Renegade ch 6: A Nest of Rebels

The cookie was supposed to be round, but its cerulean body, flecked with paler toppings and darker burnt spots, was too dry. Crumbled bits had fallen away, leaving it some indefinable shape.

At least it smelled nice. Maybe it could serve as potpourri, and for once Hrausq Seven-One-Nine’s room might welcome them home with something other than the scent of scorched metal. Besides, the sweet hovered much too close to Kix Entrycii’s nose to still be considered edible by Twi’s standards. She watched through the open hatch in the floor, paint-speckled canvas spread across her lap in one of the cubbies above the hrausq room.

Entrycii stared at the treat cross-eyed. “What kind of cookie is it?”

“It’s a cookie. Just eat it and be happy.” Lanox shoved it even closer to his face, and the pastry’s color reflected in the silvery Knalcal birthmarks on his cheeks and ears. “It even matches yer hair like it was made for ya.”

Twi held in a chuckle. While it was true—Entrycii’s short, purposefully messy locks claimed an amalgam of blues, from near-black like her own to pale platinum—she had never thought matching one’s hair was a defining factor in cookie choice. Leave it to Lanox.

Entrycii made no move to take the confection, brows shoved high. “If I eat this, will you make some joke about it representing my state of mind and me eating my own brain?”

Lanox’s head tilted, and golden-silver curls cascaded over her shoulder. “Do ya often think about eating yer own brain?”

“Is this a trick question?” Suspicion crawled across Entrycii, inciting schemes. Twi saw it in his stance, in his icy eyes, in the twitch of his tan fingers near the pouches on his belt. A chrome crescent glistened on the back of his right hand just above his thumb. He had gotten the scar in a fight with Aberrant, he claimed, back when Twi thought every member of her hrausq family invincible.

It should have been a clue, a warning of how childish and ridiculous that belief was.

She recalled a bandage wrapping that hand, Sep’s laugh as he commended Entrycii for his bravery. The younger boy’s prideful smile extended from one ear to the other. Sep was like his big brother, his hero, his rival, his idol. A ‘good job’ from Sep was worth more than a planet’s worth of jewels.

Twi knew the feeling.

I should intervene before Lanox and Entrycii end up making a mess.

With a tired sigh, she set aside the canvas, sliding the carefully folded cloth next to the others beneath her bunk.

Tell me every detail, and I’ll paint your battle scene, Sep had told the younger Knalcal. That Aberrant must have been real desperate to resort to biting, right? That is what the wound on your hand looks like, a bite.

A nervous chortle had escaped Entrycii. Twi knew that was how the scene was supposed to go, but as her boot touched the top rung of the ladder, instead a gaping maw stretched between jagged pincers in her memory. Putrid slime sprayed her face. On her back in the mud with a great weight on her chest, she couldn’t breathe. Powerless fingers pushed against rock-like exoskeleton as that mouth descended.

Purple flashed with the sound of an explosion. A hot, acidic stench surrounded her as Sep’s weapon sliced vertically through the Kelis that had her pinned. It fell to either side, and she scrambled to her feet. Another giant insect leapt on Sep—

Twi’s toes hit the floor, and the scene cleared. She was no longer covered in mud and pain. Dry, not drenched by rain and blood. The air was sweet and easy to breathe, gravity reliable and strong.

Kelis was gone, and Sep with it.

Entrycii stood less than an arm’s length in front of her at the bottom of the ladder, blinking rapidly.

He didn’t know I was here. I was less than half a body’s length above him this whole time, and he didn’t notice.

Complacency is a serial killer, her teacher would have said. She needed to mention something like that to Entrycii, to chide him to better scan his surroundings, but she hated sounding like a lecturer.

I’m only nineteen, barely three years older than him.

“Have you received mission assignments for tonight?” he asked, and Twi forced a grin to tug back one corner of her lips.

“You mean these mission assignments?” She held three glittering datasticks fanned in her raised hand.

Entrycii reached for them, but Twi pulled back.

“I’ll give you a cookie for one,” he offered. She hadn’t seen him take the treat from Lanox, but he had it now, held out with both hands and a slight bow.

“You’ll trade a cookie that’s already been bitten off of? Such a great negotiator you are.”

“Lanox, you gave me an already-been-chewed cookie!”

Lanox shrugged, false innocence shining in her aqua eyes. “Ya didn’t ask me where I got it.”

