Tarnished (16 page)

I nodded. “I grew up here. But this is new, all of it. Before I got here today I’d never seen any of this. Those girls, the other pets.” I pointed back in the direction we’d come from. “I don’t know what’s going on in there, but I know something isn’t right. And you…” I shook my head, gesturing to her.

“But you know about the incubators?”

I shook my head.

“It’s not like I agree with what they’re doing to you,” she said, “but I don’t have a problem with being a FTS. That sort of money is more than I would make in like five years. And it’s kind of for a good cause, you know?”

“No, we
don’t
know,” Missy snapped. “What’s a FTS? What’s an incubator? What are they doing to those girls?”

“Geez, chill out,” Riley said, throwing up her hands. “FTS stands for Full Term Surrogate, but we just say incubator. Well, I say oven.” She chuckled. “I mean, tell it like it is.”

“Surrogate?”

“For the babies,” she said. “You saw those pets in the other room. I’ve heard that they’ve been trying to get them to have babies ever since they started this program, however many years ago
that
was.”

“What about the lab?” I asked. “The babies are made in the lab.”

“If you want to call this place a lab, I guess they are,” Riley said.

I slumped back against a row of mops. The handles knocked together and one toppled to the floor. We all froze, looking at the door like we expected an army of orderlies to come charging through. But nothing happened. The room stayed silent.

“I’m sorry,” Riley said. “That was kind of rude of me, to just blurt that out like that. I kind of forgot that you were one of them.”

“They’re trying to
breed
us?” Missy said, her voice a rough whisper.

“Well, it doesn’t seem that weird. This is a breeder, right? They might as well use the ones that get returned to carry the babies. It would save them a lot of money. All they’d have to do is feed them and have them pop out babies for them, if it’s even possible for them to have babies, that is.”

“But we can,” I blurted. “I know pets can get pregnant.” My face burned just thinking about the congressman’s other pet. If she were sent back over a year ago, would she still be here? Had I just spent the last few hours in the same room as her without even realizing it?

“It’s not the getting them pregnant part that’s hard,” Riley said. “Some of them come in that way, you know? That’s how they got the name ‘tarnished,’ even though that’s what they call
all
of them now. That alone is creepy as all get up, if you ask me. Like they’re some piece of jewelry that got ruined or something. Maybe it makes them feel better about what they’re doing to them, giving them all those shots. They fill them up with drugs thinking they’re going to get a baby out of them, but they can’t. They just can’t have ’em. I think the longest they can carry one is three months before they both just die.”

“They die?” Missy spat.

Riley swallowed, realizing what she’d just said, and nodded.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “All of them?”

Riley nodded again.

Missy plopped down on one of the crates next to Riley and rested her forehead in her hands. “I guess deep down we always knew they’d try to kill us, right? I knew. Don’t tell me you didn’t. If we weren’t perfect enough they were always going to get rid of us. Maybe we didn’t know they’d use our bodies for a science experiment first. But we always knew we were expendable.”

“What if we tell people?” I asked. “We were looking for a way to expose them. Maybe this is it.”

“You think people are really going to care?” Riley asked. “Not to be rude, but they won’t. Maybe you’ll have some of those PETA people that get all pissed off, and get their picket signs out and stuff, but most people just don’t care that much. How do you think that whole law got passed? Hell, it’s not like I paid any attention to it before. You hear all this crap about corporations and big money or whatever, but you think people have time to really think about that stuff? They’ve got jobs and car payments and rent that’s too high. Besides, it’s not like anyone really sees you as people. You’re pets. Maybe you kind of look like us and you have most of the same genes or whatever, but so do apes, right? And nobody cares about them.”

“You really think that about us?” I asked.

She looked sheepishly down at her hands. “Maybe I used to,” she said. “It’s easier to believe the things that people tell you to believe, you know? When all these people that are so much smarter than you and so much more important than you tell you stuff, you just assume they’re right.”

She stopped talking and Missy and I stood in stunned silence. This wasn’t just shock or confusion or disgust. When we walked back inside this kennel it was like a piece of ourselves had snagged on the jagged corner of the doors and the further we ventured inside these walls, the more unraveled we became. I could feel myself coming undone. Unspooling from the inside out.

Maybe Riley was right. Maybe nobody cared.

Riley glanced uncomfortably between the two of us. “It might not be any consolation, but I kind of know how you feel. Do you think anyone gives a crap about a poor girl from Camden? I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t have any choices.”

“So what do we do?” Missy asked. “We can’t stay here. They’ll kill us.”

“We can’t leave yet,” I said. “We haven’t fixed anything.”

Missy threw her hands up. “Does this look like something that can be fixed? We should just get out of here now while we still can.”

