The Breakers
Light Find You
Genre: Adult Dystopian
Word Count: Approx. 109,000
Status: Complete, seeking publication
Sequels: One, complete
Synopsis: After a failed rebellion, hundreds of defeated rebels were stripped of all citizenship and sentenced to life underground – of the rocks and darkness. Men and women were separated to prevent regrowth, and, thirteen years later, Peter Haynes is already eighteen. But he’s used to the dirt. He just wants to live. Peter and the other prisoners have only two options – rise, and fight their prison guards back to the surface before becoming too old like their fathers, or accept their eternal fate of imprisonment. The cost could mean more deaths than the still bodies that already litter the floors, and Peter torments over whether life above ground is worth fighting for. But when a reckless young leader makes that decision for everyone and ignites the embers of revolution in their cavernous tomb, Peter’s father falls mysteriously ill, and getting him to the surface is the only way to save his life. Peter must take arms – rusty pipes and shivs – do what is called for to at last break his fate.
Reflecting poignant themes of war and death, inner and outer darkness, and the longing of a future for mankind, Breakers tells the story of a youthful generation refusing to be broken, an older one refusing to let go, and the struggle over both physical and mental illness. They act on their leader’s words: There’s a better place out there. If you fight for it.
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
Sun glared across the steel and pierced into the child’s eyes, causing him to wince. It burned red beneath his lids, and a large hand clutched him too hard, convulsing in involuntary beats like a ticking clock.
A strangled choke pulled the boy’s attention to his father, and like a map he followed the man’s taut, pained expression down to the floor.
“Regretting yet?” A sallow, bald soldier sneezed into his black uniform, smelling of gunpowder. He twisted a black metal band with a red light hard around the child’s ankle with both hands. The boy looked down in fright and glanced back up at the tower that was his father; a tall, sturdy man with gray hair backlit by the setting sun and deep brown eyes steadily forward. Floating dust billowed past him like glitter and a thick metal door hung open on glinting hinges, stairs climbing after. His other hand, the one not holding his son’s, clasped a stomach wound, and he responded to the guard with a cough.
“I’ll never regret freedom.”
“You’ll regret dying for it.” The guard rose from the child and turned to face him. The prisoner’s eyes grew milky as blood crawled beneath his nails. But the father replied clearly once more, keeping his hazy gaze on the guard.
“Wrong again.”
The guard grunted. He looked at the bracelet already fixed upon the tall man’s ankle. Red light spilled through semidarkness and obscured the tile in violent, fiery hues. “I suppose I didn’t need to waste a band on you…” he muttered.
The other hiccupped with a cough and turned down his face, red phlegm spraying from his lips.
The little boy clung to his father – scared, confused, and no older than nine – the guard eyed the brown-haired youth almost warily.
“I’m sorry,” he said flatly. Then he moved towards the door.
“Wait!” the boy said, side-stepping around his father’s leg. “Are you getting a doctor?”
The guard reached for the knob and shook his head. Sunlight reflected off his long fingernails. “He won’t pass sixty ticks, son.”
Shadow swept over the boy’s face as the door shut.
Total darkness, save the faint blue glow of a wall clock, enclosed them. In the quiet, its ticks could be heard, another heart beating.
The boy’s father doubled over. Bloody light from his bracelet illuminated his face, exposing pain upon each line.
Helpless, the boy reached for his cheek.
With slow, heavy thumps, the father’s knees found the floor. His son reached for his ear, little hands trying to feel, trying to help. The father looked into his child’s eyes while blood glossed his lips.
“My sweet boy.” His eyes were soft as he blinked tears from them. With another blink, his face twitched once – a horrible, sudden contort – but it was gone an instant later.
The child mirrored his tears. With another tumbling, wet cough, the man fell forward, catching himself on the tile with one hand. He hung his head there, eyes tightly closed, drawing in his last breaths as if revering these final acts of life. A moment later, tilting carefully to one side, he thumped down. “Come on…” he croaked, inviting the boy to lie with him with a gentle wave of his fingers. “Come on…”
When they were both on the floor, he took his son’s hand in both of his, eyes closed, mouth open.
“What’s happening, Daddy?” the boy whispered.
“I’m going to go,” he mumbled, lips barely touching each other.
“Please don’t.” The boy began to cry.
“No,” he crooned, putting a hand on his son’s cheek. “Can I ever leave you for real?”
