They brought the new prisoner in right before the storm hit. Finton Willis Penitentiary was a lackluster, soul-crushing beige, rising out of the desolate patches between cities. It was strategically built deep in a dried-up river valley, and so buffered from the worst of the storms. Still, the winds slashed against it like a madman's reins, the building gritting its brick and mortar teeth.
Even underground, you could hear the churning. In the outerlands, the storms were relentless, unmerciful. Finton Willis was the only structure for miles around.
The guards shoved the prisoner into a cell a few feet across from her, the bare-bulb lights in the corridor buzzing. His arms were sinewy, still wet from sweat, or from the hose-down they'd likely given him, wrists cuffed at his back. The shackles jangled on his ankles, but he managed to remain balanced and walk with an easy gait.
The guards pinned one last look on him, then left them both in darkness. The minutes passed. The hours. Time in the dark is a slippery thing. The prisoner's shackles clinked lightly a couple times. His ragged breathing turned steady. Two forsaken souls breathing in the dark.
"Dimarrah Folette?" It was so low she barely heard it. Thought maybe she'd imagined it. Odd to hear her name after so long. The guards never called her by name, only the vile ones they gave her.
There was something strange about the voice. It came to her solidly, like it was wrapped in velvet, with no echo of the prison walls around it.
"I am." She felt like she spoke for someone else. Her voice was a scrape of sound.
She was about to say something else, when the voice came back to her like a whiplash.
Don't speak out loud.
Strange, so strange, the voice, his voice; somehow it felt like it was inside her mind. A thrill and a horror at the same time.
The walls listen as much as they watch, came his voice again.
Who are you? She was stunned at how effortless it was to exchange in this way. How much quicker.
He didn't answer, but she felt the tug of his mind on hers, like a train hitch to her runaway car. In an instant, the prisoner across from her knew her terror. Knew her pain. She severed the contact, like a light blotted out suddenly. But he pushed back, his words coming like echoes from the bottom of an empty well. Coaxing. She gave way.
Do as I say and we get out of here.
Out? She wanted to laugh. Even if you get out of your cell the other doors above have DNA scanners—
Footsteps. Two pairs. Bald and Nerves were coming for an after-hours visit. The dread solidified like a lump of coal in her stomach.
"Ain't we lucky," Bald drawled, coming into view, the lights flickering on. "Got the Devil and Medusa under one roof." He flicked his eyes to Dimarrah, then back to the prisoner.
Bald had the keys out, and there was the metal clank of the other prisoner's cell door opening. Nerves stood back, Adam's apple showing just above his Rejkav black-collared uniform. Usually Bald was tamer when the other guard was with him. Usually.
He walked around the new prisoner, who stood a full head taller. He'd done the same thing to Dimarrah the first night she'd spent down there.
She looked away for a moment, feeling the shame of relief. They had a new prisoner to taunt tonight. Maybe they'd leave her alone. It didn't matter anyway. The doctors had stopped seeing to her hand. Some days all she had to eat was bread. She drank when the sprayers washed her; horrible, unfiltered water. She'd stopped eating. Her panic attacks came with unpredictable ferocity. There were whispers that an executioner from the city was coming.
"I know what you are." Bald stopped a few feet in front of the prisoner, took a pack of cigarettes from a front pocket and tapped one out. Brought the lighter to it. The prisoner didn't even blink when the guard blew smoke into his face. "You tell me the truth and I'll get you out of here. That's a promise."
The live-ink lizard tattoo writhed around Bald's temple and flicked its tongue. He held the red-hot end of his cigarette up to the prisoner's jaw, grizzled with the start of a beard. A scar ran down the base of the prisoner's neck, disappearing under the front dip of his tunic. The same baggy tunic she was in. The prisoner remained silent, not a hint of movement.
Bald laughed, then looked to Dimarrah.
"You watchin' this?"
She sat in the shadowed corner of her cell, cringing that he'd called her out.
"Witchy here don't talk much either. But I know she's watchin'." He was slurring. Vitriol drunk. And he was just getting started. Drinking only greased his wheels.
"We got fifteen minutes," said Nerves, glancing at his wristscreen.
Bald took a long, languorous drag off his cigarette, tapping the ashes to the cement floor.
