suppress
-to put down by authority or force: subdue
-to keep from public knowledge: such as to keep secret
-to stop or prohibit the publication or revelation of
-to exclude from consciousness : to keep from giving vent to
-to restrain from a usual course or action
-to inhibit the growth or development of
obsolete : to press down
The first five names are given to me in the next days, after a long session of more discussions in Whitefire. I prepare fast, I have waited in the wings already. Samson is still rummaging through the house, my mother is still throwing her luscious little evening parties, my father is still tired and looks the part. I can't wait to leave.
Since no one can snuff out the rebels, at least not yet, we don't make a plan based on that. We don't know where they will appear. Instead, we route and rewire our location and plans to necessity and structural ease.
I was the one preaching about efficiency. And so the plan is as followed: Retrieve the first two targets, ready them for transport, move on, and then escort the last one back to wherever. It will take me about a week with all the back and forth, and all the wiring up contacts in between.
If you could draw a route in a thick black pen over a map, it would root in Archeon and move away, slowly crawling further. If the trend continues, I may just reach the outskirts of Delphie, or the air base Atara is stationed in. Wouldn't that be something, visiting my dear bird girl. All the while her brother is trying to catch and strangle her friend Heron and her family.
The nearest targets are siblings. They live in the outskirts of red villages just a few hours away from Archeon. The measures have thinned out the villages here too. Close to the remaining sources of power, closer to a big city, the silver mansions upstream, or the technological facility keeping reds in their proximity building our instruments, they have nowhere to go.
They don't have much cover to flee to. Even if my contact assures me that many have either tried to. Some starve away in their attempts to escape misery. Because no red, glorious rebellion has come to save them. The Scarlet Guard bombed, murdered and now they have vanished.
I don't expect any of the rebels to come close to the center of their future demise. They can't pull bombs and fuses anymore in secret. The tunnels have been taken care of, and now faces are made known.
No. This is a test run. It's easy. Just as the vanity title, this is testing my loyalty. My endurance. They don't give me anything without being sure I am made of diamond glass. I made a proposal, now I need to prove myself.
I brought Runt and One Ear with me this time, as well as my guards and Hadrien. I could have come alone without a gun and no one would have hurt me. It isn't even a hunt. It's a hut, not like the one standing on Stilts in that village during the hunt with my cousins, but as miserable all the same.
We don't even kick down any doors today. The whole family stands lined up in their home.
Gun dangling at one side, metal cuffs on the other, I take a step inside the small space.
The red family is surrounded by us and the dogs, as well as my contact in the officer guiding us here. The officer is my age, a little bit older, and he watches us with pale submission and not much joy.
I look at the names on the crude paper, back at them. Their names and the birthdate and blood group are lined up in mechanical letters.
I came for new blood, for anomalies. For dangerous creatures that can shoot lightning and join rebellions. I came for people that share the ability to inflict pain. Just as the Barrows, throwing me over banisters and raining down sparks over the army.
The one named Wolliver in Harbor Bay was a teenage boy, hanging from a noose. The others that escaped were more dangerous.
These ones here, they are children.
The younger one is not even four. He has thin, dark hair, clogged together by sweat and dirt. When he sees my dogs, his hands cling to the ragged pant leg of his mother. Runt stands alert, ears up, panting. One Ear sits beside my leg, pressing his big paws and body against my boot. It looks too clean and gleaming polished surrounded by the dirt.
The older one is a girl with the delicate bones of someone underfed their whole life, pale and scared. Their freckled faces and colorless, grey eyes swimming in their faces stare at me.
The longer the silence in the dirty, small house stretches, the more pressing it gets.
"Take the children to the transport," I tell my animosi cousin, Asher and the banshee, called Bryce. The officer to my right moves a step back.
Their mother stood very silent until now. When my guards move to grab her children, she shrieks forward. The toddler behind her legs pulls forward along.
Asher holds her tightly, twisting her arms. Her words are barely audible in a sobbing, high pitched scream, but they are pleading.
The toddler still stares at the dogs, then up to his mother. He barely starts crying when gloved Hadrien collects him. The air around him cracks a second. My dogs put their ears flat to their heads in the sudden stroke of heat. Hadrien swoops away from the crying mother, muttering something. The child looks at him with big eyes. Hadrien doesn't look back. He rarely meets eyes or shows emotions. Now, his dark leather gloved hands just cradle the dirty toddler in his arms and carry the kid away.
The dogs relax a little again.
Since my guards are both busy with the mother, I take on the girl myself. Just as her baby brother, she doesn't struggle at all.
Red children are bruised to stand still and avert their gaze. This small girl lets me wrap my hands around her wrists to bind her.
Skin on skin, I feel her beating heart, the pulse that rushes under the salt-crusted, wet skin. But it is not her plain fear or her being so alive. As soon as she touches me, something flashes between us. I know the connection of a whisper breaking into my brain. It isn't exactly the same, but similar enough for me to breathe in strangled, with blurred fear infecting my system.
The next moment she looks at me, I see her eyes. And they look right into my soul, into whatever I have done. They see every corpse, and they see every pain I ever inflicted and had to endure.
