Jenna Black - Resistance

But it might as well have been a prison cell as far as Nadia was concerned. Unlike at Tranquility, there were quite a number of rules here, so many that there was a booklet on her nightstand documenting them all. There was an eleven o’clock curfew, for one thing, and the staff checked each and every room to make sure that the inmates were accounted for. You needed a key card to open the doors at either end of the dormitory hall, and wherever you went, you had to check in and have your key card scanned. There were security cameras everywhere except inside the rooms themselves. You couldn’t take a step without being tracked and observed. And instead of having visiting hours twice a week, there was only one visiting day each month, and Nadia had just missed it.

It would be a month before Nadia could set eyes on any of her loved ones again. A month before she had any chance to warn Gerri away from the recordings. And forget about seeing Dante. There was no way an Employee would be allowed to visit her, at least not without her parents’ permission, which he’d never ask for and they’d never give. She was miserably, utterly, and truly alone.

And so she cried for everything she had lost, and she cried in fear for Gerri, and she cried because there was no one around to tell her she shouldn’t.

Nadiadoubted she got more than an hour or two of sleep on her first night at the Preston Sanctuary. The crying jag had exhausted her, and yet she was too worried about Gerri—and about her own bleak future locked away from public view—to fall asleep.

She rose from her bed shortly after the sun came up and tried to interest herself in one of the classic old novels on her prestocked bookshelf. She sampled four or five of them before she came to the inevitable conclusion that in her current state of mind, nothing was going to hold her attention. She felt so awful that she skipped breakfast, making do with a cup of tea and spending the morning in her room with the door closed.

By lunchtime, her stomach informed her in no uncertain terms that she had to eat, so she dressed and showered and headed down to the main dining room. There were several long tables in the center of the dining room, where the more sociable of the Sanctuary’s inmates could gather and share whatever camaraderie and gossip was available for people who had no lives, but there were also tables for two and four dotting the edges of the room. Nadia stood in the doorway for a long moment, trying to decide where to sit.

As her mother had promised, there were a handful of teens among the inmates of the Sanctuary, and Nadia quickly spotted them, clustered together at one end of one of the long tables. Of course, they were all Executives, so even if they hadn’t been seen in polite society in recent months or years, Nadia knew who they all were. There was Theresa Mallory, who was rumored to have a nasty habit of sleeping with the help—and then accusing them of rape when she got tired of them. There was Piper Cade, who was so jealous of her little brother that she’d pushed the boy down the stairs and practically killed him. That wasn’t a rumor; Nadia had been at the party where the “accident” had occurred, and though she hadn’t seen what happened, she had seen the self-satisfied look on Piper’s face while the paramedics strapped her brother to a gurney to rush him to the hospital. And last, there was Sydney Sullivan, who was rumored to be mentally ill. Nadia had never met the girl in person—Sydney had been sent to the retreat years ago—but if the company she kept was any indication, Nadia was just as happy to keep it that way.

Ignoring her supposed “peers,” Nadia chose a two-person table in the corner, her stomach tying itself in knots. Tranquility had been bad enough, but at least there hadn’t been any psychos like Theresa and Piper there. Not that she knew of, anyway. She wondered how long it would take them to notice her and start trying to make her life more miserable than it already was. They were bound to be as aggressively jealous of her as the Terrible Trio, and because they were out of the public eye, there were no rules of polite society to keep their behavior in check.

Nadia was so busy chewing her lip, worrying over this new potential problem, that she didn’t notice the older woman approaching until she pulled back the second chair at Nadia’s table and sat down without an invitation.

“You don’t have to worry about them,” the woman said as she snatched the elaborately folded napkin from her plate and smoothed it over her lap. “The staff here keep a very close eye on everyone, but particularly the known troublemakers.”

The woman smiled at her, creating crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out her hand for Nadia to shake, “I’ve been here so long I’ve forgotten my manners. I’m Athena Lawrence.”

“Um, pleased to meet you,” Nadia said, wondering if her own manners would disappear after she’d spent a few years here. “I’m Nadia Lake.”

“I know,” Athena said, giving her hand a mannishly hard squeeze as she shook.

“You do?” Nadia guessed Athena’s age to be mid to late forties. Nadia had never heard of her, and that meant whatever scandal had sent her to the retreat happened long ago, before Nadia’s time. Which meant Athena shouldn’t know who she was.

Athena nodded, and her smile turned sad. “Ellie Hayes was my dearest friend for many years. I wasn’t allowed to officially attend the funeral, but there were a couple of us who watched from one of the windows. I saw you with Ellie’s son and made an educated guess about who you might be. You and Nathaniel were already promised to one another before I came to the Sanctuary.”

Nadia wasn’t sure what to say, especially when Athena’s eyes misted with tears. The woman had done more than watch the funeral from a window if she had seen Nate and Nadia together. They had been indoors when they’d talked, and Nadia certainly hadn’t been aware they were being observed.

“Apologies again,” Athena said, dabbing at her eyes. “I’m afraid I was spying a bit. I hoped to find a way to have a word with Nathaniel before he left, but my keepers here found me out before I could.”

Nadia was intrigued despite herself, curiosity making her feel slightly more alive—and hungry. When a waitress came to the table, Nadia ignored the haute cuisine choices on the menu and went for a bacon cheeseburger instead. She had never eaten something so inelegant in public before, not wanting to see pictures of herself with her mouth hugely open and grease on her fingers plastered on the net, but if she had to be trapped at the retreat, the least she could do was eat what she wanted. Hell, it didn’t even matter if she got fat.

“Why were you hoping to talk to him?” Nadia asked as soon as the waitress moved away.

Athena’s blue eyes narrowed shrewdly as she regarded Nadia, her head cocked slightly to the side. “Do you mind me asking what your relationship is with Nathaniel these days? I don’t suppose we’d be having this conversation if you were still his intended.”

Nadia held her chin a little higher. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about her troubles with a total stranger. Even if that stranger had intrigued her. “Forgive me for being blunt, but that doesn’t seem to be any of your business.”

If Nadia had said something that blunt to an Executive out in society, the reaction would have been one of affront. There were subtle ways of avoiding conversation that were much more elegant and decorous, but she was done with being elegant and decorous. She reached for her glass of ice water, taking a drink to stop herself from apologizing.