This is a sad chapter. :'( As much as I enjoy giving my characters strife, I feel a little bad about what's going to happen to Ella. She's one of my favorite characters in this story. Also, we get a little insight into the Ella/Hunt dynamic. *sniffles* Though the future isn't looking so great for Hunt, either. :( Poor guy.
But before we get to that, I thought I'd look over a few of my reviewers' comments more closely; I'm afraid my tight schedule has left me with little time for replies. :/ Let's see if there's anything to address…
WinterSky101 – What do naps have to do with anything? :-k
nathan-p – I'll take it that means you liked the description? :P And actually, when I'm being perfectly honest with myself, I was planning to do extra stories from the very beginning. I just wanted to see if anyone would actually read them and make my effort worthwhile.
AngelwiththeClippedWings – YES! The new reviewer-proof shelter's done! *bolts self inside* Hahaha! Take that Leela! }:D
*cough* Anyways, on with the story.
25 – Ella's End
After three days of terror, torture, and verbal abuse, Ella Martinez was finally transferred to a processing camp. General Grieves hadn't been very happy when he got the order to cease the interrogation and make the transfer immediately—he had just threatened to pull her teeth out with a pair of pliers unless she talked, and had been looking forward to carrying through with it—but he did as he was told and sent her off without putting another scratch on her body. I'm one step closer to my doom, Ella thought, running her tongue over her teeth, but at least my smile is intact.
When she arrived at the camp, she was searched and issued a faded red jumpsuit, just like all the other prisoners. She was assigned a barrack, given a work schedule for the camp's adjoining air purification plant (almost all processing camps were also work camps of some sort), and then released into the chaos. Camps like these were often little more than organized mobs full of dirty, underfed, overcrowded people, with everyone pushing their way around and trying to forget their anxiety by starting trouble with each other. The Collectors were always watching, of course, but unless somebody was breaking bones or being raped they usually left the prisoners to their own devices. In fact, they almost seemed to enjoy watching the chaos.
Maybe that's why there's one big co-ed eating area instead of two separate ones, Ella mused as she walked through the mess hall, because the guards enjoy the madness. The only thing separating the men's side from the women's side was a partition of bendable mesh that looked a lot like chicken wire, but was far too strong for anyone to bend or snip. Perhaps at one time it was electrified, but not anymore, because on both sides people were pressed up against it, shouting and talking and groping and kissing and doing whatever else there was to do through a mesh barrier during lunchtime.
Ella just shook her head at the entire scene, and was about to turn away and get herself some lunch when she thought she spotted a familiar face on the other side. Hunt? And then she began running towards the divider, pushing her way through the lunch crowd until she found an empty spot in the mesh where she could see the men's side more clearly. Sure enough, there was Hunt, carrying his lunch tray to a table. "Hunt!" she shouted, trying to catch his attention. She kept calling him and waving her arms until he noticed her. "Hunt, come over here!"
"Ella?" Hunt called back, equally surprised to be meeting her here. He abandoned his lunch tray and ran over to the mesh. "Ella, what happened?"
"I could ask you the same thing," Ella answered, explaining what had happened at the farm. "Now, how did you end up in this place?"
Hunt described what happened to Ella. "We made it to the West, but Collectors found us and arrested Angel. The rest of us escaped and went to check out a building called the Gallery, but something went wrong and I got caught. Nudge and Gazzy escaped, I think, but I don't know what happened to Lex. She just disappeared."
Just then a couple of Collectors entered the mess hall on the women's side and began calling, "Ella Griffiths! You're due in court in fifteen minutes!" Already? Usually it took a month or two for someone to get tried and sentenced. She'd barely been there a day. Trying to get rid of me quickly, she thought grimly.
Suddenly Ella realized she was standing there on borrowed time, and only had a few more seconds left with Hunt before the Collectors located her. "Look, I don't know how long they'll sentence you for, Hunt," she told him, "but I'm not getting out of the Citadel anytime soon. Maybe not ever." Ella felt a sickening foreboding take root in her stomach, and she felt like she might break down and cry, but she had to keep talking. "If somehow you get out of here, promise that you'll find Lex and keep the others safe for me."
