Human Bait

Chapter 36: Uzmed

My gaze swung between sights like a panning camera. The dozen men and women on the floor. The butter knives and rocks clutched in their hands. And the towering man whose hand clamped over my mouth.

"How much did you hear?" the giant growled.

Despite my heart hammering my ribcage, I found myself glaring at him. Your hand is still over my mouth, fucker. 

A graying man with hair clinging to his shoulders like vines laid his rock and knife on the ground. "Bezan, he is one of us."

Hot, sour air blew into my face with Bezan's snort. "He stopped being one of us when he started fucking a Northerner."

I tried to protest and tasted his palm, metallic and gritty. Fuck, I should have listened to Rekkan.

"He ended the Implant Era," said an elderly woman, turning over a rock in her wrinkled fingers. Shocks of bright-white hair contrasted tan skin and emerald eyes.

Over Bezan's shoulder, I tried to send her a grateful smile. All of my grandparents died in the war before I was born, but I allowed myself to imagine she could be one of them.

The sharpened butter knife slid over my throat, grazing the skin without piercing, and wild eyes bored into mine. "Not in time to save the South."

The gray-haired man furrowed thinning eyebrows. "Still, he might support our side."

"But he might not." The elderly woman folded wrinkly arms over her chest one at a time, emerald eyes piercing me. "Better to eliminate the threat."

Well, fuck you, Grandma.

Bezan's hand slipped off of my mouth, but the crude weapon prodded harder, drawing a bead of blood that trickled down my throat. "Tell us why we should let you live."

I swallowed and wet my lips. "I don't really, uh... have any fantastic arguments. But stashing a body sounds a bit messy, don't you think? Surely you'd rather —"

The door flew open, mercifully ending my pathetic attempt to defend my right to live.

A figure staggered into the room and swung toward me, appraising. I recognized him from the corridor. Buggy eyes flared emerald, and a grimace twisted the scar that roped over his face.

He eked out words with all the command of a rusty, broken teeter-totter. "Let him go."

The blade dipped a few inches from my throat, but the lumbering man remained before me. "Get out. This is none of your business."

The scarred man waved his hand in a circle while everyone awaited his response. A second wave, and a third. A moment of complete stillness. And an alcohol-drenched, reverberating belch.

While the group leaned away with groans of disgust, he jabbed a wavering finger in the air. "Maybe it is my business, and maybe it isn't. All I know is, when I see someone in need, and I happen to be passing through, and I'm kind of in the mood for a fight, and I've never liked Bezan much..." He propped a palm on the wall beside him — a half-casual gesture I feared he might be relying on for support. "What I'm saying is, let him go, or I'll make you."

Unfortunately, the group called his bluff.

Fortunately, he wasn't bluffing.

Bezan lobbed a fist at his head, but he ducked and nailed the giant in the gut, sending him reeling back. When several others swarmed him with a flurry of fists, he ducked, parried, and returned blows with a grace utterly at odds with his stumbling footsteps from moments prior. After a few more kicks and jabs, his attackers lay moaning on the ground, and the rest of the group gaped at him.

He flung an arm over my shoulder and sagged into my side. Though he was a few inches taller than me, he was even skinnier than I had been pre-Rekkan, and I supported his weight easily. His pungent breath stung my nostrils.

"What do you say we sashay on out of here?"

I dragged him out the door and down the corridor. When I felt sure no one was coming after us, I sideglanced my unexpected savior. "Thank you for saving me back there."

His arm tightened around my neck, pulling me closer and almost choking off my breath. "If you want to thank me, say nothing about this to anyone. Not Ivogg, Mekkar, or Zhina, and definitely not your Southie-killing boyfriend."

I darted a glance over my shoulder and dropped my voice. "But if the Southies plan to start a war —"

"They're not starting anything. They are preparing to defend themselves."

My brow furrowed. "Defend themselves from what?"

He flipped up both palms, arm sliding off my shoulder. "Who knows? Maybe from a Northerner attack after Integration. Maybe from the Sentries, if they abuse their powers. Maybe even from a second Implant Era."

As much as I wanted to protest, his words made sense. The South had been destroyed by an Implant the North created, and the few hundred Southies still alive had not survived by trusting others.

The man stumbled off down the hallway. When I jogged to catch up to him, he grumbled, "Stop following me."

"Can I at least know your name?"

He slumped against a wall and examined me, mutilated lips curved down. "Uzmed."

I blinked. "You're the seventh sentry?"

He quirked a scarred brow. "Seventh? Are they listing me last now to punish me for quitting?"

"Why did you quit?"

His face darkened. "Enough questions. Just because I saved your sorry ass doesn't mean I like you. A word of advice, kid — don't rely on others. Learn some self-defense."

Now that did sound like a good idea, but if I asked Rekkan to teach me, he would suspect something had happened. I chewed on my lip and tilted my head. "Will you teach me?"

"Hmm, let me think about that for five seconds." He balled a fist in front of my face and flicked up one finger at a time. When all five were brandished, his eyes ticked from his hand to my face, and he ground out one flat syllable. "No."

He started off down the hallway once more.

"Uzmed."

"What?" he snapped, halting but not turning. "Make it fast."

"If you quit the Sentries, why are you here?"

Bitter humor twisted his voice. "Because there is only one person I still care about, and she is happiest here."