The Aviary Read online

  So, I don’t think. I just fly. Swiping the pitcher of water next to my bed, I chuck the contents in his face. Then, I leap out of the bed with my bare feet skimming the cold floor and swing toward the door. Before I can even touch the doorknob, his hand snaps around my wrist.

  “You are nothing if not impulsive.” Annoyed, he frowns and forces me back onto the bed, but one corner of his mouth lifts into a smirk as if he’s secretly amused.

  After his hands depart from my arms, the strings on the back of the hospital gown come undone, and one sleeve slips below my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the edge of a silver mark. I blink a couple of times before scrambling for the pitcher on the floor. The man huffs, but moves aside so I may grab it. Using it as a mirror, I thumb the image on the back of my shoulder, tracing the feather shape of the silver tattoo. It’s like a noose tightening around my neck. Museum candidates are always tattooed.

  He’s already branded me.

  A signature tattoo like this records my location, heart rate, blood pressure, and God knows what else! Maybe it’s where they injected the Immortal implant.

  My stomach churns. Bile splatters the butterflies in my stomach on its race out of my system.

  On cue, the young man grabs a bucket and holds it underneath my chin just as I retch.

  “At least it smells better than you,” I snort.

  When I hear him chuckle, all I want to do is dump the contents over his head. Show him who he’s messing with.

  Guess the joke’s on me. It took him less than a second to thwart my attempt and knock the bucket to the ground, splattering me with some of its contents in the process. This man is not to be messed with either. Suddenly, I grab at whatever sheets I can, putting as much distance between us as possible. Pleased with his success, he relaxes back onto his chair, crossing one ankle over his knee and folding his hands in his lap.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I seethe. Amused, the man smiles. Definitely younger. I’d wager mid-twenties, but I can’t determine. His brow bones are strong. All he does is exercise the thinnest effort and those sultry eyes narrow, betraying the gaze of one who wields control and influence. “Are you ready to listen?” Between his authoritative voice and youth, I assume he’s with a Family branch. Only Family blood gives men his age higher status and position.

  I stare down at the sheets, silent.

  “Good. As you may have noticed, I’m well trained for situations like this.” That’s when he raises his hands. They are sheathed in black gloves.

  My suspicions are confirmed. A Family director.

  But which Family? Many branches run the country, but the most powerful one, The Syndicate, controls the Temple.

  “The Guild,” he says, answering my unspoken question.

  Relief fills me.

  “Where in the world have you been hiding, little girl? You look like you’ve been untouched by reality.”

  I shift my head in his direction. Glower as best I can. “You don’t look much different.”

  He stretches his arm toward me. I have barely enough time to flinch before I realize he isn’t trying to touch me. Rather, he unbuttons the cuff of his left sleeve, rolling it up so I can see the dozens of needle marks feasting on the skin. “Your condition is not so unfortunate. I have taken an oath that no needle shall ever pierce my flesh again. And I prohibit their usage in my museum. I felt the burden of narcotics, and the price is too high. Non-impacting hallucinogens such as Bliss, but not narcotics.” He buttons his cuff again, asking in a casual manner, “Do you know who I am?”

  I spit another bit or two onto my sleeve and refuse to answer, wincing a little from the stench, but he isn’t so willing to let the topic slide. “You must have some idea, of course.”

  Holding my breath, I study him. I could very well choke on his beauty. Few have ever earned the right to compete with Sky, who is his own breed of handsome—earthy and rugged with enough muscles to be a demigod byproduct of Zeus. Sky has deep-set, dark amber eyes, not to mention hair that falls in abundant waves. In contrast, the man in front of me has a noble forehead and wears a crown of dark, swept-back hair. His eyes are scathing, along with the permanent curve of his thin but attractive mouth.

  He only used one hand to stop my little escape attempt, so I know he’s strong, probably strong enough to take Sky down if he ever attempts to rescue me.

  Tired of waiting for me to respond, he sighs. “I am Luc Aldaine. Your new director.”

