by Terina Adams
“Azrael, no.” The words were emphasized with a violent shake of her head.
Ignoring the woman, Azrael grabbed my wrist again and pulled me inside. I half expected the woman to close the door on me before I made it through, but Azrael moved quick, tripping me up the small lip at the door so I clumsily crashed inside. Not waiting for any terse words from the woman, Azrael kept her firm hold and pulled me along a narrow, dark passage with the heavy clank of the door being locked behind us, which had to mean the woman was not about to scream at Azrael to kick me out.
With the front door closed, we plunged into darkness if not for the lamp hanging from the wall in a large bracket of twisted metal. We finished up in a small room furnished with the bare essentials and a few comforts like cushions and throws to prevent the room from appearing austere.
The woman entered the room with the cautious eyes of someone who managed to survive the constant harassment of the sweepers. Peacock-blue eyes lasered over me before settling on my tattoo. For someone who looked as old as my mum, she was still attractive, although the buckle of lines at the corners of her eyes and across her top lip, plus the creases gouged into deep scars between her eyes, said her life had not been easy. The way she moved, alert with every step across the room to stand by her daughter—there was no mistaking the resemblance—eyes on me like I was a feral animal, spoke of a life in the fringe. As she’d done to me, I darted a look to the tattoo behind her ear when she glanced down at her daughter. Perun, no mistaking the jagged bolt of lightning.
“You know better, Azrael.” The fury had subsided. Her voice now quivered with the outpour of relief.
“She needs our help.”
Her mum shook her head. “We can’t help her. She can’t stay here.”
“But we have to. The sweepers will get her otherwise.”
“That is not our concern.”
Azrael puffed herself up, on the verge of arguing some more.
“Your mum’s right.”
Azrael’s angry little face snapped to me.
“It’s not safe for anyone at this moment. You shouldn’t be rescuing strangers,” I said.
She looked nothing like Ajay, but she made me think of him all the same. I would be repeating her mum’s command if this were my family. “Besides, I need to find my friend. He may need my help.”
Azrael grabbed my hand, shaking her head. “You can’t go out there. You can’t stop yourself from being Persal. The sweepers will see.”
My eyes widened at her honesty. Her mum’s expression had not altered, no surprise at the shocking revelation. It was like she expected it all along, or she’d seen the lie many times over. There was nothing friendly about the woman, but I would act prickly too if my family was at risk and harboring someone wearing a false tattoo, which would see everyone punished.
I gave Azrael a weak-smiled apology and turned to leave, but she snagged my hand. “No.”
Her mum sighed. “You can stay for a while. There is no point walking into danger.”
“I’m worried about my friend. I left him fighting a sweeper.”
Her peacock-blue eyes kept everything she thought inside. Then finally, she said, “Did Islia do that?”
No point in lying. She was hiding from the sweepers, so the senate were no friends of hers. Besides, Azrael, in true child style, had already revealed my secret.
“Yes.”
“That is why you are here?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you are in more danger than us. Come, we cannot stay out here.” She glided past me, moving toward the opposite door to the one we’d enter by, disappearing farther into the house. Azrael, deciding it was safe to let me go, dropped my hand and followed her mum through another dark and narrow passage smelling of damp clay. Closed doors on either side broke up the earthen walls. We ended up in a cheerless, dank room with cracks running from ceiling to floor and dirt under our feet. Three cupboards lined the back wall, each uniquely carved out of smooth-looking stone. From the belt of her pants, the mum pulled a set of keys and unlocked the smallest, a waist-high cabinet, with something similar to a metal poker.
“Azrael, you go first.”
Seeming content now that her mum was on her side, Azrael ducked and stepped through. My turn to follow was announced by a terse jerk of the mum’s head toward the cabinet.
With my hand on the doorframe, cold seeped through my fingers. The surface of the cabinet was cool and smooth, like marble. But the door looked built from metal beaten thin to make it light yet durable. The back of the cabinet opened out into a dark space, but the big surprise was the floor, which disappeared downward into a stairwell. Below, a dull light flickered like a small flame. Azrael appeared at the bottom in silhouette, some ten steps below. “Come on.” She impatiently waved me down.
The room at the bottom was big enough to accommodate a group of people comfortably. Jagged rock walls, it would’ve been a laborious task to cut this room into shape. Three beds and a small table with a single drawer were the only pieces of furniture. The air smelled like it had been locked away for centuries with little disturbance, but with a cold earthiness that comes from underground.
With a muted click, the light from above disappeared. The mum’s footsteps scuffed down the rock steps. In the flicker of the candle flame, she looked younger. The golden light hid the gray flecks around her ears, so all I saw was a mane of black hair.
When Azrael opened the drawer of the table, a cast of soft light shone over her face and up to the ceiling. She pulled a glowing lump from the drawer and placed it on the table then blew out the flame with an exaggerated huff. Trylite. The same rock that had illuminated the cave as we moved through the dungeons in Dominus. Only this was the real thing and not a simulation. But Jax had said trylite was expensive, its mining and sale strictly monitored by the senate. How was it a fringe dweller had themselves some trylite in their escape room?
