Dead and Buryd: A Dystopian Action Adventure Novel (Out of Orbit Book 1) (30 page)

She nodded, gazing up at Edtroka with narrowed eyes. Maybe he was just in a bad mood because of the fight, not that he’d have to do anything about it. Guards didn’t intervene in fights within the block. They simply let it play out until the Veniche inside either broke it up themselves or one of them ended up dead. It wasn’t like there weren’t a hundred more Veniche to take their place. She grimaced, unable to believe she’d even had the thought.

“Well, I should get in there then,” she agreed.

Following him down the path and through the heavy doors into the compound, she placed her bag on the table and let Edtroka search through it. She submitted to the usual hand check to see if she was carrying anything on her and even gave Edtroka a smile as if hoping to cheer him up. Throughout the whole ritual, Edtroka did not say a word.

“Call when you want letting out,” he finally told her as he pushed the block door open.

Georgianna nodded, she knew the routine, yet he insisted on telling her every time she visited. Stepping into the block, she looked around curiously for the men who had been injured. People were milling about in the free space within the block. Others, as she walked past, remained seated in their cells. All the cell doors were open, as they usually were, but she supposed some people just felt more comfortable in their own small space.

“Hey,” she said to a passing man. “You know where the injured guys are from the fight?”

The man glanced over his shoulder and pointed down the row of cells. Thanking him, she patted his shoulder before moving on. Walking down the length of the block, she found one of the men in a cell, looking like he was in quite a bit of pain.

“Hey, you okay?” Georgianna asked. “It’s uh, it’s Geiy, right?”

Geiy nodded, not opening his eyes until she was stood in front of him. Groaning in relief, he moved a bloody hand from his leg where a shard of metal was sticking out of the flesh.

She tried to keep her face impassive at the sight of the metal protruding from Geiy’s leg. She knew from experience that if she let on how bad the injury was, the patient would only become more scared than they undoubtedly were already.

“Geiy, I’m going to be right back, but I need to check on the others, okay?”

He grimaced and nodded, returning his hand to the wound, holding the skin as close together as he could.

As it turned out, Geiy’s injury was the most urgent so she returned to him quickly. One of the other men had little more than bruises, and the other was going to lose his thumb no matter what she did.

Geiy’s injury was mostly superficial. The metal hadn’t gone nearly as deep as she’d thought and hadn’t hit any important arteries. She cleaned out the wound, stitched it up, and gave him two pills, one to stave off infection and one for the pain. It would be difficult for Geiy to keep the wound as clean as Georgianna would have liked, but the Adveni medication would hopefully hold off infection long enough for it to heal a little.

She went to the unlucky man who would lose his thumb next. It was hanging on by so little skin that Georgianna had no choice but to cut it all the way and sew the wound closed over the stump. He was passed out by the time she’d finished, even though she’d given him a pill for the pain at the beginning. Luckily, he had a friend in the cell with him, who promised to look after him and give him the antibiotic when he awoke.

It was as Georgianna was smearing salve onto the third man’s face, the dark bruises forming under his eye and along his jaw, that she heard the conversation going on in the next cell. For a few minutes, she paid it little heed, but with nothing but the sound of her patient’s breathing to listen to, the words drifted innocently through the cell and into her consciousness.

“That’s what I heard,” a man was saying. “The guards are all riled up about it.”

“Yeah, you heard. From who?” a woman asked. “Who tells you anything, Owain?”

“Jurou. He was by the door while they were talking about it,” Owain replied.

Georgianna gave her patient a smile and a roll of her eyes as she gathered up another two fingers of salve, reaching towards his face.

“What do the Vtensu care about a drysta escape? Just more fuel for the fire,” the woman replied cynically. “Anyone who thinks they can get out is deluded.”

“You don’t get it, Nori,” Owain insisted. “It’s that girl, the blonde they sold not long ago and some other guy. Apparently the owner is some big shot.”

Georgianna’s fingers froze, not two millimetres from the man’s face, her heart giving one resounding thump before it stopped dead. She could hear the huff as all her breath left her body, her legs trembling against the flimsy matt on the bed.