  So, the museum operator himself bought me and will escort me to his museum instead of a recruiter. Since he’s the one who put up the bid of fifty million, it makes sense, but this is still unheard of. Most directors delegate auctions to recruiters. From what I know, directors don’t usually take this much of a personal interest in the subjects of their exhibits.

  I glance back at the feather brand. Is he already imagining feathers threaded together like a chorus along my body? Which museum does the Guild control? All I’ve ever concerned myself with is the Syndicate and its Temple empire.

  I need to know where I’m going. “Which one?”

  “The Aviary.”

  Birds. I will become a bird. His next words don’t give me much opportunity to ponder.

  “Your virginity alone would qualify you for Temple standing. That and your beauty, not to mention your spirit, would carry you to the Penthouse, but I have plans for you that will achieve what I have always desired—the Temple’s envy. What is your name?”

  The Glass District auctioneer asked my name, too, but I refused to give it. This time, I give the director my alias.

  “Alice Trinity.” The lie is instinctive. One thing Sky taught me well: never use my real name, but always keep it close. Alice Trinity. Serenity Lace.

  “Alice Trinity,” Luc reflects, wavering like he’s uncertain whether he believes me. “I think I’ll call you Trinity.”

  “Call me whatever you want. You’ll give me another name soon enough.”

  Luc’s laugh sprinkles the air. “Yes, indeed I will. Good to know you are so open to the idea.”

  I grimace. “Who says I’m open?”

  “Yes, you’ve shown how open you are. Rest assured, I look forward to loosening that vise of yours.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  “Tell me, have you ever entered a museum before?”

  I shake my head. Cringe when Luc approaches me. In the wake of my prior retching, he is far too welcoming, too inviting. I try to remember the other lessons Sky taught me. Be numb. Don’t show your emotions. Give him nothing he can use against you. But unlike me, Sky could go outside our hotel rooms to understand the world around us. I never could. Too dangerous for a girl like me—too dangerous for most girls. Sky and my father are the only men I’ve ever known until now. Luc takes a match to the fuel of my curiosity.

  He taps something on the flat screen behind him. “I have significant plans in store for you, Trinity. You’ve no need for concern. I will give you the utmost protection and respect.” He rises from his chair, scoots it back to the wall. “But those terms are conditional to your behavior. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard of other directors who create addictions for their girls or beat them into submission. I prefer other methods. And you are a sculpture I will enjoy reshaping. Please keep that in mind the next time you consider flying off the handle.”

  He shouldn’t waste his breath. He’s no different from any other man who has controlled this industry of fear and abuse. No better than the politicians who opened the first district more than a century ago. This man who bought me for fifty million dollars isn’t going to make an exception for me.

  “There is a shower in the corner of the room.” He motions to his left before picking up his suit jacket, which is draped over the chair. “And a dress for you to wear in the closet. Later tonight, I will personally transfer you to the Aviary, and you will begin.”

  “Begin what?” I spit out the words as he departs.

  Turning back, he smiles. “Your new life
.”

  As soon as he’s gone, I jump out of the bed, careless of the undone strings of my gown, of how only air frames the backside of my body. For once, it feels nice—no long layers of fabric smothering my skin. Whether it was modesty, my father’s glare, or Sky’s muscles that kept recruiters, hotel employees and guests, or any other random men who crossed our path at bay, I’ll never know. Maybe it was a combination of all three. But as I approach the window and gaze at the great city around me, I wonder if Sky has any idea where I am. Is he down there, several stories below, searching for me in the Glass Districts even now?

  Views like this are familiar to me. I have spent many months staring out hotel windows. Except this one is far greater. I know exactly what city I’m in because I can see the Temple in the distance. It soars far above the gridwork of other skyscrapers. From here, I can make out humongous feeds of sexualized women and girls playing on the Temple’s digitally enhanced windows. Temple ads. Other skyscrapers do the same thing for their businesses, along with the billboards sprinkled throughout the city. While the Temple is the super tower at the top of the food chain, the smaller towers are like fungi, parasitic growths, and the midsized skyscrapers are bottom feeders desperate to compete with the Temple city. None can. Not only is the Temple the most powerful and profitable corporation in the nation, it also houses the Centre. People travel from all over the world to use this medical monument, which offers everything: organ sales, research and development, surgical procedures, and the largest breeding line in the country. Rich couples who want designer babies. Rich directors who want the same for museums. Not to mention supplementing the low birth rate.

