Liquid Lies (16 page)

He pointed to the boxes strung up on the ceiling that filled the cell block with pulsing green light. “Inhibitors. They neutralize glamour before we can touch it.”

“Like
nelicoda
.”

“Yes, but if you take
nelicoda
while working with water, it’ll kill the magic right away. The Tedran neutralizers only keep you from starting glamour. I started my illusion outside. Those things have no effect on us right now.”

“That’s why there were no green lights back there, in the…” She couldn’t even say it.

A new Ofarian guard veered around the corner, stalking into the cell block.

“Oh, God,” Gwen breathed, her fingers touching her lips. “I recognize her.”

“A friend?” he asked bitterly.

“No. I don’t know her personally. She applied for Plant duty a few years ago. I was there when the Board approved her appointment.”

Xavier had hoped for that, that she’d know someone here. “So how does she like her job?”

Gwen’s head whipped around. Ah, there it was, back again: the corporate slut programmed to defend her people. “The Plant is its own entity. Once people are accepted, they give up their former lives…” Her voice petered out.

He tugged her past Cell Blocks 2 through 5. The concrete floor gave way to wiry, industrial carpet. A few more Ofarians moved about the open spaces, some in doctor’s scrubs, most in uniforms. They tapped at tablet computers and pointed into cells, mumbling to one another.

Xavier gestured to the row of barred cells lining one side of the wide, quiet corridor.

Her hands rose again, this time to her face. She advanced slowly to the bars, her mouth falling open. He joined her, hands in his pockets.

This cell, three times as large as the others, contained four young women.

111J was pregnant again. In Earth years she might be in her early twenties, not too much younger than Xavier. This would be her third or fourth child, he guessed. She lay on her side on a yellow couch, her head covered in thick, black hair resting on her outstretched arm. Her face was perfectly blank, her Tedran gray eyes dead.

The others were barely out of girlhood, their swollen bellies a contrast to their thin arms and legs. They sat in a circle, playing some sort of hand-slapping game and singing in Tedranish. On the outside, girls their age were just starting to learn to drive. Or getting their first after-school jobs. Or learning how to kiss.

These girls had never even heard of those things.

Only when Xavier had gotten out did he come to know why the Ofarians allowed the slaves to continue to speak their own language. Tedran words were needed to power the glamour. When a bottle of
Mendacia
went out, one of the slaves was forced to provide the client’s specific glamour needs in Tedranish.

A glowing screen on the wall next to the cell listed each woman’s classification code paired with a man’s code.

Gwen’s eyes swept over the soft rugs, the plush beds and cushioned chairs, the shelves stacked with games and cards, and food and drink. The cinder block walls here were painted pleasant colors, and decorated with framed prints of mountains and flowers. Things the women would never actually see.

“There’s incentive to get pregnant,” Xavier said. “At least, the Ofarians think it’s incentive. They impregnate the young girls before they know better, lure them with better rooms and food. And pregnancy puts glamour into dormancy, so they don’t have to go to the draining rooms.” He waved a hand at the ceiling, free of neutralizers. “That woman you saw when we first came in, she’s probably sterile. Her only use is draining. She doesn’t have much longer to live.”

“Why not?”

“Glamour isn’t meant to be squeezed out day after day, forcing it out of your body like a poison. The men”—he shook his head, feeling the bits of his own life stolen from him, the holes left behind—“we never live long.”

He coughed, looked away. “Soon enough the women’ll realize what it is they’re continuing. They want to live more comfortably but they don’t want to keep having kids, knowing what the little ones will have to go through.”

Gwen’s mouth twisted like she was about to spit out rotten meat. “Do they have a choice whether or not to get pregnant?”

Xavier looked back toward 111J. “What do you think?”

Gwen shrank away, mumbling, “I don’t want to know anymore. I don’t…we can go now. Get me out of here.”

“Tough shit.” One of the choicest phrases he’d learned on the outside.

On cue, from down a softly lit hall, drifted the sounds of children’s giggles and the shrieks of new babies. There were pieces of him in there. For a moment he thought Gwen might dash for the nursery, and he was grateful when Gwen pinched her eyes shut and turned her head away from the kids’ noises. If she’d gone down there, he didn’t think he’d be able to stop himself from scooping up what he guessed was his and try to make a run for it.

