CHAPTER 15
(Well, most of it.)
Jesus, this was very hard to write. It might be the most intense chapter so far. Still have a bit to go, but this was a decent stopping point and I thought I’d share.
She heard them coming up the canyon long before she saw them: a group of five. Four of them were armed, and one of them was carrying an empty duffel bag. They were surprised to see her sitting on a rock in the shade across from Avers’ body, with a smokestick taken from one of the brigs hanging from her mouth.
“Holy shit!” one of the eighth-years remarked. “You’re alive, Gray?”
Gray had pocketed a few things from the dead men worth gambling away, including a nicer tac knife. She watched the group of corpsmen as they kicked at the bodies to get a better look at the faces.
“My gun could shoot more bullets than theirs,” she panned. “Basic fucking math.”
Two of the armed corpsmen searched the brgs while the other two scaled the rock fall to have a look around above. Torres glanced back at Avers, the poor fucker. Then Torres set her pack down and got a gulp of water from her canteen before producing a pair of folding shovels. She handed one to Gray.
“Y’know what they say about F circuit,” Torres said as she began moving dirt. “The F stands for “fuck you”.”
Ah yes, that old joke. Gray snubbed out the last of her smoke, pocketed it, and got to work helping dig a shallow grave for her comrade.
One of the corpsmen who was busy examining a brig turned and made eye contact with Torres.
“Hey, check this out. This is a pretty nasty hole. Big.”
Gray took a glance at the gore from where she stood. The white of his ribs was visible in among the red and purple. She swallowed, looked at her boots. “Kicker can do that too, you know.”
Torres stopped and went to get a look for herself. She poked at the dead brig with the end of her shovel, moving his arm away from the wound on his side.
“’Nak lead if I ever saw it.” She turned back to the seventh-year sentry. “Gray, what happened over here, exactly?”
She shrugged stiffly. “They ambushed me and I made ‘em regret it.”
“One of these men was killed by a 'Nak.”
Gray shrugged again.
“You don’t seem bothered by that.”
Fuck off!
“Yeah, I’m alive thanks to that bullet. Kinda glad I got the help.”
Torres frowned deeply. “Alright, guys, hurry up, help us dig. There might be a ‘Nak nearby and he’s not invited to this funeral.”
* * *
The remnants of water clung to her backside as Gray stood in the shower stall, eyes screwed shut as she held onto the arched neck of the shower head. A rip in the tent canvas threw a long needle of light along her shoulder, which she felt as heat. More often it was used when someone wanted an eyeful of wet skin.
She’d spent two minutes on water, but fifteen minutes in the stall and was already drip-dry by the time she was ready to leave. The corpsman was busy trying to put Rice’s face out of her mind, trying to forget that she’d ever met him. And as she tired, she was realized that he’d done something for her. She didn’t quite understand what it was, but something about her was very different now than before. And that made trying to forget him all the more important.
She whispered a swear and grabbed a towel to dry off.
Later, Gray went to the privacy of her toon tent to look over what she’d lifted from the dead man. The knife, the smokesticks. They were worth something, she knew that, but how much? What might Craft give her for it? A few books, at least. Maybe he’d keep an eye out for a nicer gun.
The tent flap was suddenly pulled aside, and outside stood Torres of all people. Stout and solid, Gray didn’t want to just tell her to go away, especially because of the look in her eye.
“’Cap wants to see you.”
“You can tell him I’ll be right there to fill out the debrief sheet.”
“Ain’t that. He wants you now.”
Heat rose to Gray’s face—she knew she was in trouble. Or that Wesson wanted to act like she was in trouble.
Maybe he wants to punish you for surviving that.
Gray mustered her strength and headed out, passing another toon tent, a latrine, and the quad, before coming to Wesson’s square little office made of canvas. She took a deep breath before stopping inside, needing to gather her wits. The promo bastard had something up his sleeve, she knew it. Glancing behind her to see Torres stand, watching from the other side of the quad, was all the evidence she needed.
“Have a seat, Gray,” came that voice of his, commanding and strained.
She did, slowly. What was it going to be this time?
“Torres says you fired your gun, corpsman…”
He spoke like he didn’t know who she was, and between him and her pounding heart she began to grow confused and frustrated.
“Of course I did. I took on three fucking brigs. Was I not supposed to defend myself?”
