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Chapter 9: Egos
“Good morning.” A tall man in a blackish uniform stood on the stage. Usually, another guard greeted us at the morning roll call. They didn't check attendance or anything. They just spurred us to produce a certain amount of Jade Mint, or the pay would suffer.
His stature and aura didn't match the man in the office yesterday. I didn't know whether it was appropriate to be pleased or disappointed. I would have liked to see his face, but he might have recognized me.
“For the new ones: I am the captain of this factory, Captain Samuel. Urgent matters at headquarters required my attention. Now I am fully available. My loyal guards informed me of some inconvenience. To your notice, I will not tolerate any misconduct and will get to the bottom of it.”
“Huh, he probably means me then.”
“Now go and work hard. We have an important delivery order for the end of this week.”
The workers split into the usual groups and went to their workstations.
Nita walked beside me. “That's a serious problem.”
“I figured as much, but why exactly?” I asked.
“This Samuel guy can almost rival Captain Reysan in terms of power.”
“You realize I have no clue how strong Reysan is, right?”
“Captain Reysan,” she paused. “Remember when I consumed Jade Mint and took care of the guards during our break-in?”
“Yeah, I'll never forget how you almost killed me,” I joked.
She sighed. “Were you able to track my movements?”
“Hardly.”
“Now, imagine being me on Jade Mint.”
I nodded.
“You could barely even see a blur of Captain Reysan if he went all out.”
Only thanks to the Jade Mask could I even see anything of her. As fast as she moved and the mask on, not even Nita could see him properly?! Nita was scary already, but this. That was terrifying. Just imagining how many times someone with that speed could kill me in a single second, and that's without me even realizing it.
“We’re in some deep—I . . . I guess it’s my fault.” Conflicted feelings I had tried to avoid bubbled up again. “I owe you an apology, Nita.”
I didn't know if I was sorry. I felt guilty, but I didn't regret it. It itched me to go through more parchments.
“You'll get spanked later.”
“Thanks . . .”
“You’re welcome.”
She slung an arm around me and pulled me close to her face. “But the next time you refuse to obey an order, I will wring your neck to a cord.”
Cold sweat trickled down my face. I gulped. “Yes, Ma’am.”
The walk continued in silence. And I repeatedly tried to swallow the lump in my throat.
We spread around the conveyor belt and waited for the engines to start. Questions buzzed around in my head. My curiosity swallowed the lump; I had had enough of waiting for answers.
“How’s something like this even possible? Such speed?” I stood beside Nita. “I've seen some weird things happen to people who've smoked too much Jade Mint, but the other day there was this Riston guy from the crew and . . .”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“You said I would learn more about this witchcraft soon, but I barely learned anything.”
“Witchcraft sums it up quite well . . .” Nita adjusted her work clothes. Her sleeves were missing about an inch to fit appropriately.
“First of all, you know that there are different forms of Jade Mint, do you?”
“Sort of. Some look different, and I read about Mixtures.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Right, the chemical itself changes depending on the concentration. However, the more it’s distilled, the more unstable it becomes.”
“Ah, so spikier means more potent?”
“Uh, yes, basically.”
“And what—”
“Hey!” a guard bellowed. “Stop your chattering and get to work.”
I scoffed, not hiding my dislike for him, and he narrowed his eyes at me.
“Their balls have grown now that their captain came back.”
—
A few hours later, I switched back to the Mint Extractor.
“Hey, where’s Finn?” I asked one of the women. I believed her name was Brenda. The other men were too grumpy to reply.
“Wyatt had dragged him outside a while ago. He didn’t come back.” Her shoulders weighed visibly heavy on her.
“Who’s Wyatt?”
She stared at me in disbelief. “The guard you've been messing with?”
“The brat?”
Brenda's face showed a struggle between concern and frustration.
“They didn’t go outside to have a civilized chat, huh?”
The wet guilt in her eyes left me at a loss for words.
Maybe I didn’t know if I felt sorry for Nita, but I felt sorry for Finn. He seemed like a lone wolf, taking care of his children. Just like I had been taking care of the children in my former crew, they could have become like younger siblings if I hadn't kept my distance.
