by Robert McKay
They only saw a tiny portion of the house before they were ushered through a narrow door and down a dimly lit concrete stairway. The air was cool and smelled of dust. At the bottom of the stairs the walls were lined with small cubby holes, most of them containing a bottle. A wine cellar. In the back of the cellar was a heavy metal door in Colarian grey.
Beatrix knew that beyond that door there would be nothing of beauty and even less of hope.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Beatrix awoke the next morning in her cell. The others were trying to cheer one another up as best they could from their own cells. Beatrix remained silent beyond letting them know she wasn't hurt. They all knew her well enough to leave her alone when she didn't want to talk, and she was thankful for that. She needed time to take stock of her situation.
The beast who had murdered her father really was there, and he'd talked to her. There was no more denying that he'd been the one that dropped A Dark Beauty into her cage on the ship. She'd taken comfort in it, and now it was gone. He was toying with her and that pissed her off like nothing else could. She had to get out of her cell, if only so she could find a way to kill him. As she went through scenario after scenario in her head about how she would snuff out his life, she began to shake. She'd killed over two hundred Colarians, but it was this one who haunted her nightmares. He'd taken on a role that was bigger than life. He was like one of those monsters in old movies that stomped through cities, kicking cars like toys, and crushing buildings beneath his feet. How was she supposed to deal with something like that?
She resolutely pushed the thoughts of killing the beast aside. That was the ultimate goal, and there were lots of steps to complete before then. She couldn't do anything while she was trapped in a cell. She had to focus on finding a way out first.
She was alone in a grey cube with cement on three sides and bars on the fourth. Her companions were in cells like hers, one right next to the other, with just enough wall between them so they couldn't touch if they reached out through the bars. Hands was next to her, then Gadget, Torch, and Pickle on the other end.
Each cell had a single caged light on the ceiling, a toilet, a sink, a ledge jutting from one wall with a mattress, and a couple of dust bunnies for company. As was expected, all of it was in Colarian grey. It was a recipe for madness. Seeing color and beauty for a few short minutes and then being plunged back into the abyss of grey, even for one night, was hard to take.
If any of them were going to see the outside again, she had to figure out what the Colarians wanted them for.
Beatrix didn't have enough critical information to pose a threat to Nedra as a whole. Not even Torch had enough information worth being tortured for. Since the Colarians had shown no interest in negotiation before, they probably weren't being held as hostages. That left only a couple of other uses and none of them were pleasant. The first that sprang to Beatrix's mind was scientific experimentation. When she thought of the early tests performed on Colarians that were taken captive, she shuddered.
She saw no one except for the Colarian guards that resumed the every four hour supply drops. One of them was Woolly from their trip in on the aircraft. She preferred his open animosity to the bored indifference of the other guards. Something about their blank looks prevented her from giving them any sort of nickname like Woolly.
On his third supply drop, Woolly paused to glare at her for a moment and Beatrix again noticed that the tentacle of his symbiont had been cut away from his left eye. His snarl also gave her a decent view of his teeth and the slightly elongated canines. She wondered if the missing tentacle was the source of his bad attitude.
"I don't like you, either, Woolly," she said, snatching up her tray and moving to sit on her bed. "Now, take away my dirty dishes like a good little servant."
He didn't say anything, just like she expected. Maybe the one who killed her father was the only one that could talk. To her surprise, Woolly didn't take her tray. He just grunted and wheeled his little cart away. Somehow, that actually made her like him a bit more. It also meant that even if he couldn't talk, he did hear and understand her. That was good information to have.
The next delivery was by one of the mindless guards and he took both of her trays without seeming to notice that there was anything amiss.
Days passed with nothing to mark them except Hands' watch and the supply deliveries. There was still no sign of the murdering bastard. She couldn't help looking up every time she heard the door open, expecting to see his gleaming yellow eyes and hear that smooth voice.
"Maybe they just want to figure out what our lifespans are and they just plan to feed and water us until we die," posited Hands during one of their idle conversations at meal time.
"Well, it won't give them a very accurate count when we all lose our minds and decide to save up enough of this grey stuff to choke ourselves to death with." Beatrix pushed the grey mush aside and ate the vegetables around it.
"Torch says you should try it. Apparently, it's delicious." Beatrix could actually hear the shudder in his voice.
"I'd rather eat the dishes," she replied.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
One morning, her book appeared lying next to her bed when she woke from a fitful sleep. She rolled onto the floor and poked at it cautiously with a toe, expecting it to disappear. She'd dreamt of it for the last several days. Every time she was about to grab it, it would vanish. This time it was real and she clutched it to her chest like a long-lost lover.
A tiny sob escaped her throat. For several moments she rocked back and forth, trying to staunch the flow of tears streaming down her face. Once they finally stopped, a burn erupted in her stomach and slowly spread throughout her body. How had her mind become so warped that she would cling to a book that was provided by the monster that had murdered her father?
