In the Heart of Babylon Read online

  Whoever she was, she sobbed again, and he hesitated despite himself. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I need to tell you—”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I need to tell you…” Another sniff. Another fist slammed into the wall. “You're running out of time. When The Resort closes on the third… They'll be finished for the year with whatever it is they really do here. They'll be finished with you. I think you'll be in danger.”

  The walls of the hallway seemed to close in on Nadifa. Today was the first. That left only one more day. Jamal and Kevin passed him, pushing carts, but he hardly saw them.

  The girl was saying something. “Are you there? Hello?”

  “Yeah, I'm here,” he answered, not recognizing his own voice. In all the weeks since his abduction he hadn't found a single way out of this hellhole. Now he had one day.

  “My brother is trying,” she said, sniffing again. “But he can't find a way out either.”

  Nadifa wondered if he'd spoken out loud. His mind felt fuzzy.

  “Anyway. I… I thought someone should know. I'm sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Nadifa told her, wondering what the fuck he was thanking her for even as he said it.

  Her laughter sounded crazy, a witch's cackle that filled the passageway with anger and pain, not humor. It made no sense, but the sound of it comforted Nadifa. They would die within two days, but they weren't alone in their misery.

  Then, with one more fist slammed into the wall, she was gone.

  Nadifa drifted back to the kitchen. He served the soup, salad, main course, desserts, fruit, and coffee without uttering a word. He moved like a mindless machine as he blocked out the words of the dinner guests. He searched the faces of every woman as he placed and removed their dishes, looking for some sign from the one who'd spoken to him, but they each seemed more thrilled to be there than the last, offering dramatic gasps and easy laughter as they clutched their necklaces and listened to the puffed-up old white men around them talk about unchecked exploitation, the causes of fatal damage to the economy, and asked questions like, ‘How long can a man of good conscience allow this sabotage to last?’

  Nadifa noticed that the women and younger men hardly spoke at all. There seemed something pathetically sad about the whole thing. They were obviously afraid to say or do anything that might earn disapproval in the presence of the older men, choosing to sit instead like beaten dogs shaped by their master's cruelty.

  He saw Luk watching one of them with stony disgust and knew his friend felt none of his sadness.

  After all the guests had finally left and the last of the dishes were back in the kitchen, the seven captives cleaned the banquet hall floor while armed guards watched, then filed back through the kitchen to the locker room, where they were told to change back into their filthy prison clothes, and report back the next day.

  They hardly looked at each other on the train back through the tunnel.

  “I'm not doing this shit again tomorrow, man,” Malik said softly at Nadifa's side. “I can't do it.”

  “What's the alternative?” Mike asked, but no one answered.

  Nadifa knew he should tell them about the girl on the other side of the wall and what she'd said. But he was suddenly so exhausted he could hardly stand. What was the point? Was it any easier to know the time of death? Was it a blessing to be prepared, maybe have time for a prayer? Or was it a kindness to hold onto the hope of survival until the very last possible moment?

  He would tell them later. In the morning, he decided. Let them sleep first.

  As the gates to the tunnel slammed shut and the train doors opened in the darkness of the empty loading tunnel, Nadifa hardly noticed the absence of a Klexter. There was nowhere for them to run now except around in circles within an electric fence, like trapped rats.

  “You okay, man?” Luk asked him.

  “Naw…” Nadifa managed, ignoring the others' stares as he dragged himself up the ramp, raising his eyes only when he realized everyone had stopped around him.

  Zahi stood at the doorway to the platform, her expression unreadable in the dim light.

  “She's gone, Nadifa,” his cousin said, and his heart twisted at her words. “Ayeeyo is missing.”

  Someone knew Hanna had been down to The Resort's ninth level, and they did not approve. Every time she checked the service elevator at the end of her hallway, a blank-faced security guard stood blocking its doors. Even more frustrating was that even if she'd found one unattended, Hanna was never left alone. First, Katelyn arrived in a tornado of annoying enthusiasm, insisting they shop, have lunch, tennis, then dress together for dinner, agonizing over every detail of her look until Hanna thought she would strangle her.

