Chapter 10 Rosabelle
Rosabelle
Chapter 10
I sag in the steel chair, my head drooping sideways.
Familiar electric pulses flash behind my eyes, ache inside my teeth, spasm down my throat. I can’t seem to command my limbs. I can no longer feel my skin. For three hours I’ve resisted the impulse to gag against the metallic taste in my mouth. Acid roils in my empty stomach. Hunger and delirium blot out coherent thought.
I jerk upward, registering that my eyes were closed only when they unhinge open, tearing in the glare of overbright light. A high-pitched frequency of static fills my head, the murmur of voices faraway and disjointed.
“Brain capacity has dropped another percentage,” someone says. “She’s deteriorating now at an exponential rate. We’ll have to move on to yes or no questions.”
“Rosa,” says a voice, the familiar tenor grating. “Rosa, there are only a few minutes left. Then you get a break.”
I try to look at him, but my pupils are unnaturally dilated, details blearing in the harsh illumination of the exam room. Squinting painfully, I avert my eyes, realizing as I look down that he’s taken my hand, holding it tenderly between his blurry palms. Revulsion overpowers me.
I vomit.
The involuntary action is automatic, but my empty gut conjures little but humiliation.
Someone wipes my mouth.
“Rosa,” he says kindly. “Focus for me, okay? Just yes or no questions now. Do you ever consider doing harm to the people of Ark Island?”
My chest is still heaving.
“Negative,” says a faraway voice.
“Do you ever find yourself sympathizing with the leaders of The New Republic?”
I lift my head, color and light smearing where his face should be.
“Negative,” says a faraway voice.
“Do you ever doubt—”
The jarring alarm of a distress signal goes off, a voice straining above the clangor to say, “Brain capacity is at a critical low— Thirty seconds—”
“Rosa,” he says quickly, “Do you ever doubt the actions of The Reestablishment?”
“Affirmative,” says a faraway voice.
There’s a tense pause.
“Twenty seconds before permanent brain damage—”
“Rosa.”
My lips feel strange. Rubbery. The steady shriek of the alarm still echoes through the room.
“Fifteen seconds—”
“Rosa, do your doubts ever overwhelm your loyalty to The Reestablishment?”
My head lolls backward.
“Negative,” says the voice, shouting over the din.
I jerk forward without warning, gasping as hundreds of laser prongs retract from my body, releasing me from a simulated paralysis.
The alarm goes silent.
I slump in my seat, the back of the chair biting painfully into my neck, my senses slowly awakening. Cold seeps into my skin, bruises blossoming along my inner arms and elsewhere—everywhere. I can already feel them blooming, as they always do, along my torso, wrapping around my back.
My heart rate is still too slow; my lungs still compressed. I strain for breath, my limbs trembling. I can feel the pressure of his hands now, the familiar shape and weight. I attempt to pull away but his grip only tightens.
I look up, searching, as if through water.
My pupils contract, restoring my vision by degrees, the room slowly focusing. In the clearing blur my mind conjures his face from memory, portraits old and new layering like double exposures before resolving into the present moment. Up close he’s tenser; sharper; but his hair is the same as it ever was: pitch-black to match his eyes. I stare at him vacantly, even as gales of sensation wash over me: the clasp of childhood; the press of sunlight; a breathless dash through summer rain.
Sebastian smiles, but the effort is strained with genuine concern. I look away, my tired eyes falling upon the expanse of his upper body, the subject of my endless fascination. So many hours of my life I spent wondering how I might carve his heart out of his chest.
“Rosa,” he says softly, a finger slipping under my chin, lifting my face. He grazes my cheek with his thumb and I’m too tired to flinch. “Congratulations. Your authorizations have been approved for another month.”
I say nothing to this.
I always say nothing.
My monthly interrogations have always been managed by Lieutenant Soledad but executed by Lieutenant Rivers. Now that Soledad is dead, I suppose Sebastian— Lieutenant Rivers —will assume both roles. I never did get used to his promotions over the years; I never acclimated to calling him anything other than Sebastian. He and I grew up together. Our mothers were best friends.
For so many years, he was everything to me.
“I’m always grateful to be the one to do this for you,” he says, squeezing my hands. “When we’re married, I can take even better care of you. My personal reports will be far more exhaustive, which means I can petition for longer periods between interrogations.”
I swallow, the movement painful. My throat is desiccated. “Sebastian.”
“Yes?”
Again, I swallow. “May I have some water?”
He shakes his head, retreating, his eyes pinching in distress. “Your meal vouchers haven’t renewed yet. As soon as they come through, I’ll let you know.”
Once more, I swallow.
My rations diminish from week to week, leaving nearly nothing by the end of the month; this supply replenishes only after I’ve cleared my interrogations. The problem is that I receive hardly enough food even for one person. Clara isn’t counted in the distributions. The Reestablishment doesn’t believe in wasting resources on the weak.
“Why do you have to give her so much?” he asks. “What’s the use? When you know how it’s going to end?”
I pull away from him inelegantly, stumbling as I fight to stand. Sebastian reaches for me automatically, and in my haste to escape him I slam into a wall of steel cabinets, awakening a cascade of sound. The lingering disorientation is almost worse than the interrogation itself.
I don’t like to lose control.