If he did that, everything would end. All of Nora’s work. The Tedrans’ only chance at freedom. Revenge on the Ofarians.
Everything.

There was one place left for Gwen to see.

Though it killed him, he dragged his heavy legs to the left. The new corridor curved sharply around, and the sight of it almost brought him to his knees. Damn Nora for making him come back. Damn Gwen.

He sagged against the wall, feeling the glamour flicker around them. He snatched it back under his control before it slipped away. The wall supported him. Breath labored in his chest.

“Xavier?” Gwen stood way too close, considering where they were about to head.

“Get away from me.” He shoved away from the wall and marched around her. Into the Circle. She thought she’d seen the worst of this place? She thought she understood what Tedran lives had been reduced to?

She had to jog to keep up with his long strides. He didn’t slow down.

The cells in the Circle were like pieces of a pie. The first time Adine had made him a real pie, it had been apple, and when she’d cut into it, making triangular shapes, he’d instantly flashed back to this place. With a growl and a sweep of his arm, he’d sent the whole pie against the wall. He still had yet to eat a bite of one.

The main corridor swept around the cells at ceiling height, looking down into the triangular-shaped rooms. Carpet here, too, but no shelves of food or games. Just a single mattress lying beneath bright, glaring lights and the pallor of green neutralizers.

The first occupied cell held a naked Tedran man and woman. They lay on the bed, curled into one another. The sight of skin on skin burned a bullet through his chest.

Gwen’s voice went completely flat. “What is this.”

Xavier looked at the floor. Safer that way. But the buzz in his brain and body and blood had already begun.

“No baby yet.” He fixated on the tight nap of the beige carpet. “Poor couple combination. Bad timing. Fertility issues. Who knows? They haven’t figured it out yet. But they will. They’ll test each of them. Over and over and over. When they find a good stud, they’ll just keep bringing the women.”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I thought…”

He wanted to bite something. Rip something apart. Stomp something into pebbles. “Just say it.”

“I thought they’d do it scientifically. With needles. And petri dishes.”

“Is that how
you’d
do it?”

“No!”

“The Ofarians think it’s some kind of reward.” He slashed at the air with a hand. “Like an orgasm will take all this away.”

He’d never known the word
orgasm
either, only that they demanded he have one inside a woman.

She staggered to the next cell in the Circle. A naked Tedran man sat on the edge of the mattress, heels tapping incessantly, fingers rubbing together. Xavier didn’t have to see proof. The Tedran man was hard. Hopped up. Waiting.

A door opened at the wide end of the pie piece, just below Gwen and Xavier’s feet. The waiting man’s prize entered: a naked Tedran woman. Head down, she shuffled forward. The man rose, visibly trying to calm himself, and slowly approached her. He took her hand. There was a gentleness to his touch, but it didn’t soften what he was about to do.

The mattress creaked as the Tedran man climbed upon it. The woman reclined back and opened her thighs.

Don’t look. Don’t look
. But not only did Xavier look, he stared. He felt. He wanted.

Gwen’s chin touched her chest and she shuddered.

“Don’t,” he snapped. “Don’t you dare look away.
They
don’t.” He jabbed a finger toward the narrowed tip of the cell where floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the central observation room. An Ofarian man and woman stood on the other side of the glass, watching as the Tedran man started to thrust into the prone Tedran woman.

The Tedran woman’s arms draped out to the sides, not reaching for her partner. They rarely did. Her head lolled and her expressionless eyes drifted up to the walkway. She couldn’t see Xavier, but it felt like she did.

The man pounded harder into her, the thin muscles on his arms straining as he held himself above her. The only way Xavier knew the man came was from the stiffening of his body, the silent grimace on his face.

Xavier remembered this part. It felt good for about half a second. Then the guilt and horror rushed in.

On the mattress the man did what Xavier always had: he touched the woman’s face, brought her eyes to his, and said in Tedranish, “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

Xavier swiveled away, angry, pounding blood gathering in his penis.
Fuck fuck fuck. Not here. Not now
. He punched his fists against his thighs and squeezed his eyes shut so tightly he saw stars.

“Xavier.” Gwen came up behind him. “You were in here. Weren’t you.”

He shook his head, but not in denial. 267X. That was him.

“Xavier, look at me.”

If he turned around, she’d see.
Fuck it
. There was no hiding it. One foot first, then the other, he slowly pivoted until he faced Gwen. She stared into his eyes, got the confirmation she wanted, then her eyes flickered down to his shame.

The erection pressed against his jeans’ zipper. Aching. Immediate. A trained tool. “Don’t worry. It’s not for you. I’m a goddamn Pavlov’s dog.”

If it mollified her, he couldn’t tell. She stood completely rigid except for the deep rise and fall of her chest.

“They lost me,” he said. She’d seen his humiliation so the best he could do was use it to make her hear everything now. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel it. “They lost me and they hate it. I was their prize, Gwen. I could get any woman pregnant they brought me, even the ones who’d had problems. Do you know how many kids I have? Because I don’t. Wouldn’t know them if they came up and shook my hand. My first time was at fourteen.
Fourteen
.”

She was crying now. Full-on crying. She clutched her arms at her waist and bent over, the sobs jerking her whole body. But he wasn’t about to let her off now.

“All of a sudden it got worse about six, seven years ago. It was constant.
All the fucking time
. They had to build more nursery space. The women were constantly pregnant. The men were dying faster. Your people did this to me. To us.”

“No,” she wailed, her head shaking at the ground. “Not all of us. We didn’t know.”

Every word of hers repulsed him.

He pinched his own arm. Hard. Pain might take away the urge to breed. Pain and getting the hell out of there.

He glanced at his watch. “The guards will change again in five minutes. My glamour is starting to slip. Let’s go.”

He jerked the chain. She’d called it a leash, and at the time he hadn’t appreciated her anger. Now he enjoyed it, controlling her.

He pulled her back out of the breeding Circle and almost ran right into a small group of four Ofarians huddled in the dimmer spot between wall sconces. He veered on one foot, stumbled, and took Gwen down to the ground with him. She fell right on top of him and he kneed her off as though she were a rabid animal. He jumped back to his feet.

Gwen remained sprawled on the floor, frozen and staring up at the Ofarians. Two Ofarians were dressed in Plant blue. A woman whom Xavier recognized as head of breeding wore medical scrubs. A fourth Ofarian wore a sleek black business suit, his silvery hair polished, his face authoritative and stern.

“Gwen,” Xavier warned, jerking on the chain. “We need to go
now
. If we miss our window, the guards won’t change for another hour. Nora can’t hold the van illusion that long and I can’t hold the two of us much longer.”

“Wait.” She dug in her heels. A new brand of terror washed over her face. “That’s Jonah Yarbrough. The Company’s Vice Chairman.”

“We weren’t expecting you,” the woman in scrubs said to Yarbrough. “I apologize for the mess in the—”

“I didn’t expect to come,” Yarbrough interrupted. “There’s been a security breach. I need to move the Plant again.”

SIXTEEN

Only an hour earlier, Gwen would have done anything to get the
Ofarians to know she was alive and inside the Plant. Now she sprinted across the parking lot as though she were being chased. Every pounding footstep stabbed a new shard of terror into her heart.

“Hurry,” Xavier called over his shoulder. “It’s getting harder to hold. If I’m straining, so is Nora.”

They reached the van, its back doors open and waiting. Gwen threw herself inside without being told. Xavier snapped off the chain and slammed the doors shut. Seconds later, Nora pulled the van out of the parking lot in a tight curve.

Gwen felt like she’d polished off an entire bottle of
nelicoda
and had been pushed into the Arctic Ocean. Frigid numbness surrounded her body. The world moved like water just about to freeze. She could see it, sense it moving slowly around her, but she could not touch it or taste it or smell it.

Only one thought ran on a loop through her mind.
I am not a monster. I am not a monster. I am not a monster.

When the van stopped, she wondered if she’d fallen asleep, because they hadn’t been traveling long and they’d yet to climb up and over the mountains that surrounded Lake Tahoe. Nora opened the doors. A highway roared behind her. A sign on its shoulder proclaimed:
CARSON CITY 34 MILES
.