Chapter 13 #2
A couple of gray uniforms scanned the room, weapons strewn over their shoulders.
I watched them for a moment, mesmerized.
They had weapons, which Totten had provided, but they didn’t use them.
Every single person here felt as if they had something to lose, which was enough to retain general order.
Only Sanitation had a reason to revolt, but Totten made sure this world never came into contact with Sanitation’s.
I left the line and walked over to the uniforms. “Excuse me, I need your help with something.”
I waited for one of them to grab me, drag me back to the line, or toss me out the door. Instead, they barely held eye contact, which meant they knew exactly who I was.
“Please wait over there.” The taller guard gestured to a corner. “Someone will be with you momentarily.”
“It’s about Mr. Harding,” I insisted. “I’m his—”
“We know who you are.”
“And you can’t help me?”
“We’re barely allowed to speak to you. So please, Miss Tapley, if you will…”
He gestured again.
Amused, I retreated to the isolated corner.
The air smelled of roasting meats, savory seasonings, and baked goods. People laughed and ate, and I wondered how much of it was real. Were people genuinely apathetic, or were they merely getting by? Did they enjoy their new lives, or was this their way of coping to avoid going out of their minds?
On the outside, I appeared just as compliant.
I showed no inkling of “fight the system,” so I supposed it looked like I abided by it.
But I’d come from a line of people who’d initially rebelled by moving in silence, building up numbers and resilience until it was time to be loud.
However, a small voice spoke up alongside my desire to fight, and it was neither quiet nor loud, but it carried a weight that I was starting to feel in my neck and shoulders.
“You’re important too, Larke,” it said. “This time, maybe your fight is to save what’s left of you.”
I shook my head, sending it into the aether.
“I can’t forget,” a feminine voice whispered from somewhere nearby. “He lives in 720.”
I zeroed in on the conversation. Every whisper was a potential flag for either a new resistance member or the need to change plans.
“Conference room,” another voice, this one masculine, said.
“How much?”
“A couple of bites of the pie.”
“Is it…fast?”
“No. Slow, painful.”
“And if they find out?”
“Then, I love you.”
“Please, Dad…”
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
The conversation ended.
I peered around the corner just as a server set a plate on a cart, turned it counterclockwise, and headed for the elevators.
A middle-aged-looking man wearing a green uniform watched the server, a young girl, as she left the cafeteria.
Then, he raised his chin, did an about-face, and walked off.
As he passed me, I noticed a shine covering the whites of his eyes.
“Excuse me, Larke Tapley?”
I looked up into the eyes of a guard with medium-brown skin and hair that reminded me of a baby lamb.
“Yes, that’s me,” I said.
“Captain Harding has added to your funds.”
“Thank y—”
Poison.
It was poison.
And that food was going to the conference room.
The conference room wasn’t on the seventh floor, but Class Ones lived on the seventh floor.
They also happened to be having a meeting today.
I didn’t pick up on it before, but one of the units I’d cleaned with Tamra the same day I ran into Dez was 720.
Unit 720 had the same map on the wall as Dez’s.
They were going to poison Dez.
My weirdo.
My love.
“Why’d your ‘Captain Harding’ wait so long to add to my funds?” I asked the guard with the soft curls. “Harding is a joke. He thinks he owns me because he has a little bit of fake money?”
The guard’s jaw twitched. “Miss Tapley—”
“Do you have a radio?” I scanned his equipment. “Call him, or are you not allowed? He couldn’t even come down here himself, and then he’s forbidden most of you from speaking to me. What does he think I’ll tell you? What’s he trying to hide?”
The guard raised his radio to his mouth, eyes on me. “Captain Harding, this is Wade Marshall, over.”
Dez’s voice came through, and I nearly ran ahead, up to the eighth floor. “Go for Harding.”
“Sir, I have Miss Tapley with me in the Woodhaven mess hall. She needs to speak with you. It’s an urgent matter.”
“Marshall, go to 9 and give the radio to Miss Tapley.”
Marshall switched channels.
“Good afternoon,” Dez greeted. “I hear you have something you need to say to me, Counselor?”
He’d called me Counselor.
Only the Dez clones called me Counselor.
“Yes, I do,” I hissed. “I don’t want your blood money.”
“You will take it, and you will eat.”
“I’d rather starve.”
“You’re no use to me dead, and you’ve proven very useful for my needs when you’re alive and warm. Now, I won’t repeat myself.”
Anything else I said would be dripping with honeyed lust, so I handed over the radio.
