But they hadn’t bet on a Superior sitting in the garden hidden by fog so late in the morning. They hadn’t bet on a Superior following them over the fence.
Draven couldn’t see them now. The fog hung thick over everything. But when he stopped, he could hear them, and he sprinted in that direction and overtook one of them. He came out of the fog at the sapien, and the man screamed as Draven leapt on him and trapped his arms. The sap struggled and kicked while Draven tied him with his own escape rope. When he’d secured the sap, Draven left him on the ground and sprang after the other two. He caught the second one and subdued him without much difficulty. A human could never fight off a Superior with strength alone.
When he had the sap under one arm, Draven stood still, trying to sense the third runaway over the sound of the one he restrained in his arms. He ignored the sound of his captive’s thunderous heartbeat and the smell of ammonia that came from the boy who had urinated on himself in his panic. Draven scanned one way and another, and saw a building through a rend in the fog that quickly closed. He couldn’t hear the third sap’s heartbeat or see her through the fog. But he smelled her when a small breeze twisted around him, and he followed the scent. The boy struggled, and Draven found it difficult to move with such an unwieldy burden under his arm, but he had nothing to tie the sap. So he sought the female with one arm occupied.
He might have seen her sooner if not for the fog and the stillness. He might have noticed the strange smell on top of the fear and the smell of sapien. But he didn’t.
He came through the fog, sensing her nearness. He heard her breathing too fast, ragged and terrified. He thought she had hidden, and he saw a garbage collecting box behind a building and moved around it. The woman rose out of the fog at him, panicked and angry and surging with adrenaline, and sunk a thick wooden shard into his abdomen.
Chapter Thirty-One
Draven had felt pain before, plenty of it. But it had been a very long time since he’d felt that kind of pain—blinding, senseless, consuming. The scream that came from his throat sounded so animalistic that it stopped him short, bringing back a bit of sense. The sapien who had stabbed him looked startled, but Draven was fast even in such pain. He caught her when she turned to run.
Though he’d gone nearly mad with pain, his single-minded pursuit never wavered. He still gripped the male under his arm. He fell upon the female, dragging her to the ground, and buried his teeth in her, drawing her life into himself. When he felt her flow slacken and her body go limp, he stopped and breathed. His breath came out ragged, a horrible sound accompanying the horrible pain. He forced himself to stop the instinctive act and dragged the woman to her feet.
The fog had cleared a bit, and the sun found its way from behind the blanket of clouds. He could hardly see through the blinding brightness of the sun on the fog. He stumbled and almost fell but righted himself with his two burdens. He’d grown dizzy, and a weakening exhaustion pulled at him as he made his way blindly towards the bound male.
Draven made it to the spot he had left the other male, but it wasn’t there. He gave up on that one. If he could just make it around the side of the fence to the front of the building…
He tripped, his hands full and his instincts dulled with pain. He fell on the bound sapien who had been struggling along the ground with its arms still encased in the fabric of its restraints. Draven felt the bound sap’s teeth tearing at his pants, trying to bite him through the linen fabric. He kicked out and the sapien uttered a grunt of pain. Draven smelled the sharp scent of sap as it came out the male’s mouth in a stream with several pieces of tooth. Then he lay still, his skin aching, his eyes burning, and the constant pain throbbing where the wooden shard still protruded from his lung. He wanted to yank it out, but he needed all his strength, and removing the weapon would let out a rush of blood and weaken him.
As he lay on the ground Draven thought of Cali, and how he might die there, alone outside the wall of the Confinement, and how the humans who had killed him would rise and free their companion and escape, and all of it would come to nothing. The thought bred a dull rage in his clouded mind, and he let out a sound that was somewhere close to a roar as he forced himself to his feet. He held the scared sap by the wrist—barely more than a sapling, perhaps Cali’s age—and hefted the weight of the bound and bleeding male onto his shoulder. He transferred the sapling’s wrist to his other hand and bent to gather up the unconscious female. He could barely stand under the mere weight of two sapiens.
The walk to the doors of the Confinement seemed to last hours. The bound male struggled, flopping about on Draven’s shoulder every few minutes. Draven had to stop then and momentarily release the young one so he could keep the bound one from falling. He thought the sapling might run, but it didn’t. After the second time the adult male struggled, he let it fall from his shoulder onto the concrete, and the sap yelled and scrambled around in a circle on its side. When it stilled, Draven looked at the boy.
“If you run I will kill you.”
“O-okay. I won’t—I didn’t want to go—they made me.”
“I want you to walk just here beside me like a good little sap. I will make sure to tell the Confinement that you cooperated and that you shouldn’t go to the blood bank. Do you understand me, little one?” He looked right into the sapien’s eyes and it nodded.
“Yes, sir, Master. Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.”
