Rise: Populations Crumble, Book 2 by Gandy, A. (read book .txt) 📕

Anne Gray

Age: 24

Donor: 691205

16 weeks gestation

My eyes start to blur, and I’m unable to take in any more of the file. I look up and see through my angry tears that, sure enough, there is a small swell rising on this woman’s stomach under her gown. I quickly scan the rest of the women in the room, and realize that over half of them have visibly swollen pregnant bellies.

The sound of a door opening pulls me from my sickened stupor. I spin, and let out a relieved breath to see it’s Patrick.

“Sadie! You should have waited for me, what if someone had been in here!” he scolds me in a hushed tone. He glances to either side, and I see cold realization dawn on his face. “God in heaven, no.”

I turn, and continue walking toward the end of the aisle, checking each face. “Oh, Patrick!” I run past the next two beds when I see her.

She’s there, in the last bed on the right. All the life and color gone from her face, she’s as unnaturally still as the rest. The vibrant, spitfire, tornado of a woman reduced to a pale specter in a white gown, mask strapped to her face, IV in her left arm. Josephine.

Anger washes over me in a hot wave, and I grip her hand in mine tightly. “We’re going to get you out of here, Jo. I swear it.” I start looking for a way to unplug her, but Patrick stops me with a hand on my shoulder.

“Sadie, don’t touch anything. She’s been medically sedated. It could be dangerous to unhook any of this, when we don’t know what they’ve given her.”

“I can’t leave her here, Patrick. I can’t leave any of them.” My voice goes shrill, even to my own ears, as anger and disgust battle inside me for supremacy.

A scuffling noise from the hall causes Patrick and me both to snap our heads up, to see Atlas and Nell running past the window. They spot us, and skid into the room with us.

Nell’s first reaction is a sharp intake of breath, but Atlas surveys the room in silence. Nell runs over, spotting Josephine in the bed next to me.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” She throws a hand over her mouth, and Patrick quickly grabs a small white trashcan and shoves it at her.

She turns and retches violently. I turn back to Josephine, and realize I’m squeezing her hand too hard. I force myself to loosen my grip, finger by finger.

Nell, done puking, runs a shaky hand over her mouth and dries her face with her sleeve. “What is this place?”

“I don’t know, but we can’t stay here,” Atlas says coldly. “We found her, now we need to get out so we can do something about this before we’re seen.”

“Wait, look.” Patrick points to a red, blinking light in the corner. “Do you think that’s a camera?

Atlas’s normally stoic expression turns dark in an instant. “We’ve got to find a way to wipe the feeds. You two stay here, we’ll be back.” The two of them race back into the hall, and out of sight past the window.

“How could they do this?” Nell’s voice is shaking, and she’s leaning against the foot of one of the beds across the aisle from Josephine. My eyes flit past her to land on the occupant of that bed. “Oh, no. It can’t be—” I drop Josephine’s hand back to her bed, and walk over to the rail-thin woman. Her once dark chocolate skin has taken on a pallor, but it’s definitely her. Aisha. My hand flutters up to her cheek, no longer rounded and full of vitality.

“Do you know her, too?” Nell asks, sounding stronger by the minute.

My eyes burn with unshed tears as I answer, “Yes, her name is Aisha. I—I thought she was dead.”

“She might rather be,” Nell says darkly. I turn and see her inspecting the tablet with Aisha’s medical information.

“Why, what does it say?”

“This is her fourth pregnancy in four years.”

My eyes close of their own accord, my sadness like a suffocating blanket. “Lord, help us all.”

The echo of running feet comes back down the hall, and Patrick and Atlas appear a second later.

Patrick flings open the door. “It’s time to go. We disabled the cameras.”

I slowly place Aisha’s cool hand back on the bed, and I take in her sleeping face. “I won’t forget you, Aisha. I will get you out of here, I promise.”

The four of us file out of the room, back down the single hallway and turn toward the door. Atlas opens the door a crack, and peers out intently before swinging it all the way open. “Quickly, straight to the ATVs. Heads down and stay as quiet as you can.”

We run and hop onto them, and in under sixty seconds the men both have kick-started them, and we’re headed for the tree line.

I shout so Patrick can hear me over the roar of the engines and crunching of the gravel path, “Why aren’t we taking the trail?”

“There was a comm system in the office. The kidnappers have been dealt with and the guards are being sent back to their posts. We found the camera controls in a security office and wiped them, but that won’t matter if they catch us right outside,” he shouts back over his shoulder.

I tuck my head back against the back of his shirt, now stiff with dried sweat, and close my eyes. Images of sedated women roll across my vision, like butterflies pinned to a board for a  grade-school science project. I open my eyes, ignoring the sting of the wind whipping my hair around my head in a thousand tiny stinging strands. The brush slides by, blending together in an earthy kaleidoscope of brown, green, and yellow.

How could this happen, and how are we going to stop it?

Aftermath

To my surprise, we ride our ATVs directly to