I wonder if she’ll pinken all the way down to her slim thighs if I approach her. Had my fair share of Xin De girls, but never fucked a Common girl with rosy cheeks.
“They left babies,” she continues, despite the heat from my gaze.
Kong mutters to my side, “You’re too damn handsome, Rome.”
“You’re not my type,” I offer in jest.
Turin looks down on her, and her blush sinks to a fearful white. “And you want me to take them?” he asks pointedly.
“Sire.” She bows, collecting her thoughts, before returning her gaze. “For a better life?” She breathes, uncertain, looking at Colt, pleading through a shaking voice.
“A meaningful one,” Cairo corrects.
“Yes. And comfort and food. Shelter. Protection. Not like this...” The young girl turns, gesturing to the faces of the Common who outwardly despise The Trade, who refuse our system. Who want to live in their own communities. “Please. I do not think we can care for orphans.”
Cairo smiles, but it is snake-like. Wider than needed, with no alliance from his eyes. “Each and every Trade citizen is protected.”
“My sweet Odette.” Colt, her father, touches a small bruise marring her jaw, and she closes her eyes on a deep sigh filled with meaning.
“You won’t take any of the older girls?” Colt finally asks turning back to us. The traumatic night of carnage creates an obvious desperation in him. One that goes against his own beliefs. “We have two boys and three girls under twelve—”
“We cannot,” Cairo dismisses.
Ahead of me, there is suddenly movement and murmurs, the dishevelled Common parting to allow four young girls through. Small, slim, wiry girls. Vulnerable as they already are, they also carry babies, two each, one in each arm.
Seven Guards set their weapons down, ammunition rattling and clinking, metal on metal. The unnerving sound widens the girls’ eyes and slows their small feet.
“Give the babes to the Guards,” Cairo orders with an unaffected tone that pacifies others but bothers me.
Sobs dissect the air, the women protesting this exchange. Each babe begins to mewl as they are given to the huge Xin De Guards. Direct and businesslike, the men scan the babes for sickness, running a warm laser across each plump cheek.
The babes cry louder.
“Wha- What is that?” Colt stares, eyes widening. It is likely he has never seen this level of technology before.
“It doesn’t hurt,” a Guard confirms.
“Anything we should know?” Turin asks, and I hear indifferent due-diligence in his tone.
Defeated, Colt shakes his head. “Thank you for taking them, Sire. We cannot care for them.”
An assembly line of Guards passes the infants along and up the tank before handing them through the hatch. The sound of mewling disappears within the metal fortress, but the moment of quiet soon twists into wails and sobs from the watching Common girls.
“We are lucky,” Colt says to his people. “They will be safe. We cannot care for them here. Can you? No. Settle yourselves down now.”
“There is no God across The Strait,” Odette says. “She will need me. Can I go with them? Protect my sister.”
“They do not believe. And will not allow you to practise.” Her father holds her hands between them as the last infant is loaded into the tank.
“Well then.” Odette turns to Turin. “Sire, you must know the little black-haired one is allergic to Opi Latex. She is my baby sister.”
“That is a genetic burden.” Cairo looks the girl up and down as if she is to blame. “A weak woman produces a weak child.”
Lifting her chin, she says, “She is strong in all other ways. She fought through a fever without intervention. Strong things survive because they are strong. Fragile things survive despite it.”
Turin almost smiles at her. “Very well.”
“You will look after her.” Her eyes hit mine like a hammer to a skull, and I frown. She asked me—directly. I should say no; it doesn’t concern me, but I don’t. I want to be their saviour—her saviour.
The Cradle’s Monarch and Protector.
And the teenage boy in me is idiotically envisioning the rosy skin between her thighs. To see if she feels the same as a Xin De girl. Her eyes are so… telling. Watery. Red. Wide. Vulnerable. I want to see them pop open when I sink inside her.
“I will,” I say like a fool, and the silence that precedes could shatter glass.
Kong clears his throat behind me.
I feel Cairo’s eyes slicing parts of my flesh from bone, but I gaze straight at Odette—such a Common name.
She interests me.
What could this God have over her… This fairytale that some Common still cling to. Didn’t we prove there is no God when we altered his apparent creations? When we enhanced and fast-tracked evolution with genetic engineering? We changed the entire damn homosapien species as it was, improved it, and birthed the genus Xin De.
Ignorant Common.
She looks at her father again. “God is in her heart, Daddy.” Her violet eyes well up. It is weak, but endearing, nonetheless. “That will not change.”
Further discussions fill the air between our circle, but I am not listening anymore.
Less than an hour passes, and we are once again on the road, parting the chaotic wind, tank tracks grinding southwards down the Red Decline.
Sitting back in the tank, my skin prickles against the corruption in the air.
We offered the Common community Trade men and supplies for the coming months. The aid, exchange, supplies… It seems all too philanthropic to me. Not the image of Turin I’ve had all these years growing up.
Then again, he gains a far superior prize for his visit to the raided community—fresh-faced babies for The Trade.
We are travelling through last-light toward The Neck when the tank stops abruptly—again.
Frowning, I peer through the periscope, the infrared light activating against the dim, to find we have parked within the skeletons of a city from long ago—Ruins S, I would wager. The echoes of civilisation fade into the desert winds.
Across from us is a once-white truck adorned with scars, windows painted with messy black strokes, and a bonnet showcasing a grill not unlike the mouth of a rabid dog. A true manifestation of the life lived in the desert.
“The fuck are we doing here?” I ask as Turin readies himself to climb through the hatch. I don’t know why I ask. I don’t expect an answer, so I press my eyes to the scope and search the outside, right and then left.
We are alone.
Can’t see the other tank.
Then I see them.
Movement through the Redwind catches my eye. I feel the unsettling crawl of eyes before I make out the shady figures of hooded men as they appear from behind the truck. Their bodies part the thick sand-filled air, wind waving their cloaks.
Endigos.
If Xin De became part beast during the Gene Age, then Endigos are the vultures. They’ll feed on anything without remorse. Teeth thin and flexible for filleting, and nails long and sheer, but there isn’t a great deal to feast on out here—except Common.
Turin approaches the truck, and one of the Endigos flings back the canopy, exposing the tray, the wind aiding, blasting the fabric backward.
On the metal bed, bodies are stacked in careless piles. I squint at the bloody mounds. Slim torsos. Short legs. A small arm swings free, flapping in the wind by the tyre. A female arm. Branded on her wrist is a purple flower-womb sigil.