Estranged

by Alex Fedyr

  His teeth clenched, the muscles in his jaw flexing, and he glared into her eyes. Kalei felt her heart race, her breaths came rapidly as she strained against the pressure on her windpipe. She could feel his nails sinking into her flesh as the weight of her body pressed against his hand. But Terin didn’t move, and his darkness didn’t advance.

  After several more erratic heartbeats, Terin looked away. He loosened his hold and let her slide to the floor, keeping his fingers wrapped around her neck. Kalei heard him mutter, “I never wanted this for you.”

  Then he looked back at Kalei, steel in his eyes. He drew his arm back and slammed her skull into the wall, sending the room spinning into darkness.

  Kalei could feel her face pressed against something cold and smooth. The pressure of the object against her cheek and shoulder seemed to be holding her erect.

  The joints in her legs complained as they sat tucked beneath her at awkward and painful angles. She couldn’t fully stretch them out because her feet were already pushed up against something solid behind her. Confused, Kalei opened her eyes and pulled her legs forward into a more comfortable position.

  She found herself sitting in a glass tube. It had a cement floor with a perfect circle of glass sealing her in on all sides. She had barely enough room to move her elbows, no more.

  Looking past the glass, Kalei realized she wasn’t alone. Another dozen tubes lined either side of the long hallway, each with another person – another Estranged – within. They were like so many test subjects, lined up for study. Some of them slept, some of them cried, some of them shouted intermittently or banged on the glass with bloody knuckles. Kalei might have done the same, if she didn’t already know it was pointless.

  She knew where she was. This was solitary confinement. Built several levels below the basement of headquarters, this was where SWORDE put Estranged who were too dangerous to wander the district on their own. She had been given a tour during training. At the time, she had wanted to kill every one of them for being murdering bastards. Now she wondered how many of them were like her: people who had simply pissed off Terin.

  But was she really in here because she had pissed him off? It was more likely he had discovered her connection to Tusic. Dammit! She had grown pretty lax about where and when she met Lecia. It didn’t surprise her that they had found out. Kalei had never exactly been trained for espionage.

  She reached her hand out and traced the curving line where the cement and glass came together to form her cell. She knew the cement wasn’t holding the tube up. Apparently, the ground beneath was hollow, allowing the glass to slide up and down using some mechanism below. But all Kalei could see was a small black gap between the two surfaces, no larger than the width of a wedding ring. She pulled her hand back.

  Kalei knew she couldn’t break out. Erit had offered her the chance to execute these dangerous inmates if only she could crack the glass. Even with a pistol at close range, she couldn’t make a scratch. In fact, she nearly killed herself when she tried.

  She leaned her head back against the tube and looked up at the featureless, cement ceiling. The only things to interrupt its monotonous grey expanse were the bright lights recessed into the cement at regular intervals, drawing a straight path along the center of the hall. Kalei’s eyes traced the path of the lights to their beginning, and then her eyes slid down to settle on the heavy steel door that marked the entrance to the prison.

  What is happening out there? Is Fenn really all right as Terin said, or is Xamic on his way to kill him now? Perhaps he was already dead.

  Kalei punched the glass. No! She refused to believe that. She refused to accept that he was. Even if—No. Fenn and the girls were alive. She remembered Xamic’s darkness within her, the way it resonated with his innermost thoughts while he held her hostage. When he spoke, she could sense the emotions – the truth behind his words. Xamic knew Fenn was alive, and he knew where to find her husband. But his intentions didn’t feel like death. They felt like... excitement? Elation? That couldn’t be right. Perhaps she had just imagined it.

  But where is Fenn? And the girls? Kalei furrowed her brows. What about their father? Kalei shifted her weight in an attempt to find a more comfortable position. Come to think of it, what did they tell Qain when he came back from his trip to Takaio? Had they kept him from seeing his daughters, or did they take him into protective custody as well? Kalei couldn’t see that going well. Qain was a high-profile employee for a high-profile company. There was no way he would allow them to take him off the map.

