The Price of My Life

Evelyn's POV

“If you love me, Owen, tell them to take these things off my wrists.”

The guard held me against the truck while my husband watched from the loading office. I had been promised a place beside him at Meridian Enclave.

I had washed my only decent shirt that morning and packed our wedding photograph in a cloth bag. Now a plastic restraint cut into my skin, and nobody would tell me why I was the only one leaving.

“Owen, please. You said we were going together.” He came closer but stopped beyond my reach.

“Meridian wants to examine you,” he said. “The settlement gets thirty days of food and medicine. You know what our stores look like.”

“You told me we'd have a room there. You told me I could sleep in a bed again.”

“I needed you to come to the gate without making trouble.”

I looked past him at the crates being carried into our storeroom. Two children were already waiting beside the door for their first proper meal in days. I'd helped feed those children through the winter.

I understood why their mothers wanted the supplies, but I couldn't understand why my husband had decided he could exchange me for them.

Clara stood beside him with the agreement. Only yesterday she'd borrowed my clean scarf, promising to return it before our journey. She was wearing it now, neatly tied beneath her coat.

“Clara, tell me you didn't know about this.” Her fingers tightened around the papers.

“We didn't have another way to feed everyone,” she replied.

“How long have you known?”

“Since last week.”

Last week she'd been ill. I'd used the antibiotics I'd saved for myself when her fever rose, then stayed awake to change the cloth on her forehead. She had held my hand and thanked me for being the only family she had left.

“You let me sit beside your bed and talk about leaving with Owen,” I said. “You knew what he was planning, and you let me pack.”

She wiped her eyes. “Please don't make this harder.”

“Harder for whom?”

Owen reached for the agreement. “Enough. Clara didn't arrange this. I did.”

“Then read what you signed.”

He hesitated, and Clara finally unfolded the pages. The document named me as a subject for biological testing and continuing observation. There was no return date. Meridian had agreed to deliver grain, water tablets, and medical supplies to our settlement.

“Continuing observation could mean anything,” I said. “They could keep me there for the rest of my life.”

“They have doctors,” Owen replied. “You survived the contaminated water in the eastern flood. They believe you can help them understand the infection.”

“Then why did you tell me we were moving there as husband and wife?”

He glanced toward the crowd. “Because you would have refused.”

I had gone into that flood to reach Mrs. Bell's little boy when the water rose around the dormitories. She stood near the gate now, her son behind her. I called her name, hoping she would at least ask the guards to stop hurting me. She turned the boy away.

I remembered carrying him through water that burned the cuts on my legs. For weeks afterward, I'd been afraid I'd develop the lesions that appeared on other survivors. A mobile clinic had cleaned my injuries and given me an injection to prevent infection. I'd recovered without developing the illness.

The guard pulled me toward the truck. I stumbled, striking my knee against the step. Owen made no move to help. Clara went to him, and he rested his hand at the small of her back.

I'd seen him hold her that way through our kitchen doorway when they thought I was asleep. I'd believed his explanation that she was frightened and needed comfort. Now Clara leaned against him without looking at me.

“Are you together?” I asked.

Owen looked away, but Clara answered in a whisper. “We didn't mean for you to find out like this.”

I looked between them, remembering how often Clara had stayed with us and how Owen had insisted she shouldn't be left alone after losing her family. Whenever I'd questioned their closeness, he'd accused me of being unfair to her.

“Were you going to tell me before you left?” I asked.

Owen's expression hardened. “Our marriage was already over, Evelyn. You just wouldn't accept it.”

“You never told me it was over.”

“There was never a good time.”

“You took my wedding ring to trade for antibiotics last month,” I reminded him. “You promised we'd buy another when things improved.”

He looked toward the truck rather than at my bare finger. I'd agreed to give up the ring because he'd told me the medicine was needed. I hadn't imagined that a month later, he would be standing beside Clara while strangers took me away.

The guard dragged me up the step. I fought until another guard pinned my arms, then stopped because every movement made the restraint bite deeper.

Through the open doors, I watched Owen pull Clara close. He had held me that way the night our home burned during the first heat emergency.

“You could have left me,” I said. “You didn't have to sell me.”

He didn't answer. The doors shut, and the engine started.

I shouted until my throat hurt, but the engine drowned me out. When I pressed my forehead against the truck wall, I could feel every bump in the road through my injured knee. There was no seat belt, no blanket, and nobody willing to tell me where they were taking me.

Meridian's medical wing was brightly lit and painfully clean. A man in a grey coat checked my wrist number and told the guards to cut the restraint. My hands had swollen so badly that I could barely bend my fingers.

“I didn't agree to any tests,” I told him. “My husband lied to get me here.”

He checked his tablet. “We requested you because of your records from the eastern flood. You were exposed to contaminated water and recovered without the illness seen in other patients.”

“I wasn't the only person who survived the flood.”

“No, Mrs. Carter, but your medical results require further investigation.”

He opened an examination-room door. A chair with straps stood beside a trolley of collection tubes. I backed away, and the guards stepped behind me.

“Please, I haven't done anything wrong,” I told the man. “Why won't you let me leave?”

He checked the information on his tablet before answering.

“Because the injection you received after the eastern flood wasn't the preventive treatment the nurse told you it was.”

I stared at him. “Then what did she inject into me?”

“An experimental compound, Mrs. Carter. And according to our records, every other person who received it is dead.”