“No,” the son answered, but it was a sob.
“That’s right,” he whispered, fingers trembling over the boy’s skin. His voice grew hoarse. “It will be hard...” He squeezed the little hand. The boy nodded, tears streaming. “…and dark.”
The boy burrowed into his father’s chest, breathing in the earthy smell of the cool, leather coat. He could hear shaky words breathed like a promise. “Light will find you…”
And the man coughed once more, loud, like rock hitting a metal wall. “You’ve already made me… pr…” The breath escaped him, and he could only mouth what he had meant to say.
The little boy closed his eyes. Strained breaths caught into gasping chokes. He began counting. With each tick of the clock, he cringed a little more.
Past thirty.
Past forty.
Fifty-two.
Fifty-nine…
At the sixty-first tick, the father died. Expression peaceful, embracing his greatest love.
Minutes passed like hours. With a small hand, the boy pried his fingers under the pewter chain on the man’s neck. It tinkled as the heavy tag bumped down the ball chain, lifted from its owner’s head.
The boy cradled it in the palm of his hand – a dog tag, engraved with his father’s name, a number and a hand-scratched line indicating it belonged to a Common’s Rebellion Soldier.
He brought it around his own neck, and the cool metal chain dug into his skin.
Once more, he curled up at the dead body and closed his eyes, wrapping the cool, black leather coat of his father in his fist, smooth as it ran through his grasp. He dreamed of fall leaves and a ticking clock. He dreamed of a tall man lying down next to him.
Thirteen years later.
Knuckles whacked Peter into the wall. Granite scraped beneath his feet as he caught himself on the stone and blood splattered like paint onto his pants, but it was black. So were the hands patting him down, shadowed.
They were old. Bones probed through loose skin, searching for food or possessions in his pockets. Peter hung at the earthen wall and panted. Letting them.
“I don’t have anything,” he breathed. He raised his eyes to the dark ceiling like he’d been through this before. The assaulters remained silent, never to speak, faces smeared in dirt and age. Some bent to pad his pant pockets. Peter kicked one off and jerked back, stone stabbing into his shoulder blade.
“Hey!”
The old thieves scrambled away at the loud, echoing voice. Peter exhaled, looking down the cavern to the sound.
Although tall, the figure’s tread over the soil was gentle and smooth. Darkness screened him like everything else, but rusty brown eyes reflected like a cat’s. He turned his head to watch the old men dodge past him and then back at Peter.
“You hurt?” Up close, his voice was soothing and relaxed. A thumb brushed the cut on Peter’s temple and examined the wound. Peter’s eyes twitched and he pushed the hand away, not unkindly.
“Fine, Chris.”
Chris studied him for another still moment and then patted him on the cheek.
“You look tough.”
Peter scoffed. They began to move together towards the other end of the tunnel. Next to him Chris’ pace was silent, unnoticeable despite his size. He looked like he might belong down here. Peter couldn’t imagine him as anything other than greys and browns, only those russet eyes and smile there to light the ashes.
Old footprints patterned the dirt before them, but they were all theirs. No one else’s. Peter felt the soles of his shoes fall into familiar grooves, but it didn’t comfort him.
“You should just let me go alone,” said Peter, voice a little curter with nerves.
Chris didn’t respond. Peter thought he heard him swallow.
Threads of cobweb hung down from industrial lights embedded into the earthen ceiling, and Peter and Chris ducked under them, getting closer to the end.
Ahead, another young man leaned at the end of the cave’s tunnel, next to the elevator. Peter stopped. Immediately Chris’ hand took his shoulder, trying to urge him forward.
“What’s he doing here?” said Peter.
“He wanted to come,” said Chris.
“No.” Peter shoved Chris off and lashed back, refusing to move forward.
“He’s old enough now,” Chris coaxed.
“We don’t need three in Interrogation,” said Peter, and the boy ahead heard, rubbing his forehead dully.
“Jeremy wanted to come,” Chris repeated.
“Why?” said Peter, finally stumbling forward once more.
“Same reason as you,” said Chris. “Because he has to.” Peter couldn’t reply, muscles tightening.
Face to face with the younger boy, Peter sighed. Jeremy, seventeen, looked up sharply with cool, ice-colored eyes. He was small-built, naturally quiet, but with enigma behind every move. He shifted his slight weight, and Peter glanced over him twice, trying to catch what he might be saying.
“Don’t be scared,” Peter nearly barked, choking back something in his throat.
