Dead and Buryd: A Dystopian Action Adventure Novel (Out of Orbit Book 1) (17 page)

Jacob rocked himself forward for a moment, staring intently at his knees before he finally pushed himself up straight, moving himself into the corner of his bed. He pushed his body back, bracing his feet against the bed until the walls pressed so hard against his skin that his flesh flattened to the metal. Georgianna frowned. This was too painful for him. She should stop it. She opened her mouth.

“When I was caught I was sent to the compound,” Jacob said in a fast murmur. “I was there for a week when a guard came into the block. Even back then we knew it was strange. They didn’t come in unless…”

“Unless for count,” Georgianna nodded.

Jacob nodded.

“I’d been hiding in a cell with a couple of others. We were young so we were trying to protect ourselves from… others,” he continued. “With a guard on the block, we all had to come out. He selected five of us from a list and we were taken to the Yard.”

“Jake…” Lacie moaned.

This time, Jacob didn’t reach for the redhead, even as she buried her face into her hands, the tiles spilling from her fingers onto the bed.

Guilt flooded through her. She had known this would be difficult for Jacob but she hadn’t fully known how difficult it would be for Lacie. Their stories were so similar. Hearing his struggle had to be the same for the girl. Pushing herself quickly off the bed, Georgianna moved over to Jacob’s. Jacob, without even looking up, curled his legs tighter to his chest, but relaxed a little as she, instead of coming towards him, looped an arm around Lacie’s shoulders and murmured apologies into her ear.

“I wasn’t sold the first day, so I was kept in the other block, where they keep the people who will be sold,” Jacob explained. “The next day, a man bid on me.”

“How old were you?” Georgianna asked, brushing her hand gently over Lacie’s hair.

“Fourteen.”

“And when he bought you, what happened?”

“You’re taken to be registered,” Lacie answered. “There’s a room. They take you in and an Adveni takes a sample of blood.”

Almost at the exact same time, Lacie and Jacob raised their left thumb and held it there for a moment. Georgianna hugged Lacie a little tighter to her.

“They take information on you,” Jacob explained. “Name, age, tribe, everything. It all gets put into a… a…”

He held his hands a little way out in front of him, one hand flat, facing up, the other drawing like a pencil on paper.

“On a tsentyl?” Georgianna asked.

Jacob nodded.

“The information goes to their… their… main thing, and it’s kept.”

“Same as if you register yourself,” Georgianna explained. “I had to go in and register with my family.”

Jacob did nothing but nod again.

“So what happened, you know, after that?”

Jacob shrugged, his gaze not shifting from his knees. Wrapping his arms around his legs, he looked like a small child, not a young man. Georgianna wondered if he’d always looked young, curled back into the corner, trying to save himself from his owner’s rage.

“Whatever they want,” he answered. “After they’ve registered you, you’re theirs, they can do anything.”

Lacie untangled herself from Georgianna’s arm and set about methodically putting all the tiles into a neat stack in her hands. Each tile facing the same direction and the right way up.

“The cinystalq?” Georgianna asked.

Cinystalq collars were an Adveni design used on dreta. Clamped around the neck, the collar could not only track a person’s movements, but also issue punishment in the form of painful shocks travelling through the body. From what Georgianna knew, they were difficult to remove. Doing it wrong could end up killing the wearer as the energy inside escaped into the body when the connection was broken.

A couple of years before, it had been thought impossible. It was only when a Belsa turned up, collar in hand, that they realised that the impossible was actually doable with a little training and care.

Jacob shook his head, his lips pursed. It looked like he was thinking about it, but when he answered, it was clear he’d already known what to say, just that it was harder to say it.

“Personal choice. They are expensive, so most Adveni don’t bother unless they are having… problems.”

Georgianna pressed her lips into a thin line as she considered his answer. It was good news in a way. Knowing that most Adveni who purchased a Veniche as a drysta wouldn’t bother with a cinystalq.

As she thought about it, Georgianna hadn’t even realised that Jacob was rubbing his hand back and forth over the side of his neck where a long burn had healed not long before. Now, against his skin, a thin white line curved from just beneath his ear and disappeared under the neck of his shirt.