Entrycii’s glare latched onto her, not deigning to track the cookie as it flew into the trashbin in the corner with the cookbox.

Lanox ignored him. “What’s up with the assignments?”

Twi gestured with the datasticks. “These were written before Ekymé showed up.”

“And the problem?”

“He’s...different.”

Lanox raised a finger to count off each point. “Ya mean his gray skin and hair and how they’re almost the same shade, so it looks a little weird, and how he doesn’t have a smidgen of color?”

“Except for the chrysolite in his eyes,” Twi corrected. “That stare is sharp, a sword designed to slice thoughts. He has Mind Talents, and he used a shout suggestion on those kids.”

“So?”

“If you attempted a shout suggestion, what would your sutae tell you?”

Lanox’s face crumpled somewhere between a pout and confusion. “She’d say it was reckless, ill-advised, and forbidden. But maybe he’s just a really skilled Tala?”

“He’s not Tala at all, not as far as I can tell.”

Lanox shrugged again. “So?”

Twi’s foot tapped. “Have you ever known of any non-Tala with Mind Talents?”

“Cinosals,” Entrycii supplied.

Twi shook her head. “Cinos is a conglomerate colony. They have Tala ancestors.”

“Maybe he doesn’t even have real Mind Talents then,” Lanox excused. “Like, maybe he can do shout suggestions, but he can’t even whisper?”

“That’s it exactly. There are too many maybes, too many unknowns.” Twi’s hand tightened on the ladder’s rail. Her reflection hovered in Lanox’s dark pupils, a rigid, proper Knalcal, though she felt about to collapse. “He said he was from Hrausq Three-Two-One.”

Entrycii’s face scrunched, his offense like warm paste flooding the room. “That awful nickname the Aberrant call us?”

“It’s not that awful,” Lanox protested. “It has a certain cleverness to it. I mean, they believe Magni hybrids are superior beings meant to take whatever we want, so they think we’re backward for using our skills to help our worlds.”

“We’re backward fools and our days are counting down,” Entrycii said with exaggerated emphasis. “It’s supposed to be an insult. That’s why there’s no hrausq with that name.”

“And Ekymé didn’t know that,” Twi reasoned. “These mission assignments send us into the city, and I feel that to leave him here to wander unattended is to invite disaster into our home.”

Lanox stomped. “I don’t see why ya are putting up full security shields. Didn’t that patrol find Ekymé’s ship sailing out of the deep gases? None of our transports have shields that can withstand the inner nebula. Not even our worlds venture in there.”

Unease shifted Lanox’s feet. It formed a restless sea pounding against Twi’s unsteady sense of security.

She met her amaraq’s turquoise eyes with all the strength her Talents allotted. Parting the overwhelming and obvious, she searched for truth. “Why are you defending him?”

Lanox looked away and focused on her deep brown boots. “Who knows how Ekymé lost his amaraq or what he’s been through, but we can’t expect him to tell us everything right away. How were ya when ya first came back from Kelis?”

Twi flinched, then sharpened her gaze. “I should report him our sutaes.”

“And embarrass every last bit of pride out of him?” Her arms flailed, and her eyes turned pleading. They were mossy pools of innocence that belonged in some secluded, peaceful haven, never having to witness evil.

Twi wished she could protect her.

“He seems to get along pretty well with Rifo,” Lanox went on. “Give him time. Ask him to come to the city with us. Rifo, too.”

With a nod, Twi headed for the door.

“You’re actually going to follow her plan?” Entrycii’s brows twisted to match the trickle of incredulity she sensed from him.

She didn’t look back. “If you have a better idea, I’m listening.”

***

There has to be a better way to do this.

The hallways wove on endlessly, lined by a million doors that led to mazes of rooms. Frustration was a mild term for what Xlack attempted to keep bottled up. On his shoulder, Rell growled, and Rifo still followed, humming like a muzzled bird.

Backtracking, he eventually found his way to the hangar that housed his Oha, but the heavy doors refused to grant him passage. Beyond them and the very long, dark, twisty cave, outside awaited.

He whirled toward his songbird stalker. “Do you know how to open the doors?”

“Yep.”

“Then open them.”

Rifo crossed his arms, murky eyes accusing. “Last I knew, I wasn’t supposed to take orders from uncooperative strangers who refused to answer more than seven questions.”

