The Taken, page 15
‘Thea,’ Cole was holding me, willing me to stop, ‘please, don’t cry.’ He shook his head as he stared down at me. ‘What were you doing out there? Who was that boy, what did he want?’
I pulled away from him, my heart racing as I tried to think. ‘You need to save him.’ I whispered. ‘You need to go and help.’
Cole faltered. ‘Who was he?’ He questioned quietly.
‘Seb,’ I answered, ‘his name is Seb.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘Did he come here for you…..to take you back?’
There was only one answer to that question. I nodded, my heart breaking once again when I remembered what attempting to do that had in turn done to Seb.
Cole closed his eyes, his body visibly sagging. ‘I didn’t ask for you to choose me, Cole. I didn’t want this. I wasn’t given a choice.’
He nodded, so slightly that I wondered if I had imagined it. ‘I know you didn’t.’ He finally said. For the first time since I had met him, I felt something other than anger when I looked at him. I felt an unbearable sadness that this life that he had been told to accept held so much disappointment; that I could never be exactly what he wanted in the end. ‘He’s hurt.’ He whispered, glancing at me warily, as though he himself was to blame.
It wasn’t his fault. He had come out there to protect me, he had no loyalty to Seb. He was a stranger to him, someone who he had never met. ‘Please, you’re a doctor, you can help him.’ I stepped forwards into the amber light. ‘Please, Cole, please do something…’ I paused, thinking as quickly as my addled mind would allow. The treatment that I had endured that afternoon had affected me more than I had been willing to admit, I felt as though I was wading through mud, ‘…..you can find him, and then you can heal him, you can make him better again.’
Cole shook his head. ‘I’m not qualified, I’m not a doctor yet.’
‘Yes you are,’ I disagreed, ‘I know that you can treat him, that you can help him.’ I swallowed, my throat scratchy and painfully dry, ‘He came for me, and because of me he’s hurt. I can’t get to him but you can. I’m begging you, please, go to him, help him.’ I paused, deciding if I actually meant the next words burning my tongue or not before I would allow myself to say them. ‘I believe in you.’
He lifted his head, staring across the small room towards me. I shivered beneath his stare. ‘I don’t know where they’ve taken him.’ He began
to argue. ‘I don’t know if there’s anything that I can do.’
‘Then go and find out,’ I retorted. ‘Do something that you haven’t done before, that no one is telling you to do. Do it because you’ve made the decision on your own, without you father ordering you to.’
He flinched at my exclamation. He had spent his whole life in his father’s shadow, I didn’t need to be told to know. ‘He’s not a bad man, no matter what you think, he isn’t.’ Of course he would defend him, his father and his indoctrinated beliefs that had been passed down over the last two decades was all that he knew.
‘Neither is Seb,’ I lifted my chin to look him in the eye, ‘he didn’t deserve what just happened to him. He doesn’t deserve to be left in the forest to die.’ My body itched, panic rising once again with each and every breath, ‘Please Cole, you are the only one that can help him. I can’t get out….I can’t go to him.’ The realisation caused my stomach to clench. When I placed a hand against it, Cole followed my stare, his expression shifting into one that seemed to mirror my own pain. ‘Please.’
He continued to stare at me for a few moments before he swiftly nodded his head. When he broke eye contact to pace across to the cabinet in the corner I let go of my tightly held breath. ‘He has a head injury,’ he muttered, his eyes flicking across the instruments and medicine inside, ‘he will need something to stem the blood.’ He began to reach for various items, pushing them down into his pockets. When they were soon full, he unbuttoned his coat to tuck them into his belt. When he had finished, unable to conceal anything else against his body, he refastened his black coat before shutting the cabinet doors and turning to face me. ‘Althea,’ he exhaled heavily,
his shoulders lowering on a sigh, ‘I didn’t want this. You need to know that.’
I nodded my head. ‘I do.’
