Amy Hadley 1. "Number Nine"

Chapter 7

The next evening, I tell Hanna everything about what Damon showed me in the warehouses. As I tell her, I'm seriously starting to wonder if he didn't show it to me on purpose and tried to send me a message - a threat? His words "I hope you will get in the line" echo under my head, and I shiver. What if what I took for worry was really mistrust? But why? Why bother threatening me when I am nothing and nobody here.

    Damon has known me from kindergarten, and I know he didn't want to hurt me. So maybe it came from his mother, President Collins herself. She is, to my knowledge, the only person capable of deeply influencing Damon, who devotes a real cult to his mother, and since childhood, does his best to make her proud of him and to be able to live up to the expectations of a president. But why would she want to intimidate me? I am not a rebel, despite what my appearance might suggest. They have nothing to fear from me, and I hope I have nothing to fear from them.

   Hanna agrees with me.

   James keep his promise and comes back to see me every night - still refusing to explain to me how he comes and goes in a fortress like the Global. He never stays long and his night visits always make me feel like a dream.

-       How do you feel? He asks, one night.

His question, although usual, surprises me:

-       Good.

-       Think a little more, and you'll find something else to answer.

I sigh. Despite the freezing cold of the night, I am hot, trapped between him, the wall and the thick curtain:

-       I throw up every morning, but I'm good.

As he continues to watch me, visibly unsatisfied with my answer, I continue, whispering so I'm not waking Hanna up:

-       And I'm far from the score I need to bring my brother in and pay for the surgery.

-       Your brother.

I sigh deeply. If he doesn't already know, it's time for me to tell him. Anyway, everyone here is more or less aware. I never realized, before I came here, how publicized my family story is. General of the Army of the West, cowardly murdered at home, when he had just returned from the front of the war, leaving behind a depressed mother, a diabetic daughter and a burnt alive son – Here is the story of my dear father. I know that my father is known and famous because he was a great soldier who participated in the victory of the New Civil War, but before I came here, I did not know that the story of our family is told everywhere like a tragedy of a station novel.

-       He is one of the great burn victims of the war. I work here to gain enough points so I can buy his transfer to the hospital and his surgery. He needs a skin graft, and the waiting lists are deadly long. The Virus allows him to survive by improving his immune system, but the pain is consuming him. He will die of pain before dying of his burns.

-       It's probably the cruelest death, James whispers.

He takes my hand gently, intertwining his fingers between mine. It's an exceptional night tonight. I take advantage of his contact as long as I still have the right to touch him, without saying a word, and before the electric shocks forces us to pull away again. We are both suffering from very painful idiopathic neuronal excitations provoked by our mutual contact. So, we can't enjoy touching the skin of the other more than a few minutes.

-       And, about these vomiting... He starts.

-       Don't tell me I'm pregnant!

He laughs gently, in response to my muddy joke: