The DollHouse

Chapter Seventeen

The next thing I know Nick is standing beside me.

"Wake up. We've got a party to go to," he says.

I blink away the sleep and look for Clay. He isn't there. I sigh and jump down from the bed. Nick looks tired and filthy from the quarry work.

"Are you alright?" I ask.

Nick shrugs, giving me a smirk. "No choice," he says. "I'll be fine."

"Danny doesn't seem happy about the quarry," I say, thinking of the report.

Nick laughs. "That's because he's an idiot," he says quietly. "I talked to the others. He's convinced they were mining precious gems or something that he can trade with the other Cities Lesser communes. Get a strong black market network going. No matter what anyone tells him, he won't listen. They were never mining precious stones. It's some kind of fuel or something. Completely useless right now, but he keeps making us look for more."

For some reason his tone sounds slightly off. "Is something wrong?" I ask.

"No, everything is fine," Nick says, holding the door open for me. "I'm just a little annoyed by something that I should have expected."

We move into the corridor. "Which would be?" I ask.

He sneers. "All rostered activities are going to be supervised by Danny's boys," he explains.

I frown. "Aren't you used to that? Surely the Guards would have been the same."

He shakes his head. "We had more freedom under the Guards. They just had to make sure we didn't escape. They didn't care how we performed our duties since it was only to keep our own community going. They didn't care if we starved because the chefs slacked off. Danny wants to make sure we do everything he says. I thought he might at least wait a little before getting that tight."

"Is that such a big deal?" I ask, following him down the corridor toward the main hall. "So you can't sleep on Guard duty anymore, big deal."

"That's not the point," Nick says. "It's the principle."

Thinking back to the way he seems to react to events as they come, rather than planning anything, it vaguely surprises me to hear Nick talk about principles.

"Besides," he continues. "They won't just watch that. They'll watch how we talk, how we laugh. It won't be long before they dictate what we can talk or laugh about."

"You can't know that," I argue. "He might not even care."

Nick shakes his head, his face grim. "None of this is new to him. This might be the first time he's had command of the whole community, but he's had small regimes before, until fights broke them down. They never lasted. But each time he had some kind of foothold, he would always end up with these whistle-blowers following him around. They would report every time people spoke about something that Danny didn't like, or every time they showed approval to someone Danny didn't like. Because of that, people start to change the way they talked and what they smiled about."

"So, why didn't you expect that to happen again?" I ask, confused. Nick isn't stupid, so I can't see why he is surprised.

Nick shrugs. "Like I said, I should have. I suppose I thought he wouldn't need that kind of control if he had all of us under his thumb. He got rid of the ones that he didn't trust, but maybe he's just straight up paranoid."

Watching him, he seems strangely thoughtful. Suddenly, Maggie pops into my head and I remember my conversation with Danny. I grab Nick before he can keep walking toward the hall and quickly tell him in a whisper.