27. Ember
EMBER
I WILL NOT BOW – brEAKING BENJAMIN
“Don’t tug, Mum.”
“Hush, Ember. I have to get the knots out.”
I bite my cheek through another painful stroke of the brush. As rushed and forceful as the first. She tuts at my little whimper, pulling on the ends of my long, flaming-red hair.
“Sit still! I can’t do it if you keep wriggling.”
“You’re hurting me!”
“No I’m not.”
“Excuse me, Ms Lawson? Can I help?”
Relief comes in the form of his soft voice. The lonely boy with sad eyes and no home of his own to go back to. When he does, I get excited. I like playing in the garden with him.
“You always seem to have better luck than me.” Mum huffs in annoyance. “Here.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
My eyes are clamped shut to hide the tears. I don’t want Warner to see me crying again. He’s older than me and far cooler than any of my school friends. He’ll think that I’m a baby.
“Hey, little Em. Can I try?”
“Be gentle,” I whisper in embarrassment.
“Always am. Keep still for me.”
Soothing fingertips comb through my hair, nails barely scraping against my scalp. It doesn’t hurt. Without the plastic brush jerking on my knots, he can easily separate the strands with his fingers alone.
“You need to wake up, Em.”
“Hmm?” I startle.
The gentle touch grows more urgent. “I need you.”
“Who…? I don’t understand.”
“Wake up!”
A firm yank on my hair causes fire to race over my scalp, interrupting the dream world with the cold, harsh bite of reality. My eyes fling open, but I’m no longer sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor.
Mum isn’t here. Neither is a young, sad-looking Warner. My childhood home doesn’t have rusted bars or a low ceiling. It’s warm. Dusty. Full of framed photographs and dog-eared TV magazines.
Not blood.
Not a used bedpan.
Not two terrified blue eyes locked on mine.
I must still be in a dream. Or a nightmare. She features in them regularly enough. My Gracie doesn’t look like this—bony, blood-splattered and dirt-streaked. She’s smiling. Healthy. Living a happy life at home with her parents.
“Ember. Are you with me?”
Another hair tug. Crap, that hurts.
“Wake up, we don’t have much time.”
“G-Gracie?”
“In the flesh,” the girl drawls with a sad smile. “Snap out of it.”
“You’re not… Where? Where am I?”
“You slept through the car ride. They must’ve given you the strong stuff.”
Attempting to lick my lips, I can’t quite clear the acrid, chemical tang from my mouth. It’s the same furry grossness that covered my tongue each time we were shot with sedatives then hauled around like branded cattle.
Fuck!
This is very real.
The ghost hanging over me with a concerned frown isn’t some manifestation of my worst nightmares. She’s breathing. Blinking. Lips wrinkled in a hopeless kind of smile.
“Gracie,” I gasp. “You’re here.”
“Didn’t we already establish that?” She scrapes a fleck of dried blood from the back of her hand.
“Oh my God.”
My limbs feel leaden, but I still snag her elbow to haul her into a tight, awkward hug. Gracie has to bend down to hug me back, hiding her face in my loose braid. She trembles with each inhale.
God, she’s little more than skin and bones. I can practically feel the blood swimming in her veins, her skin is stretched so tight over her skeleton. Uncontrollable tears well up and spill over, causing me to hiccup.
“Hey.” She sniffles.
“Hi.”
“You came back.”
“That was the plan.” I push her back so I can wipe my face. “Although not the part about getting drugged and kidnapped too.”
With those choked words, it all comes flooding back. Nolan Madden’s house of horrors. Welded cages and a ghostly child behind bars. The audio recorder. Gunnar. Gunshots… And Axel.
“Oh, no.” The tears come faster. “Axel’s… he… Oh, no. Shot. He got shot, and now?—”
“Ember, breathe.” Gracie slides a hand beneath my neck. “He’s right there. You were brought in together.”
She guides me to a sitting position in the cramped cage, allowing me to see an identical setup a couple of metres to our left. Passed out in a matching metal prison, Axel lies sprawled in a lifeless mound.
“Ax!” I clutch the bars, longing to go to him.
“He’s been out of it for a while,” Gracie murmurs. “Since the medic dug that bullet out of him and cauterised the wound. It was bad. He screamed a lot before blacking out again.”
“Medic? What medic?”
“He works for Nolan.” She shrugs.
My mouth falls open. “Madden?”
“He likes to be called Nolan. Or master.”
Yep, I’m definitely going to puke.
The vomit rises in a fast-moving spew to erupt from my throat. Gracie pulls loose hair from my face while I twist to hurl into the corner of our shared cage, needing to purge the chemical remnants from inside me.