Even though he probably wanted to cry as much as she did, Hunt retained his composure as he nodded and said, "I promise." He shuddered slightly and bit back on his lip, and for a brief instant the strong young man in front of her looked like the scruffy little twelve-year-old Hunt that Iggy had carried into the house four years ago. "I'm scared, Ella," he whispered. "Really scared."
"Me too," she admitted, looking straight him in the eye, "but being afraid doesn't mean you don't have courage, because you do." She reached forward and brushed her fingers against his face lovingly, tears threatening to leak from her eyes. "I love you, sweetie," she told him quietly, "and I'm so proud of you."
Hunt nodded numbly, and tried his best to smile. "I love you too."
"Ella Griffiths!" One of the Collectors shouted, exasperated, "We know you're in here! Come with us now or you'll receive an instant life sentence of service in the Brainworks for not showing up in court!"
As if I'm not going to get a life sentence already. "I got to go now," Ella told Hunt, "but tell the others I love them too. You'll get out of here somehow; I'm sure of it." She smiled at him, and then went away with the Collectors.
Just as Ella had anticipated, she was given a life sentence in court. Treason was almost always a sure ticket to life in the Citadel, but even aside from that the system was harsh in dealing out sentences. Even relatively minor offenses, like not paying your taxes on time, could get you several years in the Brainworks these days. The West was desperate for more processing power, and what better way to obtain it than through a twisted judicial system?
After the trial and sentencing, Ella was immediately hand-cuffed and stuffed into the back of a transporter with at least ten other prisoners bound for the Citadel. Some of them chatted amongst themselves, talking about what they'd done and how long they were going to be spending in the Brainworks. Ella didn't dare say anything, though, just in case some of her fellow captives were resistance supporters. If they were to find out that the infamous Ella Martinez, the champion of their cause, had been captured and was hopelessly resigned to a fate in the Citadel, they would be devastated.
Yes, Ella had accepted the fact that she was going to be staying in the Citadel for the foreseeable future. For all the things the CSM had accomplished, they had never rescued anyone from the Citadel. You didn't "just" break into a place like the Citatel—it would be like saying you could "just" storm the empirical palace and overtake the Supremacy, or "just" cross the Barrier to the outside. It was an impossibility. There were too many Collectors, too extensive of a security system, and too little manpower on their end. It would take nothing short an army to get Ella out, and while the CSM was, in fact, slowly forming an army out West, that endeavor was a good twenty or thirty years away. By then it would be too late for Ella.
Most people who spent two or three years in the Citadel made a full recovery; you might be a little dazed when you got out, but you'd return to normal fairly quickly. Longer sentences carried longer recovery periods, debilitation lasting up to a few weeks rather than a few hours. And, once you got up to ten, twenty, thirty years, the risk of a permanent psychological breakdown became increasingly more likely, especially if you were being used as a processor for heavy loads of complicated codes and information. The perpetual inflow of data and neurological stimulation interfered with your brain's ability to function properly outside of the 'Works, so it was common for long-time prisoners to experience flashbacks, suffer from mental disturbances, or even descend into complete insanity once released from the Citadel. The disorder was known as Post-Brainworks Retention Syndrome, or PBRS. And, knowing how much the Supremacy loved Ella, they'd do everything within their power to make sure she got it. After all, a crazy enemy was almost as harmless as a dead one.
Once the transporter arrived at the Citadel, the prisoners were all taken to the clinical department—which was really half human cattle ranch, half hospital—for testing and prepping. After receiving a series of injections and medications to make her body "more receptive to the osmotic oxygenation and nutrition provided by the specially-designed suspension solution that will keep your body nourished and prevent muscular atrophy", as one of the nurses had kindly explained, Ella was showered off and put into a wetsuit for the final step of processing.
A nurse wanted to cut her hair short to make it easier for the technicians to work on her, but Ella glared at her and politely refused. "I like my hair the way it is, thank you very much." In a world full of dull factory outfits and bare necessity, Ella had always kept her long to retain a sense of femininity—she had always held there was no shame in looking like a woman, whether you were working on the farm or working as a CSM operative. Her hair probably wouldn't even be dry by the time they put her in a tank, and even if it was it'd be a mess, but Ella liked to think that in some small way her hair would remind the technicians working on her that she wasn't just an androgynous patient. She was a woman, a wife, a mother. She was a real person.