‘You need to go back to the dormitory,’ he gestured to the secret doorway behind me which led to the staircase to the floor above, ‘before they notice that you’re missing. They’re going to look.’
‘Promise me that you’ll find him, that you won’t let him die.’ My voice caught in my throat. The thought of Seb not existing was just far too much. I could bear anything, I could be separated him from the rest of my life if it meant that he went on, but I could not live if he did not.
Cole inhaled sharply, ‘He must love you very much,’ his voice was a wounded whisper, ‘to be able to find you…to come to bring you back.’
For a second I couldn’t speak. ‘He does.’ I realised a few seconds after Cole himself had.
He nodded, smiling sadly as he took a step towards me, ‘Thea…’ he paused when we both heard the sound of voices outside of the door. We both glanced at the door handle as it slowly turned. ‘Quickly,’ he ordered, his whisper suddenly stern, ‘through the door, now.’
I ran over to the door in the corner, opening it as my heart banged against my chest and I stepped into the darkness waiting beyond. When I turned to close it the last thing that I saw was Cole.
When the voices entered the room I couldn’t see a thing. The darkness was so penetrating that I couldn’t even see the stairs.
‘Son, what are you doing in here?’
I immediately recognised the voice of Mr Bravick when he stepped into the room. Instead of feeling for my way up the staircase I stalled, pressing my ear against the cold wood.
‘I was just doing some revision, I was about to go home.’
The click clacking of heels followed Mr Bravick into the room. ‘Cole, I thought that you had already left.’ A tiny crack in the wood allowed me to see Miss Motley as she hurried into the room, standing in the doorway beside Mr Bravick as Cole lifted his bag from the chair.
‘I stayed a little later, I’m leaving now.’ He turned his back towards them, glancing across to the door that I was standing behind. ‘Is everything okay?’ he questioned when he turned back to face them.
‘Yes, Miss Motley and I just need to need to discuss some issues which have arisen, nothing important, and then I shall be retiring for the day.’ His father nodded as Cole made to step past him, before tilting his head slightly and reaching for his arm to suddenly stop him. ‘Your hair,’ he frowned as his narrowed gaze assessed him, ‘why is it wet?’
I lifted my hand, placing my palm against the wood as I listened to Cole’s response. ‘The window had blown open; I couldn’t get it to shut so I had to lean out. I got a little soaked in the downpour.’
Mr Bravick stared at his son for a few moments before releasing his arm. ‘There’s quite a storm brewing out there, be sure to light the fire when you reach home.’
‘Yes, father,’ Cole faltered slightly before stepping from the room. Miss Motley quickly closed the door behind him.
Both she and Mr Bravick waited for a few moments to ensure that Cole had definitely gone before Mr Bravick paced across to the desk and lowered himself down into the chair. Miss Motley sat on the one opposite as she took a deep breath.
‘How could an outsider possible find out where we are. This is a classified building, the location has never been leaked, how exactly did that boy come to be here?’ Annoyance laced the question as Miss Motley quickly shook her head.
‘I have no idea, Sir. The guards discovered him wandering in the woods. Perhaps it could genuinely be a case that he has accidently stumbled across the Academy grounds and he didn’t actually mean to be here.’
Mr Bravick huffed. ‘Leah, we are hundreds of miles from nowhere. This site was chosen for its isolation, it is not possible for someone to accidently discover the Academy, they would have to be purposely looking for it. Whoever this boy is, he was not here by chance, he meant to be here. And if he meant to be here, then there is somebody inside that he was trying to find.’ He exhaled heavily, clasping his hands tightly together on the desktop. ‘Part of our ongoing success has been due to the fact that no one in any of the surrounding towns or villages have ever been made aware of where we are located or where the girls actually go.’ His jaw locked as he swallowed, his spine rigid. ‘Can you imagine the repercussions if this boy was able to return to wherever it is that he has actually come from and inform the families of just exactly where we are. We would have a mob on our hands, the results could be catastrophic.’
