The Sixth Line of Defense

by Shiva Winters

  * * *

  Despite that satisfied smile he had given her, Shiva had expected to get reprimanded the moment that the car had left the school behind. She had all but expected some sort of confrontation during the ride through the tiny trash covered streets. She had expected another pointless lecture back there in the garden, she had expected some reprimand filled with veiled threats at some point during the interim. But she honestly had never expected Hornton to say things were different this time and when those words had touched the air she would never have expected him to actually mean them. For as much she might find it odd when comparing this most recent incident to all the others, she hardly expected things to really change this time. Hornton might be trying different tactics but she would never let herself be fooled by that, she had spent far too many days and months being bounced from one horrible situation to another to ever let herself think that anything would ever change. It had seemed perfectly clear that she had lost her one good chance to an accident and she would just be continually put into slowly worsening situations in the future just as she had been for the past two years. The bleak landscapes flowing past her window were like so many other scenes of desolation and desperation that her senses were becoming so very jaded from those long ago days when all of them had dreamed of a life on the outside free from the lives they had been forced to live.

  The car drew to a halt a short while later pulling up in front of the half ruined brick building with dirty windows that had greeted her home almost every day for the past month. Tiny filthy rooms, walls infested with rats and insects, the front steps littered with drug addicts and trash, hallways filled with graffiti and carelessly discarded items, and roofs that leaked foul smelling water every time a polluted rain started falling across a city that had long since stopped caring about the people packed into its' borders. When Shiva reached for the car door to get this repeated scene of departure over with yet again she discovered that the door had been locked. Hornton seemed almost amused by the fact that she was trapped inside, but his smile disappeared the moment she raised her fist to punch out the glass.

  "Don't you ever." He growled as he hastily pulled open the door.

  "And don't you ever test me Hornton." She drawled back at him with a glare as she extracted herself from the back seat.

  "You're right.. I'm sorry." Those words were a bit surprising, but she covered that reaction and started up the stairs.

  "Whoa.." She heard the dark stern man murmur in her wake as they both turned to follow.

  "That was her being playful the last time someone did that to her, she punched out the window and went right through the hole after the man who thought that was so funny." Hornton murmured back to him as they entered the dingy entrance of the aged building. "Pay the landlady next month's rent and tell her that she can list the apartment as open." He added as Shiva waited impatiently for the elevator to arrive. With the two of them inside, it started its' ascent up towards the top floor. "Sorry to see this place go?" He murmured as if he actually might want to start a conversation with her.

  "It's just a place.." She hissed back to him darkly.

  "I would have thought that anything would be better than that tube." He commented in return.

  "Not when you are shoved from one bad situation into another every couple of months because someone else got you into trouble with your keepers." She growled back at him as a small piece of her bad mood loomed up once again. She didn't give him a chance to make any sort of retort as the elevator drew to a halt and she practically launched through the doors before they were completely open. Just this once and for whatever the reason he didn't try to argue her out of her point as he followed her in through the open door of the dark apartment. In truth she had never even really bothered to unpack this time, most of her few things were still packed away in her luggage and within a dozen minutes she was moving back to the door almost before Hornton could find some light source to illuminate the dirty floors, water stained walls, and half broken furniture that were packed into the tiny space. As she neared the outer door he reached for her again and out of instinct her hand snapped up to grab his wrist in a grip that could snap his bones like dry sticks.

  "Let me help you the bags." He murmured down to her seemingly perfectly calm. Almost grudgingly she let go of his wrist and passed over one of the pieces of luggage into his keeping. With the keys dropped on the entrance table and the door shut firmly behind them, the elevator doors at the end of the hall opened almost as they reached them with Hornton's subordinate waiting on the far side.

  "Took you long enough." Shiva half growled at the figure as he stepped back to let them get inside.

  "Leave him alone, Shiva." Hornton reprimanded gently as the button was pushed and they were soon descending back towards the streets below. Almost against her will, uncertain, and off-balance with the sudden change in his behavior, Shiva shifted just a little closer to his side to slide her free hand under his arm and half leaned into his side. Not entirely sure why she did it, Hornton gave no outward sign that he was even aware of the tentative gesture as the metallic box dropped down.

  "Where are you taking me this time?" Shiva whispered up to him as her eyes drooped half closed and her head moved to lean against his upper arm. "Another rat infested slum filled with junkies and the criminally gifted?"

  "I would not have put you in any of these schools had I been given a choice." He murmured back to her seemingly somehow calm in those somewhat surreal moments.

  "Prison Academy?" Shiva half joked, feeling far out of her comfort zone and unsettled by the day's odd events.

  "No, I wouldn't want you to have a bad influence on the inmates." He murmured back without pause and somehow proved that he wasn't completely without a sense of humor. Shiva almost fought back the small smile his words brought to her expression. "The plan for the moment is to get you out of the city before that boys cronies decide to take revenge for what you did to their boyfriend, outside of that I still have phone calls to make." He added as he lead her off the elevator and back out into the foul smelling air outside. The back door was opened for her and her bags were tossed into the back seat before she was added inside. As they loaded up in front of her on the far side of sound proof partition, Shiva looked at Hornton's face uncertainly as she formed a small nest out of the soft sided packs, pushed her sunglasses up her nose and put her headphones on to drown out the sounds of the road as they pulled away from the corner and start their retreat from the city.