Dissidence (5 page)

We passed through several passenger cars as well as a small dining car before reaching a row of individual compartments closed off from the main corridor where the guard stopped and held open a door for me. The interior was impressive
:
a large bed, curtains on the windows, even a small closet with a full length mirror on it.

“How long will the trip take?” I caught the guard just before he left.

“Not long.” His voice was rough, all pretenses of politeness gone. “You’ll finish the trip in here.”

“But, what if . . .”

“Here,” he barked, slamming the door shut behind him.

Even before I heard the lock slide into place, I knew something was wrong.
The lock . . . on the
outside
of the door.

I threw myself across the small room, and yanked on the door knob until my hand cramped, but it refused to budge. I was trapped. My hands throbbed from pounding on the door as I demanded to be told what was happening. I wasn’t sure if there was anyone out there, but if there was, they weren’t answering.

Waves of panic crashed over me as I tried to steady my breathing. Hyperventilating was not the ideal solution. A faint hiss resonated throughout the room and I focused on that. I needed to solve at least one problem in order to hold it together, and locating the source of the sound seemed like the easiest challenge in front of me at the moment.

I followed the noise, listening intently, to a vent near the base of the wall. As I watched, a pale white vapor started pouring from it and crept like a thick fog across the floor. Attempting to keep out of its reach, I backed across the room, but the space was only so big. With my back pressed against the door I was suddenly finding it difficult to stand. My eyes felt heavy and the edges of my vision were beginning to blur. I was only vaguely aware of my knees and then my face hitting the dark green carpeting. The pain barely registered as the door swung open, slamming right into the side of my head.

“Get her up.”

The voice sounded dull and garbled
, like it was coming from under
water. I struggled to pick out the speaker, but my eyes refused to stay open long enough. There was pressure under my arms as my body was lifted off the floor and then dull comfort as I was dropped onto the bed. A blue comforter with red roses was the last thing I saw before everything faded to blackness and silence.

Chapter 5

Beep, beep, beep
.

I cracked my eyes open and peered at the glowing red numbe
rs beside my bed.
Five-fifteen.
T
ime to start another day.
I reached out to switch off th
e beeping monstrosity and froze,
my hand hovering inches above the offensive piece of technology. I was suddenly noticing a distinct lack
of anything patriotic. Not that I was complaining, but where the hell was my cat clock?

I flipped the switch, and the room slipped back into the pressing silence of the early morning hours. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes while simultaneously trying to convince them to remain open, I decided that the mystery of the missing clock would be better left until my brain was operating on a higher level of coherence.

A shower was of the utmost importance at the moment and a cup of that dark, steaming liquid they called coffee in all of those old movies wouldn’t have been too bad either. Too bad it didn’t exist anymore. I had to physically force my body out of the bed and into the bathroom. I fumbled around under the hot spray for nearly ten minutes before I noticed that somet
hing was off. The light was dim,
tinged a greenish shade because of the hunter green shower curtain that was muting it. My shower curtain was
not
green. It was clear, so that my shower was usually brightly lit, with little yellow
duckies
on it.
Seriously, first my clock and now my shower curtain?
I was definitely too tired to deal with this.

After my shower, I felt about a million times better, although my brain continued to cling to a certain degree of fuzziness. Of course, by this point, I was officially running late, as usual. I grabbed a quick piece of toast and shoved it in my mouth, as I fumbled to lock the front door behind me. In my haste, I would most definitely have overlooked the large manila envelope lying on the porch had it not been right at the top of the stairs and nearly sent me spilling down them. Great spot for it . . . if the mail carrier had been trying to make me break my neck. Who knew, maybe he was. I couldn’t thi
nk of anything I
ha
d done recently to anger him, but who could really tell with postal employees.

The heft of the envelope surprised me when I snapped it up, planning to toss it closer to the door so that exact thing didn’t happ
en on my way back in later. But
that was before I noticed the stamp in the corner.
U.S. Employment Dept.
Well, that couldn’t be good. I slipped my finger under the seam, deciding the muffins and cakes could wait another minute. Inside was an officially sealed sheet of paper. I had to read it three times before I was
sure of what I was seeing. I’
d been reassigned . . . to maintenance. Were they kidding me? This had to be some kind of bad joke. I glanced around for Peter, half expecting to see him rolling on the ground in a fit of laughter somewhere, but I was alone. I tried to think back and recall what I possibly could have done to Marcus to make him request a reassignment for me, but my memory was coming up kind of blurry. Well, just great! Now what was I supposed to do? Follow this clearly erroneous letter and report to the maintenance office, or dismiss it as the blunder it was and go to the bakery as usual?

That was hardly a tough call. Seriously, who wants to spend even one day cleaning up other people’s messes? Not me. I started down the stairs, my mind made up, but my feet seemed to be working against me. I really did need some caffeine . . . or sugar. I’d have to grab something at work. I made it all the way to the end of the walkway before the stomach cramps set in. I took another step out onto the sidewalk and they tightened.
What the hell
? Every step made them worse and worse until I felt like I might vomit right there in the hedge.
Maybe I wouldn’t be going to work anywhere.

A few deep breaths and I was able to stand upright again, but the very thought of going to the bakery made me gag. Maybe maintenance wouldn’t be so bad for just one day. I could get everything sorted out after that, and resume my old position punching keys on the register tomorrow morning.