Ella spent a short while in a locked waiting room with several other fully-prepped prisoners, and since there were no magazines to flip through (Ella rolled her eyes at that thought; there hadn't been any paper-bound magazines around in years), she was forced to stop and think about who and what she was leaving behind. What would happen to the CSM? Would Iggy get over losing her, ever fall in love again? Who would help raise her children? Would her mother cry? Would baby Jason remember her at all when he was older? Would Lex remain missing like her parents? Would Hunt receive a heavy sentence from the processing court, or would he get out quickly and continue living his life? Would either he or Nina find a special someone in the near future? These were questions only asked by a person who would never find out the answers. For all intensive purposes, this was the end of Ella's life.
It would have been better if they killed me, Ella thought dejectedly, at least that way everyone could move on and I would be out of their clutches. But no, death would be too merciful. The Supremacy wanted her to suffer for the trouble she'd cause them. Besides, to kill her would be a waste of perfectly good brain matter that could send their children's emails and archive medical journal articles. Her mind was empty space for rent.
"Ella Griffiths?" a nurse called, reading the name off a cliff board. How many people had that woman sacrificed to the Citadel with that clipboard? How many of them were still in there? How many prisoners were in the Citadel in total? Thousands, hundreds of thousands? These were the thoughts that crossed Ella's mind as she walked stiffly towards the nurse, who escorted her through a pair of doors into a room full of suspension tanks, all of them inset into the floor so that they looked like flooded manholes instead of a virtual death sentence.
The nurse turned her over to a group of technicians, who gently but firmly escorted her to her designated tank. "Take this mask," one of the technicians instructed her, handing her a mask that covered the nose and mouth and had a tube running from it, "and put it on. It's connected to an air supply, but once your body adapts to the solution you won't need it. You'll get all your oxygen through absorption." Ella looked long and hard at the technician, who was a good-looking girl in her early twenties with caring eyes. She reminded her a little of Nina. "Is something wrong, ma'am?" the technician asked attentively, "Do you want one of my colleagues to administer a sedative to you, to help you relax?"
Ella shook her head. "Why are you in this line of work?" she asked, smiling sadly at her. The technician didn't answer, and she looked down at the floor so she didn't have to meet Ella's gaze.
"Well," Ella continued, "I guess we should get this over with." She strapped the mask onto her face had the other two technicians help her into the vat of bright green solution. Almost immediately Ella felt the sedatives and muscle relaxants in the air supply take their course, leaving her paralyzed in the water.
After a few minutes the air supply was cut off, but Ella barely noticed. Breathing was unnecessary now that she was directly submerged in the oxygen-rich solution, and lungs became entirely pointless once a technician reached down and disconnected the little tube, leaving only the mask behind to keep the airway sealed. Ella felt the technician attach something to her right temple and to the base of her neck, but even though there was a prodding sensation as the probes took root, she was too numb to feel pain now. And even if she had felt pain, she was too drugged up to care.
Goodbye was the one of the few words she could still conjure up in her mind, as the technicians sealed the top of the tank and a mechanical arm lifted Ella and clamped her onto a conveyor belt. Goodbye Iggy, Goodbye Mom, Goodbye kids, Goodbye Max… the list went on and on as Ella's tank moved along the conveyor belt as it slithered behind the frame of already-filled tanks in front of her, looking for an empty spot to put her in.
Finally an open spot came up, and the conveyor belt popped Ella's tank forward, snapping it into place seamlessly without even stopping. Even in her sedated state, Ella could almost feel the electric connections forming as metal touched metal and signals began to transmit. There would be no resisting, no delay; there was too much power about to surge into Ella's brain. Goodbye everyone, she thought, mouthing the words behind her mask, I love you all. And then an explosion of text and coding overrode the consciousness that was Ella Martinez-Griffiths.
*cries* Ellaaaa! She made such a good little rebellion leader. :'/ Iggy is not going to be happy about this. Rest in peace, Ella. Or more specifically, rest in a tank of green liquid as electrical signals pass through your brain and drive you to the point of insanity. *sigh* Memorial cookies, anyone? I baked them in the shape of Ella's head.