Wesson chuckled, and behind her someone entered the tent. He waved them in, and it was Torres again, with Gray’s pair of Corps-issued weapons. Torres must’ve slipped into her tent and grabbed them just now, something that would normally get you beat up. But not this time—this was an officer’s errand.
“Do a bullet count,” Wesson ordered, still not having made eye contact with Gray yet.
The seventh-year just sat in her uncomfortable chair, watching the eighth-year in stiff silence as she slipped the magazines out of their respective guns and proceeded to empty them out onto the great wooden desk for counting.
“Sider fired six times,” Torres said. “And kicker fired eight, sir.”
Gray narrowed her eyes and in a mocking voice said: “_Forty-_eight, sir. She must not have seen the two empty mags sitting on my cot waiting to be packed again.”
“Thank you Torres, that’ll be all. She and I need to talk alone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Torres and Dunn found thirty-nine of your shells out there,” he said once she’d gone.
Gray swallowed, feeling warm under hr shirt collar. To illustrate this, he produced one of the precious little sleeves of brass and set it on the desk.
“And one of these, about 150 yards away.”
Another, altogether different shell was then stood up beside the first: it was several times larger, with a jagged-looking taper in the middle. Gray knew that it was also heavy.
She studied the pair of shells, glancing from one to the other. “There’s ‘Nak casings everywhere in these hills… sir.”
There was no way that what she thought was happening was happening. It wasn’t possible. What case was he going to try and build based on one shell?
Wesson rubbed his chin, still not looking her in the eye. Why didn’t he? Look at me while you do this, you goddamn bastard.
“It was fresh,” he said carefully. “Not a grain of sand in it.”
And then he paused. Gray possibly stopped breathing as he did.
“Know what else was fresh? His prints up on the ridge.”
She tensed as if hit with the pheromone of several scenting giants. Her blood ran like cool water, and all she could think about all of a sudden was his hands on her back, on her breasts, between her legs, and she was coming, coming—
“What are you trying to say, Wesson?”
“I just want to know what happened.”
“I was out there trying to survive the fucking suicide mission you sent me on. I wasn’t making friends, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Wesson turned to swat at the heavy canvas behind him and call through the fabric: “You can come in now, Kessler.”
Kessler.
This was about the moment that Gray’s stomach felt like it dropped to the floor because it all made sense. This was all coming back to finally haunt her.
The young man looked intense when he came in, at once both afraid and angry. Burke never knew about what had happened that evening before the ambush, but Wesson did.
“Holy shit,” was all Gray could stammer.
Wesson said to Torres: “Go get the Commander, please.” And to Kessler: “You, tell me again.”
“There was a ‘Nak with her that day. I remember him… h-he was on top of her. They thought no one was around.”
“On top of her.”
On top of me.
“Y-yes, sir. When I… attacked, he was on top of her.”
“On top like what? Was he trying to kill Gray?”
“No, sir. I don’t know what he w-was doing, sir.” Kessler swallowed. “But she lied, sir. She lied to Burke’s face. She said the ‘Nak was a dog. I knew what I saw. I never forgot.”
Wesson stood up and began to pace.
“What did you tell him?” he asked Gray.
Gray’s mouth was open and it felt like she’d been tied to the chair. Not a sound came out.
Wesson exploded, kicking her to the floor in the rib she’d injured all those weeks ago, and the seventh-year cried out in pain. She hit the floorboards with a hard thud, gasping.
“What did you tell him, Gray?”
He stepped over to her and grabbed her by the collar.
“You traded something for your life, corpsman! Now what was it?”
Wesson shook her or maybe she was shaking or maybe both were happening. Barely recognizing the sound of her own voice as she struggled to say something—anything, idiot!—and with a horrified wheeze, a few words were dragged out.
“We f… f-fucked.”
Gray had no idea if she’d just saved or damned herself to more torture than she could possibly imagine. But the fact was that a lie hadn’t materialized. All she could speak was the truth.
“That’ll be all, Kessler,” Wesson growled from where he was crouched over her like a fox with a vole.
“Sir—”
“I said, that will be all!”
When he was gone, Wesson let her go, but only in time for his hand to go sailing across her face hard enough for blood to spatter.
