Suddenly, the door to the office opens and Charlotte stiffens, half convinced her leg will buck out on its own and knock the boards out of place. She can see a narrow slice of the room through a seam. One of the attendants is there. He looks around the room, even going so far as to glance into the knee well under the desk. After a moment, he looks toward the open door and shakes his head at someone Charlotte can’t see.
They’re looking for her. She knows it like she knows her own name. Something has gone wrong. Maybe they found out about Rick. Maybe they discovered her mother’s plan to escape.
Behind her in the tack room, she hears the door open. No one calls out, but the quiet footsteps of someone walking around the room sends shivers up her spine. They aren’t hurried steps and no one calls out. It’s utterly quiet and calm, which is even more frightening.
She can’t turn and look into the tack room, but eventually, she hears the person cross the room again, then say to someone, “Not here either. Are you sure she didn’t go back to her module?”
The voice that answers is too low for Charlotte to identify in any way except that it’s male. The words themselves are lost, but the answer is short and had the cadence of someone saying, “No.”
Charlotte feels like she can’t get enough air into her lungs, and without the medication that’s kept her calm circulating her bloodstream, she can feel the panic rising too. Panic is not good. Being trapped is not good. She may not be able to see the sky here inside this wall, but she could die all the same. She closes her eyes and breathes slowly, searching for calm.
After a few minutes, footsteps sound out again. When she opens her eyes, her mother is being escorted into the room. She looks angry, but composed. A doctor stands next to her. He watches her with calm attention.
The attendant nods at the doctor, then says, “I’m going to help search. You okay here with her?”
The doctor smiles and says, “We’ll be fine.”
As soon as the attendant is gone, Tabitha says, “We don’t want to leave. Why is that so hard to understand? And why would you say we could stay and then suddenly change your mind and not warn us?”
The doctor looks completely unperturbed by the questions or the tone. He says, “This was never meant to be a permanent home. It’s a temporary shelter, not a home. Everyone here needs to move on to something more stable.”
Her mother’s lips twitch up in something close to a sneer. “More permanent, yes. I know what that means.”
The doctor’s eyes flash at those words. He obviously didn’t know that Tabitha knew what happened when women left this place. He tries to play it off. “I’m sure the town is quite pleasant.”
What she said before about them leaving had been meant for Charlotte’s ears. She’s sure of that. She was telling Charlotte to remain hidden because they were being transported, and for her, that probably means a life support pod and continuous pregnancy until her comatose body gave out.
Her mother isn’t going to let the doctor’s untruths slide. “I know what you’re doing to us, or to the younger ones anyway. What do they do with ones like me? Pump us full of hormones and implant leftover embryos? I’m betting that’s it.”
The doctor swallows and looks nervous. He glances out the open door quickly. He still gives deflection a try and says, “Such rumors are always spread by the disaffected. You shouldn’t believe them.”
His hand moves very subtly toward his pocket. Charlotte looks at her mother, but she can tell Tabitha isn’t seeing it. What’s he going for? The bulge in his jacket pocket is too small to be a radio. If she had to bet, Charlotte would guess it’s a sedative. They always have sedatives on hand.
Her mother obviously isn’t seeing the slow progress of the doctor’s hand, because she keeps talking and doesn’t move out of range. “Then why are the photos of the town all fake? Why are all the blog posts faked? Why so many lies if the truth isn’t terrible?”
The doctor’s fingers dip into his pocket and Charlotte knows that if she doesn’t do something, then her mother is going to be unconscious and gone, never to be seen again. And they’ll find Charlotte eventually. Without her mother, she has no way to leave, no way to keep hiding for the days it might take to find a way out of the camp, let alone find someplace beyond the camp that’s safe. She can’t stay inside a wall forever.
There’s no more time for thought.
Charlotte kicks the boards away from the wall with such force that they crash into the desk. The doctor jumps, and as he does, the injector flies away from his hand. As Charlotte dips to leave the wall, her mother must finally see it, because when she straightens, her mother is kicking the injector to the corner of the room.
The doctor moves to shout, but Tabitha leaps on him, pressing her palm over his mouth and nose while one arm grips his neck and pulls him close. Decades of horse and farm work have made Tabitha strong, and she has a death grip on the small man. The hand of the arm she has around his neck finds the crook of her other elbow and braces there. This is a killing hold. The pressure on the doctor’s face and around his neck is magnified by that additional leverage. He tries to pull her fingers away, his eyes showing his panic.
It doesn’t take long before his feet are shuffling madly on the floor. He can’t breathe, but Tabitha doesn’t loosen her hold or look away. Instead, she grunts and pulls him to her even more
