Chapter Three
Heidi could no longer smell the disgusting stench, but she knew that only meant she was getting used to it. Both of them had to smell like death having dived into and then walked through a sewer and then into the woods where they had been walking all afternoon in the hot sun. Now that the sun was going down, it occurred to Heidi that she and the blonde man hadn't spoken a word to each other since the sewer.
“Um… sir…” she began.
“Yeah?”
“Where are we going?”
“There’s a rebel base about two days walk from here,” he said. “We can probably make it there by tomorrow evening.”
“So… you’re a part of the rebellion?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know about that sewer line?” she asked.
“They toss dead bodies down there,” he replied. “I saw them do it the last time they captured me.”
Heidi shivered despite the heat of the day. She was silent for awhile. “Look, maybe it would be better if you just dropped me somewhere populated,” she said finally. “I need to get home.”
“I’m not going near anywhere there are people until I get to the base.”
“But I have to get back to my aunt,” Heidi argued. “She’ll be worried about me.”
He laughed humorlessly. “There’s little point in that,” he said. “Your aunt is probably dead and if not, they at least took her to an Imperial prison camp.”
Heidi stopped dead in her tracks. “W-What…?” The hysteria began working its way back up her chest and she started to hyperventilate.
“Whoa…” he stopped and walked back towards her. “Calm down, Red.”
Heidi shook her head, tears pouring from her eyes. “Calm down?!” she exclaimed. “Three days ago I was at home celebrating my birthday. Now I’ve been ripped from my home and a prisoner of the Emperor and almost tortured and dropped in a sewer where dead bodies go and following some insane rebel guy through the wilderness to God knows where and I’m sorry if the revelation that my aunt might be dead is just a little too much for me to take after what I’ve been through!”
“Hey, I’ve had way worse days than that,” he argued, shrugging.
“But I haven’t!” she sobbed. “And my aunt… she’s my only family…”
His brown eyes, cold and distant until now, softened slightly. His lips parted and momentarily his face was full of empathy. It lasted only an instant and then he cleared his throat and pressed his lips together. When he spoke again, though, his voice was less harsh.
“Look, if the Emperor needed you for something then he probably kept your aunt alive to use as leverage if need be,” he said. “So she’s probably in some prison camp. I have contacts and I can look into helping you find her when we get back to the base, but we have to get back there first.”
Heidi swallowed and tried to calm her crying. She took a few deep breaths. “You would do that for me?”
He shrugged.
“Okay,” she said and wiped her face. When she pulled her hand away there was a small, brown particle on her palm. “Ugh!” she exclaimed, wiping her hand on a nearby tree. “I am so disgusting!”
The blonde man chuckled. “There are way worse things than being covered in shit, Red.”
“And stop calling me ‘Red’!” she exclaimed. “My name is Heidi.”
He grinned mischievously. “Sure thing… Red…”
He started walking again and she followed, rolling her eyes. “What are you, eleven?”
“I wish,” he muttered. “Life was a lot better at eleven.”
“Not for me,” she responded, tripping slightly on a root but catching herself on his shoulder. “You want to tell me your name? Or should I call you ‘Blonde’?”
He chuckled again. “Dexter,” he said. “Or Dex.”
She stumbled again.
“Try to watch for tree roots, will ya, Red?”
“Heidi…” she grumbled.
Heidi wrapped her arms tighter around herself. With as hot as it had been today she didn’t think it would be so cold at night. They had decided to stop for the night and were sitting in a small clearing among the trees. Dexter was leaning back against one of the tall oaks with his arms folded. Heidi sat across from him with her legs tucked underneath herself.
“Shouldn’t we build a fire or something?” she asked.
“Can’t,” Dexter replied. “Will alert the Imperial guard to where we are and where we have been. Plus…” he held up his hands “…no matches.”
“You can’t rub sticks together?” she asked. “I thought you were a rebel.”
He grinned. After a moment he leaned forward and pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it to her. It was a long-sleeved thick green shirt. Underneath he was wearing a brown ribbed tank top.
“Here,” he said. “It’s pretty thick, it will keep you warm.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t want you to be cold.” She held the shirt out towards him.
He held up a hand and then folded his arms again as he leaned back against the tree. “No, I’ll take the first watch for the night and the cold will help keep me awake.”
“Okay,” Heidi said and pulled the shirt on over her head. He was right, it was very warm. She felt a little better.
“You should get some rest, Red,” he said. “I’ll wake you up in a few hours so you can watch and I’ll sleep. Then you can wake me at dawn and we’ll get going again.”
She nodded and lay down. She had given up trying to get him to call her by her name. She closed her eyes and was quiet for awhile but her head was spinning and she couldn’t shut her brain off. Too many things today had sent the adrenaline coursing through her body. Finally, she opened her eyes again. Dexter was looking up at the sky.
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “I’m too wired.”
He looked back down at her and grinned. “Help keep me awake then until you get tired.”
“Why don’t I take the first watch?” she suggested.
“Will you be able to tell by looking at the sky when it’s two a.m.?” he asked.
