Chapter 80 Kali
KALI
The incessant throbbing in my stumps matched the pace of the maskless man as he approached Zion. A meat pounder hung at our tormentor’s side, the thick head of the tool tapping his slim thigh.
I wished it was drumming against the glass separating us, not his leg. When the wall-sized mirror had changed and Zion had appeared on the other side, I’d almost sobbed.
But not from relief.
Horror had made my eyes water. I wasn’t the only one in captivity.
Any memory of the last hours evaded me, and awakening in a strange room, with no clothes and my body cleansed, had unsettled my gut, to put it nicely.
So when the couple set on extracting answers out of me had taken a break between battering my body into mush and complaining how they couldn’t do much else because I’d still have to do my duty to Ardaton, I wanted to bang my head against the metal armrests my limbs were secured to.
Cheating Ilasall’s fertility system had finally come to bite me in the ass.
It was clear Ardaton’s citizens were as brainwashed as Ilasall’s. Whatever they couldn’t understand, they condemned. Like my choices. Our compound. Our fight for freedom. Our way of life in general. Our—
The door to my right whipped open. A barely-out-of-her-teenage-years girl peeked inside, a clear bag pressed to her chest. Once inside, she lowered the door handle, checking if the lock had engaged. But the door remained unsealed, and she gave me a sheepish smile.
Her shoes made no sounds as she tip-toed toward me, her medical gloves squeaking as she adjusted her grip on the package. The sleeves of her white tunic were tucked under the latex, hiding the color of her wristband.
I wondered if green-banded were permitted to work in Ardaton’s prison. With the majority of criminals undoubtedly non-fertile, it wouldn’t make sense to allow their kind to look after the prisoners. But I couldn’t believe that rich folks would ever agree to servicing the commoners.
The plastic crunched as the girl opened the bag, but I didn’t pay any attention to how she was about to hurt me. My world had narrowed to the meat pounder the man was raising above Zion.
Though the speakers allowed me to hear what was occurring in the room behind the glass, I didn’t listen. All I could focus on was how the instrument glinted in the harsh overhead lights as it fell—
And struck Zion’s forearm.
The crunch made my diaphragm spasm. His howl caused bile to rise up my throat. And the man’s sickly smile as he yanked Zion’s head back sent shock waves through me.
I swallowed the saliva from nausea swirling in my stomach. Ivory peeked out of Zion’s skin—a jagged piece of bone surrounded by an ocean of red.
The flaming aches radiating from numerous areas in my body fell away—dissolved. The pain was nothing compared to how the torture unfolding before my eyes was shredding me. How powerlessness paralyzed me. How I would’ve given anything to switch places with Zion.
Kneeling beside me, the girl warned, “This might hurt. But I have to do this or…” she trailed off, biting her chapped bottom lip.
Ignoring what she didn’t say, what she kept to herself, I stepped on my pride, begging, “Please let him out.”
Without gracing me with a reply, she unchained my left hand and bent my three remaining fingers to inspect them. A tear-inducing burn spread in the stumps that once had been the roots of my two missing fingers.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” I croaked out as she pressed a non-fluffy cloth to the two open wounds.
A sniffle escaped me, but not from the sting.
“I’ll wear the green wristband. I’ll give birth to as many kids as you want.
Please, just”—my lips quivered—“release him.” My plea came out as a whoosh of air, so quiet I feared she hadn’t heard it.
Wrapping a roll of gauze around my hand, the girl murmured, “I can’t.”
“Pl-Please.” The years Zion had collected, the ones forming his past, were so dark, I dreamed of painting them in white—of erasing the hurt and the pain.
“I can’t afford to lose this job,” she muttered as she tied a knot on my palm. “I haven’t worked here for long, and if I do something like that…my employer won’t be happy.”
Choking on the ball in my throat, I peeled my attention away from her. The meat pounder was swinging once more, drawing an arc in the air—
And landed on Zion’s elbow.
The crushing sound and Zion’s scream were going to haunt me in my nightmares.
But Zion refused to answer the man’s questions again, and I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to watch the next blow. Only the blackness invading my vision couldn’t stop the tears of fire from singeing my face.