Miss Motley stammered when she answered. ‘The boy was very badly injured, Sir. I highly doubt that if he survives he will be able to remember much of what he has seen.’
Mr Bravick slammed both of his palms down onto the desktop, causing both myself and Miss Motley to flinch. ‘Then why would you risk the disclosure of this Academy by allowing him to live.’ He shouted angrily.
‘If he had died then the effects could have been devastating….’
‘And if he lives they could be far, far worse.’ Mr Bravick interjected before running a hand tensely across his face. ‘Where exactly have the guards taken him?’
‘Away from the perimeter, down into the forest,’ I heard her inhale as I clenched my fists. ‘No one will find him, Sir, there’s no one around here to do so, and if he does survive he will be lost in the forest, I highly doubt that he will ever find his way out.’
‘A person who is capable of finding his way through the forest will always be able to find his way out.’ Mr Bravick sighed. ‘This is very troublesome, especially coming so soon after our findings in the city.’ He took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers as he closed his eyes.
‘Have there been more?’ Miss Motley’s tone changed from defensiveness to concern.
‘Three women today, all only a few days after their fortieth birthday,’ Mr Bravick shook his head. ‘More tests are being performed tomorrow but it is now almost conclusive that the cause is almost definitely the chip.’
I frowned, positioning my ear against the crack in the wood to be able to hear them more clearly.
‘You’re certain?’ Miss Motley replied.
‘As much as at this point we scientifically can be. The chips first began to be placed in the girls’ hearts rather than their arms exactly forty years ago, it is no coincidence that now, forty years later, the women begin to prematurely die.’
I placed a hand across my mouth as I gasped, before holding my breath.
‘It could be being caused by any number of things surely….’ Miss Motley shook her head.
‘The chips have been the main source of electricity for the city for four decades, Leah. The unexpected side effect of placing them into the girls’ hearts, that it then generated that power simply from the continual beat of their heart, and then harnessing that supply of energy was always in an embryonic stage….no one knew for sure what the long-term effects would actually be.’ He lifted his glasses to put them back onto his face. ‘Every single one of the women that have died have done so because their hearts have simply stopped. The strain was obviously far, far too much.’
My entire body tensed as I strained to listen to them.
‘This was never a commodity that we expected to gain in the beginning,’ Mr Bravick continued on, ‘and yet the success of the last four decades, of how we have harnessed the most organic and undeniably powerful electromagnetic field that exists on this planet, and used it to power what is now one of the richest cities in the world, is arguably one of the most magnificent feats ever accomplished by man.’ He inhaled, leaning back into his chair as he shook his head. ‘For this to now transpire to be the outcome, that the girls who are ultimately the batteries that power that city, to not be able to survive the strain for longer than forty years, could be catastrophic to what has until now been believed to be an endless, abundant supply.’
‘Sir, really, that may not be the case,’ Miss Motley swallowed tightly, ‘the women who have died, it could be of natural causes, it could be anything…..’
They did not die of natural causes, Leah,’ Mr Bravick interrupted her sharply, ‘they died because the chip in their heart ultimately stopped it.’ He folded his fingers together on the table top. ‘This is only the beginning, day by day the number of fatalities will grow, not only in the city but in the villages and towns. Not all of the girls who have been through our doors were eventually acquired by the citizens of the city, some were sent back to their villages, as well you know.’ My eyes widened as I took in what he had just said, and the way that Miss Motley’s cheeks suddenly reddened. ‘Tell me, how old are you Leah?’
Miss Motley slowly exhaled. ‘I turned thirty five in January.’
Mr Bravick nodded slowly. ‘That buys you a little time, at least.’
She laughed tightly, shaking her head. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘One by one, the girls will begin to fall, and nothing and no one will be able to stop it.’ He closed his eyes, pursing his lips. ‘People will start to ask questions, they will be able to do the maths, it will be carnage.’
