by Emma Hamm
She laid her head down on the sorry excuse for a pillow and found herself wishing for the gentle swing of a hammock. She would have been pleased for the darkness of the caves and the hard cold floor. Jane was missing much of her life underground. Life had been easier Below, at least for her. Selfishly, she wanted to disappear back into that world and never see this one again.
“Jane.”
“Luther I don’t want to argue anymore. I have had enough of that.”
“Jane, look at me.”
She growled, but rolled over until her feet touched the ground and she could stare at her brother once more.
“What. What is it that you could possibly want.”
Her eyes met his. His expression was carefully still and devoid of emotion. The clear difference from anger made her instantly worried.
“What-”
She was cut off when his eyes flicked towards the ceiling. It was then that she heard it. A slight shuffling from the vent above them. There were no openings that she could see. She had days to explore every inch of her tiny cell and there were no ways for the two of them to escape.
But a small child inside a vent could hear them perfectly.
Jane cleared her throat and said loudly, “Luther can you hear me through that glass?”
Luther nodded as he played along, but Jane was listening for the quiet answering thump against the metal above her head.
“Catherine told me that Juo was with her.” She was still speaking too loudly, but she was praying that whoever was listening to them would only think that she was still angry. “I don’t know where they’re keeping Ruric but I assume it’s somewhere secret.”
“There are rooms deeper in the building.” Luther answered her. “They’re underground and I’ve only heard of them.”
“We couldn’t get there if we tried.”
“The other interns used to say that the air was stale because there weren’t any vents.”
The warning was clear. Willow wouldn’t be able to get to Ruric even if she tried. There were too many obstacles. Jane’s throat swallowed hard as she realized there was a choice to be made here.
Ruric was too far for them to get, but she could still try to save three out of the four goblins. She knew what Ruric would choose.
“If we get out of here, we’ll grab Juo and go.”
“Jane.” Luther leaned forward as though to press his hand against the glass. He was shaking his head, but her mind could not be changed.
“No. That’s the plan.”
She waited until she heard the shuffling of her sister moving away from the vents. Willow was gone, Jane had made her choice.
She laid back down on the bed and closed her eyes, refusing to listen to Luther speak or his thumps against the glass that separated them. Her heart felt as though it was bleeding. Jane had experienced that enough in the past year to last her a lifetime.
Rather than dwell on the present, she let her mind wander to memories that soothed the wound upon her soul. Beneath her closed eyes she saw blue lit caves, fish that glimmered underneath cool water, and the warm rumble of an inhuman voice practicing her language.
His eyes burned. His stomach was on fire. His hands were bound and he could not seem to move.
Ruric attempted to lick his lips but found that he couldn’t open his mouth. It felt as though he had swallowed a mouthful of sand. There should be water here. He couldn’t feel the sun blistering his skin, so surely he must be home?
He opened his eyes to slits so that he could vaguely see what was around him. His vision was blurry, but he could make out movement to his left. His head turned to watch the shadow pass by him and pause next to him.
The muscles of his bicep bulged as he attempted to lift his arm. Ruric wanted to grab whatever it was next to him. Though his mind had not recognized the memories that still lay dormant, he knew that he wanted to hurt something. He wanted to hurt whatever these creatures were as much as they had hurt him.
The movement should have been easy and yet it wasn’t. He felt the bite of strappings holding him down onto the table he was lying on.
Sensations returned slowly. First, was the cold table underneath him that had yet to warm from the heat of his body. Second, was the pain of his stomach that turned from fire to hellish pain. Third, was the ache of his right hand.
The person near him tsked and he could hear the sound of someone tapping a hand against water.
“They’re skimping on you.” The voice was decidedly male and human.
Ruric’s lips moved them. They bared sharp teeth much larger than the small goblin boy they had trapped before. Though he was immobile, Ruric wanted them all to know how dangerous he truly was.
“Easy there big guy, I’m trying to help you.”
He growled in response.
“Yeah yeah.” The man moved again and Ruric felt something slide out of his arm.
“That would be why.” The man was talking to himself. He obviously didn’t think that Ruric could understand him. “How do these people expect to get results if they can’t even stick it with a needle right.”
Ruric was successful at licking his lips this time. Though he wanted to yell or intimidate, the first words out of his mouth were, “Water.”
He could see that the shadow froze and slowly turned back towards him.
But the man shook himself and started moving away again. “You’re losing your mind there, Frank.”
Once more, Ruric managed to say, “Water.”
The man spun around and Ruric heard a few metal objects hit the floor.
“Did you- did you?”
This time Ruric growled low and loud until the man started moving again.
He felt cool metal press against his lips and swallowed until he started to choke. His mouth was finally relieved of sand and the cool drops slid down his neck in welcome reminder that he was alive.
The cup shook against his lips was it was drawn away.
“Did you speak or am I going insane?”
