Chapter Seventeen — Fire Eyes

Aecker:

The smell of sweat and blood laces the air with malice. My entire body throbs, my head so sore it pulsates with each beat of my heart. Piercing, white stars blind me from behind mutilated lids even though the pounding has stopped, but that is when it hurts the most. The in between, when the fist lifts and rests before it strikes again. That’s when the blood flows back with sharp vengeance, slicing my skin, muscle and tissue that make up my face. I can’t breathe through my nose. It’s clogged with dry blood and the swelling makes it worse.

At one point the Enforcer grabs my hair, pulls my head back and places an old blood-stained towel over my mouth and nose. Cold water is poured over my entire face, going up my nose, and when I open my mouth to breathe I choke on the funnel being forced down my throat. Then, as the towel is removed, I feel the unmistakable sting of salt water. I am deadly thirsty, but I have to spit most of the water out, because if I consume too much of it I might become violently ill.

They know I don’t know anything, but now it’s just a game to them, as one soldier swaps with another, eager to get in his best shot. I have become a human punching bag they use to measure their own strength. A sport they place bets on. Who will deliver the shot that leaves me unconscious? They also know exactly who I am, and who my father was. They call us deserters for running away, traitors that were once leaders of the rebellion.

“Sir, if we continue this he will die. We won’t get a single thing out of him. You have worked too hard and lost too much to throw it all away on this boy. No one can keep this up for so long. Look at him. He is tiny, frail―”

“I do not tolerate sympathizers,” a gruff voice states. “He will talk. Go another round. If he still resists, send him back to the pit. I also happen to know that his athletic build is designed for the long haul, for stamina. He can go another round, trust me. His mother was the same.”

“I’ll kill you yet, Cyrus!” I threaten between coughs.

“You first.”

I reached the threshold of my pain tolerance over an hour ago, but the breath-crushing blows keep coming. My eyes are so swollen I can’t see who the enforcer of my torture is this time, or when the next fist will come crashing into my bones.

The beating continues until I can’t feel my face anymore, now it is just one wound seeping into the next until my head becomes one giant throbbing beast. I can hear the beat of my heart, I feel it in the veins of my face, clawing at my brain, so sharp and savage it wants to fight back. I had hoped they would have moved on to my arms and legs, or tried my fingers and toes by this time. But apparently they have something against pretty boys.

I am not sure what they want me to say. They keep asking the same thing, over and over: “Where is it?”

My answer is always the same. “Where is what?” I barely get the words out after my lip has been split. Blood drips into my mouth, mixes with sweat and trickles down my throat, it’s a potent mix of salt and copper, like dried, bloodied meat.

A pail of water comes at me, cold and painful. They ask me about Tracker 208, something about what we did to her, why they can’t get a solid read on her, and who she really is. I know this is a break-off division of ST because they wouldn’t have to ask me, they could have asked the doctor. She is, after all, Opel’s creator. If they were indeed ST, they would have had the doctor and my brother as well. Besides, why would Cyrus fake his own death? He is up to something, something rotten.

“Cyrus. Where is my brother?”

“I don’t have to answer to you.”

I swallow a chunk of bloody spit. “They’re too smart for you, and pretty soon they will figure out your twisted ideas of overthrowing ST.”

“You’re wrong,” he sneers.

“Well, they took your best leads away from you, didn’t they? Couldn’t even hold on to the leader of The Emblazers.”

“Do you not strive to overthrow ST? Is this not the goal of the Emblazers?”

“Not at all. Cupola is a safe haven for Inborns.”

Cyrus strides over to me, hands behind his back and leans in. “So you admit you are guilty?”

“If it is guilt I suffer from, it is only for our people. Look at you, Cyrus, with your fancy encoding. You don’t need that. Some people really do and you are taking that from them.”

Cyrus’ grin drops. He gives me one look and walks to the back of the room. My eyes are just thin slits, I can’t see into the shadows where he now hides.

***

After spending the night chained to a chair, I wake the next morning to a tapping sound coming from the other side of the wall. From the echo, I can tell I am being kept in a metal shell. I try to open my eyes to take the opportunity to assess my situation, but no matter how many times I order my eyes to open, they will not obey. They are swollen shut, making escape impossible.

My father would not approve of me right now. He would tell me I have given up… he may be right. It sure as hell looks easy to just go with it, let them have what they want. That way, perhaps lives will be spared. Then I think of Dyllian. I want him to forgive me for getting him into this mess, compromising Cupola and all we fought for.

The tapping returns, echoing in the room and bouncing off the walls. I want to click my tongue, let the vibrations paint the picture for me. Then I realize my jaw is too swollen, it hurts to even swallow.

Give me some sort of tool, Father. Come on, you are making this so hard for me!

