“Not your type, huh? Not like your boy Ryan?”
“Don’t talk about him.” I say quietly.
“Why not?”
“I don’t like to talk about him.”
I don’t like to think about him. Not in here. My memories of whatever it was we had, whatever was starting between us, are starting to fade and distort. He’s on the outside living free and wild with the Lost Boys and the part of me that I imagined with him feels far and faint right now. As though it’s ceasing to exist. As though maybe it never did.
“Will he look for you?” Vin asks softly, his usual careless bravado shelved for a brief moment.
I shrug, watching the screen fixedly. There’s a guy talking to a girl on the busy streets of a large city. He reaches up to push a lock of her hair behind her ear. She beams up at him like an idiot, like that small, simple gesture means the world to her.
“I doubt it.”
“If he went missing would you look for him?”
Rain begins to fall. The guy pulls out an umbrella to cover her but she pushes it aside. They’re drenched in an instant, both of them a mess. They kiss.
I feel the pang in my chest again.
I nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”
Two nights later I visit Nats at her newly assigned work station. She’s in the maintenance room, the place that impresses and intimidates me most. I think it’s because of the dull hum of electricity, something I’ve nearly forgotten about. That of all things here feels the strangest to me. Functioning lights that go on and off with the flick of a switch. Power readily available at your fingertips whenever you need it. It was such a huge part of my life before the world ended, one I never actually thought about, and to have it back is almost unnerving. It’s like an old friend you thought was long dead is back and insisting they’re alive. I don’t trust it.
Nats is thriving here in this room. She’s working with just one other person on her shift. When I sit down across from her at the table where she works, I think I hear him snoring. His head is on his folded arms resting on a desk. He didn’t move when I enter the room.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I ask, perching in front of her.
“Good.” she says distractedly, making notations on a chart and frowning.
“Something wrong?”
She purses her lips, then tosses the pen aside. “No, not really. I was just noticing how inefficiently they’re using the power here. If they’d divert it from some sections to others at regular intervals, moving with the shifts, it would make so much more sense. They need to create dead zones, yanking the power entirely from areas like the dorms. Someone is always sleeping, why do you need power flowing there? If you need light, use candles. And the useless bathrooms. You can’t flush the toilet but you can turn on the light. Why? It’s ridiculous.”
I lean forward to look at the chart in front of her. It’s gibberish to me. Confusing, foreign language, Greek gibberish.
“You got that from looking at this chart?”
“Yeah, it’s all here, plain as day but none of them want to see it.” she grumbles.
I shake my head. “Scary as the thought may be, I’m with them. You’re a genius, Nats, cause this all means nothing to me.”
“Just below, actually.”
“What?”
“Just below a genius.” she says casually. “At least by the standards set before. Now I’m considered a moron because I can’t skin a cat and cook it for dinner.”
I smile at her. “It’s an acquired skill. What did you do for a living before the world fell apart?”
She shakes her head, standing up and gesturing for me to do the same. “That doesn’t matter now, it’s in the past.”
I follow her as the takes up the clipboard and begins her rounds. “You don’t like to think about it?”
“There’s no sense in thinking about it.”
“Ok.” I say, dropping the topic. I don’t like talking about life before either so fair enough.
She sniffs the air around me. “Do they have you in the kitchens now?”
“How’d you know?”
Nats smiles. “You smell good. Like pumpkins.”
I nod. “I was canning. They do a lot of canning in there.”
“Did you know how to do that before?”
“No.” I scoff. “Do you know how?”
“Yep, but I’m from a different generation. Do you like it in the kitchen?”
I shrug as I step closer to one of the generators. There’s a discoloration on the side like rust. I run my finger down it. “It’s alright. Better than the gardens.”
“But you don’t like it?”
“I don’t hate it.”
She looks where I’m touching the generator and frowns. “Make friends in there.”
I straighten up, scowling at her. “Why?”
“Because something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” she tells me, her voice dropping low. “I promise you not everyone is happy to be here.”
“Really?” I ask, shocked. They all seem so… brainwashed. “How do you know?”
She gestures silently over her shoulder toward the sleeping guy and mouths the words Not happy.
I look over my shoulder at her co-worker but he’s still out cold. I turn to ask Nats who else isn’t happy but I catch her frowning at the generator again.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know.” she mutters. She reaches out to touch the discoloration. “It looks like rust but I don’t think it is. The pattern is all wrong.”
“Could be blood.” I say offhand.
She looks at me sharply. “Do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. Looks like it. If it is, it’s old.”
“They said this facility wasn’t that old. They haven’t been here very long.” she mutters to herself.
“This thing had to come from somewhere else. It was probably salvaged from an old building. Maybe the blood got on it there.”
“Maybe.” she says, still frowning.
There’s a snort from the guy on the desk and Nats steps back, her entire demeanor changing. She’s suddenly light and happy.
“Where’s Vin tonight?” she asks loud and clear.
I roll my eyes. “With Caroline.”
“He’s working that angle hard, isn’t he?” she says, shaking her head.
“Does he really do it to get information out of her or is he doing it—“
“You mean doing her.” Nats says with a smirk.
“Sick. Is he doing it just because he can? Or to show he can?”
“Oh, honey,” she laughs. “He knows he can. Have you seen Vin? Just because you have your heart and panties all knotted up over some boy on the outside, it doesn’t mean Vin isn’t a show stopper.”
“He told you about that?”
“He tells me about everything. And here’s my take on what he’s doing with Caroline. It’s a power trip. He’s spent his entire life, even his life before this one, under someone else’s rule. Out there in the wild he can’t do much about that. He’s risen as high as he’s gonna go and he knows it. But in here he has options. And I think that’s what he’s doing with Caroline. He’s exerting power and control. He’s in charge with her and he likes it. Sort of his way of literally stickin’ it to the man.”
“What was he before?” I ask, trying to shake away the imagery that phrase is attempting to force into my mind.
“He was you.” she says, matter of fact. “And that’s why he likes you so much.”
“What do you mean he was me? Ten years ago nobody was living like I do.”
“Vin was. He was a kid your age from the wrong side of town living almost exactly as you do now. A runaway alone, trying to avoid becoming affiliated with a gang and scraping out a life for himself. And he wanted more, just like you.”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted more.” I say softly, feeling embarrassed somehow. “I think I’ve always just wanted to keep what I had.”