When the fire reached her fingers she hurled the book away, meaning to throw it outside her cell and out of her reach. It clattered against the bars and she sighed with relief. For a full day she left it where it fell, staring at it like it were a live snake. The debate about what to do with it raged until those trivial thoughts were crushed by grim reality.
The Colarians had decided to start there experiments.
A group of guards tromped down the hallway outside their cells. It hadn't been four hours since their last food drop. They hadn't even taken away the dirty dishes. Besides, no more than one guard ever came with the food. This was something different. Beatrix counted four of them, including Woolly. They didn't pause at her cell door. "Hands?" she called.
"They didn't stop," he replied. "Gadget?"
There was the loud clunk of a lock being released. "No, no, no," said Gadget, and there was the scrabbling sound of boots scraping on concrete. "Why me?"
"What's going on?" shouted Pickle from her cell on the end. "Gadget? What are they doing to Gadget?" She wouldn't be able to see anything from her vantage point. Only Hands and Torch would be able to see much of anything.
"Don't tell them anything," said Torch urgently. "Stay strong."
Pickle must have figured out what was happening because her shouts drowned the rest of them out. "When I get out of here, I'll cut all your heads off. No, that's too nice. There are much worse things. You'll beg me to die before I'm done with you!"
Beatrix saw Hands' food tray bounce off the head of one of the guards as they passed his cell. "Just come back alive, whatever you have to do," he said quietly.
It wasn't until Beatrix saw Gadget struggling between two burly guards that the situation became real for her. She grabbed the plastic fork off her tray and pressed her body as close to the bars as possible. When the guard closest to her passed by she lashed out and buried it in his bicep. The end snapped off, leaving her holding the bloody grey handle. It wasn't until the door closed that she realized the horrible shrieking in the prison was coming from her own throat.
There was a lot of screaming and crying after Gadget was dragged away. The quiet that descended later was w
orse. It was too much to bear.
The book was the only real distraction she had; she wasn't about to deny herself a way to avoid thinking about what was happening to Gadget. Even just holding the book helped. Eventually though, the image of Gadget's blood decorating a dreary grey wall would flash across her mind and only the crisp black and white pages could wipe her thoughts clean.
When two guards dragged him back to his cell, Gadget hung limply between them, his eyes open and glassy. There were two livid red marks on his forehead, just above his eyes.
Once the guards were gone, reports immediately passed from one cell to the next, giving news of Gadget. He wasn't responding to anyone. Beatrix's heart thudded loudly in her chest. She knew these days would come, but that didn't make it any easier.
The marks on Gadget's forehead were very similar to those left behind when one of the symbionts was cut away. Her books on Colarian biology explained that the symbionts connected directly to the frontal lobe of the brain in those spots, allowing them access to the higher functions of the brain, such as reasoning and logic. It was thought by many scientists that it allowed the Colarian and their symbionts a method of communication since the symbionts had no discernible ears or mouths and the Colarians weren't prone to speech.
They were probably trying to dig around in Gadget's brain to get a better understanding of how to defeat Nedra. The war had been going on for years without either side gaining a significant advantage over the other. Apparently they had grown tired of trying to simply outmaneuver the Crown Fleet. Now they wanted insider information. Beatrix hoped fervently that she and her friends were the only ones snared by the Hounds. If they had taken the Harbinger, the secrets the ship's commander held could bring Nedra to its knees.
Beatrix shook her head to clear it of her paranoid supposition. The truth was that she didn't know anything for certain and that needed to change. Getting information out of the guards seemed about as likely as getting blood out of a stone. She doubted that when Gadget came to he would have much to offer, but she'd ask anyway. It would be good if she had some information of her own first. There was only one possible means of gathering information that she could think of and it sickened her stomach, but the thought of what they'd done to Gadget left her too aware of how helpless she was. She'd do anything to change that—even talk to the beast.
She reached down and picked up A Dark Beauty. She grabbed her fresh tray off the floor and stared dubiously at the grey goo occupying the corner. Carefully, she dipped the broken tine of her plastic fork in the goo and then lowered it to the back cover of her book. It was sacrilege to desecrate one of her books; it was even worse to be trying to communicate with the monster that had murdered her father. But with each dip into the disgusting grey goo, her resolve strengthened and her heart hardened. This was all she could do for Gadget and the rest of her friends.
It took an hour of painstaking dipping and scratching, but she managed to pen a note on the inside of the back cover that read simply, "Come talk to me". She let the note dry and then put it through the bars and opened the book back up with the note clearly visible.
A while later, the guards came through and picked up their trays. If they noticed the book, they ignored it. She heaved a sigh of relief. Apparently, along with being nonverbal, her guards were completely uninterested in anything out of the norm.
Now, all she could do was wait and hope the beast saw her message. Though she couldn't see cameras, she was sure he was watching her, somehow. Maybe he just crept in at night to watch her sleep. She shuddered.
