Kartega

Seven hundred and twenty-four. Seven hundred and twenty-four boulders lined the walls of the cylindrical hole Sid was thrown into. She had counted and recounted their brilliantly polished surfaces so many times that she was certain she could see the outline of her cage without even opening her eyes.

At least this time, her hands were free. Not that it was doing her much good. The thick stone around her acted as a shield, keeping her and her magic tucked far away and out of sight. Even if Sid managed to conjure enough power to flow through her, there was nowhere to direct it. She was entombed in rock. It was as if the holes were a burial site for those the queen wanted out of her sight. A memorial of everything that stood between her and the star’s full surrender.

After being unconscious for what Sid assumed was several hours, she had woken up on the floor of the stone shaft. Her mind was dazed and she still had very little strength left after being electrocuted by Abbot’s blade but she was aware enough to know there was no escaping the hole. The large boulders that made up the interior walls were polished so smoothly that there was nothing to grab hold of if she wanted to try climbing to the top. Though even if she was able to make the climb, she wasn’t exactly keen on trying since the hole’s glass ceiling sat nearly ten meters up. The only other access into her cage was through a thick steel wall. Unfortunately, there was no handle on the interior of the door and the guards did not bother opening it, choosing instead to torment her through the small slit in the center.

“Here’s your last meal, traitor!” One of them yelled, tossing a rotten piece of soy bun at her feet. “Eat up!”

Sid cleared her dry throat but the air got trapped in her larynx and she ended up dry heaving instead. “I’m thirsty!” She yelled back. “I need water!”

“Traitors don’t get water. Just like they don’t get bathroom breaks. If you’re thirsty, wait until you need to take a leak and solve your own problem!”

Boisterous laughter sounded on the other side of the door and she sank her back into the wall behind her. This was what Kartega had granted her in her final hours. This was what it thought she deserved.

She crouched next to the soy bun at her feet, soggy and lifeless and bruised. Just like her. How many days did it take for a bun to be this broken? How many hours of neglect and misuse? Did it try to fit in with the other buns only to be cast aside? Or did its mere existence anger the baker so much that they felt the need to let it simply wither into nothing? She sniffed its skin and tossed it against the wall. The bun flattened on impact and slid down the shiny stone until it splatted on the floor, dead. If only it was that easy.

The guards outside started talking again, some pointless story about the domes she assumed. Until she heard one of them mention a rebel. Sid’s ears perked up and she crawled closer to the opening in the door, careful not to step on the heels of her feet. Her own breathing was so loud that she could only make out every other word. She inhaled sharply, held her breath, and listened.

“More of these savages? Are you serious?” One of them asked. His voice was light and airy and Sid imagined what it would feel like to strangle him with her bare hands.

“Just caught today. Looks like we’ll be pulling double shifts until this one here is taken care of.” The second guard sighed. “If you ask me, just kill her already and get it over with. That way we won’t need to keep throwing them in these stardamned holes and wasting my time.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the first guard said, “I don’t mind this one so much. Too bad for the queen’s eyes everywhere, I could think of a few things I could do with her before she’s good and chipped like the rest of the beasts.”

Sid’s skin crawled and she held back a shudder. She could think of a few things she’d like to do to the mucking piece of garbage too. She pressed her ear to the cold metal and listened.

“So what are these new ones in for?”

“Same old charade. Some rebel garbage. Good thing they killed one on the spot or else we’d be stuck here till next week.”

“They got one? Really?”

“Mucking straight they did. A high up one by the sounds of it.”

“Not that angry one Kalvin told us about? The one with the bald head?”

“That’s the one! Put up quite a fight, I hear. But you know how these things are. They’re as dumb as they are angry and they all get caught in the end.”

Sweat poured over Sid in buckets. She fell away from the door, crawling back until she collapsed on the floor next to the foul-smelling bun. She couldn’t move her arms or legs. Everything in her body shook but she couldn’t feel the movement. There was only one Freedom Runner she’d known of with a shaven head and only one that was important enough to kill outright. Nyala. They had killed Nyala.

Tears welled in her eyes and she willed herself to hold them open, trying to contain the waterfall building in her which was itching to get out. Her eyes burned and when she couldn’t hold them any longer, she blinked and let her world flow out of her.

