She walked around the boy, still playing with the whip, "There are 26 girls in this compound. Since you won't divulge the name of the one you broke in here for, I have no choice but to punish you for all 26 of them. Your back is just big enough for the 26, lucky for you, or we'd have to move on to other places. Feel free to scream, Zoriner. It'll make me enjoy this more," and she swung out her arm and brought the whip out some and then flicked her wrist, the whip curling away from Riley and then into his back with that awful metallic buzzing.
He watched as a deep gash opened up in the top of Riley's back, streaming blood. The hand was up again, and again, and again. He looked away. He wished Riley would scream, but by now he knew that he wouldn't. He closed his eyes, counting each of the blows, hoping the kid survived this. Hoping this was something that could be survived. Finally, the buzzing of the furling and unfurling metal stopped. It was over. He couldn't bring himself to look at the boy. He heard the rope come down and, the metal on metal sound of the cuff sliding away from the slave band.
"Wake up, mute, and get him out of here. You can unlock his band when he is at the gate." She dropped the whip on the tray, pressed it into the wall, and without once looking at Riley walked out the door. When the grinding stopped, he finally looked at the boy. Riley was swaying, eyes shut, but still standing where she left him. His back just streaming redness.
He ran to the sink and turned the water on, found the coldest setting and let it run. He unlocked the slave band, and gently pulled what was left of his shirt off. He'd need it to try to take some of the pain away. The cold water should help. He hoped it would help. He soaked the shirt, fingers going numb at the coldness of it, and pressed it as gently as he could to Riley's neck and let the streams from it run down over the impossibly deep wounds, turning pink and then red. He kept at it for a long time, until Riley raised his hand, stopping him, "I'm okay, Drake. I can walk now."
He faced him and put his hands out in front of him, nodding to him to put the band back on. It hurt him to do this to him now, but the kid was right. He had to do it, had to play the guard until it was safe not to. So they walked, very slowly through the hallways and then up to the main floor and to the lawn.
There was a slight breeze in the air, and on it came just a hint of sweetness, jasmine or orange blossoms, though he knew it was far too early for those to be blooming now. But there it was still, the kind of smell that should signify the end of school for the year, when carefree kids would roam the streets falling in love, plucking leaves off of trees to mask the smell of stolen smokesticks on their fingers, but never these blooms. The good kids wouldn't touch the blooms. This Riley, he was one of the good ones.
They were almost at the tower. Riley walking slowly, carefully, not once turning around to look at him, not saying a word. Maybe he could tell him about Samson now. He had a right to know. Riley stopped at the gate and turned around, looking at him, "I know she's here, Drake. I will come back for her. I'll find her and get her out of here. I have to. But I can't use the tree anymore. I can't get you in trouble. I'll find another way." He unlocked the slave band and dropped it on the ground. He didn't want the damn thing in his hands. "I have to go, Drake," Riley whispered and faced the gate, waiting for him to slide it open.
"I buried your Samson, Riley. I found him, and I knew I had to get him out of there, that you couldn't be the one to have to do it, to see him like that. I'm sorry I couldn't save him, couldn't save any of them. I wanted to tell you for all these years, but I just couldn't do it, didn't know how to." Riley didn't turn around to look at him, just stood there, breathing hard, his broken back rising and falling too fast.
"Where? Where is he?" - a pained whisper.
"The back of the house, by the garden. It was too cold to go deep, but I dug as deep as I could... I had this old cross that my mother had that she gave me. I put it in there with him. I didn't know what else to do. I'm sorry."
Riley nodded, and put his hand on the gate.
He knew he had to let him go now, go and cry for Samson again, and for the pain in his back, and for Drake, who couldn't save him from Hassinger today. Drake, who never saved anybody. So he did.
