Of course, I had titles. King. Krul. My lord. My love.
I had heard these on repeat, but they felt wrong. As though they no longer belonged to me. As though they never did.
I had lost my name and was left only with formalities. I refused to accept that that was all I was.
It may have been a serendipitous occurrence, however. With the exception of Joclyn and Ryland, every name had been spoken aloud as Nastya played with me. Precious names that dripped from me.
Unlucky for her, she couldn’t put a face to a name.
That, and based on what I had seen, I was pretty sure all of them were dead.
The thought was both joy and ice and I let it shiver through me once before dispelling it into the air as I pushed it away, leaving me only to get lost in the look in her eyes.
As much as I longed for my memories, I had these moments.
In many ways that was enough.
I leaned down to kiss her, her breath brushing against my lips, only to have the calm of my paradise shattered by a scream.
My body tensed at the noise, at the pain and tension that rippled through my bones and threatened to send me into the icy foam.
“My love,” Joclyn gasped, grabbing a hold of my towering frame just before I fell.
Her arms wrapped around me, somehow holding me above the waves as they flowed, the motion breathing right along with me as I inhaled their salty aroma.
I willed the fear away, I willed the pain of my body away. The relapse only held for a moment before the abrasive echo of the scream brought it right back.
“I am fine,” I growled, the reaction not one I would normally give her. Luckily, she didn’t respond, she only held me closer, assisting me to stand as the sound came again. The scream that lived inside my head accompanied by a loud creak as the house on the hill behind us began to give way.
“Stay with me,” she pleaded as she fell into me, wrapping her arms around my waist as she held herself close.
It was a touch I gratefully returned, holding her against me as I cemented the feel of her in my mind. I almost wasn’t fast enough.
The screams followed me out of my dreams, the same as they did every night, and every morning. Every moment someone walked into the hallway that we were all trapped in. The screams grew into roars as the sound of doors opening and closing began to sound. The heavy thunks grew closer as the screams did, the sound of trays being slammed onto the cement becoming clear.
It was the same ritual I had heard for the last two years that I had been locked in this place. The screams and sounds were so familiar that I didn’t even move anymore. I just lay there, focused on the comfort of the cold cement as the doors continued to slam. Closer and closer.
Arching my body toward the door I waited for mine to open, my heart swelling in need for the brief moment of contact I was about to receive.
Whimpers of joy from the child who was restrained next door replaced his screams before my own door was thrown wide, the only familiar face that existed in this dark place coming into view.
Kaye took one step in and slammed the tray onto the floor, the action sending brown peas rolling. I didn’t even look at the tray anymore, I looked right at her, at her brown eyes, at the way she nodded sadly. I returned to nod, her hand swiping over the ridge of the door frame as she grabbed the note I had left for her. I watched her leave, the low messy bun she had adopted about a year ago the last thing I saw before the door slammed between us, closing us off from each other, and me from the one good thing that existed here.
I didn’t move.
I lay still, my body pained from sleeping on the cold hard floor, and stared at the food, at the tray, and the little piece of paper that I could see tucked between the divots on the underside. The formed plastic tray was cracked and missing chunks around the edge, but it still made the perfect vehicle for note transport. It was all we had anyway.
Trying to focus past the wall of narcotics that I was always infested with, I slowly reached my unrestrained arm toward the tray. My fingers fumbled against the edge as I desperately tried to grab it. It was just far enough away I couldn’t reach it. I already knew they hadn’t given me enough line from my IV to shift closer.
As it was, I hadn’t been able to reach the toilet for the last few weeks, not that it worked.
I sighed and rolled over, listening as the sobs of the little boy next door picked back up, the kid calling for his mother as he had since the first day I had been put here. Somehow, the sounds of his cries had become comforting, familiar. I was sure he felt the same way. The way he called for her, the way he spoke to her from time to time.
Sighing, I lifted my arm, the heavy thing wrapped in layers of gauze and bound with a locked brace to keep me away from the IV. The filthy tube trailed from my hand, winding over the floor and through the air until it reached the machines and bags and everything else they used to control and monitor me.
Too high to reach.
Too risky to try.
“A little length next time, would be good,” I said, turning toward the camera in the opposite corner, the thing there more to make sure I didn’t mess up their systems. They couldn’t take the risk of giving me full use of my mind and magic after all.
At least they still thought it was working. Shifting my weight, I turned toward the tray, but only the fractured edge hit my fingertips.
Fine. I would have to call this practice.
I pushed myself a little farther toward the tray, letting my magic swell as the tray shifted, the tiny surge of energy bringing the try right to me. Perfect.
I waited for an alarm, or footsteps, or a rush of cold in my IV but nothing happened. They either weren’t watching me, or the motion was subtle enough they had missed it.
Didn't matter to me. I had my food, and more importantly. The letter.
Keeping my back to the camera, I huddled over the tray as I poked at the old meat, stomach turning at the once green peas and equally as discolored carrots.
Luckily, I didn’t get as sick as many of the others in this prison, but thanks to the IV, I also didn’t need to eat as much.