  She'd had to sneak off to the bathroom during the appetizer course before she murdered someone with a flower vase. How could you be so stupid to not notice what Father was saying before? Were you really that drunk?

  Katelyn had appeared in the powder room ten seconds after she'd tried to warn someone through the wall, claiming she needed to freshen up, her eyes studying Hanna with barely concealed suspicion.

  She'd hardly been left alone from the moment Hanna rejoined the dinner party, to the moment she met her father for breakfast by the gardens the next morning. All through dinner and late into the night Connor stuck to her with a newfound eagerness that felt like he was performing for someone other than her. He doted on her with his infuriatingly smug smile that made her want to smash his perfect teeth in, insisting on a full day of “fun” and not leaving her side until it was nearly time to get ready for the fucking banquet. He even escorted her to her suite, then sent her texts he obviously—and mistakenly—thought were romantic every three minutes afterwards, leaving her with the creepy feeling someone was in the shadows, watching her. She didn't have long to think about this though, because after Connor's third text (You take my breath away, you're so beautiful) Aunt Chastity arrived, a wide smile plastered on her face, bearing gifts.

  Hanna soon found herself standing at the foot of her bed, looking down at a gown of purple and fuchsia, its ruffles tumbling to the floor in a river of silk, its bodice decorated in silver embroidery and tiny pearls. Only twenty-four hours ago she would've thought it was beautiful. Now it made her want to scream. Every fold looked like a stream of blood, every pearl a severed artery.

  “And for your hair,” Aunt Chastity announced behind her, her voice syrupy sweet as she lifted Hanna's hair in her hands, her fingers brushing Hanna's neck, making her skin crawl. She'd seen how her aunt had looked at Dr. Kaiser the night before. Hanna made herself smile as she turned to look at the orchids in their little plastic box, their color perfectly matching the dress.

  How could she have never once noticed how dangerous her aunt was? The woman was like a viper, her smile dripping with venom, nails like poisonous claws. Hanna felt again as if she'd woken from a long sleep to find the world she thought she knew turned into a nightmare.

  Looking at the phone on her desk, Hanna thought of Adam again. She hadn't escaped. Banquet Night had arrived, and The Resort was bursting with excitement for this year's party. It was supposed to be especially grand this year.

  Don't go, Adam's voice rang in her head. Get out and as far away from here as you can.

  “You feeling okay, honey?” Aunt Chastity asked, taking Hanna's chin in her hand and turning her face toward the fake late-afternoon light of the false windows. “You kids party too much,” she decided, clicking her tongue.

  Hanna managed a giggle. She needed to sound like the Old Hanna. The Hanna she was before yesterday.

  “I suggest you get a spa treatment and nap before you show up at the banquet, sweetie,” Chastity continued, pointing one manicured nail. “Otherwise, I'm afraid a boy like Connor won't look twice at you, even in that dress.”

  “That's a good idea,” Hanna said, forcing a smile and reaching for her phone. “I'll call and let them know I'm coming.” I'll do anything if you just go away. It's amazing how a mind could chan
ge so completely, she thought. How those I love can become those I hate in a single instant, and no one even notices.

  Chastity glanced at her diamond-encrusted watch. “I'd ask Katelyn to join you, but she's terribly busy this afternoon, what with tennis with that tiresome congressman's daughter and everything.” She frowned. “I suppose if you're at the spa it will be all right.”

  “I'll be fine, thank you though.”

  “And Hanna?” Chastity's hand was on the doorknob. “Your father expects big things from you.” Her full attention was on Hanna now, a cold focus that sent a chill down her spine. Did Aunt Chastity know she had been to see Adam? Had she watched her?

  “Don't let him down tonight,” she finished.

  Right. Big things like ignoring the fact that he's a murderer who discards his own son.

  All Hanna could manage was a nod, and her aunt finally left the suite, leaving her alone.

