Captives (35 page)

“I, uh, was wondering if my vaporizer is broken. Nothing’s coming out.”

“Your first time, eh? It’s just empty. You want me to fill it?”

The marijuana had been fun at first, but Omar didn’t like not remembering where he’d been or what he’d been doing. Maybe he could vape something else. “Yeah.”

“What’s your juice?”

Juice? Was that the same as stim? “Can I have beer?”

The barkeep sighed. “I can get you a beer to drink or alcohol to vape.”

“Oh. I want to vape it.”

“Alcohol then. What level?”

“How many are there?”

The barkeep laughed. “Ten, shell.”

“Let’s go with a five, then,” Omar said, feeling mature.

“Any flavor? Color?”

“Sapphire. No flavor.”

“I got blue.” The barkeep slid a SimTag pad toward Omar.

Omar tapped his fist against it, and a few minutes later was sitting on a bench outside what turned out to be the Django Building, waiting for his cab, eager to see if his vaporizer could help him get a little warmer on the inside.

The first puff burned the back of his throat and made him cough. His second breath was more careful. The stream of hot vapor hit his tongue, and he held it in his mouth a moment before breathing it into his lungs. At least it didn’t burn the back of his throat this time, and it definitely warmed his insides.

The taxi arrived and carried him to the Snowcrest Building. Not too long after, he entered his apartment. The carpet was inviting under his bare feet. He’d barely closed the door when his doorbell rang. He opened the door, and Belbeline walked inside.

“Magnificent Fortune!” She grabbed him in a hug. “You’re freezing! What happened to you?”

He took a quick puff and blew a cloud of blue vapor into her face, then chuckled at her surprised expression.

She snatched the PV from his hand. “You refilled this. When?”

“It was empty. Give it back.” He pried it out of her fingers.

“You have to be careful, Omar. You can make yourself sick vaping too much grass. Too much anything. No more tonight, okay? I don’t want you getting liberated before your time.”

“I’ll be careful.” He felt clever to have filled his PV with alcohol. “How’d you know I was back?”

“I asked Artie to tap me when you came in. I thought you left me!” She slapped his arm.

“I woke up in some strange apartment, on the floor behind the couch.”

Belbeline started to laugh, but it trailed off as her eyes went wide, looking past his arm. “Is that me?” She pointed to where his easel was set up in the kitchen.

Omar’s cheeks burned. “Uh … yeah. I couldn’t stop thinking about your hair.”

She walked into the kitchen and stared at the canvas. “You really
are
an artist.”

Omar joined her. “It’s not done.” He suddenly felt heavy and exposed and wanted to cover the canvas. “I’m sorry. I should have asked first. Are you mad?”

She turned those gorgeous eyes back to him. “I’m not mad. I want you to paint me again.”

The heaviness fell away. “Really?”

She ran into his living room and crawled onto his couch. She
twisted and turned and settled onto her side, shaking back her hair and making his breath catch. “How’s this?”

A thrill bounced through him. She wanted him to paint her now? “Okay.” He lifted his painting of Bel’s face off the easel and leaned it against the wall, then put up a fresh canvas.

M
ason woke up at five thirty and showered. He didn’t have to go to the SC until ten thirty, which gave him several hours of free time. Perhaps this morning would be a good time to explore a little. Take another look at the harem before Levi made contact and wanted to plan a rescue.

He again read the card Levi had sent him. Despite the silly message, which featured a cartoon of a pile of body parts—”I’m falling apart without you”—Levi had written only, “Write me back. L,” and his address in the Midlands. Mason would have to pick up some cards at the G.I.N. after his shift. Not much was open at this hour.

He took a taxi to the Snowcrest and walked across the street. The harem took up several blocks in the center of the Highlands and was surrounded by a fence topped with coils of barbed wire. Were the fences meant to keep people out, or the women in? Mason walked the perimeter, taking note of the entrances and the locations of each yellow camera.

The drop-off zone in front was in public view, but the loading docks in back might be a possibility. They all let out onto Snowmass Road, but an alley that cut between the Axtel and the Whetstone
buildings connected the harem’s loading docks to Emmons Road. If the women were somehow able to get to the loading dock, they could easily be picked up. Still, a bright yellow camera looked down on the loading dock.

The cameras were a problem.

Mason walked toward City Hall, just people-watching at this point. The skin colors and piercings, the bizarre hairstyles, the clothing, the extremely well-endowed women … So much rested on personal appearance here. He passed a group of women who were sitting on a bench and blowing different color vapors into the air and giggling.

He stopped and turned back. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m conducting a little experiment. I wondered if you ladies would mind telling me what substance each of you are vaping.”

“Grass,” they said together.

“Thank you.” Mason continued along his path to City Hall, asking the same question of anyone using a vaporizer. The majority answered that they were vaping a combination of caffeine and alcohol or grass, which Mason figured out was marijuana. After being in Jack’s Peak, he’d recognize that smell anywhere. Mason thought several were vaping candy, until he asked some follow-up questions. It turned out that in most cases,
candy
just meant
flavor.
The other fluffy-sounding answers were much more daring substances: brown sugar was heroin, golden ice was methamphetamine, and white cocoa was cocaine.

Mason knew a bit about narcotics from the book
Addiction Medicine
his mother had on her shelf in the sick house. It had intrigued him because of the thick layer of dust covering it. He’d asked his mother why she kept an obsolete book that she never read. “Knowledge is never obsolete,” she had answered.

So Mason understood the damage that the habitual use of stimulants could impose upon many organs in the body that were already burdened by the thin plague. Surely, Ciddah would know that such substances were harmful to pregnancy.

But what if she didn’t?

Perhaps he could use this observation to his advantage. He had
visited the History Center once and been unable to find much medical knowledge at all. Perhaps a medic with a higher rank would be permitted to see more. He would simply have to take Ciddah with him.

