Black Jack Read Free Page B

how incredible it was all going to be henceforth, she turned an adoring gaze up to him.
    He lifted her out of the bath and enveloped her in a thick towel. She put her cheek against the soft material, and unconsciously made the contented sound of a dog when its master bends to scratch its ears. There were polka dot panties and fine clothes laid out on a black velvet chair. He dressed her in them. In a daze she ran her palms down the front of the dress and smoothed it over her legs. This was her first time in clothes since she had woken up caged.
    She was taken to a playroom. There were many toys in a big, lidless wooden box, and another child was sitting on the floor playing with a train set.
    ‘Tom is the same age as you, Dakota. Would you like to play with him?’
    The little boy was fair-haired like her and seemed unsurprised by Dakota’s appearance in the playroom. Dakota wanted to join him, but, feeling shy and tongue-tied, she hung back behind Schooner Klaus.
    ‘Go ahead,’ Schooner Klaus encouraged kindly. ‘I’ll be right here if you need me.’ He moved to a table nearby and sat down. Paying no more attention to the children he began to shuffle some papers on the table.
    Tom had neither smiled nor spoken, but he was silently holding out a green and black train compartment toward her. With timid steps she went to sit in front of her new friend. But no sooner had she settled down, when the door burst open and a large man barged in. Dakota was instantly immobilized with fear. Everything about him reminded her of the coldly remote six that stood around the metal table. Worse, he appeared to be in an uncontrollable rage.
    She scrambled up and tried to run to Schooner Klaus, but the man was lightning fast. His iron fist closed around her forearm tightly. He would have dragged her out of the room, too, if Schooner Klaus had not looked up from his papers and said in a calm, firm voice, ‘There must be some misunderstanding here. You must want some other child.’
    But the man was adamant. She was a runaway and must return to the metal room with him. Dakota began to cower with abject terror.
    ‘Let’s discuss this outside,’ Schooner Klaus suggested reasonably.
    They left the room. Dakota lay frozen on the floor, where the man had tossed her, for what seemed an interminable time. Finally, the door opened and Schooner Klaus walked through it. He seemed concerned. The man loomed at the door with crossed arms. Schooner Klaus knelt on one knee beside her so he could whisper into her ear. He told her that the man had orders to take her away and kill her, but that he had managed to convince him it was not important which child died, only that one did. And Dakota, well, Dakota could decide whether it was she or another child that did.
    ‘Perhaps Tom could take your place?’
    Dakota went white.
    Schooner Klaus shook his head regretfully. ‘I know,’ he soothed, ‘but it was the best I could do.’
    Dakota looked at Tom. Unaffected and uncurious about what was going on he had quietly gone back to playing with his train set. In a daze it occurred to her that she had not yet heard him speak. Perhaps he could not. He seemed strangely solemn and unappreciative of his own good fortune, living in that brightly lit, colorful room full of toys. She had done nothing wrong, and yet she had to die. It seemed terribly unfair. She thought of the metal table and began to shake her head. She couldn’t, she simply couldn’t go back. Her heart was pounding in her chest.
    ‘Well?’ Schooner Klaus prompted.
    She uttered her first word since being out of the cage.
    ‘Tom,’ she whispered.
    Barely had the word left her lips when the man strode into the room, grabbed Tom by his head, and, with a knife that he pulled out of his pocket, slit the poor boy’s throat. From ear to ear. Blood gushed out of the gaping wound as he kicked and writhed. Dakota stared in shocked horror. When eventually Tom stopped jerking, the man calmly wiped his