To me, she is a freakish genetic anomaly. But I can see in her face. She sees my scarred face and hard eyes.
To her, I am a monster. Inside and outside.
As fast as I can, I swish the cuffs around from my belt and snap them in place. Her wrists are so thin I need to tighten them.
Asher is done dealing with the red woman, and she is slumped over on the ground by now.
They get put in the back of a vehicle, up to be transported away to the place Maven has hinted me at, and we move on.
Up at the gravels and loose stones on the road, into the dust of a faded summer and swirling autumn. I rake my fingers over the back of my dog's heads, petting them, staring at the dust clouds.
"That went rather fast," Hadrien tells me. His eyes more distant than mine, especially without his glasses. He doesn't look at my face. "We will be able to take a pitstop at the outer residence of the Vipers as planned."
"You are always rotating in plans, are you?" I ask him, crossing my arms.
He flails his hands a moment, obviously trying to match my body language but failing. "I like being on time. I like having schedules."
"Right, then you will like that we are on time," I confirm. "We take a night's rest, then move on by air."
He only nods.
"What did you tell the kid?" I ask, voice low. "That child could have unleashed something deadly."
"Usually," my animosi cousin answers, detached. "I would have said it could be much worse. But my parents told me to understand what other people are worried about. And this child asked for his mother. So I told him that he'll be with his mother again soon. I hope that was not too cruel? It seemed to calm him down."
I blink against the unwelcome feeling in my stomach and my dry eyes welling up in something I can't explain.
The mother will be executed, probably. And a toddler can't survive in prison on his own very long.
Taking a breath, I remind myself that I am indomitable. There is nothing to change it. This is my diamond heart test. I wanted this. At least I didn't hurt them at their arrest. Whatever the rest of the officers do is not my business anymore.
I stare at the river while we travel on, looking into both directions. Where we came from, where we passed.
If you have the vision of a bird or know that they are there, you can see the smoke plumes from the factories, miles, and miles away, hours and hours, as we passed it traveling by ship back to Archeon from the summer residence. They are only guarded by fences, commandos, and the trees in the water that filter the pollution. If you guess the other way, you can almost sense Archeon tensing, clenching in lights.
We move away from both.
The house stands build seclusive, even more so than the houses in West Archeon. It has a wider berth, more space for animals, not just a small backyard, but it shares the same metal fences surrounding the grass. And it is smaller than the mansion. One nervous red servants rustles on the outskirts of the gates, and a our vehicle is not the only one that has left rims and traces on the roads.
I thought we would be alone here. But we are not. I'm greeted with a bustling of animals. Then, a moth flutters over my face, cotton soft antennae tickling my ear. The dogs pant at my legs again.
A few guards patrol in the distance. But besides black, I only make out one silver-haired head from a magnetron guard, and my heart stops. My palms start to sweat. One Ear beside me whines low in confusion. Runt tilts her head.
"Who's here?" Hadrien asks. Asher and Bryce both have their hands on their guns. I leave mine strapped. "Who did you tell you would pause here?"
"Only Hector," I whistle low. "But I have a suspicion your loyalist father shared the information with someone else."
The rapid noses move on the ground. My dogs shift past the nervous servant. The dogs catch the whiff of something soft, a perfume. It tickles my nose just like the moth did my ear.
I hurry through bare bone walls, only decorated with a few meager images of animals and one small green stroke for our family.
Like a Queen in her own kingdom, Larentia has made herself some space in the living room of the house. She sits poised, clearly waiting. I look shabby against her dark dress and her firm fitted, cast on dress billowing slowly down her waist.
Hadrien stops behind me, right next to one of my dogs.
"Leave us alone," she demands, chin up. Her face turns to the group behind me. Beside me, Runt stops in her agitated tracks, pushing her tail between her legs before snarling low.
I stare at my mother, sister, idol.
And even if a part of me is starstruck, delighted, another part of me is tired and still frightful. Still burning with apathetic shame I can't push away.
Her green eyes soak through my facade.
"You could at least greet me," she says, standing up. And even though we are the same height, she is bigger than me in every regard.
"I apologize, Larentia, always a pleasure to see you," I finally find my form and look back at Hadrien. "Take the dogs and wait upstairs, or outside."
They close the door behind me, and it falls heavy.
"What are you doing here?" I ask. I realize now that her eyes don't leave my face alone that it is the first time she sees the scars on my jaw and cheek.
"Don't be surprised, it's a small window to discuss things."
After the whispers and Samson have been left behind in Archeon, I really shouldn't be surprised. It is indeed a very small window, but smart, she always keeps her distance to the fires she can't control.
"What can I do for you?" I ask. In truth, I want to ask something else, something much more childish.
Did I do something wrong?
To which the answer would be a disturbed yes, because I am walking on the edge of everything.
I shake that thought off.
She walks two steps towards me, straight and without losing eye contact.
"Letters are good enough in the long run, but encrypting your animal analogies gets cumbersome, and it doesn't leave room for details," she explains. "How about you tell me the truth about the last weeks?"