The only noise was our breathing, the only light the dim, golden glow of the rock. It made it seem like we were the last people to survive. The room shrank. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would not expose me as being off-world. Strangely, despite the mum’s defensive expression, I wanted to befriend her. Maybe it was because she was my mum’s age. I’d forgotten what it was like to trust an adult, but confronted by her calm strength, I couldn’t help feeling like a child.
“Can you buy trylite around here?”
“No. It was gifted to me.”
By someone with a lot of money and influence, most likely. What woman from the fringe knew the right sort of people well enough for them to supply her with such a valuable gift?
I wouldn’t question her. Who was I to delve into her secret? And she was unlikely to tell me the truth, if anything at all.
Azrael slid onto one of the beds. “What was that boy’s name?”
“Be quiet, Azrael. That is none of your concern,” she said.
Azrael’s mouth drooped at the corners. Her head dropped, so she was staring at her hands in her lap. Her mum sat next to her and patted her thigh then covered her hands with her own. “You know why I say these things.”
Azrael rolled away from her mother and stretched out on the bed with her back to us. What her mother did was for her safety, but it would be a prison for a child.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
After a decent wait, she said, “Alithia.”
I took a seat on the next bed. “How long do we stay here?”
“Until nightfall.”
As much as that? “But I can’t. I have to find my friend.”
“He will find you.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
She turned away from me and stared at the wall opposite.
“Do you know him?” I said.
She leveled her gaze at me. “I took you in because of my daughter’s pleas.” She returned to staring at the wall. End of conversation. This was going to be a fun time, but I couldn’t fault the woman’s caut
ion. After all, she had a daughter to think about.
I slid farther onto the bed, leaning against the wall, which made for an uncomfortable backrest due to the jutting rock. No way would I last until nighttime sitting here staring at the wall. At some point, Azrael was bound to get restless, or maybe she’d been conditioned to sit through long periods of confinement. Her escape was likely sleep.
The utter stillness in the room twitched my legs. I had a roving energy gliding ceaselessly through my body, which seemed to get worse the longer I stayed put.
“Is it just you and Azrael?” I needed distraction.
She nodded. Was it the question or the fact she wasn’t interested in any conversation? People living in the fringe were perhaps intimately associated with death, regardless if it was a conversation no one wanted to have.
“I’m sorry.”
“If you were from around here, you’d know not to pry.”
A distant bang silenced us both. Azrael rolled over and looked up at the ceiling. The whole room seemed to hold its breath. The bang sounded again.
“It’s him,” Azrael said, climbing from the bed.
Alithia hitched her around the waist. “You can’t be sure. It’s not the knock.”
“It has to be. I know it is.” Azrael pleaded, “You can’t leave him.”
“What if it is not him?”
“The two of you wait here. I’ll go,” I said.
Azrael froze in her struggles. Alithia’s eyes were dark in the dull light, dark enough I couldn’t read them.
“No. There will be less trouble if I go.” She swung Azrael aside. “You wait here,” she ordered, jabbing a finger at her daughter. But the moment she was up the stairs and out of the cabinet, Azrael bounded after her. As if I’d be left behind.
I rushed on Azrael’s heels. I caught up in the first room, latching onto her arm, hauling her to a stop. “Get behind me.” Destruction loomed deadly close to release. If I were to look in the mirror, I’m sure I’d see its turbulence churning up my irises.
“No!” she yelled, attempting to drag herself free.
“Don’t break your mum’s heart.” I said back with equal ferocity.
Her face was a puffed red flush of anger, but she relented all the same. With the sound of commotion up the passage to the front door and her mum’s gasps of dismay, Azrael was off, pattering across the floor in her bare feet.
“Help me!” cried Alithia up the passage. I was in motion in seconds flat.
The dim lamp gave me little light, but I didn’t need much to see. Jax had slid down the wall, leaving a thick smear of blood trailing after him. I’d seen this all before. No, this time, he looked worse. It wasn’t possible he was still alive. He is, he is, and bleeding out fast.
Azrael collapsed on her knees in front of him. “Jax,” she cried with a childish voice full of desperation.
I wasn’t gentle when I wrenched her out the way; nor was I conscious of where she tumbled.
“We need to get him inside, lying down.” I hated the fear in my voice. I swallowed the big ball of panic in my throat, hoping it would take destruction down with it. “Take his other side. Gently.” Good, a harsh tone in my voice. It’s what I needed to fool myself. “Where can we take him?”
“The escape room.” Good to hear Alithia sounded calm too.
“We can’t get him down the stairs while he’s like this.”
“And we can’t hide him quick enough if the sweepers come.”
No arguments from me.
Jax was a big guy, which meant it was going to be hard. When he scrambled his feet under him to give us a hand, I had to bite my bottom lip to stop from whimpering with his pain, but we needed his help if we had any hope of getting down into the escape room.
I ignored the tacky feeling of his clothes and the wetness that spread to me and concentrated on shuffling us step by step down the passage. At the first room, I refused to look at him for fear of what it would well up inside me. Destruction hated any weakness. It hated awkwardness and shame and confusion and fear, writhing like a caged animal teased with a hot poker.
