in tow. He’s not tied up, nor does his father look the least bit upset with him. Sigh. I really didn’t want to be wrong about him.
Victor slaps me harshly across the face, causing nasty vibrations to ring through my head. Then Victor speaks slowly and purposefully, so that I have no choice but to process each word he utters. “Luckily for you, my wife will recover. If there is ever another incident like that, I will not hesitate to end your life, your mother’s life, and your brothers’ lives. Do you understand?”
I definitely speak the language of “threat.” So, slowly I nod.
“In return for your family staying alive, we have some expectations of you. You will be the ‘face’ of our Clean Slate campaign. Yours is a remarkable story that the press will eat up...a girl who lived in a van with her family off and on for three years. Was almost killed on the street, but was saved by one of the SCI staff. Then, taken in and offered a second chance at life. I couldn’t have planned it better myself …” He chuckles, his slate-blue eyes flickering with triumph. “Oh wait. I did plan it.”
My eyes narrow. What does he mean he planned it? Now would be an awfully good time to have the gag out and restraints off. This man could use a ring of bruises around his neck to match his wife’s. Mine’ve faded.
“Yes, young l
ady. We singled you out as the perfect candidate to represent our campaign when you came in for flu shots and screenings a while back. You have some unique qualities that makes you of great interest and importance to us. Of course we had to make sure you’d return, so we gave your mother a little something extra in her shot. Put a tracker on your van and while we were at it, did a little work on it to make sure it’d break down. It wasn’t hard to get that drug addict to lay into you either. We timed the save perfectly. Got you here and under our thumb. Put your mom in a medically-induced coma. Brilliant really.”
Blood rushes to my face, and I once again struggle against my restraints. I don’t care that they’re cutting into my wrists and ankles, causing me to bleed and swell. There’s nothing I want more than to see this man go down. He’s a monster.
“Oh, and I forgot to mention...we’ve transferred your brothers to another SCI location where we were in desperate need of additional security. They stopped by while you were sleeping to say goodbye,” Victor says. I can’t keep the tears from coming. Did they kill my brothers, too?
“Now, now, now. There’s no need to get so upset. Your brothers are alive and perfectly safe. And will stay that way as long as you cooperate. So, what do you think? Do you agree to my terms? Joshua here will be at your side at all times to make sure you don’t make any more mistakes. There’s just no room for error in this business.”
Joshua subtly nods his head towards me. He thinks I should take the deal, I guess. Do I take what’s behind door number one: certain death? Or what’s behind door number two: being the face of a campaign designed to lead other people to their certain death. My mom always told me that when you’re picking between two bad options, pick what you can live with, while actively looking for option number three.
I can’t figure out a way to help the others if I’m dead. So, I nod and say a prayer, asking forgiveness for what I’m about to do.
“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche