Rehabilitation: Romantic Dystopian (Unbelief Series Book 1) (11 page)

T
he woman takes the band off my arm, grabs her clipboard, and leaves me alone again. Now I’m stuck waiting once more, staring at that dumb mirror again. I don’t know why it makes me so uncomfortable, why my reflection creeps me out, but I can’t dislodge the conviction someone is behind it somehow, watching me.

Someone who doesn’t like me much.

After what feels like forever, the door opens again. I expect to see the lady return with her stupid clipboard to finish my tests, but it’s not her. Instead it’s two men dressed in white camo, marking them as soldiers. Guns are strapped to their thighs and visors cover their eyes.

“You’re to come with us,” one of them tells me.

I rise from my chair, hesitant. “What about the Mistrial?” I ask dumbly. I haven’t finished it yet.

It’s the other one who speaks this time. “Your Judge has informed us that you have failed your Mistrial,” he says in a strict monotone. “You are to come with us for processing and transportation.”

I start to shake my head, this can’t be happening. This has been my plan all along, but now that I’m here staring into the cold, blank faces of men who stand ready to take away my freedom? I’m afraid. I’m
sickeningly
afraid. I take one hesitant step back, bumping the edge of the table. It’s enough to make both men tense, their hands reaching automatically for the firearms at their sides.

Immediately, I freeze.

“Come with us now.” The man’s tone leaves no room for arguing and I don’t hesitate this time. I just walk straight forward to them, letting them put plastic cuffs on my wrists to hold them together and letting them escort me down the hall without resistance.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the other boy—Raymond—being hauled away by two large soldiers. He’s struggling against them, but his gangly arms don’t stand a chance against their large frames. He’s yelling, calling out “No” over and over again, but no one’s listening. I swallow hard, watching his futile fighting.

After a moment, I have to look away, my lips firming together. There’s nothing I can do to help him.

After all, we’re both going to the same place.

We make it down to the garage again and I’m thrown into a line of other kids around my age, maybe seven or eight of us total. There are some younger, maybe twelve or thirteen being the youngest, but most of them are about sixteen or seventeen. Those are the ages that tend to cause the most trouble.

There’s a line of soldiers on either side of us, making it clear running away is not an option. All of us, one by one, climb into the back of a large truck that isn’t enclosed so much as it’s covered by a thick white tarp. There are long benches on either side of the truck bed where we take our seats. I’m the second to last one in the truck (Raymond is the last, thrown in with a bruised face) so I sit near the back of the truck bed.

After myself and Raymond sit down in the truck, a soldier climbs in behind us. He sits on the edge of the truck, facing inward, so he can watch us all. I realize suddenly he’s there to keep any of us from doing something stupid, like jumping out the back.

There are people sometimes that are just that desperate to get away.

After he’s settled, the truck starts up and we begin to move. We can’t see anything outside thanks to the tarp, but I know when we’ve reached the outside of the Center, because it gets cold. Or colder, rather. All of us begin to shiver and most of the kids scoot in closer, sitting right behind the cab of the truck, seeking warmth.

I stay toward the edge, however, staring down at Raymond. He’s unconscious, lying on the bed of the truck and I worry a little he might freeze during our trip.

I glance toward the guard. It’s pointless, I know, to alert him that Raymond is unconscious and no doubt freezing in the back of the truck. He won’t care, much less do anything.

I try anyway. “I think Raymond’s unconscious.”

The guard glances at the boy laying on the truck bed. He considers him for a moment, then nods. “I think you’re right,” he says, and I’m surprised to find his voice isn’t like the other guards and Elite I’ve spoken with. There’s a hint of amusement there.

The tinge of emotion, anything beyond the detached tones of all the rest of the Elite I have encountered, makes me notice other things about him. He is dressed in the white and black camouflage all the soldiers wear and has that same disconcerting visor across his eyes, but he’s thinner than most. Not gangly like Raymond, but his body looks filled out by lean muscles instead of bulky ones. There’s a tuft of dark hair sticking out from beneath his cap.

After a moment of contemplation, he nods his head and yanks out a box from beneath the bench opposite of the one I’m sitting on. He opens the box and grabs a thick gray blanket from it. Unceremoniously, he tosses it over Raymond.

“That oughta hold him at least ‘til we get to camp,” the man says.

He turns to look at me. It’s unnerving because I can’t see his eyes through the visor.

“What’s your name?” he asks me.

I fold my arms across my chest and lean back against the metal beam that holds up the tarp over our heads. I can’t decide why this soldier seems different, and it only serves to fuel my distrust. “Sinna,” I answer finally.

He smiles then, and it’s the first time I notice he has full lips and dimples on either end. “Sinna, eh?” he says, that amusement lacing his voice again. “Interesting. What are you in for?”

I keep my mouth shut, deciding I don’t particularly like his amusement.

As though sensing my reluctance, he lets out a sigh and does something that shocks me. He pushes his visor up onto his hat so I can see his eyes. They are brown with a hint of green around the edges and flicker with a surprising amount of warmth.

I wasn’t expecting that.

“I guess you all are here for the same thing,” he says, his warm eyes locked on mine. “This your first time?”

“Obviously,” I can’t help but saying. “No one goes to Rehabilitation twice.”

