The Millstone

CHAPTER TWO: "THE FURNACE"

Bennett and his companions, both groups of captives who'd been working in this area of the ward, were in the "waiting place". That's what he called it, anyway. Places of transition – doorways, halls, stairwells – never felt like real places to him. Time stood still here, not in the way it stood still for the prisoners but in the way it stands still when one is in line for the train.

"How much longer, you think?" Osric asked. They'd been in the waiting room for hours.

"We could ask," Bennett suggested. In the past few days, he'd become more and more willing to speak to his captors rather than follow them dumbly in silence. At least, he figured, nobody could call him an idiot if he was helplessly led to his death this way.

Osric shook his head. "This is clearly a test of some kind. I mean, how long can it possibly take just to clean out a room?"

The three people in Dr. Stringer's group – Byron, Buck, and Clarke (Christina) – seemed to share every one of their afflictions. They couldn't remember where they'd come from either, or what they'd done to get thrown in here. Once, during lunch hour, he'd gotten the nerve to speak to Christina face to face. She was utterly clueless. Either that, or she was merely pretending not to recognize him. He chose to believe the latter not because it was more likely but because it made him feel better.

And, really, what sense was there to any of this? Why in the world would the State hire criminals to work in a prison? And why had he convinced himself without a single shadow of a doubt that he'd spoken with Christina before? He had to have been imagining things. Then again, the line between fantasy and reality had blurred itself beyond recognition as of late.

A knock came on the door, and Bennett was struck by how similar it sounded to the knock of Dr. Abraham the first day he'd come to visit them in their private quarters. When the door swung open, a petite little nurse came into view, her hair neatly arranged. It was quite confounding, he realized, to think that every sort of person has the same knock: the child, the mother, the movie star, the beggar, the traitor, the most loyal soldier of the World State. Only once the door was opened could one tell who had come to see them.

"Follow me, please," the nurse said, her voice clinically smooth from years of work.

Unlike last time, Bennett hung at the back of the group as they shuffled into the hallway. Christina was a slow walker, and he wanted to talk to her again.

"I already told you," she muttered. "I've never seen you before. Not since last week."

He knew she was lying. He contemplated accusing her out loud, but that would never work. Not only would he be openly declaring his possible insanity, it would most definitely come off as rude. He had no idea where he could be deferred for bad behavior, but it couldn't be good.

Anyway, breaking the rules at all when the surgery room was so close wasn't a good idea.

"It's so dark here," Christina said. She opened her mouth, presumably to elaborate, but there was a flicker of fear in her eyes and she fell silent. "I remember what it feels like, to be under the sun," she said at last.

That was right. It'd been so long since he'd felt the sun that he couldn't even remember the sensation of its burning kiss. Those memories – along with the memories of his family and his past – seemed to have been artificially removed. He considered asking Christina if she felt the same way, but decided against it. Something told him he wasn't supposed to know what the State had done to him when it had taken him under its captivity. Speaking out would get him nowhere.

A prisoner – a victim of the Stretching – came wheeling down the hallway, pushed by a pair of doctors. In the split second they crossed paths, Bennett observed the man in the hospital bed as carefully as he could: the hazy disorder in his eyes, his broken-out complexion, the way his fingers and toes quivered under the blanket.