“You fucking whore,” the captain hissed. “I thought I knew you, Gray. I thought I knew you. You wanted nothing but that freeman’s mark, and you’d be the good corpsman to get one. But now, now…"
Gray lay there on the floor and clutched her side, the pain almost as bad as it had been in the beginning, and all she could take were quick, shallow breaths. It made it hard to think.
But Wesson continued without her. “And you used me, didn’t you? Played me like a fucking fool, getting me to schedule you for all those solitary posts. And all so you could commit treason. Unless…” He paused to take a few rough breaths through flared nostrils, and still all Gray could manage was a wheeze. “It was rape?”
Gray shut her eyes tight, not wanting to even think about answering this question. She focused on trying to breathe.
“Tell me he forced you, Gray. Tell me he put his gigantic hands on you and shoved you to the ground.”
She panted wordlessly, and Wesson stood up again. He watched as she began pulling herself back up into her chair.
“So you’re just a fucking whore,” Wesson whispered. “For years I stuck out my neck for you. I felt bad for you.” His flushed face drew close, and he grabbed her by the chin. “You barely knew how to suck a cock when we first met. You were what, seventeen? New to Fox after spending that first year getting your ass kicked at Camp Jay.”
Wesson drew even closer, and he spoke with a choked, hushed voice.
“What does he have that I don’t, huh? What’s he got on me?"
Gray was seated again, moving carefully as she tried to sit upright in the chair. Her hair was in her eyes but that was fine because there was no sitting up when she hurt this much and no looking him in the eye.
“A… backbone…”
There was a flash in his eye, brief but unmistakable, before he lifted his leg and kicked her again. This time she went tumbling across the floor along with the chair.
While Gray was busy trying to breathe steadily and keep herself from vomiting, Hitch had stormed in with a pair of armed ninth-years in tow. It took a few seconds for her to be able to sense the world outside of that pain.
“Get her to the med tent. We’ll keep her there until she can be picked up.”
“Picked up? But s-sir this is treason. She… she…”
“Captain Rhyd Wesson, it’s time you learned what retraining is.”
* * *
The captain’s liquor had tasted so sweet on her lips, and she’d fallen so neatly into that silky stupor that she was gone before she knew it. The pain went away, it seemed, and Gray was at least able to take deep breaths. She couldn’t quite see straight, but that was fine, she wanted to sleep, anyway.
Where was she? The cot didn’t belong to her, and how did it get so clean?
“A couple morph should do the trick,” a shadowy figure said.
“Jesus, Bauer, we’re not trying to kill her.”
“Alright, just one morph, then.”
Gray opened her mouth to speak, but found it very dry. “Wh… ere am I?”
“Shit, she’s awake.”
“Did the commander say she wasn’t allowed to remember this?”
“Well, no. But it would sure as hell make our job easier.”
“…W-what’s going… going on?”
The pair turned to her, and Gray could barely keep her eyes open to see them through the haze. “Whatever it is, it’s between you and Hitch,” one of them said. “I’m just here to medicate.”
Something small and chalky was stuck into her mouth, then, and she struggled with it for a few seconds. Then a few beats later and Gray fell into a dead sleep.
* * *
The next thing Gray knew for sure was happening was being woken up from a tent somewhere, filled with several unwashed bodies. Her hands were bound in front of her, there was a length of fabric tied around her head as a gag, and some kind of bag over her head prevented her from seeing anything. She felt woozy and hoped that she wouldn’t puke, or it would have nowhere to go.
“Up, up, everyone up,” came a voice. “We leave for the trade-off point in twenty minutes.”
There was groaning and shuffling, all of it sad.
Gray still sat on the hard ground, feeling stiff and tender as she pieced together that she, too, was to get up. She tried and failed, not quite finding her balance yet.
“You too,” said the same voice, now much closer. The seventh-year jumped when a big hand grabbed her by the arm to hoist her up and out of the tent. And it added in a very low voice: “Traitor.”
It all came back to her, now—Wesson, the shell casings, the beating—and the nausea roiling her stomach redoubled. She swallowed bile as black fear overcame her, and tried to speak: I’m not a traitor! I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know!
But all that came out was muffled grunts.
Outside, she was shoved and herded and instructed to stand still for a while, and she listened through the pounding in her head, the pounding in her chest, to the sounds going on around her. Orienting herself was almost impossible, but she acted like her life depended on it.
