DIVISION 52 - BOOK II

CHAPTER XI

"Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human." 

― V.E. Schwab

S C O R P I O N

Pain was always familiar. It was a place to go to. More raw than any other feeling and often more useful than anyone realised. I expected much of it before my death. That was surely where I was heading before I had fallen off a fusion cycle at speeds that should kill. But life was often never as simple.

Life clung on stubbornly.

My mind rang in a high pitch and that was the first thing. The second was distant murmurs. Unfamiliar ones. I took more measured breaths and identified something cool pressed against my forehead–at least I may not have to fight these people.

I opened my eyes slowly to a low ceiling in a patchwork of metals. Dim lighting and the smell of damp and street food. Someone stirred beside me in shock. I turned my head carefully aware of the singing and blinding ache.

My eyes landed on a gangly boy. Middle teenage years at best. The woman beside him stirred a pot cautiously and kept throwing quick looks between us and the weapon holster on my hip.

"Where. The hell. Am I." I rasped slowly.

The woman flinched and the boy came to put himself more prominently in front of me. He cleared his throat and tried to widen his shoulders. I regarded him with calm lethality. It was then that I noticed my weapons were not in their holsters.

"Scorpion–I found–I saw your crash and took you in–before a group of rebels could find you."

His voice broke on several intervals but he was doing his best to look years older and stronger than was the case. I exhaled slowly and stared at the ceiling before speaking.

"Why would a boy from Sector 49 do that?" I thought dully recalling the last location I flew past.

"Don't start Lee you've done enough–" The woman in the back tried to cut in.

He pushed some jet black locks from his face. "I want to be a part of the Division."

I stared at him blankly waiting for the punchline. But his face was adamant. I raised myself slowly from the thin bed so I could set my legs on the metal floor and meet his stare properly. It made the blood rush dangerously around my head but he met my gaze without flinching. I raked my eyes slowly over his thin and spindly body that would break under the first week of training.

"No you don't, kid."

"I'm not a kid–I've fought–people." He pressed with a tightening of a fist.

I smiled darkly at him. "You think bloodying a nose makes you a fighter?" I asked calmly. Watching the woman behind him relax more as I spoke. It was clearly not her will to have him anywhere near us. For good reason. "What did Proximo Kartega say to you when you approached him?"

His eyes became more sheepish in a moment. He avoided my lethal amusement and loosened his hand. I snorted.

"You should look for work in the city. If you cannot even approach my second, you should not be anywhere near my Division."

"It's not that–it's that he–" His words cut off and he wrapped a cloth around his hand. "–he said I was too weak before he even trialed me with the others." He grit out.