“It’s not like I can help,” Riley said. “I would if I could, really, but they’d make my life a living hell if I said anything. They’re paying us a lot of money to do this and most of that’s for promising to keep our big mouths shut. They had me sign this gazillion page legal document saying that I wouldn’t ever tell anyone about it.”

“Why?”

“Because people would freak out if they knew about this,” she said, pointing to her stomach. “I guess I kind of knew this was wrong when I signed up for it, but I needed the money, you know? Anyone would have done it if they grew up where I grew up. In my neighborhood people steal, or deal meth. This seemed like a better choice than that. At least I wasn’t hurting anyone. I didn’t think I was. And I always thought being pregnant would be nice. I’d get paid to just sit around and eat and sleep for a year. It sounded nice not to have to worry about all of the crap I grew up worrying about.”

“And you think people would be upset if they found out that NuPet was using
you
, but they wouldn’t be upset about them using
us
?” Missy asked.

Riley snorted, laughing. “No! I don’t think people give a rat’s ass what happens to me! They’d just be freaked out by the whole thing, you know? If these guys have spent all this time and money selling you as pets, telling people that you’re different from us and that’s why it’s okay to own one of you, then they aren’t going to want people to find out that you weren’t grown in labs or bred by other pets. And I sort of get it, I mean, these rich guys are paying all this money for their perfect pets…they don’t want to find out that they used poor, trashy girls like me to give birth to them. They’d rather just picture that you all popped out of a plastic tube somewhere or something.”

She placed her hand on her stomach and for the first time since we’d arrived I really thought about the fact that there was a baby in there. A tiny living thing. That baby girl that grew inside her wouldn’t be too different from me. Like me, she would have been engineered to have a petite body, large eyes, a rose petal mouth. She would have been made for the sole purpose of bettering someone else’s life. That’s what we’d been told. We existed to serve. We existed for our master’s pleasure.

But was that really the truth? It wasn’t what I believed. But now I wondered if it was even the truth as far as NuPet saw it. Were they really worried about creating lifetime companions for people, or did they only care about the money? Maybe no one actually believed that we had been created for any of the reasons I’d been taught. Even the people who were buying pets didn’t believe it. They only cared about prestige and status and the way other people perceived them.

I wondered if Riley had really thought about what she was doing to that little baby that lived inside her, if she’d thought about the life that it would have.

She saw me staring at her stomach. “You think I’m a terrible person, don’t you?”

“No.”

She closed her eyes and placed both of her hands on her belly. Her brow wrinkled like she was concentrating on something.

“The thing they don’t tell you is that you’ll get attached to it,” she said softly without opening her eyes. “I did it the first time and it nearly killed me. This time I’m trying not to think about what’s going to happen to her. Sometimes I kind of wish that we didn’t know that they were all girls, like it might make a difference, might make me less attached since I wouldn’t know what it was. But then I just get to thinking that I don’t care about any of it as long as she’s not a discard, you know?”

Chapter Sixteen

“D
iscard?” My skin prickled at the word.

Riley nodded, her face solemn. “When I got here the first time, I thought those stupid high-and-mighties were just trying to scare us newbies. I figured the doctors gotta know what they’re talking about. They’ve been doing this for long enough. They can’t mess up a baby! But then I had one.”

I looked to Missy to see if she understood what Riley was ranting about, but she looked just as confused as I was.

“I got all the way to term, too, so I thought it was safe. Not all the women here do, but I delivered without any problems. That saves ’em money, you know? And then I heard it cry, which is weird ’cause you wouldn’t think that would be a sound you’d like, but with a baby it is.”

She smiled for a moment, her eyes glistening, but the fleeting happiness slipped away almost immediately. “The doctors, though… Damn, those are some stone cold bastards. They took the measurements and look at me like I did something wrong. Like I ruined her by being me, or something.”

“What happened?” I asked. “To the baby?”

Riley’s face sobered. “They said she was sub-par and took her away. Took her to the other side of the room and pulled a curtain across so I couldn’t see her anymore. But I could still hear her. And then the crying just stopped. It stopped and it didn’t start any more after that.” She leaned forward. “They think we don’t know what they’re doing, but we’re not stupid.”

Dread flooded my gut. Surely she wasn’t saying what I thought she was saying? Because if she was… I looked at Missy. Her face had gone white and her pale blue eyes were wide and round.

Riley lifted her chin before I could ask what, exactly, had happened to her baby. “I can’t let myself think about any of that stuff anymore. I’m here to do a job and I gotta do it,” she went on. “So I’ll just keep on imagining how spoiled she’ll be. She’s going to grow up and go live with someone that’ll give her the comfortable, pampered life I always wanted.”

Missy still stared at her, but the color had returned to her face, and a familiar fire simmered in her eyes. I knew we were both thinking the same thing, but neither of us would tell Riley what it was really like. For just a few minutes more, maybe we
all
needed to believe her next baby’s life was going to be wonderful. It hurt too much to imagine any other scenario.