She frowned.
“Didn’t think so,” he said. “Just talk to me for awhile, you’ll get sleepy.”
“Okay,” she agreed and sat up. She thought for a moment before she spoke and then remembered a question she’d been meaning to ask him for awhile. “Why did you kick that guard?”
“What guard?”
“After you knocked Hektor out and took that other guy’s blaster,” she explained. “You shot him. Three times. He was dead and you still went over and kicked him a bunch.”
“Oh,” he said. He shifted against the tree uncomfortably before he responded. “I don’t know. He'd been torturing me for a couple days and I guess I just really wished I had time to give some of it back to him.”
“Torturing you?” she asked. “Like they were going to do to me?”
“Probably.”
“What do they do? Strap you in that thing and stick you with hot pokers?”
He scoffed. “That would be a walk in the park compared to what they do.”
“Why?” she asked. “What do they do?”
“That machine,” he said. “The thing they strap you in… it’s a form of psychological torture… it sends signals to your brain.” He tapped his head.
“Makes you feel pain?”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that. It’s not just physical pain, though there’s certainly that, but it’s also misery, despair, hopelessness. It’s… it’s…” He thought for a moment, searching for the correct word. “It’s hell,” he said finally. “The machine puts you in hell.”
Heidi breathed and shook her head. “I had no idea…” she mumbled. “The history books don’t tell about any of that.”
“History books?” he scoffed again. “You mean the propaganda in the Imperial libraries?” He shook his head
and chuckled. “That’s not history, Red. It’s Ezar’s effort to make everyone loyal to him. But eventually he ruins everything, hurts everyone somehow, and they all find out the truth. Why do you think the rebellion is growing by leaps and bounds?”
“I didn’t know it was,” she said.
He nodded. “Why else would my battalion have been attacked? We weren’t even on a reconnaissance mission, let alone an attack mission. We were just hiding out but Ezar’s trying so hard to take out the rebellion army and he’s getting desperate. So he’s attacking anything remotely related to the rebellion.”
“The rest of your battalion… were they captured, too?”
“No, I sent them one way and I went another,” he answered. “I knew they’d come after me because I was the squad leader… I have information they might want.”
“That was brave of you.”
“Hardly,” he said. “It was entirely selfish. I was trying to save myself from what happened to me last time. And I put the rest of the rebellion at risk because they could have gotten information from me.”
“What happened to you last time?”
“The last time my squad was captured they tortured me for two days trying to get me to reveal the location of my rebel base, but it wasn’t working.” His lips became a thin line. “They brought in one of my men—one of my friends—and made me watch them torturing him… I told them the location within ten minutes.”
“That’s awful.”
“That’s Ezar.”
“You were in hell for two straight days?”
“Well, not two days straight,” he said. “They have to let up occasionally to give you the opportunity to talk before they put you back.” He cleared his throat and shifted against the tree again. “Also they occasionally have to give you longer breaks so you don’t totally lose it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if they go for too long, you can totally snap,” he said. “I’ve seen guys who’ve been in the machine for too long.” He shook his head. “Like walking corpses. They don’t talk or recognize anyone, just stare and occasionally moan or scream.” He sighed. “Ezar just tosses them in one of his prison camps. The rebellion at least is merciful enough to end their suffering.”
Heidi considered this a moment. “You mean end their life?”
“It’s not really a life.”
Heidi shuddered despite the fact that Dexter’s shirt was still keeping her extremely warm.
“Thank you,” she said. “For saving me from that.”
“No problem, Red,” he said, grinning again. “What were you there for anyway? You’re not a part of the rebellion, are you?”
“I have… a gift…” She shrugged. “Really it’s more of a curse but the Emperor wanted me to use it to help him and when I said that it doesn’t work the way he wanted it to work I guess he didn’t believe me and sent me to be ‘persuaded’.”
“What kind of gift?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said. “In short I guess you could say that I can read memories. If I touch your head and you think of a memory, I’ll see it in my head, like it’s my memory, like I’m remembering it. At least, all I’ve ever been able to do is read memories, except for once. My mother had the same gift—or a similar one—but hers was more advanced. She could read whatever someone was thinking whenever and she didn’t have to touch your head to do it. She still had to touch you, but she could just like tap your palm and she could read your mind. I’ve been able to read current thoughts one single time and I did it inadvertently. But it’s apparently what led the Emperor to me and now I’m here. I told him I’d only done it the one time and didn’t know how to do it again, but…” She shrugged again.
Dexter didn't speak for awhile. He stared at her curiously.
“What?” she said finally.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just really glad I got you away from there. You would have been an extremely powerful weapon at the Emperor’s disposal. It’s possible you would have been able to help him bring down the rebellion.”
“I wouldn’t do it.”
“A few days in the torture machine and you would,” he said. “Or worse… a few hours watching them torture your aunt.”
Heidi breathed in sharply through her nose, all too aware of the truth of his statement.
“But now you can help the rebellion,” he said, smiling. “You’ll be a great asset to us.”
