Chapter 7
Asha hacked a dry, painful cough. Her head was pounding, and her whole body ached.
The rough, uncomfortable cot she was lying on didn’t help.
Straws poked up out of the mattress, and the rough bedsheet was irritating on her damaged skin.
Covered in scrapes and bruises, she couldn’t get comfortable in any position.
“More water,” Leo demanded, holding a cup to her lips. “Just a few more sips.”
“You’re gonna waterboard me,” Asha complained, but even to her, she sounded like death; her throat was raw from screaming. She realized too late that Wastelanders likely wouldn’t understand the reference.
Regardless, Leo gave a half-hearted chuckle. “I promise I’ll give you a hit of the good stuff if you drink.”
She reluctantly took another few sips, her swollen lips impeding her.
At least it washed the coppery taste of blood out of her mouth.
Several long candles were lit by her bedside—the best light that one could get at this late hour—and briefly questioned the wisdom of performing medical procedures by candlelight.
Not that we have much choice.
“That molar has to come out, I’m afraid,” Leo said critically as he took the cup back from her. “It’s broken, and leaving it will invite infection. Consider yourself lucky that I’m giving you painkillers before I pull it out. I’ve pulled a lot of teeth here, and most have to do it raw.”
“Is that what you’d call me, Leo?” Asha asked weakly, closing her eyes. “Lucky?”
His expression darkened briefly. “No. Sorry.”
He busied himself with examining her battered left wrist, which was mottled purple. She hissed in pain as Leo gently tested its mobility, and he frowned.
“Minor muscle strain and bad bruising,” he said. “You’ll need to rest it.”
He retrieved bandages from his medical bag and began to wrap her wrist. Asha winced as he pulled the bindings tight, but didn’t complain.
She wasn’t going to jeopardize her chance of getting that sweet painkiller he promised.
Leo started sanitizing forceps with a small bottle of alcohol that he’d told her he made himself.
Not as pure as I’d like, he’d said, but better than nothing.
He’d subjected her to an invasive physical exam when she came in, as he had for the last four nights that she’d gone to Angel’s Wing.
She hated lying back on the exam table, letting him look and touch between her legs.
To Leo’s credit, he was nothing but detached and professional throughout the process, but it still deepened her feelings of humiliation.
There’s some bleeding, he’d said again tonight. Still mostly superficial tears, but…I worry about them getting worse if you keep fighting him, Asha.
Tears pricked her eyes, and she wanted to hide her bruised face in the pillow. She hadn’t told him the extent to which Angel had tortured her. But how could she not fight back in that situation? How was she expected to lie still and let him torment her, over and over?
She refused to gift him her silence. If he was going to break her, he would suffer for every damn second of it.
It hadn’t even been a conscious decision on her part; it was her kneejerk reaction to his regime of torture.
Perhaps, if she’d been a different—smarter, she added ruefully—sort of person, she could’ve simply locked herself away, like Lana had suggested.
She could’ve just lain there, spaced out, and walked away a little less black and blue than she had for the last week.
It was what everyone had told her to do, before and since: just lie still and let him get it over with.
Maybe they were right. Maybe if she’d had something to lose or someone to survive for, she’d have been able to.
But she didn’t. The only person who’d tried to help her had also put her in this mess. And then there was still that voice of rage inside her, that little girl angry at a world that had failed her so miserably, that said, you won’t break me. You won’t.
So, each night since that first one, she had been forced to return to Angel’s Wing, fought for her life, and left beaten and bruised, but not broken. Never broken.
As promised, Leo injected her with a powerful painkiller, and Asha soon felt her eyelids fluttering.
She barely reacted to Leo yanking out the remains of her broken molar; it had been hanging by a thread anyway.
The two tiny stitches he made in her gums bothered her more, oddly enough.
She hated the way the needle poked at her, but she was in no condition to complain.
“All done,” Leo said a moment later. He gathered his instruments for cleaning. “Rest now. You need it.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. “He’s going to kill me, Leo. Before Cade gets back.”
A long pause. “Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of.”
He sounded genuinely concerned for her, which she found strangely touching, considering he hadn’t known her long.
“You should stay here overnight,” Leo said after a moment. “For observation. Want to make sure there aren’t any adverse reactions to the medication.”
