[Danny]

can't talk. just read.

CHAPTER 31

The empty corridors multiplied any fears I had. Even our quiet footfalls sounded deafening in the silence, and as for the metallic clicks of the sligs in our company…

Amazingly, given the deafening silence around us, we reached the outer door of the Slave Block without incident. Despite his initial reluctance, Gil led us purposefully and confidently down the grey corridors, only hesitating a couple of times at multiple junctions.

At the Outer Door, however, our luck ran out.

As the door swung open, we heard the ear-splitting whine of the security alarm. As we reeled from the alarm, Gil looked around in a panic, before grabbing my arm and pointing down a side-alley.

“This way! Quickly!”

There was no time to question him, so I followed. Seeing us move off, the rest of the slaves followed, panicking slightly. Vint caught up with Gil.

“Is this-” he breathed, “Is this the way to the city gates?”

“We can’t go directly, we’d be picked up in no time!”

“Okay.”

Gil led us down a series of alleys, and I thought for a while that we’d lost anyone who might have been following us, but then I heard gunfire and screams from behind us. There was a sudden rush forward, and we all hurried round the corners Gil led us round, trying to outrun the gunshots of the guards behind. The sound and smell of death was around us, although I didn’t look back to see the slaughter of those who had followed me.

Then Gil led us down the wrong alley. Before us was a line of guards, waiting. We were trapped between two companies of guards, but they didn’t seem at all interested in capturing us, as they opened fire immediately. Gil fell, blood pouring from gaping holes in his chest and head. Hap, holding on to my hand, went limp as bullets penetrated her skull. My earlier attempts to protect her were now apparently wasted.

I saw a door in the side of the alley, and pulled it open, running inside without waiting to see what was there. Confused, most of the other slaves followed. We found ourselves in a large warehouse. Hearing signs of pursuit, I led us in a twisted path through the huge crates, which weren’t dissimilar to the ones that had been on the ship. Screams from behind told me that our pursuers weren’t very far behind.

I looked for an exit, and saw one. We hurried out into yet another alleyway, and I wasted no time in picking a random direction to run in. Whether our chances of survival would have been higher if I’d picked a different route, I never found out, but we soon found ourselves under pursuit. We scattered.

Me, Vint, Quiss, Yan, and about a dozen others found ourselves being picked off one by one by three pursuing sligs. I watched impassively as the bodies of my fellow escapees fell to the ground, as my own survival assumed overriding importance.

Then Quiss fell. I watched in horror as my new brother’s chest exploded with blood, and he sank to the ground. I turned, and dropped down beside the body. I had lived without relatives for all my life, and no sooner had I finally found one, when he was torn from my grasp in this act of violence. The others slowed, wondering why I had stopped, but I cared not. My life was as good as over in this moment. Then I felt a familiar cold rush of hatred. How dare these sligs take away the life of my brother? They had never known him; he had never done them wrong; he had only been trying to escape. I was the one who deserved that bullet; I had organised the escape, and cajoled Gil into leading us out. Quiss deserved better.

I stood, and turned to face our pursuers, my mind already being pushed aside by an all too familiar usurper. I watched as I charged at the three sligs, unarmed. Even with their weapons, they hesitated in the face of such obvious aggression, but soon opened fire. In their uncertainty, most of their shots missed, but I was hit in the right arm twice. I barely felt it, and took no notice.

The first slig died the easiest, his neck broken in one swift move. Then, as though that hadn’t been bad enough, I swung his corpse over my head and threw it at the other two. It failed to knock them down, but threw them off balance long enough for me to leap on one of them, biting at his face while my hands wrenched his gun from his grasp. He cried out in agony as I tore off two of his feeding tentacles with my teeth, and fell to the floor, clutching at his face. The third slig was desperately trying to reload his rifle, having fired all his bullets at me while I was running. I used the other slig’s rifle to knock his head back, throwing him to the ground. I swung the rifle down, smashing his goggles, before dropping the rifle, and pulling his feeding tentacles in different directions. As the skin tore from his face, he screamed, temporarily deafening me. I hit him with his rifle to shut him up, smashing his skull and killing him. I strode back to the slig whose tentacles I had bitten off. He was still now, having lost a lot of blood, but just to be on the safe side I picked him up and broke his neck.

I wasted no time in returning to Quiss’s body, and kneeling beside it. I saw the horrified looks on the faces of the other slaves, but took no notice. I did my best to staunch the flow of blood from the hole in Quiss’s rapidly cooling corpse, pretending to myself that it would do some good. When I could feel no pulse I tried to restart his heart, and when that failed I collapsed over the body. Vint approached me tentatively.

“Ulven? Come on, let’s go.”

“Help me with Quiss.”

“Ulven, we don’t have time to mess around, we have to get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving him.” I clung to Quiss’s cold hand, as if to reinforce what I had said.

Vint sighed. “We can’t do any good for him.”

“If we leave him, he’ll die!” I was getting angry. Was Vint just a heartless bastard?

“He IS dead, Ulven!”

“NO!” Suddenly furious, I stood and punched Vint in one smooth motion, knocking him to the ground in a fit of rage. I stood, looking down at his shocked expression, and felt the last vestiges of the killer leave my mind, for the last time ever. I was as shocked as he was by my actions, and thought for a moment that he was going to hit me back. Instead, he stood, turned, and ran off down the alley. After a brief hesitation and a few glances my way, the other slaves followed him, leaving me alone with my brother’s corpse. I didn’t care. I collapsed across his chest, my tears mixing with his blood.

That was how the guards found me, half an hour later. They had some difficulty prising Quiss’s corpse from my grip, as my arms were frozen as if in death, and his blood had dried, cementing the bond that would always exist between us, undamaged by death and despair.