The 45th Parallel, page 7
“I’m going for a walk. I want to look closely at one of the water pumps and see if I can adapt our units at home. They pump the water almost vertically here, which is technically challenging as gravity comes into play. Want to come?” Sera acknowledged my statement, but I already knew her answer.
“No, I still want to find out if they are in contact with the other communities. If they have radio transmissions, I might be able to send a message home, let them know we are safe.”
I nodded. We had always intended to let our families know where we were, on August Island and visiting my cousin Sam in Australia. Being missing for weeks with no word was cruel. We didn’t want to be used as slave labor, planting trees and installing new panels on the dome on Lewis, but we hadn’t meant to disappear without a trace.
“Oh crap. Crap. Shiiiiiit!” I ranted as I flew back into the office, slamming and bolting the door.
“What?”
“There was a button on the wall next to the large column in the middle of the floor. I didn’t mean to, but I touched it, then it lit red, and something moved above me.”
“What?” Sera blurted, pulled out of her stupor.
“I didn’t mean to! I leaned against it as I did up my shoelace. It lit red, and something inside the wall started moving. I could feel it. That pillar we thought was solid? Well, it isn’t. Then I heard yelling and thumping. I think we have been detected.”
“We have.” The panic in her voice sent chills down my spine as Sera tapped away and hastily spun the laptop around, showing me a building map with tiny flashing red lights popping up all over the diagram.
“Then stop it! Turn it off!” I cried, panic rising.
“I can’t!” She banged away on the keyboard madly.
Loud voices sounded outside, barking orders, and the heavy thud of footsteps on concrete echoed down the passageway.
“Fuck! Shut it down! Hide it!” I shrieked, trying to muffle my voice as I turned off the light, plunging us into darkness. Sera slipped the laptop between the bookcase and the side wall and tossed the cables on top in the slim, dusty space between the old bookcase and the ceiling. Hurriedly, we shoved our clothing and toiletries into our bags and flicked them onto our backs, backing up against the back wall as the stomping came closer. Every door along the corridor was being beaten in with a battering ram by the sounds of it.
“Fuck it,” I seethed. This was my fault. If I hadn’t stopped right there to do up my laces… The banging was becoming louder as they advanced on us. We couldn’t run. Sera and I shrank together behind the desk. We were trapped.
A resounding boom reverberated around the room as the door was kicked in, and four burly men dressed in camouflage took two steps into the room and grabbed us. As they gripped my arm, I noticed a pair of my dirty socks in the corner as I was dragged past. Kendra made me those, I thought abstractedly. My feet barely touched the ground as we were hauled down various identical-looking corridors. They were hurting and didn’t care. Fingers dug roughly into my forearms, and I squirmed against their unrelenting grasp.
Sera and I were dragged to the center of the pod, and one of our captors pushed the button I had inadvertently touched. It lit again, and we waited. The double doors slid open silently, and we were shoved roughly into a box with transparent walls, barely big enough for the six of us to fit inside. Squashed against the back wall, flanked by guards, I couldn’t even make eye contact with Seraphine. She would be freaking out. No one spoke as the door closed, and the entire room moved, making my stomach jolt. I could feel us being lifted. It was the strangest sensation moving upward, disconcerting but sickening. I desperately wanted to sit down, contract my torso and minimize the feeling, but flanked by the men who had said nothing to us, I was too scared to move, even though I could see no weapons being carried. Inadvertently, my stomach convulsed, and I shuddered, making one guard move slightly to avoid being vomited on. There was no risk of that, but the reaction was immediate. Roughly shoving me, he pushed me to stand beside Sera, our backs against the hard, silver metal wall while the guards crowded around us again. They definitely weren’t taking any chances with us.
Standing side by side, I squeezed her hand, comforted to know I wasn’t alone. The men surrounding us were several times my size, and that alone made them intimidating. Sera and I were taller than most women. Both our biological parents were tall, but these guards towered easily five inches over us and were twice as wide. That wasn’t the only terrifying factor. The looks of fierce determination on their faces, combined with silence, made my blood run cold.
Silver panels whizzed past outside the moving box, and I glanced at Sera, who looked equally terrified. The moving room stopped with a jolt, and the door slid open unexpectedly. I was gripped firmly by the arms and dragged out. Sera’s treatment was no gentler. She stumbled on the slightly uneven surface, and the two guards holding her yanked her to her feet, and I heard the gasp of pain.
As we stepped out onto solid land, I looked over my shoulder in awe and saw that the tiny moving room was suspended from the top by a steel cable, lifting it up and down. It is like an enormous bucket going down a well, I thought, lifting it up and down. I paused a moment too long, mesmerized by the engineering and planning in my head how I could build one, and my captors wrenched at my arms, barely avoiding dislocating my shoulder.
