Kwaide (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 2)

Chapter Three

Chapter 3

SIX, CIMMA AND DIVA gazed around them. They were back in front of the concrete slabs and wired fencing of the Rexel birth shelter on Kwaide. Diva thought that it was just as gloomy a place as it had been the previous time she had seen it, with Six. If anything, it had an even more abandoned look about it. Cimma looked with disfavor at the unprepossessing building, and then shivered as she became aware of the cold wind.

“This is nothing,” Six told her with some pride. “In the uninhabitable zone the winds can kill you!”

“How nice!” Cimma’s expression indicated just what she thought about that.

Diva led the way to the main gate, and rang the bell. It echoed somewhere inside the dank building and then fell silent. This time it was an imposingly stern woman who came out to speak to them. She examined her visitors through narrowed eyes. “Now why,” she said sharply, “would three outsiders be ringing the bell of the birth shelter?”

“I am no outsider, you old harpy!” shouted Six. “Call yourself a matron? Hah! I want my sister!”

Diva rolled her eyes. “Going for the subtle approach, I see, no-name!” she murmured.

The matron gave a satisfied smile. “So you have come at last,” she said. “Well you are too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?” 

“Wasn’t she your twin? Can’t you feel it?” taunted the old woman.

Six fell silent for a second, and his eyes lost their focus. “She is not here,” he said at last. “Where have you taken her?” He made a lunge in the old woman’s direction, and had to be pulled back by Diva.

“Oh, she is here, all right …” The woman gave a cackle. “We kept her here. Now would we let a precious thing like your sister get away?”

“Even four years in this place must have seemed like an eternity,” said Diva.

“Tell me about it!” But Six struggled against Diva’s grip, still trying to get closer to the matron. “What have you done with her, you evil troll?”

“I? I have done nothing. We had orders from Benefice, didn’t we? Had to keep her locked up, didn’t we? Not my fault if she didn’t like the food, was it?”

Six gave a growl deep in his throat. 

The matron turned to him and hissed. “You can’t feel her, can you? You don’t know if she is alive or dead. What if I told you she were dead?”

“LIAR!”

“Or not. It might have been something she ate – or didn’t. Yes, it definitely might have been something she ate. What a pity! So sorry. Nothing to be done.” And the matron gave a satisfied leer in Six’s direction, together with a mocking curtsey.

Six shook Diva’s arm free, but Cimma was before him. Her Xianthan dagger flashed at the neck of the old woman. “Tell us exactly what happened,” she snarled, “or I will cut your unworthy throat wide open!”

The matron squirmed at the touch of the knife, and tried to spit in Cimma’s face.

“I don’t like you.” Cimma tightened her grasp. “I didn’t like you on first acquaintance and things have gone downhill since then. So keep a civil tongue in your head, you hear?” She shook the woman. 

“I have told you what happened. The Elders from Benefice were ‘interested’ in her. They requested ‘special’ measures. She was to be put in the dark room and kept apart from the rest. It’s not my fault if she didn’t eat properly. It isn’t my fault she got sick. It was the Elders and their ‘special’ measures.”