Chapter 24 Rosabelle
Rosabelle
Electricity hums through my body, the low-level current vibrating through my wrists, my ribs, up my throat, inside my teeth.
The effect offers me a strange comfort, the white noise a stabilizing anchor for my mind.
There’s no reprieve, however, for my eyes.
I blink and hold; release.
Blink and hold.
Release.
My eyesight still hasn’t fully recovered. My pupils continue to dilate and constrict, trying to focus. The muscles are beginning
to ache. The constant flare and retraction of light is making my head pound.
I walk in measured strides up to the sliding door in the empty living room, my hands still forcibly restrained behind my back.
Absently, I touch the pads of my thumb and forefinger together, making soft circles.
Die, I tell myself softly. Die.
A muted blade of hunger cuts through me and I hold still, silently breathing out with the pain as it passes. It smells stale
in here, like paint and dust; the air is dense and depressing. My vision blurs and focuses; blurs and focuses. Footsteps echo
in the vacant space, staccato against the wood floors.
A soft hush, then thud, as she comes to a stop.
“That’s the yard,” she says.
Cold sunlight illuminates a stretch of empty hardscape, ostensibly a patio, beside which sits a rectangle of dirt, untended
and riddled with weeds. There’s a low, wooden fence containing this sad sight, a dilapidated gate leading to a vast, common
green space rolling into the distance beyond, where the sun is painted off-center in the sky. A withered plant sits in a cracked,
plastic container near my feet. It’s been knocked sideways onto the hardened soil, rotting quietly. What’s left of the leaves
makes me think it was once a tomato vine.
My eyes focus; unfocus. Dilate and constrict.
I blink and hold. Release.
Blink and hold.
“And this one, Rosa?” Clara’s grubby fingers pinch a needlelike leaf, holding it up.
I reach forward to wipe her nose, but she jerks out of reach.
I’ve started taking Clara on hikes through the forest, strapping her to my back with a few twists of a bedsheet, releasing
her into the wild as soon as we find a stream. The blue glow of her eyes assures we’re always being watched, which means we
can never eat or drink anything we find or else suffer severe punishment. But Clara loves the burble of the water. It’s the
only cure I’ve found for distracting her from hunger for minutes at a time.
“This one, Rosa,” she says again, batting me on the chin with the leaf.
“That’s from a hemlock tree,” I tell her.
She tries to repeat the word, shaping her mouth around the sound. “Hammock.”
“Hemlock,” I say.
“Hemmock.”
“That’s right.”
Clara searches around herself, grabbing another: “This one?”
“Maple,” I say.
“Mable.”
“Perfect.”
She fishes around in the dirt and finds a reddish-blue berry, her eyes widening with astonishment as she rolls it between
her fingers. She presents it to me in an open hand, as if it were a jewel. “This?”
“That’s—” I stiffen. “That’s a huckleberry.”
She frowns at me. “It’s poison, Rosa?”
I stare at her small hand. “No.”
She gasps happily, then shoves the berry in her mouth. Her eyes flash a brighter blue before a red sniper dot appears on her
forehead. I grab her face and scoop out the berry before she can eat it, then chuck the berry into the heart of the forest.
I turn back to face her, my heart pounding.
Clara stares at me, stunned.
Then bursts into tears.
“I’m sorry,” I say breathlessly. “I’m so sorry—”
My right hand begins to tremble and I press it flat into the dirt. “I’m sorry,” I say again. I look around frantically, terrified
they’ll still try to punish her. Sometimes they hurt her remotely—they can activate pain from within the mind.
I feel myself begin to panic, my eyes threatening heat, and I kill the feeling, kill myself, disappear. I don’t want Clara
to witness my fear. More than that, I know they’re watching me through her eyes.
I don’t want them to see my weaknesses.
“I know you want to eat it,” I say to her, steadying my voice. “I know you’re hungry. I’ll bring you bread tomorrow, okay? How does that sound?”
Clara goes still, sniffing as her tears retreat. “Really?”
“Yes,” I whisper, heart still pounding as I stare into the middle distance. I wonder what they’ll make me do for a piece of
bread.
“Thank you, Rosa,” she says, wiping her eyes with a dirty fist.
Die, I tell myself. Die.
I force my body to calm, my thoughts to quiet. “Look at this one,” I say to her, picking up a frond with my trembling hand.
“Do you remember what this one is called?
She sniffs again, then points. “Fun.”
“Yes,” I say. “Fern.”
