Dead and Buryd: A Dystopian Action Adventure Novel (Out of Orbit Book 1) (35 page)

Edtroka stepped back, turning the collar in his fingers almost absently.

“Inmates are expected to be ready for count at sunrise and sunset,” he ordered, turning and unlocking the cell door.

He pushed the door open, standing to the side as he allowed Georgianna from the cell. The door slammed behind her and Edtroka’s hand slipped around her arm, holding tightly onto her elbow as he led her through the corridor down towards the block. The heavy door she knew so well was fast approaching. Georgianna glanced at the guard she had felt she might have been able to be almost friends with.

“If you have injured,” Georgianna muttered hopefully. “I can still help. With supplies, I can…”

“You are an inmate, not a medic,” Edtroka answered. “You should get used to that.”

He placed the odd-looking key into the lock and turned it. He exchanged the key for the black card and Georgianna watched as it intricately etched itself with blue lines when pressed to the device next to the door. The door creaked open, and finally, Edtroka stepped back.

Georgianna could feel at least a dozen sets of eyes on her as she looked one final time at the Adveni guard. His expression, cold and distant, gave no impression that they had ever known each other at all. Her hopes of keeping any semblance of her old life slipped away.

Georgianna stepped into the block for the first time without her medic bag hung from her shoulder. Without a tsentyl to request her release, the door closed behind her.

 
38
From the Outside In

 
Each day became like the last, a slow monotony that did not change nor falter. Every day the guards came in twice to do the inmate count, every other day they let them out into the yard. Past that, there were only the events between the four walls of the block, which luckily were few and far between.

Georgianna learned quickly that there was a certain hierarchy within the compound walls, and that the best way to survive was to stay as far under the radar as possible. A pair of brothers, Ta-Dao and Vajra, had asserted their dominance. Ruthless and efficient, the men acted like the elders of a tribe, though Georgianna had heard that they had previously been outcasts, travelling alone before the arrival of the Adveni.

Hearing the stories, Georgianna heeded the warnings to stay off their radar, to make herself as invisible and inconsequential as she could. Keeping a low profile, however, was harder than it seemed when she already had a reputation.

While Edtroka had told her the truth when they last spoke, that she was no longer a medic, but an inmate of the compound, within the walls of the block the other inmates were not so keen to forget that she had ever been of service to them. She was not called by the guards to help prisoners, or soon-to-be dreta, but the other prisoners were quick to call on her expertise when needed.

There wasn’t much Georgianna could do. Without supplies, she couldn’t sew wounds or even treat a virus. There was nothing to be done but to patch things up as best she could and hope the guards would pay enough attention during count to give injured prisoners the treatment they needed, a hope that was often dashed.

Since the day he walked her into the block, Edtroka had refused to look at her. Each day during count she would watch him, waiting to catch his eye. However, even when he was the one reading off their names, he turned his head the moment he reached her. The other guards were not nearly so affected. In fact, a few of them seemed genuinely amused that the medic who made such an effort to visit the compound was now one of their permanent residents. She received more than one taunt or amused smirk as they passed her on count, or as the prisoners were led out towards the yard.

She waited in constant fear that this would be the day she’d be taken back for more questioning, that they would demand Nyah and Alec’s whereabouts, or the people who had helped free them. It never came. The longer she remained in the compound, the more sure Georgianna became that Maarqyn wanted to question her himself, that he was waiting until he owned her and he could torment her in any way he pleased.

Every night, once the doors had been locked after count and most inmates returned to their cells, she lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what she had missed. Someone had to have betrayed them. That was the only answer she could come up with that made any sense. There was no way the Adveni could have known without being told. She had wondered once or twice whether Nyah and Alec had been talking and Maarqyn had overheard them, but why would Maarqyn have let them run if he already knew? Was it an attempt to capture more Belsa? Whatever roads her thoughts took her down, they never led to any answers.

