The Halibred prophecy rang almost true. The Iscleption officers ushered the wounded into the Medifac on enclosed beds. The rest of the prisoners complied into a line, with a mixture of Ilius and Enieyu escorting individuals into the leftmost building. By the time the next prisoner entered, the one before them had vanished through elevator doors.
Iggy glanced back. His throat cleared to grab Lenith’s attention. He had succeeded, but she gave him no hint of it. Fandel the Ilius guided him through the snapping doors.
Lenith was fifth in line. Three minutes of waiting in full silence. Her time had come.
Arjel’s gauntlet landed on her neck and compelled her forward. She elicited a quiet groan. He squeezed harder. No control. Nothing left. Well, almost nothing left. Only her favorite button-down shirt and a scrape on her cheek.
Heavy, black doors parted. A rush of wind slapped against her back as they closed, sealing her inside with the Enieyu.
The stark corridor stank of cleaning chemicals. Her nostrils burned. She smelled nothing else. Like an infection gone straight to the brain. Queasiness grew to an almost unbearable level.
The overhead lamps cast a yellow tint onto whitewashed walls. Arjel brought her to a slight opening where three curved sets of double-doors waited. He pushed gloved fingers against a digital panel-lock.
A moment’s pause. The elevator opened. The cylindrical chamber was large enough to fit a dozen bodies. Lenith and Arjel were alone. Her breathing. His silence. She panicked. For the first time, she resisted the stiff hand leading her. He forced onward.
A numeric screen listed floors from 3B to 4FL. Arjel poked one of the circular, digital buttons. 2 FL. It brightened a shade of orange, and the doors closed.
The walls trembled, the floor shook and, for the briefest moment, Lenith felt she could have floated. Her stomach twisted. Arjel remained with his back turned. His sidearm hung freely from its holster. A machine-operated rifle was slung to the back left side of his suit. She thought to grab it and put him in his place, but this was his place. She was the one out of her element.
Two sets of doors hissed open and ended their trip. She had never taken an elevator before. She dreaded doing it again.
Vibrant lights loomed over another long hall. Cells made of glass and cells sealed like secrets flanked her on either side. Most of the spaces made of glass were empty but a few unlucky prisoners awaited fate. She had no clue about the opaque cells.
Steps sounded tinny on the corrugated, white floor, echoing off cement walls. Panels glowed blue beside each door. She assumed to keep them locked.
Something at the end of the hall knotted Lenith’s throat. Sixteen complex sets of machinery unlike anything she had uncovered in the Gray Area. Each had a small, black pod large enough for a single body. Beside the pod, a mask and tank. A heap of clothes lay to the left.
The temperature shifted. Cool concrete rose to humidity. She tasted boiled water in the air. Fandel the Ilius stepped back from the farthest pod, swiping his palms together.
“He fit?” Arjel called.
Fandel gestured with a curled pinky finger. “Believe it if you will. Somehow.”
Their voices washed over Lenith as murmurs. A tank behind the pods had grabbed Lenith’s attention. A water-heater, rumbling with pressure. Its presence—the fear of it—swallowed her. She failed to notice Arjel releasing her neck.
He clenched the opening of her shirt. Tore. Buttons clattered.
Lenith wrestled out of the sleeves, screaming in sudden panic. A bandeau covered her breasts. Everything registered at once. The shuffle of Chimayri boots. The burden against her temples. A voice screamed, from the back of her head, begging her to die before anything more could happen.
Arjel pummeled the bruise that Iggy had started. Sheer pain caught her gut. She doubled over, vomited against a recessed drain in the floor.
A laugh escaped her. She always laughed when vomiting, even in the midst of a fever or poisoned by poorly cooked food. Her father had always hunched over her, rubbing her back, baffled by her laughter. Not this time.
Arjel dragged her pants off. Stripped the bandeau.
“Let me get that for you,” Fandel said.
He hoisted the lid of a black pod open. Steam poured out. Lenith screeched and howled, doing everything she could to keep kicking. A padded knee drove into her bare back.
Arjel kept her down. Fandel forced the mask over her face. Straps dug against her scalp. Plugs jammed into her ears.
Raised from the rigid floor, arms constricted around her torso. She lifted into the empty air, so cold and biting, drawing closer to the opened pod. Lenith’s fists clenched in resistance. She planted a foot against the rim. Arjel raised her higher, giving her a view of the dark water within. Her heel slipped.
Lenith succumbed. Fists weakened. Her naked body plunged into scorching water. Tingling spread from flesh into nerves. The pressure, the mask, the dread stopped any attempt to climb out.
The lid shut.
The light died.
In the dark, Lenith found oxygen. The mask pumped pure air into her lungs. Her eyes opened, seeing nothing. She clawed at the water. Then, in the distance—or what seemed like the distance—purple light formed. She reached out. Too far away. If she could grab it, she would know the way. She would be able to fight back.
In this miniscule pod, space felt limitless. The purple was taking shape. A slit; a tear. Whispers in the water. In her mind. She grasped the purple, and the purple vanished.
