The Condemned

by Claire Jolliff

  Leci and him would never be the best of friends but there might come a time when they would be able to reach civil ground. With Bitsy and Amato around to rein in the two of them when needed, the process would probably move a lot quicker.

  Her attention fell to his hands, she had noticed earlier, when he had clasped his wife’s in his, that the skin was unmarred, but the relevance of this had escaped her at the time. He was fully healed. Sometime while she had slept, he had died and regenerated afresh. She wondered who had taken his life, Bitsy or Amato. She reasoned it was probably something he trusted his wife to do, but she most certainly wasn’t going to start asking questions on that particular topic.

  Morgan’s voice cut into her thoughts, bringing her back to their present situation.

  ‘What happens if they catch us?’ Her green eyes were fixed on Amato and asked for truth, not a sugar-coating.

  ‘If you’re alone and they find the two of you they switch off your implants and you drop. No coming back, lights out. If you’re with us... I really don’t know. They might do the same and then just kill me and take Alecia back, she’s too valuable for them to destroy, or they might not shut you off, might just take us all back and let Leci here make us all wish we were dead.’

  Leci felt herself flush with shame and looked down at her hands, curled in her lap, she refused to meet any of their eyes, the thought that recapture would lead to an endless cycle of the torture of these three people was almost too much to bear. She silently promised herself that she would never again allow herself to be used as a tool at the hands of the Officials. If it came down to it, she would end her own life first.

  She was surprised to feel contact, looked up at Amato as he slid an arm comfortingly around her shoulder and pulled her closer to him in a reassuring hug. He smiled at her and she smiled back. It felt good to be touched in a friendly way, to have back the things that she had taken for granted for so long but had come to miss so yearningly.

  Human contact; such a simple notion but something that could mean so much.

  He was telling her that he understood, he knew that any pain he suffered because of her would not be her own doing, would never be intentional and he was absolving her of any guilt that may come from whatever the unknown future brought. She leaned into the hug, feeling his warmth against her side.

  She suspected that if she closed her eyes and tried hard enough right now she could convince herself that everything was going to be fine.

  ‘Sounds like we’re condemned either way really, doesn’t it?’ Beriael’s voice broke through Leci’s vague reverie. ‘But safety in numbers, I guess. We’ll stick with the two of you, for now.’

  Nodding slowly, Leci muttered softly to herself. ‘The four of us, The Condemned.’

  Chapter 12

  She was the only one who had slept since their escape and the strain of the past 24 hours was quickly taking its toll on the others.

  Leci had offered to take a watch while they rested and for the past two hours she had been sat with only her own thoughts for company. It was dark and she enjoyed watching the sky; the deep indigo canvas, sparsely dotted with twinkling spots of light, the barren landscape before her, dulled to darkness, but illuminated in stark monochromatic shades by the light of a beautiful full moon.

  She allowed her senses to feast on the sights and sounds that had been denied to her for so long and had existed as nothing more than distant memories. Intoxicated by her newly retrieved freedom, she found herself appreciating things she had never bothered taking the time to notice before; the way the moonlight hit the rusted remnants of an old, long abandoned vehicle, dappled reflections bouncing from contour to contour and creating a vivid masterpiece of light. She heard the sound of a wild dog somewhere far in the distance, howling at the moon and answered by his pack with a series of undulating cries that struck her as beautifully eerie and made her shiver.

  A blanket fell across her shoulders and she flinched, surprised. She had been so consumed with appreciating the beauty of what was around her that she had failed to notice him approaching.

  Some lookout she was. She had been paying more attention to the surrounding night than she had to watching for an attack, but she didn’t think that she could be blamed for that, besides, none of the others seemed all too concerned right now with their being located.

  She watched as Amato took a seat beside her on the rock she had chosen as her vantage point. The shelter was underground and the hatch hidden mostly by foliage, she had chosen a small outcropping of rocks a small distance from their temporary home, she sat with her back to it, shielded by the granite around her.

  She muttered her thanks and tugged the blanket closer around herself, holding it in place at her throat. Amato sat very close, though their bodies didn’t touch. Reminiscent of the warm feelings that had flooded her earlier, Leci shuffled closer until their sides met, lowering her head to his shoulder. After a moment she felt his arm slip around her waist and he squeezed her briefly. He knew she needed the closeness right now and she was grateful to him for not denying her.

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’

  ‘No, got about an hour or so but I couldn’t sleep much, too wired. And it didn’t seem fair leaving you out here alone.’ He grinned down at her and she raised her head briefly to smile at him before setting it down on his shoulder again. She wasn’t sure if he wasn’t sleeping because he wanted to spend time with her, or if he was here with her because he couldn’t sleep. It didn’t matter either way she supposed, it was nice that he was here regardless.

  ‘Are those two sleeping?’

  ‘Yeah. And trust me, after spending so long in a cell next to Beriael I can tell you he hasn’t slept this well in a long time.’

  ‘I’m surprised he can, we could be found anytime and taken back...’ She trailed off, not liking the thought.

  ‘We could, but I don’t think we will. They’re not even looking right now, they’re waiting.’

