16. Sisters pt.2

Runt.

"So, Rebecca," the man said. He placed a cup of a hot green liquid in front of me. "My, it's been a long time, wouldn't you say?" He sat down opposite me on a cracked leather chair, small clouds of dust puffed out from its cushion.

I eyed my black rings. I had the whip on my lap, but Hera had trained me better than to just lash out. What the fuck do you want?

He sipped his own cup, his sausage like fingers a coat around the dirty metal mug. "You, sweetheart."

I'm not your sweetheart, motherfucker.

He chuckled, low and scraping like gravel. "That's the attitude that got your tongue cut off."

A smile tugged at the edge of my lips. I remember that day. All of us thrown off of the thin mattresses we shared on the floor, stuffed into white dresses that could cut you if you wore them wrong. Smile, sweetheart, the nuns had said. They drew lines across their lips to emphasize it.

Adoption day. That's what it was. It had been every Monday, Friday and Saturday. But the bombs started dropping, and it only became Saturday. That's when he'd walked in. Pale and clammy, reeking of alcohol and clutching a briefcase.

He was one of those men that was…preparing for the war.

In disgusting ways. But the Nuns didn't care, we were products to them. They'd wanted to sell us off as quickly as possible. They needed credits to get onto the ships that would take them up into the sky.

He'd picked me.

I'd told him to jump off a bridge.

The Nuns had thrown me into the basement and cut out my tongue. They needed all of us to be sold, and if I didn't speak, then I'd look more appealing to the sleazy men that strode into the orphanage.

I'd found a way to talk after a week. They'd sown my lips shut after that.

I don't regret it. I leaned forward. You still need to jump off of a bridge.

He licked his bulbous lips and sat forward, too. "Still a fowl mouth after all these years." He stood. "Luckily for you, I like when my women don't make any sound."

The whip was in my hand, my boots on the coffee table, and the harsh slap of the leather tail cut into his forearm. He roared and backpedalled, clutching the gash in his arm. I whipped him again, the tiny explosion filling my gut with something. Adrenaline? No, joy. That's what it was. It replaced the sinking feeling that had settled ever since Tick had died. Kira called it anxiety.

But now it was frothing. Raging. My shoulder burnt as I brought the whip down again. Blood splattered the dust covered leather couches in the room. The gray ash tray dropped and threw a cloud of white into the air. It blinded me for a split second, and he took his chance. He barreled into me and threw me against the window. My head whacked against the pane of glass and the world hazed for a moment.

"You little bitch," he roared, his mouth filling my ear with spit. "Should have just gutted you in the dirt where I found you in Jamestown."

He grabbed a handful of my hair and slammed my head against the glass. My body numbed. The glass splintered as my head crashed into it again. He was tugging at my clothes with one hand, my black t-shirt ripping at its seams. The glass shattered and I flipped over the sill, scraping against jutting glass. I landed hard on the metal cakewalk and tried to get onto my feet.

The harsh leather of the whip wrapped around my throat and pulled. I gasped and choked, pulling my lips apart, the thin wires cutting into the flesh and filling my mouth with blood. My vision was flickering and going dark, my lungs screamed and my heart hammered.

Cleo.

Three strikes, that's what my brothers had always talked about when they made a mistake.

I was down two strikes. I wasn't going out. Not yet. Not until I find Cleo.

I reached above me, my arms waving until I found his face. I punched wildly, the stabbing pain of my left hand crashing into his nose made me scream. But the raging flow of blood in my ears wasn't done yet. I wasn't out yet. My knuckle grazed past something soft, smooth, too liquid. He roared. I jammed my fingers into his eyes.

The whip dropped from my neck and I gasped, choked, until I could stand straight. The people around the pit, the women around the bubbling pot of stew, the naked children, all of them stared up at me.

Make a statement. Just like Hera.

He lunged, flying over the windowsill and crashing into me. We fell over the thin metal barrier, falling for less than a second and smacking into the hard dirt. The wind blew out of my lungs in one motion, I was on my feet – shaky – but on them in one more motion. A ringing had settled into my ears, the puff of dust scratched at my eyes. I must have hit my head harder than I thought, the sound of distant engines roared through the desert air.

