AN: Yes, I know this took a long time, but I'm glad it did because this chapter turned out better than I was expecting.
For those of you hanging out for it, Tawny's in this chapter.
Please review and let me know you're reading this. This fic is really special to me because 90% of this is all my creation.
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Boston. The Pulse ruined this city; it's only a fraction of what it once was. There is one district of shops and such, and the rest is this city that's been ripped apart and brought to it's knees.
The hostel is a questionable place. It was started after the Pulse, when hundreds of children lost parents to the food riots. This suburb is full of churches, refuges and such with Pulse Orphans, as we're called, living there.
Not that it's a nice place. Gangs roam the streets the second the sun sets. Hookers and dealers are out on every corner. People take guns and knives to the school down the road.
I'm thirteen now. I'm now Laura Harris, whose parents were shot dead.
Shot dead.
Like Eva.
We all have tiny little rooms in this place. My room is painted red, with horrible black and red curtains, and nasty dark wallpaper printed over the red paint. The light is a bald light bulb that hands from the roof in the centre of the room. I have a bed that is soft and squishy, with blankets and quilts that smell of camphor oil, and one pillow. My clothes and things are jammed in one broken dresses that I've padlocked. There's a small table in front of the window and a sink in the corner.
It's small and grubby, but it's my place in Boston.
There are almost fifty girls here, and five women who look after us; serving us food, checking that we're in our rooms at 9pm and have our windows permanently barred and locked. We have no freedom to speak of. No boys, no work, nothing.
I don't miss Joel though, at all. I miss the Marsdens, that was a nice place to be.
"Laura?"
I turn around. It's Mrs Geller, who looks after my floor.
"Laura, I didn't see you at dinner."
I give a half hearted smile. "I wasn't hungry."
"You're fading away, child." Her reply was ready, calculated and predictable. But what sort of soldier would I be if I wasn't at my leanest and fittest every moment of the day and night?
"I've always been small," I look back out the window. "I'm fine, honest."
Mrs Geller nodded. "Fine then. Just checking, make sure we don't have to get you a doctor, Laura."
I hear my door click shut. They have no idea. On all their records, I'm sixteen, almost seventeen. In all reality, I'm thirteen years old. I'm lucky I'm tall, I suppose. They didn't ask any questions. They gave me an ID card, and enrolled me in the local high school; I'll be a sophomore three years early. And I'm planning to get a job. I need money if I want to get out of here, get my own place, that I properly pay for.
Tomorrow I start school. Everyone does; and all day the other girls have been yelling over clothes, scraping together money for new shoes and organizing notebooks. My notebooks were stolen when I first arrived here, brand new and covered in clear plastic. Some of the girls shared a sheet of patterned wrapping paper for their books - purple with silver and metallic stars. I didn't like it at all.
"Lights out, girls!" Mrs Geller yells from down the hallway. And the power in my room goes. It can't be good for the wiring in this building, to switch off the power every night.
I stay seated in the dark, playing with the ends of my long hair. I can't do this, I can't be sixteen. I don't know how.
I stand up, peeling off my sweatshirt and jeans, and pull on an old flannel shirt. My head is heavy and I can feel my seizures coming back. I haven't had one in so long… I wonder if I've still got my tryptophan or if I lost it somewhere… I wrap myself in blankets and quilts and try to sleep…
My dreams are full of Manticore again. That disastrous training session with the dog tearing Syl's face off. I can see the blood everywhere … I can feel myself sinking into Tawny's arms as we stare at Syl's mauled face and the blood…
There's more this time. There's never been more before…
We'd never lost some many X5s on a training mission before. Two KIA, Syl and I injured during the mission. And when Jondy went back to get help for Syl and I, she got put into solitary confinement for a whole week. And we didn't know that until she came back.
I lie awake for a long time wondering if Tawny ever forgot Krit killing that dog. I know I never have. The way he hit that dog. The way he killed it.
The way he cried when Lydecker took Syl away. And the way he smiled when she came back, okay.
Well, as okay as you can be after three months of reconstructive surgery on your face. And she made it out.
I still didn't get back to sleep that night. It's still dark when Mrs Gellar rouses the house to get ready for school. I peel off my nightshirt and reach for a sweatshirt and jeans from my dresser. They're damp from water that leaks in from the window frame but there's nothing I can do about it. I guess I do well out of it; the other girls have to shake mice and spiders from their clothes. But at least after they're out of your socks and jeans, they don't stick to you and make you feel like you're suffocating.
My head feels heavy and so do my books as I jam them into the bag I stole from some shop a few days ago. While the other girls steal and barter from each other, I steal and barter from the general public.
