The Price {Completed}

Chapter Thirty-Five

My spot for the night was only three buildings down from the remains of the Wellington, and perhaps that's why I found her.

The figure of a woman, sprawled face-down on the street, her white uniform a dingy gray by now. I sidled closer, noting the dark hair that looked all too familiar. I already knew who it was before I crouched by her side and pushed her onto her back with a heave on her shoulder.

Rachel's face was as pale as her uniform, her green eyes closed. Scrapes marred her skin, some bleeding and some partially scabbed over. A bruise mottled her eye, and her lip was swollen and split. I sent a glance down her body, quickly finding the rust-colored stain near her midsection. Only the middle was still a bright ruby red. She'd been injured a while ago.

"Rachel," I said, gently shaking her. She didn't respond at first, and I did my best to cradle her head on my lap. "Rachel?"

Just when I thought perhaps her wound had claimed her, her eyes fluttered, and she opened them with a painful wince.

"Did I make it?" she whispered, her voice barely above a whisper. "Am I home?"

"Nearly," I said.

"I was..." she closed her eyes as she struggled to breathe. A wet whistle punctuated each breath, and I began to suspect the wound to her middle had caught a lung. "I was trying to find you."

"Why?" My eyes flickered toward the end of the street, wary that a group of Vigilant Men might even now be waiting in the shadows to pop out and force me to fight.

A strange noise came from Rachel, and at first I thought she was gagging. I looked down, ready to adjust her head so she could breathe easier, but then saw the tears sliding down her cheeks and neck. With each sob she struggled against her wound, her back arching and her hands scrabbling along the cobblestones.

"Calm down," I whispered, wiping her hair away from her sweaty brow. "It's all right. Calm down."

"It wasn't what I thought, Nadia. It's nothing at all what I thought," she gasped out. "I thought we'd fight for our friends, for a right to a life in comfort. But all I found was death. Miserable, rotten death."

"Rachel, it's all right. Sh. You're hurting," I said, voice quavering.

"They sent us out to die, droves after droves. If you survived one battle you were sent to another, on and on until you die. This isn't helping the normal people, Nadia, it's murdering them in piles."

I cleared my throat, and looked up to stop the tears building in my eyes. "You're out now, though, Rachel. We'll get you healed up and then..."

Rachel shook her head, her green eyes staring into mine. They were so wide and feverish. "They're all dead. All dead around me. Blood and guts and souls. I waded through it like rivers, Nadia."

I tried to make comforting sounds, but she wasn't listening to me at all. She gripped the side of her uniform in sweaty fists. "Ferdinand."

I froze. "What?"

"I saw him once. In one of the battles. They could have filmed him for their Vigilant moving pictures. He looked like a god of war, beautiful and heroic, leading a group to save their commander."

"What happened, Rachel? What happened to him?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. It was a battle that ended in lakes of dead. I don't know where he went. I was... stabbed."

"Today? It was today?" I asked, hope blossoming in my chest even as Rachel's face grew paler and paler, and the stain on her midsection seeped deeper.