Whatever magic was still in her sparked over her skin in small, pathetic bursts of power. She let it go. Let the magic leave her until she was nothing but an empty shell; a useless sack of skin on the floor.

Sid wailed. The guards yelled through the opening, ordering her to stop, unable to discern the depths of her grief. Unable to care even if they did. But she didn’t hear them. All she heard was that Nyala was dead. Another person that cared for her, loved her even, dead because she wasn’t strong enough to stop it. Because she was locked away in some hole while people, her people, died in the domes for simply wanting back what was theirs.

She felt like she was always locked away somewhere. In a ship, in a hut, in a hole. Always indisposed when the ones who were actually doing something were dying. She’s the one that should be dead, not them. She was the coward; the reason for all of this. The girl who hid until everyone she loved was gone. There wouldn’t be a chipping, Sid would make sure of it. In the morning, when it was her time to go, she would make certain that Leona would kill her. She didn’t know how yet but it couldn’t be that difficult. All she would have to do was feed on the queen’s arrogance and pride, push her into ending her life.

Ending it once and for all.

* * *

Hours passed before Sid heard the guards on the other side again. It was as though her dramatic display of emotion shocked them, like they hadn’t been expecting a Domer to have any feelings at all. She could hear hushed tones and wondered if maybe the queen moved up the timeline and decided to chip her in the middle of the night. That didn’t make sense. What would be the point? No one was awake and the entire purpose of the spectacle was to use her as a means of instilling fear in the Freedom Runners.

The voices got louder, loud enough that she didn’t need to crawl back to the door to listen.

“I am your superior and you will let me speak with the prisoner. I will not ask again.”

She knew that voice. The hard edges of it enveloped in a cocoon of jest and honesty; Ashlan.

Footsteps shuffled around, no doubt the guards getting out of the way for fear of losing their position. “Sid?” She heard him say on the other side. The sound was muffled by the weight of the metal but she could still make out the words. “Can you hear me?”

She said nothing.

“I know you can hear me, Sid.”

“Go away, Ash.” She cried.

“Not until you tell me why.”

She sat up but stayed in her spot. “What?”

“Tell me why he did it, why he helped you.”

“I don’t know why. He was your dad. You figure it out.”

“I’m trying to but I just don’t get it. You were a random Domer. Why help a random Domer?”

Same old Ashlan, still carrying as much tact as a newborn frigger. All limbs and fluffy fur and wings that can’t take flight. And words that work for nothing when it comes to getting someone to tell you what you want to hear.

“Did he ever talk about me?” He asked.

“No, Colton wasn’t much of a talker.”

“Ha!” He scoffed, “That’s for sure. I guess he wasn’t that different around you.”

“What do you want, Ash?” She barked.

“I want to know why you lied to me. Why didn’t you just tell me from the beginning?”

“Oh, tell you that I’m an un-chipped Domer that your dad’s been hiding in a ship for fourteen years? That I came back to find him because that mucking ship almost killed me?” She yelled, then decided to lower her voice in case the guards were still nearby. “Or maybe I should have told you that I still had magic? Because I’m sure if I did you wouldn’t go running back to Leona with the information just to get a higher ranking, right?”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not? You did it when she finally caught me. You did it when it mattered.”

On the other side, Ashlan grew silent and she could hear his breathing speed up.

“Go away, Ash.”

“I don’t-”

“Go away! Go be with your people! You owe me nothing. We owe each other nothing.”

“Sid, I-”

“I said go!” She screamed and tossed the bun against the door. The pastry had hardened from its time on the cold ground and sounded a sharp pang when it met the metal. She could hear Ashlan jump back on the other side. “I want nothing to do with you. Tomorrow I will be chipped and you will be free of me. Your life will go back to normal and you can forget we ever met each other. I don’t want you here,” she sighed. “Just let me have some peace in the last hours I have left.”

She waited for him to rebut her, to keep arguing his point like he always did, but the boy outside was muted. Even his breathing had grown quiet to the point where she wondered if he was even there at all. Perhaps she just imagined him coming here? She was definitely hungry and thirsty enough to hallucinate. Maybe this was another trick her mind was playing on her like it did in the hut when she saw her twin of light? She had almost convinced herself that he was gone until she heard his steps recede.

He was leaving her. Again and this time forever.