I walk slowly downstairs, wanting to crawl back into my bed and just wait for Tawny or someone to come and get me and take me somewhere that I can breathe and sit and not remember how much blood was split back at Manticore. Syl's, Zack's, Tinga's, Max's, mine..
Eva's.
"Hurry up, Laura," Mrs Gellar says as she dives down the hall. "The others are waiting for you."
The others. The four other sixteen year olds who'll I'll be going to school with.
We have to sit together at breakfast, now school has started again. I drop into a chair, my stomach rebelling at the sour milk I can smell in the porridge. At least, it's going sour. I wonder if the others can taste what I can smell or it's just because I'm such a freak.
Marnie looks at me. Marnie's a goth and creeps me out to no end, mainly because she's seventeen and is completely stick thin, with plain white skin, straight black hair to her waist, a deep voice and all she talks about is sex and killing herself. Two things I cannot abide by. Death is what takes you to the Nomalies. Death is what stole Eva and Jack.
"You better eat something, Laura," Marnie looks at me flatly. My name sounds unnatural when it's coming from her, like she has a hard time pronouncing it, or something. "I've been doing this school for two years and the food there is expensive crap."
I shrug, looking at the milk congealing in the bowl of porridge. Tessa and Micaela both have bowls of it in front of them, and are stirring it with their spoons but haven't eaten any yet.
"No, I'm fine," I said weakly, wishing there was some milk that wasn't decomposing as we sat here. I prop my head up on my hand and watch the porridge congeal. I remember meals at Manticore. You couldn't put a name to most of the stuff served, but it was fresh. Because we can smell the second something starts decomposing.
Marnie gives me a strange look, almost appraising. I don't want to know her or be apart of her world. I want to be back at Manticore with Tawny and Zack. Not here with a girl who terrifies the shit out of me for a reason I cannot pin point.
"Girls, it's time for you to go," Mrs Gellar's standing in front of us, handing out money for school lunches. I can use it to buy milk - or better, yet, tryptophan. If I knew where to find some in this city.
I grab my bag, jamming the money deep in my jeans pocket. It's still cold, this time of year. No snow though. I wish it would snow. Reminds me when we used to sneak out of the barracks and what it fall from the High Place.
Marnie and the other three whom are wearing thick make up and dark clothes follow me out onto the street, fishing through their bags for a cigarette.
"Hey. Laura. Kid," Marnie calls out with her deep voice. "Straight after your last class, meet us at the old coffee shop across the road from the school. Don't go in there, just wait for us. We know where you can get a job."
"We're not allowed to get jobs," I parrot Mrs Gellar's words.
"Yeah. We're not allowed to work, yet the day we graduate high school, we're thrown out on our asses. We need that cash. I'm offering you a job that pays well." Marnie holds up a cigarette triumphantly. "I can offer it to someone else."
Money. A job. I bite my lip before nodding. "Fine."
"Good girl. See you at four o clock, " Marnie saunters off, her three lackeys trailing behind her. She never had any intention of going to school. I wondered why she wore black all the time. Why she was in the hostel at all.
And, for the briefest second, I wonder if she was one of my sisters. Maybe Max. Max was a good soldier, she'd keep her body thin. And she had dark hair. So did Jondy.
I walk slowly towards the school. Zack shouldn't have said I was sixteen. I'm only thirteen. I shouldn't have to deal with this for three more years. I'm still a little kid. My heart thumps in my chest and I feel a little bit of the winter chill on my face as I walk closer to the big, grey concrete building which seals my doom. Huge wire fences around the whole place, and one sad looking tree in the middle of the 'playground', it's roots - and life - sealed in smooth, unyielding concrete.
And I keep on walking.
I walk up the steps, down the hall and into the office, ignoring people staring at me. Compared to these semi-adults, I'm tiny and I feel young and that I shouldn't be here.
But Zack. Zack set this up for a reason. Zack is never wrong. He'd know I wouldn't like this, but that it was the right thing to do and it'd be good for me.
I'm handed a piece of paper with numbers and rooms and things I'm learning on it and I stumble my way down the hall and into a classroom and I hunch at my desk, trying to be completely insignificant to everyone.
My hands shook as I tried to write out the assignments. Why am I such a god damned freak show? I'm not like the thin, sleek girls in my class, whose pens match the cover of their notebooks and their shoes. I feel frumpy and young and like I'm sinking somewhere deep. And my seizures are flaring up. I can feel the shaking in my hands getting worse.