“You have to give them what they want,” the girl said. “Lenus won’t stop if you don’t.”
I nearly laughed at her suggested course of action. “Zion won’t talk.” The combined armies of the three cities wouldn’t succeed in breaking him. Once he’d set his mind on something, he got it. “Can you—”
“I can’t.”
I flinched at her harshness.
“I’m sorry.” She stroked my bare thigh, and a hiss slipped out of me from the contact.
In Ardaton, like in Ilasall, people tended to touch you without asking first. “All I can do is give you this.” Peeking inside her transparent bag, she pulled out a small, rectangular box.
“I’ll tell them it was necessary to slow the bleeding. ”
No.
This wasn’t going to happen again. I wouldn’t allow it. As I writhed in the chair, my muscles began to cramp, but I paid no heed to their protests. I was too busy tracking how she used a syringe to draw clear liquid out of a vial.
The chains pinched my skin as I squirmed, fruitlessly trying to escape the needle.
Not again. Gods, not again.
“Please, calm down.” The girl pushed the plunger, and the liquid misted the air. “It will help you, I promise.”
Fuck her promises. The vows Ardaton’s citizens made weren’t worth anything. Their city functioned identically to Ilasall.
Disregarding my wriggling, she grabbed my upper arm, her grip like iron, and injected the drug into my bicep. “This way, at least you won’t feel a thing when she comes in.”
It was the opposite of what I wanted. But nobody cared about that. How I wished to feel everything until I was dead.
Yes, we were captured, but the war wasn’t over. War that ripped your humanity out of you. War that dangled the bait of liberty in front of you.
But I was ready to pay the price of freedom. Even if it meant I was going to rot in Ardaton’s prison.
“I’ll see you soon,” the girl said. Her round face doubled, and her following whispers became as distorted as Zion’s howls rolling from the speakers.
“N— Arhg— No,” I slurred as my neck gave out, and my chin dropped forward.
Nothingness devoured me, one piece at a time, until I floated in a space with no sound and no air, flowing with the current of nothingness.
My hand twitched as I tried to slap the annoying fly buzzing in my ear.
No—ears. Plural. The insect was burrowing into both of my eardrums.
As I swallowed the dryness gluing my tongue to the roof of my mouth, my throat convulsed from the soreness. Yet I peeled my eyes open, wincing from the assault of bright illumination and—
A shove returned my head to my chest. “Stay still.”
My vision swam from the sudden movement. But it didn’t stop the realization from dawning: the voice had been foreign. The gentleness in it didn’t belong to either of the two tormentors assigned to Zion and me.
Curious, I strained to glance over my shoulder, but a firm push nudged me back.
I thanked the chains holding me upright as I would’ve barreled straight into the floor if not for them. My limbs had gone completely numb from staying in the same position for too long.
“I’m almost done,” someone behind me said as they pushed my head down. “If you don’t move, I won’t have to tell them you’re awake.”
Deciphering their words took significant effort. The fog clouding my mind slowed my comprehension.
But whoever was in the room with me took my lack of a response as a sign of compliance.
As the buzzing restarted, sharp bites began to dance on my nape. They moved in a line, a curve, then went back and repeated the process anew.
The low, continuous hum lit a path in the labyrinth of my memory, leading me to the center, where the answer awaited.
A tattoo needle was running across the back of my neck.
The pricking sensation reminded me of how only a select few bore tattoos in the cities, their ink identical—rows of numbers, a mark of the offenders—prisoners. Which we were now. Convicts graced with the judgment of rotting in Ardaton’s cells.
But I’d survived worse. Much, much worse. So as the black fluid seeped into my skin, I repeated my mantra: I will not crumble. I will not give up. I will persevere.
They could slice me open, cover me in scars, throw me into a den of hungry beasts, but I would still walk with my chin raised high.
They could dole out their blows in heavy doses, but I would absorb.
All of it. Their looks. Their words. Their groping.
My body and I were two separate beings. The former could be traded, sacrificed, but the latter was mine.
Mine to give.
Not to be taken away by anyone. Them, especially.
I was going to enjoy watching them fail to break me, time and time again.