Georgianna stepped into the bare room, pushing the door closed behind her and locking out the shards of light that had thrown themselves across the floor. The glass pane in the door was so thick with dust and grime that only sparse drops of reflected sunshine sprinkled across the wooden slats.
Her heart was racing, thumping so fiercely in her chest that she could feel the pain of it below her breast, her breath coming in quick, shallow pants that she couldn’t control. The building stood far enough away from the main street so that the bustle of activity in the district was dulled to a deafening silence. Only the sound of her breath and her heart hammered through the void.
She glanced behind her towards the door before she looked around the room again. From the looks of it, nobody had been here in months. She knew Keiran had been here before, he had to have been to have told her where to go, but the layer of dust on the floor looked as undisturbed as fresh freeze snow.
She called in the quietest whisper:
“Hello?”
Slow, nervous steps led her across the bare room, further into the small, dark building. Everything was silent, nothing disturbed, and she could only hope that it meant the Adveni had at least not known about this meeting place. She was just about to turn around and head back towards the door when next to the wall, in the shadows, a movement caught her eye. It shifted, bright eyes gleaming at her through the dark, and after a moment of staring at her with a suspicious gaze, a body materialised as if out of the brickwork.
She jumped almost a foot into the air, covering her mouth with both hands as a scream threatened to spill from her lips.
“George?”
Georgianna took a step backward, then another as the man remained in shadows, a dark silhouette framed by brick. The voice was so familiar, yet impossible. She’d not spoken to Landon in a long time, but he was almost a decade younger than the man she had heard. There was no way they could sound exactly the same.
Another step and she would be at the door. She reached out, grasping through the gloom for the handle. They could see her, but they remained hidden in shadows. It was a trick, it had to be. Her fingertips hit the handle and she grabbed it, wrenching the door open. She turned away, foot already outside before he stepped towards her.
“Georgie, wait!”
“Don’t call me Georgie.”
The words came before she had to think about them, ingrained into her through years of mockery. He refused to stop using the name, even though he knew how much she hated it. Sometimes she’d wondered if he only did it to annoy her. Other times, she didn’t even have to wonder.
She didn’t dare move. She couldn’t even look at him. The lump in her throat exploded in a desperate breath of air. She wanted to scream, to run away or crumple into a ball, because there was no way in this world or the next that the man stepping towards her, staring right at her, could be Alec Cartwright.
“Lec?”
“Hi George.”
His hand settled on her, his thumb making a small, gentle circle against her shoulder blade. Her entire body trembled as a sob fought to break free, and she finally turned her head.
He was older. Seams of worry and work that had never been there before lined his face. His hair was longer, dishevelled and uneven. Either his clothes were too big, or he’d lost weight. Both his sleeves were rolled up past the elbows and across his tanned skin she could see the numerous marks of abuse in different stages of healing, many more than she had ever seen on one person, including Jacob Stone.
YOU ARE READING
Dead and Buryd
Science Fiction"You are an inmate, not a medic. You should get used to that." On the planet Os-Veruh, the native Veniche have endured a decade under the oppressive rule of a race of invaders, the Adveni. When Georgianna Lennox, a Veniche medic, discovers her child...
