Beautiful Things

Two

When the police got us out, I didn't want to tell them anything. They took us to interrogation rooms - we weren't allowed to call our parents, our friends, we weren't allowed to rejoice together.

So when Officer Danzel entered the room and sat before me, I didn't smile, I didn't offer any greeting. Neither did he. He was the third officer to try and talk to me. The others hadn't got much more than a few nasty glares.

"So," Danzel sighed as he slapped my file onto the table and slid into the chair, "You don't want to talk."

I didn't answer.

"But here's the thing," Danzel leaned forward, his expression bored. "If you don't talk, you're letting all of your friends down. You could be injuring our case against Noah, Jak, Mason and Oliver - "

"The Generals." I said, hating their names. 

"The Generals?" Danzel scribbled something down onto a pad of paper. "Is that what you called them?"

I didn't want to answer, but I wanted to tell somebody. I remembered the way the other kids were crying with joy, smiling, hugging each other when the police got us. I remembered how Riley looked at me, tears in his eyes.

"There were two of them per army, just in case one died or something," I said. "Jak and Mason - General Fisher and General Karrigan, as we knew them - were Generals of the Hellfire Legion. We weren't a legion, per-say, just an army. General Tyler and General Browne - or Noah and Oliver - were the Generals of the Barrows Legion. I don't know why they picked the name, rather childish, if you ask me," Danzel smirked a little at that, "But we believed that the Barrows Legion was so much worse than ours. That's how they kept us on their side. No runaways if we're just going to be running into something worse."

"Did you ever learn that the Hellfire Legion was actually the most brutal?"

"I did," I nodded, playing with the USB in my hand. "We had a few guests from the Barrow Legion, mistresses of General Browne. They came to . . . pleasure General Karrigan. I was supposed to look after them for a while."

"Why you?" Danzel asked, scribbling something else.

I stalled. Why me? Why . . .

"I was one of their favorites." I swallowed, then shook my head. Danzel didn't push. He knew this would come later in the story. "I accompanied the mistresses around the camp for a few days, and each night, as I stood guard outside their tent, I would hear them crying to each other about how horrible it was." 

"Did you ever use this information?" Danzel asked, nodding to the mirror. I didn't know who he was nodding to on the other side, or why, but nothing changed.

"No."

"Why not?"

I tried to answer. To tell him about the things that I had been through. But my tongue was frozen, my mouth glued shut. I felt the suffocating need to cry. But I hadn't cried in a decade, I wasn't about to start now. So, instead, I threw the USB onto the table.

Danzel sat up straight, looked at the mirror, and sucked in a sharp breath. 

I watched him in the way that I had been trained.

"What's this?" he asked.

I guessed he already knew.

"When we were thrown into this . . . this hell, we were assigned Bots."

"Bots?"

"They filmed us, followed us. New age technology, or something. They were waterproof, very hard to break - especially seeing as they could conjure up a force field around themselves - and impossible to lose. They recorded every step we took, every breath we took, no matter how intimate." I looked at my hands, my face going red. Danzel didn't press.

"This is all twenty-three years?"

"Yes."

"How does it fit into one USB?"

"Like I said," I shrugged, "New age technology-"

"Or something," Danzel smirked. He looked at me. "The other kids we've seen had the same sort of USB. They told us their stories anyway. But if you don't want to talk . . ."

"I'll watch it with you. If you need any clarification, I'll be glad to lend a hand." I said, not letting any emotion show.

"You've been so strong, Ella."

I flinched inwardly at the nickname.

"It's Gabriella." I didn't even like my real name. Despite the twenty-three years that I had followed the orders of General Fisher and General Karrigan, the name they'd given me was one I liked. "Actually," I looked Danzel dead on in the eye. I knew what he saw there. A child, and yet a soldier. I had killed children. I had seen children die next to me. I had fought with children. And though I still appeared to be one, I wasn't any longer. "It's Briar."

"Briar?"

"I'm apparently all thorn no rose." I smirked at the story that went along with that. 

"Well, if you don't mind, we'd like to get straight into it." Danzel stood, taking the file and USB with him. I followed suite. 

"Lead the way," I said.

He led me down a few long halls, and every corner that we took I memorized. Old habits die hard. 

We entered a larger room, with two sets of four rows of chairs, an aisle between. Only four other officers occupied the room.

"And if you don't mind. . ." Danzel said, slipping the USB into the port in the side of a wide TV. "Identifying any fallen soldiers would be a great help. We found a box of USB's, but the names on them don't match the names of the children that went missing."

I swallowed.

"If I can, I will." I said before taking a seat in the front row.

"Then let the movie begin," Danzel pressed play, and I watched myself relive twenty-three years of hell all over again.