  ‘Waiting?’

  She felt him nod. ‘Yeah. For us to make a mistake.’

  Leci considered this thoughtfully for a moment, she lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him, his face was in profile as he watched the mostly dense and overgrown wasteland around them. She could read nothing in his expression.

  ‘You mean for me to make a mistake?’ She asked. She caught an almost imperceptible smile in the shadows of his face before it passed and was gone.

  ‘If any of us do, yours will be the most noticeable.’ He admitted. ‘They don’t know where we’ve gone, they don’t know how far we’ve gotten. They’re not gonna waste the resources spreading their manpower across an almost impossible search area just to find us. Their reasoning is that one of us will do something stupid, like set someone on fire.’

  ‘How do you know all that?’

  He looked at her, one eyebrow raised slightly, his expression asking if she seriously needed him to go over that again.

  She shook her head, mumbled ‘never mind’, and he went back to watching the night.

  ‘They can’t have much faith in the training they’ve given me if they think I’m gonna panic and start burning random people.’ She mused.

  ‘You’re on the run.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re relying on you panicking and forgetting everything they’ve taught you. This isn’t like tracking you through the towns and shit when they first got a hold of you, they know you’re with me and they know they won’t find you unless you give something away. Looking would draw too much attention to themselves, they won’t risk that, but we have to stay away from people for a while.’

  ‘That almost sounds like a good thing, if we don’t lead them to us they won’t bother looking? It can’t be that easy.’ She watched him shake his head.

  ‘No, it won’t be that easy.’ He looked at her again.

  ‘Guards posted in towns will alert them the second we try get anywhere near one. Stealing some horses without getting seen is gonna be rough, I haven’t made my mind up
yet whether or not we’re gonna bother trying, but Beriael and me will be heading out at first light to see how things look. Keeping a low profile might just be easier and safer, but even then, they’ll be looking out for any reports of fires or thefts or suspicious people in areas they shouldn’t be in. The list goes on. I’ve sort of made it sound like they’re just gonna be waitin' for us to find them or somethin’, but they’ve got eyes and ears everywhere. Unless we can stay invisible, we’ll be back in those cells in just a few days.’

  Leci contemplated this quietly, chewing on her lower lip absently.

  ‘I’ll never go back to that cell.’

  He was still looking at her but as she spoke she pulled her gaze away and distractedly scanned the land around them. The area might once have been a small farmstead out in the middle of nowhere. One smallish pile of rubble vaguely formed the shape of the lower half of a house and a larger one not far from it might’ve been a barn. Any pastures or fields had long since become overgrown with tangled vegetation, almost wild and high enough to hide what remained of the buildings from view. If she hadn’t known the shelter was here she never would’ve found it, it was a nice, secluded spot that might offer them privacy for a day or two.

  ‘You never thought about ending it before?’ He asked her quietly.

  ‘Yes. All the time. Funny ain’t it, that I could’ve done if I’d wanted to, they never did anything to stop me from doin' that if I’d decided to.’

  ‘They knew you wouldn’t.’

  She frowned, looking up at him again, he sounded so certain.

  ‘They couldn’t know that. I didn’t even know it.’

  Amato smiled tenderly and reached up, holding her chin very gently in his fingers, locking his eyes with hers.

  ‘I knew you never would. They saw the same thing I did. A spark inside of you, no pun intended, you’ve got fire in your veins Leci. You fought so damn hard against the things you knew were wrong. At first they knew you wouldn’t because no one who struggles so hard to hold onto who she is would throw that away, then after a while they figured they were safe because you’d just given in, broken but too afraid to finish it.’

  Her eyes searched his, it seemed harder to draw breath all of a sudden.

  ‘I knew they’d never break you.’ He whispered.

  She closed her eyes as he lowered his face and she offered no resistance as his lips met hers softly, their moist warmth pressing against her gently but with a restrained longing. Leci lifted her hand to his face, her fingers tentatively stroking his cheek. Her head screamed at her to stop, told her that this was insane but her body yearned for his touch and she parted her lips, welcoming him into her mouth.

  Ignoring the rational part of her that insisted she was making a mistake, Alecia allowed herself to become lost in the kiss, would’ve given herself to him fully and without hesitation. When he pulled away she was left with a feeling of loss, she opened her eyes and stared into his wonderingly.

  ‘Who are you?’ She asked him breathlessly, pulling her hand away from his face slowly but never shifting her gaze from him.

  Amato released her chin and pulled his other arm free from her, turning back to the night and falling silent for so long she began to wonder if he’d forgotten she was there.

  She hugged her knees to her chest, confused and uncertain, wondered if she should say something, or maybe just get up and head back inside, he seemed to want to be alone with his thoughts.

  She had just about made the decision to return to the shelter when his voice stopped her.

  ‘I was a part of the party that caught you. I was the one who took down your horse.’

  She tried to be surprised by this but found that she wasn’t. Maybe she’d just been shocked so many times in the past few hours that she’d lost her capacity for it or had been dulled against it, some sort of mental blockage to protect her already weary mind. She made no response and he took that as a sign to continue.

