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Chapter Four
Lunch Hour
I wondered how much of our whispered conversation the cameras had caught, if any. When I said that to Sam, he waved his hand dismissively and told me not to worry. I was worrying, all right. How could he be so nonchalant about it? Even with the trauma he’d already been through, he didn’t seem to grasp the fact that there was a zero-privacy policy in the Block. There was really almost always a pair of eyes tracing you wherever you went. There probably weren’t sound-detectors on every single camera set up, but I doubted that they’d done that with the Rec Hour pen. What happened to people who talked about rebellion? It couldn’t be good.
In the meantime, I found Molly and the two of us sat at the end of one of the long metal tables. Even with it being our only meal of the day, I was barely able to stomach the unidentifiable sludge in my bowl. There had been a handful of days where I’d caught the passing glimpse of Death as it tried to tempt me one way or another, only to watch It pass. I’ve told you already; my death means nothing. But now I was thinking…this was it. The Reaper had his bony hands around my throat, another hand pointing to the final falling sands in an hourglass.
I was screwed.
Intentional killing outside of Judgment wasn’t common in our considerably well-behaved block, but there had been a couple of circumstances where they’d pulled a kid from his table and did him in then and there, with all eyes focused in. It was strange, the way we’d all been numbed to that sensation of horror. Yet there were times when the pain came back to bite you. People wailed at night. The friends or relatives of the killed fell to pieces, at least for a little while. I’d been turned silent for two months after my first. I hadn’t eaten for three days after the initial arrival. My death didn’t matter.
But now I thought, What if Molly has to see me be beaten to death?
“Adara?” Molly said. “Are you okay?”
It took me a second to even conceive of a logical answer. “Yeah, fine, Molly. Do you want the rest of my dinner?”
“No,” she said firmly. I hated that look she got when she knew I was hiding something. Despite being so young, Molly was one of the minority who’d gotten a true education. Even with this, though, her intelligence was a kind that could only be naturally-obtained. Her butterfly eyes stopped dancing. “Adara, what’d you do?”
Before I could answer, Chairman Mercen walked to the head of the tables, followed by something between ten and twenty henchmen and their trusty whips. People who had been standing in the area parted like the Red Sea, and there was the ever-following silence that trailed Mercen with the loyalty of a dog. My heart sank.
He opened with a politician’s grin that would’ve looked inviting if we hadn’t all known better. I remembered the first time I’d seen him; maybe it had been because we’d all been captured and confused, but he seemed like someone to trust. By now we all knew better, and you could almost hear our stomachs churn. Mercen, visiting two days in a row? This couldn’t be good…
“Children!” he said in his booming voice. “Children. So lovely to see you all again. Unfortunately, for some of you, this may very well be our last time.”
Glances were shot around the room towards loved ones. For whatever reason my
gaze separated Carra Lorner from her place at one of the far corners, where
she looked down at her fidgety fingers. For a second, I wondered if it was because she
had nobody to worry about her. Being alone wasn’t uncommon, but groups were
formed. Carra was always with gossiping flocks of girls and good-looking guys, but did she have anyone she could honestly call a friend? My eyes found the mousy brown hair and wiry form of Peter Harden, then turned towards Molly, and eventually traced their way around towards Sam, who was walking in from kitchen duties. I wasn’t what you’d call a social butterfly, but even in this terrible place where minds and personalities were forced to conform, I’d made friends. Had Carra?
In the meantime, we all waited with baited breath to see what he was so tediously keeping from our knowledge. The seconds ticked by.
And by.
By the time our faces were almost blue with the inability to breathe, he spoke. “We’ve bumped up the times for Block changes. We’ll be announcing all switches now.”
Oh. I saw the blow before it hit.
Names called, bonds torn apart with sadness, but numbed by the first Block changes that had taken place on the third month of our sentencing. Numbed by everything, really. Could you even call this misery anymore? It was just a void - empty, cold, hollow. The only few nerves that could possibly hit me were the ones linked to Molly or my little brother McCall. The other nerves were detached and impartial to everything - our daily punishment, the wreak of death, the reality of what lay ahead as far as we could possibly see, and what we‘d already faced.
He announced it block by block, from best to worse. It began with Block 34, 27, 23...slowly but surely, until we reached below our own Block number. The Blocks only get worse as the numbers lower. I gripped the table’s rim, knuckles white.
11? 10? 9? They were called, 8,7,6. Few were demoted, but it did happen. 6 was the lowest that anyone from our Block had ever been. Two sixes, neither me.
“And finally; Adara Jameson and Samson Freeman.” As was usual custom, we met each other in the center, Mercen staring at us with those cold hazel orbs. “Both discharged to Block 2 immediately.” Did my ribcage crack? Or was that my heart? Maybe my brain had snapped from its stem. “That will be all.”
“Adara!” It took me a second to come out of my daze enough to realize that not only had Sam been saying my name, but I’d been incoherent enough that he was shaking me by the shoulders. “Block 2.”
“I know.”
“It’s my fault,” he murmured angrily.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Well? It didn’t. Whatever stupid delusions of jailbreak had come over us was gone. We were two kids. Two really stupid kids.
Molly hugged me so tight that tears were almost squeezed out.
I sighed as I wrapped my arms around her in return. I wished I had something - anything - to give her to remember me by. Thinking about it my hand instantly reached towards my neck, where I’d been wearing a necklace the first day I’d come here. Nothing special, but something that was mine, something that was not made for any purpose but to be beautiful. They took everything of ours when we were stripped down the first day.
Peter Harden, who we all called Hardy, came up to us. “I’m sorry, Adara,” he said, although his tumbleweed eyes and simpleton drawl didn’t mask the smallest twinge of relief for himself. “I’ll keep an eye on Molly for you.”
“Thanks, Hardy,” I said feebly. I let Molly go.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she requested.
“Don’t die,” I said more seriously.
The henchmen led us to the trucks, where we would be carted off to our more sinister location.
For the second time, Sam scared me that day. We both sat on the floor of the closed-in, barred-up car cell. He looked through the black-barred slat above our heads expectantly. "And three, two..."
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