Nyah.

“Well, if it’s true, she’ll be back here by sunset,” Nori answered.

Not two moments later, the woman called Nori passed in front of the cell, not even glancing in to see Georgianna frozen in shock. The Adveni knew. They knew that there was to be an attempt to get Nyah and Landon out. Georgianna swallowed the lump in her throat. She’d forgotten where she was, forgotten what she was doing until the bruised man clicked his fingers in front of her face.

She shook her head quickly, taking a deep breath as she smoothed the salve haphazardly onto the bruises and rubbed the residue off onto the side of her leg.

“You alright there, Med?” he asked.

How could they have known? There had probably been more than one blonde sold from the drysta yard, but it was too much of a coincidence that they would be escaping today. It had to be Nyah. Georgianna nodded, glancing at her patient and attempting a smile. It came out more like a grimace and she quickly grabbed up her bag.

“You’re all done. I’ve got to go!”

She was already half-running through the cell block as she dug the tsentyl from her bag and pressed her finger and thumb to opposite sides of the cube, sending the signal so that a guard would let her out of the block.

It took Edtroka a few minutes to reach the door and unlock it, something that Georgianna didn’t usually notice. Tapping her foot impatiently as she wrung her hands together in front of her body, she was barely able to force the reassuring smile onto her face as the thick metal door opened with a resounding scrape. Perhaps if she hurried, she would be able to get to Keiran and Taye in time. If she ran north from the compound towards the Adveni quarters, not returning to the tunnels, she might be able to catch them before Nyah and Landon left the house. If they couldn’t see their back-up, surely they wouldn’t run.

Submitting to the search was torture, trying to stand still and not look like she was screaming obscenities in her head. She had to get back, she had to warn them. She didn’t know how an Adveni had found out about the escape and she didn’t care: she just needed to make sure that they weren’t caught.

By the time she stepped out of the compound and into the bright sunshine, it was already past sun-high. Not by a lot, but it was definitely too late to call off the escape. They would already be on the move, Nyah and Landon would have already made a run for it. That was, if they hadn’t been caught already, the moment they stepped out of the house.

With the fear that her friends were already on their way to the compound burning through her body, she couldn’t wait until she reached the tunnels before breaking into a run.

 
32
Running into Oppression

 
Her sides were in a stitch, the muscles in her legs beginning to burn as Georgianna sprinted through the tunnel back towards the main line. The rumour she’d heard in the compound had set her mind racing. Not that what she had heard between the two prisoners could really be considered a rumour. There was far too much truth to it, too much information already known. It was no hunch the Adveni guards had—they knew about the escape. They knew who was escaping, which could mean they also knew who was involved.

The tunnel travelled underneath the expanse of open ground between the city limits and the compound, and then the eastern side of the city. It ran directly beneath one of the broader streets, where a number of large Adveni buildings had been erected, holding everything from shops to military training facilities. Javeknell Square, where it ended, formed the buffer between the Adveni districts and the Veniche, a place where rebels and criminals were executed for their crimes. The Adveni made a spectacle of it, important men giving speeches about the importance of their laws. Georgianna avoided it as often as possible, as did many other Veniche, but she had seen enough to know that Javeknell Square was not where you ever wanted to end up.

With her thoughts passing to and fro within her head, Georgianna considered checking the square for any news, but she quickly dismissed the idea. Prisoners were always taken to the compound before being executed, the Adveni taking their time in asking questions and getting all the information they could before they killed someone. Belsa, especially, were kept for days or weeks at a time before being taken to the square. If they were lucky, or if they cooperated, they were given the rope, a quick death. If they held out, however, or if they were especially important, like Beck would be, they were collared.

Georgianna knew that it involved a cinystalq collar, but she’d been told that it was stronger, worse, specifically designed to make a death as long and as painful as possible. Georgianna had never seen anyone collared, but she had heard enough to know that its barbaric brutality was something she did not want to witness.