The teachers don't even comment on my shaking hands. They mutter - loud enough for anyone to hear - about kids on drug trips. I know, if it comes down to me in a coma, no one here will help me. I'm the tiny girl coming off a drug trip, not a screw-up of a runaway genetically engineered soldier who has a serious neurological problem.
I wonder what would happen if I killed someone. I just murdered someone flat out. I wonder how far gone I have to be until I just crack and break someone's neck. Or choke them to death. Or beat them. I wonder if, when that day comes, I'll be able to think straight. I wonder if I'll cry or I'll feel or I'll relish in how warm the blood feels as it gushes out of a lifeless body.
I remember the warmth from the convicts at Manticore. It was warm for awhile after the death. Then it went cold and congealed. And there was a dead person there. Life blood is like a new beginning. Like opening your eyes for the first time ever. Every sense I had was on overdrive, turned up high. Sweat prickling my skin and the blood running over my hands like mercury.
Does mercury burn? Blood does. It burns your mind. You never forget the feel of someone's blood. Slippery and almost greasy; you can't wash it away. It stays with you, even though you don't know it. You wake up, sweat pouring off you, thinking it's your blood and the Nomalies have gotten you, even years after you've left the Nomalies behind.
I can still see Ben telling his stories and the Nomalies in the cages. I always used to fear them. What was there to fear? They were alone for so long, they had nothing left except an incredible power. The power Manticore gave them use was to kill. And when they went to use this power, they got locked up.
Every side has a story. Every person an explanation.
I sat in science, gripping my pen tightly, trying not to think about the white rabbit the science teacher had. He was going to kill it for us to dissect. He mentioned in passing, as he loaded the poison into a syringe, that before the Pulse, the animals came to the school already dead, all preserved for the students to use.
My hands were shaking as he held that rabbit up, ready to stick that needle into it's neck. It's eyes were so wide and I could hear it's little heart pounding and I could recall all the times the doctors at Manticore had held me like that, with a needle at the ready… never knowing if I'd see my siblings again. Or if I'd wake up a Nomalie…
What if someone had been able to stop those doctors before they got to me or Jack?
I don't remember what happened next, really. I remember the terror I felt back ten years at Manticore as I sat on a gurney, a doctor waving a syringe of something clear and blue tinted around smugly, my own terror, having to swallow my tears in fear of the taser - or solitary confinement…
Everyone was looking at me. I realised I'd yelled out. I could still hear that rabbit's heart pounding. I couldn't take him with me; the hostel didn't allow pets and I'm pretty sure the only image that entered Zack's brain at the word 'rabbit' was 'dinner'. I'd prolonged it's miserable life. I'd let it know it was going directly to hell the second that needle pricked it's throat.
It's heart was pounding a mile a minute, and I wanted to take that scalpel and jam it into the rabbit's heart to shut it up and then my own, for not being able to really save it's life.
It looked so soft.
And it was over. The heart beat stopped almost instantly; mid beat. The eyes dilated, it became rigid and stiff in the teacher's hands.
And it's blood ran cold. I could feel the blood on my hands, Syl's face nothing but a chewed hunk of flesh, her high keening wail, the way Krit killed that awful, awful dog…
I swallowed hard, trying to keep down the mouthful of coleslaw I'd choked down at lunch down. Throwing up wouldn't help. I'm the Girl On A Drug Trip.
And the bell finally let me free, away from the dead rabbit and the cold blood.
I clutched my books close to me and walked slowly out into the cold. I wonder why the terrorists set off the Pulse. What did they gain? They made millions of people miserable, they're responsible for millions of deaths and corruption.
But they set us free. We wouldn't still be on the outside if it wasn't for the Pulse. They would've found us, all that so-called tight security.
The coffee shop beckoned invitingly and I wanted to go inside and sit for awhile, drown my sorrows in something warm, that reminded me I was still human, and can enjoy human pleasures. I don't feel human. I feel sick to my stomach and my hands won't stop shaking. And I can still hear that rabbit's heart beat.
But Marnie warned me against going inside. I don't want to know why and I don't care. I want the money so bad. I want to get out of that hostel and find Tawny and go to Florida where I can be warm again. Beaches and sun…
"Heard you don't like pointless animal slaughter," a voice said behind me. I whipped around, to face Marnie. Who black jeans had been traded in a mini skirt with a slit to her hip. "Come on, Jay really wants to meet you."
I blinked at her, aching all over, too much to ask her how she knew or why she was wearing such a pointless skirt or who the hell Jay was…
We walked along the streets, deeper into the city, where very few people were still walking around. By five o clock people have already gone home, locked their doors and bolted their windows, which shows so much faith in the police of this fair city.
