He stopped just inside the open doorway to the bathroom and looked back at me, green eyes blazing in the glow of the blue lights. “Your friend was right, you know?” Then he left without uttering another word.
I stood there stunned, backed against the wall like a small, scared child. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew my body felt frozen in place. I let the events of the last five minutes sink in. The tension in my body was causing my muscles to ache, and my shoulders were bunched up to my ears. Once I heard the zap of the aura snapping back into place, my shoulders sagged with relief and the new tension in the rest of my body was a distant memory, but my muscles still ached with it. I took one hand away from the towel and dug my fingers into my shoulder where a knot formed.
Ryder’s words slithered around in my mind for a few minutes as I lingered there, still unable to move. I was right that he was a coward, but even Ryder knew that Cato had spoken the truth. I could make more of a difference than him. What exactly did that mean? And why was that so?
To me, Cato made all the difference in the world just by being there, and he wouldn’t be anywhere anymore. I felt lost without him and his guidance, and I wanted it back dreadfully. I would never again open my apartment door to his smiling face and heavily muscled embrace that warmed me from the inside out.
I walked out of the bathroom, leaving wet footprints on the tiled floor and then on the gray stone of what I could only call my bedroom. I stopped just in sight of the aura, and I could see Ryder’s back through the electric blue light. His hands were clasped together behind his back again, and his feet were slightly parted just like always, but tautness and sadness were evident in his posture. I sighed and looked at the clothing neatly folded on my bed and knew that was a color only meant for me.
Chapter 22
I stood perfectly still as I watched a swarm of color move around me like a breathing, living thing. Everyone was wearing clothes of a different hue. Some did share the same shade, but there were the few, like me, who had their unique color. We were being classified and categorized by our ability. We were only known as numbers in different colors. The metal tray in my hands was filled with something I usually loved. Breakfast for dinner. It had lost its appeal, just like everything else had, after I had been forced to take Cato’s life.
I looked down at the tray. On it were eggs, made sunny side up, toast, and hash browns. They gave us packets of ketchup and jam and butter to use on our food that, to be honest, I wasn’t sure I would be able to eat. Maybe I could force down the toast with some of the delectable strawberry jam, but I wasn’t sure about the rest.
The depression and disgust at myself for what I had been forced to do was eating away at me, and I hadn’t eaten anything in days as a result. They had let me lay in my bed, shielded by the blue aura from the rest of the world long enough. I had been wallowing in my sorrow. My pants were a little loose, hanging on my hipbones like curtains from the lack of sustenance because I had barely eaten since we arrived. My gaze left the tray, and they instantly focused on the table where Julius and Nero sat, chatting with Caius in an animated fashion.
All three of them hunched low over their trays, hands laid out in front of them, talking enthusiastically. I didn’t want to move and stood there frozen as I watched them. I had killed Cato, and they would turn away from me because of it. I knew the brothers well enough to know that, but I didn’t know Caius at all. My thighs twitched because they wanted to move, but I couldn’t follow through. Terror of their judgment and their betrayal flooded me. I wasn’t sure I would be able to live through either one. I willed myself to move and slowly walked to the table, the tray trembling in my hands as I did. Julius’ gaze met mine. Tears began to burn my eyes, threatening to spill down my face, but I held them back.
Caius turned to me, and Nero’s eyes took in my thin, fragile, and sickly frame. I wasn’t ready to face them. They didn’t know why Cato had been missing from their table, but I did, and I was barely willing to face it myself. I sat down as slowly as I could, sliding my legs along the cool metal of the bench. Julius was wearing a mossy, almost putrid green, and Nero was in sky blue. The blue reflected in his eyes, matching the color perfectly.
I looked down at the yellow eggs on my tray and swallowed hard as I felt a small tinge of bile rise in my throat. I saw Julius push his clear glass of water toward me in my peripheral vision. I wasn’t sure I wanted it, just like I wasn’t sure if I wanted the food.
