by C. G. Hatton
His fist punched into my face, right above my eye, his thumb pushing into my throat.
“You little bastard, you’re dead, you hear me?”
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see past a swirling mist, and started to grey out. I’d been in trouble before but that was the first time it ever felt like it might have been for good.
He hit me again then his weight lifted off me abruptly. I sucked in a breath and scrambled away from them.
Hilyer had him against the wall, thumping him until the big kid slumped in defeat. I sat there on the wet floor, watching, breathing ragged, a trickle running down my face, red smeared on the tiles around me.
The other two started to back away.
Hilyer barked, “Stand still,” and they froze.
The one Hil had pinned against the wall lifted his head, glowering at me.
Hilyer punched him again and held him by the throat. “This is my block. You understand? No one gets beat on without my say so. You want to kick the crap out of him, you wait for me to tell you to do it. You understand?” He shoved the kid again until he nodded, mumbling something I didn’t quite hear.
My ears were ringing.
“What did you say?” Hil growled again.
“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”
“It won’t happen again what?” Hil prompted.
“It won’t happen again, Mister Hilyer Sir,” the boy winced.
Hilyer hit him again and hauled him to the door by the scruff of his shirt. Jem slipped past them. Hilyer muttered something to her as they went out and she grinned, coming in and throwing me a towel.
“Wow, you look like shit,” she said, standing with her arms folded, looking down at me.
I could see two of her, blurring into one and back again. I got the towel around my waist and got to my feet, swaying.
“I really am tired of getting knocked on my ass,” I said.
She laughed. “That’s what you get for snitching around here.”
Snitching? I’d been thinking they were pissed because I beat Raine in the yard.
I felt like I was going to throw up. Or keel over. “What?”
Jem laughed again. “He got thrown into solitary for cheating on the tests. Someone said you’d snitched on him.”
“I didn’t.”
“Your word against theirs.”
“Who said it?”
“What does it matter?”
“I want to know who.”
“Listen, sunshine, you’re cute, but seriously, don’t be so naive. Hil told you not to get caught alone. Listen to him. He might not be there next time Raine or his buddies decide to take a pop.”
The way she said it, it felt like a threat. I was starting to wonder whose block it really was.
Lunch was high energy ration packs again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten but my mouth and jaw were so sore, all I could manage was the soup. It tasted as bad as ever.
They didn’t give us long to eat before they started shouting for us to finish up and get out. They led everyone out of the hall towards the school wing. Except one of the guards took hold of my arm and steered me out of the line and away towards the detention centre.
I bit my tongue and didn’t fight them.
They took me to a cell. An isolation unit. A tiny dark little box with a small table and two chairs in its centre. There was a board on the table that lit up as they pushed me inside.
“You have one hour,” the guard said and they closed the door.
I didn’t even know what I was supposed to have done wrong. It was me that had got my head bashed against the shower floor.
I stood, staring at the board, stubbornly resisting what they wanted me to do. But sometimes you have no choice but to play the game.
After about fifteen minutes, I sat and ran through the board. Meticulous, fast. It went into shut down as I finished the last one. I stayed there in the dark for what must have been another half hour or so before a light came on, the door opened and the psych guy walked in.
He sat opposite me, setting a coffee mug and his little book on his side of the table. “Well done.”
I squinted at him.
He didn’t waste any time. “What happened in the shower, Luka?”
“I fell.”
He stared at me until I added, “Sir.”
I was fairly sure they’d know exactly what had happened. It was like the test was whether I’d snitch on them and I wasn’t sure which way it was going to go but he nodded like that was what he wanted to hear.
“Your written test results are anomalous,” he said. “Are you trying to be clever? Or are you really that stupid?”
I didn’t know how to reply. I’d answered them all right that time.
“If you’re trying to get our attention, you just did. You might wish you hadn’t.” He sat back. “You must be missing your family.”
They’d told us to expect something like that. I was surprised it had taken them this long.
I switched into neutral.
“Must be warm where you’re from, judging by that tan. Are you missing the sunshine, Luka?”
I looked at him, bored.
“You leave your friends behind,” he said, “it must be hard to make new ones. I bet there was a girlfriend. Have you left a girlfriend somewhere, Luka? Bit stupid to do what you did without thinking through the consequences of your actions. I bet she’s missing you. Or was it a boyfriend?” He smiled and changed tack. “You’re small for your age. Must be quite unnerving being somewhere like this. In amongst bigger kids who know the ropes, who’ve done all this before.” He picked up the cup and took a drink. “We get the real hard cases here. Not the type of kids you’re used to, huh?”
My head was hurting. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. I was fairly sure there’d be surveillance. If I held my breath, I could probably pass out again. Let him write that up in his book.
“You’re having nightmares.”
It wasn’t a question.
“There are times you become dissociative. Are you experiencing flashbacks, Luka?”
