2 - Naihabi Ridge

A frigid, unbearable cold splashed over my body and I shivered uncontrollably, shaking as I opened my eyes and sat up, wrapping my arms around myself with chattering teeth and quick, drawn breaths. I couldn’t see anything but pitch black darkness on all sides, pinning me with my thoughts and the lingering cold of the liquid soaking my clothes. I heard heavy breathing from... two, maybe three people coming from the darkness beyond whatever I was sitting on, which sent a chill down my spine and a jitter through my arms. I heard faint whispering coming from the abyss, but I couldn’t understand a word of it through the ringing in my ears and the panic in my thoughts. The only thing I could think to do is scream, but I couldn’t manage it through the ice in my lungs.

“L-lil—l-lilli...”

I felt a hard, cold hand grip my arm and I jerked away, but it was stronger and kept me leashed with its talons, then the world went white. I squinted and my eyes watered, then the light dimmed and I could make out a small, claustrophobic room with a chair in two of the corners and two men and a woman with blurred faces standing in the middle. They were wearing white, long-sleeved coats down to their knees, and all of them were holding a pen and a board with paper, a few of them writing something down. They didn’t look like anyone that would come from around my village, or from any of the surrounding villages, either. They didn’t look like they were from any village at all. Who were these people? Why did I survive the fire?

Why did I not wake up from this nightmare?

An image of the glowing orange liquid soaking into the bare earth flashed into my mind, and my breathing became faster, my eyes watering at the thought of Lillian running beside me.

I looked to my left to see a fourth person with one of his slim, almost robotic fingers wrapped around my forearm so hard I could feel the blood slowly drip down to my elbow and onto the floor, where it made little dots that looked like they sunk into the flooring, but I blinked and they were still there. I was becoming delusional. Are these the same people—the same things that took Lillian? Do they have her now? Thoughts bubbled through my mind in my hallucinational state, and before I knew what I was doing I was speaking quite clearly aloud. I heard myself mouthing the questions that crossed my mind, and I screamed, taking all four of the coated people by surprise, the one on my arm loosening his grip so I could finally yank myself away. I could feel the skin on my arm tear as I broke loose of the monster’s metal grip, but I ignored the pain and shot to my feet, jumping off the bed. Then I stumbled down to the ground with weak knees and numbness all over. My head spun, and I looked up at the four people as if I wanted them dead by the gallows as they crowded around me, writing more down with their pens. I shivered again, and I felt as if the blood on my arm would freeze in place.

“I-if you think y-y-you can capture me, it will—will be harder t-than this...”

Then I saw one of them show their teeth in a calculated smile. I wanted to growl at him like a rabid dog, but I couldn’t move.

“Hello, Mr. Itoma, we’d like you to answer some questions.” The low humming sound escaped the mouth of the smiling man like vipers on the hunt and I recoiled. The other people started nodding, bringing their pens up unanimously—and I looked at the ground as my foot regained its feeling. I shot up to my feet, trying to sock the nearest one in the face, but she caught my hand mid-swing and held it with the same steely grip of the other, then she pulled my ear close to her mouth and said in a monotonous purr that would never leave my thoughts, “Avi Itoma, you will never be more than a pawn for our experiments.”

No.

“You will never be anything more than that, and deep inside yourself, even if you refuse to acknowledge it, you know we’re right.”

No.

“We know who you are, where you live—or rather, where you lived, and”—she grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked me closer to her mouth to whisper the words—“where your siblings are, too.”

“No!” I screamed, trying to kick her unsuccessfully. She grabbed my leg by the knee and I went down, hitting my head on the floor and blacking out.

+++

A searing pain in the back of my head brought me to consciousness, and I found myself in another darkness, but this time the thing I was laying on was harder, and I could see little slivers of light through the darkness, meaning that I probably wasn’t dead.

I was still in the nightmare, huh?

I slung my legs over the edge of the bed and slowly got up, the throbbing pain in the back of my head intensifying like a sledgehammer to my senses. I took a deep breath of air that stank of disease, then I was standing. Wobbly, maybe, but it worked. I looked at the slivers of light in the darkness, then I started hearing voices. Not like before, though. These were normal voices, like children at play and casual conversations dulled by distance. I started forward, but then there was a loud, elongated creak and one of the slivers of light widened, revealing another silhouette, a figure of ebony against glowing ivory, and I couldn’t help but squint at the sudden change of light. My eyes adjusted just as the silhouette started speaking, and an immediate wave of relief ran through me when I heard it wasn’t one the people from before, but a warm, elderly voice that beckoned me forward, but I bit the urge back under the suspicion that rose at the returning thought of Lillian.

“Ah, so you’re awake!” I saw, as my eyes adjusted little by little, that a smile broke across his wrinkled features, and I took a shaky step back toward the wall behind me. “For a while there I thought you had some serious damage to your head, but I see it’s alright.” He paused, waiting for my answer, then, figuring out I was too jarred to respond, continued. “It’s always nice to see new faces, though it’s not always very jolly reasons that people come to the Ridge, unfortunately. But nonetheless—”

“Where am I?” I rasped suspiciously.