Xlack sighed. “Fine. You want to know what an Aylata is?” He snapped out his Ier.

A straight, simple beam of light emanated from its center. Special magnets amplified, divided, and curved the laser as it ran along the length of the weapon’s structure. Wind swirled as the burning tendrils shredded most of the molecules they touched.

The Ier wouldn’t hurt the hand of the Aylata for whom it had been made, though. Paired to his life-signature, it recognized him, and a barrier protected his living flesh from its deadly caress.

Other things had no such protection.

Xlack stabbed the Ier into the door. Sparks flew as the weapon cut a hole large enough for him to fit through.

“Short definition, that’s what happens to anything that stands in an Aylata’s way.” Xlack curled an arm around his back and dug Rell out of his jacket. He had shown the Ier to the beastling several times so it would become familiar, but Rell insisted the tool was scary and always hid.

Wide-eyed, Rifo paused, lips twisted.

A high-ceilinged cave with dripping rock formations greeted them beyond the opening, and a smirk crept across Xlack’s lips. The silver Ier still pulsed in his hand, but he had never used it to injure anything animate. The sight of it was enough to persuade most offenders to compliance.

“That weapon of yers reminds me of mine,” Rifo admitted, following him through the broken door, “but blast-resistant metal considers itself safe from my ju’wack.”

Xlack shrugged. “Then maybe you should get a better weapon.”

“The cave is a maze. Ya won’t get out if ya lack a guide.”

Xlack ignored the warning and kept walking. The rest of the base had been a maze, too, and he had found his way here without assistance.

Jogging to catch up, Rifo offered, “I could be that guide, show ya the way out, but on one condition.”

Xlack threw him a sideways glance. “What?”

“Ya try to consider us friends and not obstacles.”

“Hard bargain.”

“No harder than blast-resistant shielding. Accepted?”

With a grin, Xlack nodded. “Sure. Which way?”

Leaving plenty of space between himself and the Ier, Rifo stepped around him and pointed down a narrow path to the right. “The tunnels are dark. Keep yer weapon on.” Pride trickled from him, a distracting, sour stench to Mental senses. What exactly did Rifo think he had accomplished?

As they turned, the Ier’s glow revealed a person in the mouth of the passage.

“Hello, Rifo. Ekymé,” Twi greeted with a nod for each of them.

Xlack flinched at the address. He hadn’t told her his name, but Lanox had overheard it. He wasn’t sure he liked how easily it rolled off her tongue, as if the elongated y in the middle supported the entire weight of the name.

Rell sniffed at her, leaning as close as he could without falling from his perch in Xlack’s hand.

A blend of concern and relief seeped through Rifo’s brief, potent coating of surprise. “What’s up?”

“Aberrant gather in Vlavaran,” Twi explained. “Estiga wants to know what’s attracting them.”

This time, Xlack hid his flinch, though barely, at the ancient Magni term used exclusively for Aylata of higher status than the speaker. An Aylata likely hadn’t given her this mandate.

Rifo rolled his eyes. “Where the Aberrant gather, we go.”

Twi’s gaze flicked to Xlack. “Would you accompany us to Vlavaran?”

He would have accompanied them anywhere as long as it was outside.

“Sounds interesting. I’d like to go.”

“Good.” The slightest of smiles found Twi. “I must collect Stevalok. Meet us at the top of vacporter four.”

“Will do,” Rifo agreed as Twi left them, shadows stealing her from sight.

With a snort, Rell settled into Xlack’s palm to hug his master’s thumb and chew at its tip.

As Rifo walked on, Xlack followed him, wondering if one of these groups could be the protectors the stories spoke of—the protectors K’alaqk had meant when he mentioned collecting information.

“Ow, Rell, stop!” Xlack hissed, thumb tearing free and tapping the beastling’s velvety nose.

With a disgruntled yip, Rell retreated. Jumping onto Xlack’s side, he squeezed into the Ier’s sheath. Xlack let him stay there, attention returning to the vagueness of his mission.

“Hey, Rifo, what’s an Aberrant?”

Rifo laughed. “They’re people like ya and me, I guess.”

“Then what makes them Aberrant? That means something like abomination, doesn’t it?” Xlack’s gaze raked the tunnel walls as if a horde of monsters might crash through them. Shadows danced over their lumpy sides, slime and dust winking in the Ier’s light. Wet stalagmites called to his Kinetic senses, pulsing an alien tune with low, thunderous growls.

