Page 8 of Us Dark Few

“If there’s one thing to learn, Kanes, it’s this. Braderhelm is unforgiving, and no one cares about your problems. Fall in line, or you’ll die painfully.”

“Why not just kill me now?” she rasped.

His icy stare bore into her like a dagger, and the Captain bent his head until their noses were barely touching.

“Nice try,” he quipped. “I expect you to finish a few work shifts before dying. But keep it up, and I’ll grant your wish. Now, get the hell out of my sight.”

The frigid air between them felt magnetized. Her fingers twitched, poised on the edge of defiance, but Khalani turned and hastily fled before succumbing to those fatal instincts.

After a few steps, she dared a glance back, but he was already gone, leaving behind only a lingering sense of peril. She forced herself to exhale, running a shaky hand through her hair.

Something about the Captain made her hairs stand on end but also compelled her toward a head-on collision. The darker parts of her enjoyed toying with death. She didn’t mind playing dangerous games and winning deadlier prizes.

In fact, she yearned for it.

Because it had to end. Some way or another.

She needed everything to end.

4

We can be nothing together.

She followed the lighted wires embedded in the ceiling, ignoring the blister that popped on her heel. When the tunnel opened to an expansive dusty cavern, the sound of metal grating against stone amplified. Ten-foot-tall lamps were placed around the room, their bright lights illuminating massive boulders of rocks.

She shuffled to a stop against the gravel, locating the source of the pounding. A row of prisoners swung hefty pickaxes against the sheer stone wall, carving a new passageway in the tunnel. A layer of dust hung in the air, and she fought the urge to sneeze.

“Stop slacking!” A burly guard approached an old man in a prisoner uniform, slumped over in exhaustion.

The prisoner said something inaudible to the guard, and the guard bashed the butt of his gun against the prisoner’s head. The prisoner fell face down on the gravel, unmoving.

“Back to work!” the guard yelled at the other prisoners, who didn’t spare the unconscious man another glance. Their facial expressions were blank as they continued to swing the pickaxes toward the rockwall, like they’d seen far worse.

A girl shuffled by, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with gravel. Her light blonde hair was matted to her forehead in sweat, face sunken in, and a thin line of ribs protruded through the patchy holes of her grey garment. Khalani’s eyes widened at the frailness of her body.

The girl couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old and looked like she’d keen over at the faintest breeze. The wheelbarrow probably weighed more than she did.

“Hey,” Khalani whispered, walking toward her.

The frail girl slowly turned her head, and Khalani froze at the expression on her face. Her eyes were a blank void, as if a ghost had walked through her body and taken over.

“What do you want?” the girl asked in a monotone voice.

Khalani’s body felt rooted to the ground. A name. She couldn’t remember the name of the woman the guard had told her to meet. Past details paled to the insurmountable now.

Would Khalani end up like her, a breathing shell who lost any evidence of a previous life?

Was that what she already looked like?

“Why are you not working, prisoner?” a guard shouted. The bulky guard charged forward, and her muscles froze in place. His pale blue eyes gleamed with anger as he pulled out a steel baton and hit the young girl on her lower back, and she collapsed with a pitiful cry.

“No. Please, stop!” Khalani yelled.

“What did you say?” The guard turned to her with a merciless glare and got right up in her face.

Her hands were shaking. “I’m s-sorry, sir. It’s not her fault. I was asking her a question. The Captain sent me here to meet someone.” The name finally blared to mind. “Marcela.”

The guard’s eyes narrowed as he perused her up and down. She gulped and didn’t move an inch. Khalani barely recognized that she’d peed herself a little.

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