A blinding light flashed in her face. The pod was small again, as a screen revealed itself through the water. Sound flowed from the earplugs.
A video of a plump man with deep jowls, credited as Torigen Vien Aglebon, played. He stood beside a statue of his visage, flanked on either side and from behind by four concrete monoliths. No. Colossal, gray strongholds.
The aged man planted his palms on a cane carved to look like a blackwood branch and gawked at the camera with a white-toothed smile.
“Hello, my friends. Here I am with my statue, watching over your future home. Now, they don’t look like much but you’ll find they have all the amenities a man or woman of any age or size could ask for. Because, see, these Blocks of mine aren’t meant to last you forever. They’re meant to project you onward and upward. Strive to do good things, work hard, and one day you’ll look back fondly on these little slots of life.
“When I was a young boy, back when the country was in such peril at all hours, I grew up south of Juptos. Ever been there? It’s a real treat if you can make it. I lived in a middle-sized home, three stories tall with a couple acres of land, with my mother and my father and my sisters and brothers.
“They were great fun but some of them weren’t too good at life. Hopping jobs, eating more than their fair share, and being lousy in general. What makes a lousy person, you might ask? Comfort.”
Aglebon twisted his cane and looked in awe to his statue, a glint in his blue eyes. Then he focused back on the camera, knowing he had to sell this to people in pods who hated him.
“One of my sisters—dwindled and whorish—told me she never wanted much because she was too comfortable to do anything with her life. If her life had been tougher, if she had been scared more, maybe then she’d do something.”
Lenith tried to cover the video with her hands. It was projecting from within the mask. There was no escape. If she wanted to breathe, she needed to watch.
“If my sister was alive today—if the excess of comfort hadn’t taken her life already—I’d place her in these Blocks. I’d put my own family in here. Can’t be so bad, right? It builds character. It sets societal expectations.”
The Torigen’s tone deepened. His eyes darkened. “So, when you first walk into your room, whether it’s the first slot or Slot Five Fifty-Five, know you’re one step away from earning a better life. It’s up to you and no one else. An opportunity that we have given you not to squander. Your first and your last.”
The video blinked out of existence.
A new light raced from under Lenith’s feet, and she was falling. The pod dumped her and all its water into a glass chamber. While the water drained, she had nowhere to escape to. She ripped the mask off and tossed the earplugs. As the pure oxygen soared away, she sucked in acrid air. It was the best taste in the world, in that moment.
In the glass chamber to her left, a dazed Iggy sat upright. To her right, a young man she didn’t recognize lay on his side. She raised onto her knees, pushing the swaths of matted hair from her face.
As Lenith’s eyes acclimated to the light, the momentary relief of freedom faded. Out past the glass door, another Chimayri officer hurried down a long corridor. He was unarmed, at least. A long cloak billowed from raised shoulders. The fabric matched the color of his charcoal gray helmet.
White stripes accentuated and contoured indentations along his faceplate. White tips punctuated rigid epaulets and ran down his arms like claw marks.
The officer moved with purpose. He was a member of Dehkie.
Dehkie were once the greatest at two professions: infiltration and interrogation. As such, Gray Area camps had grown increasingly wary of strangers. Paranoid individuals questioned their closest of friends. The town Lenith’s family had sought refuge at when she was much younger, in her late toddling years, had started a saying (which spread across Korvilene, given enough time), indulging suspicion.
Don’t Trust the Dehkie Beside You.
The leaders plastered it on walls, floors, ceilings, even roofs. Children learned the phrase. Adults hammered it into their common lexicon. Executions of good men and women went without question. All someone had to say was ‘Sabotage’ and point the finger.
In the fleeting moments before this Dehkie’s arrival, Lenith made eye contact with Iggy.
As the door to her chamber opened, the glass shifted opaque. Iggy vanished, as did the young man.
The Dehkie entered.
Lenith collapsed in exhaustion and defeat, face first in the cooling water.
Instinct told her to roll over when the officer pressed a gauntlet to the small of her back. She failed. All her strength had escaped in the pod.
The cloak cast a wavering shadow within her fallen eyesight. He smelled of smoked meats. A welcome scent no matter the source.
His splayed hand stroked along her spine. “Stay down. I’ll return in an hour. Rest for now, Lenith Thaymen.” A digitizer in the helmet barely manipulated his voice, able to mask his identity if he wanted. Easy, calm. Like a light wind touching scorched land.
Lenith managed a weak “Wh-who are you?”
“Kogin. Poralaget of Dehkie. But if you call me Kogin, even once, we’re not going to be friends.”
Lenith shuddered. A Poralaget was the highest-ranking official of a military branch—a word borrowed from Old Korvish. She found it hard not to repeat his name out of spite.
“What should I call you then?” she asked. Teeth chattered.
“Marlic.”
The Dehkie removed and draped his cloak over her seizing, pink body. The soft, thick fabric was nothing like the coarse blankets of the Gray Area. Warmth spread. Lenith blinked once, then dropped into slumber.
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