The Condemned (22 page)

     
‘So... The only way we can really guarantee that they leave you guys alone, that you can just go on like normal, is if I’m out of the picture?’

    
Amato narrowed his eyes at her and didn’t reply, Leci continued slowly, thinking through her words as she spoke them.

     
‘If I’m gone, you three will be a lot safer. Not just cos of them either.’ She looked at him pointedly. ‘I don’t wanna hurt anyone and I don’t want anyone getting killed cos of me.’

    
He knew what she was suggesting and he was shaking his head before she had even finished.

     
‘Not a chance Leci. You’re not giving yourself up. You really want to end up back in there?’

     
‘No, and I wouldn’t, I already told you I’ll never go back to that cell, but if I’m dead
,
and they know I am
,
they’ll just stop, right?’

    
She felt Amato’s hand pull away from her leg and he
brought his arm down from where it rested on the back of the couch as he sat up straighter and twisted around to face her fully. The movement pushed her feet off him and she bent her knees, gripping the undersides of her thighs lightly, meeting his gaze steadily.

     
‘Stop it right now Alecia.’ His tone was low and she picked up the undercurrent of warning that ran through it.

    
Him calling her Alecia instead of Leci just sounded wrong, as though she were listening to her father instead of Amato, the fact that he seemed to think he could just tell her what she could and couldn’t do seemed to reinforce this feeling and she didn’t like it. She’d never paid any attention to what her real father had told her to do and she didn’t
appreciate
somebody thinking they could just assume his position.

    
She frowned.

     
‘It’s not your decision to make. If I want to go down in a large and noticeable ball of fire and
make sure that
know about it then that’s my choice, not yours.’

     
‘The hell it isn’t.’ He looked angry now and she flinched slightly. ‘You’ve no idea what I’ve done, what I’ve been through for you, you don’t know-' he cut off and shook his head, pushing away
either in disgust
, frustration or annoyance, she couldn’t tell which.

    
He moved to the other end of the couch, as far away from
her as he could without actually getting up and putting the entire room between them and he refused to look at her, focussing his attention on the flickering wick of the candle.

She was smart enough to realise he wasn’t; sulking, he was trying not to become angry and lash out.

Alecia
stayed
silent, watching him, hugging her knees to her chest and trying to decipher whatever it was he was saying.
 

   
She was confused, she was offering him freedom rather tha
n the constant worry that they would
be living in for the rest of their lives otherwise. It seemed impossible to her
that somebody would refuse that, especially
when it could be achieved at no detriment to themselves, yet here he was telling her that somehow he had a right to deny her this sacrifice.

     
‘What have you done?’ She asked him, her voice a tremulous whisper, as though she was afraid of the question, or
, more likely,
of the answer it might provide. ‘What have you been through?’

    
He didn’t move, didn’t give any sign he had heard her for a long time but when he finally looked up at her she saw that he was torn. He wanted to tell her but at the same time he didn’t, as though whatever it was must be so horrible he was afraid she would refuse to ever look at him again or something. She knew suddenly that this was all somehow tied in with what he had refused to tell her once already, the reason
he had been arrested in the first place.

    
Uncurling from her protective ball she crawled along the length of the couch until she was on her knees beside him. Hesitantly she reached out to touch him. He was no longer wearing the jacket
that he had stolen a few days ago
, it hung over the back of a chair somewhere and the faded
,
red
,
sleeveless shirt he wore left his arms bare. She rested her hand just above his elbow, his skin felt warm against her palm and she could feel the power of his muscles beneath her fingertips.

He looked down at the contact and when he shifted his eyes back up to her face
,
she smiled gently.

     
‘You can’t just say no to me like that and expect me to be ok with it without knowing why. I deserve to know. Tell me
,
Amato, please?’

    
He sighed and she could sense him relenting. She felt as though they were hovering over the precipice of some life changing revelation
,
though she couldn’t explain why she felt that way. Chances were
,
whatever it was that he felt was such a big deal would
probably
be a far less serious affair in reality then he
was perceiving
it to be.

     
‘I told you before that after they took you in I didn’t see you again for two years. But that I thought of you?’

    
She nodded.

     
‘I thought about you a lot at first. I didn’t know what
kind of things they’d be doing to you but I knew it couldn’t be good and I knew that whatever it was, it was my fault. I mean, they probably would’ve gotten hold of you eventually, would’ve caught up with you sooner or later. But probably... It ain’t no guarantee is it? If not for me you might’ve managed to stay away from ‘em.’

    
Leci tilted her head; she didn’t know how to respond. She felt like she should be reassuring him or something. What he was saying was true but it didn’t seem like there was any point dwelling on the whole thing now
, pointing fingers and casting accusations would achieve nothing
, she almost said as much but held her tongue. She wanted to hear the whole
thing and interrupting him... s
he might never know the rest.

    
He shook himself, took a deep breath and seemed to gather his thoughts.

