Removing the canister, I set it between us and kept my eyes on Roys’ hand grabbing the strap. I held the other. He slid between the walls, trying not to let his back touch the rocky surface. More of his exoskin scraped off, dropping at our feet while I made a mantra in my head;breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.
He likely spoke to keep his focus on anything other than the pain. “Not exactly. I know what it’s like to have no one on your side, to see the worst-case scenario heading right at you and to be scared out of your wits. If I can ease that for someone, then I want to try.”
Roys walked out of the path into another open cavern. I followed, heaving a breath of relief and refusing to glance behind us. While I put the canister back on my shoulder, he reached into his pocket for a piece of candy.
“Well, ain’t you so fucking sweet.” I walked by his side, carefully maneuvering over rocks to another path below. “What’d you do?”
“What?”
“Only someone trying to rid themselves of a guilty conscience is that nice to strangers they can’t possibly give a shit about. What did you get into?” I glanced toward the marks no longer hidden on his arms.
Under our lights, the veins were a dark brutal black, like rot beneath his skin. He hadn’t used once or twice. There had been years when he hadn’t taken a break, when there was more synthetic in his body than blood.
“Just because you are a jerk doesn’t mean everyone else is.” He actually sounded sincere. A good actor, then.
“It’s exactly because I’m a jerk that I recognize the cruelty in others; they just aren’t as honest about it.”
Roys stopped in front of the next path to check his scanner. It seemed to need an extra moment. “Have you always hated everyone, or is this a more recent development?”
“I like to believe I was born to be a spiteful prick.”
“Parents didn’t hold you much, did they?”
“Parents didn’t have many opportunities to do so. They died when I was eight.” I laughed at Roys’ not-so-subtle flinch. “Don’t get sentimental on me. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I gave a shit.”
A lie. Of course I fucking cared, but I was angrier above all else, and anger was useful. Sorrow, not so much. One couldn’t sit around moping if they wanted to survive in this world. The Colony wasn’t a family-friendly environment. The upper ring wanted more kids; they were the future workforce, and that was necessary, seeing how many miners died on the regular. My mom and dads were fuel for the tank, workers until they weren’t, replaceable, bodies under the rocks.
“You didn’t answer the question, by the way.” I stopped to take a drink. Roys did the same. I stuck the canister back on my belt. “What did you do to get that guilty conscience of yours?”
Roys smacked his lips together. “Will you believe my answer if it paints me as anything other than trash?”
“No, because everyone is trash, maybe not now, maybe not back in the day, but one day everyone makes that grand fucking mistake. You, however, have certainly made yours.”
Roys turned his back to me, made another failed call attempt, and sighed. “My mistake was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”
07
Thereweren’tgoodmistakes.Roys was pulling my chain, and I wouldn’t deny the intrigue. I always figured out the truth eventually. Everyone in the militia had one, that dirty secret that put them there in the first place, the one that was, more often than not, entirely their fault.
Arana was a gambler, and obviously a bad one. All her credits went to pay off debts unless she wanted to be decapitated and hung out of a mob bosses pub as a warning.
Ryker was born rich but had a rap sheet a click long, mostly for petty crimes. Those petty crimes were for one reason only; adrenaline. Ryker was his own kind of junkie, the one who got off from the thrill of a chase. His mom’s were tired of bailing him out, so he took the one exit available.
Iylene never cracked. I got their shit from Darmin’s office while digging for booze. They didn’t deny it when I asked about the incident. Iylene was an alcoholic for most of their life. Hopped in their speeder and rammed into a dock that destroyed a lot of property, and surprisingly only ruined their life.
Lilea didn’t like her boring life on a farming planet, thought she was meant for bigger things. Those bigger things ended up being the theft of a deep space ship that became a pirating vessel (albeit fairly unsuccessful)until she worked with a less than loyal crew who took on a job too big to handle.
Zavir worked a menial job in the upper-class circles, a server for the elites. He had a fair wage, all things considered, but wanted more, and who better to steal from than those who didn’t remember all they had? Created quite an effective trading network, but he pushed too far and lost all he ever made.
The militia collected broken things — a cupboard of unwanted curiosities. They thrived on our wickedness, on our greed and desperation. No one but the broken would give away thirty years of their life to be run ragged and thrown to the furthest ends of the universe to die gruesomely and alone. We’d all seen our fair share of death, certainly dealt out plenty of it under the militia’s orders. You had to be the kind of person who had a taste for it to survive here.
Roys had his story, tied to those marks on his arms. There were plenty of users in the militia, too many to count, though most rarely made it to the title of captain. One would think in our line of work we wouldn’t have access to such paraphernalia, and yet, we all knew how. Because, ultimately, the militia needed us to remain broken.
“What’s your mistake, then?” Roys brought me to the present, where he removed my very stretched shirt to hold under his arm. Even with the cool temperature, all our walking brought on a sweat, and perhaps the fabric irritated his wounds.
“Why would I share shit when you wouldn’t?”
“I gave you a hint. Give me one for yours.” He threw a smug smirk over his shoulder. “There are sure to be too many to remember, so I likely won’t guess.”