Moving my chair back, metal scrapes against metal. Am I being held in an old water tower? I move the chair forward and listen to the song of the echo. Again, it’s around me all at once. It’s round, but I can’t make out if there might be any other furniture in the room. This is where the clicking technique would have been ideal; sharp sounds vibrate at a certain frequency where I’d be able to locate dense objects, like wood or windows.

In the silence, I hear footsteps. The door opens. I can tell by the way it squeaks that it’s a heavy door. A pair of feet enters. It’s not Cyrus, his step is too light—he’s a proud man on a power trip, which causes his gait to remain steady and deliberate.

The man speaks, telling me that I shouldn’t worry, that they have not found Opel. That whatever ST was looking for, they have it. He lets me know that negotiations are underway with ST and that there is no need for Tracker 208 anymore. Perhaps I should think about the possibility that it was their plan all along, for them to poison Cupola right at its core. He wants me to know what a pleasure it will be to kill someone who thinks he knows how to love.

I hear someone else at the door. With a slide of heavy metal, the mammoth door once again creaks open. I hear it shut, as well as the crash of the latch as it falls back into place. We are in some kind of airtight room, a vault, maybe? Some old bank? Or, could it be a bunker?

“You told him yet that his Tracker tramp is gone?”

There is a sharp slapping sound. “You idiot, Butch,” the first guard yells.

“Did you just slap me?” Butch seems stunned and annoyed.

A ringing sound travels through the room. Both go silent.

“Is that you laughing at us?” I’m asked with much attitude.

The whistling is coming from my nose as I try to laugh. These two are morons. Not only did they give away names and the surroundings, I now know how easy it can be to manipulate them.

There is a shuffle of feet, and then they speed off. They stop just outside the door, but it’s still ajar, their voices booming right into the room as if I was holding a phone to my ear.

“He needs to think she is still alive, we might need him for something. Now what does he have to live for? Huh? Don’t you understand how this works? The delusional will live for ideals like love and peace and all that crap. It’s their obsession.”

“What!” I hear Cyrus’ gruff voice spit out. “If I ever hear you use the word ‘love’ again, I will kill you, too!”

He has obviously been spying on them for a while, acting as if he were in on the scene the entire time.

“Idiot!”

“Sir, I was using a tactic,” the second guard tries to explain.

“You are hired to guard the prisoner. Please do us all a favor and leave the thinking to those who actually can!”

It is sad and confusing the way he says love, like the word is made of some kind of filth that taints his tongue. His tone is laced with disgust and disbelief. And as the man tries to explain again, Cyrus continues to yell. It is very apparent that the rage has moved in fast. His tongue lashes out with a string of nasty words.

I hear a thump followed by a soft moan. A gunshot rings out, echoing beyond the door and traveling a long way down the hall. From the sound, I think I might know where they are holding me.

“I have some news that might interest you, Aecker. It seems our little ploy worked. By capturing you and knowing Dyllian is held by ST, your father has made his return. We bled the coward back from death.”

A shockwave of fury rips through my core. He is lying!

I am sure it’s the adrenalin but one of my eyes almost opens entirely, and I can see Cyrus standing right before me. One of the other guards stands two feet away, all bloody, just staring at his dead partner’s body sprawled on the floor, his boots over the edge of the door.

A fist comes at me, so fast it eclipses the entire room and leaves me breathless. The strike leaves me dizzy, but I laugh at him again, my nose whistling from the strain. It’s a painful exercise, because my entire face feels like it wants to explode. He has to know that he can’t break me, that his maneuvers are lost on me.

“Remove him from my sight before I kill him!” he roars.

I give him the best smile I can, and through the slit of my eye I see him turn.

“Stupid boy, you see how this weakness of love you carry has damned you all? For a girl, you lost everything. Just like your father. Your weakness for her has brought Cupola to its knees, and her weakness for you has brought ST to fall. Now it will be easy for me to just slip in and take over.”

I continue to smile, but shake my head simultaneously. “So scared of things you don’t understand. Love will save us all.”

He turns, throwing me the bird. “Clean it up.” He points to the body lying on the floor drowning in a ruby sea of blood and guts, blue eyes still open from the shock.

All I can think is that I don’t want to go out like that, staring at a gun, surrounded by metal walls and trapped by fear. That boy should never have died because of someone’s temper. The stakes have increased, and so has my need to escape the fire of this hell.

***

Hours and minutes blur together. Thoughts of my parents’ death swoop in and out, causing me to remember all the things I miss about them. What would it be like if they were truly alive?

At some point, I managed to swallow the stale bread and gulp the flavored water they call soup. Now, I’m staring up at the roof. One tiny, old globe swings from the ceiling of my cell each time someone walks overhead. It’s not really a ceiling, more of a metal grate walkway in some old factory. I try to think of any old plants in and around The Gate that might resonate with this location―probably an old military building if it has this kind of security. If they are conspiring against ST, it will be somewhere obvious, right under their very rotten noses, in fact. That’s what I would do, anyway.

