The Gender Game by Bella Forrest (historical books to read txt) 📗

Dina, lying on the floor while choking and clutching her throat, blood spilling from her neck and pooling around her.

The door shot open behind me.

A scream erupted. Vera Sykes's scream.

"OH, MY GOD! VIOLET'S KILLED DINA!"

I haven't killed her! I thought to myself in a panic. She's still alive! She just… She just needs to get to the hospital, dammit!

But the amount of blood that was spilling from her throat… As Vera raced away, shrieking for the wardens, I already knew what would happen next.

4

Footsteps pounded outside. Five wardens spilled into the room—Vera and several other girls looming behind them.

I was in a daze, still not believing what had happened. My sodden hands were trembling as two wardens flipped me over and pinned me against the floor. The other three picked up Dina and rushed her out, before dragging me to my feet and pulling me into the hallway after her.

My blood pulsing in my ears, everything around me was a blur. As we approached Josefine's and my room, I managed to catch a glimpse of her terrified face, but they pulled me right past her. They wouldn't bother to stop to collect my things. What use would they be to me now?

We arrived at the stairwell and my feet dragged and tripped as we wound our way down the steps. Reaching the ground floor, we moved through the work room and the reception where Ms. Maddox was sitting. I didn't even get a chance to witness the expression on her face. I was forced forward as the wardens escorted me out of the mill.

We came upon four more wardens here. Two of them raced off around the side of the building, returning in two trucks. Dina was loaded into the back of one, myself into the other. As they slammed the doors shut behind me, I was plunged into darkness — the nightmare replaying over and over in my mind. Those few seconds before Dina's end. My knees thrusting upward. The moistness of her blood. Her choking.

The vehicles trundled down the long track that led to the city, but it sounded like they parted ways as they reached the end — mine split to the right, Dina's to the left. Both headed to different destinations. Very different destinations. I clutched the base of my seat as beads of sweat formed on my upper lip.

The road was bumpy. My elbows and the back of my head banged against the walls, but I could hardly make an effort to hold myself still. It was as though the life had been sucked out of me already. Everything seemed pointless.

I'd imagined this moment a number of times since claiming my first life. I'd imagined this journey, across the bumpy outskirts of Matrus, blending into the smooth roads of the city, where the labs were situated. A small part of me had always known that my anger would get the better of me again.

Closing my eyes, I lost track of time.

Finally, the doors opened, letting in a stream of streetlight. Hands grabbed me and pulled me out and I found myself standing on a sidewalk, my surroundings not what I had expected them to be. I was not outside the labs, but the gates of Frenton, another detention center—the most central to the city. Then I reminded myself that this should not be surprising. It was nighttime and lab technicians didn't work at night. Of course, I would spend the night in a cell and be taken to the labs tomorrow morning.

The wardens led me to the main rectangular gray building and into a reception area where they picked up a set of keys from the woman behind the desk. Then we walked along a hallway before moving down a stairwell, down, down, down, until we reached what had to be the lowermost floor. We arrived at the end of a hallway lined with cells, all empty. They stopped outside the third one on our left and thrust me inside.

After locking it, they strode away, leaving me to the deathly silence.

I wasn't sure what to feel. Somewhere within me still blazed my perpetual flame of anger, indignation, and resentment. But deeper than that, there was more. There was abandonment. There was betrayal. There was a hollow sense of grief. For years, I'd been grasping at straws in an attempt to find meaning to my life, purpose to my days. As much as my country had been the cause of my darkest depths of depression, it had also picked me up from them. It had forced me to keep going in some direction, even if it wasn't what I would have chosen for myself. In many ways, being imprisoned had been the best thing that could have happened to me. It had taught me to stop feeling and to simply concentrate on doing. We were worked hard and weren't given time for much else. Days were comfortably numb.

But now, as I sat here alone and taskless in the gloom, I didn't know how to still my mind. Almost decade-old feelings resurfaced, clawing at my chest and heart, threatening to overwhelm me.

Through it all, questions broke above the surface, surging like bellows in the wilderness.

What am I?

Why am I here?

Where did I go wrong?

When and how did I become a person unworthy of living?

Do I truly deserve to die?

I was so lost in my mind's tempest that I didn't notice when the prison doors finally opened and the wardens stopped right in front of my cell.

I gazed up at them, my vision focusing. These women were different wardens from the ones who had dropped me off here. They escorted me out of the holding cells, up the staircase, and back to the ground level. I gazed through the windows. It was still dark outside.

Where are they taking me?

The air had a certain feel to it—a crispness—and the crows had started cawing, indicating the imminent daybreak.

Perhaps they wanted me to be