SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Steell now,” he said before unstrapping the restraint over her chest. “Steell, pleese.”

She nodded and held still, her body rigid, desperate to flee while she forced it to stay in place and wait. Once he undid all her restraints, she could use everything she had to break away from this horrible place. The bright lights still burned her eyesight, and tortured Sualwet eyes gazed at her from behind cage doors.

She would run, find her way to the ocean, and get home. She would tell her father of this horrid place, and he would rise from the sea and avenge all those who had been wronged here. She would marry Adal and have the life she’d always dreamed of, one free from her father’s control. She would forge her own life but heed her father’s warnings more closely now. She’d obey his rules about Erdlanders from now on, even if it meant not returning to the star lilies.

Those beautiful moments of peace beneath the sun and the more rare, sacred nights under the ruby moon—they all seemed so far away.

When Vaughn undid the final strap, she launched off the table and ran toward the door. Her legs were weak, the gravity strong. It felt like the earth was trying to swallow her whole. Since she lived in the Domed City, her muscles were more used to walking than swimming, but the weight of her body never crushed her down like this.

She stumbled and reached out for something to hold onto. The door looked so close, but as she made a final lurch forward, she fell to the ground.

“Don’t,” Vaughn said from behind her. He approached the cage nearest to where she lay, and opened the door. “Een.”

His Sualwet hardly resembled the actual language. He distorted the words with his oversized tongue so much that she barely understood. But when he nodded to the door he held, waiting for her to enter the prison he clearly intended to be her new home, she had no difficulty following his meaning.

“No.” She shook her head and lowered herself to the floor. “Gods, no. Please, let me go!”

He approached, a soft light in his eyes illuminating what she desperately hoped was kindness.

“Een.” He grabbed her ankle and dragged her across the smooth floor until she lay at the entrance.

The tears demanded release. She looked up at him, lifted the membrane covering her eyes, and let the sorrow fall. Tears fell as her dreams of the ruby moon shattered into nothing.

Vaughn crouched and reached for her face. When his hand cupped her cheek, she allowed the contact, hoping to reach any part of him that might choose kindness over imprisonment.

“Please…,” she whispered.

He leaned forward and placed dry, cracked lips against hers. Before she could react, he shoved her into the prison and locked the door.

Nights passed, one after the next. She judged it to be night when Rhine and his minions departed, leaving her and the three other captives to wallow in their grief and filth. At first, she tried to talk to her companions, but they never responded. Either they were too afraid or too broken to bother.

The eldest had dark spots on his head and deep, sallow rings under his eyes. His lips had dried and cracked, and his skin appeared so delicate and thin. Nilafay worried it might crack and all of his insides would gush out.

Her fellow captives said nothing to comfort her whenever she cried. They watched passively whenever Rhine injected her with unknown chemicals or extracted eggs from her body and placed them in Petri dishes or test tubes.

On the sixth night of her imprisonment, the old Sualwet died. His breath no longer joined the rhythmic pulse of their small group, and his heart no longer added to the unified beat.

“Jisquekai,” said the prisoner in the cage next to her, and he began humming a funeral dirge. His voice filled the horrible room, bouncing off the exam table and shelves of torture tools. The specimen jars full of half-formed offspring from the Erdlanders’ experiments rattled, and the singer’s voice rose to a tortured wail.

Nilafay and the other remaining prisoner joined in the song, adding harmonies and discords as they sang. No one slept that night. Instead she and her two living companions mourned the passing of a man who had never deigned to speak to her, even as she sobbed and pleaded for someone to tell her where they were and what the Erdlanders wanted.

As she eventually cried herself to sleep, she held her arms around her middle and wished it was Adal.

The other Sualwets had never spoken to her, and as grief for this unknown prisoner washed over her, she understood why. The depth of her pain at losing him was so immense, so overpowering, it threatened to rip her soul in two. She hadn’t known his name until the other spoke it. She had never even heard his voice except for the times Rhine or Vaughn demanded his response, usually following screams. How much more devastating would her loss have been had he shown her kindness, had they forged a bond between them?

She rocked back and forth in her cell, singing while tears slid down her cheeks. Eventually the prisoner in the adjacent cage came close to the bars separating them and reached his hand through the opening. Together, they sang, holding hands.

In the morning, they continued their song even when Vaughn arrived. He ignored them while setting up the morning’s tortures. When he noticed the body of Jisquekai, he shrugged, opened the cage, and dragged it out. Arms and legs askew, the corpse lay on the floor while Vaughn went to the door and said something to a guard.

The two Erdlanders lifted the body and placed it on the exam table.

When Vaughn stripped the body and picked up a scalpel, the prisoner beside me dropped my hand with a screech and slammed himself against the bars at the front of his cage. He screamed and cursed the Erdlander, but Vaughn ignored him. No doubt he didn’t care. He certainly didn’t understand.

Nilafay watched Vaughn slice open the body which had once contained Jisquekai. She couldn’t look away. There was a tragic lack of bleeding. His heart no longer beat, so his blood lay stagnant in his veins.

Vaughn dissected the man piece by piece, then weighed the organs and jotted notes on a pad. By the time he had finished, Nilafay felt as hollowed out as the dead man.

“Swim strong, Jisque,” she whispered.

Vaughn faced her and smiled, his hands covered in blood, his teeth bared. He made a for gruesome sight.

She backed away, huddling at the back of her cage on the small, worn mattress on the floor.

That night, the prisoner in the cage next to hers sat against the bars, their fingers intertwined as they fell asleep in silence.

Telling time became impossible. The progression of one day into the next never stopped. Rhine and Vaughn never missed a day; they never took a break. The constant march forward toward their goal wore Nilafay down, and she began to wish they would either kill her or succeed in their gruesome task.

Some nights, Vaughn stayed after the others left. He would sit before her cage and speak in his mutilated Sualwet. She would nod and smile, baring her teeth the way the Erdlanders did. Eventually, she found herself unable to tolerate listening to his garbled words any longer, and over time she began correcting his pronunciation.

One night, he told her about his life, his family. He was to be married soon, and Nilafay shared stories of Adal with him. Perhaps if he knew she was to be married too, he might understand and help her. Maybe he would let her go. Instead, he pressed his lips together and left.

Vaughn didn’t return for nine nights.

Nilafay found herself missing his company. As much as she resisted, she enjoyed their conversations. It disgusted her that she had come to rely on his presence. She hated him, hated him more for the things he did when Rhine was around, now that she had begun to believe there was some good in him. He was soft, weak, pliant. And yet, she couldn’t help but wish he’d return.