Nearby there was shuffling, the gathering of rope, the saddling of horses. A man barked orders at someone, and in the meantime she heard tack and leathers in several places to her left, and hushed murmurs to her right. In the distance were the sounds of camp—she was not far, and the idea of trying to escape briefly crossed her mind, but it hit her then, really hit her, that there was no going back.
This was it.
The Corps was through with her.
At least, for now.
She remembered Hitch mention retraining: where was she being taken? A bullet-packing line? The ponds where the base for rations were grown? Was she being taken to a bond market?
Almost eight years. All gone.
Gone.
Washed away like dust in the rain.
Gray stood there, shaking, hands cold, and waited for whatever fate was in store for her. It seemed like a long time. But it was only the twenty minutes before she was shoved again from behind, situated into place, and someone began fastening something to the rope around her wrists—a line.
“If you stumble, catch yourself. If you fall, get up. Nobody’s slowing down for you until you get to the trade-off. Got it?”
It was Wesson, and his voice cut her to the bone.
But he was gone, too.
She tried inflecting the wordless groaning she was able to make to get something more from him. But he ignored her.
“Never taken a retrainee,” one of them said. “I’m surprised the camp isn’t gawkin’.”
“Camp won’t miss her.”
Those were her old friend’s last parting words before she heard the clicking of tongues and the jangling of bridles as they got underway, and the line tied to her wrists tugged her roughly forward through the glow of pre-dawn.
Gray was 16 years old again, except this time she was being led back to the caravan.
* * *
Once they were out of sight of camp, the bag was taken from her and she was finally permitted to see where they were going. Gray blinked, the knot in her stomach loosening from nothing else but exhaustion as she took in her surrounds: the rope tied her to a line of eight corpsmen, and she recognized them all as being those rejected from service during the inspections. They were a ragged bunch, limping along and lead by a man on horseback. Ahead of him were two more riders, each heavily armed.
It was several hours of hard walking in the baking sun, going on in pensive, defeated, anxious silence, before anything changed. Before the exhaustion settled into her bones and the wind pulled from her sails. It wasn’t that she wasn’t terrified, it was that she had no fight left in her. And that was part of what changed now.
They stopped, and Gray, too tired to even continue imagining the worst anymore, assumed that this was the destination. The riders dismounted, and people spoke in hushed voices so that Gray could barely hear.
The trade was happening, and between the trembling, the thoughts broken and scattered by fatigue, and the ghost of yesterday’s drugs, Gray couldn’t make much more sense than that. They must have been the rejected prospects, being dumped on somebody else in exchange for… for whatever. Paper. Light bulbs. Canvas. Anything but more useless humans.
She didn’t dare wonder what their fates would be, instead sitting still and anxious on the dirt, waiting for a hand to drag her to her feet so that she, too, could be sold to the wasteland.
Hoofbeats disappeared down the road along with the shuffle of bonds. Eventually, Gray was alone with the three Corps riders.
“Who they savin’ her for?” one of the men grunted.
“The next client,” another snapped. “Due at dusk.”
“How much does a trained bondie like her go for these days, anyways? Those eight we just got rid of were barely fit to dig a ditch.”
“Goes for more than you think. Now you two get goin’, I do the rest of this job alone.”
A gun cocked, and Gray stiffened.
“You sure?”
“You’re damn right, I’m sure,” he said in a low voice. _“_This the goddamn protocol. Now get.”
Two of the men mounted their horses, and after a few more mumbled sentiments exchanged, they too faded into the distance. After a minute, all she could hear were locusts.
She sat like that for another five, ten minutes, as her unseen companion walked a slow, steady circle in the dirt, not saying a word. Gray was thirsty, but dared not bring attention to herself.
Eventually, those footsteps came to a stop nearby, and she could feel him standing close. So close that she almost jumped when he spoke.
“You’re not gonna like your new holders,” he said quietly, voice raspy from smoking. “They don’t do things like we do.”
Gray shifted herself to face in his direction, trying to make out his silhouette through the burlap weave. He snorted.
“S’funny to me that after all these years, they still don’t tell you enlisteds anything. Not like knowin’ changes things. In fact, knowin’ would just make you more scared of ‘em. You know what they do, corpsman?”
She sat motionless, tense, listening.
“They eat humans,” he said. “They take us, grind us up, turn us into wet ration. That’s the real reason we fight ‘em. ‘Naks don’t grow nothin’, don’t raise nothin’. They farmin’ us, though.”
