"The Generational Purge"
38. What Justice Means To One
Orcus Penitentiary, in the year 3086
No one moved. On one side, Nathaniel Nash had his weapon trained with nothing short of victorious thrill in his eyes. On the other side, the Doctor stood at the head of the larger group, with Rose, Jack, Jaime, Beth, and Norman at his back. And in the middle, Beatrice Oshiro stood, a tight grip around Noah and a knife pointed at his neck.
"Do it. Finish it," the warden commanded.
"No!" Beth cried back, and Jaime put a hand to her shoulder to calm her.
"So that one there is your daughter then?" Beatrice spoke at Noah's ear, looking at the frightened guard. "In a few moments, she'll never have existed, so please, these are both of your last moments, tell me. Don't you wish you'd never known?" He grunted, wanting to struggle, though he was very, very aware of the knife.
"You, what's your name?" he still called out.
"Don't," Jaime told her.
"First name. Just that," Noah requested. "If I'm going to die, then…"
"Beth. My name's Beth," she told him.
"Nice to meet you," he told her, and she turned away; she couldn't look.
"Alright, enough. Kill the boy!" Nash spoke again.
"Warden," the Doctor cut in. "Tell her to release him. Now." Beatrice looked at him, frowning.
"And why would I do that?" the warden shook his head. "She will do as she was told, as she does." Beatrice tightened her grip on Noah, and he struggled not to struggle.
"She will not," the Doctor announced. "She will not kill him."
"You seem so sure, don't you?" the warden almost laughed. "There's that look again, Doctor. One of these days, we will need to continue our conversation from earlier."
"The conversation is over," the Doctor glared.
"That it is," Nash agreed. "Beatrice, go on."
"You let the girl live!" Jack shouted. Beatrice looked at him. "He's fifteen. He's a child!"
"Hey!" Noah frowned.
"Shut up," Jack told him.
"Right," Noah understood. "If you kill me, my mother won't have anyone else to help raise my little sister. She needs me."
"Enough!" Nash called an end to the pity pleas.
"Jaime, were you called to, what was it again, Block Nineteen? Were you called there today?" the Doctor asked the man standing behind him, never looking away from Beatrice Oshiro.
"No, never."
"But if you were to have a… a treatment, wouldn't you have been summoned for it?" the Doctor wondered aloud. Beatrice Oshiro frowned, turning back to look at the warden. "How many people were called to Block Nineteen for one of these treatments?" the Doctor went on.
"Four," Jaime replied.
"Four?" the Doctor repeated. "That's odd, because I could swear the warden mentioned there had been six so far, of which you would have been the seventh. Four treatments, so what happened to the other two?"
"They just disappeared," Norman piped in. "I remember them all," he stared far across the corridor, to the warden. Beatrice, still gripping Noah, turned toward her descendant.
"That wasn't part of our agreement, Nathaniel," she declared.
"They're lying," the warden shook his head.
"No, but I don't think they are. And what's worse is I should have noticed."
"Kill the boy now, or I will."
"Would you, Nathaniel? Would you kill him? Your hands are clean in this. If I had not volunteered, what would you have done? Found someone else to get blood on their hands, while you stand here, protected. I killed for you, because I believed in you. But you know something, you've changed. It's as though I'm finally seeing you. You claim this is about justice. What I think though, I think this is about a vendetta. You used me. That's not how I work."
"Didn't seem to bother you before," the warden was unmoved.
"It bothered me every time!" she shouted. "It should bother you to take a life, always! And I've taken hundreds with six strokes of a knife. That's the difference between you and me, Nathaniel. You never had anything to lose in this. I try not to think about it too hard, but they stay with me, they always will. I'm not taking this one." There was silence. "Boy, I am going to let you go now. I won't harm you. Before I do, I want you to know, for your mother…"
"I know," Noah spoke, the anger in his eyes now pointed squarely at the warden facing them. The knife was pulled back, returned to its sheath. "Thank you," he told her; he had never imagined himself saying as much to her.
"Beatrice, I'm warning you," the warden was livid.
"It's done, Nathaniel. You're done. At this point, I'd be better placed to look after Orcus than you are."
"Enough!" the warden's voice was growing shrill, sensing his authority slithering away. "If you can't finish your job, then I will, it'll be my pleasure," he took aim and fired the pulse.
It had all happened too fast for any of them to understand what had happened before it was done. The group in the back cried out before they could process how Beatrice, still gripping the boy in front of herself, had turned her back on to the warden. She had absorbed the pulse, the pair of them falling to the ground together before rolling apart.
Noah was stunned, but he was unharmed, and neither Beth nor Jaime was affected.
Beatrice had barely a few breaths left in her, and they were coming short and shorter.
Beatrice Oshiro, many-great grandmother to Nathaniel Nash, would be dead in a minute or two. The warden saw this, and he screamed.
TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)