please?"Bonnie tried hard to make sure her voice didn't quaver.
The man was bored. "Show me your pass,"he said irritably.
It was at that point that Bonnie suddenly knew that everything was going to go horribly wrong.
"Come on, come on, snap it up!"Stil looking at his accounting books, the man snapped his fingers.
Meanwhile Bonnie was running a hand over her sack-cloth smock, in which she knew perfectly well there was no pocket, and certainly no pass.
"But I thought I didn't need a pass, except to cross sectors,"she babbled final y.
The man now leaned over the counter. "Then show me your freedom pass,"he said, and Bonnie did the only thing she could think of. She turned and ran, but before she could reach the door she felt a sudden stinging pain in her back and then everything went blurry and she never knew when she hit the ground.
Chapter 15
Bonnie woke slowly, coming up from some dark place.
Then she wished she hadn't. She was in some out-of-doors place - only buildings blocked the horizon where the sun hung forever. Around her were a lot of other girls, al approximately her own age. That was puzzling, first of al . If you took a random sampling of females off the street there would be little girls crying for their mothers, and there would be mother-aged women taking care of them. There might be a few older women. This place looked more like -
- oh, God, it looked like one of those slave warehouse places that they had had to pass the last time they had come to the Dark Dimension. The ones that Elena had ordered them not to look at or listen to. But now Bonnie felt sure she was inside one herself, and there was no way not to look at the Stillfaces, at the terrified eyes, at the quivering mouths around her.
She wanted to speak, to find the way - there would have to be a way, Elena would insist - to get out. But first she gathered al the Power at her command, wrapped it into a cry, and soundlessly screamed Damon! Damon! Help! I really need you!
Al she heard in return was silence.
Damon! It's Bonnie! I'm at a slave warehouse! Help!
Suddenly she had a hunch, and lowered her psychic barriers.
She was instantly crushed. Even here, at the edge of the city, the air was choked ful of long messages and short: cries of impatience, or camaraderie, of greeting, of solicitation.
Longer, less impatient conversations about things, instructions, teasings, stories. She couldn't keep up with it. It turned into a menacing wave of psychic sound that was curled like a wave about to break over her head, to crush her into a mil ion pieces.
And then, all of a sudden, the telepathic melee vanished.
Bonnie was able to focus her eyes on a blond girl, a little older than her and about four inches taller.
"I said, are you okay?"the girl was repeating - obviously she'd been saying it for a while.
"Yes,"Bonnie said automatically. No! Bonnie thought.
"You might want to get ready to move. They've sounded the first dinnertime whistle, but you looked so out of it, I waited for the second one."
What am I supposed to say? Thank you seemed safest.
"Thanks,"Bonnie said. Then her mouth said all on its own,
"Where am I?"
The blond girl looked surprised. "The depot for runaway slaves, of course."
Well, that was that. "But I didn't run away,"she protested. "I was going right back after I got a sugarplum."
"I don't know about that. I was trying to run away, but they finally caught me."The girl slammed one fist into an open hand. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted that litter carrier.
Carried me right to the authorities and me blind and without a clue."
"You mean you had the litter curtains down - ?"Bonnie was asking, when a shril whistle interrupted her. The blond girl took hold of her arm and began dragging her away from the fence. "That's the second service dinnertime whistle - we don't want to miss that, because after that they shut us up for the night. I'm Eren. Who're you?"
"Bonnie."
Eren snorted and grinned. "All right by me."
Bonnie allowed herself to be led up a dirty stairway and into a dirty cafeteria. The blond girl, who seemed to regard herself as Bonnie's keeper, handed her a tray, and pushed her along. Bonnie didn't get any choice in what she was to have, not even to veto the noodles that were squirming slightly, but she did