Chapter Fourteen

KHELLEN

I sat in the darkness of solitary confinement with my back against the wall, waiting for anything to happen. Once again, I wished for my computer unit, which guards confiscated as soon as I arrived. The disappeared didn’t get electronic devices.

My feeling of noble self-sacrifice had lasted all the way until I arrived at the holding center and understood what my life had become. Then I became furious thinking about everything I had lost. I was angry at the government and myself, my mother and Morda, but most of all I was furious with Sophie. It was because of her I was here. The rational part of my brain knew I was incorrect, but I couldn’t reason myself out of my rage — not in this cesspool they called a government facility.

There was something about this place that corrupted my mind. Every ounce of love had turned into a white-hot burning hatred. How could anyone be as selfish as she had been? How could she have sent me to this place? I should never have told her to walk away and leave me in the cell to rot while she went home to a happy life.

Holding Center 241 was a facility where those who refused to procreate naturally, by getting married and having children, were forced into breeding for the good of Biyaha. On the first day, my guard took pity on me and had given me information and tips for surviving. The Warden had made it sound like I would be dating in here.

It was not remotely like dating.

We were allowed to select our partners as long as we had sex at least three times a day with three different people. No protection was used, of course, and some of the inmates had sexually transmitted diseases. The infections that were rampant in the population didn’t hurt the fetus or the fertility of the parents, so they weren’t a concern to the government. Inmates saw a doctor once a month for treatment, but that wasn’t frequent enough, and the medications rarely helped. The government wasn’t even pretending to try and stop the spread of the diseases.

When the guard told me about the STDs, I made a plan. I would refuse to cooperate, and then I would escape, somehow. I guess it wasn’t a plan. It was more like a fantasy or a dream. But it was all I had, and I was sticking to it.

I learned how they used solitary confinement as punishment. After a stay in solitary, the inmate was usually released back into the main population with their will broken. There was a rumor that they put something in the food to encourage mating. It was the most disgusting place I had ever heard of, and I had to get out.

Even worse were the other communicable diseases that could be contracted from the air or from touching a person. A pulmonary disease had killed three people while I had been there. They were trying to contain it, but they were struggling with all the bodily contact between inmates. Before I went to solitary, there had been discussions of quarantine, but they hadn’t taken any concrete steps. If they lost more breeders, they would have to do something about it. A reduction in the population would be counterproductive.

What struck me as interesting was that the people who died from the lung disease had all been off-worlders. The Biyahans got sick and coughed a lot, but off-worlders were dead within a few days of contracting it. I couldn’t help but think about Sophie. As angry as I was with her, I was relieved at the same time that she wasn’t anywhere near this hellhole. Right now she was on a nice clean shuttle, heading back to Earth. Maybe she was already back home in her cute apartment. I pictured her bedroom, where she’d recorded most of her hologram messages. Thoughts of Sophie didn’t belong in this horrible place.

From the start, I had refused to have sex, so they put me into solitary almost immediately. I didn’t know how long I was there because it was dark and I had no visitors. My only companion was a bucket in the corner for me to shit and piss in. I couldn’t mark the passage of time. Still, I knew they would put some desperate woman in here with me sooner or later, and I had to be ready. I wasn’t going to have sex with a random person. I felt like I was losing my mind, though, and I hoped I wouldn’t do anything stupid.

When they transported people to the solitary confinement level, there was usually only one guard. More guards escorted punished inmates because they were more likely to struggle. While I was in the general population, I saw two prisoners taken away. My plan was to attack the guard when he brought in my potential mate. After I overcame the guard, I would take the cargo elevator to the main level. There wasn’t tight security. Most people, no matter how much they hated this place, were so disheartened they had no will to escape.

Eventually, the door opened. I heard the scraping and jumped up, legs stiff and body sore, but adrenaline pumping through my body.