  But then again, being a high-profile employee for a high-profile – international – company meant it would be easy for Qain to pick up and move. Were they even in Celan anymore?

  Kalei tried to imagine Fenn lying on some beach somewhere without her. It was hard, not only to imagine him alone, but to imagine him leaving without her. She knew Fenn; he wouldn’t have left without a fight. They must have told him that she was dead, or what if Xamic really had told him that I’m...

  But what did she know? She wasn’t there when they enrolled him into Victim’s Protection. What if he just skipped into the office, happy to be free of his nagging wife?

  Kalei shook her head. Stop it. You know that wasn’t the case. He loves me, and I love him. He wouldn’t do that.

  But that was then. What about now? It has been two years since the attack...

  Kalei remembered the night before her first day at the police station. A hundred thoughts had run through her mind, each more bizarre and paranoid than the last. What if she spilled coffee on the police chief? What if her partner was a smelly old man? But there was one thought that was more plausible and scary than the rest. What if she died on the job?

  It didn’t happen all the time, but it happened. Kalei started to think about what the world would be like if one day she just... wasn’t here.

  A sudden fear had grown inside her and she woke up Fenn. She told him that if she ever passed away, be it that day or a hundred years off, she wanted him to remarry. She didn’t want him to spend the rest of his life miserable over the woman he had lost. She wanted him to find love again, to be happy, to live his life. She wouldn’t let him rest until he promised.

  Fenn had run his hand through her hair, looked her in the eyes, and told her he would never love another woman the way he loved her. She was the only one in the world for him. But if this was what she wanted, then he promised he would find love again, even if it could never touch what they had, and he wanted her to do the same.

  When they made those promises, Kalei had never imagined she would become... this. Estranged. She was dead to Fenn, but at the same time, she was still very much alive.

  She knew he should forget about her; it was better for him that way. But what if he had listened to her? What if he had found some woman to comfort him through his grief, to hold his hand, to keep his bed warm at night...?

  Kalei’s hands began to tremble. She began to fidget with the diamond ring on her left hand, its largest diamond sitting on the white gold band like a queen announcing her shining presence to the world, while a trio of smaller gems framed it on either side. Its beautiful design brought back memories of a candlelit dinner and a question she had been breathless to answer...

  Kalei gritted her teeth against the tears streaming from her eyes and the painful tightening of her throat. The swirls on her nails began to bleed and blur. The biting pain in her heart turned into a cruel stabbing and twisting that made her stomach clench. When the sobs came, she couldn’t stop them.

  She sat like that for ages. It could have been a week or a year; she had no way of knowing. Time didn’t make itself known in this damned dungeon.

  Then she heard a few shouts and calls from her fellow inmates at the far end of the hall, followed by the steady rhythm of two boots thumping against cement. She lifted her chin off her chest and saw a Warden approaching. She watched the dark figure’s advance with dead eyes.

  The Warden stopped at Kalei’s tube. Kalei raised a
n eyebrow at him as she heard a grunt, and then the Warden pulled off his helmet. It was Wexley, the old weapon master. Well, Shenaia called him old – the man was in his late fifties, his hair not entirely turned to grey yet. Not that it ever would, considering the man was Estranged. Kalei knew him well from all the time she had spent at the range. She only belatedly remembered that he was in charge of solitary too.

  As Wexley tucked his helmet under his arm, he grumbled, “Fuck protocol. This ain’t exactly by the book to begin with.”

  Kalei smiled in spite of herself. She hadn’t realized how desperate she was for information until she saw the man. “Hey, Wexley. How’s it going? What’s going on out there?”

  Wexley studiously ignored her, walking over to the wall behind her tube where steps had been carved out of the cement. The steps created a slight, curving path that hugged the back side of her tube and climbed all the way to the open top about twenty feet above.

  Kalei persisted, “Hey, Wexley. C’mon. At least tell me what you’re doing. Shenaia and I took good care of your guns. Yeah, we might have burned through a lot of ammo, but we always cleaned up, helped you out around the range. C’mon, Wexley. Don’t give me the silent treatment.”