The days were slowly getting shorter, the heat not quite as unbearable as it had been before. The air, previously so dry and unforgiving, began holding the promise of wind, maybe even rain. While the other inmates were praising the relief the cooling weather brought, Georgianna could not help but feel depression as the heat began coming to an end.

Every year around this time, before the Adveni anyway, the Kahle would be getting ready to leave Adlai, travelling south to Nyvalau where they would live out the freeze. Since the Adveni had arrived, fewer people travelled. Most were forced to suffer the harsh northern blizzards in Adlai. The lucky few who were allowed to travel petitioned for passes from the powerful Adveni volsonnae.

Georgianna loved the trail. She adored the cities, yes, but there was something about waking up in a different place each morning, seeing the expanses of the land. Trapped in the compound, despite being on the edge of the city, that land only seemed that much further away than it did when working in the centre of Adlai. She couldn’t help but wonder whether her family would try to make the journey. There was nothing keeping them here; she would be buryd whether they went on the trail or not, but not knowing whether they were already packing to move on was pulling Georgianna down a little more each day. Even though she couldn’t see them—and she hadn’t seen them nearly as often as she should have when she had the chance—she had liked knowing that they were close.

Only one thing kept Georgianna’s spirits up each day, that in the weeks since their escape, Nyah and Alec had yet to be caught. Georgianna didn’t recognise a single face among the new inmates brought into the compound each week. Whenever the doors opened to bring a new inmate into the block, Georgianna breathed a silent sigh of relief that she did not know the person standing before her. Wherever they were, Taye, Keiran and Wrench had gone undetected, and Nyah and Alec were free.

 
***

 
“Medic! Hey, Medic!”

Georgianna pushed herself up off the bunk, running her hand through her hair as she stepped out of the cell she had claimed as her own, moving to the edge of the upper-level balcony. It had taken a lot to gain her own cell, but her medic skills, as limited as they were without supplies, had been enough to bargain with. She leaned over the balcony to see Dhiren, one of the other prisoners, looking up at her hopefully.

“How many times?” she asked, her eyes widening in accusation.

Dhiren thought about it for a moment, or at least pretended to, before he shrugged his shoulders and grinned lopsidedly.

“Please, George,” he whined.

She rolled her eyes and stood straight. Barely glancing back into her cell, she made her way along the upper walkway towards the steps. She didn’t have much, only a few bits and pieces other inmates had given her for medicinal purposes. She didn’t think anyone would bother trying to search it in the hopes of finding anything. There were others in the block who would have much more interesting things than she did, having been here a lot longer.

Coming to the bottom of the stairs, she was greeted by Dhiren, who took hold of her wrist and began tugging her through the block. She tripped but caught herself, falling into step beside him.

“What did you do this time?” she asked, glancing sideways at him. “Or is this another ‘request’?”

Georgianna couldn’t see any bruises on his face, nor the evidence of blood pouring from a wound. However, Dhiren wasn’t exactly one to come to her to help someone else. Not many of the inmates trusted him enough to send him to fetch her, except maybe Ta-Dao or Vajra.

“Kinda personal,” Dhiren explained, leading her around the corner towards the next row of cells.

She had met the famed brothers once since her permanent arrival into the block. Vajra, having decided that he liked the idea of controlling the flow of medical care within the block, however limited it was without supplies, had sent for Georgianna. While the message had been relayed to her as a request, the look on the inmate’s face made it incredibly clear to her that this was not the sort of request you denied. In fact, it was best to consider any “request” made by either brother as an order, given with a smile that would quickly disappear if you refused. Georgianna still worried that her single occupancy cell had been influenced by the brothers. Though, if it had been, they had not demanded repayment.

Once Georgianna had reached his cell and they had exchanged the briefest of pleasantries, he had offered her protection and luxuries in return for her answering to him and his brother, Ta-Dao.

Georgianna had declined as politely as she could. She could tell that, despite the fixed smile on Vajra’s face, he didn’t approve of her answer. There was no doubt in Georgianna’s mind that it was only a matter of time before he made the request again.