“I need to see Clara,” I say, trying to steady myself. “I need to tell her I’m leaving. I’ve never left the island before and I’ll need to make plans for her. I need to wash the windows. I didn’t wash the windows today and if I don’t wash the windows every day soot stains the glass and she can’t see outside and she needs”—I stumble, the room tilts— “she needs to be able to look outside or she, she— I should speak with Zadie. One of her boys just lost his rations for the week, and if I give her some of my meal vouchers maybe she’ll help care for Clara while I’m gone—”
“Rosa—”
“I’d like to go home.” I cut him off, touching my fingers to my mouth in alarm. It occurs to me that I might be talking too much, and the realization scares me. “I’m tired,” I say, my hand falling away. “I’d like to go home now.”
Sebastian takes a breath. “All right,” he says. “You’re allowed a brief interlude before deployment tomorrow. I suppose you can take it now.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll fly you back, and we can run through tomorrow’s itinerary one more time. Remember,” he says, and I finally meet his eyes. “Klaus was only able to map out a program of action for twenty-four hours. By sunrise we’ll have just under three hours of script left. After that, the subject’s behavior is no longer certain. You’ll be on your own to manage him.”
I nod blindly. “I understand.”
“Give me a minute to grab some things before we go,” Sebastian says, flashing me a smile. “Now that we’re engaged, I can stay with you overnight.”
My head sharpens in an instant. “Overnight?”
His color heightens; he shakes his head. “I only mean that I can help take care of you.”
I turn away in response, staring into the middle distance as my heart pounds. In less than twenty-four hours my life has been so rearranged as to be unrecognizable. Soledad is dead: a cause for celebration. And yet I’ve been freed from one aggressor only to be shackled to another.
Never again can I hold Sebastian at bay, enduring him one month at a time. I can’t even reject his proposal without being accused of insanity—or worse, disloyalty. Who but a traitor would reject an opportunity to leave the pit? To marry into wealth and prestige? To never know hunger?
And then there’s Clara.
If you married Sebastian, things would be better. They’d lift the sanctions. You wouldn’t have to pretend we have food in our cupboards every morning.
I nearly startle when Sebastian reaches for my hand again, his eyes softening when he says, “You don’t have to give Zadie your meal vouchers, by the way. Clara will be fine. She knows you’ve been given a new assignment, she knows you’ll be off the island for a while, and she knows she’s being transferred in the morning.”
“What?” A cold wave crashes through my body, dulling my brain, slowing my pounding heart. “Transferred where?”
“I’m having her moved to my mother’s house. She’ll have a dedicated nurse and around-the-clock care while you’re gone.” He grins. “I’ve already gotten approval.”
A fossilized fear inside me slackens, threatens to buckle. It feels almost like relief, which seems like a trap. I study the soft lines of Sebastian’s face; the subtle stubble that tells me it’s getting late. His eyes are earnest.
“But you’ve never cared for Clara,” I say.
“Can you blame me?” Sebastian’s smile is self-deprecating, as if he’s said something charming. “The simple fact of her existence is killing you. She’s parasitic.”
The instinct to shut down is reflexive.
I feel it happening almost without my permission, senses powering off until my very body feels foreign to me. My hair feels like someone else’s hair; my skin feels like someone else’s skin. I hear myself say, from faraway, “Then why would you care now?”
Sebastian steps forward, and I’ve withdrawn so deep inside my mind I hardly feel it when he pulls me close, rests his forehead against mine.
“I’ve always loved you, Rosa. After everything that happened with your family”—he shakes his head—“I’ve only ever wanted to take care of you. Even if that means taking care of your sister.” His voice deepens, softens. “I feel like we’ve been waiting our whole lives for this. I still can’t believe it’s happening. After all these years, we’re really going to be together.”
Sebastian pulls a ring out of his pocket, and a carousel of memory sweeps through me, pushing me deeper into the abyss: the taste of blood I vomited while he looked on; the sound of his saccharine voice, echoing; You’ve disappointed us, Rosa, you’ve disappointed all of us ; the blinding pain in my right arm; the disjointed sounds of my own screams; You’ve disappointed us, Rosa ; the scrape of stone under my knees; the gasp of ragged breath; You’ve disappointed all of us ; the quiet violence of the gold band he slips onto my dead finger.
I study it, glimmering against my skin.
By inches, I lift my head to look at Sebastian. A glaze of blue light winks across his dark eyes, and I realize I don’t know how many people are watching.
Only criminals need privacy, Rosa.
“I know you can’t wear it while you’re gone,” he whispers. “And I know we’re not married yet. But I want you to take it with you, so you’ll remember what we’re fighting for.”
He smiles at me with genuine, unbridled affection, and I am stunned, not for the first time, by Sebastian’s ability to live in a dreamscape forged entirely of delusion.
He wasn’t always like this.
Over the years I watched him give his mind away in pieces, devoting himself to the cult of the collective opinion—offering up blind faith in exchange for fraternity. Sometimes, when I drift safely under the veil of near sleep, I find I can be generous with my thoughts. In the twilight of consciousness my heart expands enough to remember Sebastian as he once was, enough to pity the man he is now. The feeling never lasts long enough to provide comfort.
If I fail this mission, I’ll be out of options.
Sebastian will loom over me always, killing me softly for the rest of my life.