22. Riley #2
“How do I know you’re not just going to run away?” he asks with more providence than I would have expected of him.
I was really hoping he would fail to think this through.
“Corrado,” I say reluctantly. “If you keep him here, I’ll come back with or without Aron.”
He considers this with a grimace. “Won’t they get suspicious if you show up without your assistant? You two go everywhere together.”
“No,” I assure him. “No one will give a shit. Corrado could be sick if someone asks. But they won’t.
I go to these places all the time.” And then, after a deep breath and a momentary pause, I land my final blow.
“I can tell you care about Aron. Why would you not let me try? I am nothing to you. So, you have nothing to lose, do you?”
ARON
I’m half-stripped and bound to the wall, chains rattling loudly each time I move.
It’s dark, but not fully dark, light is seeping in from the outside through cracks in the roof, illuminating the empty stalls.
A smell hangs in the air that I can’t get my brain to ignore; a mixture of hay and misery—the first a ghost of old times, the latter a ghost of men who died so recently that their souls still linger.
Time ticks, minutes, hours, no way to tell. The pounding in my head lessens and then stops altogether, my thoughts sharper and clearer. Here, that’s not a good thing.
Holding memories at bay is like trying to stop a flood with my bare hands. They keep slipping between my fingers, rushing in.
Images on a TV screen from long ago. Continuum’s Consuls in their tweeds and tuxedos, their constipated faces against the backdrop of the newly established capitals. Long speeches about how the death penalty is not only inhumane, but wasteful.
“If the recent tragic events taught us anything, it’s that human life is fragile. And because it is fragile, it can become scarce. And because it can become scarce, it is valuable,” their voices boomed. “Every human life can be a resource in a prudent society.”
What they weren’t and aren’t saying is that in the world they created, death isn’t a punishment. It’s a liberation.
Rebelling against the regime is treason, the most severe crime under the Continuum law. Deserving the harshest penalties.
They don’t execute rebels.
They use them.
First, they harvest any spare organs that can be transplanted into upstanding citizens.
A kidney, a part of the liver, occasionally a part of the lung or pancreas.
Uterus and sometimes ovaries in case of a female rebel.
Testicles in case of a male, especially if the male is tall, strong, healthy, and as such deemed physically ‘superior’.
They take litres and litres of blood, bone marrow, stem cells. Some prisoners spend the rest of their lives as blood bags.
Those are the lucky ones.
Unsurprisingly, more prominent rebels—and leaders especially—have it the worst. They become test subjects. Drugs, experimental treatments and procedures, genetic engineering or even research into anything ranging from anti-radiation pills to pain receptors.
I should have shot myself. When I pulled the trigger on the bridge, I should have killed myself right before it detonated. I don’t know why I didn’t—just a foolish instinct, that human compulsion to go on and on. So natural. So stupid.
The best I can hope for now is that, unlike me, Attila won’t be stupid, and he’ll move Retrograde before they manage to torture our hideout location out of me.
They won’t want to leave any visible physical marks on me—not before parading me around the capitals.
But after, they will break me. And then I’ll talk.
Everybody does. The only question is how long I’ll last before that happens.
My adrenaline surges. This, more than anything, is a true soldier’s trial.
Please. I close my eyes in a silent prayer to all the deities I don’t believe in. Please don’t let me fail. Please don’t let me piss myself the minute they start working on me. Please let me give them hell before they make me sing.
Shame twists in my gut when I feel the burn of tears at the back of my throat, dread clawing at me.
I think of my parents. It’s a good thing they didn’t live long enough to see this.
Like a sentimental pussy, I picture the life they wanted for me, before everything—the life I could have had if none of this had happened. A regular job, a pad in a city somewhere. Gym visits on Saturday. Right now, I could have been rotting on a couch with my arms around a girlfriend.
Unbidden but unsurprising, thoughts of Riley flood my mind. Freckled cheeks, her small, fragile body in my hold, that sweet, spasming cunt. I could never love her in this life, in this reality. Not after what she’s done. But in a different reality?
I’m neither blind nor in denial. In a different, better, peaceful life I could have fallen for her. I could have fallen for her hard.
Just not in this life.
The main door wings creak and struggle in their hinges as they fly open. Lights come on. Men march in. Most are guards, but among them is a decorated uniform. Short, balding, small, trembling hands with chewed-off nails.
“Behold the feared Necromancer, gentleman.” He stops right outside my stall, his voice high-pitched with fake bravado. “Not quite so grand without his mask.” He takes a step closer until his nose is between the bars. “Blimey, he’s barely out of diapers, isn’t he?”
I lunge forward with a feral growl, chains creaking and clattering. Predictably, he nearly falls on his ass as he stumbles backwards, mouth frozen open in fear, eyes bulging.
“A complete psychopath, of course,” he adds, wiping his brow with a white napkin.
I start laughing, and I cannot stop. My chest is heaving, my face is hurting, the sound is echoing and the man keeps telling me to stop.
“Riley. The photographer bitch,” I snap at him, my voice harsh and firm. “Bring her to me. Let me see her.”
“And why would I do that?” he chuckles uneasily.
I scan him with my eyes, measuring him, until he’s squirming uncomfortably underneath my scrutiny. A bald patch. A round gut. Cunning little eyes. Ageing. A colonel, based on his uniform. Small-time, insignificant. Running out of time to ever be anything more.
“I’ll make you a general,” I reply to him simply.
“You really are delusional.” He shakes his head, scoffing.
“I’ll lead you to the proof of this century’s biggest conspiracy. Something they don’t want you to know. If you play your cards right, they’ll give you the rank for your silence.”
And if he plays his cards wrong, they’ll kill him. But no need to point that out.
He laughs, but from the way his eyes fix on my face, I can tell he’s detected the sincere note in my voice and is now intrigued.
“You’re full of shit, Krasnik,” he tells me, lacking true conviction. “Do you know how many men before you have made claims like this in here?”
“I can imagine. I’ve been on the other side of this,” I remind him coldly. “But how many have only wanted to see a cunt in exchange?” I let him consider the implications of this—he has a clever little face; he’ll soon figure out he has fuck all to lose.
When I see it in his eyes that the realisation has sunk in, I give him a hint, something that’s been on my mind a lot.
“Isn’t it a strange coincidence that Rift Day happened right after Volker Junior assumed office?
Didn’t you ever find it odd that the Rift runs so close to Synechord’s territories?
Why would they nuke practically their own lands? ”
His rodent eyes widen. He’s picking up what I’m putting down fast enough. A vein is now pulsing angrily at his temple.
“Just let me see her, chained as I am and fully supervised. No harm, no foul. Ten minutes is all I need. And then I’ll make you a consequential man.”
“I ...” I can almost see the smoke coming out of his ears. “I don’t have her. I don’t know where she is.”
What the fuck? Where is she? This is the only mustard base relatively close to our holdout. Where else would she fucking go after Atilla released her?
Possibly, he’s driven her somewhere blindfolded to make sure she couldn’t tell where our base is—win extra time before the location’s burnt anyway. But still ...
A nasty sensation slithers down my spine, settling like a stone in my gut. Because what if ... what if he didn’t do as I ordered him? What if he kept her?
He wouldn’t have, right?
Not if he thought you were coming back, a voice at the back of my head whispers. But what if he were sure you weren’t? What then?
I barely pay attention to the rodent anymore. I’ve said what I needed to say to him. He’ll now pretend not to believe me in front of the guards, only to come back solo later. Until he does, I’m not interested in anything he has to say, and he’s not interested either. Not until we can speak freely.
I’m just waiting for him to wrap this charade up and leave.