“Rosa?”
“Yes?”
“Where is Mama’s glasses?”
I look up at her. “Mama’s glasses?”
Clara nods, turning away as she runs her hands along the forest floor. “She was looking for them last night.”
I sit back. “What do you mean?”
“In my dreams,” she says, lifting her head to frown at me, as if this should be obvious. “She never knows where anything is,
but she’s a grown-up, just like you.”
“Like me?”
“Yes.”
“But, Clara,” I say softly. “I’m only eleven.”
A hand grasps my arm and I nearly startle. “Hey, did you hear me?”
I turn slowly to face the woman, the action carefully dislodging her hand.
My first impression of her was simple: she’s beautiful.
Tall and willowy, with warm olive skin and yards of dark, glossy hair that looks nearly black.
She has sharp, light brown eyes. A tiny, almost missable diamond stud pierced under her bottom lip.
She wears a loose shawl around her neck and a rifle strapped across her chest.
Of course, I recognized her immediately.
Nazeera Ibrahim: only daughter of the supreme commander of Asia. Sister to a brother: Haider Ibrahim.
Both siblings were traitors to The Reestablishment.
It occurs to me that almost every child of a supreme commander betrayed or murdered their own parents. This alarming fact
is certainly worth greater reflection.
“Your room is over there,” she says, nodding beyond my shoulder.
I don’t turn to look.
My eyes focus; unfocus.
A simple wooden folding chair rests against the far wall. There’s a spade in the garden. An exposed light bulb hangs from
the middle of the ceiling. A loose grate is poorly affixed to the floorboards. A full-length mirror leans in the hallway.
A screwdriver sits on the windowsill. On the kitchen counter there are two glass cups, a pair of scissors, and a punctured
plastic sleeve with a disposable fork and knife inside; no spoon. The kitchen offers greater yield, but I’m about two yards
away from the screwdriver.
“I thought you’d like to see it,” she says, tilting her head at me. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
I don’t move.
I blink and hold; release.
Blink and hold.
Release.
I’ve been in a state of suspended disorientation since I was discharged from the hospital. There’s so much I don’t understand
about what’s happening.
I have no idea what I’m doing here.
I don’t know why I’m being offered a room in a house; if I were back on the Ark I’d be impaled to a ceiling right now, held
in place by blades of directed energy. Sebastian would be overseeing my torture, smiling meekly up at me while someone burned
pinprick holes into my organs—never enough to kill me right away, but enough to remind me, as I watched my blood drip onto
the ground below, that I am not my own master.
That I cannot save my sister.
Once again, I can’t decide whether the rebels are stupid or surprisingly conniving. These electric manacles fry and snap apart
with the right power surge, but the trouble isn’t finding a way to introduce the right current, it’s surviving the subsequent
voltage spike.
I’m still a little too weak to risk it.
For now, I’m waiting to understand whether this is some new trap, just as the rehab facility was a glorified prison. It’s
worse for not knowing what they’re thinking; the dread is worse. The pretense of freedom is always so much worse.
There are no cameras, anywhere.
The build of the house is old enough that any renovations or modifications to include subtle spyware would’ve presented an
inconsistency. As far as I can tell, this place is just as unsecured as the rehab facility; perhaps less so.
This oversight strikes me as impossible.
Then again, I don’t know what I might find in that bedroom. Perhaps someone is waiting for me in there; perhaps I’ll be tortured
where I’m expected to rest. In the early years, when I was still learning how to protect my mind, my true feelings about The
Reestablishment would sometimes break loose during interrogations. After I’d been punished, and after Sebastian had unhooked
me from the wall, Soledad often forced me to sleep in a shallow pool of my own blood.
Soledad is dead, I remember with a start.
James killed him.
A rush of feeling moves through me at the thought of James, my heart threatening to push beyond the veil of death. I crush
it back down violently, killing my pulse.
Too much.
I unclench, allowing myself to come back to life a little. The beat is faint at first, then stronger.
“Hi? Hello?” Nazeera steps directly in front of me, ducking her head to meet my eyes. “Can you hear me?”
I meet her gaze slowly.
“Your room is over there,” she says again, gesturing once more to something out of sight. She stares at me like I might be an idiot, then finally walks away, but not before shooting me an uncomfortable smile. She begins to monologue as she strides ahead, turning her back on me.
I’m not planning on killing her, but if I were, this seems like a dangerous mistake.
I am now alone with the screwdriver.