Page 44 of The Captive Missing

Between the move into the dorm and the visit from Mandy, it was too much change. Too many new faces and things to take in. Val stopped at the table with the bottles of water. Twisting off a cap, she held the liquid to her lips and gulped it down. The water felt soothing as it coated her throat and wound around the inside of her belly. Quietly, Amber crept up beside her and did the same.

“When’s your lunch?” She asked.

“Eleven.”

“Mine, too.” Amber glanced at the clock. “We don’t have time for a shower.”

Val nodded her head in acceptance. If you don’t make the time, then you don’t eat. And if you want a hot shower, then too bad because the water here runs cold. And if you want another blanket, or an extra pillow, or a window, or any control whatsoever, then the answer is no. You just better give that idea up right away. There’s no room at Cambric for choices. There’s no room at Cambric for thinking or feeling.

As Val followed Amber out the door, she fought a constricting sort of panic that threatened to overtake all the air in her chest. This was her forever. It was where she was born and where she would die.

And to survive the in between, she was going to have to learn not to feel it. She had been that way before and without a doubt she could do it again. She could last.

Because at least in all her wasted years of freedom, she had done one thing right. Jace. Her Jace would never, ever see this.

Chapter 15

He was running down a wooden dock. Dark ocean water surrounded them. It was still as still could be.

Stop, baby. Just wait. Val called out but Jace didn’t look back. He wouldn’t listen. Then she was chasing him. Running as hard and as fast as she could. He was just ahead of her. Until he wasn’t.

Skidding to a stop at the end of the lone dock, Val looked frantically down into the water. There wasn’t a ripple. Not a splash. But somehow, she knew he was under there. Suffocating. Drowning.

Coming awake, Val sprang to her feet. Her covers were all tangled around her legs, causing her to fall to the floor. It was everything she could do not to scream. On her hands and knees in the dark, Val sucked in oxygen until her head swirled and she passed out.

When she woke in the morning, it was to the customary beep of the automatic alarm. She was still on the floor. Her back ached and her hip felt bruised. Since she had stopped taking the pill issued to her, sleep was once again hard to come by. Shutting her eyes, Val would toss and turn for what felt like forever. Then pushing up to sit in the dark, she would rub at her temples.

Eventually sleep would come for her but even then she found no rest in it. The hours that unconsciousness took her were spent twisting inside larger than life dreams. They were so vivid without the meds to erase them. It all felt too real.

Groaning now, Val pushed up to standing and braced herself against her desk. Without much thought, she swiped her finger over the black surface. What she saw there had her doing a double-take.

Rubbing her hand over her face, she stared. She had an appointment for nine a.m. Frowning, Val read through a few sentences that accompanied the booking. She must report to Room 115 having been freshly showered, though her hair need not be dry. Taking a step back, Val leaned against her bed, hands tingling with nerves. That was a prep room, she knew it well.

Closing her eyes, Val tilted her head back and worked to tamp down on the flood of feeling. Since stopping the medication, her emotions had come charging back and often threatened to give her away. She couldn’t let them catch her crying, or shaking in fear, or having any other type of outburst.

Inhaling, Val held her breath and fought to replace her rampant thoughts with a serene inner screen of gray. Maybe that’s why it was Cambric’s color of choice. The lack of color and the lack of feeling combined into a welcome nothingness.

An hour later, Val listened to Amber talk over breakfast. The cafeteria was bustling with its first phase of captives, so the tables were crowded with bodies and sound. Sitting across from one another on the far end of a packed bench, Amber assured her that the dreams were only withdrawals from the drug. Everyone who avoided the meds experienced it for a few days, up to a week at the most.

Val poked at her scrambled eggs and hoped that her friend was right. Half of the captives at Cambric were prescribed medication in some form. Either they treated you for depression, gave you pills to help you relax, or gave you drugs to make you lose all inhibition. The last category was what Bee had been hooked on. The uppers that made you want to party all night long were used widely, but in very strict amounts. You only got them before seeing clients.

Stopping medication the way Val was doing was not a choice that Cambric allowed its captives to make. If you wanted to get off the drugs, then you had to pretend to take them and later dispose of the pills. This task was a lot more difficult depending on where you were housed and what guard oversaw your dosing. In Isolation, it was nearly impossible to pull off, but up in the quiet halls of monthly subscription things were a lot more lax.

The morning guard walked the hall, handing out pills, but he didn’t bother to check if you swallowed them before moving on to the next captive. Val hid her pills under her mattress, as instructed by Amber. Later, another captive would come around and collect them all. He or she would trade them for extra food or favors on the floors far below, where pills of any sort were in high demand.

Val didn’t know which captive was the one dealing and frankly she didn’t want to know. If that captive were ever caught, then it would look better for Val to seem truly surprised. The word on everyone’s lips would suddenly be deny, deny, deny.

“So, they’ve booked me into Room 115,” Val said, glancing up at the clock on the wall.

“Prep?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have any idea what for?”

“No.”

“Maybe they’ve booked you a client, finally.” Amber was unperturbed, for her this was a weekly occurrence.

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