Dead and Buryd: A Dystopian Action Adventure Novel (Out of Orbit Book 1) (2 page)

Sweat clung to his skin, his shirt plastered against his back. At his wrists and neck, the skin was already turning pink, and he could only count himself lucky that he knew a good medic to ease the burning flesh when he returned home.

The building stood halfway along the perfectly laid Adveni road. It was easy to spot amongst the other buildings. The design was similar, its colours uniform with the rest of the street, but this building was larger, more impressive, and slightly more terrifying for what waited inside.

He lengthened his stride, making brisk progress down the road towards the building. He wouldn’t be going inside, he never did, but it wouldn’t change the fact that he didn’t have long. Pass offs had to be made quickly and without fuss. With their situation, they couldn’t risk being caught.

He was almost opposite the building before he could look up into one of the front windows, able to spot the sky-blue shirt hanging behind the glass. He smiled, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he turned towards the house, making his way through the gap between the buildings.

The contact he’d been coming to see was a drysta, a slave to an Adveni, so he wasn’t able to venture far from his owner’s house. The drysta was already outside by the time he rounded the back corner of the house. He stood against the wall, a cigarette hanging from his fingers, and a fresh bruise blackening his cheek. A collar shone around his neck and numerous small scars snaked out from underneath it. He glanced up. At the sight of his visitor, he grinned.

“I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

“When have I ever let you down?”

The drysta tilted his head to the side as he rubbed his hand against his shoulder, ash dropping from the end of the cigarette and sprinkling down into the grass.

“You got anything for me?”

A brief shake of his contact’s head as he leaned forward, glancing through the back door which stood open just enough to warn them of an approach.

“No, he’s been in a particularly bad mood,” he said, pointing towards his eye. “I’ve been keeping a…”

The low thud of a footstep cut him off, and the drysta quickly stood up straight, turning to peer in through the gap. They both listened, expecting the steps to fade into the other sounds of the house, but they came closer, and seemed to multiply.

“Go!”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Turning on his heel, he made his way back around the corner to the gap between the buildings. The door was wrenched open so hard that it smacked into the wall. Though he knew that only one Adveni lived in the house, he heard at least four men pour out through the door.

“Who was here?”

The drysta’s howl of pain seared through the air as the only answer.

Breaking into a run, he didn’t need to look behind him to know he was being followed. The drum of footsteps evened out into a constant beat against the pavement. If it had been any other situation, he might have laughed that the Adveni were so well trained that they couldn’t even run out of unison.

Another scream of pain echoed between the high walls. Even through the percussion of footfalls, he could hear the drysta claiming he didn’t know anything, that it had been no one. He rounded the corner, guilt following at every turn.

The wide street was the worst place to run from an Adveni. He knew that if even one of them chose to stop running and aim a weapon, he would be dead or captured in an instant. He had to get into some of the narrower streets, or somewhere he could try to lose them, instead of listening to them slowly close the gap.

Launching himself around a corner, his shoulder collided with the wall. His shirt caught on a rough patch of brick, tearing through the material and scraping the flesh beneath as he pushed off the wall and sprinted along the thin alley.

A shot smacked into the pavement by his foot, bouncing away in the glare of the evening sunlight. It was a warning shot, an order to stop. The next one would not miss.

He couldn’t be taken in alive. He knew too much. He’d never fully considered his ability to withstand Adveni torture, but he wasn’t about to risk finding out. At least he’d learned something from the shot: they were firing metal, not copaq bullets. They were aiming to kill.

The road was taking him further through the Adveni dwelling quarter. There were so many roads to take. He didn’t usually come this far into the quarter. He hadn’t memorised the routes. Tall buildings obscured his view and disorientated him. The footsteps were getting closer as he hurled himself into an alleyway. High walls threw him into the shadows.

Blinded by the harsh sun as he came out into the next street, he squeezed his eyes closed. He didn’t care where he put his feet as long as it was away from the Adveni behind him. He blinked and shook his head. The glare of the sun on his left blazed across his eyes. He was heading north, further from the city, he knew that now.

