companions out of the corner of my eye. Their genders and ages are easier to determine up close. There are three or four older women, perhaps my mothers’ ages, huddled near Pax. Next to them sit a couple of children, Intermediate Cell age, and on the far end of the table, two middle-aged men.
Four teenagers flop beside Lucas, around our age or a little older, three girls and a boy. None of them look familiar, and disappointment makes it hard to swallow the last bean. Lucas said he’d seen some of the kids here from Cell in Danbury, like Emmy and Reese. If Leah’s still alive, she’s probably here, too.
For some reason I think seeing even one of them would make me feel better.
One single air-horn blast makes me jump out of my skin, and my elbow knocks my apple onto the floor. The people that remain at the tables rise in unison and push toward the exit. Their haste makes me wonder what the punishment is for being caught outside your tent after lockdown.
I glance at the Wardens, at their painfully beautiful faces and the cruelty in their obsidian eyes. The story Lucas told us just hours ago, about how they treat children and the elderly or the people who disobey them, rises in my mind. I don’t doubt that they’re positively gleeful at the thought of catching anyone stepping out of line.
Lucas and Pax stand up, but I drop to my hands and knees to retrieve my piece of fruit before heading to the exit. They’re waiting for me by the waste receptacle. We toss our plates and step onto the winding path toward our tiny refuge.
The living tents are crammed together, the sides and backs pressed against more sides and backs, roofs pressed against floors, and they glow slightly from the same swinging bulbs that light the meal area. If they weren’t full of people being beaten and forced to mine for an alien race that thinks they’re as disposable as those plates, the way the lights fill this bubble until the whole thing pulses slightly like its own sun would be pretty.
We’re almost back to our tent, my heart beating faster with every step toward captivity, when a figure streaks out of the tenement to our right, clamps on my arm, and drags me inside.
Chapter 12.
“Shut up, don’t talk. You have less than two minutes before they lock the furnicars for the night,” the girl rasps, unfamiliar, in my ear.
Lucas and Pax crash through the flap behind us, eyes wild and scared, but they stop in their tracks when they see me unharmed. The voice turns me loose and I spin, indignant at being hauled off the street like a bag of waste, but her face stops me.
Her thick chestnut curls used to hang to her waist, but now they’re cropped close to her head, shorter than Lucas’s, even. Chocolate-brown eyes, filled with dazed confusion the last time I saw her, fix on mine. They’re clear and sure, not scared.
The last part strikes me as strange.
“Emmy?” Lucas asks, an incredulous tone curling his voice up at the end.
“Hi, Lucas.” She gives him quick smile. “I saw you at the meal and wanted to talk to you, except I didn’t want to draw attention in front of the Wardens. But we don’t have time now.”
“What about tomorrow? At breakfast?”
Emmy stares at me for a minute, biting her lower lip. There’s still no fear in her face, but she’s more nervous than she was thirty seconds ago. “I don’t know. Okay. No. How about during cleansing tomorrow after duty?”
There’s no time to ask why she doesn’t want to be seen with us at breakfast. She pushes us out of the furnicar. We hustle into our own, and it zips closed the second I step through the flap. The light goes out.
All of the lights go out, plunging the world into blackness.
Our eyes adjust to the dark after a moment and we move around in silence, getting ready for bed. I guess we don’t get to brush our teeth after dinner, and these clothes are as clean and as soft as any pajamas I’ve ever owned. So I pull my ponytail out and
Four teenagers flop beside Lucas, around our age or a little older, three girls and a boy. None of them look familiar, and disappointment makes it hard to swallow the last bean. Lucas said he’d seen some of the kids here from Cell in Danbury, like Emmy and Reese. If Leah’s still alive, she’s probably here, too.
For some reason I think seeing even one of them would make me feel better.
One single air-horn blast makes me jump out of my skin, and my elbow knocks my apple onto the floor. The people that remain at the tables rise in unison and push toward the exit. Their haste makes me wonder what the punishment is for being caught outside your tent after lockdown.
I glance at the Wardens, at their painfully beautiful faces and the cruelty in their obsidian eyes. The story Lucas told us just hours ago, about how they treat children and the elderly or the people who disobey them, rises in my mind. I don’t doubt that they’re positively gleeful at the thought of catching anyone stepping out of line.
Lucas and Pax stand up, but I drop to my hands and knees to retrieve my piece of fruit before heading to the exit. They’re waiting for me by the waste receptacle. We toss our plates and step onto the winding path toward our tiny refuge.
The living tents are crammed together, the sides and backs pressed against more sides and backs, roofs pressed against floors, and they glow slightly from the same swinging bulbs that light the meal area. If they weren’t full of people being beaten and forced to mine for an alien race that thinks they’re as disposable as those plates, the way the lights fill this bubble until the whole thing pulses slightly like its own sun would be pretty.
We’re almost back to our tent, my heart beating faster with every step toward captivity, when a figure streaks out of the tenement to our right, clamps on my arm, and drags me inside.
Chapter 12.
“Shut up, don’t talk. You have less than two minutes before they lock the furnicars for the night,” the girl rasps, unfamiliar, in my ear.
Lucas and Pax crash through the flap behind us, eyes wild and scared, but they stop in their tracks when they see me unharmed. The voice turns me loose and I spin, indignant at being hauled off the street like a bag of waste, but her face stops me.
Her thick chestnut curls used to hang to her waist, but now they’re cropped close to her head, shorter than Lucas’s, even. Chocolate-brown eyes, filled with dazed confusion the last time I saw her, fix on mine. They’re clear and sure, not scared.
The last part strikes me as strange.
“Emmy?” Lucas asks, an incredulous tone curling his voice up at the end.
“Hi, Lucas.” She gives him quick smile. “I saw you at the meal and wanted to talk to you, except I didn’t want to draw attention in front of the Wardens. But we don’t have time now.”
“What about tomorrow? At breakfast?”
Emmy stares at me for a minute, biting her lower lip. There’s still no fear in her face, but she’s more nervous than she was thirty seconds ago. “I don’t know. Okay. No. How about during cleansing tomorrow after duty?”
There’s no time to ask why she doesn’t want to be seen with us at breakfast. She pushes us out of the furnicar. We hustle into our own, and it zips closed the second I step through the flap. The light goes out.
All of the lights go out, plunging the world into blackness.
Our eyes adjust to the dark after a moment and we move around in silence, getting ready for bed. I guess we don’t get to brush our teeth after dinner, and these clothes are as clean and as soft as any pajamas I’ve ever owned. So I pull my ponytail out and
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