“How did you get away?” Georgianna asked.

His fingers paused halfway down his neck, and Jacob glanced off to the side, a curl of dark brown hair falling in front of his eyes before he impatiently pushed it away.

“My owner didn’t pay a lot of attention to me.”

Georgianna’s gaze crept to the scars she could see on Jacob’s arms, long faded marks mixed with newer, angrier reds. From the look of him, Jacob’s owner had paid a lot of attention to the young man, and none of it in the way anyone would like. However, looking at him, Georgianna didn’t dare disagree.

“It was only when he was bored that I became worthy of notice.” His voice was barely more than a whisper. “It was… it was almost okay at first, but then… After the last time, I knew I’d not last and so I ran when he was asleep. I figured I’d get far enough and the collar would kill me, but someone found me and they got the collar off.”

“Are they so open with security? Why doesn’t everyone run?”

“Some are.”

Georgianna looked down in surprise as Lacie spoke instead of Jacob. She was looking at the tiles, flipping through them, though it had been unmistakably her voice.

“At first they keep you locked away, all doors and windows shut. After a while, you stop thinking about running except when it gets really bad,” she continued. “But then, you’re scared of what will happen and…”

“And you stay put,” Jacob finished when it seemed Lacie had lost her will to continue.

Georgianna nodded slowly. From the sounds of it, Nyah would still be the type of drysta locked away, kept on a tight leash while she became accustomed to her new position. Unfortunately, that also meant that, most likely, she would be kept close to the Adveni who had bought her. It would be difficult for her to get away for any length of time.

“Jacob, when you were sold… do you remember who did it?”

Jacob frowned, and for the first time since he’d began speaking about what had happened to him, his gaze met Georgianna’s. His eyes were narrowed, but Georgianna was sure it wasn’t in anger, it was confusion.

“Who bought me?”

“No, who sold you from the compound? Are there specific guards, or do they all do it?” she asked.

“Oh.” He looked back down at the bed. “There are a few who deal, but the one who sold me? His name was Edtroka.”

Georgianna’s mouth dropped open as she stared at Jacob, and though he looked like he wanted to find out what was so surprising about that name, he didn’t ask. Edtroka couldn’t have been his favourite person. She didn’t want to have to explain to him that she knew the man who had sold him to an Adveni who would torment and beat him for almost six years.

“Thank you, Jake, for telling me.”

Jacob nodded gently but didn’t speak again. When she stood up, Jacob shifted and lay on his side, curled into a ball at the far end of the mattress. He held his pillow squashed in his arms. Georgianna considered suggesting to Lacie that they should give him some time alone, but Lacie had already moved, stretching out her arm, entwining her fingers with Jacob’s.

No words passed between them as Georgianna collected her things and left the two alone. She felt horrible for asking Jacob and Lacie to relive what had obviously been the most horrific of times for them, but as she took a final glance back at the pair curled on the bed, she couldn’t help but feel that maybe talking about it had actually been the best thing she could have done for them. Maybe talking about things they had kept to themselves for so long had given them the chance to begin to move on.

 
17
Question of Delicacy

 
Georgianna’s conversation with Jacob and Lacie remained in her head for two days. In some ways, getting Nyah out seemed more possible than it had before, as the story that cinystalq collars were placed on every drysta at the moment of purchase had been proved a myth. However, knowing that a drysta would be more heavily controlled while they became accustomed to their new situation made the idea of breaking her out any time soon look virtually impossible.

Still, even though it had been days since her argument with Taye, Georgianna had yet to approach him about helping out. She knew that the longer she left it, the more likely it was that Taye would do something reckless, but Georgianna also didn’t want to go to him with a half-baked idea that would wash away at the lightest touch. She needed something positive, something they could work with, like who it was who had bought Nyah in the first place.