It took an eternity to reach the room with the cabinet, during which Jax must have trailed most of his blood supply, leaving the rest on me and Alithia. A handful of times, his legs buckled, and it was only our combined strength that kept him upright. Azrael opened the cabinet door, staying amazingly controlled and quiet for someone so young seeing something as terrible as this, but she was a fringe child. I had to remember that.
“You’ll have to bend down,” I whispered close to Jax’s ear. Not even I wanted to hear the suggestion that someone as badly injured as Jax had to contort himself to climb into a small space.
He tried but collapsed forward onto his knees in the entrance with a groan of pain. Both Alithia and I cried out when he went down. His weight too heavy, neither of us could stop his momentum.
“We’ll have to drag him down,” Alithia said.
My mouth dropped open, about to protest, but her eyes flashed warnings. I shut my mouth and nodded.
Working together, we turned him onto his back, and I tried to ignore how feeble he’d become in the time it took us to get him here from the front door. Only now did I get a good look at him, and again, I had to swallow that hard ball of panic made bigger by my tears. I swallowed it all down, punched it deep into my stomach. “We’ll both take an arm.”
Dragging him down the stairs was agony, but watching his wounds seep was worse. We needed to get him safe. That’s what I told myself for ten steps, and when we reached the dirt floor, Alithia and I collapsed down to our asses panting with more than the strain. But Alithia was a survivor, and in no time, she recovered, waving her arm at Azrael. “You know where things are.”
Once Azrael disappeared, Alithia turned to me. “He’s as good here as on a bed for now. Azrael will give you what you need. I’ll be back soon.” Then she was gone.
In the gentle glow of the trylite, I assessed his wounds, pressing my lips tight at the sight of him. There was nothing I could do for him now but soothe my hand over his brow and down his arm so he would know I was here until Azrael came back.
There was so much blood left in a trail down the stairs and on the floor to here, caking the dirt into clumps. How much of that was his own? If he opened his mouth, would the blood stain his gums, his tongue? I closed my eyes as I stroked his arm, seeking solace in touching him as much as to give it in return. For one moment, I felt as though gravity pulled me down into the center of this alien world, crushing me with its intensity. This wasn’t a game. We were no longer in Dominus racking up kills so we could escape with our minds intact. Outside the game, how much of our sanity would remain if we continued to be who we were?
Azrael clambered noisily through the small doorway and down the steps. She cradled a box in her arms.
“I got you this.” She set the box beside me on the floor then sat next to Jax’s head.
“You should wait outside.” After years of protecting Ajay, I didn’t like the idea of her witnessing the mess Jax was in.
She shook her head. “No. I can help.”
This was one stubborn child. “Do you have any tablets. You know… coagulants?”
“Like this?” She opened the box and rummaged inside. The bottle she showed me looked different to the ones Jax had in his apartment.
“We’re not allowed to use them usually. They’re for special cases.”
“Sounds like the right ones.” I hadn’t thought Alithia would have the right medicine, being in the fringe and all, but it seemed her benefactor was as generous with medicine as they were with the trylite.
My hands shook when I took the bottle. There was so much going on inside me; not the least was my factional nature clawing at the walls.
“How about some water?”
Azrael scuttled up the stairs once more.
Shaking hands made the bottle hard to open. I tapped gently, not wanting to spill any of the precious pills. He looked so
bad three would do to start, especially since there was no one around to judge how many I wasted.
“Jax.” I cupped his face. “Jax, I have the pills for you.”
He lolled his head toward my voice then tried to reach out his hand, but it flailed beside him. I clutched it in mine. “Open up. I’ll put them in your mouth.”
“I had no choice.” His voice was tired, weak.
“It’s all right. You’re safe. You’re going to be all right.”
“Sable.”
“You don’t have to talk. Let me give you the pills.”
Jax slowly turned his head away when I touched a pill to his lips. I couldn’t see his eyes clear enough through the blood and open wounds to enforce my will with my glare.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
I placed a hand gently on his throat, because it was one of the few places with intact skin. A tear followed from my eye, landing on his chin. “I know.”
I knew this heaviness, this horrible weight that sinks you down to the depths of yourself and makes you want to drown. “None of us do, Jax.”
“Committed…” His Adam’s apple moved under my palm. “You can’t back out.”
I had to lean lower to hear him. “Don’t talk. I understand.”
“They’ll never stop.”
“Jax, you don’t need to tell me this.” I squeezed the hand I still held.
“They won’t relent.”
More of my tears dropped on his face.
“Kill or be killed.”
I lifted my hand from his throat and touched lightly over his lips. “Stop, please.”
“I’ve never killed in real life before.”
“I have. I’ll never judge you.” I leaned down and pressed my lips to his forehead.
Chapter 14
The silence of the empty streets belied the savagery of the hunt, which had taken place only hours ago. With Jax’s rebellion, more sweepers were sent to the fringe. Alithia had returned with news that four more utilities had landed. She assured me the fringe dwellers were good at hiding and most had disappeared by the time reinforcements arrived. The clash between the sweepers and those who had remained to fight was brutal but swift. That was all Alithia would tell me. Hours later, and I couldn’t tell if she blamed us for what happened.