Marnie and the others lead me to the back of an old warehouse, up an old wooden stair case and thump on a steel door. I look out over the street, wondering if the rabbit had a family to mourn him or I was the only one who wanted to jab the science teacher with his own god damned needle.
"…This is Laura, Jay," Marnie said almost proudly. I turned around.
Jay was a tallish Mexican guy, wearing his shirt open and about five gold necklaces. I could see into his dark apartment, where a scantily clad woman lay on a bed. No, a girl. Who didn't look much older than I actually was… who was he…
"Laura," he said, taking his cigarette out of his mouth with a grin. "Laura. Sounds like she's about to sit down to afternoon fucking tea with my fucking mother in law. Won't sell."
"Then give her a stage name. No one will care," Marnie shot back. "Look at her."
Jay run his eyes over my body with a gleam in his eyes. "You do nice work, Marnie," he said. "But I gotta make this legal. Not like the last bimbo you brought me."
Marnie shrugged. "Hey, she said she wanted to work for good money. You gotta do bad work for good money. It's the law of the world."
Jay took a step towards me. "Well, Laura, how old are you?" he asked, puffing cheap cigarette smoke in my face.
"Excuse me?" I said quietly, Marnie creeping me out for longer each second.
"Your age?" Jay demanded.
"Sixteen," I replied slowly, edging away from him.
"Legal. Perfect," he grinned, satisfied. "Marnie, babe, strip down and join Miss Rebecca inside."
I felt sick to my insides, as Marnie peeled off her clothes and walked into the dark apartment, joining the girl on the bed. I knew.. Sex. It was all about the sex thing. The dark, sweaty thing that girls sold themselves for.
"You're in Laura. I know my regulars will be impressed," Jay said, gripping my upper arm tightly. "Marnie's earned her cash this month. And Amy Gellar. Didn't think sexy girls existed in this city any more."
I swallowed, planting my feet. "What… what do I have to do?" I asked slowly, not budging an inch.
"Now? I was hoping you give me a blow job but if you want a go at one of the girls," Jay leered at me, pulling on my arm a little.
Glen's face flashed through my mind as he smiled. They had the same look in their eyes.
I planted my feet even more firmly, not moving an inch, like Zack taught me when I was two. "And to work?" I asked blankly, not reacting at all to his previous statement.
"Dance, strip and fuck whatever man is willing to pay," Jay said, giving me a look.
"No. Please let go of me," I said, my voice wobbling a little as the panic rose in my throat. He was bigger than I was and this stair case didn't look like it would hold my weight at all. Especially if we got into a fight.
I didn't like my odds if I fell.
"No?" Jay began to laugh. "There is no 'yes' or 'no', in this Laura. You're coming inside now so I can make sure you're… suited to the work."
I felt something flare up in my stomach. Sex…
"No," I said, wrenching my arm out of his grip. "No!"
Jay stared at me and reached for something at his hip. "If that's the way you feel, Laura. But I can't have you running and telling every soul in Boston where Jay Sanchez bases his operations, can I?"
And there was a .24 Desert Eagle pointed at my face.
And I hit him. I punched him so hard that his gun dropped to the alley way below and Marnie and the girl screamed and Jay swore, falling backwards clutching his face. I froze, not remembering the last time I'd hurt someone.
Maybe I'd kill him and not know. Maybe this was it.
"You fucking bitch, I'll kill you!" Jay reached behind him and I saw the blade catch the late afternoon light and I turned and ran down that staircase, jumping down most of it and sprinting as fast as I possibly could.
It was eight blocks away my body reminded me I wasn't in any state to be long distant sprinting.
I slumped against a bakery, trying to catch my breath as the shakes took over, blurring my vision and I curled up in a ball on the pavement, knowing if Jay caught up to me, he could blow my brains across the pavement without me even knowing he was behind me.
And someone was next to me, holding me against their warm, firm body. I couldn't hear or see, but I could see golden eyes and smell something I vaguely remembered from somewhere… they spoke quietly, putting something in my mouth and holding me close, telling me I'd be okay.
I don't know how long it was until I got my vision back but it felt like hours. But the sun was still low in the sky, and my watch claimed it was after five. And then I looked up at the guy who'd saved my life.
And that grin brought everything back.
"Tawny," I let out a hoarse sob, feeling my head spin.
"Easy, Lex," Tawny grinned, looking relieved. "It'll take a little while for you to absorb the tryptophan."
He was just how I remembered him - the eyes which gave him his name, the well tanned skin and the dark hair falling into his eyes. And the smile that always made me feel safe…
"I can't believe you're here," I said, realising tears were running down my face as I flung my arms around him tightly. He was so warm.