Riley’s eyes filled with tears as she looked between us. “Maybe I was wrong,” she said. “They don’t want to admit that you’re just like us, but you are. They can change how you look, but they can’t change the fact that you’re humans. You grew inside someone. You heard her heartbeat for
nine months
. That’s gotta count for something, you know?”

My throat tightened. She didn’t have to tell me we were human. I already knew.

Suddenly, she sat up straight, determination replacing the longing in her eyes. “There is one room that has something you could use, if you’re serious about trying to expose things.”

“Will you take us?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yes, but we have to go now. It’s down a different hallway by the delivery rooms and it’s kind of close to the orderly’s office. He’s usually sleeping this time of night, even though he’s not supposed to, but he won’t sleep that long.”

We followed after Riley as she slipped out of the little supply closet and padded down the dark hallway. It was lined with doors, some of which stood open, leading to rooms that were almost identical to the ones that I’d seen on the other half: a dining hall, a bathing room. But other doors were closed, leaving me both curious and anxious about what lay behind them.

At the end of the hallway Riley paused, holding up her hand to stop us. “It’s around the corner,” she whispered, pushing her back up against the wall. “The doors on the right are all their offices and stuff,” she said. “The door you want is at the very end of the hallway.”

“You aren’t coming?” Missy asked.

She shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve only got a few more weeks and then I’m done here. I’m so close to getting out and getting paid. If they caught me…”

I lay my hand on her arm. “It’s okay.”

“I know you probably think I’m a coward. But it’s the best I can do,” she said. “Now listen, the room you’re going to go in is bad, but don’t let it freak you out. There’s a whole wall of filing cabinets on the right. That’s what you need to focus on. I found my file in there, so I know they keep track of things.”

Missy and I nodded. I had no idea what we were supposed to do once we got the files, but at least it was a start. “We’ll try,” I said. “But I’m not sure what we’re looking for.”

“It’s all in there: contract terms, reports, everything you need,” she said. “Well, I’m getting out of here. This sort of stuff makes me too nervous, like I’m going to go into labor or something.”

She gave us an awkward wave and turned back down the hallway, not even bothering with a proper good-bye.

I grabbed Missy’s hand. “Let’s get this over with.”

She nodded and we rounded the corner together. It was dark, with only one small light mounted in the middle of the hallway casting a yellowish glow down the hall, so we couldn’t really see the door at the end of the hallway right away.

Missy spotted it first. A small yelp escaped her lips as she stopped, yanking my arm back with her.

Her hand tightened around mine, squeezing my fingers so tight that I might have yelled out in pain if the sight of the door hadn’t sucked the air straight from my lungs. I’d known it was here. There was one in every wing of this building. But even though Riley had talked about the door, I hadn’t actually expected to see it. The shape was no different from any of the others, but that color was unforgettable.

Red.

Like blood.

A shock of color that pulsed behind my eyes.

“That can’t be where we’re supposed to go,” Missy said, shaking her head back and forth, back and forth, like a girl possessed. “She’s got to be wrong. This is where they take the babies, right? Not where they’d keep cabinets full of paper.”

I held tight to her hand and yanked her forward again. “Calm down.”

Red.

Red.

Light shone out from under the door to our left. The orderly’s room.

My heart thudded madly and the floor wobbled beneath my feet.
Think
, I told myself.
Breathe
.

“We have to do this,” I whispered. “We have to go in.”

Missy’s eyes widened and she shook her head even more violently, planting her feet on the ground and tugging on my arm. “No. I won’t do it.”

Behind the orderly’s door, something rustled. There was a small
thud
, followed by a
click
and the light that shone out from under the crack intensified.

“We have to go.
Now
.”

Missy gritted her teeth as I dragged her toward the red door. Anger flared through my chest. Did she think she was the only one who was terrified? Did she think the red door only haunted
her
? It stained all of our nightmares. Every one of us. They’d painted it red for a reason. It was a sign. A warning.

Do something wrong and you will be punished!

I blinked and I could see afternoon light streaming down the hallway. I was just a little girl. I could feel the wood of my doorframe beneath my hand as the starched white pants of the orderly passed by, the man wearing them dragging a girl by her hair. I heard the screams. Saw the door open. This much was always the same, in every poisoned memory, but suddenly I understood. They’d made us watch. It wasn’t just a coincidence that I’d been standing in my doorway. They’d forced us there, each time, to watch as someone disappeared behind that red door forever.

I blinked again, and time rushed forward.

From behind the orderly’s door, the sound of a chair scraped over the tile and it was like I could see through the wood into the room beyond it. I could see the man in his white shirt and pants, rubbing his tired eyes as he scooted back from the cluttered desk.

I shoved my shoulder against the door and pulled Missy through behind me…right as the door to the orderly’s room creaked open. We toppled inside and I silently swung the red door shut behind me, closing us in.