  ‘You’d passed through a camp a couple of hours before, not even a town, just a few tents with some traders and shit. I was meant to be posted at Kingston, further north, quite a big place, but I’d stopped to get somethin’ to eat. All I knew was that I was on the lookout for a blonde kid who was somewhere close by with a stolen horse. Been told not to get close, the kid was dangerous, to report in any sightin's and keep you in view.’ He stopped, and though she wanted to say something she had no idea what, plus she had a feeling that her talking might break whatever it was that was suddenly allowing him to be so honest with her and she badly wanted to hear the rest.

  She waited patiently, allowing him to gather his thoughts, knowing he would tell her more when he was ready to.

  ‘I waited ‘til you left and I followed you. Kept my distance but you were so spooked and looked so tired that you weren’t really payin' much attention. I radioed in and got told to keep you in sights but to take you down without killin’ you, if I could. They were getting pretty desperate by that point, just wanted you in. I had no fucking clue who you were or what you’d done, I just wanted the glory. Wanted pullin' out of this shithole.’

  He gestured widely with his hand, referring to the open space around them.

  ‘Saw you as my ticket to get on the inside.’ He stopped again, shaking his head, clearly troubled by the memories of what he had done.

  Alecia didn’t know how she was supposed to feel. He was describing to her the details that had led to her arrest, her capture. He was claiming responsibility for being the man who had handed her over to her captors, hell, for being one of them, and maybe worst of all he was telling her that he’d done it to further his own career. Yet... he was her saviour and he obviously felt remorse for what he had done, was trying to put it right, and he had kissed her... She had no idea what it all meant and it hurt her head to think about it too much.

  ‘Your horse was ready for dropping, you’d run the thing close to exhaustion and I kept you in sight pretty easy, just on your tail for a while, waiting on the shot. You never saw it comin', the horse went down like a sack of shit. I was expecting you to get up and start runnin' but you didn’t and when I got close enough I could see you were trapped. I shot the horse again, to shut it up.’

  Leci winced, it was silly, she knew, to feel sentimental over a nag, but that pony had served her damn well in the time she’d had it. It didn’t seem right somehow, that it had died screaming it’s agony, a bullet mercifully administered to put it out of its misery.

  ‘I was half convinced you were dead. You were fucking white as a ghost under all the dirt caked on your face. I radioed it in and then just sat and waited for em, watching you. You never moved. Looked like you were sleeping, real peaceful. I had a bottle of water and I used some of it to clean your face up a bit, dunno why really, I s’pose I just wanted to get a proper look at you. I wanted to know what you’d done, what a kid like you could’ve done to get ‘em so worked up about getting hold of you.’

  She watched him closely, he wasn’t looking at her, had been staring out into the slowly approaching dawn, but his eyes were now closed, as though shutting out the world would shut out what he had done, shut out her questioning eyes, her accusing stare.

  ‘Then they came, in the suits and so I knew you had to be some kind of dangerous mutant.’ He glanced towards her, his expression apologetic, before quickly looking away again.

  She didn’t really take it as an offensive term, there wasn’t any denying that she was one.

  ‘Only I’d never seen one before and I’d always pictured them as being... I dunno, malformed or with tentacles or some other crazy shit. You just looked like some poor, beat up kid, didn’t look like you could hurt anyone. I went with them, with you, back to the prison. I got exactly what I wanted, cushy job inside the building. I wasn’t assigned anywhere near you. I was a guard in the main prison to start off with, just the regular criminals, or at least anyone who they saw as one. Most of the poor saps in there have never done anything worse than ask an Official
an annoying question when he was having a bad day. I didn’t see you again for two years but I thought about you, a lot.’

  It was difficult to absorb. She wasn’t entirely sure she would even be able to, it all seemed like too much, how did you even begin to get your head around revelations like this?

  Still, some of the things he had said had aroused her curiosity, stirred in her questions that she hadn’t thought she’d ever get an answer to and now here was an opportunity.

  Leci had very little idea of the length of time she had actually spent on the inside. She knew that it was years, had tried counting the days in the beginning but that became hard when you weren’t really sure where one day ended and the next began. She knew that when Xavian had died she had been sixteen years old, roughly a year on her own reasoned that she had been seventeen upon her capture. It had always scared her a little to consider the fact that she didn’t even know her own age anymore.

  ‘How long was I in there? Altogether?’

  ‘Four years.’ The speed and conviction of his response surprised her. She had expected him to have to think about it but he answered quickly and with utter certainty.

  ‘Almost to the day, four years and eighteen days.’

  She was lightly awestruck to realise she was twenty-one years old, wow, like, all grown up and everything... She almost managed a smile at the thought.

  ‘How old are you?’ Ok, so that one wasn’t really relevant, pure curiosity on her part, but she wanted to know.

  ‘Now?’ He glanced at her questioningly, she nodded and he shrugged mildly, as though realising the question were unimportant, but seeing no reason to hold back the answer.

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  It made no difference to anything, she wasn’t sure why she had thought that it would and she carried on, probing for the information she actually wanted.