Naturally, the maintenance office was on the exact
opposite
side of town, and with a quick stop off at home to change back out of my bakery uniform, I was running insanely late. By the
time I arrived, people were already pouring back out of the building to report to their daily assignments. An older man with scruffy facial hair pulled me inside and immediate chewed me out. There’s a way to start the day. I could thank my tardiness for my crap assignment, and he meant that literally. My job for the day was to scrub the public toilets in the park and the town hall building.

Before ten a.m
., I was up to my elbows in my third toilet of the day. The smell alone was enough to knock me out. I grabbed the bottle of toilet cleaner, which was hard to grip with those oversized rubber gloves I was wearing, and squirted it into the water. How hard was it to pee
inside
the toilet, people?
Disgusting.
Standing over the stinking mess, I used a bristled brush to scrub it until it shined. What was I thinking coming there? I must have lost my mind. I sighed as the brush came out of my grasp and dropped with a splash into the nasty toilet water. Now I got to fish it out, fantastic. I had
definitely
lost my mind.

By lunch time, I smelled like a potent mixture of bodily fluids and cleaning supplies. Attractive, I know. I hadn’t brought anything with me to eat, figuring I would just snag something from the bakery like always. My choices were now to either go into a shop, looking and
smelling
like I did and buy something or just skip a meal. I was leaning towards the latter. The day’s work hadn’t left me much of an appetite anyway. I spent the full half hour sitting on a bench in the park breathing in some fresh air and trying to alleviate the burning sensation deep in my lungs.

The rest of the day was no better than the beginning.
Maybe even worse, if that was at all possible.
The last rest room of the day was on the first floor of the town hall building and by far the worst. It took me two hours to get it to an acceptable level of not-so-bad.

At least I was already at town hall. As soon as I tossed the last trash bag in the dumpster around back, I ran upstairs to the local office of the Employment Department. One look at me, heck one whiff, and they’d have to reverse the transfer. Just for pity’s sake alone.

When I reached the office on the third floor, the door was already shut. I knew it was after five, but
come on
! I pounded on the oak door for a solid minute before a woman opened it looking utterly perturbed.

“We’re closed for the day,” she said stiffly, attempting to shut the door in my face.

I managed to wedge my foot in the space between the door and the frame and refused to remove it until she heard me out. If she thought for one second that I was going through another day from hell like that before I got to talk to someone, she had another thing coming. I explained about the mix up and informed her that I would be returning to my position at the bakery the following day and that I could come by afterwards if they need me to help fix any paper work or anything. She only half listened to my tirade, before forcibly removing my foot from the doorway with her own. She did, however, find the time to assure me that my reassignment was both authorized and legit before slamming the door in my face.
Like I was about to take
her
word for it.
Peter.
I needed to find Peter. He worked in the archives. He had to have some sort of idea what happened . . . and how I could fix all of this.

I raced toward the archives building as fast as my legs would carry me
,
which, granted, wasn’t all that fast. Understandably, I was met with more than a few strange looks when I pushed through the crowd into the building. Peter’s department manager informed me that he had already left, and I headed for his house next. I really should ha
ve gone home and showered first,
especially considering I’
d managed to avoid ever meeting his parents before. Not e
xactly the first impression I’
d been going for, but oh well, so what. I had bigger problems at the moment.

By the time I reached his front gate, I was panting hard. I seriously needed to get in shape.
Giving myself about thirty seconds to get it together, I knocked on the door and waited. Peter answered. Thank goodness.

“
Leigh?
What the heck happened to you?” So help me, if he’d laughed at me right then, I would not have been held responsible for my actions.

“Don’t start, Peter.”

He joined me out on the front steps, wrinkling his nose slightly as he sat beside me. I could only imagine what I looked like right about then. I
explained
—
not
ranted,
no matter
what Peter may have called it—
about the reassignment, and begged him to help me fix it.

“I don’t know what I can do, Leigh, but I’ll look into it.”

Well, that was way too easy. No jokes at my expense? No sarcastic comments? No ridiculous demands? Something was definitely up.

“What’s wrong, Peter?”

“Nothing.
I just . . . My mate file came.”

Oh . . . huh. Shouldn’t mine have come first? I’m older than him by a few weeks. Wait, when was my birthday? Had it really come and gon
e without me noticing
? Every time I tried to think back, everything got all hazy. I blamed i
t on the cleaning chemicals I’
d been inhaling all day.

“So, who is she?”

“Her name’s Ethel. Hold on, let me get the file.”

He disappeared back inside, and I was left sitting on the steps alone. I really couldn’t blame him for not inviting me in
.
I wouldn’t have
wanted me inside either. Ethel. T
hat sounded like a really old-fashioned name. When Peter returned and handed me the file, I saw why. The woman was old-fashioned. Well maybe not old-
fashioned
, but definitely old. She was almost seventy.

“That can’t be right. It must be some kind of mistake.” I was unable to control my jaw bone, which seemed to have come unhinged at the moment.

“It’s not. We checked. She’s some kind of important official over in colony H
. Her husband died and she requested to be repaired. Because of her position, she can’t leave,
so I’m going to have to move ov
er there
. I don’t have much time left at the archives here, but I’ll see what I can do about your job before I go.”