by Cheree Alsop
My lips twisted again into the smile. How was it that a simple sentence from her could make me feel so happy? I glanced up at her. “Doctors have nurses.”
“And you’re sorely lacking in beautiful women ready to assist you.”
I snorted at the thought. “It’s not exactly sanitary down here.”
She looked around. “It’s cozy, and I’m sure the mice won’t mind having a roommate if I clean up after myself.”
I set one of her feet gently on my knee. I had almost forgotten how bad they were. The fact that she pretended they didn’t hurt bothered me. Galdoni were supposed to be tough, to never complain, to tend to their wounds and hide their pain so it was never used against them. Yet I wanted her to be different; I expected her to be. I let out a small breath and said, “This is going to hurt.”
“I know,” she replied in a tight voice.
I looked up to see her eyes closed and hands tightly gripping one of the ratty blankets. I sprayed a bottle of saline solution on the bottom of her foot. She kept perfectly still. I picked up the pair of tweezers I had purchased. My hands shook. I had never doctored someone else, and my own wounds I had tended to healed as scars that still pained me sometimes. I didn’t want to be the cause of more pain to her.
“I don’t think I should do this.”
She opened her eyes. Her brown gaze held me with a look of trust and belief I felt I didn’t deserve. Her smile was small, but it touched her eyes. “Who else is there?”
I gave in. “Fine, but I don’t expect you to like me much after this.”
“Who says I like you now?”
The words and the way she said them brought another smile to my face. Instead of looking up to show myself grinning like a dork yet again, I ducked my head and concentrated on her foot. A gasp answered my gentle prodding. I gripped a piece of glass firmly with the tweezers and drew it out as gently as I could.
Alana kept silent, but when I looked up again I saw tears rolling down her face. I clenched my jaw and focused on her foot. I couldn’t explain it, but every intake of breath or muted gasp hurt me more than any wound I had ever received at the Academy. My hands were shaking by the time I was done, and the blood that coated my fingers felt more precious than the blood pounding through my heart.
I sprayed more saline solution on the bottom of both of her feet, then spread ointment across the tattered skin as gently as possible. I pressed bandages against the worst of the wounds before wrapping her feet in gauze.
I had never cared for anyone or anything. The ache I felt at the sight of the blood on the floor was as unfamiliar as the rage that burned in my chest at the thought of her cut wings. I was used to kill or be killed. At the Academy there weren’t friends, there wasn’t family, there were only Galdoni waiting to kill you should you make a wrong move or forget to watch your back. I didn’t care about any of them.
A slight whisper in the back of my mind reminded me that I was wrong. I grimaced at the rush of memories brought by the thought.
“What are you thinking?”
Alana’s quiet voice jolted through the silence. I looked up, surprised to find her watching me. The pain was bright in her eyes, her expression pleading as though she asked for a distraction.
I cleared my throat, hesitant to trust her with something as secret as my thoughts. I was Saro. I didn’t trust anyone. Yet she pleaded without saying a word.
“The Academy,” I replied honestly.
She nodded as though she had guessed as much. “It must have been horrible,” she said.
I looked down and realized I still held her feet, one in each hand as if by touching them I could help her heal faster. I eased them gently to the ground, reluctant for reasons I couldn’t explain to release my hold on her. I rocked back on my heels and felt a slight chill at being distant from her, if only by less than a foot. “Worse than you’ll ever know,” I replied without meeting her gaze. “At least I hope so.” The thought of Alana at the Academy sent another chill racing up my spine.
“What do you mean?”
I picked up the supplies I had used on her feet and tucked them back into the plastic bag from the convenience store. “If you’re captured, they’ll take you there. I don’t know how a girl would fare at the Academy, but they don’t hesitate to send anyone to the Arena.” My voice grew bitter. “Anyone at all.”
Silence filled the air between us. She broke it after a few minutes. “Saro, the Academy doesn’t exist anymore.” She said the words hesitantly as though worried about how I would take them.