Nerves licked his lips. "Look at that nasty scar. He can't be one of 'em."
"Scars don't mean nothin'," Bald said, "just means they're harder to kill. These fuckers, they're like cockroaches." He made a full circle around the prisoner and stopped again in front of him, tracing the long scar with the cigarette. "Probably fake. I seen them do it before. Think they can fool everyone."
"How we gonna know for sure?"
"Looks like he ain't feelin' too chatty." Bald gave a satisfied grin. "Didn't want to do this the hard way."
Nerves swallowed audibly. "Boss said not to—"
"Boss ain't here now, is he?" He tilted his head and took a deeper drag off the cigarette. Hovered the red hot end right over the prisoner's scarred collarbone.
"You tell me, where should I put this and we get this over nice and easy?"
The prisoner stared into the guard's eyes, then spoke deliberately, enunciating each syllable.
"Stehke von yon assei."
Dimarrah sucked in her breath. Wanachiean. He'd spoken in the lost language. She hadn't heard it since childhood.
Foreign or not, the prisoner's meaning was clear. He'd just told Bald to stick it up his—
"He say what I think he just said?" Bald looked back to Nerves, who nodded, needlessly.
Turning back to the prisoner, Bald wore a smugness she knew too well, when she'd fought back. In the beginning.
Don't taunt him you fool, she thought. It's what he wants.
She swore she saw the prisoner's head turn her way by the smallest amount. Might have even seen the slightest curve of a grin. Bald must have seen it too. He sucked on the cigarette, then slowly, so slowly, pressed the hot end into the prisoner's skin, twisting it on his collarbone, watching him. The prisoner's jaw clenched, but he made no sound or movement.
Bald spoke, unhurried as he pulled the hot end off. "That's me being magnanimous. For now."
The mark of the burn stood out from the other scar. Nerves shifted in the shadows. Waiting for something to happen. "Ain't it supposed to disappear or something?"
Bald let the cigarette drop, undeterred. "I know what I saw yesterday. He ain't just an Anomaly." He took a step closer to the prisoner. "You got anything more to say?"
The prisoner looked down at the cigarette, half-spent on the floor. "You gonna waste the whole pack on me?"
Bald beat on the prisoner without restraint until he was hunched over, coughing up blood.
"Sir, you'll kill him—"
Bald nudged the prisoner's ribs with the steel toe of his boot. "Nah. He's still alive." Peered down on him. "Might not want to be."
When the prisoner suddenly sputtered out a few words, it shook Dimarrah to her core. "Bring the woman to me and I'll show you."
"I don't like it," Nerves said. "I think it's a trick."
Bald was silent for a moment, considering. "What if the goddamn rumors are true about these motherfuckers?"
Dimarrah knew exactly what he was talking about. Everyone did, even if very few believed it. If he was one of the Anadeim soldiers, he could suck the life out of a human to heal themselves. Stuff of nightmares.
"She dies next week anyway." Bald dragged Dimarrah out of her cell and threw her next to the prisoner who lay on his back, gasping for air.
Dimarrah watched as the prisoner, whose one eye was swollen, who was in obvious pain, reach out with a shaky hand to touch her, to touch the pulse line at her throat. She could almost hear the expectant, sharp intake of breath from the guards. She held her own at the brush of his fingertips, calloused against her neck.
"We don't have much time left!" Nerves yelled, cowering in the shadows, but Bald moved in, gun cocked and ready, aimed on the prisoner.
"Better show me now or I'll— " The prisoner sprang up, knocking his head into the guard, who shot his gun wildly, getting the prisoner once in the chest and once in the shoulder. This did not stop the prisoner. He knocked his forehead into Bald again, who was still stunned from the first time, and she heard the sickening crack before they both went down.
Nerves fumbled with his gun, dropping it as the prisoner got back up. He snapped the chain holding his ankle like it was a piece of thread and rammed Nerves into the wall. He strode over to Bald, who was slowly coming out of a stupor, moaning.
"Pretty sure you deserve a worse death," muttered the prisoner. "Count your blessings for this one."