  In the distance is one of the Glass Districts on the edge of the city, strategically positioned before the bridges and checkpoints. Girls who escape the city without the right connections or the right money are plucked and dumped right into the nearest district. Runaways are the most common. My parents’ precaution of keeping me in a hotel beyond the bridges didn’t help much. Of course, if I hadn’t snuck out of the hotel room to go swimming…

  I should have waited for Sky. I went at midnight. After pool hours. Tricked the card sensor just like I’d watched him do in the past. I should have always assumed smugglers were everywhere, even in outlying hotels. They prey on spring breakers and bachelorette parties. Sometimes, they bring recruiters. Other times, they just don’t bother. The lucky girls have rich parents who will pay a ransom, but close-knit families are sparse today. Real families have disintegrated—single parents, foster homes, and orphanages are more common. Families are now defined as any one of corrupt branches in the country that run everything from government to media to Glass Districts to museums. Our family might as well be a relic, whatever photographs we have worthy of an anthropological gallery.

  Desperate to figure out what day it is, I turn on the holographic projection on the wall, cringing at the ancient technology, and find a news channel. Wall screens are old but cheap. Volumetric laser projection is the latest cutting-edge tech. Ironic. Technology was supposed to usher in a new world and make things better. Instead, it reduced the workforce and women took the worst beating. Without connections, few women have jobs outside the sex industry. I wouldn’t doubt it was the intention of men all along…

  Heart sinking, I realize I’ve been gone for seven days total. Two in the Glass District. Five here.

  A reporter is responding to the chaos behind him. “For viewers just tuning in, as you can see in the background, security is carting away the lone activist and restoring order to the Glass District. After a three-day assault of carefully executed vandalism, the perpetrator will be brought to justice.”

  Justice. Bah. I press mute when I see black-gloved figures advancing toward the man. Activists were more common during the early days of legalization. No longer. Time bred conformity, then normality, and now any opposition is silenced because the Families won’t have their commodities cheapened in any way. The money trail always leads back to the Families, where blood ties are thick and mandatory. They filled their pockets to the brim with lobbyists in the early days, marketing legalization to media moguls, who promoted it to Hollywood elite. Of course, more Family members run congress—all corrupt politicians serving their own corporate ends. Few laws are ever passed, fewer regulations imposed.

  Sensing a slight ache on my shoulder, I needle my thumb into my silver tattoo and wince because it still hurts. I hurry to the shower, turn it until the heat blasts, snatch up the sponge, and scrub my shoulder. And I don’t stop scrubbing. On the shower floor now, I bask in the water. More pours down the front of the hospital gown, rinsing any leftover bile from my skin, but the tattoo won’t disappear. My hands tremble from the effort. I’ve scrubbed until my skin is raw, red, and chafed, but the silver feather proves to be a worthy adversary. Like a cackling ghost, it taunts me, and I finally slump down, cold and wet as a fish out of water.

  Dropping the sponge, I smack the tiles over and over. Can’t stop flopping around, can’t stop fighting. Curling up with the shower streaming over me, I scratch at the tattoo with my thumbnail, wondering if I’m destined to follow in my mother’s footsteps.

  No, I won’t become like the Unicorn.

  I remember the photograph I’d unearthed, and though its image rises to the surface, cleaving to my mouth like chalk rubbed there, I try to spit it from my mind. Those eyes glittering lust don’t belong to my mother. No, her eyes are purer now, thanks to my father and his gentle fingers that picked out the glitter fleck by fleck. But she didn’t come away without scars.

