‘Course they do, silly bitch, you dreamed it all.’
The sound of her own voice struck reality home to her and she laughed; a harsh, bitter, humourless sound that seemed to echo around the cell as though taunting her by showing her that even her words could never leave this place.
Light flooded the room suddenly and she squinted against it until the glare stopped being painful. She turned in a full circle, and came to a stop when she faced the door. She stood, unmoving, watching. The hatch was closed and she could hear nothing through the thick door, but she knew that somebody stood on the other side.
A tingling sensation passed through her.
She knew, she knew, with unfailing certainty that it would be the same guard she had burned in her dream, the man who’s neck had been broken by the Clone in the cell opposite. Had she dreamed some kind of premonition? Seen the future before it happened?
Was that possible?
Hell, she could create fire with her mind, she wasn’t sure that she should really cast aside the notion of seeing into the future all too readily. With the cleansing and new dawning of humanity there had emerged several new talents and skills possessed by a small number, her Pyrokinesis being just one of a multitude of dangerous mutations.
While her mind whirled with the possibility of a newfound skill, her eyes and ears paid careful attention. When the whirr-click notified her that someone was entering she backed against the far wall of her cell, her body tense and rigid as she waited for what she knew was coming next.
Two men stood beyond the doorway. The light in the corridor was as bright as the one that lit her chamber and it illuminated them in their suits. The stark glare hit the shiny metallic surface of the table between them and bounced reflections at her, dizzying her.
This wasn’t right, this wasn’t the way it happened...
What was going on?
She shook her head and tried to back up further, prevented from doing so by the wall at her back. The suited men advanced, bringing the table with them. It was a sort of trolley set on wheels with a series of drawers beneath it. On the top were shackles positioned to restrain a person at their ankles, wrists and neck. It looked very similar to the one she had found herself waking on four years ago after falling from her horse in her attempt to flee the Officials chasing her.
The door swung closed behind them and they stopped in the centre of the room. One of them pulled open a drawer to reveal rows of very shiny and incredibly sharp looking instruments. She could hear their mocking laughter and she held her hands over her ears, her eyes screwed tightly shut and her head shaking back and forth in some vain display of denial. She heard herself repeating the word ‘no’ over and over, then a hand grabbed her arm, and she was hauled onto the table. Her clothes were torn away and despite her struggles she was easily overpowered, the shackles were locked into place, rendering her motionless.
The man to her left took a scalpel from the tray of instruments and held it up so that she could see it clearly. The man to her right raised his arm and pulled off the hood that covered his face.
Alecia stared into Amato’s eyes uncomprehendingly as he laughed down at her.
‘Gonna turn you into a Clone, bitch.’
As the hooded guard slowly, oh, so slowly, lowered the blade in his hand towards her chest Alecia opened her mouth wide and screamed at the top of her lungs.
Chapter 10
Her scream was cut off when a hand clamped across her mouth.
Alecia sat bolt upright, fighting against the man who held her, her fingers hooked into claws, raking the skin of his hand. She kicked out at him with her feet but found them bound and she struggled fiercely to free herself.
The grip across her mouth loosened and she sucked in air but did not scream again, while she thrashed and writhed he simply held her, gently but firmly, against himself, rocking her slightly, trying to calm her. When she had exhausted herself she fell against his chest sobbing.
Amato ran a hand through her hair and spoke softly to her much in the way one would attempt to console a child waking from a nightmare.
When her tears had dried and her laboured breathing returned to normal she raised her head and took in their surroundings. The room was dim but the blackness wasn’t absolute and she could make out enough to see that they were in some sort of underground shelter.
Towards the middle of the 21st Century, in a very similar way to events during the Second World War, paranoia over the advancement of weapons of mass destruction and other various threats had led many people to invest in fallout shelters. Hideouts underneath the ground that would protect them from the effects of a nuclear blast, alien invasion, fiery comets of judgement raining from the heavens, that type of thing. Leci had seen many of these buildings. A lot were now inhabited by people who simply had nowhere else to go, some served as way stations for renegades travelling and in need of a place to rest for the night. She had never stayed in one while she had been alone.
She remembered them mostly from her time with Xavian, even had distant memories of sitting inside a room just like this on her father’s knee. They had always sort of scared her a little, she couldn’t really place why but when she had found herself alone and self reliant she had avoided them, maybe it was the feeling of being trapped underground in a room that had only one way in or out that she wasn’t so keen on.
The layout was similar to that of her cell at the prison, slightly larger, four bunks along the walls, one lower down on either side and one above each of those. She sat on one of the lower beds; a thin blanket was twisted and bunched around her ankles, this explained the bindings she had perceived when she had been struggling.
Looking down at herself she saw she was still dressed in the oversized baggy prison issue men’s shirt. Tentatively she raised a shaking hand to her face. It came away wet with tears but she felt the rough scab of her healing scratches and breathed a sigh of relief, noting the irony in being pleased to find herself injured, choosing to ignore it.
