Ex-Isle by Peter Clines (electronic reader TXT) 📕

polish and done her toes two days before and didn’t want to waste it.

Where the heck was she? She’d woken up in her room yester…no. On a small boat? An orange inner tube? A life raft. She’d been on a life raft with Mom and they were going to…no, dammit. She’d been with St. George and…and…and Barry! St. George and Zzzap.

She was on a mission. She’d been hurt. Her body was repairing itself.

Her wet suit was ripped apart just above her waist, all the way around. Stretch lines wrinkled the material, like it had been pulled tight before tearing. The zipper was snapped in the middle, and the splayed-open ends showed off gaps from missing teeth. Her bare stomach looked fine, though, and aside from the tingling she couldn’t feel any other injuries or…

Madelyn shifted her hips, leaned back a bit, and looked at her stomach again in the light.

The skin across her belly reminded her of fast food wrappers, all slick and see-through. She could see dark veins and strands of muscle going back and forth. Her belly button was a little knot of cloudy gray.

She turned her hips a little more and pulled up the ragged edge of the wet suit. There were a bunch of holes in her side. Oval ones, maybe two or three inches long and half that wide. The gray muscles underneath flexed and relaxed as her hips moved.

“Huh,” she said. “This is new.”

“COMPANY’S COMING,” SAID Barry.

Five people walked across the deck. Three adults and two children. When they got closer to the cage, St. George saw one of them was Eliza. One of the others was the dreadlocked man from his examination.

The boy was eight or nine with a red baseball cap. He could’ve been a younger version of Devon, just without the wiry biker beard. The little girl had brown hair and Asian features. St. George was pretty sure she’d been in the courtyard when they’d had their meeting with Nautilus. She wore a baggy dress, and it took him a moment to recognize it as a modified T-shirt.

Eliza looked over her shoulder into the distance, then at St. George. “Did your friend explain to you how things work?”

“About the other kids in cages?” He glared at her. “Yeah, he did.”

“Do you believe him?”

“From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t have a real problem believing you’d do it.”

“Good enough.” She took a few steps to her right and stood where they could both turn their heads and see her. “We’re going to open the cage. If you try anything, there are still guards watching. They’ll signal the drop.”

“Why are you opening the cage?” asked St. George.

“We’re going to let the kids trade places.” She looked at Barry. “We’re going to do one at a time, so there’s always going to be someone cuffed to you. Clear?”

“Crystal,” he said.

“Why even risk it by trading them out?” asked St. George.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “We’re not going to leave them in there with you twenty-four-seven. They’re going to go home to their families and play with their friends.”

“Well, yeah,” Barry said. “I mean, keeping someone locked up in a cage all day would be cruel and barbaric.”

“Cute.”

“I’m just glad someone’s thinking of the children first.”

“Keep this simple,” she said, “and you get breakfast.”

The dreadlocked man stepped forward and spun the dial on a padlock. It opened with a clunk. He unwrapped a length of chain, stepped back, and pulled a big panel of the cage open with him.

Eliza stepped inside and crouched by Colin. She unlocked him and shifted his manacle onto the little girl in the T-shirt dress. Then the broad-shouldered woman took Kaitlyn out and put in the boy St. George already thought of as Little Devon. The boy whimpered as the shackle ratcheted shut on his wrist.

“Hey,” said Eliza, taking his chin. “Be brave. Your dad’s proud of you.”

The boy stuck out his chin and nodded.

Colin yawned. Kaitlyn waved from outside the cage. “Bye, Barry.”

“Bye,” he said. He waved back and managed a tight smile. “You be good. Learn some more stories for me.”

The dreadlocked guard frowned. “Don’t talk to her.”

“Hey,” said Barry, “she talked to me first.”

Dreadlock opened his hands and let the cage door fall back into place. It crashed shut, and the echo rang across the deck. He wrapped the chain around its bars and slammed the lock shut.

“Wow,” said St. George, “you’re so brave when it comes to prisoners and children.”

The man took a step forward, but Eliza stopped him with a raised hand. She set it down gently onto the little girl’s shoulder. “Kaitlyn,” she said, “you can’t forget, these are bad men.”

“Not Barry. He’s funny.”

“They’re liars.”

Kaitlyn’s eyes got wide.

“So, about breakfast,” said Barry. “Whenever I’m being held captive by a bunch of nutjobs, I like to go with French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon. If you’ve got cream for the coffee, that’d be fant—”

“You’ll get some food once we’ve checked the kids and made sure nothing’s happened to them.”

St. George cleared his throat. “You mean like someone leaving them outside in a cage overnight?”

The woman grunted and guided the kids away. The guards followed her. Kaitlyn snuck a last glance at Barry, then looked away.

“You didn’t write my order down,” Barry called after them. “Are you sure you’re going to remember it?”

The girl played with her end of the shackle. Little Devon scowled at Barry. He scooted across the cage until the chain was tight between them. Then he shooed the girl back until her chain was tight, too.

An hour later, the sunburned guard with the peeling nose showed up carrying a tray of bowls. A holster rode on his hip. He handed two of them through the cage to the kids, then slid two more a little closer to St. George and Barry. The bowls held more stew, but it was closer to soup than the stuff they’d had the day before.

“Dammit,” said Barry,