  My anger fuels the lightning inside me, keeps any scars from the Glass District at bay. But I feel a twinge of resentment that I must wrap up with guilt. Resentment my mother has left me unprepared for any scars, but guilt at knowing she never had any choice. Because we are the hunted ones. To this day, I know how overpowering my mother’s love is; she’s done everything she can to protect me.

  I know I’m strong enough to escape sooner than she did. I won’t spend years in any museum. And I’d tear the Temple down glass window by glass window before becoming part of the place that gave my mother nightmares.

  Sky says I should’ve grown out of it by now, but I still curl up by their door every time to hear my father soothe her while she sobs. They never talk about the Temple. I do. I tell Sky all about my nightmares because it helps, because once I speak them, they become words and float away like chaff in wind. My mother isn’t like me. She carries horrors on her skin, in her head, but no longer in her heart. My father stacked his love there until there was no room left for anything else. His patience is the thread wrapped around our family. A true family. If my mother is the broken survivor, he is the natural counselor, Sky’s the protector, and I’m—the bat out of hell.

  4

  T h e A v I a r y

  “I call them my Birds.”

  On the way over in his self-driving-limousine, which is Family-branded so they have immunity, Luc gave me a digital tour of his Aviary, but seeing the building from the vehicles one-way windows was completely different than up close. Against the darkness, it was like a diamond sitting in a bed of ash. Grand spotlights and high-tech holographic images of birds light the entrance.

  Now, it just looks like a giant glass dollhouse. From the observation deck within the domed ceiling of the Aviary where I stand with Luc, I stare down at the men flooding the lobby as they stray to girl-encrusted exhibits. If they pay more, they will advance to the second level. The ones with deep pockets continue to the third where the highest-ranking girls are.

  It shouldn’t impress me, but it does.

  Luc motions to one of the screens stationed on the balcony’s railing, gesturing for me to expand it. Voxel images like I’ve seen in some hotels. Better than holograms, these are interactive lasers manipulating particles in the air to create images. Volumetric technology.

  Light as a cobweb, Luc’s hand strays to my back as I lean over and magnify the sight, focusing on one exhibit. Two men stand
in front of it watching, gesturing to the glass. Then, I see her. Frozen in place with her face, throat, and chest shimmering blue from an injected bioluminescent, her naked hips a fruitful purple, and a skirt fabricated of peacock feathers that flows behind her like a train. Even her hair is nothing but a straight waterfall of blue tresses that shine like dragon scales. Not a chemical dye, but hair implants like mine.

  I step back from the laser lens, feeling a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach. Like all the butterflies that used to dance there are dying, wings fanning in and out, slow enough for heartbeats to pass through.

  “Would you like to see one up close?” Luc offers as his hand strays to my bare arm, giving me another fleeting glimpse of the feather’s edge. Thanks to the thin-strapped white dress I wear, the tattoo is prominent. My skin has already healed from my shower episode. I should count it a blessing. Breakables don’t get this kind of treatment. Nor do they get smart fabric that regulates body temperature. These smart dresses are standard issue here. Not that I need one with my Immortal implant, which does the same.

  As we walk deeper into the Aviary, the tattoo seems more like tree roots tunneling into my veins.

  No matter how much I convince myself I’m not my mother, that I have more fight in me, every time I catch a glimpse of the tattoo out of the corner of my eye, it blows me a kiss, reminding me of its power. For now, I must hold onto my disgust. Remind myself of the girls in Glass District cages, and my mother’s photograph. I cling to that image.

  I follow Luc to an elevator, considering pressing the alarm button. He notices my gaze, but I lunge just quickly enough. His hand comes down on my wrist at the same time, flinging me back hard against the metal rail, but not before I jam the button.

  Alarms blare, and the elevator stops.

  Unperturbed by my action, Luc calmly presses the button again, silencing the alarm and rolling up his sleeve to reveal a digital tattoo of an owl. As soon as he presses the eyes, a screen appears, hovering above his skin. Skin interfaces are the latest in technology. Only recently legalized and expensive enough that only elites can afford it. Maybe he’s canceling security.