For those of you hanging out for it, Tawny's in this chapter.
Please review and let me know you're reading this. This fic is really special to me because 90% of this is all my creation.
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Boston. The Pulse ruined this city; it's only a fraction of what it once was. There is one district of shops and such, and the rest is this city that's been ripped apart and brought to it's knees.
The hostel is a questionable place. It was started after the Pulse, when hundreds of children lost parents to the food riots. This suburb is full of churches, refuges and such with Pulse Orphans, as we're called, living there.
Not that it's a nice place. Gangs roam the streets the second the sun sets. Hookers and dealers are out on every corner. People take guns and knives to the school down the road.
I'm thirteen now. I'm now Laura Harris, whose parents were shot dead.
Shot dead.
Like Eva.
We all have tiny little rooms in this place. My room is painted red, with horrible black and red curtains, and nasty dark wallpaper printed over the red paint. The light is a bald light bulb that hands from the roof in the centre of the room. I have a bed that is soft and squishy, with blankets and quilts that smell of camphor oil, and one pillow. My clothes and things are jammed in one broken dresses that I've padlocked. There's a small table in front of the window and a sink in the corner.
It's small and grubby, but it's my place in Boston.
There are almost fifty girls here, and five women who look after us; serving us food, checking that we're in our rooms at 9pm and have our windows permanently barred and locked. We have no freedom to speak of. No boys, no work, nothing.
I don't miss Joel though, at all. I miss the Marsdens, that was a nice place to be.
"Laura?"
I turn around. It's Mrs Geller, who looks after my floor.
"Laura, I didn't see you at dinner."
I give a half hearted smile. "I wasn't hungry."
"You're fading away, child." Her reply was ready, calculated and predictable. But what sort of soldier would I be if I wasn't at my leanest and fittest every moment of the day and night?
"I've always been small," I look back out the window. "I'm fine, honest."
Mrs Geller nodded. "Fine then. Just checking, make sure we don't have to get you a doctor, Laura."
I hear my door click shut. They have no idea. On all their records, I'm sixteen, almost seventeen. In all reality, I'm thirteen years old. I'm lucky I'm tall, I suppose. They didn't ask any questions. They gave me an ID card, and enrolled me in the local high school; I'll be a sophomore three years early. And I'm planning to get a job. I need money if I want to get out of here, get my own place, that I properly pay for.
Tomorrow I start school. Everyone does; and all day the other girls have been yelling over clothes, scraping together money for new shoes and organizing notebooks. My notebooks were stolen when I first arrived here, brand new and covered in clear plastic. Some of the girls shared a sheet of patterned wrapping paper for their books - purple with silver and metallic stars. I didn't like it at all.
"Lights out, girls!" Mrs Geller yells from down the hallway. And the power in my room goes. It can't be good for the wiring in this building, to switch off the power every night.
I stay seated in the dark, playing with the ends of my long hair. I can't do this, I can't be sixteen. I don't know how.
I stand up, peeling off my sweatshirt and jeans, and pull on an old flannel shirt. My head is heavy and I can feel my seizures coming back. I haven't had one in so long… I wonder if I've still got my tryptophan or if I lost it somewhere… I wrap myself in blankets and quilts and try to sleep…
My dreams are full of Manticore again. That disastrous training session with the dog tearing Syl's face off. I can see the blood everywhere … I can feel myself sinking into Tawny's arms as we stare at Syl's mauled face and the blood…
There's more this time. There's never been more before…
We'd never lost some many X5s on a training mission before. Two KIA, Syl and I injured during the mission. And when Jondy went back to get help for Syl and I, she got put into solitary confinement for a whole week. And we didn't know that until she came back.
I lie awake for a long time wondering if Tawny ever forgot Krit killing that dog. I know I never have. The way he hit that dog. The way he killed it.
The way he cried when Lydecker took Syl away. And the way he smiled when she came back, okay.
Well, as okay as you can be after three months of reconstructive surgery on your face. And she made it out.
I still didn't get back to sleep that night. It's still dark when Mrs Gellar rouses the house to get ready for school. I peel off my nightshirt and reach for a sweatshirt and jeans from my dresser. They're damp from water that leaks in from the window frame but there's nothing I can do about it. I guess I do well out of it; the other girls have to shake mice and spiders from their clothes. But at least after they're out of your socks and jeans, they don't stick to you and make you feel like you're suffocating.
My head feels heavy and so do my books as I jam them into the bag I stole from some shop a few days ago. While the other girls steal and barter from each other, I steal and barter from the general public.