I froze as I turned my attention to the vast space we were entering. We were in the center of an enormous round dome with windows all around the outside. It was huge, and I could barely see out the windows, despite being in the center. The space was filled with a blue-tinged artificial light, unlike anything I had ever seen. Long, thin light boxes hung from the ceiling far above, attached to silver chains anchored to the top. There were people everywhere. This place was far busier than Clava or any gathering I had ever been to. People dressed in gray shorts and t-shirts were running along a red path that ran the perimeter of the building. Many more were walking purposefully, heading off to an unknown destination or sitting at tables. Some eating, some working. All adults. No children. But in that single orienting view, the most unsettling thing was the sense of order. Every person in this enormous space was wearing identical clothing. A drab gray-green shirt and pants, patterned, not dissimilar to the fabric on the backpack Sera had inherited from our father, Luca, although hers was green and these were gray. The one on her back right now. Military issue. Illyria had told us about Luca’s missions, and hers, when they had been in the British and Australian military, respectively. Many of Luca’s bags and tools had been passed on to his children. When I lived on Newgrange for the years of my apprenticeship, Jake had regaled me with tales of his life in the army before settling down: traveling to dangerous places, being dropped from a plane at night, infiltrating enemy-held territory.
Sera and I were being stared at, but no one spoke. The room hushed from the previous level of habitation noise as they all turned to watch us being hauled through. Everything was so clean and ordered. Tables lined up neatly; chairs tucked away. Not a single cup on an empty table. But the people. They all look the same, I realized as I got closer. No one was smiling. Everyone was neatly groomed with short hair and polished boots. Why wouldn’t they stare at us, two girls with long hair, dressed in stained and crumpled jeans and t-shirts, wearing scuffed and dirty hiking boots? Thank goodness we had collected our dry washing from behind the heat pumps that morning. It wouldn’t be a good look to tell them we had just arrived if they found our clothing scattered around the place.
The firm grip on my forearms hadn’t relented, and the fingers digging in hurt. Bruises would be the least of my worries, I suspected. I pulled back slightly, hoping the pressure would lessen, only to be rewarded with a firmer grip pressing into my flesh, leaving white imprints with tender red discoloration spreading from each point of impact.
Note to self: don’t do that again.
Sera was slightly ahead of me, and I could see that her treatment was no gentler. I tried to make eye contact but couldn’t as we were frogmarched across the central pod, through an unmarked doorway into a side corridor, and into a smaller pod. Narrow metal corridors crowded us as we were forced, three across, down the passage. Finally, we were brought to a shuddering halt, and one of our captors rapped on the door, the sound echoing through the cylindrical hallway.
“Enter!”
Sera and I were shoved roughly through the door into a dimly lit room. Blinking to adjust to the change in light, I tried to take it all in and determine who these people were. I had learned enough about negotiations from Illy to know that a quick assessment was critical. Knowing who you are up against and getting a feel for them was crucial to how you managed negotiations. Not that this was a negotiation. Interrogation was more accurate. A long, dark timber table, well used as evidenced by the extensive scuff marks, sat at the far side of the room. Four men… no… two were women, I revised rapidly, sat facing us. All wore the same drab clothing as the others, gray camouflage pattern, ending in polished black boots I could see neatly lined up under the table as they sat rigidly. The women had their hair clipped short like the men. Standard haircut, evidently. Remembering what Illy had taught us about rank and insignia, I peered at their shoulders for epaulets but couldn’t make them out in the low light and at the distance across the room.
Our captors shoved us forward and forced us to stand, then took several steps back, blocking us from escaping through the doorway behind us. With the impressive armory on display behind our interrogators that obscured the view from the window beyond, even I wasn’t stupid enough to run. We would be dead before we even made the hallway. Even if we got away, where would we go in an underwater military society when the only escape opportunity was the full moon over a week away? Assuming we were correct, and we had reactivated all portals, they had likely reset to their previous activation phases.
“Who are you?” one man barked, his eyes boring into us in what he intended to be an intimidating manner. He spoke English but with a strange inflection, one I had never heard before, making me need to concentrate on what he was saying. Because of my delay in responding, he bellowed the question again, and I caught the words this time.
I stifled the urge to laugh at his forceful tone. Illy was the Chief of the Association of Collective Communities. Before the virus spread, she was part of the team that had selected candidates to live under the domes, my parents included. Dad had told me once how terrifying she was, even then. She had never lost her commanding presence and tone. We had endured far worse interrogation over breakfast.
“Caitlin and Seraphine,” I said sweetly, trying to sound girly.
“How did you get here?”
“I’m not sure,” I simpered, keeping up the innocent act. “We were playing, and suddenly we ended up here.”
The man on the end slammed his hand down on the metal table. “Are you planning an invasion?”
Now it was my turn to be taken aback. “Invasion?” I gasped. “What—the two of us?”
Sera and I stared at each other, my brain whirring madly. If they thought we were capable of invasion, we had better keep our mouths shut. If they learned we had activated the portals and traveled from Lewis, they might retaliate by attacking our home. Lewis was nothing like this place. I knew we had missile defense systems, but if they came en masse through the portal, the people there couldn’t defend themselves against an attack from a place like this. Most of our neighbors were farmers and crofters and didn’t even own a gun. Opening my eyes as wide as I could, I stared pointedly at Sera. Being sisters and best friends since birth, we knew each other intimately. She knew and played along.