“You can’t leave the workplace,” I said, mustering Brenda’s insecurity. “But I can.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I got this.”
Minutes later, an opportunity to sneak out presented itself. The patrolling guards walked away, and the stationary ones concentrated on their card game.
I casually walked through the factory. When guards asked where I was headed, I lied to have been assigned to swap to another section, and they let me through. I didn’t know why the other workers didn’t abuse that. Wait, maybe they did? Whatever.
I pushed open the massive double door. A whiff of salt wafted around me—the first time outside after days in this dusty metal prison.
I immediately spotted Finn lying in the sand. I sprinted to him.
“Finn? You okay, man?”
Finn lay unconscious on his stomach, his face covered in reddish-blue spots, dry blood under his nose, and sand in his mouth. I gently shook him, but he didn’t react.
“Finn?”
I turned him on his back and pressed one ear to his chest.
Nothing.
“Finn . . . ?”
I closed my eyes and blended out the ocean noise, focusing solely on my one ear. A faint beat thumped inside him.
“Damn it, Finn. Don’t scare me. Can't let the one person nice enough to talk to me in here die.”
I pulled him over my shoulders and went back into the factory. He definitely had more padding under his clothes than it looked. My rather petite shoulders ached. I didn’t belong to the type to wear heavy stuff. I leaned more toward the flexible and acrobatic kind of side.
“Hey!” I yelled at a pair of guards in front of the fill-up section. “This worker is seriously injured. We need to treat him.”
I jogged over to them.
Both raised their eyebrows and glanced at each other. Their lips trembled, then one nudged the other with an elbow, and they both burst out laughing.
“Assholes . . .”
I searched for other guards, pleading for help. Despite their reaction conveying some pity, they still didn’t help. Eventually, I gave up; my back pain was getting worse. I carefully placed Finn against a larger pipe and gasped for air.
“Treatment . . . bandages? No, he’s not bleeding. Ointment—if I had any . . . Jade Mint. If I could get hold of some, but the storeroom is the best guarded, of course.”
I kicked a pipe. “Wyatt . . . typical noble brat. Where’s the guard that saved me from Lush? He'd help me.”
I clenched my fist to suppress my frustration. I clicked my tongue and hit another pipe with my prosthetic fist, which left a satisfying dent.
“My prosthesis . . . that’s it!”
I opened the casing and pulled the cartridge out. Only a fifth was still filled.
“Wait. If he has internal bleeding . . . damn it! What should I do?!”
I pulled out the parchment I had stolen from the laboratory.
‘Jade Mint, Mixture 4 . . . skin application . . . internal symptoms remained . . . Drinking . . . success with the symptoms . . .’
“I don’t even know if this is Mixture 4.”
I opened the cartridge. Trusting my gut, I fed Finn the content. I knew little about medicine, though what I did know was that invisible wounds were the deadliest. And the two I knew were either poisons or internal bleeding.
“Come one, Finn. I’m sorry you got into trouble because of me. Next time I mess with this Wyatt brat, he won’t be able to hurt anyone again.”
—
The clinking of cutlery and food smacking echoed in the large dining room. Not much, but the mood had been better once. The guards seemed much more irritable than usual.
The brat guard, however, was in his best mood by far. He stayed away from me and harassed someone who didn't fight back.
“Does anyone recognize this?” The Captain sat at the head of the long table. His chair had golden decorations, a high red backrest, and complex ornaments similar to antlers. He held up a bent piece of metal—alloyed wood, to be exact—my casing part.
I had been careful not to roll up my sleeves and let it show. The captain probably knew what the part was, but about a dozen people here had some kind of prosthesis.
I watched outside, tracking a cloud lost in the blue. The other clouds kept a distance from it. The lost cloud might as well have been a portrait of my face. I glanced over to Nita. Her expression showed no traces of it, but I knew she was angry with me.
Finn sat diagonally from me. The nasty bruises covering his face had lost some color, though his broken nose hadn’t healed. He probably hated me now, too.
Grunt sat beside Finn. He had been staring at me since I first called him by nickname. I'm sure he liked the name so much that he was too embarrassed to tell me.
Like most other workers, Brenda spasmodically avoided attention—or rather: me.