I walk slowly downstairs, wanting to crawl back into my bed and just wait for Tawny or someone to come and get me and take me somewhere that I can breathe and sit and not remember how much blood was split back at Manticore. Syl's, Zack's, Tinga's, Max's, mine..
Eva's.
"Hurry up, Laura," Mrs Gellar says as she dives down the hall. "The others are waiting for you."
The others. The four other sixteen year olds who'll I'll be going to school with.
We have to sit together at breakfast, now school has started again. I drop into a chair, my stomach rebelling at the sour milk I can smell in the porridge. At least, it's going sour. I wonder if the others can taste what I can smell or it's just because I'm such a freak.
Marnie looks at me. Marnie's a goth and creeps me out to no end, mainly because she's seventeen and is completely stick thin, with plain white skin, straight black hair to her waist, a deep voice and all she talks about is sex and killing herself. Two things I cannot abide by. Death is what takes you to the Nomalies. Death is what stole Eva and Jack.
"You better eat something, Laura," Marnie looks at me flatly. My name sounds unnatural when it's coming from her, like she has a hard time pronouncing it, or something. "I've been doing this school for two years and the food there is expensive crap."
I shrug, looking at the milk congealing in the bowl of porridge. Tessa and Micaela both have bowls of it in front of them, and are stirring it with their spoons but haven't eaten any yet.
"No, I'm fine," I said weakly, wishing there was some milk that wasn't decomposing as we sat here. I prop my head up on my hand and watch the porridge congeal. I remember meals at Manticore. You couldn't put a name to most of the stuff served, but it was fresh. Because we can smell the second something starts decomposing.
Marnie gives me a strange look, almost appraising. I don't want to know her or be apart of her world. I want to be back at Manticore with Tawny and Zack. Not here with a girl who terrifies the shit out of me for a reason I cannot pin point.
"Girls, it's time for you to go," Mrs Gellar's standing in front of us, handing out money for school lunches. I can use it to buy milk - or better, yet, tryptophan. If I knew where to find some in this city.
I grab my bag, jamming the money deep in my jeans pocket. It's still cold, this time of year. No snow though. I wish it would snow. Reminds me when we used to sneak out of the barracks and what it fall from the High Place.
Marnie and the other three whom are wearing thick make up and dark clothes follow me out onto the street, fishing through their bags for a cigarette.
"Hey. Laura. Kid," Marnie calls out with her deep voice. "Straight after your last class, meet us at the old coffee shop across the road from the school. Don't go in there, just wait for us. We know where you can get a job."
"We're not allowed to get jobs," I parrot Mrs Gellar's words.
"Yeah. We're not allowed to work, yet the day we graduate high school, we're thrown out on our asses. We need that cash. I'm offering you a job that pays well." Marnie holds up a cigarette triumphantly. "I can offer it to someone else."
Money. A job. I bite my lip before nodding. "Fine."
"Good girl. See you at four o clock, " Marnie saunters off, her three lackeys trailing behind her. She never had any intention of going to school. I wondered why she wore black all the time. Why she was in the hostel at all.
And, for the briefest second, I wonder if she was one of my sisters. Maybe Max. Max was a good soldier, she'd keep her body thin. And she had dark hair. So did Jondy.
I walk slowly towards the school. Zack shouldn't have said I was sixteen. I'm only thirteen. I shouldn't have to deal with this for three more years. I'm still a little kid. My heart thumps in my chest and I feel a little bit of the winter chill on my face as I walk closer to the big, grey concrete building which seals my doom. Huge wire fences around the whole place, and one sad looking tree in the middle of the 'playground', it's roots - and life - sealed in smooth, unyielding concrete.
And I keep on walking.
I walk up the steps, down the hall and into the office, ignoring people staring at me. Compared to these semi-adults, I'm tiny and I feel young and that I shouldn't be here.
But Zack. Zack set this up for a reason. Zack is never wrong. He'd know I wouldn't like this, but that it was the right thing to do and it'd be good for me.
I'm handed a piece of paper with numbers and rooms and things I'm learning on it and I stumble my way down the hall and into a classroom and I hunch at my desk, trying to be completely insignificant to everyone.
My hands shook as I tried to write out the assignments. Why am I such a god damned freak show? I'm not like the thin, sleek girls in my class, whose pens match the cover of their notebooks and their shoes. I feel frumpy and young and like I'm sinking somewhere deep. And my seizures are flaring up. I can feel the shaking in my hands getting worse.
The teachers don't even comment on my shaking hands. They mutter - loud enough for anyone to hear - about kids on drug trips. I know, if it comes down to me in a coma, no one here will help me. I'm the tiny girl coming off a drug trip, not a screw-up of a runaway genetically engineered soldier who has a serious neurological problem.