Scars
Amelia, March 28, 2236 The Compound
She needed time to process all of this. Marching him down to the headmistress would be the right thing to do, but she couldn't bring herself to do that, not yet. She needed to think, and she couldn't do that here, not while she was inadvertently pointing a buzzing weapon into the back of this strange boy. He seemed far too eager to be shot by her, she thought. They, Zoriners, were supposed to be survivors. Their savagery was predicated on a biological imperative, to live at all cost. That's why they were thought of as so dangerous, they'd stop at nothing to survive, so this boy practically insisting she either shoot him or turn him in wasn't adding up. She had to buy some alone time. Not here or anywhere where someone could see her or talk to her.
The morning wakeup alarm blared through the compound. This one was for the groups that had early morning chores today, so she still had a bit of time, but not much before her roommates got up. She felt, more than saw him flinch at the sound.
"I need to go down before I am missed, and then I need a little time to process all of this... I am not going to shoot you, so you might as well turn around and put your hands down."
He turned around then, but his hands stayed up. "You don't trust me... It's all right, Amelia. If you need to leave, you should secure me in some way. I get it. I'm okay with it," he said quietly.
He was right, she didn't quite trust him. Too much here wasn't adding up, but she had nothing to bind his hands with, and even if she had, she was unconvinced this boy would be immobilized by a pair of cuffs for long. Then suddenly she knew. Maid-bands. Every room in the compound had them. Wide metal bands that they used to bind the wrists of new maids. The only way to get out of those was a fingerprint of the person who put the band on in the first place, or the guards, or the headmistress.
She walked him to the den that had an unmade metal bed, a chair, and a smallish sink with a mirror over it. Without a word, he sat in the chair, hands still clasped behind his head. The panel on the wall behind him slid open at her touch, and she reached in and took out the maid band. She pressed her index finger to the ID pad. The invisible latch on the band opened without a sound, a small blue light pulsing on the outward facing side.
She turned around to where Riley sat, not even watching her. He didn't seem to move at all, until his eyes registered the band she was holding. He jumped up in one fluid motion, all the calmness gone from him, as he stared at her, struggling to speak, panting. She took a cautious step back. Maybe she misjudged the stuff that didn't add up. Maybe he was indeed how all Zoriners were supposed to be, and he would hurt her now or even kill her. Instinctively her gun hand went up and pointed at his chest. She won't let him kill her quite so easily. She might be small and a girl, but the stun gun at the setting she had it on was lethal even to a full grown man, and this boy was not quite yet full grown.
He put his hands out in front of him and took a step towards her. "Go ahead," his voice sounded pained for the first time. So it wasn't rage or anger that she saw on his face, but pain, fear maybe. That, too, made no sense. It was just a piece of metal, not a bunch of undoubtedly broken ribs or worse, damaged organs. His hands were shaking slightly when she put the band around his wrists as gently as she could, and used her finger to lock it in place.
She felt him flinch when the metal touched his skin. He blanched, at her knowing. She'd seen so many maids wearing these bands when they were first brought here, none of them seemed in any pain or afraid. The bands almost looked like jewelry, and didn't bite into the skin like ordinary cuffs did. Yet, he definitely looked in pain now, his eyes looking very much like Laurel's that time, silently begging her not to break her arm. He stood there waiting for her to do something or say something, but looking past her face. Maybe he thought she was enslaving him. But they didn't
have boy slaves, except for Drake. He was the only one. Everybody knew that.
"What is it?" She knew he couldn't really hurt her now, not with his hands bound like this, and her still pointing the gun at him, so she took half a step closer to him, and gently put her hand on his shoulder. He froze, "Please, don't..." It was a plea, not a request. His voice hurt somewhere deep in her chest. She didn't want to hurt this boy. Time, she just needed some time.
She ran quickly to the makeup alcove and dabbed a bit of concealer on the dot on her cheek, waited for it to dry and become invisible again and ran all the way to the door and down the stairs to her room.
Her roommates would be just waking up now, so she sidetracked into the bathroom first, hoping Laurel and Stella slept as well as they usually did, and her absence had gone unnoticed. Poking her head into the room, she needn't have worried. Laurel's head was still under her pillow, her blanket in a heap at the foot of the bed, and her pinkish toes moving with her breathing, making scratching sounds on the sheets. She was dead to the world. Stella was just sitting up and rubbing the gunk out of the corners of her eyes.
