Three

The Child

Martouf wandered through the city avoiding the bright coloured lights and many groups of armed youths who knocked into him as they ran through bitter smoke in the hushed side streets until he found a dead end alley so rancid surely no one would enter to disturb him.

There in the darkness between glowing windows, collapsing and further weakened by hunger he knelt unsteadily until he regained his balance and wiped his face and hands with the hem of his blue tunic to clean off the black oil from the generator vent and looked uneasily around at the gaps between the curtains above, then pulled the jar from under his shirt.

Holding it in his hands as still and firm as he could, yet gently so as not to crush it though he knew he didn't really have the strength, he placed it on the ground then twisted off the lid. He tilted it slightly to see inside, trying not to fear. Shaking with fatigue he bent over it. A second later, stunned by the force of the symbiote, he rocked back and slumped, falling onto the hard ground.

The city was beginning to lighten when the early workers came out with oil lamps, casting hazy light into the side streets. A small figure in a window high above spying through the gap between the curtains and stood watching for many an hour the man who lay as dead.

Then downstairs past his mother who didn't hear from kitchen he crept to crack open the front door and stuck his head out to look around. Though sunlight poured through everything strengthening colours and the shadows between houses, the night's mist hadn't lifted yet so he snuck outside and around into the alley stretching his pyjama collar up over his nose and looked closer at the body lying on its side on the dusty grey pavement stones. The man had been a guard, with dark blonde hair and a faint pinkness remaining in his lips, manicured fingernails and Niki noticed the shine of a gold chain hanging from the man's neck.

He pulled it until it slipped from inside the shirt and a medallion hanging from it hit the ground like a heavy gold coin., depicted on it was a black snake winding itself around a burning silver sword.

Its not like he needs it now, he hid it in a small pocket.

Some soldiers came lumbering by in a group and stopped outside the front of his house as two of them walked over to knock on the door. Niki had to make his escape and get back inside. He scanned the dead end and saw amongst the garbage a frail pile of crates. He climbed onto them and found a small, high window he couldn't have seen from the ground, he pried it open and grabbed the sill as his footing collapsed. Managing to pull himself up he fell over the to other side of the wall.

"What mischief is this?" demanded the soldier in annoyance pulling him up out of the mess of a knocked over dresser in a dark and unlit room.

He stared up in nervous fear, how do I get out of this?

The soldier stood over him waiting but it was no use.

"I asked you a direct question. Speak up, boy."

Even if he had been able to, the soldiers eyes bored so deep into his he couldn't have made his mouth open to let the words he couldn't think fall out.

So the soldier pushed him along into the living room which obviously belonged to an elderly lady seated beside a window near the front door.

"Does this child belong here? do you know him?" he asked loudly.

The woman looked perplexed by both of them so he told her not to worry about it and leant down to whisper.

"You follow me, understand? You step exactly where I step until we get to the city gates and then you wait there, just outside, with one hand on the wall at all times. If you take one misstep, I will know; if you try to run off, I will know; so much as look in the wrong direction and well…

"Can you do that?"

Niki nodded as he stared at the silver pattern on the lieutenant general's boots.