“Now come,” Draven said, lifting the bound male’s body onto his shoulder again. He could keep the sapien from falling, but the thing flailed wildly, twisting its body until it knocked against the wooden instrument protruding from Draven’s abdomen. Draven bit the inside of his cheek and his mouth filled with his own blood, but he didn’t cry out again. He dropped the sapien on the ground and it yelled again, and he dragged it the rest of the way by its foot, which proved a much easier and faster method.
He made it to the doors and struggled with them before he remembered he had to use his ID card as well as his ID prints, so he scanned both while the bound prisoner lay on the ground moaning and the boy stood wide-eyed and frozen beside him. Draven pocketed his card and pulled open the door, pushed it back with his foot while he heaved the female through, and gestured for the young one to enter. Everything in Draven’s body had turned to liquid fire. He got hold of the last escapee’s foot and dragged him through the doors before he let them slam shut. The sound of the door closing echoed around the empty entrance room.
Draven stumbled over the female’s body, and his eyes filled with black spots, and he fell slowly, his lungs filling with the blood that tried to escape the confines of his body. His cry of pain echoed through the empty chamber. Excruciating pain filled him when he fell on the wooden spike and it drove through the back of his body and caught in the fabric of his shirt. For some absurd reason, he remembered just then that he’d left his outer shirt on Cali, and then his awareness drew further away and for a long while he knew nothing more than pain.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Draven. You’re awake.” Byron’s voice cut through his mind and Draven became alert in an instant.
He struggled to sit but lay back quickly after the attempt almost took his breath away. He’d never felt that kind of pain, ever. It almost felt sharper than when he’d been stabbed, now that the wound was deeper and the fog of pain had cleared away with the fog of the morning.
“How…how long have I been here?”
“A few days. You’re on a lot of drugs that kept you under while your healing began.”
“And the sapiens…?”
“Ah, yes. Them.”
“Did they escape?”
“No, no,” Byron said, laughing. “They’re where they belong.”
“No, I told one…the young one…” Draven had trouble thinking, articulating, through the pain. He’d had accidents before, cut himself, fallen. Nothing had ever hurt like this. “Can I have some morphine?”
“Yes, of course,” Byron said, pushing away from the b
ed and letting his rolling chair move to the door. He stuck his head out the doorway and called to a doctor. After the shot, Draven lay back and tried to comprehend the pain inside him.
“Am I dying?”
Byron laughed. “No. You’ll heal up just fine.”
“When? Why haven’t I healed yet? Why does it hurt so damn much?”
“Draven, you’re lucky to be alive. Somehow those saps had contraband items, and you’re extremely fortunate that the sap who stabbed you had poor aim or insufficient time to plan her move. You would have died if she’d got you a few inches higher and a few inches to the right.”
“The wood. I’m not healing because the wound is from wood.”
Draven, like all Superiors, knew the dangers of wood. He’d spent a good number of years seeking and confiscating contraband items from the Confinement and restaurant workers and even other Superiors. Wood was the most dangerous weapon. The law forbade even Superiors from having it anywhere that it could be pilfered by wandering sapien hands.
Draven’s mind grew foggy from the drug, and he heard his friend answer from what seemed a great distance.
“That’s correct.”
“And the sapiens…they didn’t get away.”
“No, soldier. You brought them back to the Confinement and someone found you with the two of them.”
“Two?”
“Yes, the two injured ones. They found the third one trying to get back out into the compound, and when they caught him, he told everything.”
“Bring him back.”
“Back from where?” Byron asked.
“Blood bank. To Confinement. I promised.”
“You promised a sap?”
“Yes…”
“Of course he said that. But he’s an escapee. You know the policy.”
“…take him back…I promised…”
Draven woke again later, alone in the hospital room. He itched. Inside and outside, his skin crawled and burned and itched until he wanted to tear his flesh and reach inside and scratch and scratch and scratch. He tore at the bandages, slid his fingers under the edges, and scratched savagely. A woman came, then two men, then two more women, all of them doctors. They looked at him, pulled away the bandages, rolled him over and looked at the wound on Draven’s back. He cried out, and his doctor gave him a shot and he slept.
When he woke again, Byron and Hyoki were in the room. He didn’t hurt as much. He didn’t itch as much. But he still did felt plenty of each.
“Hyoki,” Draven said, looking at her placid face.
“Yes, I found the lady you’d been talking about, and I let her know what happened to you,” Byron said. “Should I let you be alone?”
“Not now,” Draven said. “I feel quite weak. Have I eaten?”
“Yes, but you lost some blood and you need to eat extra in order to heal properly. Now that you’re awake, we’ll replenish you and you’ll be good as new in a few days.”
“I can breathe again. That’s a relief.” Draven drew a few deep breaths, as deep as he could, just to make sure. It hurt, but he could do it.
“Yes. You were very brave, soldier. We found where the sapiens had escaped, and the evidence of the places you struggled with them. It took a lot of courage to carry them all the way around the Confinement with a stake in your chest.”
“It wasn’t a stake. It was jagged, like a giant splinter from a board. Have you traced it?”
