Amanita: Poison Shot

Chapter 50: Sigi's Hell

*Warning: This chapter contains violence, both physical and psychological, murder, and arson.

"A block of ice, you say?" Siegfried said with unrestrainable sadness. "That's precisely why Agape chose me. She said the exact same thing the night we met."

I was watching him intensely as he went on talking. His sudden mellow yet sad voice took me off guard.

"I can't afford to be nice, Daphne. I'm a renegade in this clone-ruled world. I can't let my feelings tame me and blur my sight. I've got an aim to achieve. I feel this weight, I know its price – and I'm willing to pay it. Agape saw this in me and took me out of hell because she knew I could help her. We need each other."

There was something off in the air around him as he spoke.

"What are you talking about?" I asked softly. He simply let out a sigh.

"I lived on a farm in a small town sixty miles south of Thalis with my family," he answered with melancholy. I had a bad feeling about that tale. "I used to help my family however I could. And I used to play hockey with the other kids in the area. I had a happy, normal life. My grandparents owned a large estate, which could boast of having vast acres of unpolluted, fertile land as well as healthy cattle. You know how hard to find that has become these last few decades due to global warming and this raging pollution."

True. Climate change and pollution had had drastic effects on crops and cattle. Farmers had had to endure ruthless waves of changes. I had heard so in the news on the radio time and time again.

"The clone government had an eye on us, like many other rich farmers like us, obviously" he went on with sadness. The mere mention of the clone government made me cringe. "The clone expropriation laws were passed when I was little, and that was when tragedy ensued in our area. My grandfather, uncle, and dad confronted the police officers who came home to kick us out, since the new laws had granted clones our properties and my family wouldn't allow that to happen."

They had confronted the police forces?! I knew that that tale would not end well.

"My mother had made sure I had been locked in the house, but I was stupid enough to sneak away. I felt too curious," he went on. My pupils trembled, and I felt my mouth dry all of a sudden.

I could see that he was in pain. The muscles on his face contorted in such a way that I felt a cold pang in my heart. Then, he made a brief pause, only to swallow and gather some energy to go on.

"I saw it all. They shot at my whole family, one by one," he explained as if he was visualising it in his mind. "I was in a panic. I knew I would not be able to escape from it all due to my nanochip, obviously. The police officers eventually found me hiding, shaking, and panting in the straw loft. They chose not to kill me. I was seven at the time."

"Oh my God," I whispered with wide eyes. I was in shock too.

That was why he looked so torn and downcast when we found out that the clones had been using our allegedly dead relatives to create androids! The rest of the rebels had hopes of meeting their beloved ones again. But Siegfried couldn't: all his relatives had been shot, and he had witnessed it. He was the only one who would never see them again.

All I wanted to do was hold him in my arms. I would've loved to hug young Siegfried too. How could a seven-year-old deal with all that trauma on his own, with all his family gone?

"Then, behind the clone cops, I saw the new owners, the clones who would take over my family's farm," he went on with his dreadful childhood tale. He was not done yet. "I was told they would let me live if I agreed to work for them as a stable boy and farmer, doing the dirtiest jobs none of them would like to do, like piling up the cows' and the horses' shit, for example. I was too scared to say no."