The smell of the meat didn’t twist my stomach as much, so I elected to devour that, taking slow bites as I pulled the letter out from underneath the tray.
It had only taken her a few months to get the transfer to the north wing that she wanted. Meaning that it was almost a year and a half ago that I received the first letter from her, her loopy writing smeared on a folded square of toilet paper. It was just a few words left for me after I had stared in confusion at the girl who had brought me my food:
I got the job.
Now, we communicated on scraps of paper, every inch covered as we passed them back and forth, the things becoming more and more priceless as the SSU moved into poverty, the tyrannical government close to falling.
At least, that’s what Kaye’s notes had said for the last few months, signs of the end where clearly printed for her, especially now that she could freely go outside of the hospital.
But for me, eating rotten meat under the tiny sliver of light let in by the window, it didn’t seem like things were close to getting better.
In fact, they were only getting worse.
Nastya’s sessions were more brutal, her own magic just as much of a weapon as the machine she loved so much.
As much as I questioned, as much as I watched, I couldn’t figure out where her power had come from. Perhaps she had simply stolen it from me.
So, the brutality continued, sometimes knocking me out for days or weeks before I would return to consciousness.
I began to cut the meat as the note unfolded of its own accord. My magic moving in a thick sludge as it accomplished the task.
Chrlič declared eradicated. Western border has fallen.
My hands began to shake as I read the words, the steak forgotten as my power flared, the paper turning over in desperation to see more. There had to be more.
“What?” I whispered in
Czech as if the single syllable would be magically answered at my demand. There was nothing else.
Nothing more.
I placed the meat in my mouth and immediately spit it out, the taste a million times worse than I expected.
I couldn’t eat that, I shouldn’t eat that. And yet….
Looking from the note to the unrecognizable slab of meat, I knew there was no choice. I could feel that in the way my heart was thundering in hope. If they were falling, if it was finally happening, I needed strength.
Forcing down the grey square, I attempted to get my mind from the sludge I was eating and instead attempted to bring my magic up to the surface, using all my strength to break past the barricade of medicated drudgery I had been fighting.
With each chew I changed the color of the paper, with each bite I focused my mind and folded it into a new shape, with each swallow I let it hover above the ground, shifting and swimming as it danced. The paper danced and moved, swirling through the air as I swallowed the last bite, the stale meat sitting uncomfortably in my gut.
As the paper fell to the floor, I pushed it to flatten, watching the creases in the paper disappear as those same words winked up at me.
Western border has fallen.
I had planned to tell her of a memory from the day before, of the tiny village near that house I always dreamed of. Perhaps another clue, yes, but it did not lead to freedom like this would. That news was no longer important.
My heart thundered as I stared at the words, my slow mind struggling to find a way to phrase the questions that buzzed through me in a way that anyone who would find the paper may not understand.
When do we escape was not going to cut it.
Sighing, I popped one of the carrots in my mouth without thinking, the sour rancid flavor turning my stomach. I was barely keeping the meat down, this was not going to help. Spitting the formerly orange blob across the room toward the filthy toilet I pushed the tray away, finally realizing how I needed to phrase it.
Placing my fingertip on the paper, I pushed my magic into it, the power twisting and moving the ink into something different.
When can we visit her?
It was enough, and I knew she would get it. I smiled at the anticipation the news brought to me, the idea of being able to hold Joclyn seeming impossible after everything. The dream for the future mixed with the dreams of every night, with the few precious memories I had and I sighed. Folding the paper back up, I prepared to send it across the floor and into the door frame, tucking it away so Kaye and I could talk.
The paper never made it. It fell to the floor as a rush of cold moved through my veins, the faint blue fluid filling the clear IV tube.
I stiffened at the sensation, unable to move as I stared at the paper, the incriminating thing out on the open, my magic frozen enough I couldn’t even nudge it.
The cold grew and I knew the paper was not the worst of my problems.
They never took me to her this early.
Something was happening.
A full thought couldn’t even break past the numbness that was overtaking me. The world was becoming nothing as I fell forward into what was left of my food, slumping into carrots and peas and some sauce that I had purposefully ignored. I tried to move away from it, but I couldn’t shift.
I couldn’t move.
The floor began to vibrate as I lay there, the sounds of boots pounding against my skull a second before the doors swung open and the screams began. The heavy metal thing slammed against the supporting wall as at least ten soldiers rushed in, flanked by someone I hadn’t seen more than just behind glass for the last few years.
Commander Domor.
I tried to speak his name, but I only gurgled and drooled against the floor. The disgust on the man’s face making his disdain for me clear.
“Take the machine with him,” he commanded the soldiers, pointing to the box that I was attached to. “Get him in the truck. Your leader is waiting.”
The soldiers burst into action as the man sniffed, covering his nose with a handkerchief in an attempt to cover the foul smell.
The image made me laugh, he created this, the least he could do is smell it.
Commander Domor stepped outside the room as the soldiers lifted me from the floor, two of them dragging me by the arms as the others flanked our sides with their massive guns drawn and ready.