I felt a pang of remorse at her naiveté. Pretending something didn’t exist didn’t make it any less real. The scars across my body ached in agreement. “It exists; trust me.”
I saw her shake her head out of the corner of my eye. “It used to, but it was disbanded a year ago. The Galdoni are free.”
The absurdity of her statement made me laugh out loud. “Yeah, then why were you hiding from the cops?”
She shrugged her shoulders, making her gray wings move. “I thought it was obvious.”
A strange feeling pitted my stomach. “Because you’re a girl?”
She nodded. “Female Galdoni don’t exist. The world wasn’t ready for girls to fight. Even humans wouldn’t have put up with that.”
I studied her. “If you don’t exist, why am I looking at you right now?”
She lowered her gaze. “The scientists never stopped experimenting. Their original goal was to create ultimate soldiers, but the Galdoni were too unpredictable, too animal in their impulses.”
Her emphasis wasn’t lost on me, but my mind was already spinning. “That doesn’t explain why you were at that house.”
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Her brown eyes searched the room, avoiding my gaze. She finally said, “They wanted to make something a little more human, but they didn’t want to start from scratch.”
Her gaze finally locked on mine, willing me to understand. I was still stuck on her comment about the Academy being shut down. It didn’t make sense. Jake said he paid fees to keep me with him. He protected me. He couldn’t have lied.
My thoughts darkened, laughing in cruel tones at the back of my mind. Had I been the one who was naïve?
I ran from the thought, pounding it down into a little black box that I locked in the far reaches of my mind to never be opened again. I focused on her words, focused on the reason for girl Galdoni. Why would having girl Galdoni make them more human? What reason could they possibly have?
The knot in my stomach hardened into a brick. I felt my eyes widened as I stared at Alana. She nodded. “Understand now?”
“Babies?” I knew enough from our biology classes about the difference between test tube babies like the Galdoni and the way human babies were born. My voice came out in a strangled whisper. “They would impregnate girl Galdoni so the babies would be more human?”
She nodded, her eyes hidden behind lowered lashes. “Less driven by animal instincts and the need for their own survival; more willing to cooperate.”
My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth would break. I felt like I was going to explode. I wanted to hit someone; my fists tightened. I rested one on the ground, leaning on it from my crouched position.
A hand touched my arm. “It’s okay, Saro.”
“How can you say that?” I demanded, looking up at Alana. “How much more can they get away with? It’s not okay. It’s wrong, and it’s not animal instincts that tell me so, it’s my heart.” My heart pounded as though I had trained for an hour. My chest heaved and I fought to draw in air. At the Academy it had been easy to pretend I was an animal, fit only to fight. Outside, though, it wasn’t a black and white world, not by a long shot. I had never been taught how to deal with gray, yet away from the Academy, gray was the only color that existed, gray that symbolized the coming of a storm.
“You’re not an animal,” Alana said. Her fingers brushed my unruly dark brown hair from my face. Her palm cupped my cheek gently. I tur
ned my face into her hand. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to feel just for a moment what a touch without malice could be like. A soft warmth surrounded her hand; my heartbeat slowed. I took a calming breath, then ducked my head, breaking the contact.
“We’re not human, Alana. We’re not one of them.” I rose. “I’d rather be an animal than be one of them.” I walked to the door. I paused at the threshold and glanced back. Pain showed on her face. Whether it was from my words or her feet, I couldn’t say. I leaned my forehead against the door frame for a moment; my wings drooped against my back. No words of comfort came to me. Comforting someone wasn’t a strong point of mine; I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. I shook my head and started up the stairs. “I’ll be back with food,” I promised.
Chapter Six
The bottles that littered the floor clinked together when I opened the door. Jake stirred on his overstuffed chair in the corner. It smelled of cigarettes and the beer he spilled on it whenever he fell asleep drinking; I also smelled urine from the times Jake way overindulged, but whenever he planned to get completely blackout drunk, that was his favorite place.
“Another beer,” he demanded in his sleep.
