Conduits

Chapter Twenty

Each day they drained Clara, rung her dry. Rag dolls had more water in them than Clara. She felt only one, maybe two drops left in her at the end of each session when they strapped her into the rig at the bus golem engine's center.

Those sessions seemed longer each time they buckled the straps around her ankles, thighs, wrists, and chest and pulled down the metal conductor helmet. That first day she could swear the Junkers had her inside the engine for a little over four hours, longer than the strongest conduits they had captured and in their control. Roos had revealed the four-plus hours session was more like seven hours.

Since that day, the hours dragged out. They rang the rag further.

Seven... eight... nine... ten hours.

Clara was running up a steep hill angled just a few degrees from completely vertical. Muscles burned and screamed for air. Her stomach cramped from dehydration. The hill tilted steeper each day.

She should have dropped dead five times over the last several days. Yet, Clara lived. Her body ached, yes. It craved increased nourishment to replenish calories and begged for extended amounts of sleep-sleep and food the Junkers never provided her before pulling her from a cage. But Clara was alive!

This doesn't make sense, she told herself when Turnip Head shook her awake from too short of sleep.

"Get up now, coppertop! Rise and shine," he announced in his cruel way. His breath stunk of onions, as always. Then he jammed a boot into her ribs.

I should be dead... burned out. Clara almost wished she were. At least, she believed that was her desire. Odd thing to wish for, a burn out. The stories told of the Junkers killing conduits in the night. When Kell and his lost boys left her alive, she should have counted her blessings, prayed to God. Clara didn't. She wanted the nightmare true as much as she used to want to wake. Two prospects frightened every conduit. One, being burned at the stake as some witch that didn't fit into the new world. In pre-Black Out Thursday history, plenty of old world thumpers burned the different... books, people. Two, a conduit also feared using up her abilities and her life, burning right out. But I'm still here... and it scares me!

"Come along then," Turnip said, grabbing her wrists and literally dragging her tired form from behind the four-sided set of bars. "Try not to break this tub tonight, huh?"

"Burn out!" She hissed the curse at the man and then added harshly with what she was able to hold on to of her partially rejuvenated strength, "You'll burn me out first."

Turnip mumbled something, his words breathed between thoughts of aiming his boot at her head or breaking a couple of her ribs. He instead tied her hands behind her and handed her off to two other Junkers.

She thought she caught something along the lines of, "Don't be too sure..."

What? Clara's brain was crispier than a piece of junk overcharged with Nites. The thought drifted away as she was hauled away between the two other Junkers, both with bits of metal carved into their flesh like the captain-a painful fashion statement if Clara had ever seen one.

Off to another session. Time to ring dry the rag. Perhaps this time the Junkers' bus golem would ring the last couple of drops from her.

I hope all the water causes a short!

Burning hair offended Clara's nose. Screaming pounded on her eardrums like an amateur hitting a snare drum with a mallet.

Heat pressed against her face as if someone had pushed her face onto the cobblestones on a blistering summer day, but hotter. Today the sun had fallen to the earth and the world was aflame. That heat tingled and spat.