Rifo seemed oblivious. “The Knalcals meant it as an insult, calling any Magni hybrid an aberration. Do ya know what imprinted genes are?”

Of course Xlack did. They were the source of Aylata Talents.

Rifo looked at him in silence, expecting an answer.

“They carry traits that only manifest if a gene to counter them is absent—something common in hybrids.”

“Right,” Rifo said, hesitation and glee clipping the word. “We’re physically and mentally stronger and faster than the purebreds of our worlds, and we can do things they can’t.”

Also true of the Aylata.

Frigid slime dripped from a stalactite and landed on Xlack’s forehead. He winced, wiping it off with a sleeve. “If you’re both Magni hybrids, then what’s the difference between Aberrant and…whatever your group is called?”

“Adjuvant,” Rifo corrected. Ahead, more oversweet slime rained from the ceiling. Thousands of droplets pattered against the formations below, dust washed away in shiny rivulets. Rifo stomped into the chaos. “We’re called Adjuvants. It means a thing that aids or contributes.”

“Then why don’t you just call yourselves aides? It’s easier to say, and more people would know what it meant.” Xlack trailed his guide, a flickering forcefield overhead deflecting most of the rain. The Ier hissed, steam rising from its luminous tendrils.

The thick spikes of Rifo’s hair sagged. “‘Aide’ doesn’t have the depth of meaning that Adjuvant does.”

“You mean it doesn’t sound as cool.”

“That, too,” Rifo agreed.

Now beyond the downpour, the space was no longer narrow, only one wall touched by the Ier light. Darkness loomed opposite it and above, heavy and thick. Rifo bowed and shook out his hair.

Xlack stepped back to avoid the spray, and his heel found the edge of the walkway. Pebbles broke off beneath his boot, tumbling down an unseen cliff and splashing somewhere far below.

“Do the Aberrant use their Talents to protect those weaker than them?”

Standing, spiked head even wilder than before, Rifo grimaced. “I guess they would if it served their interests, but that’s rare. Easily defined, they’re an organization of underground gangsters with strict rules and driven by selfishness.”

“Sound like great friends,” Xlack drawled. “We’ll meet some in Vlavaran?”

Walking on, Rifo shrugged. “That’s just the way it’s always been: Aberrant make a mess, and Adjuvants clean it up.”

Were these Adjuvants the ones Xlack was meant to study, then? Did K’alaqk know about their Aberrant evil cousins?

The Magni who fled to Napix were those loyal to their king. The others were rebels. Why did K’alaqk send me to a nest of rebels? What information is he looking for?

Rifo glanced at him askance. “Yer thoughts scrape the bottom of an abyss.”

“They’re just runaway thoughts. Nothing important.” Xlack returned the sideways look. “What’s with the girl who always shows up out of nowhere?”

“Twi? Yeah, she’s pretty, ain’t she?” A sly grin appeared on Rifo’s face, but his next words chased it away. “She’s a good person. My amaraq’s death hit her hard, but don’t worry. She won’t let ya get captured by Aberrant. She has…history with them.”

“What do you mean by history?”

“What do ya think I am, a blabbermouth? Go ask Lanox.”

Rifo waved at a smooth portion of wall, and it slid aside to reveal a bright, narrow room. Xlack plucked Rell from the Ier sheath and returned him to his shoulder, then closed and put away his weapon before following the Adjuvant.

He would rather have taken stairs.

Vertiporters—contraptions employing pulleys or the like to carry passengers along a vertical shaft—always felt like a trap. One way in or out. No place to hide. Little space in which to dodge. Traveling in a vacuum, vacporters only decreased one’s chances of escape.

This cylindrical room was the latter.

As Xlack stamped down stubborn paranoia, the computer requested, “Please select a destination.”

“Outside,” Xlack directed.

Several beats passed before the computer replied, “I apologize, but—”

“Surface level.” Rifo’s muddy eyes studied Xlack again as the door closed and the vacporter carried them up through the vacuumized tube.

Great show, Xlack. You can’t even command a vacporter right. He thinks you’re an idiot.

“If ya get separated from the rest of us, ya will need this.” Rifo handed him a small pendant on a chain. “Unless ya plan on cutting through every door ya come across.”

