Eugenia part 41

Read part 40 here!

It was a five hour drive before the bus pulled off at an unmarked exit. “Probably a Reg community.” Decklan explained. “There are some places that politicians let Regs live uninhibited by society. As long as they keep to their land and don’t make too much of a fuss, they’re allowed to grow their own crops and stuff.”

Luke and I exchanged a look. “So how does a Reg apply for a place in one of these communities?” He asked, honestly curious.

“Usually, when there are too many Regs working in one job and their… boss is too lazy to find other occupations for his employees. So he gives them directions to the nearest community and shreds their employment papers so he doesn’t have to explain himself.”

“Does that happen often?”

“It used to happen a lot more, apparently. But then they worked out some system that kept too many Regs from entering the workplace-oh.”

If it wasn’t such a horrible revelation, I would have chuckled at the way Decklan was taken off guard. “You know what the worst part is?” I asked instead. The boys glanced back at me from the front seats. “The secondary tests were created before Bluff took office. So he’s not the only sick bastard out there.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Luke admitted, watching the road carefully. We’d had to drop back a mile or so, because there was no one else on this road, and we’d come too far to get caught now.

We drove the next couple miles in silence, going over what we’d gotten ourselves into. When the phone we were using vibrated in the cup holder in front of me, the three of us nearly jumped out of the car. Decklan swerved violently before getting the car back under control.

“Hello?” I gasped, trying not to laugh.

“Hey Meg. It’s Jon. We’re at the work camp.”

“And?”

“And we have more pictures of people beating children than there exist pictures of the Holocaust.”

I put the phone on speaker, no longer in the laughing mood. “Good job. We just got off at an unmarked exit -Decklan thinks it’s used as a Reg community.”

“Ok. Which direction did you guys end up going? West?”

“Yeah. Into Utah.”

“We’ll start making our way to you, then. Call us when you’ve got more info.”

“The exit we passed before getting off the highway was called Richfield, I think. Want to meet there?”

“Sounds good. See you in a few hours.”

The bus we were following was coming to the end of it’s drive. There was a small thicket of trees right before it turned off onto a short dirt road where we pulled off. Grabbing our packs, we walked the rest of the way.

The facility we ended up at was vast- like fifteen of the scrapping facilities put together and flattened out. It was metal and square, with low walls and a flat metal roof. It looked almost like a containment facility.

“What the hell-?”

“Shut up. Let’s find the bus.” I whispered, suddenly tense.

The boys nodded silently and followed me around the other side of the building, where we spotted the bus. The kids being unloaded had black Xs on their hands.

As the bus drove away, Luke threw a rock in the door to keep it from closing. I raised my eyebrows at him, but his only explanation was a shrug. There were no cameras, so we shoved our way through the door without bothering to keep our heads down.

The sound of footsteps echoed to the right of us, but I shook my head at Luke as he started to follow. I had a feeling they weren’t going to where we needed to be.

We broke off to the left of a long metal corridor, walking slowly and quietly. It was dark, so I grabbed both of their hands to stay together. They both squeezed simultaneously as I pulled them forwards.

When we turned a corner, there was a longer straight corridor full of doors. Each door, unlike the doors where Bluff had kept me for torturing, had a small window. As the shortest, although admittedly not by much, I crept to the first window and peeked inside. Whatever I was expecting, it was not what I saw.

There were four teenagers, probably about fifteen years old, in four chairs around the room. I couldn’t discern their genders, as all of them were bald and wearing rags. The one closest to me had eyes swollen shut. As I watched them, their chests rose and fell too quickly, and I watched coughs ripping through their throats. They had scabs on almost every surface of their bodies, and I could see where the chains that held them down had chafed. They were a sickly pale yellow bunch, and looked like they hadn’t seen the sun since their capture.

I pivoted 180 degrees and slid down the door, sitting down hard on the metal floor and putting my head between my knees. This was not what I’d signed up for.