  She couldn't do this. She wanted to break something, grab her hunting rifle and shoot everyone in her path, burn The Resort to a smoking hole in the ground. Adam was chained up like some dangerous animal in the basement, and she was supposed to laugh and eat and dance at a party with fucking orchids in her hair? She was supposed to just leave? Did they think she was an idiot?

  Stupid, useless, empty.

  Maybe they were right. She'd already fucked up warning anyone about The Resort's closing. The one thing Adam asked her to do that didn't involve running away and she couldn't even manage that. She'd realized, looking at the waiters last night, that she had no clue how to even speak to any of The Resort's employees. She'd never been told not to, not explicitly, but she'd grown up in her father's segregated world, overheard enough of his philosophies about gangbangers, dangerous foreigners, and lazy people trying to steal and cheat the system to know he would disapprove. He always said a certain standard applied to “families like ours,” whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. Rich? Powerful? No. White. Superior. She knew that now. He called it pride. He called it American. But none of those reasons explained whatever dangerous plan he had for the following day, if Adam was right.

  Or what he'd done to his own wife and son.

  Anyway, she'd fucked up warning anyone, so it didn't matter now. When the opportunity to speak to one of the employees fell in her lap, Hanna had made no sense, sniffling and crying and punching the bathroom wall like some spoiled brat having a tantrum.

  What would happen to those waiters? To the others who cleaned her suite? What could she have done differently?

  Hanna lifted the box of orchids and threw it across the room. It sailed over the sunken hot tub and smashed against one of the wall-chandeliers, its petals scattered amongst broken plastic.

  Looking up, Hanna caught her reflection in the gilded mirror between silk curtains.

  Stupid, useless, empty.

  She was finished thinking. Thinking would drive her insane. If her failure didn't matter, then nothing mattered.

  She turned, stalking across the suite to the bathroom. Meeting her eyes in the mirror, Hanna took hold of her thick, blonde hair. Hair she'd gotten from her mother, a woman murdered for the crime of loving her son, for choosing her child over the hate that infected her husband, for valuing a person he believed had no value.

  Killed. Tossed aside. Forgotten.

  In the vanity drawer, Hanna found tiny, golden-handled scissors decorated with The Resort's logo. They were small, but she had time. They would do.

  Banquet Night, everyone was calling it.

  Nadifa wound his way around the candle and flower-decorated tables that framed the ballroom floor, placing and removing golden plates in front of laughing guests, and trying not to hear a single word they spoke. Luk gave him a warning look from across the room as a middle-aged woman in royal blue shoved her plate away and began complaining her meal was the same as last year.

  “At twenty-one thousand dollars a plate,” she snapped, keeping her voice lowered in a way that only made people turn and listen, “we expect better than the same tired steak year after year, I don't care how superior they say it is.”

  Nadifa focused on serving the rest of the seemingly endless plates. There were at least sixty people in the room already—a horribly depressing increased number from the night before—and tried to think only about the plan.

  After Ayeeyo disappeared, he'd finally told the others about the mysterious girl's warning, and they all agreed there was nothing left for them to lose. Disobedience had previously meant everyone in the compound was denied food—but if they did nothing it sounded like the danger was worse.

  Kevin and Mike were the first to announce that they'd waited long enough to be rescued. Help wasn't coming. Even Luk agreed to fight, willing to break the promise he'd made to his father on the day he'd been killed, to stay safe no matter what happened.

  Their plan was to wait for the guests to be distracted with the meal's main course, then move—with confidence and purpose—toward the kitchen, where they would overpower the first security guard they found and use his weapon to find Nadifa's grandmother, then find the way out, and go for help. It was a shitty plan. Even if it worked, they would be leaving the others behind, risking help arriving too late. But it was better than doing nothing.

  Nadifa put the last plate of steak in front of a guest with a huge mole on his neck just as Kevin nodded at him from across the room. Mike was already moving toward the kitchen, followed by Darnell.

  “Moral superiority,” he heard a familiar voice at a table he passed. Mitch. “This is what the liberal elites and globalist vultures will never understand, even if they could admit such a thing exists. An upper class can only be created by selecting from the very best.”

