Cridex

Chapter Sixteen

"The detectors!" I ripped my arm from out of Jonas's grasp and covered my left eye, looking frantically at a frozen Camden and Imogen. "They have been activated!"

"W-what are we going to do?" Imogen spoke quickly and took a step towards the stocks, her gaze scanning for movement inside the building, her blue eye shining like a spotlight across the rugged cement. "Are they coming?"

"No," Jonas crossed over to her quickly and cupped her eye with his palm, "Not they will if you don't keep this covered."

"He is right," Camden spoke with a squinty eyed glance over to me as he rummaged through his pack, pulling out a black T-shirt. He bit the shirt and tore it into strips, with his one eye open and a feral curl of his lip- in that moment I had never seen something so wild. I half expected him to stalk his prey along the sidewalk on all fours.

"Ellery," he shouted my name in warning as he tossed the jagged black strip to me. It hit my face, hung for a second and then fell into my waiting palms. I looked down, forgetting to close my left eye.

"Keep 'em covered!" Jonas scolded, tying his own slice of the dyed cotton fabric around his head, "Or I will gouge them out."

"Aren't these strips just as effective as letting them no that we aren't human?" Imogen asked slightly in a whine, struggling to tie hers behind her heavy locks of hair. Camden walked over to her, his own eye covered and smothering the blue light beneath it, and grasped the tie as he gently lifted her hair from her shoulders to tie the strip back.

"Only if they can get close to us, with a light source at that," He smiled gently down at her then quirked his gaze up to the darkening sky. "We should count ourselves lucky that the city council doesn't see fit to light the streets near the stock."

"Lucky?" Jonas scoffed, and gestured to his black band, "I look like a pirate."

"A dashing pirate," Camden quipped without looking at Jonas, instead gluing his gaze to the stock houses that lined the streets in a decaying row. "So what is the plan, captain?"

Jonas sighed. "We are breaking them out aren't we?" Camden nodded solemnly, and Jonas turned to me.

"How familiar are you with the sewer systems running under the city? Pipelines, anything?"

I sighed, resigning myself to helping and cursing the excitement that began to run through my veins at the thought, "How familiar do you need me to be?"

"A master."

"Then you have one," I nodded and glanced down the street, searching for the emblem that marked our escape, "There," I pointed, voice steadier than I had expected it to come out"We enter through there and then we book it out of dodge."

If Jonas was taken aback by my newly acquired cooperation, he did not show it. "Good. So we only have to improvise the before and after then."

"The stocks," Camden interrupted and looked over to Imogen, eyes burning. "We need to know what the layout is inside the building."

Panic swelled in my chest, "I do not know," I inhaled sharply, "I have never even been inside the auction house."

"He wasn't asking you, Ellery," Jonas spit out, but I saw his gaze soften when it traveled to settle on Imogen.

"I know," she spoke softly, her voice wavering, "I know what it looks like, how to get in..." She trailed off reverently then met my eyes, "And more importantly, how to get out."

"Imogen," I called, my heart breaking as the question I wanted to ask formed on my tongue. I hesitated, to collect myself before I spoke so that it wouldn't reveal my emotions and their betrayal of me. "Imogen, how do you know what the stocks look like on the inside? How did you know the procedure of branding and pricing and whatever else follows?"

She chuckled dryly, but i sensed her pain come to the surface before she shoved it deep with a saccharine smile directed at me. "I was trying to tell you," She gestured to her sleeve, that lay halfway rolled up from before my fight with Jonas, "Or rather, show you. But conflict ensued before I could."

Jonas rolled his toe on the asphalt, scattering loose pebbles across the drive. "You do not have to show her to prove anything, Imogen. She does not need to know."

"She does," Imogen jerked up her sleeve, revealing a patch of circular, raised skin. I couldn't see the design from her, but if I had to guess it was the emblem of the city- the same one that marked the manhole cover of our escape. "She deserves to know. Because if anyone is going to convince the city that enslaving cybernetically enhanced beings is wrong, it is going to be Ellery."

I sucked in a breath as I watched her stalk forward, forearm cradled close but still displaying the mark - the brand, I corrected myself. "They got me," Imogen shrugged as she watched me carefully for any signs of sympathy. "I was sold and enslaved for ten of my years, I ran away twelve times during my stay in the city."

"That is how you know what the stocks are like," I swallowed, trying to remain unaffected, stoic even. "You were sent back eleven times."

She nodded, and I glanced over to a still standing Camden and a stiff looking Jonas until her words brought my attention back to her, "You were one of them. You may still be, in your heart. But after tonight? After what you are going to see? It would turn even the most loyal to the city council into a rebel- just like us."

I remained silent, but my stomach clenched. If i was already conflicted before I had been subjected to the horrors the cyborgs went through, how would I steel my resolve?

"You will be one of us," Imogen smiled daintily, and grasped my hand gently in hers, dragging my fingers over the raised skin so that I could feel the brand, so that I would not be able to chalk this experience up to my imagination- I had seen it, I had felt it, and now I would never forget it. "And if I had to take a gander, I would bet that you'll turn out to be one of the cities biggest adversaries by the end of it."