10. Chapter 5
Sitting alone in a room is my worst nightmare. As I watch the girls, I’m reminded of that first day at the school when Fallon left me alone in the cold room.
I had wondered when I heard the lock sliding into place why the doctors and nurses, all the people scurrying about, had made me wake up if they were just going to send me to another dark room. Why put tubes in my arms they said were medicine, stuck me with needles they said would make me strong again, then take me to a warm place with other girls and boys when they had planned all along to give me to a man who locked me up again. Why feed me, I had thought when the first pangs of hunger started, when I was just going to go back to sleep with a hungry belly and tears on my cheeks?
When Father finally opened the door, I remember him staring at my arms with a strange expression on his face. He’d pointed to the marks and asked, “Why did you do that?”
I had looked down at the bloody streaks, the deep gouges from my nails raking over my flesh and said, “So I wouldn’t go to sleep.”
It wasn’t until after Father retrieved me I learned I was at a school and expected to sit for my lessons with who I was told were my brothers. I’d never had a brother, but I liked that I suddenly had fifteen. I’d never been to school either, but somehow knew what it was. A room where boys and girls sat and were given crayons and papers and learned to read and write. Again, I wasn’t sure where this knowledge came from, only that I had it, so it must have been something I learned in those shadowy years before I was brought to the school. Before the darkness.
After Fallon cleaned me up, giving me a cold bath in a metal tub, scrubbing my nails and fingers clean with white bar soap and a coarse brush, he put creams and bandages on my arms and dressed me in gray pants and a dark gray button-down shirt with a pressed collar, then gave me a plate of food.
My new father watched me take every bite, reminding me to eat slowly, using words I didn’t understand now and then. But it didn’t matter. I was so hungry, so glad to be out of that room before I fell back asleep, that I did everything he asked. Then when I had cleared the plate, he said, using the same words as me, “My sons are smart. But we all must learn to communicate. Every day, you will be instructed and every day I expect progress.”
Strange how the mind remembers things. I can’t remember my mother’s face, even to this day, but I can picture sitting in the large open cafeteria, with rusted metal tables and chairs, walls with peeling mossy-green paint. How Fallon had seemed so large and strong. Handsome, with his black hair and pale eyes and the pressed three-piece suit. At five years old, I didn’t know what a three-piece suit was, nor did I understand that the school was located in a prison until I was much older.
My favorite class was language. Besides my strict education with my brothers in those stark classrooms, and the weapons lessons from Fallon later on, all my education came from the school’s staff and the old black and white movies Cook used to watch in the kitchen. All my memories from younger years are corrupted by my mind now and the things I’ve learned in life. A five-year-old wouldn’t know about a three-piece suit, but now every time I think of back then, or another memory surfaces, my older mind replaces the blank information with everything I know now.
Viper once told me it was the same with him. That he seemed to just know some things without knowing how he knew. He was young like me when he was brought to the school and said he remembered the day I joined in on our language lessons vividly. Mostly though, he told me he remembers so clearly because I looked similar to Reaper, tanned skin and dark hair, so different from him and our other brothers. And that I that had yet to get a name. I was just brother until my skills were discovered.
It wasn’t until I saw Breaker I understood what he meant.
A loud bang brings my attention back to the present. I lean in, focusing on the screen showing Delilah’s room, but all I can see is her back. We placed several cameras high in the crown molding so we can switch angles if need be. Viper wanted one in the bathrooms, but thankfully Reaper argued that there was nothing in there that they could use to harm themselves or us other than the razors we provided for them to shave their legs.
Shifting, I roll the chair closer to the row of monitors and punch the keys on the keyboard to switch cameras. Delilah’s angry scowl comes into view as she stares at the drawer at her feet, undergarments scattered across the floor.
Did she pull it from the armoire on purpose?
The question barely has time to form in my head when she reaches into the armoire and pulls out another. Thick socks spill onto the wood floor and she drops the drawer with a thud next to the other one. She kicks the bundles of socks around like she’s looking for something, then after a minute, grabs several hangers holding her dresses and tosses them to the floor. Then does it again.
“What is she doing?” Breaker asks from behind me.