Looking concerned, Luke and Decklan took peeks, and soon they were sitting on either side of me in the exact same positions.

“I… I know what this is.” Decklan whispered hoarsely, looking physically ill. I looked at him with dead eyes. “Do you remember when you first met our little group of conspirators? Before Ian betrayed us?” Nodding, I waited for him to continue. “As we were leaving, Lorena was rattling off about this new drug that Bluff had funded that made you immune to heart disease. We had biology together, and that’s why she was unwilling at first to believe Bluff was behind, or at least in support, of the whole FF fiasco. Because he was funding research that saved lives more efficiently than anything before. But he never revealed where this research was taking place and he never…” Decklan paused to choke back a dry heave, “he never revealed what research had been done. The drugs worked so no one asked questions.”

I was shaking my head before Decklan finished talking, breathing in and out slowly to keep my heart under control. Adrenaline was bursting through my veins. “We have to do something. We have to get them out of here…”

Decklan grabbed my forearm as I reached for the handle of the door. “Meg, we are doing something. We’re making sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else ever again. But we can’t get them out of there.” I tried to wrench my arm out of his grip, but he held fast. “Listen to me, Meg. We can’t. You saw them. They probably can’t even move. They’ll be dead in a week, maybe two. They’re infected, and if we take them outside of that room, we will be too.”

“He’s right, Meg.” Luke said, in a voice so quiet I almost missed it. He still hadn’t taken his head from between his legs. “Get some pictures and let’s move on.”

And so we did. Decklan held my hand tightly as we walked through the halls, making sure to get a picture from within every single room. There was only one researcher in a lab coat for the entire hall, who was oblivious to us inside one of the rooms, so I assumed the rest were evaluating their new guinea pigs. The thought made me sick, so I pushed it away and concentrated on the warmth of Decklan’s hand clutched around mine. Luke hadn’t spoken since he’d agreed with Decklan about not attempting a rescue.

There were probably a hundred more hallways snaking around the facility, but we stopped at five. Decklan made the executive decision to leave, but there was one more room, with a window more warmly lighted, that was calling out to me from the next hallway over. “I just feel like… like there’s something we’re missing.” I muttered, thinking back to when Julie had told us about this third test. We started forward, but two steps in Luke jerked us back around the corner.

“Someone’s coming.” He hissed.

We stood, backs against the wall, waiting. I heard the footsteps too, and was glad that Luke was not so emotionally compromised to warn us about things like this. Voices soon echoed towards us.

“…need some privacy?” Someone was saying. Another someone- a young girl, I wagered- wimpered.

“I’d love some. We really need to do something about that window.” This was a voice the three of us recognized at the same time.

“Bluff.” Decklan growled under his breath, clenching his fists. I couldn’t even reprimand him, I was shaking so badly.

“there was a man too. He didn’t do any of the testing, just stared greedily.” Julie had said when we asked her about the third test.

“Greedily?”

“Yeah. I heard him mutter ‘blonde’ under his breath as they left. Maybe that’s why I didn’t pass?”

Julie didn’t know what Senator Bluff looked like at the time. Possibilities raced through my mind so quickly with such awful force that I had to squeeze my eyes shut.

A door clanked shut, and Bluff’s voice was cut off. A pair of footsteps retreated back to where they’d come from. I waited for a minute before stepping around the corner again.

“Meg…” Luke started, seeing the look on my face. “I think it’s better if you…” Decklan wasn’t looking at us, sickened eyes staring at the floor.

“Better if I what, Luke?” I snapped. “Better if I don’t go get proof that will sink Bluff once and for all?”

“We have plenty on him already, Meg.” He begged, cupping his hands around my face. It wasn’t meant to be romantic, but pleading. “He’ll go to jail for the rest of his life and no one will be able to defend the FF system ever again. You don’t have to go see that.”

“If he’s going down,” I stared at Luke. “Then I want him going down for all of it.”

Continued in part 42!

(Holy crap this was a dark chapter. Apologies.)