Once she hit the main tunnel and was heading north, she had to stop running. The number of people walking along the line made it impossible to run unhindered. Georgianna walked as briskly as she could, weaving in and out amongst the people, dodging into any small gap she could find to overtake those who were happy to meander at a leisurely pace.

She glanced over her shoulder continuously, chewing on her lip and the inside of her cheek as she scanned for Adveni around her. Agrah soldiers walked the lines regularly looking for those who would try to pick pockets or ambush people using the tunnels, or simply to get from one place to another, and Georgianna couldn’t risk running into one of them now, not when she could barely keep her breath on an even keel.

The first tunnel heading west was quieter than the main line, and Georgianna broke into a run. She dodged around people as she ran, occasionally bumping shoulders and tripping over her own feet. Furious calls pursued her.

The sun was blinding after the tunnels’ darkness, despite the tall, oppressive buildings. Once she stood outside one of the western tunnel entrances, sometimes known as the Camps Line, it took Georgianna a moment to gather her bearings before she set off down the street, still having to avoid the crush of bodies as she went.

What if they were already caught? What if she was running into a trap? She knew that she shouldn’t be thinking the worst, but she couldn’t stop herself asking the questions over and over, not when people she cared about were involved. Nyah and Taye would be hauled to the compound. Keiran and Wrench strung up next to Landon as a warning to those who would attempt the same.

The building Keiran and Wrench had decided on for removing the collars was further north in the district, closer to the Adveni dwelling quarters so that they could reach it quickly and get the Adveni off their tail. However, Georgianna took a sharp turn east, running along the street that ran parallel to one of the tracks leading out towards the camps. It was still early, but maybe they’d made faster work of the tracking cinystalq collars. Perhaps she was overreacting, everything had gone according to the plan and though the Adveni knew of the escape attempt, they had acted too late to catch anybody.

All along the street, Veniche were returning to work after being given a short time to get something for their lunch. Georgianna darted between them, slipping through large crowds in the hopes that the sheer number of people going about their daily business would stop anybody giving her a second look.

The building she wanted was old and rundown, the Adveni not paying enough attention to the disused buildings in the Oprust district to attempt fixing them up. Georgianna slipped down the gap between the building and its neighbour. She brought her hand down to her hip, moving her bag further behind her.

Coming to the thick wooden door in the middle of the side wall, Georgianna finally paused. With her hand on the handle, she took a few deep breaths, steadying her nerves. If Adveni were inside, if they knew enough of their plan to know whoever turned up here could be involved, she had to look like this were simply a mistake.

Georgianna took another breath, holding it behind pursed lips as she turned the handle, pushing the door carefully open. Dust from the uneven wooden floors billowed and swirled at the burst of new air, catching in her nose and making her sneeze. Then she stepped into the shadows.

 
33
Lies in the Dust

 
Georgianna stepped into the bare room, pushing the door closed behind her and locking out the shards of light that had thrown themselves across the floor. The glass pane in the door was so thick with dust and grime that only sparse drops of reflected sunshine sprinkled across the wooden slats.

Her heart was racing, thumping so fiercely in her chest that she could feel the pain of it below her breast, her breath coming in quick, shallow pants that she couldn’t control. The building stood far enough away from the main street so that the bustle of activity in the district was dulled to a deafening silence. Only the sound of her breath and her heart hammered through the void.

She glanced behind her towards the door before she looked around the room again. From the looks of it, nobody had been here in months. She knew Keiran had been here before, he had to have been to have told her where to go, but the layer of dust on the floor looked as undisturbed as fresh freeze snow.

She called in the quietest whisper:

“Hello?”

Slow, nervous steps led her across the bare room, further into the small, dark building. Everything was silent, nothing disturbed, and she could only hope that it meant the Adveni had at least not known about this meeting place. She was just about to turn around and head back towards the door when next to the wall, in the shadows, a movement caught her eye. It shifted, bright eyes gleaming at her through the dark, and after a moment of staring at her with a suspicious gaze, a body materialised as if out of the brickwork.