A shot nicked his shoulder with a sizzling burn. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder. For a moment, the briefest soaring moment, he gained some ground. He ducked into the next alley he came across. His eyes widened at the sight of a metal fence at the opposite end. A bark of gruff laughter followed him along the tunnel. Through the blood pounding in his ears, he could hear that the footsteps had slowed. There was no use in running. They’d caught their prey.

Through the bars of the fence, he could see the open plains of the northern land. He’d reached the outer ridge of the quarter. There would be no protection, and given time, the heat would be as ruthless as the Adveni behind him. There was nothing for it. Time was not to be argued with, and he had run out of it.

He didn’t break stride as he hurtled down the alley. It was no different from jumping onto a horse, right? Hands up, swing your leg over, and hope you went high enough. There was no stirrup. It would be a big leap. The Adveni realised what he was doing. Two of them pelted after him as the other took aim. He didn’t slow as he ran straight at the fence. Grasping the top, he launched himself up, the top bar of the metal digging into his stomach as he swung his leg over. The shot blew off the heel of his boot as he swung his other leg over the fence. Pushing himself up from a stumbled landing, he set off running from the Adveni, into the merciless sun.

 
1
Buryd in the East

 
The eastern Mykahnol pillar loomed over Lyndbury Compound, onyx bricks towering into the sky, sending a long shadow sprawling over the large, oppressive building. The sun had barely hoisted itself above the mountains, but the sky was already such a clear, bright blue that it could only mean another blistering day.

Georgianna Lennox brushed her long, blonde hair away from her neck, sweeping it high onto her head: a mess of waves and curls that she tied haphazardly into a knot with a ribbon. The dirt track from the end of the tunnel to the gates was already giving off waves of heat under her leather boots. The dense, heavy air stuck her clothes to her skin. Grasping her leather bag to her side, her brown-eyed gaze settled on the building up ahead. She let out a deep sigh, and trudged towards the gates.

She had promised to spend the day below ground helping the Belsa rebels with any medical emergencies that came in. However, she’d not even reached the hidden tunnels before her tsentyl device had beeped, informing her of an emergency within the compound walls. Changing her route, she’d made her way through the eastern tunnel instead, heading out of the city. There were multiple entrances along the line, but most Veniche people didn’t use this particular tunnel, driven off by the knowledge of what waited at the other end.

The Adveni had built it when they first claimed dominion: a large compound they had named Lyndbury. While criminals of the Veniche tribes used to be marked for what they were and sent on their way to live alone, far from those they would rob or hurt, the Adveni had a different method. Instead of sending the criminals away, they would lock them up, keeping them all together in the compound.

The creation of Lyndbury had sent outrage spiralling through the people. Who were the Adveni to lock a man in a single place, especially through the volatile seasons of Os-Veruh? At times, Georgianna could almost understand it. A man who committed murder should be kept away from others and not given any opportunity to commit his crime elsewhere. However, the Adveni did not offer that. Instead of keeping criminals away from other people, they locked them all in a building together, and let them do as they pleased so long as they never left the compound walls.

One group of Adveni had been tasked with guarding the compound. Specially trained and working with ruthless efficiency, the Guards of Lyndbury were infamous within the city. The Veniche of the city described the inmates as being “buryd alive”, after the compound’s name, Lyndbury: though your life was over and there was no escape, your body remained alive.

The Veniche people might not have considered it so bad if the Adveni were fairer about it, punishing those who committed crimes the Veniche agreed with, but the common opinion was that the Adveni punished crimes without understanding them. They didn’t look at the starving family of a thief, nor did they care for the claims of five other victims when they said the man a woman stabbed to fend off an attack had also attacked them. There was no justice, only punishment. Even those who refused to bow to Adveni rule and register themselves were labelled as criminals and sent to the compound. Those sorts, however, never stayed inside the walls for long. Instead they were sold off in the drysta yard as slaves to whichever Adveni would pay the highest price.

