Chapter Twenty Three

Yarn Boy

After Jenna and Sardius finished their conference with Ixy and Ivy, they had to be rushed to Conrad’s room before the majority of the prisoners woke up. They were led past four hallways of cells before they arrived at one at the very end of the farthest hall. The door didn’t have bars like most of the others. The others had partial bars or a window to look in to see what the prisoner was doing, but Conrad’s had neither.

While Irid was unlocking his door, Jenna asked from a safe distance. “Why do the prisoners get locked in their cells if they can come and go?”

“Why do you lock your apartment when you come home after a long day at work?” Iris asked without amusement as the heavy lock clicked out of place.

“So, they lock their doors themselves to keep others out?”

“I can unlock their doors, but there are a few prisoners who are locked in and out. Here’s one.” Irid opened the door and then backed away to give Jenna all the room Sardius claimed she needed.

When Jenna saw inside, she stared and then it was a solid three seconds before she gasped.

“Jenna?” Conrad said, his voice a little higher pitched than it had been when he spoke through the communication system. “Sardius? What are you two doing here?”

“Weren’t you told we were here?” Jenna squeaked.

“Who would have told me?” he asked in surprise, his mouth open.

“Ixy and Ivy,” Jenna supplied, getting a little control over herself.

Conrad stared at them. “You think they tell me anything when they think they can create a surprise?”

“Pranksters,” Sardius said as he stepped through the door and approached Conrad for a hearty handshake.

When Sardius stood in front of Conrad, hid almost the whole room from Jenna’s view. She couldn’t see Conrad at all. She wanted to shout for Sardius to get out of the way. She had stared at him, gawked at him even, but she hadn’t had quite enough.

Why hadn’t anyone told her he was a Stickman like Misha? Looking at him, she remembered what Sardius had said about Misha when he introduced her. He said Misha was fat for her race. Conrad looked like he was made out of yarn, he was so thin. His head was round like a ball of yarn, but the skin on his face was smooth. His orange yarn hair was twisted and curling, tied in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck, but even pulling it into a ponytail did not destroy the waves of hair around his face. His eyes were large and burnt orange, like they had been black but years of staring at a computer monitor had burnt a bit of the black out of them.

His room was a mattress, a curving desk with huge monitors, and a swivel chair.

Finally, Sardius stepped out of the way and walked around the room leisurely.

Conrad started coughing. He put his arm to his sleeve to appropriately shield everyone from his cough, but when he pulled away, his white linen shirt had blood on it.

Jenna turned to Irid. “He’s not withstanding the radiation well, is he?”

“He’s in our best room for combating it,” Irid explained. “But no. He isn’t.”

“How much time does he have left on his sentence?” Jenna asked.

Irid made a little cutting gesture across her neck and shook her head. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but Conrad was going to die in prison.

Stolen novel; please report.

Before Jenna could process that, Sardius came out of the cell and drew Jenna into a corner. He huddled her in as close as he could, giving them as much privacy as possible. In their little football huddle, he pulled off her pink diamond wedding ring and tied a piece of orange yarn to the ring the same way he had tied his hair to it.

“I didn’t pull it off his head,” Sardius explained. “It was on his mattress.”

Jenna looked at him with huge sorrowful eyes. He was the best husband she’d ever had! And Jenna had had two others, so that meant something.

When Sardius had finished, he replaced Jenna’s ring on her finger and turned around to talk to Irid. “If it’s okay with you, we’ll stay with Conrad in his cell until our transport arrives.”

“Fine with me. Want me to send you some nutritional pills or a shot?” Irid offered.

It took Jenna a minute to understand that was the equivalent of offering them breakfast.

“Water?” he asked.

Irid nodded.

Jenna stepped into the cell, hugging the wall until Sardius followed her and Irid had locked the door. Then she stepped right up to Conrad. She let her force field engulf him and shield him from the radiation.

“Jenna,” he breathed when she got close enough. “What are you doing? I thought you couldn’t let anyone near you.”

“The jewel protects me from radiation,” she explained. “If I’m near you, it should give you a break.”

He breathed again, but this time through his nose. A droplet of blood had been collecting at the tip of his nose and when he sneezed, he sprayed Jenna’s green dress in blood.

He covered his nose in horror. “I’m so sorry, Jenna,” he cried in distress.

Jenna looked at him, but she couldn’t find the words to tell him that his blood on her dress was the least distressing thing she could think of in their current circumstance. What about him and his little yarn-ball body? She couldn’t leave him to die in the Xypher Zone.

“Sardius,” she said slowly, thinking fast. “How big of a mess can I make when we leave this place?”

Her husband snorted. “I know everything you’re thinking and I think we should go ahead and do that.”

“We?” Jenna asked, suddenly clicking her tongue in pleasure. “You’ll help me?”

He gave her the smile that swelled the heart of every freedom fighter, an all-white smile. It was the kind of smile no one could make unless they were possessed by the spirit of all daredevils. Hell was empty because all the daredevils were there. “I’ll help you,” he said confidently.

“What are you two talking about?” Conrad asked, looking suspiciously between them.

Jenna turned to Conrad with a grin that mirrored Sardius’. Then she said conspiratorially, “Do you remember how much I did not like Moonbeam?”

Conrad nodded. “I thought that was normal. No one would like Moonbeam. Didn’t Favel give her to you to train you?”

Jenna chuckled. “That’s not what he says. Anyway, I didn’t like Moonbeam. He was not my kind of thing. However, YOU are my kind of thing.” She scooped up Conrad as easily as a ragdoll, took his seat in front of the consul of monitors, and sat him on her lap with her arms around his middle.

“This is wildly inappropriate,” Conrad whined, making a sound with his mouth Jenna wouldn’t have believed possible considering his looks. He sounded like a grown man and looked like a tawny ball of yarn. “I am not your toy,” he complained in his low voice.

“Conrad,” she said softly as he squirmed, but quite impossibly, he was much more flexible than Misha even though they looked very similar. She rested her cheek on his head. “I’ve decided that I like you too much to leave you in this jail.”

He stopped moving and instead, he listened to what Jenna was saying.

“I’m going to take you with me when I leave. I’m claiming you and you are too small and too adorable to fight me. That’s what Sardius and I were talking about. He knows that in my heart, I’m a little girl who hasn’t been shopping in years and so I’m mistaking this jail for a store and I’m taking home the thing I want most.”

Conrad slacked in her arms. “I might seem soft and adorable, but I bite,” he whispered.

“Don’t bite me. Let me steal you,” she said, feeling tears threaten at her eyes. She sniffed them back.

“What about Ixy and Ivy?” Conrad asked sensibly.

“They’re Bonemen and they have three years left on their sentence. Besides, using the extraction method Jenna has in mind, she can only take you,” Sardius said, matching Conrad’s mature tone.

“This is weird,” Conrad said, settling into Jenna like a child who had finally relaxed.

Jenna stroked his head. Then her hand involuntarily went to the jewel on her crown.

It would be enough to protect them both, she reminded herself.

It had to be enough.