  When he reached the top of the staircase, Wexley pulled something out of his pocket and dropped it into the tube. Kalei watched the small white package grow larger as it dropped. She held out her hands to catch it, but the object moved so fast it shot between her outstretched fingers and hit Kalei’s knee with a soft thud. The package split open, splattering brown refried beans across the glass and hitting Kalei in the face. Kalei wiped the mess from her cheek and opened her eyes in time to see a burrito slide out of the white wrapping and fall limply to the ground.

  Wexley returned to ground level and told Kalei, “Shenaia thought you’d want some food. Hell if I know why, but she wouldn’t leave me alone ‘til I gave it to you. Don’t recommend eating it, though. There’s no way in hell I’m cleaning out that cage when it comes back ‘round.” He winked at her. “Unless, of course, you got a little sugar to spare.”

  Kalei snatched up the remains of the burrito. “You can tell Shenaia I don’t want her fucking burrito!” She attempted to throw it out of the tube, but within the confines of the glass, she couldn’t pull her arm back far enough to make a decent throw. The burrito weakly flew several feet up the tube and then came falling back down, nearly hitting her again. Kalei managed to dodge this time, and it hit the floor with an unpleasant squelch.

  Wexley laughed and said, “Well, have fun with that. And you’re right, you girls were pretty kind to my guns. And pretty kind on the eyes too. Thank you for that.” He winked again and turned to leave.

  “Hey!” Kalei screamed. “What’s going on out there? Is Fenn still alive? Wexley! Wait!”

  Without stopping or slowing, Wexley yelled back, “Just be glad you got that much. I’m not allowed to talk to inmates, y’know.” He reached the door at the far end of the hall and disappeared through its frame.

  Kalei’s world shrank once more to the size of her small glass circle. Except now she had company. She would have kicked the burrito, except she didn’t want the damn beans all over her shoe. Not that they didn’t already cover half her pants and most of the cell. Kalei sighed and smacked her forehead against the glass. After a moment, she reached up her hands and held its surface beneath her open palms. Then she slowly pulled her fingers closed, wishing she could pull the barrier away like a curtain. But it stood, impervious to her desires.

  She looked down at the lump of tortilla-wrapped beans. This is what I have become: the butt of some slut’s pranks. This time, Kalei really did kick the burrito.

  She regretted it immediately. The lump became a brown smear across the bottom of her cage. It looked like shit. Kalei tried to wipe it off her boot, fighting the urge to gag as she did so. Then she noticed something.

  Within the mess of beans sat a square chunk of hardened plastic, small enough to fit comfortably in the palm of her hand. When she wiped off the beans, she found it was white underneath, with smooth, rounded buttons bubbling up on one side. It looked like some kind of remote.

  What the hell is this, Shenaia? A remote to nothing? This is sick. I’m not anybody’s monkey in a cage to be laughed at! Kalei flung the device into the wall. It ricocheted off the glass, hit her leg, and then landed in the pile of beans. Kalei turned her back on it and looked out at the hall.

  Her cell felt smaller now, as though the burrito mess was crowding her. She wanted to get out – she had to get out – but she couldn’t. She knew that.

  Across from her, a bearded man sat cross-legged in his cell with one leg pulled up at an odd angle so he could chew on his toenails. Disgusted, Kalei turned away.

  She stared at the ceiling for a while, played thumb wars with herself, even attempted to clean up the burrito mess with her jacket. Once everything was scooped off to one side, more or less, she sat down again. Only now, she had to sit at odd angles since her burrito-filled jacket was claiming a fair portion of what little space was left to her.

  Left with nothing better to do, she picked up the remote again. She cleaned off the worst of the beans and read the buttons: “OPEN ALL,” “CLOSE ALL,” “LOCK DOWN.”... As her eyes scanned down the list, it dawned on her. This wasn’t a remote to nothing — this was the remote for the cages.