Missy and I both collapsed against the door, holding each other. The room was too dark for me to see the ghostly structure of a room we’d probably all constructed a million times within our imaginations.

“They had a room like this at the kennel where I grew up,” she said. “They killed girls in here.”

I squeezed her hand. “I know. And unless we see something that proves Riley wrong, they might be killing babies in here, too.” I fumbled along the wall for the light switch. “That orderly was probably headed back to the dormitory. That doesn’t give us very much time before he notices we’re gone.”

My fingers found the plastic switch plate and a moment later the ceiling light flickered to life, drowning the room in a bright fluorescent glow.

Missy and I both shielded our eyes. The room wasn’t huge, but the reflections that bounced off the metal tables and counters made it look far bigger than it actually was. The wall to my right was covered with filing cabinets exactly like Riley said it would be, but as much as I tried not to let my gaze drift, it was impossible not to see the rest of the room.

I’d only ever caught the smallest glimpse at what lay beyond the red door when I was a child, but I couldn’t forget the shelves full of glass vials and syringes that covered the walls. The machines that I’d seen lining the counters had seemed like monsters with their blinking red eyes and tangled wires that hung down like tentacles ready to reach out and strangle me. I cringed, standing this close to them now. Even though I knew that these things couldn’t do anything to me on their own, I still shrank away.

“Get up,” I whispered, pulling Missy to her feet.

She moaned, uncovering her eyes as she took a few steps further into the room with me. “Oh God, this is bad,” she said. Her gaze stopped on the cold metal table in the middle of the room. “Are those straps?” she asked, pointing to four thick white pieces of leather that hung from each corner.

Beside the straps, a tray sat at the center of the table, neatly arranged with a pair of latex gloves, a syringe and half a dozen tools.

I turned around and grabbed her hands. “We can’t look at this now,” I said, pulling her so close that our noses touched and she had no choice but to look at me. “We need to focus, okay?”

“I know. It’s just that it feels like this place is the root of everything bad that’s ever happened to me. It’s the center, like everything I’m afraid of radiates out from here.”

I leaned my forehead against hers. “I understand,” I said. “But we can’t let it control us. That’s exactly what they wanted, isn’t it? One glimpse of this door and they could bring us to our knees. They could mold us into whatever they wanted.”

She nodded, and a little bit of the wildness left her eyes. “Okay.”

“Are you ready to do this?”

She nodded again and we both turned to the wall of filing cabinets.

“How do we even know what we’re looking for?” I asked, opening a drawer toward the middle of the wall.

Dozens and dozens of tan folders packed with papers filled up the drawer. I riffled through them. Each of the folders had a bright red number drawn on the tab, and next to that, a line followed by another two numbers.

“What do you think this means?” I asked, running my finger over a folder with the numbers 5-23.

Missy looked up from the drawer she’d just opened. “These ones have them too. Check to see what’s inside.”

I pulled out one of the folders and flipped it open, thumbing through the stack of papers, but they were just a mad tangle of ink, a jumble of letters and numbers. “It doesn’t make sense. I can’t read any of this.”

Missy sighed loudly and began flipping more quickly through the files. “It must all be important if they kept it,” she said. “Maybe these are all the files of the girls they’ve put down over the years?”

I jerked my fingers back from the file I was holding. There were too many. A wall full of them.

“No.” I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. There’s no way they could have killed this many girls.”

Missy shrugged. “I don’t know. Riley said all the girls they’ve experimented on died. Who knows how long this has been going on?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t think about that right now.

Missy sighed and closed her file cabinet. “It doesn’t matter. If NuPet’s killing babies, those are the files we need to find. People aren’t going to care about the other stuff.”

I glared at her. “I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe people lack that much empathy. They would care. They have to care.”

“Fine, take some of those folders, too,” she said, nodding toward my cabinet.

I opened a new drawer and flipped through the files, adding random ones to Missy’s small pile.

“How do we know if these are the ones that Riley was talking about?” I asked, looking behind me at the door. We’d only been in here for a few minutes, but I didn’t know how much more time we had. What if the orderly noticed that we weren’t in our beds? What if someone had seen us leave? What if Riley told him where we were?

I pulled the drawers open faster, working my way left, while Missy worked her way to the right.

“These all look the same,” Missy grumbled. She abandoned that drawer and moved all the way over to the wall, pulling one open on the farthest side. “These are different,” she said excitedly. “Look!” She pulled one out and held it up. “The tab has words on it and then a number. Can you read this?” she asked, shoving the folder at me.

“I can’t read the word, but look at the numbers,” I said, almost jumping. “They’re just like the numbers on the files I have. Some of them are even the same.”

“Let me see,” Missy said, snatching the folder out of my hands. “I bet they go together.”