Chapter 6.5

I don't understand. It was a monster! What happened to the swirling black mass of stinging bees? I killed him. I killed someone like me. With his face twisted in fear and confusion, I killed him.

Rickon appeared from the underbrush looking like he'd had a fight with a tree. His clothes were ripped, and he had small bloody cuts on his back. His shoulder was bent at a weird angle and as he approached, he used a nearby trunk to push it back into place. There was an awful crunching noise as his shoulder popped into the correct position, but his expression doesn't change. He watched the body at my feet. I stared with him.

The boy was little older than me, there were dark bags under his eyes which looked sickly against his pale damaged skin. The eyes themselves were completely pitch black, like he had been possessed, but as I watched the black drained from them, inking them back to their original blue. Then, it looked like he was looking into the canopy, into the sky above, and what ever was above that. There were marks around his neck, thin bruising and small bloody nail marks where I struggled to keep holding on.

I'd done something terrible.

I looked at my hands which throbbed from the stings and scratch marks from his desperate attempts to survive. There was blood under my fingernails. His blood.

I felt cold.

Rickon slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and retraced our bearing, signally on the radio as he went. After a moment, I made myself move and followed Rickon back to the meeting area, watching as the limp body bounced against the rhythm of his movements.

"You killed it then?" Quin asked impassively.

"The boy did." He answers. I didn't like the way he looked at me- mildly impressed but mocking.

"What are you doing with the body?" One of the nameless men ask.

"They want it back. Even dead they're valuable."

It. They kept called him 'it', cant they see that it was a person? I looked at shadow, if they knew that I had Shadow would they called me an 'it' too? I'm certain those bees were made from the same thing as Shadow.

For the rest of the journey, Jay shot glances over in my direction, watching me curiously. I thought that maybe he could see Shadow, but not once did he look in his direction. Why was he staring at me?

Time dragged on while we tracked back to where we'd left the truck. I was slowly getting accustomed to feeling exhausted all the time, but the humidity and the bugs kept me in a bad mood.

I felt sick to my stomach as I watched flies rest on his body only to flit away again when Rickon made a sharp movement to avoid a shrub or vine. Somehow it made it feel dirtier. Back at the truck, we quickly uncovered our makeshift camouflage of branches and leaves and set about our return journey. The body was placed in the space between the mens feet which I had to share. I tried not to look, but every so often his body would tap against me when there was a turning or a bump in the road, and on impulse I would glance in that direction.

We returned the body to a South Garlantian experimental compound which bordered the Wastelands. The security was tighter than the prison we went to and I couldn't fathom how he managed to escape so far in the first place. The compound was surrounded by a seamless concrete wall that spanned over ten metres high, with guards stationed on top carrying large rifles. The wall drew apart as we approached and once inside the truck was scanned while Rickon informed the guard of the reason of our visit. He wore an unsavoury expression once he'd explained and beckoned us through a second set of gates rather quickly.

The compound itself was only one story high so that it was completely dwarfed by the wall surrounding it. There were few windows and the ones that did exist had bars on them, making its appearance more like a prison than the prison we visited. Everything was bland colours which blended harmoniously with the orange clay underfoot.

We pulled up into a small parking area in front of the middle building, and Rickon instructed me to bring the body as he climbed out and left the rest of the men in the back. They watched me struggle with the body, he was a little taller than me but just as skinny, although he was probably heavier, even more so now he was dead. I tugged at his arms, leaning back and using my body weight to shift him. It was difficult and slow. Touching his skin was nauseating, it still felt warm and clammy like he was simply sleeping in humid conditions, but I couldn't pretend that was true. I know what I did.

The body flopped out of the truck and I almost lost balance and fell on it. I steadied myself and Rickon took the body. I followed him. Inside, there was a small reception desk, and behind it barred doors. The receptionist looked more like a guard than a receptionist, with shortly cropped hair, military uniform, and a rifle leaning against his calf.

"We're here to see Dr Johnson, I have something of his he wants back." he says casually resting the body on the desk.

The receptionist made a disgusted face. "Go through, I'm sure you remember your way round."

Rickon glared at him but there wasn't time for anything else as a buzz sounded and the doors opened on the other side. Rickon gave retinal identification and the second set of doors opened into a long corridor.

The compound was larger than it looked from the outside, there were so many turns that I'm sure without him I would have been very lost. We entered a lift and descended to a basement. Inside, the ceiling was low, pipes ran the length of the ceiling, but it was still well lit. After a while we came to a set of sliding doors, which Rickon promptly open and we entered.

It was cold and it smelled strange. There were dozens of metal desks sat in rows, some of which concealed by a white sheets that were stained red in places. One wall was entirely metal draws floor to ceiling, while the opposite wall contained jars filled with various organs which were labelled with illegible words. We were in some sort of morgue.

There was a man the far side of the room leaning over the furthest table. He didn't react when Rickon dropped the body in the nearest empty table, the thud consuming the entire room.

"We have the body you asked for." Rickon tries to grab his attention, but to no avail when he continues attently working at the table.

Rickon grunts with frustration and grabs his shoulder, spinning him around to face us. The man wore thick glasses with magnified his eyes to twice their size and gave off the impression of a overgrown bug. In both hands he held a scapel, which like the gloves he wore, were covered in blood. Now that he'd moved, I saw that the form he was dissecting was that of a small girl, who barely filled half of the length of the table.

"I have what you asked for." Rickon repeated, gritting his teeth.

"Ah, Rickon, I see you're still alive." He says nonchalantly, moving to inspect the body we'd brought.

"No thanks to you." He hisses.

"It'll do. Could've been a bit fresher though." He says a little sad, ignoring Rickons statement.

I suddenly felt something from Shadow who'd reappeared behind my shoulder, although, this time it wasn't fear. He was looking out the small window that viewed the hall. Outside, there was a girl who was escorted by a guard. Behind her fluttered a small ghostly bird; it was swirling black like Shadow, but unlike Shadow it faded in and out like a worn-out light bulb and appeared to be struggling to fly. Seconds later and she out of view and I could only wonder where she was going.

Shadow seemed to lose interest after that and disappeared.

"You Boy! What are you doing!" I flinched as the man suddenly raised his voice at me.

"Nothing!" I replied quickly, inching away from the door.

"Why did you bring a boy in here?" he asked Rickon.

"No reason. Now you have your dead creature, are you done?"

"Yes. You can leave."

Outside, I tried looking for the girl but she was nowhere to be seen. There were too many rooms to begin to guess which one she was taken into. I peered down the length of the corridor in the direction she came from. At the end, there were several barred doors, which we also guarded, and beyond that was shrouded in darkness. When I turn back to Rickon, I almost jumped out of my skin as Shadow materialised out of nowhere. I trotted after him, trying to steady my thumping heart as Shadow floated behind me.

Just as we reach the lift, I hear a women yelling, "Hold the doors!". With a start, I recognise her as the women who took me from the orphanage. When our gazes meet, shivers dart down my spine. I feel cold and unsettled. And as if Shadow knew this, he shuffled closer, and although I knew no-one else could see him and he couldn't really do anything, I felt safer.

A moment passes before she's yelling after us "Hey! Stop there!" but Rickon either doesn't care or doesn't hear her, because then the elevator doors slide shut and we're ascending.

I tried to forget the monster, the boy, the morgue and the almost certain terrible fate of that little girl. I tried. But it was impossible.

"A kid's half a mark." Rickon told me that night. He marked my back with a thin half an inch line in the middle of my shoulder blades. Now, I could never forget.

That was the penance for my survival.