She smiled at her, and the two of them pounced on Laurel's back, jabbing their fingers into her ribs, not too gently, to wake up, not to tickle. Lateness of any kind was more than frowned upon - it was punished by extra chores for the girl and her roommates. Finally, Laurel flipped on her back and the two huge blue eyes flew open. They might all just make it if they dressed in a hurry. They fumbled through their dressers for the right color t-shirts: blue for Mondays. They pulled on their identically colored jeans and flats, and bolted down the stairs to the kitchen.
They were almost the last ones in before the inspection. Laurel was giggling softly at their almost lateness - she enjoyed cutting it close. She could almost smell the adrenaline pumping through her now and emanating as sparks from her eyes. She loved and hated this about Laurel. Ever since they met almost nine years ago now, they roomed together. She was more of a daredevil back then, but had sense enough to do it in secret. Laurel never seemed to have grown up, no matter how many training sessions she passed with flying colors.
She would know what to do about the boy, about Riley. She found it strange that she just called the boy by his name in her head, and that it felt nice to do it. She needed that thing that Laurel had been born with, the thing hidden in the back of her perfectly implanted memories, that spark of doing bold, unpredictable things. The thing that made her smirk at the headmistress behind her back and never get caught. But she couldn't share this with her, at least not yet. Not her or anybody.
It was lucky for all of this to happen on a Monday. Mondays were for meditation and the girls were left well enough alone until dinner. Her group didn't have any chores today, except for the standard making of the beds and cleaning the room. She stuffed her food into her mouth, unladylike, as her mind went over all things this morning.
She felt Laurel punch her on her arm, and almost jumped in surprise at the not too gentle jab, but then calmed herself and looked over at her friend with a smile, "I'm starving, okay? Maybe I'm going through another one of those growth spurts, or maybe my body decided that my boobs need to be a little bigger than yours..." Laurel would buy this. This banter has become second nature to them. She needed Laurel to buy this. Stella was in her own world again, daydreaming of that perfect boy she was destined to make lots and lots of babies with. She didn't need to worry about her.
But she had to find a way of blowing Laurel off for the rest of the day. They usually wandered the empty rooms of the compound on Mondays, jabbering about teachers and Drake and the headmistress, making up stories about people who used to inhabit this place, or just horsing around.
She needed a believable something that would give her hours of privacy. And then she had it. Cramps, she was having cramps. Her hands went around her stomach and she made her face look pained, "Laurel... uhm, I think I am going to die." She looked at her friend, stifling a soft giggle, but making sure to keep the pain lines etched into her forehead. "Oh, for crying out loud, Ams! You are not going to bloody die from your period. If my implanted memory serves me right, no woman in history of the human race has ever died from it. Or maybe you will, and we'll all erect a statue to you for finally managing to be the first at something..." She bought it. "Ams" was a show of affection, and a break of protocol. The girls weren't allowed to use nicknames. Nobody here had one, except for her, and that was an old gift from Laurel. One she only used when she was sick or in pain. Or when she was sad after thinking about what might have happened to her family that her implant wasn't telling her.
She put the remnants of her food on her tray and snuck a breakfast bar under the belt line of her jeans, leaned over to Laurel and kissed her cheek. "I am going to curl up in the old library with some awful book. Have a fantastic day of roaming the halls without me, friend." She got up, still acting in pain and walked rather slowly to the door. She knew her roommates would take care of making her bed now, and they'll fold her clothes and wipe down her work space.
She started up the stairs to the loft at a run, two at a time, as was now her habit, but then stopped on step 746, heart pounding. She didn't do any thinking yet. What the hell was she running up there for, if she hadn't come up with a way of dealing with this Riley problem. Yet something was compelling her to go up there. She needed to talk to him, or rather to get him to tell her what he wasn't telling her. She could threaten his life, of course, but so far nothing but the maid band even made him show fear. Who would be afraid of a piece of metal but not afraid to die?
