Fadeout

Chapter 6: Silas

Silas’ heart stopped at the sound. They were going to kill her and he couldn’t move. Tymas and Hugle ran over to the girls ward hallway, but one of the girls’ guards stood in their way and made them use the boys ward hallway entrance to the control room instead. Malina continued to scream and heavy objects crashed to the floor.

All of the kids stared around, but no one moved out of line.

“Noo, let go!” Malina shrieked.

Silas saw one of the Faan ladies pulling on Malina’s legs and then suddenly Malina went limp. They dragged her out and carried her away. Silas felt his knees shaking and the pit of his stomach ached like it had swallowed five whole walnut shells.

“All right, time to move,” Tymas said.

Somehow, when it was Silas’ turn to move, his feet managed to step and hold his weight. He tried not to think about what they might be doing to Malina. As he entered the boys ward he saw Hugle walk up to Westminster.

“What was that all about?” Hugle asked.

Westminster shrugged. “Hormones?”

Silas wanted to ask what they were going to do to her, but Carillians didn’t ask questions. His interest in her would be recorded and could cause more trouble for them in the future. Still, walking into his cell and listening to the door click shut was like having a wet towel pressed on his face.

He plopped on his bed and screamed silently into his pillow. Something soft tickled his ear and when he let himself up he saw that it was a new stuffed lion. Next to it was a plush stuffed polar bear. They had switched out his toys. He picked them both up and hurled them to the other side of the room.

“Careful,” Patton said. “Do you want them to not bring you toys?”

“I’m too old for stuffed animals,” Silas muttered. He’d never enjoyed the stuffed toys he was given every few weeks. On the first day Silas arrived, he was shown to a large room filled with more stuff than he had thought existed before. They left him alone and must have had cameras watching because all Silas did was stare between this giant stuffed white lion and a large toy brown bear. He saw them and thought they were alive, but they weren’t. When he arrived in his first cell, there was stuffed bear lying on his bed.

Patton always received books and was normally kind enough to let Silas read them too after he was done. It was one of the first privileges that were threatened to be taken away for bad behavior.

“Have you ever heard of locking your emotions?” Silas asked.

The top bunk creaked. Patton was quiet for a bit and then he said, “Yeah.”

“How do you do it?”

“I think you can’t do it until you’ve reached emotional puberty or something, because it can only be created by the strongest emotion you’ve ever had.”

“Can it work for everyone?”

“I don’t know. You remember Ginger?”

Silas nodded. They took her while everyone was in the yard. She must have known they were there for her because she ran over to one of the older boys and kissed him. Then they dragged her away with tears streaming down her face.

“She was trying to lock her emotions away, but either she didn’t do it right, or it didn’t work. I saw her afterwards. Her eyes were dead. They got everything.”

Silas wasn’t surprised. He remembered the Machine running for six hours that day. The lights kept dimming and then blazing. All he could think about was the images from his first encounter with the Machine. He had huddled in his bed wishing for the lights to go back to normal.