Chapter Nine
Skin peeling, burning, flaking away in charred clumps. My limbs were being stretched out, joints popping and screaming with the strain of it. Insides writhing and freezing, jagged edges slicing each other into bloody ribbons. The faintest sound of screaming and rasping breath, like a barely heard echo from half a world away and then silence again.
'What do you want!?'
The scream starts again as I feel my ribs being torn away from each other by dirty raggedy nails at the end of strong slime covered fingers. A rusty broken toothed saw slowly bites into the back of my thighs, chewing at the skin, hungrily gnawing its way down to flesh and muscle and bone. Images, emotions, memories flash through me in such rapidity that it feels like I'm choking, drowning in it all. I'm sat eating breakfast with other cadets. Then I'm falling up through a mega block as blood boils out of my empty eye sockets. And then I'm painting, colouring the world with suppressed emotions, the urge to hold a warm hand to my cheek, the urge to stamp on an unknown face until there's nothing left but paste. The urge to lay down, curl up, and simply give up.
'What do you WANT!?'
Wave after thought after feeling. Pieces being torn away, pulled apart, shredded until there's nothing left of me but pain, unbearable, inconceivable pain. And then I'm whole again. Fresh, untouched, just so it can start all over again. I am so tired, but even more so I was empty, utterly vacant except for the pain. Was I really feeling this? Or was it just a forced projection? Did it even matter, either way I was breaking. But at least he's safe.
What did you tell him? Teach him?
'Why? He giving you trouble?'
More searing, unidentifiable agony. The screaming starts again, closer, but this time it was peppered with choppy choked laughter.
The slums are been fading for a while, slipping out of focus, the connecting streets getting shorter and shorter. She was losing focus, getting tired, even if the world around us hadn't have been dipping I would've known, by her grip or lack thereof. The strong pulse I could feel initially, pumping under my grip as I held her wrist in my hand, was barely noticeable now. I had to put all my attention into it to finding it. The slums had become flat, only visible in one direction; whichever way I was facing. Turning to her was a mistake, I shouldn't have looked, should've suppressed the urge to check on her but I did. There was nothing there, just blankness, a blurred semblance of the slums but no her, just the arm I was holding. Time to let go, focus on keeping my mind safe and secure. The only thing going through my mind over and over was the same two things; she's just a rookie, and what're they gonna do to her? But it doesn't matter. Nothing I can do except hold out until back up arrives, if it arrives. So I let go.
'Focus Joe. Focus.'
I'm back in the wastelands, bare foot and boiling hot. Good. Focus on the heat, focus on the dirt under you feet and between your toes. Beads of sweat trickle down my face and neck. The wind picks up and brushes across my skin, my face but it's not cooling, its' stiflingly hot, like opening an oven door a mere inch from my face. I check myself over; I'm missing my helmet, my jacket, my boots, my gloves. All I've got is my vest and trousers clinging to my overheated skin, stuck fast with sweat.
'Should I walk or stand?'
Instead I just sit and sweat it out, just keep focusing on the wastelands, the dirt, the heat. Focusing on grounding myself, keeping myself locked away, guarded. Just try to outlast these bastards. I slip into a focused stupor, staring at the grains of dirt directly in front of me, trying to pick out details, put together patterns. It might have been hours, may have been minutes but it didn't matter I felt it now. The prickle of something else, someone else's mind touching mine. Nudging, prompting, coaxing, irritating.
'What!?'
Sir?
There's nothing left. Absolutely nothing, except the dull echoes of pain but that's not me, not mine. I've forgotten how to feel, forgotten how to move, forgotten how to think. I'm broken, that much I know, that being all I know. A sinking, rising lump of consciousness in oceans of chaotic dirt and skin. A feather was running lightly across my mind.
Lu?
There was a dull burn at the edge of my brain. There was something horribly familiar about it, something comforting about it. I don't want familiar, don't want comforting, don't want anything. I recoil from it, crawling away from it like a wounded animal into a corner waiting to die.
Lucy?
'Shh.' Please just let me die, just let me fade away, like a drop of ink on the beach as the tide comes in. 'I'm so tired...'
Lucy!
Suddenly it's really bright, even with my lids closed, my eyes are screaming for less, for dark. I can hear; boot steps, cuffs clicking closed, hushed rough tones. I can feel; the ground beneath me, bruises blooming across my body, blood drying on skin and cloth. There's the distant whine of lawmaster sirens, an extremely welcome sound as my eyelids finally rise to focus upon my helmet visor, and then the upon the grubby shack's ceiling beyond that. Time to sit up judge. Muscles and joints groan and protest at the request but I pull myself up until I'm sitting and look myself over. Initial assessment comes back as battered but workable. Looking around I see the perps already cuffed and down on their knees off to my left against a wall, and a unidentifiable judge standing guard over them, all seven of them. My ears finally hear the biggest source of noise in the claustrophobic drug den just as my head begins to turn, my eyes fixing on the little scene unfolding just off to my right. The rookie was surrounded, there were two paramedics crouched down around her tending to her, and Anderson knelt with the rookie's head in her lap. She sensed me looking, watching them and her head slowly rose, brown eyes meeting black visor. What expression was that?
"She's pretty bad."
It sounded so far away. My body was moving even as my head keeps going over everything that'd happened. Before I can register what I'm doing I've shoved the protesting paramedics out of the way and scooped her up into my arms, carrying her as carefully but quickly as I can out of this shithole, out into fresher air and twilight and drizzle. Anderson's walking next to me, keeping pace beside me. I don't look at her, just keep my eyes on the horizon, on the very close buildings and the choke space between them.
"How long were we under?" Even to my own ears my voice is harsher than usual, but to give credit where its due Anderson doesn't falter, doesn't flinch, doesn't lose focus or step. As my eyes flicker to the judge next to me, to the psychic, to the mutant that was just like the ones that'd captured and trapped us. Her face is blank, a trait she's picked up very quickly since her assessment day. A good trait. The law can't afford emotions. My eyes shift of their own volition and I find myself looking down at the limp woman in my arms. She'd had the brunt of those bastards attention. Her helmet was gone, exposing her young bloodied face to the world. She had strong dark arches for eyebrows, long lashes, the slightest hint of sharp cheekbones. Her lips were sliced up and swollen, bruised and torn. Her slim, small nose was plastered with now drying blood that it had previously spewed. Sweat was beading on her forehead and streaking down her temples and neck, dragging blood with it as it went. Short scruffy caramel coloured hair was soaked through, plastered to her face in places, the rest drooping limply below her hanging head. Her closed eyelids flicker sporadically, fitfully. Wonder what colour they are? Looking more I see that her uniform's in tatters, sliced in various places at various depths.
"We're not sure, four hours maybe?"
Four hours of torture on both fronts. Fuck. My jaw flexes as my teeth grind together at the concept, the knowledge of it all. Her lips twitch as a tiny whimper escapes them, a muscle spasm jerking down her spine causing her to arch slightly in my arms. The jerk causes fresh blood to flow from the slashes across her ribcage, stomach, and chest, to drip to the ground in gory little splatter puddles. Panic floods through my system and my feet hesitate, slowing me down. Anderson's watching me again, her eyes narrowing as she studies me, mental tendrils reaching out ever so carefully to probe, to query.
"We need to get her to a hospital. Now." I turn to give her the full force of my controlled temper. "And stay out of my head, judge Anderson."
