Chapter 6 Rosabelle
Rosabelle
Chapter 6
In my dreams, everything is soft.
The harsh edges of the world are blunted, my face cradled by clouds. My body seems suspended in water, my hair freed from its utilitarian knot, silky lengths cascading down my back. I am a body still becoming, untouched by tragedy. In my dreams I am safe; I have a strong hand to hold; a door to lock against the dark; a trusted ear into which I whisper my fears. In my dreams I am patient and kind; I have room in my heart for more pain than my own. I am not afraid to smile at strangers. I have never witnessed death. In my dreams sunlight glazes my skin; gentle wind caresses my limbs; Clara’s laughter makes me smile.
She is running.
In my dreams, she’s always running.
You’re so pretty with your hair like that, Rosa , she says. Would you like to play a game with me?
I inhale sharply as my eyes fly open.
The chorus of my own harsh breaths and pounding heartbeats surge with a disagreement of unintelligible, distant sound. I lay frozen a moment, trembling with cold, my eyes communicating horrors to my mind.
My first thought is that I’ve been buried alive.
I lift a hand to the smooth, eggshell interior of my tomb, and only after my heart nearly gives out do I recognize the first flaw in my theory: this narrow, enclosed space is unnaturally illuminated. Tentatively, I rap my knuckles against the cool stone, and the sound echoes. A second flaw: I don’t appear to be underground.
I strain my ears for more—more anomalous sound, more clues as to my location—and make out only a distorted jangle of metal and the intermittent hum of machinery. Looking down at myself as best I can, I run a blind hand down my body.
It occurs to me then that I feel no pain.
I’m wearing a hospital gown. My ribs appear to be intact. A deluge of memory assaults me: the inmate, the massacre, my imminent death. Clara.
The smiling rebel, who disappeared.
At this reminder of my disastrous failure, I stiffen with dread. If I’m still alive after failing to kill a spy from the mainland, it’s because The Reestablishment has chosen a different avenue of punishment. They don’t believe in acts of mercy.
Voices swell suddenly, footsteps growing louder. I steel myself in anticipation of something—anything—
Several clicks and a sound, like a gasp of air, and my tomb unseals around me without warning. The hulking top lifts upward as fluorescent light blazes through the open sides. I blink slowly against the glare, realizing I’m parched. I swallow against the sandpaper of my throat, then study the surrealist landscape of my nightmare. The stone lid hovers just above me; to my right I glimpse a cross section of torsos. Lab coats swarm and scatter; the steady, familiar blue light of surveillance strobes into my vault.
Even here, now, I am being watched.
I school my features, trying not to betray emotion as I scan what’s visible of my location. There appear to be five people in lab coats; two are turned away from me, and one is exiting the room. I can’t decipher the various clicking and humming of machines. I don’t know what they’ve done with my clothes. I have no idea what torture they have planned.
“Commence transfer,” someone says.
Fear seizes my limbs, renewed terror building as a disembodied voice begins to count down from twenty.
“Wait— Sir—”
“What?” a man barks.
“Based on her vitals, she won’t last more than six minutes in the cradle—”
“Fourteen, thirteen—”
“—and we have her scheduled for ten.”
“So?”
“Nine, eight—”
“Ten minutes and there’s a chance her lungs will never recover—”
“I didn’t make the call.”
“But—”
“Klaus says ten minutes.”
Klaus.
“Four, three—”
“Note that she’ll need to be dressed and rehydrated within the hour.”
“What if—”
“Two—”
I never have the chance to scream.
There’s a weightless moment, a sudden plummet in my stomach, and the bottom of my tomb unhinges, releasing me. Ice-cold water closes over my head, filling my gasping mouth, surging up my nose. A metallic tang coats my tongue and sears my throat, indicating there’s more to this liquid than water. I thrash wildly, my eyes flying open as a terrible cry builds in my lungs, panic storming the walls of my chest. It’s pitch-black. I’m underwater and blind, choking—
Close your eyes, Rosabelle.
The deep, treacherous voice, like something forged from the sea, awakens in my head. A painful chill courses down my spine.
We’ve all heard stories about Klaus.
Klaus is the reason Ark Island exists as it does. Klaus is the reason The Reestablishment will reign again. He’s the pinnacle of chemical intelligence; an omnipotent, synthetic brain built upon decades of work and research—built atop the charred remains of Operation Synthesis—but only a select few have ever heard his voice. Klaus is the fodder of Ark legend, so cloaked in secrecy I’d begun to wonder whether the program was even real—
There is no doubt that I am real.