His smile widens and it occurs to me that he’s attractive. Not like Jacob who is so charismatic he would be attractive even if he had been the ugliest man in the world. No, this man—if I can even call him that, he looks closer to my age than that of a soldier—is attractive simply because his features are put together perfectly.

“Oh, my mistake,” he says, but it’s mocking.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He tilts his head to the side, then makes a humming noise in his throat. Shrugging his shoulders he says, “Nothing.”

I’m about to push further to find out what he means, but he gives me a sly smile before I even get the chance.

“Wanna escape?” he asks, a mischievous glint in his brown eyes and a smile on his face.

I stare at him like he’s a crazy person. Mostly because he
has
to be a crazy person. People don’t just ask someone if they want to escape, and even if they do, it’s got to be a trick question. Even if someone wants to escape, there’s still nowhere to escape
to
.

“Are you crazy?” I ask finally.

He laughs at me, then quiets down as he notices several of the other candidates for Rehabilitation glance back toward us. Composing himself, he winks at me. “Maybe a little.”

I don’t know what his game is, but I just shake my head at him. No, is my answer, no matter what kind of games he’s playing. Or even if he’s not playing one. “No, I don’t.”

His eyebrows raise high on his head as he stares at me in surprise then demands, “
Now
who’s crazy?”
 

He has a point. Only a crazy person would think escape was an option, but only a
crazier
person wouldn’t even
want
to escape. Which I guess makes me stark raving nuts.

I fold my arms across my chest. “I don’t need to escape,” I tell him, wondering how I can explain this without giving my plan away to a soldier. “Whatever Rehabilitation throws at me, I know I’ll survive.”

He stares at me for a while. Tilting his head to the side, studying my face, he looks to come to some sort of decision about me. After a moment, he breaks into a wide grin. “You know, I think maybe you’re right.”

I’m about to ask him what he means when a voice from up front, the driver, comes back to us. It’s loud and irritated as he says, “Shut up back there! This isn’t play time.”

We fall silent after that. He puts his visor back on to cover his eyes and I spend the rest of the journey trying not to pay any attention to him.
 

Which of course I fail at, miserably.

T
he soldier I talked to earlier when we first got into the truck has fallen asleep—I think. He might just be faking. It makes me wonder if he knows how hopeless it is for us and sees no point even bothering to guard us. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. After all, he did offer to help me to escape.

I’ve been mulling that over for pretty much the entire trip. I don’t know why he would make such an offer. I also don’t know why he didn’t make it to anyone else.

I don’t know why he even
cared
.

After a while, the truck slows. I want to look outside and see what’s going on, where we are, but I don’t bother. There aren’t any windows in the tarp and I know I’ll figure out where we are soon enough.

We come to a bumpy halt, the engine idling for several long moments. I think maybe we’ve arrived, but then the soldier wakes up beside me. As he stretches he says, “Must be at the gates.” Looking over at me—I think anyway, he’s still wearing the dumb visor—he adds, “It’s not too late to escape. We’ve still got another mile before we reach the camp.”

I just hug myself tighter and give my head a sharp shake, not saying anything.

He looks thoughtful again, but shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

He’s right about not being there yet, though. The truck lurches and we start moving forward again. I debate with myself for a moment, wondering if it’s a good idea, but decide I’m too curious. I want to know why there’s another mile to go when I’m pretty sure we’ve just stopped at a check point.

The soldier said gates and gates mean we’ve gotten to wherever we’re going, right?

“Hey,” I say, getting the soldier’s attention. He looks my way, flipping up his visor so I can see his eyes.

“Alex,” he says in response.

I frown. “What?”

“Alex,” he repeats. “My name is Alex.”

Shrugging, I say, “Alright. Alex. Why do we have another mile to go? I mean, you said that was the gate. Doesn’t that mean we’ve arrived?”

Alex shakes his head before I’ve even finished my question. His expression is serious, and maybe sad, as he begins to explain. “Sort of. I mean, we’re
here
in the sense that within those gates is the camp, but there’s still another mile of, well, nothing. It’s just barren land.”

“Why?”

He takes his hat off for a moment so he can run a hand through his thick hair. I notice his hands look strong, and his hair looks clean and well-kept. Unlike mine which is often a tangled and rather mousy mess. The soldiers are obviously better taken care of than I am.

“Well,” he begins. “If there’s a mile of nothing—no trees, no buildings, no shelter to speak of—between the camp and the entry gate, then it’s extremely hard to escape unless you’re driving, right? And when you add in some frozen tundra, a wall around the perimeter with some spikes on top, not to mention guards and spotlights... you’ve got a difficult place to break out of, you know?”

His voice is casual, like none of this concerns him, like nothing in the world concerns him at all, but I don’t know what to make of it. I wonder if it’s an act—I
hope
it is, because no one should be that unconcerned with anything. Not even an Elite soldier.
 

They’re strict, reminiscent of robots, it’s true, but usually at least, they don’t act like they know there’s something wrong with the world and just don’t care.

They usually appear to be doing what they think is best.

I think.

I open my mouth, about to ask more questions, when the truck grinds to a halt. The others at the far end of the truck bed are all shaking, and I know it’s not entirely from the cold. They’re scared.