You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.
-Anon
Josh sat in silence in a corridor inside the detention unit that was called the infirmary. On arrival they had been marched together and ordered to sit on iron chains that were lined against the hard white wall. Then they had been manacled to the chairs. They were left waiting. And waiting. Water had dripped from their clothes onto the floor where it had collected in little pools around their bare feet.
It was very quiet. Sometimes, Josh thought he could hear echoes of shouting or screaming or laughing coming from rooms far away. Sometimes he could hear the clang of iron bars or the boom of steel doors slamming. And there was the sound of clicking.
The sound of clicking came from the far end of the corridor where a scruffy little lady sat on a chair beside the largest steel doors, to the next row of rooms. She was wrapped in a patchwork shawl and tatty plastic bags bulging with whatever they held were crammed under her chair. She wore spectacles and her short grey hair hung loose and scraggy over her face as she worked with a pair of long knitting needles and a ball of green wool, paying no attention to anything else.
"She's still knitting." Whispered Josh. They hadn't spoken fofr over an hour and all the time the old lady had been knitting. "She's one of the bag ladies."
"I wonder what she's here for." Said Jericho.
"Something weird, like murdering children." Whispered Matt, from across the room. He seemed to have recovered well from the previous days – or weeks, they had no concept of time in the never-changing prison – and had started to talk to Josh and Jer; his arm seemed to have a huge scar down it, but nothing else physically noticeable.
"She won't be here for murdering children," Said Jericho, "They'd give her a job for that."
Silence reappeared, apart from the clicking.
Josh sniffed hard and screwed up his face. "This place smells like a swimming pool."
"It's the bleach that they use to clean the blood off of the walls." Said Jericho. Nobody laughed.
The minutes passed, and still nobody spoke.
"What do you think they'll do to us, Jer?" asked Matt after he could bear the silence no longer.
Jericho's head was hanging down almost between his knees as he ran his manacled hands through his spiky white hair before looking sideways and up at his brother.
"We've had it, Matt. They're gonna do us. They've been after us for ages. They hate us."
"The labs?" Said Josh, his voice hoarse.
Jer was silent but she sat up, chains clinking, and leant back against the cold wall of the corridor.
"Not the labs, Josh. No way. No, they can't do that. We're only-"
"Children?" Said Jer. "Street Children. Remember, Josh, we're vermin. Rats. They hate us; us in particular."
"Because we burnt down that building?" Josh said, incredulously. "It was an accident!"
"Well, you just tell them that." Jer said. She close her pale blue eyes, thinking about what she had heard of the labs. They were places where street rats were sent so that they could be used for experiments that were not allowed to be done on norms. Injections, shocks, chemicals, dissections, FEV mutations… Nobody ever returned from the labs. Not human, anyway.
Josh's huge brown eyes closed tight as he squeezed them tighter to stop the burning.
"Crying won't help." Said Jericho.
"Shut up, fly head." Said Matt. "Someone's coming."
Josh looked up and his throat tightened. Two officers clad in the white uniforms bearing the silver cross insignia of the Heralds were walking towards them, boots thudding on the concrete floor. Their dark glasses reflected the bright strip lighting. Josh recognised the shorter of the two as the commander who had caught them. The other Herald was the one that had used the stunstick on Jonah. As he came closer to untie the irons locking Josh to the chair, he realised that there was a huge claw scratch down his face. He did the same to Jer and Matt.
"Follow." The commander spat the word in a thick foreign accent, that Josh couldn't place. Scarface (as Josh has decided to call him) marched on, not turning to look whether they followed him or not. The trio stood up and shuffled after the officers. It was difficult to walk with so much metal hanging from their wrists and ankles. They followed the hunters to where the scruffy little lady was, still engrossed in her knitting. She didn't raise her head until the officers were standing right in front of her, their prisoners clattering to a halt behind them. Then she looked up, smiling gently, but her eyes feral.
"Inquisitor," she said, as if presented with an unexpected but delighted surprise."
Standing close to the shorter officer, the inquisitor, for the second time that day, Josh noticed again his hard, sharp features. His skin was pale and his hair was fuzzy and short and black and his nose arched, broad and flat like half a shark fins. He had long thin nostrils. Josh did not breathe because of the smell of him. It wasn't the usual smell of another person; it smelt… soapy. His black gloved fingers were twitching.