The guard shoved the woman into my cell, and she fell to the floor coughing. They had sent me one of the sick ones, of course. It didn’t matter to me. I was taking the opportunity to get out of here right now. I ran at the guard, taking my chances, not thinking, only attacking. I tackled him and managed to get in a few punches on his head. I was wild, and all I wanted was to get away. When he lay still, I raced down the hallway as fast as I could, looking for the elevators. I tried to remember the path I took when they moved me here.

A moment later, my whole body stopped moving, and I fell to the ground in agony. I looked up to see the guard standing over me. He grabbed my arm and dragged me back down the hall, making no effort to be gentle. The stun was wearing off by the time he got me back to the cell, and I started to yell.

“No! I won’t go back in there!” I could scream, but my body was still immobilized.

“Yes, you will. You’ll stay there until you stop making a scene and go fuck that woman.”

“How can you do this? You people are monsters!”

He stared back at me, probably used to madmen shrieking at him. “Stop fighting and make things easy for yourself,” he said, dropping me onto the floor in the blackness and shutting the door.

As soon as I could move, I sat up, went to the corner, and tried unsuccessfully to think of something else. Anything other than this awful place. My mind filled with pain from the electric jolt. There was nothing but the pain and the sound of coughing.

I hoped she wouldn’t infect me. In theory, the coughing would probably only make me sick. It killed the off-worlders.

I felt the woman’s body wrap around my back. “I need it badly,” she said.

“You’re going to have to wait.” I pushed her away, making her crash onto the floor again. She coughed for a long time. As soon as she caught her breath, she was back, thrusting her hips at me. Her hands reached around, trying to undo my pants.

I couldn’t push her away forever. I was afraid to sleep because she would try to have sex with me when I was helpless. And I knew my body would respond. The woman was insatiable and seemed more desperate than me.

Finally, I thought of a way to get her to leave me alone. I could give her what she wanted.

When she came at me the next time, I grabbed her and pulled her into my lap. She wrapped her legs around me, moaning, and I felt that she was naked already. I dropped my hand down and found her clit. She gasped and began thrusting her hips at me while I touched her.

I sat down on the floor while she was on my lap. She bounced up and down against my hand as I stimulated her, making a high-pitched wailing that grated on my nerves. It was potentially the least sexy thing I could imagine. A noise cut through my haze of pain and my focus on getting her to leave me alone. It was the door opening again. Why was the guard back already?

Then I heard something I thought I’d never hear again. Sophie’s voice.

“Khellen?”

At that moment, the woman came, screaming, and I pushed her off my lap, getting to my feet, filled with anger and fear for Sophie’s health.

“Khellen?” she called again, sounding as if she hoped it wasn’t me.

I moved stiffly towards her, the pain from the stun still throbbing in my limbs. I knew I must look terrible. I hadn’t eaten or slept much since I arrived. “What are you doing here?” I asked, glaring at her as terror filled me. The woman was coughing again like she would never stop.

“I came to get you,” she replied timidly. I suppose she hadn’t expected this reaction from me. There was something about this place that was getting to me and making my personality unrecognizable. But what was stronger than my need to escape was my desire to protect Sophie. If she caught the lung disease, she might die. “Well, you can go right back out. I don’t want you to get me. And as you can see, I’m busy.” I pointed to the woman spasmodically coughing on the floor. If she had come this far to rescue me, she wouldn’t leave without a good reason. Thinking that I didn’t care about her was the best way to keep her safe right now.

“Khellen, I won’t leave you here.”

My heart clenched. Even after everything she saw, she still wanted to help me leave. “You misunderstand me, Mrs. Lynch, allow me to be clearer.” I moved towards her, trying not to stumble on legs still weak from the stun. “Get out.”

I grabbed her shoulders and pushed as hard as I could. She landed roughly in the hallway, and I shut the door before she could get up and come in again. I only hoped it had been in time. No one was sure how the disease spread. It could be an airborne virus or from skin-to-skin contact.