I glance at my watch. He’s not due to relieve me from my watch for another hour, but like the rest of us, he can’t seem to stay away. Reaper is the worst one. Constantly in here, watching them obsessively. Breaker seems to focus more on Cora, but right now, his entire attention is on Delilah.
“I’m not sure,” I tell him as he sits next to me and crosses his arms. We’ve been wearing our uniforms, and always have our masks nearby just in case, but I have to say I miss seeing his skin and the bold tribal tattoos on his arms. My eyes raise to find him staring at me instead of the camera. Averting my gaze, I say, “She looks like she’s searching for something.”
“Probably a weapon,” Viper says as he walks into the room and takes the chair on my other side.
I resist rolling my eyes. We are supposed to be taking shifts watching them, but it seems sleep and taking any time away is impossible. Then again, these two have been inseparable since Breaker’s first day in the classroom.
We all saw Breaker when he first arrived, but didn’t see him again for several years after Father brought him out of the cold room. I had always wondered what happened to the skinny toddler with a fat belly and sunken cheeks. He looked nothing like my other brothers, with deep skin and black curls that shot out from his head in tight coils. I remember when our otets brought him to class shortly after Breaker turned five, he’d shaved his curls, which made me sad. He was a pretty little boy, and I figured maybe that’s why Father shaved him bald. So no one would mistake him for a girl.
Viper took to him immediately. Breaker was smarter than most of us and already spoke some English, but not like Viper, whose coarse accent made the words impossible to understand. I struggled the most with English, so they would sit with me after lights out and teach me how to pronounce words. Of course, I learned all the dirty words first.
When it came time for us to learn French, Breaker knew some of that one too, so he helped us all. It wasn’t until years later, when we started taking Spanish, that I could help them.
By then, we had eliminated any traces of our accents, except for mine, which only surfaced when I got angry and raised my voice. But that only happened a few times and when it did, Teacher would rap my knuckles with the thick wooden ruler like the old sour-faced nun at the large church in the village did when we didn’t pay attention at Sunday school. I had bruises on my hands for years, but I learned eventually to articulate and enunciate each word carefully. We all did.
Fallon once said when I asked him the purpose of learning so many languages and making sure we had no accents, was because his future soldiers needed to blend in and not be identifiable. I didn’t understand then. But I do now.
“God, she’s so fucking beautiful,” Viper says from next to me. At first, I assume he’s referring to Cora, but his gaze is fixed on Delilah.
We all watch as she tears drawers from the little vanity and feels under the top, searching for something. Probably clues as to where she is. Good luck. We stripped any trace of who we are well before we brought them here. Fallon trained us well. She’ll find nothing unless we want her to.
“I’d love to wrap my fingers in that soft black hair and bend her over the bed,” Breaker says.
Wouldn’t we all? When we received the order, we knew our objective. Take her. Train her. Then we went off the rails.
Now? We willingly went along with Reaper’s orders to use them that night, and it’s got us all fucked up. And having Cora here has rattled us even more. Reaper may have made the call to bring Cora into this, but we all are keeping her here.
Why he decided to take Cora too, I assumed at first, was because she was important to Rune like Delilah, but now I’m not so sure. Reaper has a way of knowing things. Like he can see the result before anyone else. Maybe he knew, deep down, we wanted Cora too. Or maybe he saw something in her that needed to be plucked free.
My eyes flicker over to Cora’s camera as my brothers discuss what they’d like to do to the girls. I hold up my hand and they instantly stop talking.
“What’s she doing?” Viper asks scooting his chair closer.
Cora’s on her knees, her hands over her ears like she’s trying to block out sound, but the room is deathly quiet.
Breaker leans over me and taps the keys to change the camera. From this angle, we can see her profile. Her eyes are squeezed shut, but her mouth is open. Then I hear it.
It starts out low, like a quiet rumble, then grows louder and louder until it’s a high-pitched scream. She stops long enough to suck in a breath and the next scream is even louder, more desperate, broken by a sob. She does it again and again and Breaker’s standing up, shoving his chair back as Viper’s pushing me out of the way to get to the door.
Behind me, Reaper says, “She has demons darker than ours.”