If it was another gang, so be it. I'd clear them out. They'd wasted my time, I needed to get Cleo, I needed to get the Nomads, and I needed to get back home.

But this bastard was in my way. They all were.

He wobbled onto his feet and spat out a clump of blood. A tooth in the thick mixture as well. "I'm still not going to kill you." He slid my combat knife out of its hold. "I just need you unconscious." He grinned. "But conscious enough to understand what I'm going to do to you."

I didn't go into a fighting stance. Hera had said that it's a sign of respect. So I kept my arms by my side, my fists in balls, my jaw clenched. I wasn't going to kill him either. I was going to keep him alive long enough to understand what the nuns had put us through in that orphanage. All the years of being pushed aside for being 'weird' because of what the nuns did to me. He'd feel what I'd to do my parents if I ever found out who they were. He'd feel the anger that Cleo held as well.

All of it.

He charged. He swung the knife, he wasn't used to it, he moved too much, over extended himself and over compensated. I ducked and slammed my boot into his knee cap. It snapped in one fluid motion, the harsh sound carrying in the stale atmosphere. He shrieked and collapsed. I wrestled the knife out of his hand and tore the rings from his fists. Disgusting. They were oily and chipped. He'd also fucked up my birthday present. More for him to feel.

His vice like hands lashed out and grabbed my ankle. He pulled me to the ground with an almighty tug and bellow. I stabbed at his forearm and he pulled away. I wasn't done with him yet, nothing too harsh right now, just painful. The same way the nuns had dug their claws into my arms and neck as they dug that damn rusted needle through my lips.

I got to my feet and stomped down on the back of his neck. He wheezed and I slammed the tip of my boot into the side of his skull. His body stopped writhing as much, his disgustingly large blue irises were glassy and pleading. They'd been hungry just a few seconds ago. Hera had been right, silence was a virtue.

I flipped the knife and scanned the stoic group of half-naked and dirty people staring at me. They all stank, the bubbling soup was spewing over the edge of the tub and hissing against the dirt, but the women didn't care. Either that or they didn't notice. All eyes were on me.

Make a statement.

Three things happened in the same second: I plunged the knife into his back and twisted. The Berserker's chain snapped and like a wrecking ball, slammed into me. The engine notes reached their screaming peak.

I flew a good few feet backwards. I got my bearings and rolled onto my feet in a stout crouch, ready to dive underneath the next launch. But the Berserker was still low and his giant fist hit me straight in the gut. My lungs let go of their air, the world dimmed, and the sharp taste of stomach acid ran raw at the back of my throat. My head smacked against something hard. And something hot.

My red hair touched a shard of coal underneath the glowing pot and would have completely caught unless I hadn't smacked away at my head and doused the flame.

The Berserker picked me up effortlessly, my head trapped between two boulders like hands. He squeezed, and then pressed the right side of my face against the pot.

For the first time that I can remember, I screamed. My lips bled as I shrieked. My throat ached as I cried out. I fought against his grip, I fought until the searing heat pressing into my skull exploded down my spine. I fought until my arms flailed and hit nothing but air.

A gunshot. Distant and listened to from far away ears. Barely audible over the scream raging in my head and spilling out of my mouth.

The Berserker's hands dropped away from my head and I crumbled to the dirt. Someone was saying my name, but I couldn't hear who it was. The pain had gone, replaced with lightening like aching jabs of heat that ran down my right eye socket. Dan and Tick were holding their arms out to me, they were smiling. They were the ones calling my name.

They wrapped me up in a hug and my world finally drifted into a deep darkness.

Water dribbled into my mouth. Cold and piercing. Intrusive. Filling at the back of my mouth and choking me. I coughed and gagged, throwing up the water and letting it dribble down my chin.

"Don't choke her!" a voice snapped. I know that snap. That's my sister's snap.

"I won't, I won't. Jeez," another voice muttered.