Jeremy pursed his lips and shook his head. His voice was flat and quiet.
“I’m not –”
“They’ll tie you like this.”
Peter took Jeremy’s wrists and crossed them, squeezing painfully hard. Jeremy nodded, taking in unexpected breath.
“Okay?” said Peter. Jeremy’s pulse pumped against Peter, protesting his unwelcome grasp.
Peter hung his head, but for some reason, couldn’t release his hard grip. His hands began to shake.
“Peter.” Chris took his shoulder and gently reeled him back. Peter released, breathing unevenly. Jeremy watched Peter with his hawkish gaze, rubbing his wrists as Peter and Chris moved for the elevator.
***
Lone raindrops pelted from the tiny hole above, landing with a silent pat on the table’s center. A thin, gray light shone high, but corrupted in blackness before reaching the table.
With a screeching, vibrating scrape from above, a shot of further gray light colored the walls and revealed a silver ladder below the opening. Streams of rain dribbled down and splattered against the table in clumps, and Jeremy tried to nudge his bound hands to the drops and feel the cool rainwater. Chris and Peter leaned back awkwardly in their chairs, watching without a word either the ladder or the rain – whichever held their interests more.
Peter, flexing his veins against the wristbands in rhythm, chose the rain.
Someone climbed down the ladder, boot squeaking on the last prong. When his foot stepped onto the floor, the opening above sealed and his tall figure drowned into shadow.
The silence that followed was venomous.
One clap of his hands triggered to life two oil lamps hidden at the ends of the room and illuminated his features.
A dark grey trench coat covered powerful shoulders and nearly fell to his ankles, the name Walters embroidered vertically onto the lapel. On his head rested a black cocked head embellished in gold, and a foot long, gold handgun hung from his belt tightly fit around his paunch. Two newly-revealed guards, stripped of their total darkness, glanced towards Walters mechanically; one of them giving a contorting twitch. There was something sharper about them. Something animal in how they watched their commander, and the look unnerved Peter, who shifted his feet below the table so that the red light of the metal band around his foot burned into the skin of his other ankle.
Now very dim, each face around the table could be faintly made out, aglow by their identical red-lighted ankle bracelets. Seeing all three prisoners were young, Walters gave a small twitch of his face.
Then he shot them a grey-toothed smile.
“Which of you are we pretending is Benedict Callahan this time?”
He slid his eyes around, resting on Peter. They were black, but streaks of blood traced around his pupils. His skin was pale.
“Not you again?”
Peter didn’t respond, inhaling.
Walters smiled. He crossed thick, gloved hands behind him and moved around the table, where the floor creaked beneath his heavy step. “We both know the fearless leader isn’t you, boy. What’s your name?”
“Peter Allan Haynes,” said Peter. Chris, sitting to the right, glanced at him sideways.
“Well, Peter.” Walters stopped and snaked his covered hands over the back of an empty chair. “Welcome back. Milon is not happy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Peter bit. He ran a fingernail along the string digging into his wrist.
“Oh, it’s very happy with you,” said Walters. He shook his head and sat in the chair. “As is the Chairman. I’m the one in trouble.”
Jeremy cleared his throat and leaned away from Walters, seated closely.
“The country you lost your war against is pleased with your new permanent home, Peter Allan Haynes. But they know of Mr. Callahan. And they’re losing faith that I know how to control him.”
“Do you?” said Peter.
The façade swiped from Walters’ face. A dark scowl melted down it. He glared at Peter.
“I have nothing to fear from a leader who sends the least among his followers to face me. Now. Tell me what he’s planning, and I’ll let you return to your little burrows.” The glow of insult lit the coals of Walters’ gaze, and Chris hummed a low, exhaling growl in response.
Walters waited.
“Tell me,” he grumbled again.
Peter and Chris said nothing. Jeremy’s icicle gaze pressed into Peter the entire time, following his lead a little uncertainly.
Walters banged the table with his hand and shot straight from his seat. He drew his long handgun and pointed it at Peter. The two dark silhouettes at the edge of the room tensed grips on their guns.
“STOP trying to protect him!” Walters jumped around the table, closer to Peter. His voice dropped. “He’s the one who will get you all killed.” With a single hand, he grasped Peter around the throat, still aiming the handgun at his face. Peter jolted aside, trying to grunt a breath.