Rell scampered down Xlack’s arm, whiskers twitching, and a curious paw swatted at the shiny thing.

Xlack inspected the pendant—a fingertip-sized equilateral triangle with a datasphere in the middle. This last looked like a glittering, translucent jewel. Twi wore a near-identical ornament on a short necklace, and Lanox wore hers looped through her bundled curls, though Lanox’s was a seven-sided shape that reminded Xlack of a fish.

“What is it?”

“An Adjuvant emblem. It used to belong to my amaraq, but he doesn’t need it anymore.”

Back home, Aylata emblems opened otherwise locked doors and served as tracer signals for Messengers. A local emblem could come in handy.

“Thanks,” Xlack said, shooing Rell back to his shoulder and dropping the emblem in his pocket.

“Don’t mention it. Really, Twi’d kill me.”

“Said with that false smile, I could think you believe she’s a monster.”

Rifo grimaced, gaze distant. “Put in the right circumstances, anyone can be a monster.”

***

“Are Aylata monsters?” a preteen Anku Phy asked his father long ago.

Through his signature trust-me grin, Father replied, “Some might think so, but to let that thought escape aloud would get you killed.” He winked.

Phy winked back, trying to do it exactly like his dad.

Father’s grin hadn’t worked on the Mind Aylata that caught him a few weeks later. Extortion, the Aylata claimed, shattering the veneer of trust Father’s smile had built over the crowd of neighbors.

The Aylata didn’t have proof, but Aylata never needed any. One moment, the Ier slept on its master’s belt. The next, it had severed Father’s upper half from his lower.

Phy wouldn’t move from that spot, staring numbly at where his father had last stood, even long after they had removed the body. Great Uncle came for him, and another six months passed before Phy uttered a sound.

Great Uncle made it a point to entrepreneur only in districts that were between Protectors. Under his tutelage, Anku Phy honed his own signature grin. Cockiness grew, and he tired of his senior’s thumb.

He made the biggest mistake of his life.

How crazy was he to think he could pick one of the most bejeweled cities on the Aylata homeworld, hustle it, and escape care free?

He wasn’t dead yet, though. The Aylata hadn’t killed him.

“You know what happens next,” Protector Xlack Ekymé had said, and Phy had been certain the Ier would crash down. His appeal to the Mercy of the Judges had been a last recourse buoyed to the surface of his consciousness by desperation. He hadn’t dared hope it would work.

This holding cell wasn’t half bad either. It was clean, immaculately so, every surface gleaming like freshly polished dishes. The bed was hard and shaped like a pill. Phy decided not to sit there once his imagination supplied a vision of it swallowed by a giant. He had long ago learned to sleep leaning against a wall anyway.

“Hey, you,” a young voice called.

Phy didn’t move, spine to the bars and shoulder against a slim metal partition. Some of his associates back on Zalerit would have crumpled it like paper.

“If you tried using my name, I might answer.”

A sigh with a hint of amusement preceded the next address. “Prisoner two?”

Phy huffed, pride a ravaged, mutilated thing, barely recognizable. “Not my name.”

“No one cares.”

The easy dismissal strummed Phy’s thin nerves, prompting a peek over his shoulder at the pest. A scribe stood there, a city official.

Scribes’ power depended upon how involved those above them wanted to be, and there was an overabundance of them. This one wore the silken undertunic and long sleeveless coat of a nobleman with the added fur collar of official service. A medallion embossed with Kizmet’s mountainous vista seal hung on his chest. His surname appeared beneath the stylized peaks: Skrinul.

A spoiled brat who’s always been handed whatever he wanted on a soft bed of lyoko fur and fragrant kriri petals, just like the annoying Protector. They’re probably friends.

“Have you anyone who could speak on behalf of your character?” Scribe Skrinul questioned, fingers ready to type on a small screen.

Phy trusted his great uncle more than anyone in the universe.

Great Uncle would kill him if Phy got him involved in this.

“Who’s prisoner one?”

Prisoners were ranked by priority, not seniority, and as much as Phy shouldn’t have wanted to be their most valuable captive, he had hoped…

Skrinul smirked. “Not a valid witness, nor will he be available to attend your hearing at this week’s end. He is a suspected journalist spreading slander about the emperor having been murdered. This evening he will record a redaction while being ripped limb from limb. You may hear the screams from here. Don’t let it bother you.”