No, it couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be. Gray made a noise through her gag and shook her head. The man laughed bitterly.
“It’s true! You think they raid the caravans for pencils and indigo? C’mon, bondie, you can’t tell me you really believe we survive ‘em because we’re just that good. Humans are just resourceful and plucky enough. No… they let us win. They let us live our lives, be fruitful and multiply. We bargained for it, kid. S’where you’re goin’.”
She imagined it, the picture terrified her. She saw blood and gore, bones being turned to pinkish paste. This was her fate? This… this is what retraining was? Fuck the Corps, fuck the Corps, fuck the Corps…
Liars, all of them. Finch was right, who cared if General Pierce was ever real, that wasn’t the myth that the entire fucked place was based on. Since childhood, she knew the Corps helped hold the line against a shadowy and distant enemy, a race created to be human, but better.
And then, for the past seven years, Gray learned all the ways that the Corps did what it did. How the telegraph lines were laid to keep the camps connected. How their power and reputation gave them access to some of the best weapons deals available in the Southland, and how Corps-packed bullets were known to be the most reliable on the market. How they were the only organization in the waste—no, maybe the whole state—that freely and expertly trained bonds for more than menial labor.
How they were the only ones to eventually free them.
Gray wanted so badly to hate the Corps. But she couldn’t.
She couldn’t and it hurt because everything she knew was being taken from her, and as she thought about ‘Naks eating people again she remembered the liquid pumped into Rice’s side, and it all made sense, such horrible sense—
CRACK.
Thupt.
“Hk—!”
Crash, thud.
Gray gasped through the gag and froze.
Shot, shot, h-he’s been shot—
Gray shuffled herself backward until she collided with a rock and then threw herself to the ground, blood running cold with sheer panic. She couldn’t get hold of her breathing, her chest felt like it was going to explode and tears stung her eyes.
It took everything she had not to moan in despair when she heard the sound of boots approaching. Death approaching. Death was approaching. He shifted, turning on his heel. Searching. Didn’t have to search long.
She was grabbed, lifted to her feet, and the bag was ripped away. She cried out at the suddenness of it, the fact that there was no chance whoever had her now had any better intentions than a ‘Nak or a brig. In the span of a single morning, Gray had been kicked down to the lowest rungs of the social order. Carrion, ripe for the poaching. She screwed her eyes shut, not wanting to look him in the eye.
The gag was taken from her too, and the cry that escaped was long and agonized as her body pitched, ready to run.
“No! No, let me go!” she sobbed.
“Gray, it’s me! It’s me.”
A pair of arms surrounded her, the ground fell away.
It was him.
But he was a ‘Nak.
“No, no, no, stop, stop—“
“Gray!”
He crushed her to him, and he grabbed her by the wrists to hold her still, so still. She fought him, her human’s strength against his.
“Gray.”
Life left her, and next all she could do was sob into his dusty, armored shoulder. Cry tears she’d been holding back for seven years. This was… this was grief.
She grieved for her short, miserable life. She grieved for her species, for doing this to itself. She grieved for the eight bonds from earlier, for the countless rejects she’d seen during her time with the Corps. She grieved for Finch and Wesson and their friendship. She grieved for once having been sure of anything in life.
The giant just held her tight and stroked her hair.
When the tears dried and all that was left of the corpsman named Gray was an exhausted, empty husk draped over Rice’s shoulder, he loosened his grip and sat on the ground. Girl in lap, safe within the fortress of his body.
“Tell me you don’t do it,” she whispered. “Please. I need to hear it from you.”
“I don’t do what,” he murmured.
“You e-eat us.”
He hesitated and her heart shuddered.
“Let me go, let me fucking go!”
His massive hands were on her arms now, holding her still in a completely different way. Their eyes met, his hard blue ones and her agonized brown.
“Let me show you something.”
“Rice, Rice, please… just let me go. Let this be over.”
He shook her. “Gray, it’s not what you think. I have to show you.”
She trembled.
“Gray, please. I’ll explain.”
“Ellis,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Ellis! My name is Ellis!”
“…Ellis Gray.”
Rice said it slowly, trying it out. But hearing it brought her to tears again, stirring something old and worn and fragile in her, and she buried her face in his shoulder once more.
“It’s going to be OK, Ellis. It’s going to be OK.”