I wonder what would happen if I killed someone. I just murdered someone flat out. I wonder how far gone I have to be until I just crack and break someone's neck. Or choke them to death. Or beat them. I wonder if, when that day comes, I'll be able to think straight. I wonder if I'll cry or I'll feel or I'll relish in how warm the blood feels as it gushes out of a lifeless body.
I remember the warmth from the convicts at Manticore. It was warm for awhile after the death. Then it went cold and congealed. And there was a dead person there. Life blood is like a new beginning. Like opening your eyes for the first time ever. Every sense I had was on overdrive, turned up high. Sweat prickling my skin and the blood running over my hands like mercury.
Does mercury burn? Blood does. It burns your mind. You never forget the feel of someone's blood. Slippery and almost greasy; you can't wash it away. It stays with you, even though you don't know it. You wake up, sweat pouring off you, thinking it's your blood and the Nomalies have gotten you, even years after you've left the Nomalies behind.
I can still see Ben telling his stories and the Nomalies in the cages. I always used to fear them. What was there to fear? They were alone for so long, they had nothing left except an incredible power. The power Manticore gave them use was to kill. And when they went to use this power, they got locked up.
Every side has a story. Every person an explanation.
I sat in science, gripping my pen tightly, trying not to think about the white rabbit the science teacher had. He was going to kill it for us to dissect. He mentioned in passing, as he loaded the poison into a syringe, that before the Pulse, the animals came to the school already dead, all preserved for the students to use.
My hands were shaking as he held that rabbit up, ready to stick that needle into it's neck. It's eyes were so wide and I could hear it's little heart pounding and I could recall all the times the doctors at Manticore had held me like that, with a needle at the ready… never knowing if I'd see my siblings again. Or if I'd wake up a Nomalie…
What if someone had been able to stop those doctors before they got to me or Jack?
I don't remember what happened next, really. I remember the terror I felt back ten years at Manticore as I sat on a gurney, a doctor waving a syringe of something clear and blue tinted around smugly, my own terror, having to swallow my tears in fear of the taser - or solitary confinement…
Everyone was looking at me. I realised I'd yelled out. I could still hear that rabbit's heart pounding. I couldn't take him with me; the hostel didn't allow pets and I'm pretty sure the only image that entered Zack's brain at the word 'rabbit' was 'dinner'. I'd prolonged it's miserable life. I'd let it know it was going directly to hell the second that needle pricked it's throat.
It's heart was pounding a mile a minute, and I wanted to take that scalpel and jam it into the rabbit's heart to shut it up and then my own, for not being able to really save it's life.
It looked so soft.
And it was over. The heart beat stopped almost instantly; mid beat. The eyes dilated, it became rigid and stiff in the teacher's hands.
And it's blood ran cold. I could feel the blood on my hands, Syl's face nothing but a chewed hunk of flesh, her high keening wail, the way Krit killed that awful, awful dog…
I swallowed hard, trying to keep down the mouthful of coleslaw I'd choked down at lunch down. Throwing up wouldn't help. I'm the Girl On A Drug Trip.
And the bell finally let me free, away from the dead rabbit and the cold blood.
I clutched my books close to me and walked slowly out into the cold. I wonder why the terrorists set off the Pulse. What did they gain? They made millions of people miserable, they're responsible for millions of deaths and corruption.
But they set us free. We wouldn't still be on the outside if it wasn't for the Pulse. They would've found us, all that so-called tight security.
The coffee shop beckoned invitingly and I wanted to go inside and sit for awhile, drown my sorrows in something warm, that reminded me I was still human, and can enjoy human pleasures. I don't feel human. I feel sick to my stomach and my hands won't stop shaking. And I can still hear that rabbit's heart beat.
But Marnie warned me against going inside. I don't want to know why and I don't care. I want the money so bad. I want to get out of that hostel and find Tawny and go to Florida where I can be warm again. Beaches and sun…
"Heard you don't like pointless animal slaughter," a voice said behind me. I whipped around, to face Marnie. Who black jeans had been traded in a mini skirt with a slit to her hip. "Come on, Jay really wants to meet you."
I blinked at her, aching all over, too much to ask her how she knew or why she was wearing such a pointless skirt or who the hell Jay was…
We walked along the streets, deeper into the city, where very few people were still walking around. By five o clock people have already gone home, locked their doors and bolted their windows, which shows so much faith in the police of this fair city.