I stiffen. My lowered heart rate picks up, my eyes widening in fear. My hair has come loose of its knot, wet lengths lapping my face as I turn sluggishly in the murk. Nausea strikes, my gut clenching against nothing. I blink, pupils dilating, desperately searching the darkness for signs of life. Unfathomable depths meet me in all directions, the infinite gloom broken occasionally by fizzing flashes. I move toward one light source but something solid grazes my leg and I scream, shadow filling my mouth as a sudden flare, like a tongue of fire, illuminates the water.
All at once: clarity.
I’m in an undersea forest of light, spindly branches of bioluminescence fracturing the water like neon circuitry, each vein pulsing as if in possession of a heartbeat. Dozens of slick, grayish bodies appear suspended in the immeasurable expanse around me, their naked forms electrifying at random. Threads of light course across their moldering skin, hollow eyes glinting. They’re obviously long dead, minds and organs sacrificed at the altar of artificial learning.
This must be the cradle.
The rumors are that Klaus must be fed; that his chemical soul was born of human starter; that the cradle is skimmed only when the drained corpses rise, like scum, to the surface. I don’t know how many of the rumors I’ve heard about Klaus are true. I only know that they’re all fodder for nightmares.
I told you to close your eyes.
This time when I hear his voice, I don’t hesitate to obey. Curiosity alone has kept me conscious, but I’m beginning to lose the fight for oxygen, and it’s a relief to surrender.
Flashes of color brighten and dim behind my closed eyelids, the accompanying sensation like fingers prying at my skull. I wrap my arms around myself as a slithering disquiet reaches up through my ribs, wrenching my bones. My head heats. Electric shocks radiate inside me. Images bleed across my vision, scenes from my life examined impatiently and out of order—
a shiver of cold as my bare feet hit the floor this morning;
Clara, age four, tied to my back as we hike through the forest;
wide-eyed love as I watch my father button himself into his uniform;
the heft of a weapon in my small, doughy hand;
thirst; sweat slick down my back in the beating sun;
Nothing , my father shouting. Nothing is wrong—this is grown-up talk, Rosa, go to your room—
pain, explosive, as I snap my femur during a training exercise;
the damp, inky darkness of predawn;
the twist of my gut the first time Sebastian kisses me;
I’m having dreams about Mama again , says Clara one morning, she says she’s looking for her glasses; she wants to know if you’ve seen them—
awe, the first time I see a flower;
anger;
anger;
shredded petals as I rip blossoms violently from their stems;
the deafening sound of the gun going off;
Clara losing her first tooth, smiling as she says, Look, Rosa, I’m dying ;
my mother, fuming that I’ve knocked on my father’s office door;
the lurid gloss of her pink dress;
a wild look out the window;
How many times do I have to tell you that your papa is an important man? He is chief commander and regent of Sector 52, don’t you understand? He has serious responsibilities, and if you want his attention you’ll have to prove yourself worthy—
It’s as if my brain is being teased apart, as if Klaus is sifting through all of me, messily unearthing memory from flesh. Sensations buzz through me: exhaustion and isolation from the years I spent training; bright joy at the sound of Clara’s laughter; vomit the first time I killed someone; the blinding gasp of hunger; the betrayal of my father’s betrayal; anger reducing me to ash; shame; shame; self-loathing; fury —
My eyes roll back in my head as fresh agony shatters through my right arm, images flooding my mind with abandon now: steel clamps; neon wires; the stutters of baffled scientists; the rage of Soledad; the revulsion in Sebastian’s eyes;
No, don’t fix it;
Let the pain remind her what a disappointment she is;
You’ve disappointed us, Rosa;
You’ve disappointed all of us—
They’d said I wouldn’t last more than six minutes in the cradle. I wish my lungs would fail. I wish I knew how to escape this hell. I’m sure I’ve been here for an eternity—
Strange , says Klaus, turning inside my skin. Very strange.
I’m growing dizzy with fatigue. My body seems to be ballooning, stretching painfully to accommodate this mental invasion. Exhaustion drags me deeper and deeper into the dark. I drift against a cold cadaver, the dead fingers of a dead body grazing my cheek, but I lack the energy even to flinch.
I realize, with some relief, that I must finally be dying. Again.
No, you will not die today.
My eyes flicker open.
But it’s not clear, Rosabelle Wolff, whether you deserve to live.