Dhiren, she knew from other prisoners, was clasped within the hands of the brothers, though Georgianna couldn’t exactly see why. He was a bulky, well-built man, but from what Georgianna had seen of him when he came to her in the hopes of her treating a wound, Dhiren was naturally funny and kind. Unfortunately, his reputation for carrying out the punishments from the brothers made him vastly disliked amongst the other prisoners. Georgianna hadn’t asked him how he had come by his situation, but when she had taken the chance of asking another inmate, she had been greeted by a perplexed stare. There were no rumours to be heard of. Whatever had happened between Dhiren and the brothers, nobody outside the little circle knew about it, and Dhiren was not telling.

There were easily a hundred Veniche in their block, though Georgianna had never taken the time to count the number of cells. She already knew that some people shared, whether through choice or by force. Dhiren however, she knew, had his own cell in one of the corners of the block.

Dhiren stepped aside, letting Georgianna enter first. She took a few steps in, turned, then jumped in surprise when she saw that Dhiren had taken no time at all to drop his trousers. He stood before her bare from the waist down.

She was a medic, she was used to seeing people naked, but the ease with which he did it, when any inmate could walk by, had caught her off guard. Blinking, she looked away for a moment.

“Are you shy?” he asked, amusement ringing through his voice, his head cocked to the side.

Georgianna looked back at him and snorted.

“I’ve seen much worse on much better,” she claimed, earning a chuckle from Dhiren.

The cut on his upper thigh wasn’t bleeding too heavily, and even as Dhiren took a seat on the bed, letting Georgianna sit next to him for a better look, it didn’t seem to be causing him a lot of pain.

She grabbed a cloth from the basin, drenching it with tepid water and gently cleaning the wound. Dhiren did grimace as she pulled the cloth across the slice of flesh, but other than that he seemed relatively comfortable. She frowned. The wound was relatively shallow, but what was puzzling her was why it was so straight. She couldn’t imagine someone making such a straight, even wound with a glancing attack, and if it had been more premeditated than that, it would have been deeper.

“How did you do this?” she asked.

Wringing the blood from the cloth, she rinsed it through and returned to him, taking a seat. She looked at him suspiciously, only then glancing towards his trousers. There was no slash in them that she’d noticed.

“Usual way,” he answered, looking at her with an expression that clearly told her not to ask.

She pursed her lips, but shook her head, cleaning the wound off again before wringing out the cloth a final time.

Glancing at the wound, she chewed her bottom lip. Blood had oozed up to the surface, creating a thin but vibrant line, yet there it stayed, not forced up by more blood. From what she could see, it was a simple cut that would need little more than cleaning as it healed.

“Do you have anything I can wrap it with?” she asked finally.

Dhiren glanced around, leaning over and reaching under the bunk, pulling out a ratted shirt. There was a long slash running through one of the arms of the shirt, and looking at Dhiren now, she could see the scar where the slash had gone through flesh as well.

“Knife?”

They weren’t allowed knives, nor any weapons within the block, but Georgianna knew that many prisoners had been able to fashion something, if only to protect themselves. Even Georgianna had managed to trade treatment for a thin metal knife that she kept hidden in her cell or tucked into her clothes.

Dhiren reached under his blanket, pulling out a knife and holding it handle first towards Georgianna. Taking it, she flinched when she realised it had blood on it. Not a lot, but it wasn’t old. Whoever had injured Dhiren, he’d managed to inflict some pain himself.

Georgianna used the knife to cut a deep nic in the edge of the shirt. Then, grabbing each side, she tore a strip from all the way along the bottom, finally using the knife to cut through the other hem. It wasn’t the best, and certainly not clean enough, but it was the best she had in here and she hoped it would be okay on a shallow wound.

“That was a good shirt, too,” Dhiren lamented, shaking his head and taking back the knife.

She glanced at him as she sat down, sliding her fingers under his knee just enough to get him to lift his leg from the bed. She lay the strip over the wound, tugging the rest of it underneath his leg so that she could tie the ends together.