The Supremacy (5 page)

Soon, we no longer heard the steps coming. No sound emanated through our confines.
The breathing of the twenty began to heighten as that ominous silence grew. The air thickened around us, we all knew something had been coming for us.
The door flung opened, and our collective shrieks filled the air. It was a Keeper. He scanned the room, his eyes landing on all our faces until he found me. Faith cringed deeper into my side, her arms all but choking me.
I did not look away from the Keeper that stared me down. I couldn’t look away if I tried for he had me frozen with the deepest fear I had ever known. It gripped my stomach until I thought I might become sick. Sweat began to pool on the outside of my temples, and every hair follicle on my body stood on end.
His expression was singular. It was the look of death.
He stepped closer to me, a shadow of a smile playing on his lips. As he neared, I could feel my pulse quickening the closer he edged toward me. When he was only a few steps away, Faith let out a small whimper, causing the Keeper’s attention to flash over to her.
He narrowed his eyes at the small girl wrapped around me and smiled widely at her, “Are you frightened, young one?”
All Faith could manage was a nod. I gripped her tighter to my side, any closer and she would have been in my lap.
“And you should be.” He spat at her before he turned his attention back to the front of the room.
Leisurely, as if he had no care in the world, he took the few short steps to the door, absent-mindedly swinging a small cane as he went. But it wasn’t just a cane, how I wished it were. The slender black rod was an electric prod, like the one that had been used on John…
John.
Yes, Erin,
I spoke silently to myself.
He is gone now.
Dead.
The Keeper crouched down once more, but this time in front of an older looking boy sitting
just
at the inside of the door, “Come with me.” The Keeper demanded, kicking at the boy’s shoe.
“W-why,” The boy stammered, but did not hesitant to straighten, even on shaking limbs.
Faster than any of us could comprehend, that prod found its mark on the inside of the boy’s shoulder. He let out an excruciating scream of agony as the Keeper grabbed a tuft of his hair, “You don’t get to ask questions.” He spat out. “Now
walk.”
He pulled the frightened boy out of the cell by his hair, slamming the steel door behind him in finality.
Faith sobbed into my neck, her body racked with tremors, “What will they do to him?” She cried.
I brushed a tear away from her cheek and pressed my back deeper into the wall behind us, hoping that it would support the weight that I could no longer bear, “I don’t know.” I lied.

Chapter Six
The silence was almost unbearable as we all sat there waiting for the boy to return, but he never did. We became restless, not knowing what to do or what to say. Soon, I found myself standing in the middle of the small cell, pacing an invisible line from the front to the back. My body could no longer just sit motionless waiting for another one of us to be taken away.
“What are you doing?” The small fatigued voice of Faith cut through the silence of the room.
“Thinking.”  I knew if we didn’t come up with a plan then we would all be taken away, one by one, never to return. But what I was really thinking about was what they were doing to the ones they took, and why they were chosen. Was there a method to their madness? Was this the reason for them marking us?
A part of me, albeit a very small part, still had hope. I hoped above all that the cell we were in might possibly be a holding area until they found places for us. That
maybe
that was the ‘test’. That the strongest would find a way to survive the mental torture they had in store for us. That everything we were enduring was some psychotic simulation. 
“About what?” An impetuous male voice piped up, breaking me from my reverie, “about how to get the hell out of here?” His voice seethed sarcasm, “Yeah, keep thinking. The only way any of us are getting out of here is in a body bag.”
Gasps filled the room. He probably wasn’t wrong, but saying it aloud made it final. Saying it out loud made him one hell of an asshole. “That’s the spirit,” I yelled at him, quickly closing the gap between us with just a few short strides, “Say bullshit that scares everyone and not a single damn thing that could possibly help.”
“Help with what?” He stood, meeting me head on, his eyes blazing with the anger that matched my own, “Help us get killed faster?” He laughed out, “keep dreaming, but as far as I can tell, the tighter you keep your mouth, the longer you stay alive.”
Anger coursed through me, rage building as the weight of the day threatened to crush my frame. I wanted nothing more than to obliterate the guy standing in front of me. My fist clasped shut, knuckles cracking as the force of my grip tightened my fingers.
“No, Rin!
Don’t
.” I felt Faith’s small hand grasp around my arm. Hugging it tightly, she pulled me back, “He isn’t worth it.” She pleaded, pulling us back against the wall, “No one’s worth your anger.” She repeated, holding me against the cold stone.
I learned more from that little girl than I had anyone else in my entire life. She was the epitome of goodness and purity. She loved with a force that could knock you to your knees. Even faced with death, she never lost sight of the beauty of humanity.
I would have given everything to have been gifted the ability to see the world through her eyes. To her, beauty and love were all around us, we just had to take the time to notice it. 
She was right; fighting with him would have solved nothing other than my superficial need to unleash the pent-up hostility that was boiling almost painfully inside of me. A fight would have certainly alerted a Keeper, and that alone would have ended many of our lives.
With Faith at my side, I allowed her to guide me back to our place. I slumped down, rested my back against the cold concrete of our cell, but I never took my eyes off him, and he didn’t look away from me either.
All too soon, Faith’s shivering began again. Wrapping my arms around her, I whispered to her the song I always sung to my brother, hoping that it would calm her the same way it did him, the same way it did me when my father sang it.
                                “Hear the whispers in the wind.
                                   It’s when time begins again.
                                         See the colors of the ocean.
                                 Feel the warmth blanket your skin,
                              Hear the songs played in moonlight
                                  as the night comes rolling in.
                           It’s the ravens crying, ‘it’s midnight!’    