I got a lump in my throat, cold inside, like the temperature had dropped ten degrees. Like it wasn’t a game anymore. I knew what dissociative meant. I wasn’t dissociative. I lost concentration sometimes if I was thinking of stuff, and if I didn’t like where I was, I’d think of other stuff. That wasn’t dissociation. He was trying to screw with me.
“What happened at that Imperial base, Luka?”
I have a little switch inside me and if it goes one way, there’s nothing that can stand in my way once I want to do something. If it goes the other way…? I stared back at him and felt it waver. A cold little knot deep inside. Once I clicked into self-destruct, there was nothing and no one that could stop me.
“What base was it, Luka?”
I hated the way he kept saying my name. I was there to do a job. This had nothing to do with me or where I was from. Nothing to do with what had happened.
He laughed and stood up. “Keep trying, kid. You never know…”
I had no choice but to keep trying. That self-destruct button I have? Yeah, it wasn’t the best circumstances for me. I reckoned I had less than two days. I was wound tight as a wire. And what happened next almost tipped me over the edge.
Later that day, they lined us up outside in ranks, block by block, and gave us a bullshit talk about discipline.
Then they marched us around the complex and took us into a hangar. They lined us up at benches and yelled at us to pay attention.
One of the instructors was standing at the front. He held up a handgun and started talking us through it. Tremors were shivering down my spine as I watched him run through the drill. Parts of the weapon, cleaning it, stripping it, safety. Hilyer looked bored like he’d seen it all before. Or maybe that was just his way of dealing with it. It sent me right back to Kheris. Just the smell of the gun oil. The way it had in the mess on the Alsatia.
Only out the
re, in that cold, damp hangar, I fell right back to the tunnels beneath the desert.
My heart started racing.
Dayton’s guys used to tolerate us watching when they were getting ready for some action or other. They’d give us doughnuts to keep us quiet. I could smell the hot sugar, the gun oil, hear them talking, low and controlled about the Empire and how it couldn’t get away with what it was doing.
It was like weird deja-vu. Like I knew what was going to happen, sitting watching them talk and joke, no idea what was coming.
Flash forward and I was standing there staring at the same guys lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
Heart pounding.
Someone barked, far away, “Do you understand?”
I didn’t.
The echo of voices, kids’ voices, swirled all around.
I wasn’t there. I drew myself back slowly out of the tunnels to the cold damp of Redemption.
I was Earth-side. Well and truly in enemy territory.
And I wasn’t a runt, mongrel kid anymore. I was Thieves’ Guild.
Someone shoved me, barked in my ear and a gun was slammed onto the bench in front of me.
Chapter 22
I switched off, cold and running on automatic. I had mine stripped, cleaned and reassembled before anyone else. Standing staring at it, refusing to be drawn back to the maelstrom of that night, a cold spark of ice deep inside.
I looked up.
The instructor watching me looked half impressed.
Once everyone was done, they took us to an indoor range, individual lanes, an instructor at our backs. I stood there and took the pistol that was offered to me, nothing in my mind except getting done and getting out of there. They gave us each one round. I chambered it and raised the weapon. The resistance and the Imperial forces used to guard their ammunition fiercely. But Charlie had talked me through it once, told me what it takes to fire a bullet true to wherever you wanted it to go. “It’s all in the mind,” he’d said, looking me in the eye, calm and serious. Then he’d laughed and taught me about trajectories, mass, alignment, trigger control, breathing. “Slow and steady,” he’d said. “Always slow and steady, whatever the hell else is going on around you. You do it right, you make time slow and then you become the one in control. Take that advice for everything you do, kid.”
I really missed Charlie.
My entire universe became that tiny black circle twenty five metres in front of me.
Time slowed.
I sighted down the range, breathed, fired and hit the dead centre of the target. I put the pistol down on the bench in front of me and stepped back.
Hilyer was next to me. He took his time and also hit the bullseye.
They gave us four more rounds each. I hit the centre each time. Hilyer was good but he was an inch off on his last shot and he hated it, that muscle ticking in his jaw.
I didn’t sleep that night.
Next morning, we had breakfast then they told everyone to get changed into gym kit. My knee wasn’t too bad but I wrapped it up tight anyway. But as we headed out, I was taken off to one side. They didn’t tell me what was happening and I half hoped the Warden might have changed his mind, but no chance. They took me into the infirmary and told me to sit and wait in a cubicle.
It didn’t take long before Brennan appeared with a tray of meds. She took one look at me and seemed so disappointed, I almost folded.
“I missed you at your check up yesterday,” she said. “Are you okay?”
I wasn’t. I didn’t know what to say.
She shone a light into my eyes, redressed the gash above my eye then popped a couple of shots into my neck and squeezed my shoulder. “Let me check those ribs. Lift up your shirt.”
She was gentle. Until she hit a sore spot. I bit my lip.
“Healing nicely,” she said as she finished up and pulled my shirt back down, stepping back and looking at me. “What’s going on, Luka? Hacking into the system? Fighting in the shower?”
