A Collection of Ruins

Chapter 14. Way Down We Go

Ellie

I dodged a fist with ease as it swung towards my face, second nature. Giving pain, receiving it. My eyes focused on the beads of sweat dripping and blood beading and if I still had a heart to brake it would have cracked in two. My god look what I had done to him, almost nothing of the city boy was recognisable now. And I had done it all without a gun to my head. Nothing made me. Nothing but the dull ache in my chest where my heart once was. That and a burning desire for more.

"You're here. You have a ring, a house, a daughter. You have your freedom. What is that you want?"

"More". It had been a paniful shout, ripped from her very soul. Maybe I had inherited it because I looked at the shell of a boy in front of me and I still wasn't satisfied. Not even close.

My fist curled, I wanted to destroy more. My toxic anger eating away at my insides until it had no where to go but out. I swung. I didn't miss.

He was a bloodstain in the sand beneath my feet but, "that was better, your less hesitant to swing and quicker to block. You keep your hands up".

"And yet," his eyes flicked over me, "you don't have so much of a scratch".

A smirk strectched my lips, "You might be getting good, I"ll always be better".

He flushed and all at once lost his confidence, retreating into that shell that all Met born citizens had. "Are- are you really gonna train her?".

"Gonna? Careful your grammar teacher is rolling in her grave".

"Ellie-"

"Don't waste too much more time loving her Matt. She won't ever love you". I held out my hand, it was all I had too offer.

*****

My kitchen was full be the time I got there, Santigoe was the first to speak, my loyal sheriff.

"What next El?"

"What next? We set the whole goddamn world on fire and build a better one from its ashes". Donny cheered and Jev smaked the table three times with a fist. "The tunnels aren't useless, we can no longer use them to sneak in and out on a regular basis but that is of no great consequence, we are done quelling their infected for them now. Matt has the barcode on his arm for the Met wall and the inner wall that separates the outskirts from the inner city. They won't keep checking on the tunnel, they don't know for sure were using it and believe it is no longer a threat. The plan stays the same. They will keep the inner wall permanently closed, the staged attack on the police chief's daughter worked, the girl- Olivia- confirmed that, their infected population will grow substainatlly because they didn't even know they have an infected problem. We use the tunnels to smuggle out the innocent, send in a sacrifice to lock the outer gate and run to the inner one, opening it, and drawing the infected with them. We let the infected take it from there".

"And you'll sacrifice Matt will you? Use that barcode on his arm?" It was a harsh accusation from Ronan. You've gone soft for Mattie.

"He's not the only one with a barcode" ,Donny, she'd make a good second if Ronan had to be removed.

"No!", all eyes swung to Jev.

James smoothly covered, "the girl will be better used to confront her father and see a surrender or at the very least a confession. Matt brought us the intel we needed, we know it was probably him, but the rest of the world doesn't, they will need to hear it if they are ever to trust us".

"We are basing an awful lot on the ramblings of a sick woman".

"A sick woman who claims to have known Ellie's mother, who brought proof of it". My fingers went to the pendant at my throat, it was an old doubled sided coin from before my time, to remind me that I was the two different sides of a coin, Met and Rebel. Matt had brought my mothers matching one, it was what had gotten him to my kitchen all those weeks ago unharmed. Relatively.