“Are you okay?” Nero asked.
My mouth and throat grew dry, the need for the refreshment in front of me too much to deny. I took the glass of cold water in my hands, gulping the full glass within seconds. The condensation ran down my arm all the way to my elbow, just like the dead blood of my friend. I set the glass down hard and wiped the water off on my pants. I still couldn’t look at any of them, not even Caius. Even though I didn’t know the man, I still couldn’t face him. They had to know, but I wasn’t ready.
“No,” I said as I shook my head. “I’m not.” I finally looked up to greet three pairs of eyes. Two pairs were steel blue, and then there was Caius. I hadn’t paid attention to the color of his eyes before. Not really. I wasn’t about to start.
“Are you sick? You’ve been missing for a few days,” Nero said.
I shook my head again. I wasn’t sick. Well, at least not in the conventional meaning of the word. Sick wasn’t even the word I would use for it. Disgusted was more like it. It was the same revulsion I had felt for Ryder in the moments following the river of Cato’s blood in my shower. I looked at the empty glass longingly, trying to will more water into it. I clasped the very bottom of the glass, resting my arm on the table. My palm was sweating, and I had to resist the urge to wipe that off on my pants as well. It was hot in the room, but luckily it wasn’t spinning yet.
Nero then asked, “Have you seen Cato? Was he with you?”
There were too many questions. I was going to tell them. I just had to work up to it and I wasn’t even sure what to say. Could I come out and say I’d killed Cato? Could I just be so cavalier about it like that? I didn’t think so.
My eyes drifted to his face and I watched it fall as he took in my expression. He knew something had happened. The best time to tell them would’ve been at that moment. I could barely bring myself to think about it or absorb the news even if I had seen and done it myself. It had been real, and it was about time I faced the music. I had stayed hidden away in my cabin for days and had disappeared from the world, but mostly from the brothers. I looked back to the table, the glass still firmly grasped in my hand.
“Cato is dead,” I said. It came out in a hushed whisper that even I could barely hear, but I knew they’d heard those three words just fine. I felt three pairs of eyes on me in an instant and couldn’t bear to look up from the table or the glass in my hand. My shoulders hunched over my tray with the tension taut between my shoulder blades and up through my neck. I took one bite of dry toast and had to choke it down as I tried to ignore the feeling of three men staring at me.
“Did we just hear you correctly?” Caius asked.
I had barely heard him speak. The only reason I knew it was him was the lisp and slur in his voice.
I began to hear whimpers, and once I looked up, Julius pounded his fist on the metal table, causing a hand-sized dent in its perfection. Tears were already streaming down his face, and Nero sat as still and perfect as a statue next to him. I didn’t care enough to look to Caius. The two brothers before me would be significantly affected by Cato’s death. They were what mattered. Not even I mattered, but I would as soon as they knew who had ended his life.
“How?”
I didn’t want to look directly into Julius’ eyes, but it was time to finally face his wrath. I cleared my throat, wishing there was water in the glass again. I was beginning to need it more than ever. Caius filled the glass again with the plastic pitcher on the table and I gulped it down. It settled in a cold and uncomfortable way in my stomach. I swallowed again
and cleared the little bit of mucus from my throat before opening my mouth to speak.
“King,” I forced out. The next few words were even harder to say. “He forced me to kill him.”
“Wait, what?” Nero interrupted.
His voice had risen at least an octave in pitch, but I still couldn’t turn to him. “I didn’t want to, but Cato was begging me to do it. And King wouldn’t have let us leave that room. If I didn’t, he was going to kill us all.”
Nero interrupted again and said, with a hand up, “Wait. Cato wouldn’t do that.”
My heated gaze shot up to meet his. Cato had begged for me to take his life. That was something I would never lie about. Not ever. But he completely missed the part where King would’ve slain us all if I hadn’t done what he demanded. That was something Cato and I couldn’t have lived with, and King would have seen to that.