“Is it worth it?” Walters whispered in a low screech, feeling the dampness of Peter’s skin. He shook the gun. “Is it worth it?” Reflexive tears budded in Peter’s eyes but he grunted breath and tensed his muscles.
Chris tried to heave his chair into them with a cry. Before it could tip, one of the hidden guards shoved down his shoulder with such unnatural strength, the shunting of joints in his bones could be heard.
Peter fixed blurry eyes on Walters instead of the blackness of the handgun’s twelve-inch barrel. He choked out an answer.
“It will be.”
Fear flashed in Walters’ eyes for just a moment, so brief that in the dark it might have been mistaken for something else. Anger maybe.
“What are you going to do?” Chris breathed next to Peter. His head was turned away, eyes closed in pain. “Shoot him?”
No. The pedestal holding Milon’s constitution, the Human Preservation Rights, flashed black-and-white in Peter’s mind, only ever seen in a photograph. It forbid unsolicited slaughter of the defeated rebellion’s prisoners. Suppressed rage trembled on Walters’ face for several seconds, knowing. And then he roared, spun around, and –
BANG!
The prisoners jumped.
Blood bloomed across the stomach of the other guard, Walters’ own soldier. But he did not fall. Or even wince. He looked down slowly, mildly calculating, and then back up at Walters. The grip on his weapon not even loosened. Peter’s jaw fell, sputtering mutely as if he’d had a disease, disbelieving what he witnessed. Jeremy raised his bound hands to his face, the closest to the soldier but unable to watch.
Instead of retort, the guard only rumbled, low.
Pride touched Walters’ thin smile. He stepped away towards the guard, fingering the holster of his gun. Peter noticed something deeper on the officer’s expression; a hint of fanatic craze as he observed the superhuman soldier. He slid his handgun towards the holster, looking down, but hesitated a second too long. Angled the gun a little too close to his own stomach. Desire lit his eyes. A frown dragged down his face.
Rather than replacing the weapon, he hung it limp at his side before Peter could contemplate anything more.
“So, prisoners.” Walters turned to them. He gestured the soldier with his head, who still stood firmly and stared ahead, unfazed, as blood dripped like a faucet onto the floor. “Tell your precious Ben he’s picking a battle he cannot fight. Just like the one that landed you down here in the first place.
“The HPR might not let me touch you…but I can touch your water. Your food. Your air. And I will.”
Without removing his gaze from Peter, Walters lifted his gun behind him and shot the guard twice more in the limbs. Flesh tore off him with the handgun’s enormous caliber. The guard fell to one knee, but still did not keel over, held onto his gun. Peter winced.
Walters huffed out quiet laughter and walked backwards towards the ladder.
“If they can die…”
A final shot to the head finally ended it for the subhuman guard, hitting the floor on the side of his face.
Walters holstered his gun. He cocked his head.
“…What makes you think Ben won’t?”
Sun glared across the steel and pierced into the child’s eyes, causing him to wince. It burned red beneath his lids, and a large hand clutched him too hard, convulsing in involuntary beats like a ticking clock.
A strangled choke pulled the boy’s attention to his father, and like a map he followed the man’s taut, pained expression down to the floor.
“Regretting yet?” A sallow, bald soldier sneezed into his black uniform, smelling of gunpowder. He twisted a black metal band with a red light hard around the child’s ankle with both hands. The boy looked down in fright and glanced back up at the tower that was his father; a tall, sturdy man with gray hair backlit by the setting sun and deep brown eyes steadily forward. Floating dust billowed past him like glitter and a thick metal door hung open on glinting hinges, stairs climbing after. His other hand, the one not holding his son’s, clasped a stomach wound, and he responded to the guard with a cough.
“I’ll never regret freedom.”
“You’ll regret dying for it.” The guard rose from the child and turned to face him. The prisoner’s eyes grew milky as blood crawled beneath his nails. But the father replied clearly once more, keeping his hazy gaze on the guard.
“Wrong again.”
The guard grunted. He looked at the bracelet already fixed upon the tall man’s ankle. Red light spilled through semidarkness and obscured the tile in violent, fiery hues. “I suppose I didn’t need to waste a band on you…” he muttered.
The other hiccupped with a cough and turned down his face, red phlegm spraying from his lips.
The little boy clung to his father – scared, confused, and no older than nine – the guard eyed the brown-haired youth almost warily.
“I’m sorry,” he said flatly. Then he moved towards the door.