Asha made a noise that was supposed to be assent, but just sounded like a weak groan. She rolled onto her side, sleepy and finally free of pain. As her consciousness faded away, she felt the weight of a blanket being placed over her, cocooning her against the chilly evening air.
Asha’s mind was a strange swirl of dreams. She dreamt that she held a bluebird in the palm of her hand, feeding it seeds and petting its head.
It twittered happily and accepted the food.
But as it tried to take flight, her fingers closed around it, squeezing, and squeezing, and squeezing, until its feeble cries for escape were silenced.
A moment later, she looked upon its mangled, broken body, and lifted it to her lips to feast on its flesh.
The price of freedom is death. Cade’s words came back to her again, repeating over and over, like an echo in an empty hallway. They were familiar. Where had she heard them before? Who had said them?
Suddenly, the voice of a documentary she’d once watched came back: “The price of freedom is death,” a quote attributed to the civil rights advocate, Malcolm X…
He was an Old World civil rights advocate. How would a Wastelander with no real education know about him? So much of that knowledge had died with the Fall. He wouldn’t know, unless…
Something suddenly clicked into place. Unless he’s not a Wastelander at all.
“Who fucking did this to her?”
Cade’s voice, low and furious, cut through Asha’s dreams. Still, the drug Leo had given her kept her drowsy, on the edge of wakefulness.
“You know who it was,” Leo replied ruefully. “And it doesn’t change anything. We’re not ready.”
“She’s one of us, Leo,” Cade shot back. “You know it as well as I do.”
“Sure. But it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing you can do right now except play nice so you can get her away from him.”
“I’m not good at playing nice.”
Leo scoffed. “You think I don’t know that? But that’s not going to help her.”
She heard Cade pacing the room. “He’s sending a message that I shouldn’t get any ideas about doing what I want—having what I want.”
“Probably,” Leo said. “But if you go after him, she becomes collateral damage. Bide your time. Don’t be as stupid as he is.”
Cade let out a long breath. “Fine.”
“Did you manage to capture Rockland?”
“Yeah,” Cade replied more calmly. “It went easier than I thought, thanks to the prep work we did. No casualties on our side, and only a few on theirs. They manufacture plenty of weapons, so we should be able to set up a supply chain.”
“Good.”
“I’ll be back in the morning to pick her up,” Cade continued, resigned. “In the meantime, if Angel wants to send a message…I’ll give him a reply he’ll never forget.”
Asha heard him start to walk out, but Leo said, “Wait.”
“What?”
There was a brief pause, but Leo pressed on: “I don’t know what your plan with Asha was before all this…but she’s in no condition to be doing anything strenuous.”
Another, longer silence descended.
“Who do you think I am, Leo?” Cade snapped. “Have the last couple years really changed me that much?”
“Okay, okay,” Leo replied, conciliatory. “I just wanted you to make sure you knew. He beat her worse than any of the other girls. Probably because she fought him.”
“Is that why he looks like hell, too?” Cade said, and he sounded different now—amusement mixed with his fury. “Good. She gave him a taste of what he deserves. We’ll need that.”
He left the infirmary, and Asha pretended to be asleep when Leo came to check on her. She couldn’t pretend, however, to be relieved at Cade’s return. Whatever curiosity she’d had about him was gone, and she wished nothing more than for all of them to simply go away.
Sunlight seared Asha’s eyes as she awoke the next morning. The painkiller Leo had given her had worn off overnight, and now her body was screaming at her. She shifted in bed, trying to find a comfortable position, but it didn’t exist.
“Good morning,” Leo said amiably as he pulled the curtains around her bed aside. He set down a tray with two steaming mugs of herbal tea. “How are we feeling?”
His sunny greeting grated on her in her wounded state, but she took the mug he offered her. The tea was peppermint, and its crisp, fresh flavour was surprisingly comforting.
“Like death warmed over,” she replied, still sounding like she’d swallowed gravel.
“I can imagine,” Leo said, withdrawing a small burlap package from his pocket. “Here. Something to help with the pain.”
He handed her the packet, and she unwrapped it to reveal a bundle of green, six-pronged leaves.
“Cannabis?” she asked, eyebrows raised. In the compound, unauthorized drug use was banned, and the supply was tightly controlled enough that there were few addicts. She always found it odd that they had no problem letting residents drink themselves to death, but drugs were a hard limit.