“Who are you?” I asked in a robotic tone, staring blankly ahead.
“My name is Owen Sanders.” He backed up off of me.
“And are you a cannibal, Owen Sanders?”
“No,” he announced. “I am not.”
When I saw him, out in the earthly desert, he had cannibalistic traits. The sharpened teeth, blood smeared all over him, sadistic demeanor. Looking at him now, even though he was cleaned up with his shiny skin, kind eyes, and normal clothing, he still reminded me of a cannibal. “You’re not?” I asked, warily.
He shook his head. “No.”
I sat up abruptly, almost whacking him in the head. “That doesn’t change anything. You almost killed me! And then you left me all alone bleeding and unable to move!” I snapped.
“I saved you,” he harrumphed. “You don’t know anything!”
I cackled hysterically. “You saved me. You and I have a very different interpretation on what the word save means.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do we, now?”
I scoffed. “Yes, we do!”
He got up off the floor and stalked over to the control panel. “We’ll see about that.”
“Where are you going?” I shouted as I rose to my feet. He didn’t answer. I watched him carefully as he picked something up off the control panel. Then he walked over to me and chucked the item at me. I missed the catch and the item bounced on the floor several times before I walked over to pick it up.
“I cut your head open, so I could take that out!”
I palmed the tiny iridescent barcode that looked a lot like a computer chip. “What is this?”
“It’s a censor. It was implanted in your brain, to be used as a tracking device, among other things.”
“This can’t be from my brain. You are just feeding me a load of bull. I’ve never had one of these inserted.”
He shook his head. “That you know of.”
“I think I would know if I had a censor inserted into my brain.”
“Mark Baker is a very crafty man,” he stated. “You’d be surprised what he’s capable of. All of the children in your underground world have censors. And I assume that it’s only a matter of time before he figures out a way to implant them in the adults too. The man is obsessed with control.”
That was something that I already knew. But I still had a hard time believing that someone who attacked me had actually saved me. “Right.” I rolled my eyes. “How can you expect me to believe that? After the way you treated me out there.”
He shrugged. “Believe what you want. But, I’m telling you the truth.”I opened my mouth to reply, but then I noticed the hatch-like doors shaking. Owen’s face contorted into a look of panic and he grabbed me by the shoulder. “You need to hide.”
Scowling, I pulled my shoulder away. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He gripped my upper arm tightly and shoved me through a pair of steel doors just as the hatch smacked against the marble. “Owen,” Mr. Baker called. “Are you up here?”
I rested my ear against the metal door, listening to the sound of their muffled voices. “I’m here,” Owen replied.
Mr. Baker’s feet clinked against the marble floor. “Can you bring up the footage from last Sunday please?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
I waited a few minutes in silence as Owen obviously did what he was instructed to do. I heard his fingers pounding against the keyboard on the control panel and the sound of a foot tapping nervously. “Stop there,” Mr. Baker commanded.
Then a loud slap echoed so loud that I was certain our underground colony would be able to hear. “Ugh,” Owen moaned.
“When I tell you to do something, you do it!” Mr. Baker shouted. “You were supposed to kill that girl! Now we have a severe shortage in food and guess what that means?”