Georgianna hated going there. She detested the sight of the inmates burned by the sun when the Adveni forced them outside into a fenced yard while the sun was high. She abhorred looking at the women, locked in the cell block with morally lacking men who had not seen a woman in so long that their urges overcame them. She heard her brother’s pleas that she stay away, that the Adveni would, at some point decide she was no longer useful and lock her in there as well. Whenever the tsentyl communication device she had been given lit up, however, she answered it, because she knew that no one else would. The Adveni didn’t care if a Veniche man died in the block in a fight over food. The body would lie in the block until count if the Adveni wanted. It was only her continued service that meant that someone saw fit to call for a medic at all.

Turning towards the compound, Georgianna brushed an errant lock of hair out of her face, and walked the last couple of hundred yards towards the high metal gates looming in front of her.

Inside the gate, two Adveni men stood watching for her approach. She was not even ten feet from the metal fencing before one of them pushed the gate forward to allow her entrance.

“In the block,” one of the men explained bluntly. “Edtroka will take you.”

Georgianna glanced at the other guard and nodded politely. Without so much as a word, the guard, Edtroka, turned and began walking away with long, purposeful strides, leaving Georgianna to hurry to keep up in his wake.

Georgianna had met Edtroka many times before. He was the first guard to take her through the routine of being let into the block. He showed her the items she would not be permitted to take inside and showed her how to work the Adveni tsentyl device that would let her inform them that she was ready to leave. His Veuric at that time had been broken and difficult to understand. Over the two years since her first visit, however, his use of the language had improved dramatically. Unfortunately, Georgianna could not say the same for her Adtvenis.

“Do you know what happened?” she asked, struggling to keep pace with him.

“Fight,” he answered, his thick Adveni accent clear through the Veuric words. “We found him this morning.”

“And what are his injuries?”

Edtroka turned his head, glancing down at her with what she could only imagine was derision, though it could have been amusement, the way his brow quirked like that. Edtroka was always slightly odd. He wasn’t cruel or insulting to her like the other guards would be, but he had never shown her any obvious kindness either, only unreadable expressions that he never explained, even when she asked.

“I thought you were the medic.”

“Well, I am!” she answered. “But surely you’ve seen his injuries if you called me?”

The guard shrugged, and she wondered if he had not seen the injuries on the prisoner, not paid enough attention, or not cared enough to remember what he’d seen. He didn’t pause as he led her through the drysta yard towards the doors, and though the sun was now high enough to make being outside uncomfortable in mid-heat, the Veniche people set to be sold as dreta were lined up along one side, a group of Adveni looking at them with interest.

The Adveni were easy enough to spot even though in face and shape they resembled the Veniche in almost every way. Yet most Adveni stood almost a head taller than the average Veniche, and were also built better, with broader shoulders and longer legs, making them faster and stronger. It hadn’t taken long for the rumours to begin circulating through the tribes that the Adveni bred differently to them. Unlike the Veniche, who paired most commonly for love, the Adveni were put to numerous tests. If their tletonise—the Adveni way of referring to what the Veniche people knew to be the aspects of a person passed on to their children—did not pass these tests, they were forbidden from creating offspring. Georgianna had often heard the term they used for people with undesirable genetic qualities: Zsraykil.

Most Veniche didn’t spend a lot of quality time speaking to Adveni, not when they didn’t have to, but they all knew that the Adveni considered most, if not all of them Zsraykil.

The strength and skill of the Adveni was also due to their extensive training. Georgianna had heard, from a friend who, in the ways these things happened, had heard it from another friend who knew someone, that the Adveni were trained in combat from childhood upwards, until they were ready to take their nsiloq and become an adult.

Georgianna had been trained to fight too. Life on the trail could be hard and attacks from outcasts and animals were not uncommon. However, Georgianna was certain that the Adveni’s combat training had probably gone further than a lesson from their father, a lesson which included instructing them to aim for the face if the attacker was female, to go for the groin if male, and if an animal, to run as fast as your legs could carry you, preferably screaming to get the attention of people nearby.