He sighed. Time to see
Lawten
again.

“I have some theories I want to talk to you about. I think it might prevent miscarriages.”

Ciddah looked up from the CompuChart on her desk. “Don’t you knock anymore?”

Her angry tone deflated Mason’s confidence. “When I knock, you don’t let me in.”

She swept three little black plastic rectangles into her top drawer and slammed it shut. “Fine.” She shook out her hair, fluttered her eyelashes, and—finally—made eye contact. “What are your theories, O brilliant outsider man?”

Mason flushed at her insult but stuck to his plan. He needed her help. “Only if you come to the History Center and read the files with me. The task director said you could join me.”

Ciddah swelled with a deep breath, smiling wider than Mason had seen yet. “When did you ask him?”

“I just came from his office. I had to wait an hour to get in to see him.”

Ciddah snorted, and it turned into a silent laugh. “An hour is
amazing.
Some people wait months to see Lawten. Some never get in.”

“Oh. Well, he didn’t mind about you coming with me to the HC. Said it was fine. See?” He handed her the letter the task director’s receptionist had given him.

The paper trembled in Ciddah’s hand. “Why would he agree to this?”

“Because I can be very convincing.” Mason bared his cheesiest smile. “He really thinks I might be able to help. And I have a theory I wanted to—”

“Well, I don’t.” She crumpled the paper and threw it toward the trash. It bounced off the rim and onto the floor. “How could you possibly know more than Safe Lands medics? You were raised in the woods by rabbits or something.” She twisted a strand of her hair. “There’s no way …”

There she went, being cruel again. Something had upset her, but what? “That’s pretty narrow-minded for someone who calls
me
narrow-minded.”

She softened a little. “Fine. I can do it on Friday, but then you have to give me your theory. And it had better be amazing, Mason. Because if it’s not … I won’t waste more time explaining things to you.”

He grinned, electrified by the idea of seeing her outside the SC. “Thank you, Ciddah.”

“You can leave my office now,” she said without casting even a glance his way.

Not wanting to push his luck, Mason stepped out into the hallway and shut the door. He didn’t understand Ciddah’s rolling hills of emotions—he was just glad she’d agreed to come along. With her help, he should be able to find the medical data in the History Center.

“Here’s the information for the one in the waiting room,” Rimola said, jerking Mason out of his thoughts. She handed him a CompuChart and walked back out to her desk.

Mason read the patient’s name. “Shaylinn Zachary?”

“Mason?” Shaylinn’s voice came from the waiting room.

Mason walked out past Rimola’s desk and saw Shaylinn sitting in the waiting room. She looked different, older. They’d done something to her hair. Or maybe it was the clothes.

“Mason!” Shaylinn squealed and jumped up waving both hands.

“Does she know why she’s here?” Mason asked Rimola.

“Said she was here because of her summons.”

Mason’s stomach twisted into a knot. “Why was she summoned?” He found the answer on the chart the moment Rimola answered, “ETP.”

Embryo Transfer Procedure.
“No!” The task director general had promised.

“Something wrong?” Rimola asked.

“Everything.” Mason strode to the elevator and hit the button.

“Mason?” Shaylinn asked. “Are you okay?”

He squeezed his hands into fists and hit them against the sides of his legs. Where was the elevator? “I’ll be right back.” He opened the door to the stairwell and ran all the way to the tenth floor.

The task director general’s receptionist was talking to someone on her GlassTop. Mason walked right past her.

“Excuse me!” she yelled, then said to her GlassTop, “Can you hold, please?”

Mason pushed open the door to the task director’s office and went inside.

“Sir!” The receptionist chased him inside. “You can’t come in here without an appointment.”

“Clearly that is a false statement.”

The task director sat at his desk across from a man in an enforcer’s uniform.

“We had a deal,” Mason said, ignoring the enforcer and hoping he didn’t have any weapons nearby. “You said the Glenrock women wouldn’t be made into surrogates until I had a chance to look for a cure. You said a month.”

The task director’s flaking face became animated, fixing into a smile that revealed a row of shiny, small teeth further dwarfed by his massive nose. He looked at the enforcer. “My apologies for the interruption, Colonel Stimel.”

“Would you like me to remove him?” the colonel asked.

“This will only take a moment. Then, depending upon his reaction, perhaps I will require your assistance.” The task director fixed his eyes on Mason. “Mr. Elias, I allowed you to postpone
your
donations for a month while you searched for a cure. But I don’t need your donation to start procedures on the women. As we discussed, I have an uninfected donor in Omar Strong.”

Once again, Omar had sabotaged things. But was this arrangement really what they’d agreed on? Mason tried to recall the exact wording
of their conversation, certain he’d bought everyone some time. “You intend to make all the women carry Omar’s children?” Not that he could even call Shaylinn a woman. The girl was only fourteen.

“Omar’s donations will provide us with as many children as I deem prudent. But if you are concerned about the similar DNA, never fear. I’ve recently located another uninfected male donor.”

“From where?” Mason asked.

“Wyoming, where Kendall Collin came from. He has been tested and has already made donations. Now all the females from Glenrock can be scheduled for surrogacy without delay, and you are free to conduct your research. And you are also free to leave my office.”

Mason suddenly felt unable to move.

“Mr. Elias, that wasn’t a suggestion.”

S
haylinn sat on the exam table, wearing another thin white gown and swinging her legs. This room looked just like the first one she had awakened in. The door, the cupboard, the strange screen were all in the same place. Behind the exam table was a counter and sink with a mirror above it.

Shaylinn slid off the table and stood before the mirror. She studied the mirror clock, leaning close to see how it worked. No use. It was simply magical, like all glass in this place.