“Wait!” the boy said, side-stepping around his father’s leg. “Are you getting a doctor?”
The guard reached for the knob and shook his head. Sunlight reflected off his long fingernails. “He won’t pass sixty ticks, son.”
Shadow swept over the boy’s face as the door shut.
Total darkness, save the faint blue glow of a wall clock, enclosed them. In the quiet, its ticks could be heard, another heart beating.
The boy’s father doubled over. Bloody light from his bracelet illuminated his face, exposing pain upon each line.
Helpless, the boy reached for his cheek.
With slow, heavy thumps, the father’s knees found the floor. His son reached for his ear, little hands trying to feel, trying to help. The father looked into his child’s eyes while blood glossed his lips.
“My sweet boy.” His eyes were soft as he blinked tears from them. With another blink, his face twitched once – a horrible, sudden contort – but it was gone an instant later.
The child mirrored his tears. With another tumbling, wet cough, the man fell forward, catching himself on the tile with one hand. He hung his head there, eyes tightly closed, drawing in his last breaths as if revering these final acts of life. A moment later, tilting carefully to one side, he thumped down. “Come on…” he croaked, inviting the boy to lie with him with a gentle wave of his fingers. “Come on…”
When they were both on the floor, he took his son’s hand in both of his, eyes closed, mouth open.
“What’s happening, Daddy?” the boy whispered.
“I’m going to go,” he mumbled, lips barely touching each other.
“Please don’t.” The boy began to cry.
“No,” he crooned, putting a hand on his son’s cheek. “Can I ever leave you for real?”
“No,” the son answered, but it was a sob.
“That’s right,” he whispered, fingers trembling over the boy’s skin. His voice grew hoarse. “It will be hard...” He squeezed the little hand. The boy nodded, tears streaming. “…and dark.”
The boy burrowed into his father’s chest, breathing in the earthy smell of the cool, leather coat. He could hear shaky words breathed like a promise. “Light will find you…”
And the man coughed once more, loud, like rock hitting a metal wall. “You’ve already made me… pr…” The breath escaped him, and he could only mouth what he had meant to say.
The little boy closed his eyes. Strained breaths caught into gasping chokes. He began counting. With each tick of the clock, he cringed a little more.
Past thirty.
Past forty.
Fifty-two.
Fifty-nine…
At the sixty-first tick, the father died. Expression peaceful, embracing his greatest love.
Minutes passed like hours. With a small hand, the boy pried his fingers under the pewter chain on the man’s neck. It tinkled as the heavy tag bumped down the ball chain, lifted from its owner’s head.
The boy cradled it in the palm of his hand – a dog tag, engraved with his father’s name, a number and a hand-scratched line indicating it belonged to a Common’s Rebellion Soldier.
He brought it around his own neck, and the cool metal chain dug into his skin.
Once more, he curled up at the dead body and closed his eyes, wrapping the cool, black leather coat of his father in his fist, smooth as it ran through his grasp. He dreamed of fall leaves and a ticking clock. He dreamed of a tall man lying down next to him.
Thirteen years later.
Knuckles whacked Peter into the wall. Granite scraped beneath his feet as he caught himself on the stone and blood splattered like paint onto his pants, but it was black. So were the hands patting him down, shadowed.
They were old. Bones probed through loose skin, searching for food or possessions in his pockets. Peter hung at the earthen wall and panted. Letting them.
“I don’t have anything,” he breathed. He raised his eyes to the dark ceiling like he’d been through this before. The assaulters remained silent, never to speak, faces smeared in dirt and age. Some bent to pad his pant pockets. Peter kicked one off and jerked back, stone stabbing into his shoulder blade.
“Hey!”
The old thieves scrambled away at the loud, echoing voice. Peter exhaled, looking down the cavern to the sound.
Although tall, the figure’s tread over the soil was gentle and smooth. Darkness screened him like everything else, but rusty brown eyes reflected like a cat’s. He turned his head to watch the old men dodge past him and then back at Peter.
“You hurt?” Up close, his voice was soothing and relaxed. A thumb brushed the cut on Peter’s temple and examined the wound. Peter’s eyes twitched and he pushed the hand away, not unkindly.
“Fine, Chris.”
Chris studied him for another still moment and then patted him on the cheek.
“You look tough.”
