Page 65 of Calico Descending

Shrugging, she lowers her head, diverting her gaze from mine. “Doesn’t hurt as much, I guess. Whatever it was, it’s going away.”

“You were in estrus. From what I understand, its, uh … a reproductive thing.”

“That he did to me.”

“He hurt you, yes. But it was the doctors who did this to you. What Cadmus did was a consequence of that.”

“Are you excusing what he did to me? Do you have any idea how much pain he caused?”

“I’m not excusing him, at all. What he did to you was wrong. But the pain will come back with your cycle. That’s what it is. A cycle. That’s what those bastards did to us.”

She lifts a strand of my hair, the evidence of our mutual suffering. No other girls in Calico were permitted long hair. “You, too?”

“Yeah.” I don’t dare tell her there’s only one effective means of relieving that pain.

Her eyes shift toward where Valdys sits behind me then back to me. “Did he hurt you, too?”

There’s a small bit of remorse in my heart when I lower my head. “He didn’t hurt me that way, no.”

She whips her head toward Cadmus and back. “Why would he do something like that? He was supposed to be my Champion.”

“I don’t know. Part of it was biological, I guess, but … I’m not going to make excuses for him.”

In his mind, he was trying to relieve her of the pain, and defied orders to do it, but I don’t tell her that. It doesn’t matter at this point, seeing as she ended up suffering anyway.

“Then, why did you save him? Why wouldn’t you leave him there? Why bring him out here, where he can do it again?”

I can feel Valdys’s gaze on me, perhaps waiting for me to answer that question, and I can’t. After all the encounters I’ve had with Cadmus, I can’t explain why I felt compelled to save him. Maybe a part of me feels guilty for the years that followed that day in the yard. Perhaps a part of me feels sorry for what he’s suffered. Or maybe a small part of me was able to bind emotionally to him that night in his cell. There is no solid answer for why I would bother with him. I just know the thought of them sacrificing him to those monsters was unacceptable to me, and seeing him now has only solidified that decision.

My body is thrown backward, knocking me against the cage beside me, and I smash my cheek into the steel surface of it. The truck squeals to a grinding halt that jostles everyone and everything. Shouting piques my attention, and I push away from the cage, listening to the laughter and gunfire.

Marauders. Has to be marauders.

“Check it out.”

Ducking low, I peek around the silver box, to where a man stands peering into the bed of the truck. From what I can make out in the dark, he’s dressed in leather and the dirty weathered clothing of one who’s spent days roaming the hot desert. Two more hop up onto the bed alongside him.

“’The fuck is this?” one of them asks.

The first one jerks his head toward the other. “Go get soldier boy.” When the one on the left hops down, the other two begin their investigation, taking light and cautious steps toward the cages, behind which we still remain hidden. Valdys moves behind me, his muscles tensing, undoubtedly spoiling for a fight. A gurgled scream is drowned by laughter, as the Legion soldier, no more than twenty years old, is thrown onto the bed of the truck. What looks to be blood coats his face, and I notice one of his ears is already missing.

“What’s the cargo?” the first marauder says to him.

Wheezing as he pushes himself up to his knees, the soldier doesn’t answer at first. One of the marauders, a heavier man with a long black beard, slams his boot into the soldier’s ribs, knocking him to the floor again. The soldier grunts and writhes, curling into the hit.

I can almost feel the rage vibrating through Valdys’s muscles, a beast itself, clawing at his skin, not for the soldier, I’m certain, but perhaps imagining those men finding us.

“You fucking deaf? Do we need to cut the other ear off?”

“Mutations,” the soldier answers through his nasal cavity.

“Mutations?” The incredulous tone of the man’s voice carries an air of amusement. “What kind of mutations? Human? Ragers?”

“Both.” The soldier wipes the blood from his eyes, and manages to push himself onto his knees.

Behind me, Valdys shifts, jerking his head for Neela and I to get behind him. He crouches at the edge of the silver box, where Titus mirrors his stance and gives a nod.

Twisting around, I lift the bottom of the tarp that covers the truck, and my stomach sinks when I find at least thirty men standing outside of the truck. Most of them armed with guns.

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