"Inquisitor," she said again, "I would like to have a chat with our… guests."
"All right Beau," He said, trying to be forceful, but strangely intimidated, "They're yours. For five minutes. Just five minutes."
Scarface said nothing. He just looked at the children through his tinted lenses of his glasses and the corners of his mouth tightened.
The old lady dumped her knitting under the chair where the remnants of plastic bags were and stood up quickly, brushing her hands over her skirt. Josh thought she was surprisingly business-like.
"Thank you, Inquisitor," said the lady known as Beau. She stuck her head forwards and tilted it up so that it stopped about an inch from the Inquisitor's. Her lank grey hair flopped all over her broad and wrinkled forehead. "Do we have a room?" She smiled politely.
The taller officer took a key from a pouch in his black tunic jacket which he used to open the steel door. He pushed the door and it swung open, screeching from years of neglect.
"Chains?" She smiled again, pointing at the shackles binding Josh, Matt and Jericho.
The officer began to unfasten the bolts that secured the chains around Matt's wrists. At the same time the Inquisitor grasped Jericho's thin wrists and twisted her arms. She winced because her skin snagged sharply in the Herald's grip. He undid the handcuffs and wrenched away the heavy chain that bound her hands and forearms.
By the time that all the chains had been removed from Josh, Matt and Jericho there was a small heap of ironmongery on the floor. Now that the blood could flow freely through his wrists, Josh realised how sore they were.
The old lady looked from Josh's raw skin to the Inquisitors impassive face.
"You're too kind, Inquisitor." She said.
"We'll wait out here." Growled the Inquisitor, and he signalled to Scarface to leave the room with him.
"Very thoughtful, Inquisitor. I'll know where to find you if I need you." She turned on the heel of her decrepit sandal and stomped into the room beyond the steel door.
The Inquisitor turned to face the children. "Go on, filth," He said. "I don't know what she wants with you but you're getting away with nothing." Then his sharp white face split with a grin revealing teeth, sharp like canines. He whispered, "You're dead. Dead." And he kept grinning as the children walked past him and through the doorway.
When they were all in the room, the bag lady pushed the thick door and it closed with a muffled thud. She walked to a steel table that was standing in the centre of the room and sat on it. Her feet did not quite touch the floor. Josh, Matt and Jericho stood in front of her. Apart from the table and the bright strip lighting the room was bare.
"Now, we don't have long," She said. "You must know that the Inquisitor out there wants your guts for garters. If he has his way it will be verybad for you," Her spectacles had slipped down to the tip of her small pink nose and her eyes peered over the top of them. They were grey and a little bloodshot. "I can help you. Possibly."
"Are you just another one of them?" Jericho interrupted, nodding towards the door.
"Jericho." Said the Lady, "You have no idea of who or what I am." As she said that, Jericho flinched for a moment, then stared at the woman.
Josh felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He could feel the air burn up like when heat rises from a fire.
"You're a bag lady." Said Jericho. "A smelly old bag lady." The air then suddenly turned chilly. "You are old and smelly and are either one of them or a weirdo."
Josh never forgot what happened next.
The weird old bag lady shot up from her seat, and lunged at Jericho with the speed of a yao guai, and jabbed her torso with a left hook. The punch had a shocking amount of force, and, with Jericho caught off-guard, she yelped, and rocketed backwards on her chair, and as Jericho started to register that she had been punched, she was on her back, with an immense pain in her side.
The Bag Lady's long fingers, bone white and tipped by blood red nails, were pointing at Jericho and her almond eyes were deep and dark and keen as a tiger's.
When she spoke it was if the world was filled with the boom of her voice. "I am Baroness Styx; Grand Mistress of Justice and the Outer Crescent and you may look upon me and live."
If anyone sends in some OCs, I'll think about adding them in. Maybe a cameo, maybe a major part. I'm not writing a template; do it yourself, its not hard. Name, race, history, bio, etc. If I don't add you, I'll try and explain why, but it may be as simple as there is not enough of a clash. Also, non-fighters will more likely have a position, as they're easily worked in.
And also, if you want to ask any questions about the world I am designing, feel free. I'll either work them into the story, or, much more likely, I'll response at the end of the story