Dame that proclaims

Even if not for the darkness, he wouldn’t have been able to move well enough to get a good look at himself. Every time he tried to shift, a spike of pain shot through his body. Something heavy weighed him down. Maybe just the rubble. Maybe the weight of his own flesh, which felt impossibly heavy every time he struggled to draw in a breath.

He coughed. Hot blood ran down his chin. The rubble shifted, crushing his left side until he let out a groan. A sharp bolt of pain brushed down his left hip, and from there to his knee, all the way to his foot. There was something wrong with his foot. It was a ball of pain, and the ball was the wrong shape.

His cough turned into a laugh.

The laughter made his whole chest burn, and jostled his ribs in a way that made him certain they were broken. He didn’t care. He went right on laughing.

He hadn’t thought this was what freedom would look like. But who cared? He was free.

He would die looking at the blue sky.

He focused his eyes on that slim crack of blue, and didn’t look away.

“I’m telling you, I heard something over here.” A woman’s voice, somewhere above him.

“Probably one of them,” a man warned. “Be careful.”

Felix would have called out, but he didn’t have the breath. His laughter had faded into a wheeze. But it didn’t matter, because a second later, the blue crack widened into a rectangle. Then it became a wide expanse of color as a wary-looking man lifted a chunk of rubble away from his head.

The man tossed it aside with a grunt of exertion. Before Felix could try to find the breath to say Thank you, a crouching woman thrust the barrel of a gun into his face. “Start talking. Who are you?”

“Can’t do much talking like this,” he wheezed.

She jerked her chin at the man. He called another chunk of debris off his chest. He saw it move, but he didn’t feel any different. If his eyes had been closed, he would have sworn nothing had happened. The weight on his chest didn’t lessen.

That didn’t seem good.

He struggled to draw in a breath. “If you wanted the bastards who ran this place dead,” he said, “I’m on your side.”

“What’s he wearing?” the man asked the woman. “Prison clothes, or one of their uniforms?”

The woman ran her gaze down his body. She hastily averted her eyes, her face twisted in an expression he preferred not to try to interpret. “I can’t tell. There’s too much blood.”

“Come on,” he said, trying for a smile. “Even if I was one of them—which I’m not—what do you think I could do to you like this?”

“Plenty.” She didn’t take the gun out of his face. “If you worked here, there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance you’re Enhanced. For all I know, you could kill the two of us without lifting a finger.”

“Hand me an object and I can tell you everything about who touched it last. It’s a useful ability—useful enough for the PERI bastards to pull out all my fingernails trying to persuade me to work for them. But it won’t help me much here.”

All that talking made his vision go gray for a second. Blood trickled out from the corners of his mouth.

The woman still kept the gun pointed an inch or two above his nose.

He drew in as much air as he could and recited the first couple of lines of a poem. The effort made his chest ache until he was tempted to stop breathing entirely. And chances were good it wouldn’t mean anything to them anyway. The poem had been a favorite of his old team leader, before she’d taken a bullet to the lung on a mission and died slowly. They had kept the code active after her death, probably for longer than they should have. It had been a way of keeping her alive.

The code wouldn’t mean a thing to anyone else, though. There were a lot of small, isolated groups out there fighting PERI. And it had been years since his capture. His old team was probably long gone.

But behind the gun, the woman’s eyes widened. “Holy shit,” she breathed.

The man glanced down at her. “What is it? That mean something to you?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s one of our old codes.” She stared down at Felix as if she had unearthed a fossil. “And I’m talking old. Like six, seven years ago. Before your time.”

“Someone could have given it up under interrogation.”

“If he’s trying to win our trust, why would he give us an ancient code there’s hardly anyone left to remember?” She tucked the gun away. “Hang in there. We’ll get you out of here.”

The man pulled away another chunk of rubble, and another. Sometimes Felix felt it as a sudden release of pressure. Sometimes it sent a sudden jolt of pain up nerves that had fallen asleep, and he had to bite his lip to suppress a cry. He didn’t want to make them feel guilty for hurting him. Not when they were doing all they could to save him.

Even if, deep in his gut, he suspected their efforts were futile.

The woman helped shift the rubble aside. As she did, she kept stealing quick, quizzical glances at Felix. Like she was trying to figure out if she knew him. Her eyes gave no hint of recognition. She probably couldn’t tell much, if he looked as bad as it sounded like he did.

As for him, the longer he looked at her, the more he swore he had known her a long time ago.

But it might have been his imagination. Because she had responded to the code, and because he wanted to see a familiar face before he died.

It had been so long since he had seen anyone who didn’t wear the gray PERI uniform. He used to dream of rescue, but even the dreams had stopped. Sometimes he lay awake, trying to picture the faces of everyone he had known before. But they all melted into a blur. He didn’t even have his memories for company.

He had even forgotten what blue sky looked like. It was so much brighter than remembered. Even now that it was fading around the edges. He was glad he had gotten to see it one more time before the end…

“He’s fading.” The woman crouched down beside again. “Hey. Stay with me.”

He blinked up at her. Her face was so familiar. Maybe she was an angel, sent to end his suffering. It was about time.

“Better late than never,” he mumbled with a wheeze. Then, “You’re beautiful, you know that? The most beautiful angel I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so. I’m no angel, I promise you. And you’re not going to be seeing any real angels any time soon.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face, making his blurry eyes blink open wide. “I told you to stay with me. And I don’t like my orders being disobeyed.”

That voice… did he know that voice?

“I know you,” he mumbled. His tongue was thick. “Your name is…” But the name slipped through his fingers like a small, wriggling fish. It disappeared into the brightness of the sky, and was gone.

“Work faster,” she told the man tensely.