“No. We can’t find anything like it. There’s not much way of knowing where it came from. The sap who had it, she said she got it from someone else, and we found the one she identified, and he said he got it from someone else, and that sap is now dead, so…” Byron shrugged, but he looked frustrated.
“Did you get the boy out of the blood bank?”
“No.”
Draven looked at Byron, both men stubborn in their resolve. “I could have killed him, or any of them, and been excused for it with this wound, couldn’t I?”
“Yes. You will be rewarded for your catch, and your bravery.”
“Then put the boy back in the Confinement. That’s all I ask, on top of the usual bonus for catching a runaway.”
Byron studied Draven for a moment and then nodded. “Alright, soldier. But we will have him tagged, and if he tries to escape again or is involved in any way with an escape…”
“I know. Blood bank for life.”
“You know the blood bank laws well.”
“I was a Catcher for many years,” Draven said. He knew the laws well for other reasons too, from such a long time ago.
“I have a question for you, if you’re well enough.”
“Yes, I imagine so.” Draven sat and noticed that the pain had dulled considerably. Hyoki wandered over and took his hand.
“How did you happen to catch these sapiens? What were you doing outside the Confinement in daylight?” Byron asked.
“Oh,” Draven said, managing a smile. “I wasn’t outside. I was inside, feeding from a sap. She was in the garden, and I saw the saps climbing over.”
“And you didn’t stop them?”
“I was eating,” Draven said, wishing his mind were a bit clearer so he could lie a bit better. His story bordered on the truth, but didn’t exactly qualify. “I wasn’t paying attention, and when I was done I saw them on the wall. The human tried to stop me, and I threw her away and went after them.”
“You went around the Confinement to the outside and found them?”
“Ahhhhh…no. I scaled the wall.”
“Really?” Byron looked mildly surprised. “I hadn’t thought you were strong or practiced enough to do this.”
“I didn’t know I was. I didn’t think about it, I just went after them. Is this bad?”
“Could be. We can’t have dishonest Superiors climbing over the wall and stealing livestock. If you can do it, a man like Ander could easily climb in and take back the saps we confiscated from his restaurants. He might feel entitled, since he paid for them.”
Draven’s mind flashed to Cali. If Ander could climb over... Ander had owned Cali at Sap Heaven. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.
“Was it easy for you to get over?”
“I…I’m not sure, sir. I wasn’t thinking about it. I was thinking about the escapees. I didn’t know they’d be armed.”
“It was a brave and stupid thing you did, going after them. And bringing them in after you’d been stabbed. A Catcher would have brought them in the next night if you’d let them go. No one would have blamed you for walking away.”
“I needed the money.”
“I hope it was worth it. You would have healed much faster if the wood had been taken out right away.”
“Should I have pulled it out, then?”
“No. You would have bled too much. You should have gotten help immediately.”
“Next time I’ll know. Or hopefully not.” Both men laughed. Hyoki frowned. “I wanted to ask for one more thing,” Draven said.
“Anything, my brave friend.”
“I’m not partial to the canned stuff. Can you bring me a sap or two?”
“Yes, of course. And we’ll check to see if the one you threw survived.”
Draven jerked, causing a spasm of pain to run through him. He hadn’t even thought of it. He’d thrown Cali from him and hadn’t checked to see that she lived. If she’d fallen on the rock they’d been sitting on… Surely she hadn’t. Still, he knew he could kill a sapien with one blow, however unintentional. How hard had he hit her? He tried to remember but couldn’t.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, please do that. I…put my shirt on her, but I didn’t check to see if she lived. Surely one of the other saps found her in the garden that day?”
Byron shrugged. “I’d assume so. No matter, it’s just a sap. I’ll make sure it’s noted that you prevented an escape. That’s one of the perks to being an Enforcer. I’ll make sure you’re not charged with killing her, and I’ll waive the fine. It happens to the best of us. Saps are fra
gile and sometimes we use more force than we’d meant. Right, soldier?”
“Yes,” Draven said slowly. He thought of Cali, about what he’d done. He’d done it so he might buy her, and if he had killed her instead… He didn’t care about the fines, or being charged with killing a human. He just needed to know he hadn’t. “Byron, sir?”
“Yeah, soldier?”
“Please let me know right away if I killed her. She is number 8813871. I would very much like to know.”
“Alright. Why is this so important?” Byron asked. He had noted Draven’s urgent tone.
“I know it’s not important. I’ve just never killed one before. I’d like to know, is all.”
“I will check, and I will send your lovely woman back with a sap for you. Is this satisfactory payment for your courage?”
“Thank you, sir.”
Hyoki bent to kiss him. “You are very brave, Draven. When you’re well again, I have other payment for you. I hope you find satisfactory.”
He smiled. “Thank you, Hyoki. I would like to talk to you more then, too.”
“I’ll bring back your sap. You just sleep, get better.”
They left and Draven sank back on the bed, drained from the visit but not able to sleep for a while. He couldn’t stop thinking he’d killed Cali.
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