Runner

Chapter Fourteen

The hot glass blistered my skin as I tumbled through the window. The rest propelling forwards, raining down on the carpet. Fear sprinted through the room. Fire danced at my fingertips; I was ready for a fight. The suited men in the room dashed, the women running, waddling rather, for the exits behind them. No one granted me a flame, or a whip of wind, nothing.

I let my fire dilute, not losing lock on Cole's face in the rushing crowd. He didn't seem to panic, he seemed frozen. Terrified even, just at the sight of me.

I was just as perplexed by the calm my arrival had been greeted by; no guards, no fight. I lusted over the blue champagne in the room. This stuff would cost me an arm on the streets, and I was particularly thrifty when it came to alcohol and narcotics.

"I risked everything for you," I haunted, stalking towards Cole between the scattering crowds. "And how do you repay me? You sneaky bastard. Do you have any integrity?"

He sunk back against the wall. Pathetic.

"I hadn't a choice," he finally spoke.

"I deserved better," I ranted, "you could have tipped me off, let me slip away before your merry men came for me ? I sacrificed everything to keep you alive that night."

Cole swallowed, his eyes magnetized to mine.

"If I hadn't stepped in you'd have been dead days ago. Didn't me helping you mean anything?"

"Maybe I am repaying you, maybe this was helping you," he whispered softly.

"Oh you better be joking," I snarled, ripping him towards me by the collar.

I looked at our reflection in the splintered glass. Cole looked two things: petrified and pathetically guilty. My reflection was different from the last time I'd seen myself. I looked just as tall as cole but stronger, they'd been feeding us well here, not like at home.

But we weren't alone. Behind me with a menacing angry stare was my guard.

Next his hand was under my chin, and his knife to my throat.

"Let go of him," he breathed against my neck, "now."

Once again, control was ripped from my grasp.

I dropped my hands from Cole's collar, and watched him exhale with relief.

"Get out!" my guard then ordered, knife still to my neck.

"I-just.." Cole stammered.

"Get OUT!" his voice barked.

My guards body stifferend as he looked donw to see my palms alight, "put them out or I swear to God I'll give you a jolt that will leave you not remembering your own name," he said as he ripped the restraining device from his pocket.

I groaned under my breath as I snatched the flames back into my palms, his grip on me tightening.

"You couldn't just play by the rules could you?" He spat down at me, "you're like a child. You see only what you want to. No sense, no fear. Storming through with your fire like a primitive savage."

"Dex," Cole said, addressing the guard, "you're right it was my fault I was up here, I shouldn't have taunted her like that, and she shouldn't bare any consequence for my mistakes."

"I hate you!" I screamed, ramming myself at Cole, feeling the blade run across my skin as I pushed forwards, fire sprouting at my fingertips, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate!"

How dare he play sympathetic now. I didn't need his sympathy, I needed it back home. I needed him to protect me then. Why couldn't he have helped when it mattered?

I couldn't see any more, a line of wetness brimming along my eyes. I couldn't think. I could feel the vibration of footsteps, more voices, and my own above the rest screaming and shouting.

Dex pulled me back by my shirt, "That is not how we act around here, this isn't a scummy gang where you can get away with what you like. You want to join us then stop acting like your still a senseless attention-whore."

He'd kicked the air out me with those words, and pushed me far enough out of my hysteria for a leaking anger to surface. Before I had a chance to launch myself at him, as if he knew what I were thinking, again, he used the restraining device and sent the electric ropes wrapping around my torso and choking my scream.

"Start acting your age," he ordered, with a note of disgust, as I stumbled backwards.

"Dex, I provoked her," Cole reminded, his crisp grey uniform now charred at the stomach.

"You tell that to the sixteen council men and women she just injured," Dex retorted, not sparing Cole a glance.

Cole's nostrils flared before he stormed from the room, letting the door slam behind him like a disgruntled toddler. Dex exhaled tiredly as he watched Cole go. He walked towards the wall in front of him, glass crunching beneath his feet.

He was inches from the wall when he brought his fist up and slammed it against the surface. None of the black clad bodies that were storming the room so much as flinched, maybe this psychotic-agro side wasn't as out of the ordinary as I thought.

"Let's go," Dex exhaled.

I was too dazed to be bothered by the silence. A silence I realised followed Dex like his shadow. I'd met few people who were as comfortable with the quiet as he seemed to be.

The same blur of metal and glass lead us back to my chamber. The same tunnels and shafts, and the same elevator. The passages we took were always empty. Dex turned off my restraints when we were alone in the warehouse. He must have figured I was too much of a Zombie to muster any escape. And he was right.

The glass chamber was open when we approached it. A new change of clothes folded on my freshly made bed.

I walked inside and immediately turned on the shower. Scalding hot. I ripped off my tank top, leaving on my sports bra, letting the hot water run down my body taking out the splinters of glass that were still dug into my skin. My blood tinted the water red as it pooled at my feet.

I stepped out and bent over the mirror adjacent to the showering cubicle, still shaking. My body was dripping as I began to pull out the larger shards of glass still caught in my skin. I sucked in sharp breaths, dropping each shard into the sink. They needed to come out now, I was healing too quickly. I'd learnt the hard way what happens to foreign objects that are healed over. It's not pretty.

"I can help you with that," Dex offered, as I looked in the reflection of the mirror to see him sitting on my bed, "or I could get you a doctor, if you'd like."

I was too lost in my own thoughts to realise he was still there, or to have any feelings of modesty about my lack of clothing.

"Nothing I can't do myself," I said, grimly adding, "and nothing I haven't had to do before."

"Fine," he replied, like I'd insulted him.

I watched him stomper back into the dark. Once the black had consumed his figure I dropped my head, letting tears rain down into the sink, falling onto the glass, and diluting stains of my blood.

I wanted to be angry at Cole, but I wasn't. I was ashamed. Guilty. I was one step closer to being part of the Confederation, and that was only if I didn't die before I got there.

What did I fear more, joining them or death itself?

Death would be easier. Quicker. Honourable.

I tried swallowing back unapologetic sounds of my pain, wiping under my eyes and smoothing back my hair.

As I looked up at my reflection I saw a movement in the darkness, beyond my glass prison.

Like a body turning. The whites of eyes. Balled fists.

Dex's face flashed in the shadows, a menacing sadness written over him.

Then he was gone.