The other prisoners screams silenced at seeing the weapons aimed at them, but only because it wasn’t normal.
Nothing about this was normal. Instead of going left as I always did, the soldiers dragged me right, back through the double doors that had led to a more hospitable home so many years before.
Instead of the clean hospital wing, however, the place had become just as run down. Men and woman lay on stretchers and curled up on the floor, crying and screaming as they pled for some kind of assistance.
The tops of my feet scraped against the floor as we walked through them, the desperate people reaching toward us, grabbing at clothes and feet as if even I could help them.
“Get back filth!” The soldiers demanded, bullets flying as they fired above their heads, threatening them to get back, not caring if they hit them, or killed them.
Screams followed the gunfire and the soldiers began to run, my feet sliding over the slick floor, carpet and then cement before I saw sunlight, true sunlight for the first time in more than ten years.
Although the light from my dreams had been filled with this same warmth, it hadn't seeped into me like this did. It hadn’t infected me.
Attempting to turn toward the sun, to feel it on my face for the first time, my head flopped to the side. But instead of the sun, I say Kaye.
Her, her mother, and a few other nurses that I didn’t recognize filled one of the military vehicles that sat before the massive building. Medical equipment, guns, the electronic machine they had used to torture me for so long, it all went into the back of one of the buggies.
And I went into the back of another.
The soldiers threw me into the covered bed of a truck, arms and legs tangling as I went end over end into the hard metal corner of the thing. The perfectly timed steps of the soldiers faded as they marched away, leaving only Commander Domor and I as he jumped into the darkened back of the truck, pulling a pair of metal handcuffs from his pocket.
“Just in case all of that lovely medicine wears off before we get to our new home, eh?” He sneered as he locked my free wrist into the cuff, attaching me to one of the many large rings that lined the bed vehicle. “We wouldn’t want to lose our most valuable weapon now would we.”
He laughed again as he clicked the cuff tighter, the metal ring pressing uncomfortably against my joints.
My fingers began to tingle at the pressure of the cuff before he ever left the truck, the bed rocking as he jumped through the fabric opening. The flap shifted as he left, letting in one strip of beautiful sun before I was left in the dark again. Unable to move, I heaved in air, desperate to calm the panic that was rising in me. However, the emotion only grew as the silence was broken by the sound of gunfire in the distance, the sounds of screams not far behind. Bursts of gunfire accelerated before a massive explosion rocked the ground, truck and limbs shaking under the impact.
The screams swelled, footsteps following as the sound of the bombing continued.
“It is not going where you want to go!” A voice yelled in heavy Ukrainian as the engine of the truck roared to life, sending everything rattling.
“We need him. Nothing works without him.”
Kaye.
She was close, right outside the truck, inches from me.
I needed to get to her. I fought through the drugs, through the fog, and tried to yell, to scream, anything to get her attention. Nothing happened, not even a grunt. I just lay hopelessly against the metal ridges of the truck bed, staring at the cloth of the opening as it flapped in the wind, revealing moments of the chaos outside.
“Meet me at the UK Republics Embas
sy in Germany,” her voice was even closer.
My heart sped up the proximity, the pulse quickening further as I tried to yell, only to have any effort blocked as another bomb fell, this one right beside us. I attempted to move, to scuttle away and escape the truck, or the war, or whatever it was that was coming. I didn't move an inch, no matter how much work I put into it. I was trapped in the hell the drugs had brought.
The truck roared to life, as the earth continued to shake and we began to move, several people beginning to jump in the back with me.
“No, no!” One of the soldiers screamed, the first two who had loaded obviously sent to guard me. “This is a private transport!”
From where I lay tangled on the floor, I could only see their feet. The two soldiers boots stood strong before a few others rushed in, three muffled shots sounding loud as the soldiers dropped to the ground, blood pouring from their vacant faces.
“Get in,” I heard Kaye shout before someone walked right past me, slamming their fist into the heavy metal that separated truck and cab in a rhythmic four pulse beat. “Let’s move!”
She yelled just as the truck took off, roaring to life and speeding away as more guns and more bombs began to rattle the world.
The bombs continued on either side of us as the truck sped along. Each bomb burst through me, a heavy flood of anxiety jerking muscles and heart until the soft touch of fingers against mine took it all away. Kaye’s fingers wound through mine as she leaned down, coming into focus in the dark.
“We really must stop meeting like this,” she teased, giving my hands a squeeze before they left, moving to cut the large cuff that kept the IV hidden off my arm.
As she began to work, the cold in my veins began to fade, the grogginess no longer growing as it had been. My mind began to move, the subtle current of my magic moving back into my fingers. I sighed at the release, attempting to convey my thanks as my tired body settled into the ridged floor of the truck bed. Thankfully, Kaye, patted my arm in understanding, moving back to cut the lock that kept the brace against my arm.
“I tried to flush your system earlier, so I am not sure how long it will take for everything to come back.” She said, her focus still on the massive brace on my arm. “Do you feel anything yet?”
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