RHG: Inheritance Reclaimed

Chapter 13

This chapter contains references and imagery of sexual abuse and graphic detail. Reader's discretion is advised

Ginn POV

The day I found Sonya was meant to be a bad day. 

Jackson had sent me out of the Lower streets for the first time, to go East and find a village that supposedly had what he needed. A star fragment he called it. I didn't understand nor cared to understand all the science-y things he knew or revelled in and simply asked how I would find it.

That's how I ended up trekking through a forest, finding the "Base 01" landmark Jackson had informed me of. Supposedly where the Numera child I had assaulted and captured as my initiation became F-1. He was the payment I had to deliver for my sister's life. But the Lower Streets are savage lands and things don't always turn out the way we want. That knowledge alone drew the memory to surface. Was it really worth subjecting a notherborn child to the hands of men who wanted nothing but to use him to play with the fabric of nature? Perhaps if she had lived I would be more confident in affirming it so. Yet again, had I not used him as the price to pay, I would not have become Jackson's errand boy, and I would not have survived this long. I feel no real guilt over using another life to extend my own. After all, ethics is useless in the streets of my birth. My only regret is losing the last remnant of my family.

Skimming the border of the forest leading to Ferdun town, I keep well a thick width of trees between us, to stay out of sight. Those from the Lower streets are to be shot on sight after all. If Jackson had not had access and knowledge to a small gap in the walls I would not have been out there in the outside world. I would have never seen a tree in my 15 years of life, or felt grass beneath my feet. The colours of the outside world were ones I never seen before in tones so bright it hurt my eyes. I stumbled onto the path of the target village, the trees lagging behind as I entered the clearing.

The atmosphere was one I was familiar with, the hollowness of prior residence, the remnants of someone's home. Jackson informed me that an accident with the substance I was sent to retrieve caused a fiery demise for the village, if they weren't pulled into the rip generated by said substance. While the original sample had been stolen on that day of misfortune, the man who owned it prior to it's theft was said to have more in storage. I simply had to locate his workshop. This proved to be quite the task as most houses were but heaps of charred debris and ash, nothing really stood out as the entrance into a hidden workshop.

Jackson did provide me a device, the same (though later tweaked version) I would use to locate the Grenendaris tree nearby. However it seems that even after a year of the event, the energy waves were splayed all around the space. I wandered about the desolate village, trying to locate a source of stronger or constant energy output, finding myself drawn towards a demolished house. It appeared a bit different on the device's screen and I could feel the change as I drew nearer. I was made aware of the beating of my heart, pulling a closed hand to my chest despite the action having no meaning or purpose. A tingle of.. urgency? It spread to my hands and legs and I got onto my knees, peeling the shreds of the former house off the smouldered pile. It was almost as if the heap were the bones and skin wrapping up a beating heart beneath. The beats fell in rhythm to my own and it only compelled me to increase the speed of my efforts.

And that was how I found her.

After digging through the debris in a narrow tunnel vision of focus, I uncovered the cavity of safety buried beneath. I could not understand nor imagine how she could have possibly been still alive. Trapped there supposedly since the incident, a year sealed beneath the corpse of a residence. Testing her pulse with my soot dusted hands I determined her life was indeed still intact, clinging somehow to the skeletal girl caked in ash and dust. Her breathing was strained, her throat probably clouded. I dared not touch her. This.. miracle? I worried any movement would have reminded her body of its plight and sent it running to the world of the dead.