Heidi frowned. “Serve the Emperor, serve the rebellion, it’s all the same, isn’t it? Everyone just wants to use me. Everyone just wants me for what they can get from me.”
Dexter regarded her for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “The rebellion won’t force you to help. We’re all about freedom. If you help it will be your choice to help.”
Heidi relaxed slightly. “Thank you.” She looked up at the night sky. It was a clear night and the stars were out. She wondered vaguely if somewhere her Aunt Reboa was looking at the same sky. She was starting to feel tired but her mind was still running in too many directions to fall asleep. She looked back to Dexter and saw that he was watching her. He looked away quickly.
“Have you always been with the rebellion?” she asked finally.
He shrugged. “Since I was 14.”
“Your parents were a part of the rebellion?”
“No, they were killed by Ezar.”
Heidi’s eyes widened in shock. “When you were 14?”
He shook his head. “I was 12.”
“Why?”
He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “My father was a soldier in the old republic but he was retired. They killed him for refusing to come out of retirement and work for Ezar.”
“Your mother, too?”
“Yes, but they killed her for refusing to tell them where I was. She hid me to keep me from them.”
“What did they want with you?”
“I was a 12 year old boy…” he explained with another shrug. “I could be a soldier.”
Heidi’s jaw dropped. “That’s terrible, I'm so sorry.”
He shrugged again and looked up towards the sky. “It was a long time ago.”
“Do you miss them still?”
He nodded. “Especially my mother.”
“So you joined the rebellion after they were killed?”
“No, not right away,” he answered and finally looked down and met her eyes. “My mother hid me in the coal bin. After the guards killed them I was afraid to come out of the coal bin for almost two days, not only because I was afraid the guards were still there, but also because if I left I would have to walk around the corpses of my parents. But eventually hunger got the best of me and I got out. I gathered whatever food I could take and I fled. For a year and a half I lived on the streets. There were some other runaway and orphaned boys that I hung around with, squatting and stealing food. One day some Imperial guards came and tried to force us to join the Imperial army. Some of us resisted and several of the boys were killed for resisting. But before they got to me a rebel force stepped in and rescued those of us that were left. After that I wanted nothing more than to join the rebel army. But they don’t let you join until you’re 18 so I had to wait four years. But I was so eager that they let me do non-combat things like laundry and cooking for the soldiers. And they let me do some of the training with the newer recruits. I didn’t actually start into combat until I was 19 but I was a soldier from the moment I joined the rebellion.”
“How many times have you been caught?”
“Just twice. The first time I was rescued the day after I revealed the location of the rebel base. So I was able to alert them and most of them escaped.”
Heidi shivered again.
“Still cold?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Still disturbed about the idea that they were going to use that machine on me…”
“Yep, there are only two reasons to be in that
room: you’re either being tortured or doing the torturing.”
Heidi’s eyes widened in realization and she gasped. “My aunt… do you think they’ll think she knows where I am and torture her to find out?!”
Dexter’s lips parted slightly but he didn’t say anything. His eyes revealed what he didn’t want to say: that Ezar would use any means necessary to find her and get her back. He looked down but not before Heidi saw what he was thinking. She burst into tears.
“Maybe they won’t,” Dexter said, although he didn’t sound convinced himself. “If they need her as leverage for you then they might not risk it. If she’s too damaged to torture anymore, she’s no good to them.”
Heidi knew he didn’t believe it and neither did she, but she’d done so much crying today that she didn’t really have any more left in her and so her tears soon subsided. In fact, the weariness of the day and the past three days was beginning to come down on her.
“My aunt tried to hide me,” she said suddenly. She tucked her knees up under her chin and stared down at her feet. “She tried to keep me away from the Emperor and the rebellion, tried to keep me safe. But they found me anyway… because we tried to start a real life. And now she’s in danger… or worse.” She shook her head wearily, her face grave. “It was a mistake not to choose a side—albeit a well-meant mistake. If you don’t choose a side one gets chosen for you.”
“Yep,” Dexter agreed, studying her inquisitively. He considered what he would say next but before he had a chance, Heidi spoke again.
“I’ll help the rebellion,” she said. “I mean, I don’t really know how my ability can help… and I won’t violate someone’s mind against their will. But if I can help other ways then I’ll help.”
“Good,” Dexter mumbled. “Gives you an opportunity to try and rescue your aunt.”
“No, that’s not…” Heidi sighed. “I mean, yes, I’d like to save her but that’s not it.” She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees. “I just see the truth now. I was looking for it before and I only found propaganda and fairy tales. But I see the way things really are now… And twelve year old boys should not have to watch their parents being murdered from coal bins.”
Dexter’s eyes widened slightly and he drew in a small, sharp breath. He seemed to search her and take her all in for a moment but then closed down again. He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded once.
“You should get some sleep, Red,” he said finally. “We have a long trek tomorrow and you only have a few more hours before I have to wake you up.”
She nodded. “I think I can sleep now.”
She lay down on the soft ground, warmed by Dexter’s shirt and fell asleep to the sound of locusts in the trees.