Waiting, as it turned out, wasn't easy. Every noise brought her attention back to the book sitting just outside her cell. Hours ticked by and nothing happened. After a while Beatrix drifted off to sleep and was haunted by random images and feelings. Nothing concrete terrorized her. That would have been easier to deal with. Then at least, she would have had something to fight. A hazy image of her father lying dead in their kitchen gave way to a dark fog that clung to her skin like a shroud. It was impossible to see anything beyond about a meter. Then voices drifted in. First, a multitude, whispering too quietly to be heard. Then just a single deep voice, snarling words she couldn't understand in a gravelly whisper.
"Beatrix..."
A bolt of fear shot down her spine and her eyes opened wide. Her breath was caught in her throat and she was too afraid to release it. There was no doubt that she wasn't alone. The beast had come. It seemed wrong for her name to pass those lips. How dare that thing speak her name. Her fear and panic gave way to anger. Her breath came back in short pants.
"Beatrix..." he called again. His voice was soft, almost tender. He was standing under the light outside her cell, his muscled, fur-clad arms crossed before his chest.
That was all she could take. Her anger boiled over into white-hot rage, suffusing her whole body with heat and the need to move. Before she could think better of it, Beatrix lunged from her bed toward the sound of the voice, a wordless scream ripping from her throat. Her chest met cold metal with a meaty thunk. Her hands reached through the bars and clawed at empty air, but she kept swinging anyway.
"Sting," called Hands, sounding groggy. "You alright?"
The beast hadn't fled; he'd merely stepped back into the shadows against the far wall. He still wouldn't be visible to anyone other than her. While she stared at him, her heart pounding and her chest heaving, he shook his head once. The look in his yellow eyes was calculating and then he glanced toward the exit. If she said anything, he would be gone and her chances of getting answers along with him.
"I'm fine, Hands," she said, willing her breathing to slow, despite the rage still burning in her heart at being so close to the beast. "Go back to sleep."
"Alright," he said softly, already drifting back off. A few seconds later his soft snores were drifting out into the hallway.
Beatrix pulled herself back from the bars and fought the urge to rub her aching chest. She wouldn't show any weakness in front of the beast, but she also didn't want to be within his easy striking distance any more. Even if she did manage to get a hand on him, he held all the power. The only satisfaction she could get would be getting information out of him that might help her escape later.
"Why did you come down here?" she asked, once she was certain Hands was fully unconscious. Despite her best effort the question still came out loaded with more emotion than the simple words could convey. The question meant so much more than that. It begged him to explain why he had come to their house, and why he had killed her father. Why did he give her back A Dark Beauty, and why had he taken it in the first place? One final question stole through her head, but she refused to give it words.
"You asked me to come talk to you," he said simply. He reached up and rubbed the puckered, circular scar above his left eye. His black fur rippled over the muscles of his forearm. Most of the rest of his body was covered with the standard issue Colarian grey uniform.
Beatrix growled in frustration. He was just standing there, looking at her, calmly, almost meekly. Despite being three times her weight and towering over her, with the bars between them, he looked more like a tamed circus lion than a murderer. The potential for violence was written in every rippling muscle, but it was hard to see past the way he yawned and stretched in the patch of dim light like a house cat in the sun. She brushed aside those thoughts and dredged up the memory of her father lying on the kitchen table with that knife sticking out of his back. "I mean why are you coming to talk to me? I didn't even know you things could talk until I heard you outside."
"We have mouths and tongues, of course we can talk." He completely ignored her question. He spoke softly and with a slight accent, his consonants a bit too soft and his R's rolling off his tongue.
"That's flawed logic," she sniped back at him.
"It is, but not for the reason you think," he responded, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"What's that supposed to mean? Most creatures have tongues and mouths and most of them
can't talk." She stepped closer to the bars and crossed her arms over her aching chest before she could think better of it.
"False. Every creature can talk, even the ones without mouths and tongues. That was the flaw in our logic. We know that even your Nedran science has proved that many insects can speak through scent."
Beatrix scowled, realizing that he was probably closer to being correct than she was, if not entirely. His smile spread the rest of the way across his face, showing his white teeth, even the too long ones that more closely resembled fangs. Somehow it wasn't terrifying and that made her scowl even deeper. "This is all beside the point."
"Yes, what is the point?" he asked, his left brow quirking up.
"Why do you have us here? Why haven't you killed us?"
"I-I don't want you to die."
"Why didn't you kill me when you killed my father?" she asked, finally giving voice to the question that had been plaguing her for years. Had he left her alive just to torment her? Is that why he was keeping her locked up now?
"I need you—" he started, and his words cut off with a strangled sound. The smile drained from his face and his eyes dimmed. He suddenly looked just like one of the lifeless guards. His back stiffened and he reached into his jacket. Keys jangled from his clawed hand. Without a word, the two guards entered and walked over to Hands' cell.
"What are you doing?" shouted Beatrix.
The beast unlocked the cell and in a manner of moments they were dragging Hands down the hallway, kicking and screaming.
"I take it back! Don't hurt him! I'm the one that screwed up; take me instead!"
The door slammed closed behind them. Hands was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