The woman on the floor had stopped coughing and was lying quietly. I hoped she was sleeping. My legs gave out, and I sat down in a heap. I hoped the stun hadn’t done any permanent damage to my nervous system. I noticed something glowing on the floor as I sat down, and I reached out to pick it up. It must be Sophie’s. It looked like a security device. How had she gotten it? It explained how she penetrated so far into the compound.

I felt horrible. My body was racked with pain and I needed sleep badly. My emotions were in turmoil from seeing Sophie again. My overriding concern, however, was getting Sophie out of there before she contracted a fatal cough. What should I do?

Since Sophie had gotten in, she knew how to get out. We had her electronics. But what if I inadvertently infected her? Last time I had sent her away, she had gone without a backward glance. Perhaps she had done the same thing this time.

“I’m still here, Khellen.” Her whisper was audible through the barrier.

I didn’t understand why she hadn’t run away when I rejected her. She had gone quickly enough the first time. Why was she staying now? If we managed to get out of here alive, I hoped there would be adequate time to figure out Sophie’s motives.

“I’m not leaving you,” came her voice.

I ignored her, trying to decide the best action plan. I didn’t have much time before the guard came to check on me.

Then I had an idea. If Sophie’s electronic device was a multipurpose tool, it might have a scanner. A scanner set to the highest level might kill any virus or bacteria. It would give us both a chance to get out of here alive and together. I got slowly to my feet and opened the door with the device.

Sophie didn’t say anything but stood looking at me silently. I handed her the piece of electronics. “We have to do one thing before we can leave. I’ll scan you first.”

She picked up the device and inspected it carefully. “You have it set to the most powerful level. Do you think it’s safe?”

“There’s a contagious disease spreading through the facility. Off-worlders have been dying from it, and the woman in there is showing symptoms. We need to decontaminate ourselves, or you might catch it.”

Her eyes got round, but she didn’t argue with me.

After we had scanned each other, she led us at a frantic pace in a different direction. We heard someone coming and hid in a closet until the footsteps passed by us. We continued down the corridor that ended at the cargo elevator. She used the access override to unlock it, and in less than a minute we were at ground level. When the door opened up, we crept out. We hadn’t gone five steps before we heard a shout behind us.

“What are you doing there?”

“Run!” Sophie said, grabbing my hand and dragging me behind her. We made our way to the loading dock, stopping at an open bay door. Two workers were off-loading supplies from the cargo hovercraft floating outside.

“Where are you going!” the female worker shouted. “Stop! You’re not supposed to be here!” She ran towards us, pointing a blaster in our direction. We dropped to the floor, crouching behind some pallets of medical supplies.

When the worker edged around the pallet, Sophie grabbed the woman’s arm — the one holding the blaster — and twisted it. She pulled the woman down and hit her. Sophie grabbed a piece of twine from the debris on the floor and flipped the woman on her stomach, quickly tying her hands behind her.

I gave Sophie a surprised look. “We have to do whatever it takes to get out of here,” she said.

The male worker had held back during all the action, and I saw that he didn’t have a weapon.

“He doesn’t have a weapon,” I whispered. “Let’s make a break for it.”

We took off, heading straight for the large bay door. The man tried to stop us, but I punched him in the stomach and pushed him out of our way. As if suddenly remembering something, he raised his arm and pointed something at the door. It started to rumble shut.

“Come on, Khellen.” Sophie was yanking my hand, but my stiff body couldn’t move as fast as it needed to. The door dropped quickly - it was already a third of the way closed. “Khellen, you have to run faster!” Her tugging on my arm made it ache even more. I felt my body begin to shut down.

“This is all that’s in me,” I said.

“Find more!” She was screaming at me, and I wanted to run, but I felt a secondary paralysis from the stun, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

The door was halfway down, and we were too far away. I stumbled and would have fallen if Sophie hadn’t pulled me forward. We were almost there, but the door was nearly shut.

With Sophie helping me, maybe we could make it. After a few more feet we would be in the clear. When I was almost to freedom, my body seized and I fell to the floor, unable to bring my hands up and prevent my head from hitting the floor.

The last thing I remembered was my skull smashing into the stone.