  “So wise,” a woman sighed, raising her glass.

  Nadifa quickened his pace, failing to shut out the man's next words.

  “All we want is peace, after all—this is why they don't take us seriously.”

  Nadifa hurried past the staircase, moving beneath lighted trees, and entered the corridor leading to the kitchen.

  The others waited, crowded just beyond the curve of its narrow walls, out of sight of the banquet hall.

  “Ready?” Luk asked.

  Nadifa glanced around at the other five boys, and all of them nodded. “It's now or never.”

  Luk offered his hand to Nadifa. “Nice knowing you, man,” he said, slapping his palm quietly, then pulling him into a hug. Darnell looked sick, but his face set with determination as he reached his fist out to touch Luk's.

  They said hurried goodbyes, and then Luk turned, leading the group down the corridor with a fluid grace and confidence Nadifa wished he felt himself. Luk didn't slow his pace as he approached a guard at the kitchen door, taking the man by surprise when he pivoted, slamming his fist into the taller man's throat and stomach in two blurred movements. The guard fell to his knees, choking. Kevin snatched the man's rifle before it could fall to the floor and pointed the weapon at the red, enraged face.

  “The nearest exit,” Luk demanded. “Now.”

  The guard looked at the seven of them and smiled wide, his crooked yellow teeth gleaming. He grabbed his crotch with one pale hand, grinning wider. “Here's your exit, you filthy ni—”

  Kevin slammed the butt of the rifle into the guard's face, and the man fell forward, still.

  “Did you kill him?” Nadifa said, panic rising in his chest. Why had he thought they could escape without killing anyone? What insane hope made him believe they could remain free of immorality?

  Mike knelt to check the man's neck for a pulse, then wiped his glove on Nadifa's sleeve with a scowl. “He'll live.”

  “But we won't if we don't get the fuck out of here.” Luk took a step toward the kitchen door. “Let's get those other rifles and keep moving.”

  “Wait,” Nadifa said, and everyone stopped short, turning to him.

  “Don't you think he seemed a little too sure we wouldn't kill him? I mean, the dude didn't even blink.”

>   “Yeah? So? He's fucking nuts—they all are.” Luk turned back. “Let's go.”

  Nadifa grabbed the rifle from Kevin and pointed it at the guard's head, pulling the trigger as everyone rushed forward in alarm.

  Nothing happened.

  “Yeah,” Nadifa told them, shoving the rifle at Luk's chest. “These are useless to us. They're equipped with some kind of fingerprint recognition technology or some shit, look at this.”

  They leaned forward, trying to make sense of the complex weapon.

  “We could cut his hand off,” said Malik, and they all turned to stare at the normally quiet boy.

  “With what?” Luk asked him finally. “A fucking salad fork? We don't have time.”

  “Shit,” Kevin said. “Fucking white supremacist cracker ass motherfuckers.”

  “We have to go back,” Nadifa told them. “Buy more time. When the party ends and the place empties out, we'll come up with a new plan.”

  Luk clenched his jaw, but finally nodded down at the unconscious guard at his feet.

  “Give him back his weapon,” he said.

  “Like fuck we will,” Mike said, snatching the rifle from Nadifa's hands and stepping forward as if he would slam it into the man's head, but Luk put out an arm, blocking him.

  “He won't wanna admit to his colleagues what happened if he doesn't have to,” he explained. “But we do anything else? That gets all their attention. And then our next plan is fucked. Think, my brother.”

  Mike didn't look happy about it, but once Nadifa and Darnell dragged the guard into a sitting position against the corner of the corridor, he placed the weapon across the man's lap.

  They returned to the banquet hall, where the guests were all still eating their steak, unaware of their attempted escape. Nadifa felt like he was dragging heavy iron chains as he found his place once again against the wall next to the carts, waiting obediently to retrieve empty dishes and refill glasses. His heart still pounded, but he was determined not to lose focus.

  He would find Ayeeyo and keep her safe.

  He would not fail.