“I’m trying,” he snapped back. “He’s pinned under here good. I thought your information said there weren’t any prisoners being held here anymore.”

“It’s not my fault the info was bad!” But the look on her face said she didn’t believe it.

“It’s okay,” he said. His lips were going numb. It was hard to move them. They felt like two clumsy weights attached to his face. “At least… I got to see the sky.”

She turned back toward him with a scowl. “I told you, I don’t want any more of that talk. Focus. Talk to me.”

There were two of her now, each more beautiful than the other. He tried to refocus his eyes. “Talking… hard.”

“It’s better than dying, isn’t it? Tell me anything you like, as long as it will keep you focused. Tell me about your team. Maybe we had some friends in common.”

The question appeared in her eyes again—all four of them. She wanted to know if she had known him. If she wanted to know, why didn’t she just ask him his name?

A flash of sharp pain in her eyes made him close his numb lips on the question.

“There was Billie,” he said. “Demolitions expert. She told some of the dirtiest jokes I’d ever heard. She still around?”

The look in her eyes told him the answer, even before she shook her head. “Dead. Two years ago.”

He hadn’t thought there was room in him for more pain. The sharp ache her words sent through his heart proved him wrong. “Dallas. Had a face like a puppy—made you want to pat him on the head and give him treats. But man, could he shoot.” He had taken an unlucky bullet shortly after Felix had joined up with the team.

She shook her head. “I didn’t know him. Must have been before my time.”

“Anastasia,” he said next. “She was fierce.” He paused as a weak, wet cough shook his body. “She was like you—didn’t like being disobeyed. Heaven forbid anyone should call her a little old lady.”

She had deserved a better end than she had gotten.

The woman’s face creased in fresh pain. “She was something special, all right.”

She had been around to see Billie die after Felix’s capture. And she had known Anastasia before he was taken. So their time with the team must have overlapped. They must have crossed paths. But then who…

“Do you remember Trini?” she asked, her voice small, like she was afraid of the answer.

Trini. She’d had a crooked smile with the dimple on one side. Her voice had been as sweet as a songbird’s, unless she wanted to get your attention, and then her bellow could have made a Marine jump to attention. She was quiet when it was all of them together, but catch her one-on-one, and she had a wicked sense of humor.

On their first date, they’d gone out for coffee, because that was what normal people did, and they had both craved a little normalcy in their lives. That was when she had told him about how she’d dreamed of opening a cat rescue when she was ten, and how she sometimes still wished she’d done that instead of this. On their second date, he’d taken her to volunteer at the cat rescue about twenty minutes outside of town. He had worried she wouldn’t like it—after all, who wanted to go on a date to do work? But when she had figured out where they were, her grin had dwarfed the sun in brightness.

Two dates were all they had gotten. Then it was an interrogation room for him, and then the prison cell. Those two dates had been enough to carry him through the first couple of years of his imprisonment. He would remember that grin, and let the memory reassure him that there was still light somewhere in the world, even if he couldn’t see it.

Then the memory of her face had faded, just like everything else.

“Trini,” he whispered. “You’re even more beautiful now… than you were then.”

His eyes refocused enough to collapse the two images of her into one. Her eyes glistened with tears. “Felix,” she said. “I thought it might be you.”

She ran her fingers softly down his cheek. Even that light touch made him swallow a scream. There was something broken in there. But he smiled up at her. That brief touch was more precious to him than the sight of the blue sky above.

She smiled back. There was more sorrow on her face than pain. He understood why she hadn’t asked him his name. She hadn’t wanted it to be him.

Because she knew he was dying.

All of a sudden, the man shifting the rubble went still. He straightened and stared up at the sky, frowning.

“Keep going,” Trini snapped at him.

He shook his head slightly and cupped a hand to his ear. “Do you hear that?”

A second later, Felix heard it. A distant whirring, coming closer. Helicopters.

His vision was too blurry to see clearly, but he didn’t think those black dots in the sky were supposed to be there. And they were coming closer.

“Reinforcements,” the man said tightly.

“We can get him out,” Trini urged. “We just have to work faster.”

The man shook his head. “I can’t shift the rubble that’s trapping his other leg. Not without a lot more time, or equipment we don’t have. And…” He paused, biting his lip. Shaking his head.

“No,” Trini said, her voice fierce.

But Felix finished his sentence for him, saying what all three of them knew. “And it won’t make a difference. I’m dying anyway.”

 The tears in her eyes spilled free. “It’s my fault,” she said. “My source told me there were no prisoners here.”

He tried to shake his head. The movement sent a bolt of pain up through his neck that turned his vision white for a second. “At least this way… I got to see the sky.” Through his numb lips, he offered her a faint smile, all he could manage. “At least this way, I got to see you.”

The black dots were getting closer. “We have to go,” the man said. “Now.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Trini said. “I’ll stay until the end.”

He shook his head again, enduring the pain it brought. “No.” He sent every bit of energy he had into that fierce whisper. “Don’t let them take you. Trust me—I’ve been there. I know what they’ll do to you.”

She must have heard the determination in his voice, because she nodded. She bent to kiss him. His eyes fluttered shut.

His lips were too numb for him to feel the kiss. But her hair tumbled around his face like a curtain, and the smell of her filled his nose. She still smelled the way she always had. Like cinnamon.

Warm tears dripped onto his cheeks, mingling with the blood. Washing him clean.

He let his eyes blink open just long enough to see the bright blue sky through the curtain of her hair. Then they closed again.

He let himself drift away into memories of her face, and of the sky above.

There was still light in the world. Even if he would no longer see it.

His lips curved into a smile.

He never heard her leave.

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Tagged: @cakeinthevoid @gala1981