  Kalei felt something sharp pull at her finger, so she turned it over. A long crack ran down the back, presumably from when she threw it at the glass. That can’t be good.

  She turned it back to the front. She ran her thumb along the cool, smooth buttons, glanced around the hallway, took a deep breath, and looked back at the controller.

  She took a final breath to steady her resolve, moved her thumb to the “OPEN SINGLE CELL” button, and pressed it.

  The glass fell away into the floor, sending a soft breeze up into Kalei’s face as it descended. When the tube was low enough, Kalei jumped out of the circle and stretched her arms as far as they could go. It felt great.

  As she lowered her arms, Kalei noticed her bearded neighbor stretching as well.

  That’s not right.

  His glass tube had disappeared. She glanced down the hall and saw they weren’t the only ones. Along the entire expanse of the prison, inmates were jumping, shouting, or dazed as they discovered their freedom. She immediately grabbed the remote from where she had dropped it on the ground and started mashing the “CLOSE ALL” button. The tubes didn’t return. It seemed the remote had sustained more damage than just a crack.

  Kalei dropped the remote in favor of punching the closest inmate. She started cracking skulls left and right in an attempt to contain the building riot.

  Then the door at the far end of the hall opened up. A dozen Wardens charged in, the front row pushing back the growing mass of bodies with their riot shields as the Wardens in the back row tossed canisters of tear gas into the fray. Kalei dropped her latest victim and ran in the other direction.

  After shoving and kicking her way through the swarm, Kalei arrived at a narrow door just as it opened. Two Wardens stepped out, no riot gear, just pistols at the ready. Kalei stepped wide of the first Warden’s gun and slammed him hard under the ribs. Then she shoved the Warden into his companion and bolted past the both of them to run down the stairwell.

  From the moment Kalei became a Recruit, she had studied the building’s escape routes in preparation for the day she would betray SWORDE. If Landen Franklin hadn’t taken so long to contact her with the device, she might have had her chance. But it was too late now; she wouldn’t be getting a second shot at those computers.

  Kalei’s research told her the nearest exit was down: through the sewers if she could get to them.

  She grabbed the railings and used them to catapult herself from landing to landing, skipping stairs entirely, a trick she had learned from chasing down criminals in the city.

  Several flights later, the stairs ended at a service tunnel. There were no more
lights ahead, only an exposed live wire dangling from a power box at the end of the hall. The wire’s sporadic sparks lit the floor in fits, as random and bright as lightning. By these spurts of light, Kalei could see that the walls and ceiling were covered in pipes stacked side by side like so many logs building a cabin. Many of the pipes appeared severely rusted, and some jutted out or hung from the ceiling at odd angles.

  Kalei glanced over her shoulder, listening to the clatter of the two Wardens above, then she charged into the tunnel, heedless of the danger as she ran through the dark. Unable to predict the next burst of light from the wire or the location of any obstacles in her path, Kalei was lucky she didn’t snap her neck.

  At the end of the hall, Kalei stepped wide of the arching wire and entered a large storage room. The brief flashes of electricity from the hallway showed her a space crowded with rusty utility shelves, each spewing its own array of tools and rotted cleaning supplies. Kalei made her way to the back corner as fast as she could, tripping and cursing the whole way in the unreliable light. Behind a collapsed desk, she found what she was looking for: an access ladder to the sewers. It looked like a short, cement mound with a manhole cover on the top.

  While the sound of running boots started to echo down the hall, Kalei pulled the manhole cover off the opening, climbed onto the ladder inside, and replaced the cover above her.

  The lighting was even worse inside the manhole. Suspended on the ladder in complete darkness, the brief flares from the wire were too faint to give any meaningful illumination. Instead, they only impeded Kalei’s eyes as they tried to adjust to the darkness.

  Kalei paused on the ladder for a moment to catch her breath. She tried not to think about what the slimy substance beneath her hands could be. She tried not to imagine what was producing the smell of chemicals and rot. Instead, she covered her nose with her shirt, took a couple more deep breaths, and focused on finding her next handhold as she made her way down.