                                That’s when time begins again.”
Her shivers began to ebb and her breathing deepened as she slumped into my shoulder.
I knew I had my brother to thank for the instant, almost tangible bond I had with the young girl. It made no real sense, I hardly knew her, but in the same light, I knew it all. She was so much like him. I
needed
to protect her. Out of everyone in that cell, I knew
then
that I would do everything in my power to see her get out of there alive. I had to. I failed John, but I
had
to save Faith.
I grabbed my stomach when it began to roll. I had not eaten at all that day, hardly drank anything either. I knew my nerves would not have allowed me to keep any food down. I regretted that decision. How long could someone survive with no food and no water? It could not be long, a few days at best.
It seemed the more I thought about the dryness in my throat, the worse it became. The minutes turned agonizing as my throat dried, like the scraping of sandpaper with every swallow. I was hoping someone was watching us. They had to be, how would they be able to control a group as large as us without some sort of monitoring system.
I looked up, not really looking at anything, just up at the ceiling. I hoped that someone could see us, but a part of me hoped that they could not. I doubted a prisoner that demanded anything sat well with them, but if they were going to leave us to wither and die, I would have rather known my fate upfront.
“
Water
.” I mouthed at the ceiling above me. A ration of food was the least of my concern. Food would have made the dryness in my throat even more unbearable. Again, I mouthed at the ceiling, “
Water.”
But no one came. It was dumb for me to even suspect that a Keeper would care if one of their animals were in need of something, even if that something was as trivial as a sip of water.
I tried my best to rest. The rhythmic lull of Faith’s breathing rocked my tired body to sleep, but every time I was close, I was jarred awake by the fear of not knowing, of not being able to see when they came for me.
Faith came to a few times during the night, or what I could have only assumed was night, but she never fully awakened. Luckily, they were just restless stirs. Every so often, she would jerk and cry out. And with every cry, my heart tightened a little more. We were all scared for our lives but none of us was as young as Faith.
We were told that we were the first batch, the beginning of the Testers. We were the oldest in the Zones. The young girl resting on my shoulder could not have been the oldest in her Zone. It was impossible. I found it strange that The Supremacy would have lied about their testing criteria. There didn’t seem to be a point. It was not as if any of us had the choice to refuse their orders.
The only reasoning I could imagine was to keep the population in the dark about their plans, but even that couldn’t be kept a secret for too long. How would they be able to explain why none of us came home for our scheduled holiday? Were they planning on something even bigger for the outside world?
Sleep did not come to me. It did not give me a reprieve from my mind’s continuous onslaught of terrifying images. Flashes of Keepers prodding the innocent with their electrodes, the ones not burning from their rods were shackled to the walls. The inhumanity that they could bestow upon us was endless. All it took was one psychotic Keeper and they could think of a hundred more ways to torture us. They were demons.
Faith cried out again, a shriek much louder than the others, causing most of the cell to jump to attention. A voice I hoped to not hear again broke the uneasy silence of the night, “
Christ
!” He bellowed in the silence, “Can’t you shut that brat up!” His voice echoed off the cement walls as he quickly rose to his feet.
I did not want to wake Faith. I could not have her see what I was about to do. I laid her as gently as I could manage on the bare floor, and then stood to meet the one that was challenging me head on.
“Shut her up?” I asked, my voice seething in challenge, “Is that what you would like me to do? Shut someone up?”
He stepped closer to me, an arrogant smile playing on his lips, a silent challenge of his own, “You think you can actually come against me?” He let out a lone laugh before my fist found its mark around his neck. My fingers clinched tightly, squeezing the air from his lungs as he scratched fruitlessly at my hand. Something that I was not shy about was defending myself. Not only had my father taught me well, but so did John. I might not have been able to stop a Keeper with a weapon, but I could certainly choke off the words of a cowardly prick.
He scratched viciously at my arm as he tried in vain to rip my hand free from his throat. I was too skilled to allow him the advantage of getting close to me. Pushing him against the wall with my knee, I tightened my grip. His choking breath told me he only had a few more seconds of consciousness.
“
Stop!
” A female voice came from behind, “You are going to kill him!” Too bad for the guy within my grasp that the voice begging me to stop was not Faith’s.
“Isn’t that the point?” I asked the disembodied voice with a smile of my own playing on my face, mocking the one the boy gave me in a challenge.
I watched with a grin as he slumped to the ground, but he wasn’t out just yet. I followed him, allowing my legs to bend so that we were at eye level. I had the irrevocable urge to end him. I knew, even in my uncontrollable rage that it was not him that I was angry with; it was not him that I wanted to kill, but even with that knowledge, I could not stop myself. 
The same voice that begged for me to stop let out a blood-curling scream the same moment that our cell door flew open, banging vociferously against the rigid wall.
Two Keepers rushed through the door, tackling me upon notice. I knew one of those Keepers well. It was Declan. He had me pinned beneath him, my head forced to the ground, but my hand was still cleverly clasped over the boy’s throat.
“Let go, Erin.” Declan demanded in my ear, “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”
I giggled as I tightened my grip, “Go right ahead, Declan.”
I saw the syringe he pulled out of his cloak. I knew what he was going to do, but still-- I did not care.
“Let go.” He warned me one more time before he jabbed the needle into my arm.
I could feel the cold numbing of the drugs as soon as they entered my body. It was a feeling of weightlessness. I could feel myself losing control, losing consciousness. My fight against it was hopeless. I could not help but wonder if the majority of my time there would be spent drugged or knocked out. In the state I was in, I did not care. I could not feel enough to care.
And soon, I was gone again.