I crossed to the fridge in the search of something other than his favorite beverage. A moldy block of cheese, several packets of ham, and bread hardened from age took up the middle shelf. There were several fast food bags stuffed along the top. I peeked into the two closest to the front and so therefore the most likely to be fresh. I about gagged at the sight of a hamburger with green meat, the tomato of which had turned into a ring of fuzz. The second bag proved more promising; it contained a few tacos that were only slightly stale.
Taking the tacos, a bottle of water, and the two blankets on the floor that made up my bed, I slipped back out the door again. I passed one man on my way back down the stairs, but despite my trepidation, he merely muttered about miscreants spray-painting brick walls and ignored me completely.
I hadn’t realized how anxious I was to make sure Alana was safe until I saw her sleeping on the couch. The sight of her unharmed and resting made the tight muscles in my chest and back loosen. She slept quietly, her head tilted slightly to one side with a strand of dark blond hair crossing her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to sweep the hair back where it belonged. My hand was halfway to her face when I realized what I was doing. I shook my head and turned away. I quickly settled the blankets on top of her before pulling over an empty dog kennel from the corner. I set the tacos and water on top of it in the hopes that the mice and rats who occupied the basement would have a harder time reaching it.
I should have her leave. Jake would kill her and probably me if he knew I was hiding a girl in the basement; or perhaps he would make her join me in the robberies. The thought made me sick as I stood there watching her sleep. She looked so peaceful. She lay on her side with her gray wings just visible over the edge of the blanket I had spread over her. The feathers looked soft in the light of the single bulb overhead. I wanted to run my fingers through them.
I walked to the door. She made me feel things a Galdoni shouldn’t feel. I was an animal; she had even said so, echoing the sentiments at the Academy with words that hurt more than their whips ever had. She might not have meant the way I took them, but while my heart shied away, my teeth had ripped into flesh, and my hands had choked the life out of others. She should leave because she didn’t know what I had done, what I truly was.
I sank onto the floor by the door and buried my face in my hands. The memories overwhelmed me. I saw lights overhead, cut out by a flurry of wings. They pressed me down, down, down, forcing me onto the unforgiving sands of the Arena. They meant to kill me. The bite of their weapons said it as much as their cold eyes. Blade swung his sword. They held me tight. I couldn’t move. Metal glinted in the searing light. I closed my eyes.
“Saro?” Alana sounded tired but concerned.
I pushed up quickly.
“Are you alright?”
“Fine.” I kept my face from the light. “There’s food on the cage. I’ll check on you in the morning.” I stumbled up the stairs two at a time. I wasn’t sure if I was running from her or the memories; at the moment, they both felt the same.
***
“The green light will guide you home,” Jake said.
“Got it.” I pulled my trench coat close and adjusted the satchel. The Molotovs chinked together lightly. Jake drove down the road, a single pair of taillights against the house-lined street. No lights showed in the homes around me. The inhabitants were no doubt asleep at the early morning hour. I picked the lock on the garage and slipped inside.
I left the Molotovs in the kitchen and hurried upstairs. It was my new habit, a quick check to ensure that the house was empty before I set it up in flames. I realized that should have been my strategy from the beginning, but at least I was learning. I jogged past school pictures that lined the walls like mug shots, cute kids who no doubt never smiled like that in real life. I hadn’t had much experience around kids besides those at the Academy who had tried to kill me growing up; I suppose that might have skewed my perspective a bit.
The house was empty. Good. No more winged girls calling out for help or terrified cries from within the flames. I did find a cat, a black and white thing that hissed when I tossed it outside. It landed on its feet. Jake would have lashed me for taking the time to save it. At least my conscience was free, although I couldn’t say when exactly I had begun to have a conscience, and I also highly doubted it was a good thing for a Galdoni to have. Accountability didn’t exactly rank high in the life of killers.
I walked past the living room back to the kitchen, and something caught my eye. I turned slowly. A laptop sat on the corner of the coffee table. I glanced back at the bag of Molotovs, then at the laptop again. I knew I shouldn’t. There wasn’t time and Jake was swift to punish slothfulness. I took another step toward the kitchen, but Alana’s words tickled at the back of my mind. I had to know.