“But he did, Nero. He begged me to kill him. It was either that, or all of you would be dead now. Not only us, but everyone we loved. Cato sacrificed himself to save all of us.”
“You didn’t have to do it, Mila.” Nero was almost yelling, drawing a lot of unwanted attention. He was even standing, fueled by his rage and suspicion. The muscles under his skin were tense with wrath, and he was balling his fists at his sides.
Julius stood and placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Nero, calm down.” He said the words calmly, despite his brother’s actions.
Even he knew he couldn’t deny everything all the time. He was more willing to believe how horrible the world was than Nero, and he accepted it. I stood up as soon as I saw that glare move in on Julius, and I couldn’t let someone else take the fall for something I had done.
“I wasn’t given a choice. If you were in my situation, you wouldn’t have hesitated. You think this is okay?” I spread my arms to show him the world we were living in that he chose to ignore. “We’re locked up like lab rats, and we’re abused like them. Don’t be so surprised when we start to act like them. Cato saw a world better than this. Different. And it’s up to us to make it so.”
A fist hit me, and it hit me hard. I hadn’t even seen Nero move around the table. My face stung, and I fell to the floor, not even bothering to hide the pain as my body took the impact. I rolled onto my side, and my hand flew to my left eye. It was pounding, and I knew I would have a black eye in the morning.
When I turned, guards had surrounded Nero, pushing Julius away from him. One had even come to my aid, but I shook my head and told him I didn’t need his help. Nero was yelling something unintelligible, his face red with anger and frustration. I could even see the veins straining in his neck as he roared, screaming obscenities in my direction.
I pushed myself up from the floor, making it to my feet. He felt betrayed, but he didn’t know what it was like to have to kill someone he had known his whole life because he had pissed someone off. King had wanted to teach me a lesson. I stood and looked Nero in the eyes as best as I could, silence finally falling over the entire room. He was fuming, a bead of sweat running down from his forehead.
“I’m sorry Cato thought our lives were more important, Nero. I really am.”
A little bit of the fury left his eyes. With that, I walked away. My legs were thrumming with angry energy, giving me the vitality to walk away as fast as I could and just as far away. I knew I was going in a direction that was ill-advised, but getting away meant more to me at the moment then getting into trouble. Cato was dead, they all knew it was because of me, and I couldn’t face them. I would’ve called myself a coward if I hadn’t known better.
I wasn’t paying attention to where my legs were taking me. All I knew was the lights began to dim slightly and turn blue, but I didn’t take my eyes off the distant hallway. Not even when I started to hear the squeak and thud of military grade boots on the tile behind me, the tile making the sound echo through the empty hallway. I turned a blind corner and then stopped, pressing my back firmly against the coolness of it. My legs still wanted to carry me farther.
I took a deep breath in, feeling the air fill my lungs until I couldn’t take any more. Then I let it out as slowly as I could until my lungs ached with the need to breathe. I began to wonder if that was what Cato’s death had felt like as the oxygen had evaporated from within his body, the moisture leaving his blood. I needed to stop thinking about it, because every time I did, I couldn’t breathe, and there was already almost no air left in the room.
I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and let all sounds and thoughts drift away. Even the sound of the military boots pounding against the tiled floor had stopped, causing my worry to leach away and my body to relax. The silence was welcome compared to the noise going on in my head. I let out another deep breath through pursed lips, almost causing a whistle in the quiet. There was nothing at that moment.
Not even the cabins and labs full of people existed. The soldiers were gone, and only I was left with the soft blue light flooding the hushed hallways. Hands gripped the front of my shirt, jerked me away from the wall, and then pushed me back into it. My head hit the wall with a thud, and I could swear I heard the drywall crack beneath my skull. My eyes shot open and met the wide and cold eyes of Jones.
