The Law and the Codas

Chapter Seven

The entire room shakes. Porcelain dolls and empty picture frames shatter against the floor. The heap of stuffed animals scatters, tumbling into Sam's back. A bookshelf falls, rattling the beaded lampshade on the bedside table. The holographic projector titters to life and an explosion of color, rosy pinks, warm, eggy yellows, pale, springtime greens, hover in the center of the room. Calming piano music floods our ears, as more things crash and crumble around us.

I throw my arms protectively over my neck. A small square box clips Jonathan in the forehead. Blood trickles down over his eye. The mattress springs inward as if catching a dozen or so baseballs at top speed. When it stops moving, so does the room.

Marava's already got her hands on Jonathan, tending his wound, fawning over him like he's on his deathbed. He smiles at her frantic movements and the way she's ripped the sleeve of her uniform to lap up the blood. "Thanks, Mars," he says, stroking her cheek.

She nods, and it's all she can do to keep the tears at bay.

Snitch topples over. A piece of metal juts from his back.

"Holy shit," Sam says.

David kneels, places his hand around the wound. Blood oozes over his fingertips. Petals of red blossom on the fabric of Snitch's shirt.

"I don't feel so good," he says.

David nods. "It'll be okay, Christian."

A knock sounds from behind the door. "We're through. Time to leave." The voice sounds feminine, but not hard. Bored. Keran.

Sin makes to move the mattress. I scramble to help him. It's mostly him that wrestles the mattress free, but I pretend as I've contributed. He tosses it onto the box spring. The other side is shredded by bits of concrete. There's a hole in the door.

Keran peeks her head through it. "Good thing the Commander thought of the mattress, or some of you would be dead." She looks disappointed that a few of us hadn't been lying motionless on the floor.

I hurry over to her. "Keran." She frowns at the sound of her name coming out of my mouth. "It's Snitch, he's wounded."

She sighs and motions for Sin to open the door. It's jammed pretty tightly in the frame, but with a push of his shoulder, Sin gets it open. Keran walks through, pistol in hand.

All the blood's gone from Snitch's face, but as Keran approaches him, he finds a reserve, just enough to color his cheeks. He backs away from her, though David's still trying to staunch the bleeding.

"Hey there," Keran says, looming over him. "Calm down," she raises her hands up, points the gun toward the ceiling. "I'm not here to hurt you." She leans over him, which forces her to get to her tiptoes. She might be part of a terrorist organization but she's still young, probably no older than David.

As soon as her eyes land on Snitch's wound, she frowns and turns away.

"Is it bad?" I ask.

She nods. "Pierced one of his kidneys."

"You can survive with only one," Sam interjects. Rima shakes her head.

"Yeah, you can," Keran spits back. "But we've got nothing to stop the internal bleeding."

"No emergency kits?"

Keran shakes her head. "None that we'd be willing to use on him."

I grab her arm. "Enough--"

"I'm not joking," she says, shrugging off my touch. "It's the truth. Those kits are hard to come by. We use them on Codas only. Snitch isn't one of us."