Breathing a curse, I hurried to the laptop and opened it. The screen glowed blue with a window in one corner. It asked for a password. I shook my head as I shut it and set it back on the coffee table. I didn’t set it straight; the weight of the battery pulled it over the edge. I caught it before it hit the ground. I was about to put it back when I noticed something had been written on the backside. The word ‘password’ had been scrawled with a black pen. Curious, I opened the laptop again and sat on the couch. With hesitant fingers, I typed ‘password’ into the box. I hit enter and the screen changed.
“Great,” I muttered. “Using the word password for the password. This man’s a genius.” I grinned wryly. “And he wrote it on the back of his laptop in case he forgot.”
Still chuckling to myself, I pulled up the internet and typed a few words into the search bar. My laughter died in an instant. Jake didn’t own a laptop or a television. He said such things were for the lazy, though I wondered what was different from his booze-filled evenings on the couch. He did have a cell phone with the internet on it and occasionally he made me search for fast food places or the nearest bar. Depending on what city we were in, it varied widely. I had gotten used to him grabbing the phone quickly from me the second the search was completed.
My fingers shook. Had he really kept technology from his apartment because he was afraid I would find the truth? Entering the words ‘Galdoni Freedom’ showed a picture of KL426, a Galdoni I had known from combat at the Academy. The caption read “Kale’s Fight Brings Freedom for Galdoni.” He stood in front of the Arena. Its black gates hung crookedly and had been chained to prevent intruders. They hadn’t been that way when I left.
I scrolled down. A button beckoned me to push play. I took a hesitant breath, then pushed it. Music started. I saw a tiny Galdoni baby with black wings sleeping in gloved hands. In the next scene, a toddler was learning to walk, then there were young Galdoni in a classroom. A teacher was in the middle of bringing down a whip to discipline th
e child, something so common it didn’t bother me.
My heart stopped when the video shifted to the next scene. A young Galdoni boy stood with a katana in the middle of a fighting circle. The tip of the blade rested on the ground, something the enforcers at the Academy would have beaten us for. Dark blood coated the blade, trailing from the middle of the weapon to the floor. The boy’s head hung low, his wings drooped against his back. The feathers of his wings had been colored black; I didn’t know why. It didn’t matter.
I closed my eyes. A tear slid down my cheek. I remembered the loss I felt as I stared down at VZ579. He clutched his stomach, holding in its contents that we both knew would spill out the instant he let go. Lifeblood flowed around him, coloring the sand dark brown. I remembered the feeling of it when it reached my feet. He was dying, and I had killed him. I had killed my best friend when I was only six years old.
I stood with a roar and threw the laptop across the room. It crashed into the entertainment stand, causing movies and electronics to fall to the floor. Still the music continued to emanate from the small black rectangle. I covered my ears, but I couldn’t keep out the sound. I sobbed, pain wracking my shoulders. I again felt the enforcer’s hand grip my shoulder and heard his gruff voice say, “Well done, SR029.”
I slammed my fist into the coffee table. The glass shattered. I hit the table again and again, cracking the wood and destroying the glass panel on the other side. I fell to my knees beside the mess. An emotionless voice in the back of my mind reminded me that Jake would be mad I had left evidence that the fire wasn’t normal. I shook my head. I was a fool. The evidence of the Molotovs alone would show that it wasn’t a normal fire. Yet Jake never left any sign of arson on the houses; it was all mine.
I drew my legs up under my chin and rested my forehead against my knees. I closed my burning eyes. Words spoke from the laptop. “The life of a single Galdoni. Not a monster, not an animal, but a hero waiting for his chance to live. We’ve been taught to see them as inhuman, but we can’t deny the humanity Kale has shown. Help us stop the violence that goes on behind these walls. Refuse to watch the fights; don’t gamble on lives that should be spent in the pursuit of happiness, our right and theirs. Don’t let Kale die because you didn’t take a stand.”