When I’ve made it to the dry heaving stage, I bat her away to sort myself out. I’m still dressed in my full assault gear, but some of my hair has escaped its braid, sticking to my face in sweaty clumps. I try not to think too hard about the crispy, dried blood soaked into my sleeve.
“Is he here too?” I fight to breathe normally.
“He was.” Gracie’s eyes drop to study the dirty floor.
“Where? Is Madden alone?”
“No… there was another.” Her voice trembles. “The man who bought you before is here to meet him.”
My stomach heaves again. “Gael.”
“I’ve seen him a lot. They’re friends, I think. Business partners. Sometimes he brings more girls over for Madden to purchase.”
“Fuck! Okay… I need to focus.”
Pinching my cheeks does little to alleviate my fogginess. I slap myself in the face then twist to look back at Axel. From here, I can see his chest rhythmically rising and falling.
His Kevlar is gone, and his undershirt shirt is shredded, revealing fresh white bandaging. Other than that, he looks unharmed. Just far too still and deathly for my liking.
“Was there someone else who looks like him?” I ask her.
“His twin.” She nods. “He was upset.”
“Upset? With Madden?”
“No, with his brother. Axel’s heart stopped, and it made him freak out.”
“It stopped?” I bite back a screech.
“The medic did CPR after he finished cauterising the wound. He wanted to do more, but the brother shoved him out then started screaming at Nolan about some kind of deal. They left a while ago, still arguing.”
I’m not sure if I have the mental capacity to fathom exactly why Gunnar shot his brother then proceeded to panic and save his life. That’s a question for a trained mental health professional. Even then I doubt it would be an easy feat.
Focusing instead on surveying our surroundings, it reveals a grim outlook. We’re not being held in the factory that Sabre infiltrated. Gunnar must’ve removed us somehow. This building looks barer, a concrete husk with no identifiable features.
Other than our two cages, there’s a variety of wooden crates stacked around us. All stamped with various destinations. No prizes for guessing the legality of the contents. We’ve been bagged and tagged with the rest of Madden’s exports.
“How long was I out?”
“I don’t know.” Gracie winces while cracking her neck. “A few hours?”
“Shit. You arrived with us?”
“They tossed you both into the van with me. I couldn’t believe it when I saw your face. He’s thrown other girls in with me before during transport, but I never thought I’d see you here.”
“Transport where?”
“Parties,” she says vaguely.
Her tone is matter of fact. A little too flat and nonplussed. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but this older, hardened version of Gracie isn’t it. She’s far from the hysterical girl I was torn from.
“We’ve been looking for you ever since I got home.” I try to clear my aching throat. “Your parents too. Nobody ever forgot about you.”
“My parents?” Her blue eyes fill with tears.
“Yeah, I met them not too long ago. You look a lot like your dad.”
The moisture swells then flows over, streaking down her cheeks to leave clean lines in the dirt. I cup her jaw and swipe the tears aside with my thumb.
“I promised to get you home, Gracie. I’m going to get us out of here.”
“Home,” she dares to whisper. “No more parties?”
“No, honey. No more parties.”
Biting her chapped bottom lip, she pulls away from me but holds back a full breakdown. I can see it battling to escape.
“I think they’re just holding us here.” She gulps down a lungful of air and shakes herself, burying her hysteria. “I… I heard them talking about some kind of police in the area. Nolan wants to leave the country.”
“That’ll be our team.”
“What team?” Gracie tilts her head in confusion.
“I work for a private security company now. We’re investigating the trafficking ring.”
It takes a second for her to digest that.
“Ember… they said they’re going to kill them.”
“Let them try.” I laugh hollowly.
We fall into silence, broken only by the sound of yelling in the distance. I focus on stretching out my limbs, ankles rotating and knees flexing, attempting to work blood back into my body. The cage is too low for me to stand, but I can warm my muscles up.
Every time I glance over at Axel, terror attempts to inch into my mind. His chest is still pumping, but he has yet to rouse. I have to look every few seconds just to remind myself that he isn’t dead.
“Your hair’s red.” Gracie squints at me across the cage. “Since when?”
“It always was. It was dyed when we met.”
She chuckles forlornly. “Has it been that long?”
“I was held for six years.” I watch her reaction for signs of a meltdown. “The Anaconda Team found me in Mexico about six months ago.”
Her expression cycles through several different emotions, landing on a look of numb shock. “That would make me nearly twenty-three now.”
“I guess so.”
Gracie drops her gaze to stare at the dirty concrete. “Years of my life… Gone.”
“I’m sorry.” My apology sounds weak, irrelevant.
Curling her knees up to her chest, she covers the torn, white sundress that barely covers her modesty. Like the rest of her, it’s bloodstained and streaked with all manner of filth. I can still make out the twisted skin that warps her inner elbow.
777.
A brand matching my own.
Three numbers dooming us both.