“Marshall?” Dez called.
Marshall snapped his hand toward his mouth so fast, the device nearly busted his lip. “Sir? Yes, sir?”
“Please escort Miss Tapley to the conference room.”
“Yes, sir—”
“Oh, are we going to eat together or something?” I cut in. “Don’t take a bite without me, asshole. I’d hate to miss an opportunity to see you choke.”
Considering how we’d left each other this morning—him hard and me wet—I hoped he picked up on the coded message between my jibes.
I marched toward the elevators.
Marshall joined me in the windowless chamber, pressed the number eight, and we didn’t say a word to one another as the doors closed. I was sure, outside of relaying my message to Dez, he was probably “barely allowed” to speak to me, either.
Once the doors opened, I stepped out and faced Marshall, doing my best not to let worry overshadow my faux rage. In reality, I wanted to sprint to the conference room, but I’d never worked on this floor.
“Which way?”
“Miss Tapley, Captain Harding is an Elite,” he appeared to be warning, gesturing for me to walk alongside him. “He was a SEAL. I wouldn’t fuck with him. He could kill you with his bare hands.”
“Can’t most men?” I asked.
He sighed. “Look, I know things aren’t ideal here, but they could be worse.
You could be out there with those…things.
I’ve been on two supply runs so far. You don’t know how bad it’s gotten.
At least here, you’re safe. Our skin color doesn’t seem to matter, and you can love who you want.
My wife is pregnant. Where else would we be better off? ”
His argument was the crux of my quandary.
Would it be worth it to destroy Totten and potentially put a pregnant woman out in the wild? Could Dez and I organize a movement to dismantle the system that, instead of eliminating it, allowed for a more equitable life for everyone? If that were to happen, would we still leave?
We came to a double door.
Marshall knocked.
It opened, and he gestured for me to go first.
The server from downstairs was setting plates in front of each uniform-clad guest. They were slices of apple pie, and if it was Mae’s apple pie, Dez would soon be swallowing his doom.
I scanned the room.
He was already looking in my direction.
Marshall “escorted” me over. Right before I reached the table, the server set down Dez’s dessert. Then, she placed a paper box beside it.
“The second one, sir,” she said.
Dez nodded his thanks.
She left with a bow of her head.
“Miss Tapley,” Dez began, removing a fork from a cloth napkin. “What could possibly be the problem now? I sent you money to eat. I put you up in a very nice place where you get to live alone. Do you want to go back to where you were?”
I looked up from the pie slice. “What?”
“Are you not listening?”
“I don’t like this,” I said. “I don’t like having to wait on you, hand and foot, as if I don’t have any agency.
Plus, you have to know that the differences between us,” I slid an index finger along my forearm, “makes you putting me in this position ten times worse. It’s like you think it’s your right to own me. ”
His expression shifted to concern. Evidently, I’d said that part a little bit too convincingly.
He cleared his throat, the edge removed from his tone. “Marshall, get Miss Tapley a chair.”
Marshall left.
Dez went to cut into his pie, but I slammed my palm down on the table.
“I want a semblance of a life back,” I argued. “Haven’t I given you enough? You came to me at five o’clock this morning.”
“When should I have come?” he asked.
“Where?”
The side of his mouth twitched. “No, Miss Tapley. When?”
Marshall returned with the chair, and I flopped down onto the seat.
Dez motioned for a server, removed a slice of pie from the box, set it on the empty plate the server provided, and slid the plate toward me.
The server then handed him a set of utensils to give to me, and the man had taken “hands off my woman” to a whole new level.
“I don’t trust this,” I said. “Let’s switch.”
Dez eyed me, no doubt trying to figure out what I was up to. I sucked my teeth, leaned forward, and swapped our plates.
I felt the room watching us.
I also spotted Matthew Neal at one of the tables, confirming the name belonged to the one person whose death I was once tempted to organize via a professional assassin.
At this point, there was no turning back. On the ride up, I’d asked myself what I would do once I got the poisoned food away from Dez, but the answer was always the same: whatever I had to do to save his life.
I cut a piece with my fork.
Dez had gone through so much to nurse me back to health.
In one bite, all that work would have been for nothing.
In one bite, he would go back to being alone when he’d spent so much of his life in isolation.
My mortality balanced on the fork’s metal tines, covered in melted sugars, butter, and flour.
Yet, all I could think about was that I did not, in any way, shape, or form, want Dez to take one less breath than I did.