“My friend is telling the truth,” she tried in her best angelic voice, pulling their attention to her and hiding coyly behind her long, blonde hair. While we were of similar height, Sera was fair like our mother Freyja, while I was dark-haired, allegedly looking like our father, Luca. We didn’t look alike, and I didn’t feel the need to let them know we were sisters. If anyone could pull off sweet and innocent, it was her.
“We were picking flowers and ended up here. It was awful. We were sucked through a tunnel and…”
“Why did you have clothing with you? Personal items?”
Fuck, I hadn’t thought of that.
“We were on our way to a friend’s house for the weekend,” Sera lied sweetly from beside me, an innocent look on her face. “We needed a change of clothes.” She was convincing. Even I would have believed that, delivered so honestly.
“Where did you come from?”
Sera and I looked wildly at each other, and I picked the only location I could think of that was as far away from Scotland as I could remember. Coming here was our fault. Never in a million years would I put our family and friends at risk.
“Australia,” I mumbled, looking down at my feet, allowing my long dark hair to obscure my face.
There was a collective intake of breath, and they stared at us.
“You are lying!” one of them boomed at us. “Take them to the holding cell,” he snapped to our guards. “A few days in confinement might make them talk.”
Are you kidding? I thought. We have just spent two weeks in a tiny office with nothing but thirty-year-old canned food. It doesn’t get much worse.
Chapter 14
The guards were even rougher with us as they dragged us back into the moving room, and I watched one guard push a lit button on the wall. I barely held in my meager stomach contents when it plummeted without warning. Controls, I thought, trying to focus on the mechanics and not the dragging feeling in my guts. Damn it. That was how I had alerted them. It was like a pulley but for a significant weight. With six of us in here, it must lift hundreds of kilograms. The machine itself appeared to be made of metal with glass sides and must also weigh hundreds of kilograms. It was impressive. I wished Callie was here to discuss this with me. Surely this was old technology, and she had seen something like this before? There was a thud as it hit the bottom, and I felt my neck jolt. I lifted my arm to rub it but was hastily restrained, my arms firmly pinned against my sides. I tried to roll my neck to reduce the jarring pain but was glared at by one of our silent captors. The door slid open, and we were dragged down a dark narrow passage. One of our captors had the decency to hold a flashlight illuminating the space as we were thrown into a tiny concrete cell containing nothing more than a metal framed single bed with a thin foam mattress, filthy pillow, and thin gray blanket. A drop pit toilet and a manky brown-stained basin were nestled at the other end. With no windows and solid concrete walls, a single black metal grille door was the only open point, and we stood catching our breath after our mistreatment. The bars were solid metal, thick, and closely spaced. There was a gap at the bottom of maybe two inches, but not enough to get even a foot under.
Seeing inside a jail cell was an unfamiliar experience, and I took the requisite two seconds to take it all in before the door was slammed and the torchlight turned away down the corridor. My overwhelming impression was that it stank of unwashed bodies and stale urine. Living with two brothers, three if you counted Alasdair, and I was highly familiar with boy-smell. The floor was rancid. Dirty boot marks littered the floor, making me wonder how that could be. There was no dirt here. Touching the floor, I realized it was years of accumulated dust and grime adhered to the dark surface. The bed was covered with a striped sheet that at least looked clean in the dimness, but it was probably best I couldn’t tell. The thin gray blanket smelled musty, like a room that had been closed for years.
“Just one cell?” I joked, trying to make her smile. Sera internalized her stress. The fear was radiating from her in waves. “Clearly, they weren’t expecting us. Good thing we are close.”
Sera sat on the tiny bed and looked up at me, her brow furrowed with concern. “What now?”
Facing her, I placed a finger to my lips. I could hear someone lurking just out of sight. Since we were children, my night vision and hearing had been exceptional, and I had often been placed as a guard when Ally and Summer were up to some mischief. They had often escaped detection and punishment, thanks to my keen hearing.
Sighing loudly, I projected a light, clear, feminine voice. “I’m so confused. We didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t even know what happened. The last thing I remember was being by the river on our way to Summer’s house, picking those pretty violet flowers, and then we woke up here. Do you remember that awful feeling of falling? I just wish I knew where we are.”
Sera played along. “I wouldn’t describe it as falling. Being turned inside out was closer to what I felt. I thought I was going to be sick. Honestly, I just want to cry. I miss everyone. Why won’t they just let us go home?”
We continued in this vein for a few minutes, creating the illusion that we were two helpless girls. Dropping my head to one side, I paused and listened as the footsteps quietly moved away. “He is gone. We are alone.”
“Surveillance?”
We searched the cell thoroughly and as much of the outside passage as possible in the dim light, but nothing looked like a camera.
“Do you remember when Mum forced us to clean out all the aquaponics tanks because we broke into the med center to read our files?”
“How could I forget?”
“Or the time we had to clean all the windows in Roseglen because we ran away from school?”
“Hmm.”
“This is worse.”