“Psst,” someone whispers from the shadows beyond my cell. I move forward, get real close to the bars. My battered eye is still very blurry, and it hurts to try and make sense of the shadows. But I don’t have to, because as soon as I approach, I see a pair of bony hands clasping bars on the other side of a dim passage.

“Is it true?” he asks in a husky whisper.

“Is what true?” I whisper back.

“Did she kill the Sniffers?”

“Who?”

“The Tracker. You know, the doctor’s supposed dead daughter. Did she kill those Sniffer dogs they sent after her?”

“I’ve been locked up in the vault all this time. I have no idea what’s going on. How do you know all these things?”

“It’s easy to overhear the whispers if you become part of the shadows.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Too long.”

“What did you hear about the Tracker? Is she alive?”

“No one knows.”

“And the man with her?”

“No mention of him at all.”

“You said she’s the doctor’s daughter?”

“Yes, the one they are holding hostage with your brother.”

“Why would you say it’s her daughter?”

“I put it together. From my cell, if I get real close to the corners, I can hear everything that goes on upstairs.”

The drone of footsteps and the shake of the metal railings overhead alert us to guard activity. I retreat back to my bunk. Two rebel soldiers walk overhead. They were obviously outside as mud is caked under their boots, and as they walk it scrapes off and falls down to my bed, dropping through the openings and onto my face. I cuss under my breath, then smile realizing its sea sand. Seconds later, an entire troop of soldiers follow, the noise roaring as they walk down the narrow metal grate that makes up my ceiling. Their heavy steps shake the very walls that make up our cages. It rebounds throughout the holding area. Realizing that it’s a large area, I can’t help but wonder how many people are being held down here.

I try to shift the bed out of the walkway’s path, but it’s bolted to the floor. So, I move my mattress to the other side of the cage next to the concrete brick wall that separates my pen from the next. I count about thirty rebel soldiers as they pass by in dribs and drabs toward the meeting area.

Two guards patrol overhead, back and forth. They walk in patterns up and down the walkway. It’s real quiet in the cells, so quiet I’m able to make out about fifty steps to each side until they turn back. At some point, I doze off and awaken when it’s too quiet. No activity from above or beyond my cell, but as I turn over, something makes a crackling sound beneath me. I shift, realizing it’s a piece of paper torn from a book. What I would give to be reading a story right now. It doesn’t even have to be a good one. I immerse myself in the words.

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love. Give me three and they’ll invent the charming thing we call ‘society’. Give me four and they’ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they’ll make one an outcast. Give me six and they’ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they’ll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”

It’s a passage out of The Stand by Steven King. I read it a hundred times as a kid during WWIII. I crumple the paper up and hold it to my chest, wondering where it came from, when I notice a tiny gap in the bricks between my cell and the next. Lying flat on my stomach, I peep through, but there is nothing but a damp, gray floor waiting for me on the other side. The hole is too small for me to see very far into the next room.

The swinging light alerts me to movement. I quickly turn back around and when I realize the footsteps stop halfway across, I know someone is coming downstairs.

The entire structure seems to rumble and quake as the soldier walks down the metal stairs. A gate noisily slides open and steps shuffle on the hard floor. The heavy gate slams shut, so loudly, the walls seem to shake. Heavy, drum-like and quick-paced steps come my way. The other prisoners stir, begging for water, sunlight, and food. Their moans are filled with tortured grief and agony. During the racket, I listen for the guards ahead… there are none, and no second pair of steps resound behind the man coming my way.

He stops right before my pen. Through the grim light, I can only make out his heavy build, wide shoulders and strong jawline. He is wearing ST gear with steel-tipped boots, a bulge at his side. He is armed. My door slides open and he stands there, just stands there. I get up and walk over to him. I am not sure if I feel threatened by him or not, but it doesn’t matter. I need to get the hell out.

Peeking out from the shadows across the hall, I see the prisoner I spoke to earlier. He is a tall, skinny, dark-haired boy, with deep brown eyes and messy hair. He looks almost skeletal in the dim light; sunken cheeks and a huge flat forehead. He nods and I make my move. I punch the guard in the nose, and then kick into his chest so he falls backward. I know that with big brutes you must keep delivering the blows and not give them a chance to gain momentum. He’s very heavy and, as expected, doesn’t go down. As he stumbles backward, fumbling for his gun, I realize it’s all the time I need.

The boy across from me grabs the man by his throat and pulls him into the bars. The entire structure shakes as they struggle. Other prisoners become rowdy, shouting for release. I grab for the gun and point it right at the guard.

“Shoot him,” I hear a voice say. It’s a girl from the cell beside mine.

“Hold him,” I say to the other boy. I’ve never had to shoot anybody point blank. I don’t think I can stomach it.

The boy’s long arms wrap around the guard’s chest and throat. The guard has a desperate look in his eyes that seems familiar somehow. I guess I can relate to the clash of emotions burning behind rage.