My eyes fluttered open, dim sunlight harsh for only a second. The sky was a pale blue, the sun tinting it orange as it dipped behind sand dunes. My body felt exactly like the sand: rough and grainy. Like every small movement I made changed everything inside me, too.

Cool hands brushed hair out of my face, and Cleo's stunningly blue eyes looked down on me. "Hey. Don't move around too much."

I wanted to spring up. I wanted to engulf her in a hug and tell her I'm sorry for letting go of her. But I was too weak for that. I could barely move. My lips felt sore and shredded. I lifted a finger and gingerly touched my lips, the gap between them was the biggest it had been for years. But the flesh was raw and my finger game back speckled with blood. I'd torn them.

I couldn't jump up, but I could hug her. I reached out to her neck and pulled her close. Her face pressed against the side of mine. And she actually laughed. Cleo never laughed.

"Alright, alright." She smiled and pulled herself away. "Have to check something out first." She placed a rough palm over my left eye, my world snapped into darkness. "How many fingers?"

I shrugged.

She sighed and brought away her hand. "Well, guess you were right, Glasses." There'd been a boy leaning over me, too. Around our age with thick circular glasses held together with tape and wire. "Right eye is completely fucked."

"My name is Jack," he pressed. He was scrawny, but his fingers were rough and strong. A worker. "But at least the side of her face isn't burnt up as well."

She nodded and then snapped her fingers. "I forgot. Glasses, Runt. Runt, Glasses." She looked down at me. "Found the little weed working for the bikers. He politely let me escape and now he's going to show us where the Nomads are."

"You slaughtered all of them and threatened to hang my family."

Cleo waved her hand through the air. "Whatever. Point is, he knows where the Nomad camp is."

He cleaned his glasses on his dirt stained shirt. "I said I think I know."

"Stop killing the mood you little shit," Cleo hissed. "Ever heard of optimism?"

I suppressed a small laugh. Ever since we left the Gray she's been on a roller coaster of moods, but none of them had been a joking mood. She never joked. She never laughed. She never smiled. And she'd just done all three in under a minute.

And she had carried things out just the way Hera would have. But I won't ruin her mood with that, she seemed happy, and that made me happy. An eye wasn't too big of a deal, Dan had lost an eye and so had Kira. I'd be fine. But until then…

I worked the black ring on my right hand off my thumb and pressed it into Cleo's hand. Yours.

She blinked and shook her head. "This is yours. That guy gave it to you."

I folded her fingers around it. I needed my sister to watch my right. The same way Kira had had Dan, Draco had Saia, and Hera had the Major. I may have lost the other knife, but Cleo was dangerous enough without it. A ring, Tick had told me it meant a promise.

I promised myself that I'd never lose another sibling, and this certified it.

She rolled her eyes and slid the ring on. "You're still so weird. But, I'm sorry for the way I acted. I was frustrated and to be frank, I hated you. Because you were trying to replace my sister." She pushed my hands down to my stomach. "But I know you were just looking out for me. Thanks, or whatever." She shifted like apologizing was uncomfortable for her. But it was Cleo, so it probably was. "And…and I'm not going to kill Hera. I will, one day. But I'm not there yet. So…stick around and help me take her out one day?"

I smiled and gave her a thumbs up. I wasn't going to kill Hera. She'd given me a direction in life. But I could help Cleo get stronger. And hopefully to the point that killing Hera wouldn't be worth it. That's a plan, and a promise.

I sat up, and a headache hit me point blank. That and the sour smell of corpses. Bodies littered the compound, the Berserker's top half sizzled against the giant pot, the women were explosions of red on the desert's golden sand and the men…what was left of them was unrecognizable.

Two motorbikes strapped down with guns. So many that Kira would have passed out.

She was becoming more and more like Hera every day.

Jack had lingered towards the motorbikes, and Cleo's reasonably stoic poker face broke. She leaned towards me and whispered, "You know, I don't even know where his family is. I just said it and the dork bought it. Can you imagine that?" A laugh threatened her lips, only a little escaping from the edges of her mouth.

My sister was becoming more and more like the woman she hated most. Whether she realized it or now, I don't know. But it was nice seeing her smile. It looked just like Dan's.