Runner

Chapter Thirteen

ASHER

All of the initiates had been escorted to a row of cells. It was impossible to tell what time, or for that matter, what day it was. I hadn’t seen daylight since my capture.

We were directed to step into aligned cells, and as I looked to my side it was as if I was seeing a rolling reflection of myself. All of the initiates in the same white clothes, positioned in the same boxes, iron bolted doors in front of us. Glass dividing us.

This was the moment where we’d be forced to choose. There was a podium in front of each of us, a silver button atop of it.

Everyone took a simultaneous step back as a hologram of Cora flickered to life in front of us.

“Initiates, choose your fate. Step forward to the podium and press your button down, if you wish to compete for enlistment with us at the Confederation. Step back if you wish to forfeit.”

Cora’s illuminated face was still in front of me, but I was no longer hearing her voice.

I could hear Elek, and see him walking the highway, the horizon melting into darkness behind him, “I’d slit my own throat before I joined the Confederation, no one is going to make a pawn out of me,” an ever-stubborn, eighteen year old, Elek had said.

I heard Jack’s voice next, punching through my sub-conscious, “You do whatever it fucking takes to survive, that’s rule alpha here.”

And then the guard’s words from last night, singing through the haze, “Be selfish.”

I wasn’t in control anymore, my legs moved forward, my arms stretched out, and I pushed down the button. In my peripheral I saw others stepping forward, others wavering, and a couple standing back. The Asian girl was next to me, and she stood back. I could see a couple further down had chosen to as well, but I couldn’t see who they were.

The hologram faded as the beat in my chest grew heavy. Dark silence was all that followed, apprehension rising up my body. I didn't know who I was anymore. 

I remembered the boy who had started this all. Cole. How naive I had been. I’d thought the worst that could come from my involvement with him was a rumour or two.

I’d never believed he’d lead me here. Never considered his whole ‘starving family of elementals chased through the woods’ story was a complete load of turkey. He’d put on an all-singing, all-dancing production, ensuring I was convinced of who he was. I’d fallen for it alright, I’d more than fallen for it. I was captivated and begging for an encore.

The whole thing was a shameful and humiliating disaster. I’d been a complete fool and it had cost me my freedom, and I was sure I was posed to loose far more than that if I didn’t figure a way out of this nightmarish-asylum. Least of all, my sanity. 

Then the noise came. A splitting bang that made me cower in on myself. I was seeing red.

In the cell next to me, the Asian girl was gone. Red leaked down her walls, running thick down the glass. A few cells down others hustled away from the glass. I saw more red, more panic. Three elementals had chosen not to compete, and the three of them had been killed.

I’d like to say it was a bullet, but with so much blood and so much destruction, it was hard to tell. The bodies were dismorphed – life taken from them. Executed.

Our numbers had dropped from twelve to nine in a matter of minutes. I hated to think what our group would look like in a day, or in a week. It had been a fear instilling move, I could see that in the frenzy they had caused. A reminder that the Confederation had the power, and that even when you thought you knew the game, they could always change the rules.