He placed two fingers over Bald's throat, like he was taking his pulse. No choking, no gasping, just a head lolling like a rag doll. The guard was dead in less than five seconds. He did the same to Nerves, sparing no words for him at all, then took the daggers off their uniforms and slit their throats. Sliced a finger off Bald and turned to Dimarrah.
"Two minutes before the video feeds are back on."
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, but they were unhurried. Likely just another guard on a scheduled patrol. Should she call out for help?
She'd had hallucinations of being free. It was never like this.
"I'm supposed to trust you?"
"Don't care if you do."
Before she had a second to utter a word of protest, he threw her over his shoulder and pounded through the corridors like he knew the layout by heart. He did not spare the unsuspecting guard who came around the corner, who screamed in terror to see them, hands moving down to sound an alarm on his wristscreen, to grab at his gun.
Turn your head, came the prisoner's voice only a moment before the shot was fired. Her ears rang as he ran past the guard, sprawled on the floor, a pool of blood spreading around him.
The prisoner didn't slow down, didn't stop for a single breath as he bounded up the stairs, taking two at a time, three flights, and finally coming to a steel, riveted door. He pressed Bald's bloodied finger to a keypad. Typed in a code, and stood to the side of the door as it slid open. He gripped her with one hand and had a gun drawn in the other.
She squinted at the golden dawn, upside-down as she was.
Outside. She hadn't seen true sun in so long.
He dropped her in a heap as one last shot rang out. Utter silence followed, except for one guard outside the compound. Gasping for breath. Mortally wounded.
Through squinted eyes she saw while he knelt to the wounded man and placed his fingers once again on the neck, like he had with the others. A few seconds later his head lolled to the side, and he slit the man's throat.
He more or less dragged her to the huentahs corralled, a few of them with saddles strapped on, who all snorted and stamped and kicked up red dust, agitated by the gunfire.
Huentahs were magnificent creatures. A mix of equestrian grace, brute stamina, and the near-height of a camel. Nothing short of terrifying to approach if you weren't used to them. A genetic feat bequeathed by scientists more than a century before when that sort of tampering had been rampant and ungoverned.
The prisoner untied all but one of them and fired one last shot to the air, sending the huentahs galloping in all directions. He went to the one still tied, a medium-sized gray with white speckles, who flicked her white mane like a haughty teenager. He spoke softly, just a few words to the animal, then he dug into her neck with the dagger he'd taken off one of the guards.
The animal remained perfectly still, but her nostrils flared.
He pulled a tiny dot of metal out of the animal's neck, then flung it to the ground and smashed it. He wiped the dagger on his sleeve and cut through his own neck, reaching behind and pulling out another tiny dot. Trackers. He wiped the blade, both sides, on his sleeve again, then came at her.
She had a fleeting thought about how unsanitary the blade must be. He gave a half snort and forced her head down.
"Right now," he said, even as she opened her mouth to scream, "infection is the least of your worries."
The cut burned and she felt blood trickle down between her shoulder blades. He heaped her onto the saddle and settled in behind her, one arm on her, the other on the reins. The pounding hooves shot spikes of pain through her hands.
And then she heard it. Felt it. The boom that shook the ground as they raced away, and she wondered if desert beasts were trying to swallow them. She managed a look back at the prison, but in its place was only a black, billowing mushroom of smoke. She could almost taste the acrid burn of it. The whole compound. Fucking gone.
Wind whipped dust everywhere, into eyes, nostrils, hair and teeth. And everything was so bright. She blinked through sunspots down to her captor's bloodied forearm. There was a gash, about six inches long. But it changed. She watched in silent, fascinated horror as it blended together, a desert mirage melting. Not even a hint of scarring left.
Her insides iced over in terror. Bald had been right. He was one of them. The Anadeim. The outlawed race of soldiers created by the Rejkavs centuries ago. Assassins with honed abilities, and chief among them—tracking down Anomalies like her.
She shoved his arm, but it might as well have been a log pinned across her. She kicked at the huef's sides and they reared back. The animal came down hard, but the Anadeim held tight to the reins, and to her, all but squeezing the breath from her ribs.
"Beaehn stiele, Neheihla maei fehen Wovea." His voice came sharp and hot in her ear. "Be still, you foolish woman. Do you want to live?"