Her tortured mind was playing tricks on her. Their escape had been real enough but subconsciously she still didn’t believe it and was trying to tell herself this through her nightmares, trying to cause her to doubt herself and the people around her by casting them as the villains in her warped imaginings.
Glancing down, she saw Amato’s hand. The back of it was raw and bleeding, crossed with scratches made by her nails. She looked up at him and he smiled briefly.
‘I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to hurt you, I thought I was bac- I had a bad dream.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Firebug. I reckon I came off lightly, you coulda just set fire to me.’
He grinned but the gesture didn’t reach his eyes and she knew it was a genuine concern. It stunned her to find herself wondering if maybe she had made the hugest mistake of her life. She would never be accepted into a normal society when people knew who she was and what she could do. She could attempt to control herself for as long as possible but she wasn’t naive enough to think she could hide her ability forever and if people did accept her she knew it would be out of fear. There would never be trust, in the past the people she had become close to had a way of winding up dead. Now the people she was close to would almost certainly die, they just knew there was a chance it would be directly via her own hands.
She found herself unable even to allay his worries, the only reason she had not used flames to protect herself was because in her mind her attacker had been the man who had led her to safety and she would never knowingly hurt him.
If she had dreamed of Beriael then the Amato who held her now would have been reduced to ashes.
Perhaps she should’ve just stayed where she was, paid her debt to society by not forcing her presence upon them. Maybe it was safer for everyone else if she were kept imprisoned. Better yet, if she just wasn’t here at all, didn’t exist and could cause no more hurt to anyone ever again.
Leci fidgeted to sit up and since it was clear she was no longer a dan
ger to herself or anyone else, Amato released her.
He had been crouched beside the bunk that she was sitting on and now he stood and moved over to the one across from her, sitting on it and watching her quietly.
Untwisting the blanket from around her feet, she draped it loosely over her legs before taking another look at her surroundings. A metal cabinet stood in one corner, it would at one time have probably held supplies; food, bandages, medicines, but she knew that it wouldn’t anymore.
None of them did.
These places had been looted years ago and the only thing they were good for was a roof over your head for a couple of nights. On top of the cabinet stood a small, stubby candle that provided what scanty light there was. Flickering shadows stretched across the small space, dancing around the room and providing a somewhat eerie atmosphere. She looked at Amato. One side of his face glowed orange from the light of the candle, the other fell in shadow.
‘Where are we?’
‘Fallout Shelter. They’ve been around sin-‘
‘I know that.’ She interrupted him. ‘I know what this place is, but where is it? Where are we?’
Amato shook his head and looked away.
‘Not far enough away yet. But we had to stop and rest. We’re not too far from a couple of small towns and if we can steal some horses we can put some distance between us and them, but that’s gonna have to wait until we’ve all had some sleep.’
She suddenly realised that she hadn’t seen the Clones since she had come round.
‘Where are the others?’
‘Outside, keeping watch. I should let them know you’re awake, they wanted to talk to you.’
‘No...’ She held out a hand feebly to stop him as he rose, he frowned at her for a moment but sat back down again. Leci watched the flame of the candle and chewed nervously on her lower lip. She didn’t want to see the Clones, didn’t want to face Beriael’s accusing eyes or his wife’s curiosity.
Not yet.
Not just yet.
‘I had a nightmare.’ She whispered, her words barely audible, she looked up at him to see if he had heard her. He was leaning back against the wall, sat on the bed, his hands folded behind his neck and he was watching her very carefully.
He nodded slightly.
‘I know you did. You were thrashing about all over the place. I was over at the side of the cot waiting to catch you, half expected you to roll out. Then you screamed and I had to shut you up, we really can’t be bringing attention to ourselves out here.’
She nodded to show she understood why he had done it and that he didn’t need to explain himself to her.
‘I woke up and I was back in the cell. I was sure that this had all been a dream.’
He said nothing but the gentle look on his face encouraged her to continue.
‘I was confused. I thought that maybe it would all happen again or that they’d drugged me. And then two of them came in with a table.’ She hesitated, shivering at the memory.
The dream hadn’t faded as most of the bad ones and all of the good ones did, it was clear in her mind as though it had really happened.
She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them, tugging the blanket up around herself. She kept her gaze on the slowly moving flame in the corner of the room, it soothed her somehow.
‘They got me on the table, shackled me down so I couldn’t move and then one of ‘em opened up a drawer and took out a real sharp knife. The other one was laughing at me. I looked up at him an’ he took off his hood...’ Pausing, she tore her attention from the candle to watch his reaction to the revelation that was coming.
‘It was you. You were a guard.’
Amato frowned, leaned forward and brought his hands to his lap, gripping one fist inside the other; his knuckles looked white, strained.
‘I was a guard.’
It didn’t occur to her that he wasn’t phrasing the comment as a question for affirmation, as though he disbelieved her, but that he was confirming the statement to be truth. She merely nodded.