The man looked taken aback. Apparently he wasn’t quite used to having people answer so quickly. I shivered.

He cleared his throat, reassuming his friendly demeanor. “This is Naihabi Ridge, a camp for the survivors of the recent attacks on Malynian villages and towns who seek refuge.” He glanced behind him at a particularly loud conversation, then turned back to me, his voice quieter, making him sound even older and more fragile, “You come from one of the northern villages?”

I considered not answering, then nodded, figuring that my ruined village home couldn’t be put into any danger by telling this man.

“I see. Well, I suppose you would like to know where you are.” He nodded as if answering his own question. “You are in the southern medical ward, which is basically just a series of extra bedrooms in the main southern building.”

I looked around me, my thoughts getting the best of me. This is a building? It looks more like the storage shack we kept in the yard for plowing tools. My eyes glazed over the slivers of sunlight through the thin wooden slabs that made up the walls. The mattress I was laying on before I got up smelled as if so many things happened on it, and it was not pleasant, not to mention how calling it a rock would be a complement, and it was practically a stove. There were no windows, trapping in all the heat from outside, or even any lamps for light. It was dark and humid. I sighed, deciding not to say anything to the poor old man.

“Now, if you would be so considerate as to come outside, I could have Oriole show you around the Ridge.”

Oriole?... I thought confusedly. Like, the bird?

I took a hesitant step forward toward the man, who was walking hastily toward the exit, beckoning me forward excitedly with his wrinkled hand. I lifted my foot in a step again, then I froze at the loud screech of a little girl that came from outside in the dry, sandy yard, making the old man turn around and look. Lillian?

I broke into a desperate sprint across the miniature room, my mind rushing with hope and possibility, and I ran through the doorway, accidentally pushing the old man out of the way in the process, then I came to an immediate stop on the porch of the shack, which was like a wooden hallway that was open on the side facing the yard and spanned the whole length of the building. My eyes darted around the yard frantically, scanning the faces of the people there with excitement that painfully started to wear away with every feature that wasn’t Lillian’s. My breath was fast and my eyes burned with crushed hope. It was irrational, anyway. Why would Lillian be here?

“I told you to move!” A young but deep voice yelled from across the yard, and my eyes met the sight of a dirty boy that looked the age of sixteen. Big, brawny, and irritated, by the look of it, but still a year or two younger than me. He towered over a younger girl who was kneeling over another, littler girl with blood dripping from her nose onto the dusty ground. The boy had another big dude flanking his right side. Big, brawny, but kind of dumb-looking. My gaze caught on the group and the fact that no one paid any attention to the commotion. Was it common for unfair fights to be ignored here? Father would have gone and spoken some sense into both parties, then, with a flick to the forehead, sent them home with shame on their faces.

My breath caught at the thought of my peaceful homeland, and I started forward, intending to stop the fight the way my family taught me to. But almost as soon as I stepped forward with determination in my eyes, I ran into an outstretched arm blocking my path. I turned to apologize, but froze at the pointed, feminine face that gave me cold consideration. Then, seeing my face, she lowered her arm, stepping back to the customary distance between boys and girls of unmarried status. I opened my mouth to ask her what she was doing, but she raised her hand with an unamused expression. I’d never seen a girl do that before.

“Look, since you’re new here, I’ll enlighten you.” I raised an eyebrow, refusing to move from my position. “That is no fight. That is what we like to call ‘collection’. Those boys over there are where they are because that girl refused to answer her summoning.”

I opened my mouth to speak, determined to get to the bottom of my confusion. “What summoning?”

She cleared her throat as if to say what an obvious question and it kind of annoyed something in my gut. “None of us have to pay for our room and board here at the Ridge, so in its stead, there is a chance that we will be summoned, but none of us return, and none of us know what it really is, so many people don’t comply immediately, but eventually they learn that they don’t have any choice in the matter, and that this is their only home for miles. People have tried to escape, but they either die in the southern heat or get bitten by the poisonous snakes that roam the parts.” My mouth dropped open accidentally. The girl kept a straight face while saying that last part, her dark grey eyes matching the rest of her face intensely.

“There is a group of buffs like the ones you see over there who come and get the people who try to run from their summon, like the girl over there, even if it means coming down to brute force.”

I looked over at the girl leaning over her friend, protecting her from the hunks.

“And as for that girl—the one trying to shield the summoned one—she’s going to be hurt too if she doesn’t comply with the collectors’ demands.”

“But what would happen to her afterward?” I asked, not lifting my eyes from the commotion. “The girl, I mean.”

“What is there to say? She would probably get called much sooner than she would have if she would have obeyed.” She turned away from the fight. “She should mind her own business and keep her composure. It’s just what happens around here.” I thought I caught her features sadden, but then the flicker faded back into nonchalance. “Anyone who interferes with collection pays the price. That’s just how it is.”

I stared at the girl and clamped my mouth shut, keeping my eyes glued to the fight. I had a new fear digging at my gut. This place might have been worse than the ivory room of torture I had escaped from.