Justice (Chapter Nine)

Chapter Nine
The girl with the hazel eyes and hushed voice woke me with a gentle shake to the shoulder,
“Get up. Breakfast.”
I twisted from my cocoon of hair bed clothes, lifted the tattered curtain and saw that the other girls were already lined up. The Red from yesterday appeared, cuffed us to a long, iron chain and marched us into the black stairwell.
My guardian was behind me. She whispered in my ear, hardly a flutter of a sound,
“Imogen.”
I nodded to acknowledge, but kept my eyes forwards. At least I’d made one point of contact; in here, any ally was a bonus.
The obstinate gloom that over-hung Darkmoor caused my eyes to squint –a reaction that was clearly the result of a night in the windowless fist. A dull, steady rain pattered down as we jerked our way across the lawn, an injured, white centipede slicing across the black façade of the cube.
In the distance, I could make out another flailing insect. The boys. From the length of their column, there seemed to be more of them, maybe twenty, perhaps twenty five? I tried to make out Isaac. Yes, he was the one limping and trailing at the back, his body dragged forwards unwillingly by the momentum of the others.
We lurched our way to Sense’s front door, up steps with razor sharp edges and into a high-ceilinged hallway that was empty apart from a delicate crystal sculpture of a fist resting on a black marble plinth. My group, who had no doubt been through this process before, instinctively veered to the left and I followed their example. We entered a huge hall bisected by a cumbersome marble table and benches. At one end of the hall, a raised dais held another table, this one smaller and made of a vermillion stone I couldn’t identify. It was impossible to see how high the room extended as the only lighting emitted from a series of wall lights only ten feet up from the floor. They burst an icy blue blade of luminosity against the shadows, but were unable to illuminate the cavernous roof I felt was hiding above us.
The room drew my mind to a Viking long hall or a banqueting hall from the fifteenth century – the images merging with flicker shots from films I’d forgotten I’d even watched, back in my old life.
We stood and shivered. Our hands were freed by unseen Reds. I glanced down the table and couldn’t help but notice that the room’s capacity was hardly being taken advantage of. While there were thirty or so parasites, the table held room for at least another hundred.
“Silence.”
No one had been talking. No one had made a sound. The instruction thumped the breath out of each one of us.
The sound of a door opening behind the dais crushed into the hall. I turned my head ever so slightly and caught my first glimpse of Sense’s most able.
Fake Finger strode onto the platform and stood behind a high-backed, deep red chair. I could almost smell her self-righteous confidence travelling in lines via the thin, blue light which was all that stood between us and the darkness. Her face was as tight as a cadaver’s. She scanned the hall with her small eyes and stroked the back of the chair with her ever active prosthetic. She’d seen me. Her smile found me. I pulled my eyes away to see the next admission. Through the door came another Orange – The Fringe. I hadn’t seen her since the interview back at the compound. She carried her lumpy physique toward the table until she stood beside Fake Finger. A duo I could do without.
Next came Shannon. She looked willowy and fragile in that environment. Her blonde hair had been wound into a tight bun and her hands were pushed deep into her orange overalls – no prosthetic display from her, but I knew those pockets were concealing her missing digit. She shuffled towards the table and took her place on the other side of Fake Finger. A trio I could do without. For one mad moment, I nearly laughed as I imagined them as some bizarre Sense version of a nuclear family. Thankfully, my brain over-rode the impulse and the laugh stuttered into a vapid cough. After my three compound friends, an assortment of high ranking Reds, including the one who had beaten Isaac and me yesterday, took their places. There was one chair lacking a custodian, the central chair.
A minute passed. He entered the room- casually. His slight build and greying temples reminded me of a considerate family doctor. For an older man, he was not unattractive. Mum had always referred to him as ‘eye-candy’ in an embarrassing and cringe-worthy way when we’d been forced to sit through one of Sense’s many mandatory T.V broadcasts. With easy grace, he smiled at his colleagues, looked down in our direction, straightened his grey overalls and sat down. It had to be said, he was a benevolent murderer if ever I’d seen one.
His quiet, clipped voice slid into the atmosphere.
“I hear we have some new arrivals; let me take this opportunity to welcome you to Darkmoor. We hope that you will benefit from your stay here. To all assembled in this great hall, I bid you good morning and, in the name of Sense, pray that your re-education programme continues to go from strength to strength.”
On cue, the parasites responded,
“We pray as you do. Long live the glory of Sense.”
“And to you. Be seated.”
Fantastic. The most powerful Grey-coat in the country was here.
We edged onto the marble benches. Again, I looked for Isaac. And I found him. He was seated opposite me, about seven male parasites to my right. He seemed barely able to sit upright. Why did he have to get himself like that? Just looking at his bruises made me ache and I could hardly claim to be the most empathetic person in the world. Hadn’t he heard of the phrase, ‘Beating your head against a brick wall.”? Not that he was any of my concern; he’d have to look after himself in here.
A large, silver ladle appeared over my shoulder. With the flick of a wrist, a gruel-like substance splattered directly onto the marble table top in front of me. I felt my eye-brow rise in alarm and looked around. My fellow parasites had found their cutlery and were tucking in with a relish only seen in those who were on the edge of starvation.
It just so happened that their cutlery turned out to be their tongues.
Each parasite sat on their hands and lapped away at their meagre spill. Their bald heads flipped up and down in a rhythmic pattern like destitute nodding dogs.
The girl next to me started to edge her face towards my own splatter of food. I watch her tongue sweep closer. It took a meaningful crack of my skull against hers to send out the message that I would not be playing the vulnerable new recruit. Hastily, she returned to her own puddle and I started on mine. Message received. Imogen had paused to watch the interchange. When it was over, she nodded her approval. The gruel was made from some form of grain – what exactly I couldn’t tell: it was without flavour and the consistency was similar to Papier Maché. I could hardly bring myself to eat it, but I knew I had to survive this and that meant swallowing every particle.
But then, I smelt bacon. That sweet smell of fried bacon, eggs and toast ran into my hallucinating nasal system and sent my stomach into a twist of longing. Where was it? Who had it? I craned my neck and found the source. Along the dais, they were tucking into a full English breakfast.
The puddles gone, we sat on our benches until the command was given.
“Stand.”
We stood.
“Clara Knight and Isaac Coleman.”
We both looked in the direction of the distinguished grey coat. He smiled as our eyes met.
“Approach.”
The Reds grabbed our arms and pushed us towards the dais. The audience looked on: I looked for Shannon. She stared back as if she had never spoken to me in her life.
“Clara and Isaac. You need to rid yourselves of your old lives as parasites. As the first part of your re-education, you will be cleansed. You will see how Sense will find a use for every little part of you in every single way imaginable. Gone are the days of your useless rebellion and wasteful lives. Today, you are reborn.”
We were positioned on the edge of the dais and pushed down until we were kneeling. Two Reds appeared with cut throat razors glinting under the blue lights.
It takes longer than you’d think when you’ve got, or rather had, hair as thick as mine. By the time they were finished, my scalp was covered in nicks and convex circles of clotted blood. My excreted hair, a folding crest of a wave, curled at my feet.
Isaac’s pile was nothing more than a wisp of short dark splinters. It hardly seemed worth the effort, but Sense just couldn’t get enough of symbolism. Our hair, and with it our old lives, was swept and collected into a hessian sack. Half a sheet maybe? A quarter of a blanket? I wondered if I would be the one to weave it or if, at some point, I’d even sleep under it.
“Clara and Isaac. Now, you begin your real work at Darkmoor. I look forward to supervising your rehabilitation personally.”
His name was Robert Yanis. And he was the most feared man in the country.