‘Yes, and you sai-‘
‘No, Leci. I was a guard.’
Alecia found herself nodding very slowly and speaking as though trying to explain something to a small child. The rational part of her mind refused to accept what he was trying to say to her and she allowed a cloud to fall over her conscious thought.
He could not possibly be saying what he seemed to be saying, that would turn everything upside down and the way things had been over the last few hours, Leci desperately needed to not have her world capsized again.
‘Yes. You were a guard, in my dream. I’m awake now, it’s all gone away.’
She could hear the insistent tone of her voice, it sounded somehow desperate, needy.
He moved from the bunk, closer to her, crouching slightly, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders and he met her eyes, his gaze, the colour of the sky, unblinking and honest. She wanted to look away but couldn’t and as he repeated himself she felt a fresh well of tears threaten to overspill.
‘Alecia. I was a guard. At the prison. I’ve worked there for a long time, since around the time you were brought in. That’s how I knew the way out, it’s how I could lead us to the service door. I know the building, I know the layout.’ His voice was low and even, steady, his tone soft and earnest.
She desperately searched his face for some sign that he was lying and when she saw none pulled herself from his grasp, didn’t want him touching her. Her breath exploded from her throat in a sob as she curled herself into the corner, trying to become as small as she physically could whilst keeping a wary eye on him. Amato didn’t move, he let her back away with an expression of sadness that she didn’t feel he had any right to be experiencing. She was the one who had been betrayed, she was the one with the reason to feel cheated. She couldn’t understand what he was telling her. Was this all part of some game?
Was this just another one of their experiments? Let her go to see how she’d fare out in the world with her newly controlled powers? With her new understanding of her own capabilities? Why was he telling her this? Why was he letting her in on it? Surely whatever they were testing had now been voided; if she knew he was a mole then the whole point of this was irrelevant.
She felt overcome by a wave of anger tinged with resentment and shame. How could she have been so stupid to think that she could ever possibly get out of there?
Hadn’t it all seemed too easy? Hadn’t it all just seemed like an endless run of luck, just waiting for it to turn sour but fate had just kept on laying it out for them.
Seriously Leci, she questioned herself, you thought it was that easy?
He must’ve sensed some change in her demeanour because he stood and backed off slightly, watching her. She could understand the fear, he had just told her something that pretty much excused any burning she might feel like doing, except she still couldn’t bring herself to do it. Whether he had been working against her or not, he was still the reason she was out of there and she had to know why. He couldn’t answer her questions if he was dead. She glared at him, brushing a strand of dirty hair from her eyes and idly swiping one hand across her face to wipe away the tears that had begun to roll down her cheeks.
‘So, who are you really?’
Her voice was flat, she was struggling to control the anger, keep her emotion in check. If she lost the tentative hold she had right now then she didn’t know what might happen. The more angry she became the more intense the flames and the more irrational her mind the less predictable just what exactly would end up catching alight.
He paced the small space, never taking his eyes off her.
‘Benelli. Amato Benelli. I haven’t lied to you Alecia. Not about anything.’
Out of principle she wanted to disbelieve him, wanted to think of him as a lying, scheming rat, but she couldn’t. He was telling the truth, she was sure of that. She had become very adept at telling fibs over the years and she knew pretty well how to recognise one.
‘And you’re a guard? What is this? Some sort of test to see how many people I’ll kill on the outside? See if I go blabbing Official’s secrets to anyone who’ll listen? You know that everyone would think I was crazy don’t you? What the hell is all of this?’
Ok, so her line of questioning was sort of... all over the place, but she was confused and afraid, she felt deceived and hurt and somehow abandoned. More than anything else she wanted Xavian to be with her right now, he would put everything to rights and wouldn’t blame her for a thing. He would do just as a big brother was supposed to do, would take care of her. He was the only man in the world she had ever trusted and she felt he was the only one she ever would be able to put her faith in, be able to rely on. Others had done nothing but cause her pain, be it emotional or physical.
She wanted Xavian so badly.
Amato stopped pacing and sat back down on the bunk opposite her. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, shaking his head slightly.
He was no longer watching her, was now staring down at the concrete between his feet. He still wore the main suit part of the fireproof gear, without the hood and gloves, which he had disposed of back at the Clone Enclosure.
‘I said was. I was a guard. Not anymore. Not for a while. Me being in that cell across from you, it wasn’t a setup, I wasn’t a plant or anything like that. You gotta believe me that none of this was planned. We were lucky back there and we managed to get out, but it’s no game and I’m not working for them, or with them. I was in that cell because I’d been arrested. I think I was put there with you and the Clone to teach me a lesson, show me what I had coming to me.’
He paused and looked up at her, trying to determine whether or not he was getting through to her, she said nothing and so he carried on.
‘You know, when they took you and him away for your tests... every day... you know what they did?’ He didn’t wait for a response, she couldn’t possibly know and the question didn’t require an answer.
The Condemned Page 8