Page 22 of Darkness I Become
So, each night since that first one, she had been forced to return to Angel’s Wing, fought for her life, and left beaten and bruised, but not broken. Never broken.
As promised, Leo injected her with a powerful painkiller, and Asha soon felt her eyelids fluttering. She barely reacted to Leo yanking out the remains of her broken molar; it had been hanging by a thread anyway. The two tiny stitches he made in her gums bothered her more, oddly enough. She hated the way the needle poked at her, but she was in no condition to complain.
“All done,” Leo said a moment later. He gathered his instruments for cleaning. “Rest now. You need it.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. “He’s going to kill me, Leo. Before Cade gets back.”
A long pause. “Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of.”
He sounded genuinely concerned for her, which she found strangely touching, considering he hadn’t known her long.
“You should stay here overnight,” Leo said after a moment. “For observation. Want to make sure there aren’t any adverse reactions to the medication.”
Asha made a noise that was supposed to be assent, but just sounded like a weak groan. She rolled onto her side, sleepy and finally free of pain. As her consciousness faded away, she felt the weight of a blanket being placed over her, cocooning her against the chilly evening air.
Asha’s mind was a strange swirl of dreams. She dreamt that she held a bluebird in the palm of her hand, feeding it seeds and petting its head. It twittered happily and accepted the food. But as it tried to take flight, her fingers closed around it, squeezing, and squeezing, and squeezing, until its feeble cries for escape were silenced. A moment later, she looked upon its mangled, broken body, and lifted it to her lips to feast on its flesh.
The price of freedom is death.Cade’s words came back to her again, repeating over and over, like an echo in an empty hallway. They were familiar. Where had she heard them before? Who had said them?
Suddenly, the voice of a documentary she’d once watched came back:“The price of freedom is death,” a quote attributed to the civil rights advocate, Malcolm X…
He was an Old World civil rights advocate. How would a Wastelander with no real education know about him? So much of that knowledge had died with the Fall. He wouldn’t know, unless…
Something suddenly clicked into place.Unless he’s not a Wastelander at all.
“Who fucking did this to her?”
Cade’s voice, low and furious, cut through Asha’s dreams. Still, the drug Leo had given her kept her drowsy, on the edge of wakefulness.
“You know who it was,” Leo replied ruefully. “And it doesn’t change anything. We’re not ready.”
“She’sone of us,Leo,” Cade shot back. “You know it as well as I do.”
“Sure. But it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing you can do right now except play nice so you can get her away from him.”
“I’m not good at playing nice.”
Leo scoffed. “You think I don’t know that? But that’s not going to help her.”
She heard Cade pacing the room. “He’s sending a message that I shouldn’t get any ideas about doing what I want—having what I want.”
“Probably,” Leo said. “But if you go after him, she becomes collateral damage. Bide your time. Don’t be as stupid as he is.”
Cade let out a long breath. “Fine.”
“Did you manage to capture Rockland?”
“Yeah,” Cade replied more calmly. “It went easier than I thought, thanks to the prep work we did. No casualties on our side, and only a few on theirs. They manufacture plenty of weapons, so we should be able to set up a supply chain.”
“Good.”
“I’ll be back in the morning to pick her up,” Cade continued, resigned. “In the meantime, if Angel wants to send a message…I’ll give him a reply he’ll never forget.”
Asha heard him start to walk out, but Leo said, “Wait.”
“What?”
There was a brief pause, but Leo pressed on: “I don’t know what your plan with Asha was before all this…but she’s in no condition to be doing anything strenuous.”