‘But the villages, they don’t know about the city, they have no idea how the power is being generated…’
‘Not yet they don’t,’ he agreed, opening his eyes to stare back at her, ‘but they will soon enough when it starts to be investigated further.’ His shoulders tensed. ‘Which is not even the main problem we are now facing. The power supply will inevitably begin to drop at the same rate as the women do. The city is a vast place, it needs and uses more power than we will possibly be able to generate. The harvesting is not something that can immediately solve this issue, it will take a few years yet for that to be considered in any way a solution. In the mean-time, the supply will have to be rationed, measures will have to be put into place to ensure they only use exactly what they need. How do you think the governors and residents of a city that knows only opulence and wealth will react to being told that they can no longer live the life to which they have grown accustomed?’ He sighed heavily. ‘If it isn’t the villagers that will revolt against us, then it will be the people who directly purchase the power supply from us instead.’
‘We can make the girls run more often,’ Miss Motley suggested, running a hand through her hair, ‘we can make them go outside three or four times a day.’
‘And put even more strain on the hearts that we now know to be severely impaired purely because of the device placed within them at birth.’ His jaw tightened. ‘It’s not a risk that we can in any way be willing to take, not at this moment.’ He scrapped back his chair, turning to stare out of the window at the rain beating against the pane. ‘I need a list, of every woman who will enter her fortieth year in the next twelve months, and I need it by sunrise at the latest. I need to know their names and exactly where they are, whether that be in the city or the villages. I need to know exactly who is about to die, and if we can try to prevent it from happening.’
Miss Motley exhaled heavily. ‘It’s almost midnight, Sir, how can I possibly collate that amount of information by the morning?’
Mr Bravick turned his head slightly, ‘by starting to gather it right now. You can sleep tomorrow, Leah, this information is far more important than rest at the moment.’
Miss Motley hesitated, before pushing herself to her feet. ‘of course,’ she replied quietly, ‘I’ll go to my office and start gathering the names immediately.’
I watched her leave before I shifted my gaze back onto Mr Bravick, standing frozen by the window. Once he believed himself to be alone he began to mutter a name, over and over, before curling his fists into tight balls and suddenly letting out a long, blood curdling scream of frustration.
It matched the one that roared inside my own head, and as he repeated the name once again, it was all that I could do not to push open the door and go to beat my own fists against his chest.
My mother’s own birthday was in a matter of weeks, and as he continued to mouth the name Lauren, I had already calculated that my mother was about to turn forty.
Chapter Sixteen
I awoke from a fitful sleep with a gasp, immediately sitting upright as my fists gripped the threadbare covers. Ava hurried across to my bed, placing a hand across my mouth as she quickly shook her head.
‘Thea, you need to be quiet, don’t keep shouting out like that or they’ll move you from the dorm.’
My chest heaved as I struggled to catch my bearings. My head felt fuzzy, with snatches of memories flashing into my mind, making my heart quicken. ‘What?’ I stuttered, wiping my fingers roughly across my swollen eyes.
‘You kept shouting, in the night, I had to come and hold you to try and get you to calm down before one of the other girls went to fetch Miss Motley, don’t you remember?’
My breath quickened. ‘What was I shouting?’
Ava swallowed before answering. ‘Seb……you kept shouting for Seb?’ She also looked exhausted, as though she had not slept a wink. She glanced around us, at the other girls in the dorm still sleeping, before leaning forwards to whisper. ‘Where did you go, last night, you were gone for hours?’
‘I……,’ I had gone to the boundary, and I had watched the boy who had come to save me be beaten until there was barely any life in him left. The memory made me tightly close my eyes as I fought to control my mounting panic and anger, ‘I need to find him……I need to make sure that he’s okay.’
‘Who….who are you talking about, who is Seb?’
I hesitated before shaking my head. I liked Ava, it wasn’t so much her that I didn’t trust, but rather whatever it was that they were injecting us with when we were being treated. Whatever was in those vials could also make Ava repeat things if she was questioned, and then she wouldn’t even be able to remember what it was that she’d told them. I couldn’t risk it.
