The Breeder's Daughter

Chapter 63 | Barcodes

He's still looking at me with those eyes, twinkling and mesmerizing, digging deep into my own awaiting a response.

"Wow. I'm not gonna lie, that was unexpected. How come you guys didn't just confront us from the start?"

"I don't know, Shayla said it might be a bad idea or something, something about you two being irrational drama queens." He flashes a playful smile.

"She said we're irrational drama queens?" If we weren't heading into a highly-guarded building on a life threatening mission, I might've actually went up to the front of the bus and thrown her out the bus myself.

"To be fair I don't think that you are." he adds,

"To be fair I don't think that you're a drama queen either." I say and we both laugh.

As our laughter slowly dies down, my eyes land on his revealed wrist, various arches etched on his tan skin.

He notices me looking, "I made some changes to it," he says as he lifts his arm and places it between us, his wrist facing the both of us.

"I know a guy who was able to make some changes to the original tattoo I'd gotten at the government center. I didn't like the idea of the government owning me like that. Something about the marking felt wrong from the moment I got it. So, I had him add arches to the original, they were supposed to be dragon scales and he was going to eventually draw out a miniature dragon that extends to here." He drags his finger across his wrist to show me.

"But the guy disappeared shortly after. And that's when I began searching for answers."

His eyes shift focus from his wrist tattoo and back to me.

"What's yours look like?" He asks.

The uniforms we were handed out earlier today were full-sleeved, some people in our unit had pulled their sleeves up like Cyrus had, to accommodate the heat and humidity in the bus as our crammed bodies pumped out heat in the small space. But I hadn't bothered pulling mine up, my mind too preoccupied with other things, but now that he was asking, it occurred to me that I never paid much attention to what the tattoo actually looked like. I'd been so busy trying to hide it out of fear, I never took a proper look at it.

I slowly started to pull my sleeve up, keenly aware of Cyrus' gaze lingering on my wrist as the triangle etching came into view. Without notice, Cyrus's hands were suddenly over my wrist, touching it, holding it. One hand held my wrist, the other traced the delicate markings. Strangely enough, something about my arm being in his hand felt right, and I wondered if he felt it too. His hand radiated warmth, and I wished he'd keep on holding it for the rest of the ride. He traced the outline of the triangle, then moved on to the more delicate details drawn inside of it; a collection of minuscule geometric shapes.

To me it looked like a bunch of squares and lines and circles, but Cyrus was so concentrated on the etchings as he traced them, as if seeing something worth contemplating. His fingers lingered for a bit, and then he let go of my hand and the warmth was gone.

"That's interesting, they have no similarities." He says placing his arm next to mine, arms nearly touching.

Side by side, the drawings look completely different: one is more circular, the other clearly a triangle. Mine is filled with geometric shapes, his is filled with patterns. My arm is pulsing with an electric-like feeling at the proximity, but I try to ignore it as I scrutinize his tattoo more.

"What about these lines?" I ask noticing a set of matching small etchings visible on both of our wrists.

"Which ones?"

I touch a set of especially small lines on the side of one of the curves of the dragon's scale that's permanently engraved into his skin.

"There's six of them." I say, then proceed to count seven on mine. The lines were so small, yet despite this, their discernible height was easy to make out.

"None of them are the same height." Cyrus says as if reading my mind.

The only thing I could think of,

"Barcodes." We say at the same time.

"That's crazy. We'll have to investigate what this could mean once this mission is over." He says pulling his arm away.

"That's if we make it out alive today." I say tugging my sleeve back down despite the heat.

"C'mon have some faith, how hard can it be." 

*** It's 1:40 am here ya'll not sure if what I wrote even made sense lol either way I hope to see you soon for another update that I have coming ;) ***