Page 18 of Mutant Mine

As I’m hauled across the canteen, there’s a cacophony of hooting and jeering. I feel like a piece of fresh meat being dangled in front of a pack of wolves.

I refuse to give them the satisfaction of crying. I can’t stop myself from shaking though. I have to fix my eyes on the ground, because looking at the crowd makes me dizzy with fear.

As we reach the center of the room, the shouting falls away to chatter, then attentive silence. I’m dropped to my knees on the hard floor.

Roth says from above me, in a slow, quizzical tone:

“And what is this?”

I look up. He’s sat at a table in the middle of the room. He seems to have been playing a game of cards with a few other men.

“It’s the guard from our block,” says the shifty-eyed man. “The one you spoke to sometimes. I thought you might… want him.”

There is a long, painful pause as Roth looks down at me. He’s considering my fate as casually as someone else might peruse the lunch menu.

Just put me with the others, I think hard at him.Say that you’ve got no idea who I am, and dump me in a cell with the others.

Then Roth speaks again.

“Take him to my rooms.”

“No!” I plead, but it’s too late. The two men at my sides are dragging me again, and this time I’m fighting for all I’m worth, kicking and scratching — but there’s too many of them. I’m surrounded.

It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless. Soon my feet are knocked out from under me altogether, and they simply lift me between them. Rough hands grab at my legs and shoulders and ribs.

Roth is watching all this coolly, still holding his hand of cards. Perhaps he’ll turn back to his game once this little interruption is finished.

“Handle him with care,” he says. “I want him whole. Undamaged.”

I think of the shifty-eyed man’s comment aboutnot harming my pretty face.

Roth disappears from view as I’m hauled out of the room like a sack of potatoes. All I can do is howl — and hate him, hate him,hate him.

12

Roth

I AMnot particularly good at cards. But we are playing a game of luck today, so that does not matter. I will simply play the hand that I am dealt.

I find it helpful to mingle with the men, be amongst them. It allows me to judge their shifting moods. And my presence reminds them that they fear me. They quickly forget that, once I am out of sight. Their imaginations start running away with them.

There is a stirring in the room. Like wind through grasses, the men are whispering then falling silent.

When I turn, they dump her at my feet.

It is a heady mix of emotions, seeing Finch before me again. Fierce relief comes first, when I see that she is truly alive. For all that I have felt the strange itch of her presence, I do not understand where that feeling comes from, so could not trust it without the evidence of my eyes.

Irritation is next. Who is this stranger, for her presence to affect me so strongly?

Regret. She has clearly suffered over the past few days. She looks shaken and exhausted.

Anger, when I see the bruises that these careless men have left on her skin.

There is pride, too, that she has survived as I anticipated. I wonder where she managed to hide herself away? Her faceand posture still hold such defiance.

But relief defeats all other feelings, and I feast my eyes on her.

Huddled on the floor at my feet, Finch is terrified. That much is obvious, even though she holds her back straight and her jaw tight.

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