Phy turned, eyes wide. He hid quivering hands behind his back and swallowed hard. He wasn’t worried. Why should he be worried? He was a simple thief, nothing like a journalist.

“What if he doesn’t say the words you want?”

The scribe looked at Phy like he was an idiot. “Skillful editing.”

Phy hated that look. It was too close to the self-righteous mien worn by the Aylata he also hated. His disdain was a simmering, wounded monster hiding deep within him, long ago having accepted there was nothing he could do. It was stupid to fight Aylata.

Skrinul seemed the type to ride in the shadow of the Aylata’s power and love every moment of it.

Phy leaned back on the flimsy wall, not bothering to correct his feathered beret. It had slid too far to the right, but he hoped it gave him an enigmatic, nonchalant appearance. He stroked his fake goatee for added effect.

The beard was itchy.

He tried to ignore it, wishing he had splurged on finer material like the faux beards of delicate lyoko fur often donned by noblemen envious of the Aylata. Skrinul was one of those wannabes. Beneath his fringed, pentagonal hat, his shadowy hair was even long enough to be pulled into a petite tail. Purebred Napix, regardless of gender or age, typically possessed thick, coarse tresses that refused to grow longer than a thumb. Emperor Gera Kys’ luxurious coif was a mystery many also strove to emulate.

The scribe met Phy’s gaze. “Upon your imminent death, whom should be informed?”

“Wait a lard-slicing moment, I appealed to the Mercy of the Judges. Surely their benevolence won’t allow a good man to die for one tiny mistake.” Fear’s tremors rattled Phy’s hand, but he continued to rub his chin, refusing to be the first to look away.

Skrinul shook his head dismissively as he slipped the datapad into a pocket on his coat. “You are pathetic to think the judges would side against their Protector. They never do. This is all just a formality, and there are multiple charges against you.”

“Like what?” Phy scoffed. “I borrowed the tiniest gem, and it has since been returned.”

“The Athikil clan wishes you penalized for infringement of their state-recognized pattern. You will be required to strip and publicly burn the clothes you now wear.”

Phy didn’t have to reach deep for his best offended nobleman voice, arms folding across his front. “You’ll provide me with suitable replacement attire?”

“If you failed to bring alternate covering, it’s not my problem.” Again, the scribe’s dismissal felt like sand slowly scratching away at Phy’s flesh. “You won’t have much time to wallow in your humiliation anyway. In case you weren’t listening closely enough, your death is imminent.”

Phy’s fists clenched, partly in anger beget by the scribe’s calm arrogance, partly to conceal the panic steadily overtaking him. “They may choose to bestow the lesser sentence. Petty theft with a recovered item usually results in the loss of a limb.” Not an ordeal he wanted either, but it was better than dying.

Skrinul stood with his hands loose behind his back, smirk small and self-satisfied. “According to code four-o-two, section three, amendment sixteen, your punishment shall be decided by the Protector.”

“Grand theft merits a quick death.” Phy hated how squeaky that came out. He had witnessed the executions of business associates—usually a swift gutting with an Ier. He hoped this wouldn’t be one of those occasions where Aylata chose to show off their Talents. Mind Aylata were the worst in this regard, trapping victims in their own little horror world until they dropped dead.

Xlack Ekymé had Mind Talents, Phy recalled, breath hitching.

Skrinul’s smile possessed a sinister slant, pale eyes too stark against his shaded lashes. “Our Protector prefers not to dabble or dawdle with the darker side of our judicial system. He usually leaves such decisions to me.”

He turned, smile unfaltering as his heels clicked against the hardwood floor. A steady rhythm carried him to the exit.

“The record will show you have no next of kin or close associates. Out of some shard of loyalty, most perpetrators seem to prefer this. Enjoy the lullaby this evening.” He rounded a corner, and a heavy door slid shut behind him.

Regret filled Phy. He had to get out of here. Was that one tiny gem worth his life?

No, it hadn’t even been about the gem, really. He had done this so he could brag to his great uncle that he had managed to slip past the elite Protector in a place as revered as this.

So much for bragging rights. Phy wanted to bawl.

He lay for some indeterminate time in a fetal position on the unsoiled floor. Just as sleep finally came to mercifully close his eyes and transport him away, the screams began.

Continued in Chapter 7: Free to Move

Thank you for reading!