Peter scoffed. They began to move together towards the other end of the tunnel. Next to him Chris’ pace was silent, unnoticeable despite his size. He looked like he might belong down here. Peter couldn’t imagine him as anything other than greys and browns, only those russet eyes and smile there to light the ashes.
Old footprints patterned the dirt before them, but they were all theirs. No one else’s. Peter felt the soles of his shoes fall into familiar grooves, but it didn’t comfort him.
“You should just let me go alone,” said Peter, voice a little curter with nerves.
Chris didn’t respond. Peter thought he heard him swallow.
Threads of cobweb hung down from industrial lights embedded into the earthen ceiling, and Peter and Chris ducked under them, getting closer to the end.
Ahead, another young man leaned at the end of the cave’s tunnel, next to the elevator. Peter stopped. Immediately Chris’ hand took his shoulder, trying to urge him forward.
“What’s he doing here?” said Peter.
“He wanted to come,” said Chris.
“No.” Peter shoved Chris off and lashed back, refusing to move forward.
“He’s old enough now,” Chris coaxed.
“We don’t need three in Interrogation,” said Peter, and the boy ahead heard, rubbing his forehead dully.
“Jeremy wanted to come,” Chris repeated.
“Why?” said Peter, finally stumbling forward once more.
“Same reason as you,” said Chris. “Because he has to.” Peter couldn’t reply, muscles tightening.
Face to face with the younger boy, Peter sighed. Jeremy, seventeen, looked up sharply with cool, ice-colored eyes. He was small-built, naturally quiet, but with enigma behind every move. He shifted his slight weight, and Peter glanced over him twice, trying to catch what he might be saying.
“Don’t be scared,” Peter nearly barked, choking back something in his throat.
Jeremy pursed his lips and shook his head. His voice was flat and quiet.
“I’m not –”
“They’ll tie you like this.”
Peter took Jeremy’s wrists and crossed them, squeezing painfully hard. Jeremy nodded, taking in unexpected breath.
“Okay?” said Peter. Jeremy’s pulse pumped against Peter, protesting his unwelcome grasp.
Peter hung his head, but for some reason, couldn’t release his hard grip. His hands began to shake.
“Peter.” Chris took his shoulder and gently reeled him back. Peter released, breathing unevenly. Jeremy watched Peter with his hawkish gaze, rubbing his wrists as Peter and Chris moved for the elevator.
***
Lone raindrops pelted from the tiny hole above, landing with a silent pat on the table’s center. A thin, gray light shone high, but corrupted in blackness before reaching the table.
With a screeching, vibrating scrape from above, a shot of further gray light colored the walls and revealed a silver ladder below the opening. Streams of rain dribbled down and splattered against the table in clumps, and Jeremy tried to nudge his bound hands to the drops and feel the cool rainwater. Chris and Peter leaned back awkwardly in their chairs, watching without a word either the ladder or the rain – whichever held their interests more.
Peter, flexing his veins against the wristbands in rhythm, chose the rain.
Someone climbed down the ladder, boot squeaking on the last prong. When his foot stepped onto the floor, the opening above sealed and his tall figure drowned into shadow.
The silence that followed was venomous.
One clap of his hands triggered to life two oil lamps hidden at the ends of the room and illuminated his features.
A dark grey trench coat covered powerful shoulders and nearly fell to his ankles, the name Walters embroidered vertically onto the lapel. On his head rested a black cocked head embellished in gold, and a foot long, gold handgun hung from his belt tightly fit around his paunch. Two newly-revealed guards, stripped of their total darkness, glanced towards Walters mechanically; one of them giving a contorting twitch. There was something sharper about them. Something animal in how they watched their commander, and the look unnerved Peter, who shifted his feet below the table so that the red light of the metal band around his foot burned into the skin of his other ankle.
Now very dim, each face around the table could be faintly made out, aglow by their identical red-lighted ankle bracelets. Seeing all three prisoners were young, Walters gave a small twitch of his face.
Then he shot them a grey-toothed smile.
“Which of you are we pretending is Benedict Callahan this time?”
He slid his eyes around, resting on Peter. They were black, but streaks of blood traced around his pupils. His skin was pale.
“Not you again?”
Peter didn’t respond, inhaling.
Walters smiled. He crossed thick, gloved hands behind him and moved around the table, where the floor creaked beneath his heavy step. “We both know the fearless leader isn’t you, boy. What’s your name?”
“Peter Allan Haynes,” said Peter. Chris, sitting to the right, glanced at him sideways.
