Page 55 of Calico Descending

I sit crosslegged on the grass, across from Roz, and split my extra piece of bread in half, offering some to her. So long as it doesn’t appear that I’ve stolen it for her, the guards won’t bother with us. “I need your help, Roz.” Eyes scanning our surroundings, I keep my voice low, so as not to draw the attention of not just the guards, but the girls who’ve been chosen to act as little birds to Doctor Ericsson.

Focused on her bread, she’s shrugs and nods. “Yeah, of course. What do you need?”

In the time I’ve known her, I’ve never asked her for much, in the way of favors. I’ve never needed anything quite as much as I do now.

“Information. Opportunity.”

Brows knitting together, she pauses midchew and lifts her gaze. “For what?”

I lean in a bit more and tear off a small piece of bread. “I want out. With Valdys.”

“Are you crazy? There is no out in this place. Believe me, I’d have found it by now.”

“The supply trucks. I need you to find out when they leave each night.”

“Okay, I’m just going to tell you right now, that’s not a viable option. Supply trucks are checked thoroughly now, after the last subject escaped. They’re heavily guarded in the loading docks.”

Roz has had to transport bodies to the trucks, sometimes. Not the bodies of dead subjects--they go straight to the incinerator—but the bodies of the occasional physician who kicks the bucket in this place, and gets a nice little burial back in Szolen.

Shoving a piece of bread in my mouth, I hesitate to chew. I haven’t had much of an appetite, at all, in the last two days, which is unheard of. “I have to try. They’re going to send Valdys down into the tunnels soon.”

“What tunnels?”

“According to Doctor Tims, there are tunnels beneath the hospital, where early first generation Ragers were kept. He says the antidote to the Dredge is down there, but you have to get past those Ragers first.”

“Jesus.” She shakes her head, feeding a chunk of bread into her mouth. “I can’t even imagine what those fuckers look like,” she says around a mouthfull of food. “This place scares the shit out of me, sometimes. Yesterday? I had take a failed fetus down to the incinerator.” A shiver twitches her body, her eyes staring off, as it she’s looking at it right now. “Didn’t even look human.”

“These things are the most pure, and according to Doctor Tims, they are the most violent of all.”

Huffing through her nose, she looks around, presumably for anyone close by. “I’ll talk to Kenny. See what I can find out.”

“Which … brings me to the opportunity part of my request. When the electricity shuts down, I need Kenny to help with a distraction.” Every night, the hospital powers down to conserve energy for the day. Some departments, like a few of the research labs, run on large generators that also power the cameras and locks for the Alpha Project. “I need him to alter the cameras.”

“Cali ...” She leans forward, her jaw tight with obvious frustration. “Do you even know what you’re asking?” she whispers. “They’ll gut him open and feed him to the Ragers for such a thing. And how do you plan to spring your little prince from his cell? It’ll be locked.”

“Medusa said they were able to switch the computer to recognize her left hand prints. If Kenny can assign me to Valdys’s cell, I can get him out.”

“Kenny, Kenny, Kenny. You realize I’m only giving him occasional blow jobs, right? It’s not like we’re in love, or he has any reason to do these things for me. It’s not like he won’t tell someone about it. I mean, what does he even get out of this? What do I get?”

“Come with us. Both of you. All four of us can get out.”

“And go where? Roam the desert, and get swiped up into a Rager’s nest? Or taken and sold by marauders to be a breeder? I have a decent gig here. Yeah, it’s shitty sometimes. Sucks what they do, but at least I’m not out there, living under rocks to stay hidden.”

“Have you forgotten already, Roz? Have you forgotten those first nights you were here? What they’ve taken from us?” I shake my head, glancing back to where the Ragers pace in the pens behind us. “Out there, we have a choice. In here? We’re animals, pacing in a cage, waiting for the day they call us into the Chop Shop.” That’s the name given to the wing of the hospital where samples of bones and flesh are cut away, bits at a time, for study. Doesn’t take long for those subjects to die off, as they usually carry something that interests the doctors.

Her gaze falls to her lap, and she finishes off the last piece of bread, swallowing it down.

I break off another piece of mine and hand it to her, which she accepts.

“I’m always starving,” she says on a laugh. “Seems like there’s never enough food to take away the hunger.”

Her comment doesn’t require an answer from me. Everyone here is starving, including me.

“I remember the nights when my father would kill a rabbit, or deer. How good it felt in our bellies. How filling. I haven’t felt like that in a long time,” she says, before popping the bread into her mouth. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises, okay?”

With a nod, I set my hand on hers and smile. “Thank you.”

“Do you have any idea how much dick I’m going to have to swallow for this?”

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