Marnie and the others lead me to the back of an old warehouse, up an old wooden stair case and thump on a steel door. I look out over the street, wondering if the rabbit had a family to mourn him or I was the only one who wanted to jab the science teacher with his own god damned needle.
"…This is Laura, Jay," Marnie said almost proudly. I turned around.
Jay was a tallish Mexican guy, wearing his shirt open and about five gold necklaces. I could see into his dark apartment, where a scantily clad woman lay on a bed. No, a girl. Who didn't look much older than I actually was… who was he…
"Laura," he said, taking his cigarette out of his mouth with a grin. "Laura. Sounds like she's about to sit down to afternoon fucking tea with my fucking mother in law. Won't sell."
"Then give her a stage name. No one will care," Marnie shot back. "Look at her."
Jay run his eyes over my body with a gleam in his eyes. "You do nice work, Marnie," he said. "But I gotta make this legal. Not like the last bimbo you brought me."
Marnie shrugged. "Hey, she said she wanted to work for good money. You gotta do bad work for good money. It's the law of the world."
Jay took a step towards me. "Well, Laura, how old are you?" he asked, puffing cheap cigarette smoke in my face.
"Excuse me?" I said quietly, Marnie creeping me out for longer each second.
"Your age?" Jay demanded.
"Sixteen," I replied slowly, edging away from him.
"Legal. Perfect," he grinned, satisfied. "Marnie, babe, strip down and join Miss Rebecca inside."
I felt sick to my insides, as Marnie peeled off her clothes and walked into the dark apartment, joining the girl on the bed. I knew.. Sex. It was all about the sex thing. The dark, sweaty thing that girls sold themselves for.
"You're in Laura. I know my regulars will be impressed," Jay said, gripping my upper arm tightly. "Marnie's earned her cash this month. And Amy Gellar. Didn't think sexy girls existed in this city any more."
I swallowed, planting my feet. "What… what do I have to do?" I asked slowly, not budging an inch.
"Now? I was hoping you give me a blow job but if you want a go at one of the girls," Jay leered at me, pulling on my arm a little.
Glen's face flashed through my mind as he smiled. They had the same look in their eyes.
I planted my feet even more firmly, not moving an inch, like Zack taught me when I was two. "And to work?" I asked blankly, not reacting at all to his previous statement.
"Dance, strip and fuck whatever man is willing to pay," Jay said, giving me a look.
"No. Please let go of me," I said, my voice wobbling a little as the panic rose in my throat. He was bigger than I was and this stair case didn't look like it would hold my weight at all. Especially if we got into a fight.
I didn't like my odds if I fell.
"No?" Jay began to laugh. "There is no 'yes' or 'no', in this Laura. You're coming inside now so I can make sure you're… suited to the work."
I felt something flare up in my stomach. Sex…
"No," I said, wrenching my arm out of his grip. "No!"
Jay stared at me and reached for something at his hip. "If that's the way you feel, Laura. But I can't have you running and telling every soul in Boston where Jay Sanchez bases his operations, can I?"
And there was a .24 Desert Eagle pointed at my face.
And I hit him. I punched him so hard that his gun dropped to the alley way below and Marnie and the girl screamed and Jay swore, falling backwards clutching his face. I froze, not remembering the last time I'd hurt someone.
Maybe I'd kill him and not know. Maybe this was it.
"You fucking bitch, I'll kill you!" Jay reached behind him and I saw the blade catch the late afternoon light and I turned and ran down that staircase, jumping down most of it and sprinting as fast as I possibly could.
It was eight blocks away my body reminded me I wasn't in any state to be long distant sprinting.
I slumped against a bakery, trying to catch my breath as the shakes took over, blurring my vision and I curled up in a ball on the pavement, knowing if Jay caught up to me, he could blow my brains across the pavement without me even knowing he was behind me.
And someone was next to me, holding me against their warm, firm body. I couldn't hear or see, but I could see golden eyes and smell something I vaguely remembered from somewhere… they spoke quietly, putting something in my mouth and holding me close, telling me I'd be okay.
I don't know how long it was until I got my vision back but it felt like hours. But the sun was still low in the sky, and my watch claimed it was after five. And then I looked up at the guy who'd saved my life.
And that grin brought everything back.
"Tawny," I let out a hoarse sob, feeling my head spin.
"Easy, Lex," Tawny grinned, looking relieved. "It'll take a little while for you to absorb the tryptophan."
He was just how I remembered him - the eyes which gave him his name, the well tanned skin and the dark hair falling into his eyes. And the smile that always made me feel safe…
"I can't believe you're here," I said, realising tears were running down my face as I flung my arms around him tightly. He was so warm.