“You’re not going insane.”
The cup then dropped to the ground and the man backed away from Ruric so quickly that he tripped over a cord and fell heavily onto his hip.
“You- You-”
“I speak.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Same as you.” Ruric’s arm bulged once more, though this time he felt a protest in his stomach. His entire body strained against the restraints until he felt something split. Only then did he relax entirely while his lungs struggled to draw in enough air to dispel the pain.
He hardly registered the sound of movement as the man stood up once more.
“You split your stitches.”
“Surprised you gave me any.” Ruric wasn’t precisely confident what stitches were, medical vocabulary hadn’t gone into much of Jane’s teaching. But he could safely assume that whatever had snapped was the stitches the man was talking about.
“We had to. Otherwise you wouldn’t be alive.”
Ruric tracked his movements through sound alone as the burning in his eyes grew too great to peer through his lashes.
“Your fault.”
“Not mine, no. I don’t do any of the surgeries.”
“Wrong.”
“No, really. I don’t do the surgeries.”
He could feel the man’s hands probing his flesh and Ruric bit back a groan. He fiercely wished that Jane was here to decipher his words. The pain made it hard for him to think of all the sounds that were necessary to explain to the man what he wanted to say. Jane had always been able to understand him clearly.
“Wrong to do this.”
The man’s hands stilled for a moment before they were removed.
“We do what we have to. Surviving here isn’t as easy as you might think.”
“It is.”
“You think we all want to be doing this job? Not all of us are twisted freaks that get off on hurting people. But this is the best job with the best benefit
s. You work for the Doctor and life suddenly gets a lot easier.”
Ruric grunted. He wouldn’t believe that humans could choose to do the right thing. Though the man insisted that he did this job because he had to, Ruric saw things in another light. Whatever they were doing here was fundamentally wrong.
His people killed. Sometimes in the heat of battle there would be a slow death. But Ruric had never seen people who would so easily hurt another without giving them the release of death.
“Kill me.”
“Oh I can’t do that.”
“Then release me.”
He could hear the man swallow. “Also can’t do that.”
Another growl rumbled through Ruric’s chest. “Then you do nothing and are worthless!”
“I am a nurse, I’m not worthless!”
Once more Ruric began to struggle against his bindings. The backs of his knees banged against the table as he attempted to rock himself over. His plan was to tip the entire table over in hopes that something other than himself would break.
“Stop doing that!”
Ruric ignored the weak man.
“Listen to me, if you keep doing that I’m going to have to make you go back to sleep and you don’t want that do you?”
Those words made him pause. His arms remained tense against the strappings but he was clearly listening to what the man had to say.
“What reason do you have to keep me awake?”
“I didn’t know you could talk.”
“Reasons, human.”
Frank pulled himself up to his greatest height. It was not very high in the grand scheme of things, but he was taller than the table and the creature on it.
“I might be the first person you speak to. It is important I make a good impression between species.”
“Good impression?” A great warble raised in Ruric’s chest as his throat bobbed up and down in a laugh. “Human, I can feel the blood dripping off my flesh.”
Frank cleared his throat. “Right.”
The man busied himself in cleaning the wounds that were now open on Ruric’s torso. Even though that task, he couldn’t seem to keep his mouth closed.
“The first time any two species meet, there should be general understanding don’t you think? You seem like a reasonable…” He paused and swallowed. “Man. It will be good for both of our species if we manage to have an intelligent conversation. I’m happy to meet you. My name’s Frank.”
The man was odd. Ruric was having a hard enough time focusing on the words he was saying, let alone understand him. But there was a part of Ruric that also felt sorry for him. Frank was like a woman. So delicate and small that he needed someone else to take care of him.
If that wasn’t an uncomfortable thought, Ruric didn’t know what else was.
“I have met humans before.”
“You have? Who?”
“Many slaves.”
“Slaves? Why that’s…” The man seemed to not be able to find words.
Ruric finally took pity on the talkative man who had suddenly fallen silent. He was clearly uncomfortable again.
Sighing, Ruric grudgingly added, “And my wife.”
“You’re married?” Frank perked up once more and his hands busied themselves in cleaning the wounds once more.
Ruric grumbled an affirmative.
“How unlikely. And to a human woman of all things. How does that work?”
“Quite well.”
Ruric could almost hear an audible click in the man’s head when the pieces fell together.
He knew that Jane had made it into the City. She had slipped away from them, but Ruric had known where she had gone. The others had thought she had deserted them. But he knew her heart more than that. But doubt was an easy worm to wiggle into his mind.
When she hadn’t returned by nightfall, Ruric had followed her.
The wall had been easy to climb. His claws had tucked into the crevices and his strong body had pulled him into the City. The guards had caught him nearly instantly.