She had meant to go to the compound the next day, feigning that she had her days mixed up, but as things usually went, she’d been caught up with other responsibilities, one of which included looking after Braedon while her father went down to the Oprust district and Halden worked. Her nephew had been more than happy to spend the morning with her, especially as it meant going to various sections of the camps to make small trades. Georgianna had been a little worried about taking her nephew with her, but Braedon had been fascinated with the different places and people. He was thrilled when his aunt, someone who was usually seen as someone to entertain him, had been asked to stitch up a rather ugly-looking wound on an equally ugly-looking man, something Georgianna was grateful Braedon had not commented on.

Having left the family home early that morning to get back into the centre of the city before sun up, Georgianna made her way through the tunnels towards the east of the city, taking the familiar lines until she could come up out of the entrance a few hundred metres from the entrance to the compound.

Getting through the gates was a rather regular affair, though with Edtroka not standing guard, it had been up to Georgianna to ask whether he was on duty.

“Dreta,” the guard had grumbled at her, handing back her bag, now checked for contraband, for Georgianna to take inside.

Georgianna gave a small, polite nod and instead of taking the first door into the compound, walked down a bricked path that led along the side of the high walls.

Between the wall and the fenced cage surrounding the compound, the thin path felt more like a tunnel than anything else. Georgianna could only guess at the reason they’d made it so narrow, but as she saw the crowd of people gathered in the yard at the end, she wondered whether it was to prevent a quick getaway should anything happen. Only so many people could get through the fenced corridor at a time, not to mention that at the other end they would face guards with heavy copaq weapons. Her father had once told her that, should you wish to fight off a large number with only a few men, leaving them no entrance or retreat but a small corridor meant only so many could attack at any one time. Looking at the swarm of Adveni and the number of Veniche lined up to be sold, she decided that was a useful thing to keep in mind here.

It took a while to locate Edtroka. She’d first made her way respectfully through the crowd to the other end of the yard, letting Adveni bump and push her around and apologising to them each time they did. When she could not see Edtroka standing guard near the dreta waiting to be sold, she instead stood near the high wall of the compound, looking out through the sea of people. She finally spotted Edtroka. He was talking to a man with a pompous, self-important expression on his face. Edtroka was nodding politely, but even through the stiff, polite smile, Georgianna could see that he was not enjoying the conversation.

Georgianna slipped through the crowd, once again apologising to anyone who barged into her, until she reached Edtroka’s side. She held her distance a few yards away, giving the two men the space to continue their conversation. It only took a minute or two before Edtroka held the side of his fist to the middle of his chest in the Adveni mark of respect, and the other man turned to walk swiftly away.

“Guard Edtroka?” Georgianna asked cautiously, stepping forward.

Edtroka turned, the forced smile on his lips fading for a moment, to be replaced by a look of amusement. Georgianna looked at him, surprised that his expression would not be one of annoyance, especially seeing as he’d seemed almost incapable of fully hiding his contempt from someone who was clearly his superior. Edtroka stepped forward and nodded to her.

“Med,” he answered, his head cocked to the side. “Don’t see you here often. You do know I’m not allowed to sell to you, right?”

Georgianna gazed back at him in surprise. The only time she’d seen Edtroka for long enough to hold an actual conversation, he’d been stiff and surly. Today he seemed practically happy to see her.

Not entirely sure how to respond, she faltered, glancing up towards the area where Veniche were waiting to be sold as dreta. There was such a stark contrast among them, young and old, male and female, defiant to downright terrified. She couldn’t look at Edtroka, his gaze was too piercing for her liking, as if he could see what she was thinking, what she was planning.

“I was hoping you’d be able to give me some information,” she said. “On a sale.”

His gaze flickered over to the soon-to-be dreta and the Adveni guarding them. Georgianna suspected that he was about to tell her that he wasn’t allowed, that giving over information like that was considered dangerous. However, when he looked back at her, he nodded for her to go on, holding one hand out and curling his fingers over his palm to ask for the details.

Georgianna was stunned. She’d expected to be drilled with questions about why she wanted such information, but instead she was being treated like an equal to this man. At least, for the moment. With no idea how long the pleasure would last, she quickly adjusted the strap across her shoulder and glanced around them to see if anyone was listening.