A scream forced its way out of my mouth, and his hand quickly covered my lips to stifle it. His skin showed a network of black veins underneath translucence. Some were turning purple and green like healing bruises, and a plastic IV tube dangled from the bend of his elbow. He was dressed entirely in white, just like when I had been in the hospital wing of the compound. There were small spots of red blood splattered on his white shirt as if he had hit someone while trying to escape his hospital room. His teeth gritted, and his labored breathing was loud, blowing directly in my face. It was hot and sour as if he hadn’t brushed his teeth since his admittance.
“I’m not that easy to get rid of, freak.” He hissed the words at me. I had things to say to him, and he seemed to know it because then he said, “I’ll move my hand away from your mouth if you promise not to scream.”
I didn’t make a habit of making promises, but I nodded regardless, knowing it wasn’t a promise I planned to keep.
“Honestly, I don’t see how you’re walking around. Or breathing for that matter,” I said through ragged breaths.
His body was pressed into mine, making my breathing a little bit more labored, but I still managed to push the words out. I wasn’t in the business of lying anymore. At least not when it came to what I was and what I could do. They apparently thought we were monsters. So who was I to deny them that? In the literal sense of the word, we were all freaks, and they were locking us in cages. So there was no reason not to indulge, even if they were just words.
He pulled his arm back, and his fist collided with my face, pain spreading out quickly from the impact. A groan escaped from between my lips, and the taste of blood hit my tongue. The metallic and salty taste of it mixed with the slight tinge of vomit rising in my throat from the fear that was threatening to do the same. My head was slightly spinning, but I had to keep up the dangerous appearance despite the fact that I was merely human with just one advantage. I wasn’t superhuman by any means. Plus, I was sick and tired of playing games and the games they were forcing us to play had already cost too many lives.
I let my laughter fill the air, and I was sure we weren’t the only ones who heard it bounce off the white walls. I was imagining a line of soldiers making their way to our location, but who knew if they cared enough to make sure one of their lab rats survived the compound. Then he punched me again, even more blood making its way into my mouth and beginning to drip down my chin and neck. The anger and rage in his eyes as they met mine made the smile on my face disappear. I wasn’t sure of his intentions, but I could tell they weren’t the least bit honorable. His fist then made contact with my belly, causing me to curl around the injury and fall to the ground. He let me fall, not even bothering to try to stop my knees from striking the tile.
I was on my knees and curled around
my abdomen, hands gripping myself like it would stop the pain. The acid that had risen in my throat before was being spewed onto the floor, the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything producing agony within me. All I could taste was the sourness of the bile overwhelming the iron flavor of blood.
A few droplets of blood dripped and swirled in the yellow of my stomach acid, but I could only focus on the pain wracking my stomach and head. My muscles spasmed as I fought the urge to shudder with them, attempting to keep myself as still as possible. I had already vomited on the floor and I didn’t want to give Jones any more ammunition than I already had.
I’m not exactly sure what made me expect him to stop his assault if I showed reserve, but I was wrong. It was only the beginning of the onslaught he had planned for me, and I wasn’t betting that anyone would come to my aid anytime soon—no matter how many footsteps I thought I heard. I remembered I had heard booted footfalls behind me as I had tried to run away from everything, but where were they? Was someone standing back with their arms crossed listening while someone took me down a peg even though I was already down as far as I could go? No part of me doubted it for an instant. Then Jones grunted and a swift kick collided with my jaw, causing me to fall backward onto the ground, blood spurting from my mouth and splattering the wall behind me and the floor below me.
The landing sent all the air out of my lungs in a long wheeze, a cough erupting filled with fine sprays of blood and saliva. Then Jones was on top of me, grabbing fists full of my shirt and lifting me slightly off the ground just to pound my head against the tile. All the while I was trying to think of a way out of the situation. I placed a hand on his arm and drug down with my nails, hoping just a little pain would stop his assault, but it only seemed to spur him on. He roared in pain as the blood ran down his arm and punched me one more time.
The Harvested (The Permutation Archives Book 1) Page 15