He could still feel the surprising pricks when they shot him. Not with bullets or anything that could kill him, but with tiny darts that had decorated his skin with red fletched feathers. He had managed to pull only one out of him before he had fallen at their feet.
He remembered very little other than small sparks of pain and anger.
“You’re married to her.”
The other man whispered the word as though it were a secret between the two of them.
“Jane.” Her name on his tongue felt like a hymn.
“Yes, that was her name. I’ve heard them speak of her.”
“She is safe then?”
“Well…” The man paused. “In a sense.”
Ruric’s tense muscles eased at the man’s tone. Though it suggested she might be in danger, at least she hadn’t abandoned him as the other goblins had thought.
“Where is she?”
“In a cell. They’re holding her for study.”
Ruric understood little of that, but he didn’t need to know the ‘why’ behind any of these human’s actions. What he needed was his wife back in his arms and underground.
“Let me go.”
“I can’t.” Frank’s hands disappeared entirely then.
“Let me go human.”
Ruric’s eyes opened in the barest amount so that he could track the human’s movements.
“You need to calm down.”
“My wife. I need to find my wife.”
Ruric renewed his struggles. This time, he managed to shake the entire table he was laid out on. The metal clanged loudly against the floor and made his ears scream in pain. But he wouldn’t stop. Not when he knew that she was here, that he was so close to her.
“I’m sorry, but you need to stay quiet.”
Just after the words, Ruric felt a prick against his forearm. He knew what that was. He had felt that prick more times than he consciously remembered.
He tried very hard to remain awake. But his limbs would not hear his desperate calls for them to awaken. It felt as though he was dying. Numbness crawled from his fingers to his chest. His eyes drifted shut though he struggled against it.
The last thing he thought was that Jane was so close to him that he could almost feel her.
Jane’s eyes opened to stare at the light above her. The light stung her eyes, but she forced herself to look at it. Wherever her boys were, and Jane had started to think of the goblins as her boys, they were looking at the same thing. Two of them were in pain, two of them were lost. She had managed to fail them entirely.
Days had past since Willow had wandered by in the vent. Luther had become strangely silent and she knew he was worrying about their little sister.
She was too. Jane was questioning whether she had made the right decision in sending Willow. She was just a child. But Jane, unlike Luther, knew that Willow was capable of keeping herself out of trouble. Jane had more faith in that girl than Luther did.
The problem was that both of them were feeling guilt that they couldn’t help. Jane didn’t like sitting and doing nothing when other people were saving her. Luther felt as though he should be the “man” and be doing the saving.
Rather than argue, the two of them had fallen silent. Few words passed between them and those that did were meaningless.
Thoughts danced in their minds as they both considered what could be happening outside their walls.
“Do you feel like a butterfly in a jar?” Luther asked her. He was lying on his cot and staring at the ceiling.
“I’ve never seen a butterfly.”
“I have. There are a few tacked up onto the wall with their wings spread out in the intern hall.”
“That seems cruel.”
“I think it’s supposed to be beautiful.”
Jane rolled to watch the expression on Luther’s face as his nose scrunched.
“I don’t think anything dead and on display is beautiful.”
“In a way they a
re. The others are bright and they make you think about what the creatures looked like when they were alive.”
“I hope they don’t do that to humans here too.” Jane slumped back onto her cot and stretched her arms over her head.
“Probably.”
“How did you end up working here, Luther? Of all places?”
“It’s the best job in the City. The most prestigious.”
“Nothing makes sense here. Why is this a prestigious job? Working for a madman in a hellhole sounds like one of the worst jobs you could find.”
“Things are different here.”
And Jane suddenly realized what Ruric felt like when he attempted to explain to her how different it was in his world. She had put up a wall and stubbornly dug in her heels, yet she did that even with her own people.
Her teeth ground hard and a muscle in her jaw ticked. There had to be a better way than this.
Just as she was about to ask her brother his opinion, she heard the sound of heels in their hallway.
Luther sat ramrod straight on his cot. His head turned to look at hers with wild eyes. Unexpected visits had not led to good interactions for them so far. Jane felt an answering jolt in her heart.
They stood together and walked to the opposite glass wall. When Jane saw Catherine’s familiar face, she rushed forward to press her fingers against the glass.
Something was happening. Jane knew that from the wild look in Catherine’s eyes and the flyaway hairs that streamed behind her as her heels struck the ground in a fast rhythm.
“Catherine. What’s happening.”
The other woman’s hands shook as she reached into her pocket and pulled out the key card for Jane’s room.
“We have to go.”
“You managed?”
The glass door slid open and Jane felt her soul sing at the freedom. Catherine moved to Luther’s door to release him.
He brushed past the tiny woman as though she wasn’t even there. Jane had little more than a heartbeat to think before she was held tightly in her brother’s arms. Both of their eyes squeezed shut as he squeezed her far too tight.
“We have to go.” Catherine’s worried voice burst through their reunion.
