Sullha's heart climbed into her throat and got stuck there.
They marched through the central courtyard, passing women and children, a pair of guards standing at their post by the inner wall, and another pair a few meters farther out.
Sullha walked her son directly across the open middle of it in broad daylight, and braced, with every step, for the shout, the pointed finger, the alarm.
None came.
A Sacred Mother passed within arm's reach, close enough that Sullha could hear the humming. Her gaze slid over the column of them, found nothing to catch on, and moved away. Another crossed their path and adjusted her stride without seeming to know why, giving the empty air a wide berth. The guards by the wall looked out at the courtyard and did not see ten women walking through it. To them, it appeared as any other ordinary morning in the breeding enclosure.
They were truly invisible.
Yaaf had told her that he could do that, and she'd believed him because she'd witnessed him doing it many times before, but it was still unnerving to walk through a crowd of people, including armed guards who would kill her and her son without a thought, and not one of them turned their heads.
Beside her, Tomek walked with his lips pressed tightly together, his eyes round, and she didn't know whether he believed her that they were playing the quiet game or whether he was afraid because he knew they were all in danger.
Behind her, the women also walked in complete silence, and even Bianca remained frozen in her mother's arms, not a peep or whimper leaving her mouth. The only audible sound was the scuff of their mismatched footwear on the baked ground.
The gates stood ahead of them, the high barred gates she had never passed through before.
As they reached them, they swung open as if activated by magic, and Sullha walked through them with her son, nine women, a little girl, and her best friend who had not forgotten her and had come back to free her.
31
YAAF
Getting the women out of the gate was the easy part. The hard part had been thralling everyone on the way out, not only to ignore them now but to ignore their absence in the days to come.
It had been taxing, and the collective noted that they had expended too much of their mental energy on this task and would not have enough left over for the harbor. Yaaf was of the opinion that they had enough time to replenish their reserves during the drive, but the rest of the collective was worried.
The human guards on the inner wall waved the column through without a second look, seeing only what the collective wanted them to see. The immortals on the other side of the gate reacted the same way, but those guards were bored, and a fresh draft of adolescents shuffling past them was an opportunity to have some fun at the expense of the boys.
Yaaf still remembered how nasty the guards had been when he'd left the enclosure along with all the other boys who had turned thirteen around that time. He'd thought they were being cruel, but as it turned out, it had been just the appetizer before themain course. Whatever he'd imagined about the training camp couldn't have prepared him for the brutality of it.
Back then, he hadn't understood why they were being abused so badly, what the purpose of it was. It had taken the collective's combined thinking power to realize that the goal was to strip them of any feeling of empathy, of basic decency, and turn them into monsters who relished brutality and slaughter.
"Fresh meat for the grinder," one of the guards said.
"Soft mama's boys." His companion spit on the ground. "Don't worry, they'll beat the crap out of you and turn you into men. Just try not to piss yourselves. You'll get beaten bloody if you do."
"Go on, then, and cry for your mothers now," the first one called after them. "Because if you cry there, they'll beat the tears out of you as well."
"You should know," the other guard said. "The commander broke both your arms and didn't let the medic set them right just so he'd have to break them again to set them."
The horrified expressions on the women's faces reminded Yaaf of his own and that of his friends when they'd been marched to the transport truck and followed by similar commentary.
Yaaf ignored the guards' taunts, the women's spike of terror, and kept the column going until they reached the waiting military transport.
He helped Sullha up into the truck bed first, then handed her Tomek. Saphira and Asira got up next, so they could help the others. The women sat on the two long parallel benches,pressing their backs against the canvas sides. He swung up after them and let the canvas flap fall.
Number Six was behind the wheel of the transport while Number Seven was behind the wheel of the Humvee, driving the other five parts of the collective, so none of the sons were in the back of the truck for the women to reunite with. Still, Yaaf had expected the mothers to ask about their sons, but none of them had said a word so far.
The women were too frightened and overwhelmed to think about anything beyond their next breath, and in a way that was good, because now was not the time for family reunions, and certainly not the time to explain the collective. The Eight who were one.
The truck pulled out from under the shade, and the heat under the canopy thickened, the canvas not allowing the breeze to chase it off. The women were sweltering in their two layers of clothing.
"It's only a few minutes until the tunnel," Yaaf said. "The entrance is about a mile ahead. Once we're inside it, you can take off the outer layer, and it will be cooler."
The chances of anyone stopping them inside the tunnel to inspect the cargo were slim. If an inspection were to happen, it would be at either end, and they could handle it.