     
‘So yeah. I thought about you a lot. Let my conscience eat away at me a bit. I saw you again two years later when they moved your testing up a notch, started you in on the inmates instead of the animals and dead shit. Sometimes I’d be the one who brought then to you, sometimes not. I can remember the first time I saw you again like that. They had you strapped into that chair, you could barely move.’

    
He paused, Leci felt a brief shudder run through her at the thought of being shackled into that horrible contraption and comforted herself with the simple thought ‘never again’.

     
‘You looked diff’rent from when I first saw you. Harder, meaner. I’d remembered you as this poor little kid, your face black with dirt, all smudgy and your eyes big and scared, h
uge bags under em cos you were s
o tired.’ He smiled slightly as though the memory was a fond one or something, Leci raised a brow quizzically but he wasn’t looking at her and didn’t notice that she seemed to be questioning his idea of when she had looked her best.

     
‘You looked like you’d been through a lot, seen a lot of bad stuff. Something in your eyes was sort of..
. I dunno... dead.’ He shrugged.

    
Leci frowned, she didn’t like the picture, it unsettled her to be described in such a way even though she knew what he was talking about
, knew that she had, much of the time, felt pretty dead inside and that had to have been reflected in her glassy stare
.

    
The things she had seen, the things she had done... They had come close to winning a few times, come close to draining the life, the will from her and on occasion she had retreated inside of herself, seeking comfort in some protective inner shell that had been a safe haven, encompassing her like some giant womb and leaving the outer girl barely more than a walking zombie. If she had been a weaker
person, she would ha
ve allowed herself to stay in that self created sanctuary rather than clawing herself out of it and back into her waking
hell.

     
‘When I saw that,
saw
you just sat there
doing
as they told you,
you
never blinked, never said a word, just killed the m
an who was brought out, i
t didn’t make sense to me that you’d have given in so easy after what you put em through to get a hold of you in the first place. It was the first time I’d seen what you could do too. I mean, I’d heard stories of firebugs but I’d never seen one.’ He shook his head as if still in disbelief and she fidgeted uncomfortably.

    
She hadn’t asked to be what she was, hated it, couldn’t change it and didn’t like the attention it brought her, be that from the Officials, from Amato or from anyone else. The way he was speaking about her, as though she were a thing rather than a pe
rson, a mutant and not a girl.
She wanted to touch him, to hold him, to
show
him that she was a woman.

She had pulled her hand away from
his arm while he’d been talking and now she missed the contact.

    
Amato was sat leaning against the back of the couch, his legs out in front of him,
his
feet
planted
on the floor, his arms
were
folded across his chest and he hadn’t looked up at her since he had begun to speak, just watched the candle as though the flickering, dancing motion anchored his thoughts.
 

    
Leci was sideways on, sat facing him with her legs pulled up and her feet curled beneath her, the side of her face rested only inches from his, she found herself sitting on her
hands to keep from reaching out for him.

     
‘I saw you a few times, sometimes you were just like that first time but more often
,
you were you.’ He looked at her and grinned before looking away again.

     
‘Shouting and screaming and fighting even though it would never do you any good. God I loved that about you; your spirit. Every time you gave em hell I was cheering you on inside. Then I got moved, didn’t see you again for ages cos they sent me to work in the Clone Pen and I stayed there until eight months ago, when they had me bring Beriael up and reassigned me to the flame wing. After that I saw you every day.’

    
She listened, amazed, it seemed so strange that he had been so close to her and she had never known he existed until the day she’d first seen him in the cell across the corridor.

He had been there, every day, watching her, silently supporting her.

    
Ok, so she would’ve been more impressed if he had actually tried to do something about it
,
but it made her feel so much better to know that she hadn’t been entirely alone all that time, someone had felt for her, had had sympathy for her plight.

     He
twisted to face
her, reaching out
for her hands. She gave them to him a little numbly, knowing that it was coming, the reason for his arrest, he was about to tell her something
that
he felt was very important. He took her hands in his, they looked so small in comparison, seemed so weak and useless next to his. She squeezed gently, reassuringly and he smiled at her, entwining his fingers with hers.

     
‘You never gave up.’ He said, his voice low,
barely more than
a whisper. ‘After all that time you were still just so... amazing. I don’t know when or how exactly it happened but I fell in love with you
,
Alecia.’

Chapter 19

Leci blinked, stunned. She hadn’t known what to expect but that certainly wasn’t it and she didn’t like this turn of events. He didn’t give her time to respond, it was as if he’d started and so he was going to finish, whether she liked it or not, he’d opened the gate and now he couldn’t close it again until everything was out.

     
‘I watched you
,
and I loved you. I loved your fire, the fire inside I mean, I loved your face and your hair and the way you cried for the people you were hurting, loved the way you fought for what you believed even though you knew it’d just end up getting you hurt. You were persistent and infuriating and irrational a
nd exquisite.
I couldn’t just leave you there, let you rot in that place. It wasn’t happening very fast but I could see that they were going to eventually break you, one day you’d just wake up and decide you couldn’t go on anymore...’