“Well, Peter.” Walters stopped and snaked his covered hands over the back of an empty chair. “Welcome back. Milon is not happy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Peter bit. He ran a fingernail along the string digging into his wrist.
“Oh, it’s very happy with you,” said Walters. He shook his head and sat in the chair. “As is the Chairman. I’m the one in trouble.”
Jeremy cleared his throat and leaned away from Walters, seated closely.
“The country you lost your war against is pleased with your new permanent home, Peter Allan Haynes. But they know of Mr. Callahan. And they’re losing faith that I know how to control him.”
“Do you?” said Peter.
The façade swiped from Walters’ face. A dark scowl melted down it. He glared at Peter.
“I have nothing to fear from a leader who sends the least among his followers to face me. Now. Tell me what he’s planning, and I’ll let you return to your little burrows.” The glow of insult lit the coals of Walters’ gaze, and Chris hummed a low, exhaling growl in response.
Walters waited.
“Tell me,” he grumbled again.
Peter and Chris said nothing. Jeremy’s icicle gaze pressed into Peter the entire time, following his lead a little uncertainly.
Walters banged the table with his hand and shot straight from his seat. He drew his long handgun and pointed it at Peter. The two dark silhouettes at the edge of the room tensed grips on their guns.
“STOP trying to protect him!” Walters jumped around the table, closer to Peter. His voice dropped. “He’s the one who will get you all killed.” With a single hand, he grasped Peter around the throat, still aiming the handgun at his face. Peter jolted aside, trying to grunt a breath.
“Is it worth it?” Walters whispered in a low screech, feeling the dampness of Peter’s skin. He shook the gun. “Is it worth it?” Reflexive tears budded in Peter’s eyes but he grunted breath and tensed his muscles.
Chris tried to heave his chair into them with a cry. Before it could tip, one of the hidden guards shoved down his shoulder with such unnatural strength, the shunting of joints in his bones could be heard.
Peter fixed blurry eyes on Walters instead of the blackness of the handgun’s twelve-inch barrel. He choked out an answer.
“It will be.”
Fear flashed in Walters’ eyes for just a moment, so brief that in the dark it might have been mistaken for something else. Anger maybe.
“What are you going to do?” Chris breathed next to Peter. His head was turned away, eyes closed in pain. “Shoot him?”
No. The pedestal holding Milon’s constitution, the Human Preservation Rights, flashed black-and-white in Peter’s mind, only ever seen in a photograph. It forbid unsolicited slaughter of the defeated rebellion’s prisoners. Suppressed rage trembled on Walters’ face for several seconds, knowing. And then he roared, spun around, and –
BANG!
The prisoners jumped.
Blood bloomed across the stomach of the other guard, Walters’ own soldier. But he did not fall. Or even wince. He looked down slowly, mildly calculating, and then back up at Walters. The grip on his weapon not even loosened. Peter’s jaw fell, sputtering mutely as if he’d had a disease, disbelieving what he witnessed. Jeremy raised his bound hands to his face, the closest to the soldier but unable to watch.
Instead of retort, the guard only rumbled, low.
Pride touched Walters’ thin smile. He stepped away towards the guard, fingering the holster of his gun. Peter noticed something deeper on the officer’s expression; a hint of fanatic craze as he observed the superhuman soldier. He slid his handgun towards the holster, looking down, but hesitated a second too long. Angled the gun a little too close to his own stomach. Desire lit his eyes. A frown dragged down his face.
Rather than replacing the weapon, he hung it limp at his side before Peter could contemplate anything more.
“So, prisoners.” Walters turned to them. He gestured the soldier with his head, who still stood firmly and stared ahead, unfazed, as blood dripped like a faucet onto the floor. “Tell your precious Ben he’s picking a battle he cannot fight. Just like the one that landed you down here in the first place.
“The HPR might not let me touch you…but I can touch your water. Your food. Your air. And I will.”
Without removing his gaze from Peter, Walters lifted his gun behind him and shot the guard twice more in the limbs. Flesh tore off him with the handgun’s enormous caliber. The guard fell to one knee, but still did not keel over, held onto his gun. Peter winced.
Walters huffed out quiet laughter and walked backwards towards the ladder.
“If they can die…”
A final shot to the head finally ended it for the subhuman guard, hitting the floor on the side of his face.
Walters holstered his gun. He cocked his head.
“…What makes you think Ben won’t?”