She went the rest of the way up to the loft, slowly, trying to remember what she knew about the bands, but nothing was clicking. Nothing was quite adding up. As far as she knew only compounds had maids and as such maid bands. They weren't something he'd ever run into in his world, but he acted as if he knew what it was, and it scared him.
She was almost at the top and paused again. A part of her wished for this morning to not have happened at all. "You are a coward, Ams," Laurel's voice in her head chided her. That she was, at least compared to her friend. She made it this far now, and logic dictated she keeps going. Few more steps to the door and she was in. She let her eyes adjust to the dark before walking to the den where she had left him. He was lying face down on the naked metal of the bed, his bound hands outstretched in front of him, eyes closed. He looked very much asleep, and extremely uncomfortable.
She leaned over and touched her finger to the ID pad of the band. It slid open, and she threw it on the small shelf behind the bed, just out of reach. Now she remembered that she put her gun into the alcove on the way to the kitchen and never replaced it. She was unarmed, and he was no longer bound. She stepped back, ready to run if need be, and suddenly feeling very much afraid. She waited, but the boy didn't move.
She flicked the small light on then, and looked closer at the prone form, thinking that he may have died while she was gone. Worried that his injuries were worse than the bruises she saw. She should have helped him fix them, if she weren't such a bloody coward... His back moved, rhythmically, she could see it now, and then she saw a multitude of dark burgundy streaks symmetrically showing through the tan cotton of his t-shirt.
These couldn't be from the fall, nobody bruised like that. She was staring at them, thin dark lines cutting diagonal patterns across his back. How was he still alive after that fall with his back like this? Who would do that to a child? And he looked very much like a child now. She had to see how bad it was, if she could somehow help him. Doing anything at all was better than looking at his back and thinking, imagining...
The blood, drying like this, would make it impossible to take the shirt off without breaking his skin, she knew. She ran to the sink, soaked a clean washcloth in warm water and put it gently to his back, letting the water soak into the shirt. He still didn't move. She couldn't even see him breathing anymore. She had to soak the rag four more times until she got all the caked-on blood to dissolve. Her hands were shak
ing. She couldn't tell if it was from fear of what she will see or from hurting him or from fear of him waking up now and lunging for her.
Slowly, she lifted the bottom of his now heavy shirt up over his back, even this dim light catching every one of the slashes, 26 in all. She let the shirt fall back down again. She couldn't do this. Nobody taught her how to do this. How to look at so many slices, made as if by a knife, into someone's flesh. She stifled a sob. "It's okay, Amelia... I'm okay." She jumped back at his words. He wasn't asleep after all. He sat up looking at her face, then stood. She took another step back from him. He didn't seem to mind or to notice.
He went past her to the sink, pulled of his soaked shirt and started washing all the blood out of it. She watched, horror-stricken, as some of the scars opened up and fresh red blood streamed down his back. She had to get him to the med floor, he needed a doctor. She wasn't trained for any of this, not yet. She could maybe give someone a shot in an emergency, or splint a broken bone, but not this.
She felt tears run down her face in hot streams, too much water to hide from him. She walked back into the den, found the maid band and locked it inside the panel of the wall. She didn't want him to ever see it again. She stood there with her back to him, still facing the wall, trying to get her tears to stop and her breathing to return to her normal inaudible soft inhales and exhales. It wasn't working.
She was suddenly dead tired, and sadder than she ever remembered being. And she was angry. For the first time in her life, she was angry. Then she surprised herself by knowing with absolute certainty that she was no longer afraid of this strange boy. He seemed far too broken to ever hurt anyone but himself.
Rosemary
Riley, March 28, 2236 Female Replenishers Compound
He didn't know what to make of this girl. He could tell she was still crying into the wall, facing away from him, not wanting him to see it. He knew what it felt like to not want to cry in front of people and knew he had to let her. He walked over to the dusty window on the other side of the loft, put his hands behind his back and looked out onto the lawn.
Escape (Alliance Book 1) Page 4