I stared at the floor.
She lowered her voice. “You need to be more careful. This can be a dangerous place if you don’t…” She stopped as footsteps approached.
“Check in with me tomorrow,” she said. “I’m here if you need…”
“I need a case review,” I said, the words catching in my throat.
She looked at me like I was a stray puppy that had just talked, asking for a scrap of food and a scratch behind the ears. She sat next to me and took hold of my hand like my great grandmother used to do when I was tiny and she was telling me off about something or other. She unwrapped the pressure dressing. “Why do you need a case review, sweetheart?” She rubbed her thumb over my palm, tracing the scars there, turning my hand over and squeezing. “Make a fist.”
I complied, as best as I could. It was much better than it had been.
She smiled. “Well done.” She rewrapped the dressing. “How on earth did you get yourself shot in the hand?”
“I…”
I had to catch myself to not say something stupid.
“Why do you need a case review, Luka?”
“I want out.” It was easy to say because it was the truth.
“You want to go home?” She was still holding my hand. She leaned close and whispered, “You got caught. I’m sure you thought you were too smart to ever get caught but you did. And now you really do need to be smart. Smarter than you have been.” She let go and stood up. “I’m here if you need to talk. And don’t forget tomorrow. You need these meds. Okay?”
I watched her leave, a guard coming in to escort me outside. The meds weren’t sitting well, my stomach queasy and an unease deep inside that I’d given something away.
It was cold, a sting hitting my cheeks as I walked round to the pitch. They were playing a different kind of ball game, two teams, full contact, scoring goals at each end. No sticks this time and a bigger ball. The rest of the kids were standing around the edges, cheering. It looked more like the kind of game we used to play in the streets.
I went and stood on my own. The instructor saw me and called me straight over. I didn’t listen to what he was saying. He pushed me in the chest and said it again, louder. He ended up shouting, “Do you understand?”
I nodded vaguely, watching the game. Hilyer was in the centre of it, tackling a bigger kid, grabbing the ball as he fell to the ground, rolling and tossing it out to another of our team. They were playing Alpha and losing by the look of it.
The instructor hit me on the arm with his baton to get my attention. I looked round. He was glowering at me.
“Do you understand?” he barked again.
“Yessir,” I said. I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue what rules they were using. From what I could see, there weren’t any.
He grunted and yelled to one of the kids playing, subbing me in, right into the middle of it. Someone threw the ball at me. I caught it and ran. Next thing I knew I was face down in the dirt but everyone was cheering. I got to my knees, still holding the ball, as Hilyer ran up. He grabbed it and hissed at me, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Scoring a goal.” I said it way too cocky and he shoved me as I stood.
I laughed as he stalked off. It was a good thing he didn’t have a stick.
They blew the whistle to restart the game and I did it again, twice, before they called time.
I sat on the sidelines, catching my breath, and watched the rest of them laugh and joke. It was icy cold. The instructors were joking about how they were waiting for it to snow before they sent us out on the next run and gun as they laughingly called it. Kat was standing with Jaimie and her Gamma buddies. I thought from her expression that she was still pissed at me but she said something to them and headed over to me with a bottle of water. She sat beside me and offered it up.
“You’re good at this game,” she said.
I took the water and muttered a thanks.
“Where have you been?”
“Infirmary. Meds.”
“At least you didn’t have to stay in. Or come out in a body bag.”
It felt like she was trying to make an effort so I met her halfway. “The food’s not that bad in there.”
She gave me half a smile. “You don’t get food in the infirmary.”
“You get a pillow.”
“Don’t you have a pillow in your bunkroom?”
“We supposed to have pillows?”
She looked at me like she couldn’t tell if I was joking then elbowed me in the ribs. “You should be Gamma,” she whispered. “You’re too smart for Delta.” Her hand reached for mine, gave it a brief touch and withdrew, like she didn’t want to scare me off.
“If I was that smart, I wouldn’t be here at all.”
She was still looking at me intently. “Do you get homesick?”
I didn’t reply.
She turned and looked out across the pitch. “I miss the ocean,” she said. “And the sun. Don’t you miss the sunshine?”
The psych guy had said the exact same thing. “Kat… don’t.”
She peered at me again and said, her voice soft, “What’s really going on with you, Luka?”
The walls went up again. Damn right the walls went up. Everyone was trying to get me to talk and I was glad of the wake up call. I didn’t need to talk to anyone. I needed to get selected. I needed to survive another thirteen mile run in the freezing cold. I started to run the intel through my head, every scrap of data, every map and plan I’d seen of the place.
And suddenly I saw it.
I knew exactly what I had to do.
I turned to her, grinned and kissed her, full on the lips. She froze, then leaned into it, her arm going around my shoulder.
I pulled away gently. “How many people are we pissing off right now?”
She smiled. “Do you care?”
“About you? Too much.”