Bee looked at Insie inquisitively, her head tilted to the side to show her perplexion. She must have been wondering why Insie thought there would be a problem.
“We’ll see you after showers,” he bid her goodbye, stealing a glance at Jamie. Understanding, the boy became even paler than he had been before and looked like he would rather not shower at all. If only he had a choice. Insie began walking through the hallway, making his way to the shower rooms. There were ten shower rooms in The Coves, five for each gender. Despite the separation of the sexes, there were no other measures taken to provide any privacy. All of the showers were communal, with no walls or curtains whatsoever, not even separating stalls. Each room had around 30 showerheads, which should mean that each room had 30 people showering at a time, but there was only a 20-minute time period allotted for showering, and there were hundreds of nunkers of each sex trying to get their shower in before the time ran out, so there were closer to just over one hundred people in each one at any given time.
“Let me guess,” Jamie spoke up after they had gotten about halfway there. Insie tilted his head to show that he was listening and waited for the boy to finish his statement. “Showering is normally a pleasant thing in my experience, so here it must be yet another thing that can kill me, right?” Insie couldn’t help but grin as he chuckled at the greenhorn’s prediction. He’s a fast learner, he mused.
“You have the right idea,” Insie granted. At that, the boy remained quiet for a long moment, until eventually, he replied with another question.
“The other nunkers are going to try and kill me, aren’t they?” he asked.
“As soon as you give them a reason to,” Insie confirmed honestly.
They came upon the showers quickly, the familiar sounds of yelling, threatening, and irritated sumnuffs clamoring about filling Insie’s ears once again. Insie stopped short of the door, knowing that Jamie would do the same. From where they stood, the showers themselves couldn’t be seen, since one of the walls of the entryway were blocking them from view, but the people coming in and out of them could. Too many teenagers to count forced their way through the crowds, each one entirely naked. Some of them were emerging with their skin tinted yellow. This was no shock to Insie, having seen the same sight and become deafeningly numb to it after so much time in The Coves, but based on the expression the greenhorn to his right wore, Jamie couldn’t imagine a worse possibility for what Insie had been hinting at. The showers were communal, and there was no privacy. So not only would the boy be forced to strip his clothes away, he would have to do it in front of a small towns’ worth of other people.
“No,” he said with eyes blown wide in terror.
“Look, kid-”
“I’m not doing it. I won’t.”
“You don’t have a choice. This isn’t optional, every nunker that has the ability to stand is forced to come and shower every Saturday.”
“I don’t care, it isn’t happening.” At this, Insie could feel the irritation beginning to swell in his body. His left eye twitched once, but he tried his best to be sympathetic and have some patience with the boy before him, however worn his resolve may be.
“Jagger, listen-” he tried once more.
“No!” The boy yelled before Insie could get out another word. He felt the withered thread that was his patience cry out as it snapped in two; his breaths came faster, his face tinged red, and his fists clenched subconsciously. If he didn’t think it would kill the boy, Insie would have beaten the greenhorn senseless right then and there.
“The hell did you just say? No? Well then you listen here smartass, after the 20 minute time period for showering, the sumnuffs check every single nunker for the chemical in the liquid. Anyone who doesn’t test positive for it is whipped, beaten, and then forced to shower immediately after. Of course, Stri won’t have to worry about showering because even the sumnuffs will realize that he can’t walk and let it go; the bleeding gashes on his back-the ones that he got protecting you from the consequences of your own physical weakness-are pretty obviously not going to let him move around at all, much less escape unsupervised. The water burns like fire already, but when you have a gaping hole with blood pouring out of your body and that shit gets in it? It’s like if you had fallen onto a scorching needle of blood and pain. That’s by far the most painful way they have to punish you, and they don’t go easy on anyone. How do you think I got all of the scars on my chest? You aren’t the only one here who has scars; almost every single nunker has more than twenty, so I really hope you aren’t expecting any kind of special treatment for whatever it is you went through because I can promise you that you won’t get it. So, if you want to deal with all of that, go ahead and stay right where you are, and I’ll let my pack know that all the pain that Stri is in, the pain that he only feels because he protected you, is for nothing.”
Insie saw crimson, and only that. He knew that by now his entire face would be flushed, his chest heaving, and his fists clenched so hard that his knuckles turned white. He turned around and stormed off with a rush of wind, straight in the direction of the doorway, not even bothering to look back. When he got to the doorway, it became clear to the whole room that Insie was enraged and not to be messed with. The crowds parted for him yet again with ample room and when he approached a crowded showerhead, he found it completely vacant within seconds. The entire room became silent, stunned quiet in its collective anxiety. This was the Insie that the nunkers knew, the one that they feared. He had almost forgotten that he had a reputation to maintain. He was certainly making up for it now, emitting a dangerous aura that kept everyone far away. The spray of the liquid came on just as Insie braced himself for the pain. He saw the yellow chemicals pouring out of the water and pelting his body. It burned just as any other acid would as the “water” assaulted his flesh with a chemical flame.
He reveled in the pain, allowing it to steal away his thoughts and force the emotions out of his mind, but couldn’t stop himself from noticing that the sound of the room had returned in the form of a shout and the thud of a body hitting the floor. He ignored it, for the most part, assuming that some greenhorn had just slipped and fallen, until he heard the cheering start. He opened his eyes, not realizing that he had ever closed them, and turned his head to face the source of the commotion. He saw a young boy, most likely a greenhorn of only 16 or so, swinging rapidly at an unidentified victim that Insie couldn’t see. Probably a dominant on trial, he thought. The Dominant pack had a particular trial, consisting only of inflicting as much pain on other nunkers as possible for a week, then eventually reaching the peak of two initiates fighting to the death for their spot. The assailant delivered a particularly damaging punch to the jaw, and his victim’s familiar face was revealed. Insie couldn’t help the pure rage that bubbled within him, so he made a point of closing his eyes and turning his head back into the spray of the corrosive substance still flowing fluidly from the showerhead above him.
He stayed that way for a fleeting second, memories suddenly flashing in front of his eyes. He saw himself as a greenhorn all those years ago, no one telling him the consequences of not showering, leaving him to find out the hard way. He imagined the chilling image of the bodiless shower room. The floors, he knew, were mostly concrete with some cracked tiling on top, and the walls were a mix of cavern wall and some kind of faded bleached white bricks. He could practically feel how cold the ground had felt against his cheek, one sumnuff pinning him down by sitting on his back directly in line with his chest, restricting his breathing and leaving him gasping on the barely tiled floor. He remembered looking at the wall in front of him in terror, seeing the faded red stains lining the block in front of him in a pattern that suggested the substance had spattered in all directions, then was left to drip slowly for the remainder of the day, only disturbed by the next day’s spray of acid from the surrounding showerheads. He recalled how he was bound at the hands and feet as the whip struck his back four times, one for each nunker that had been caught not showering that day. He could still remember the biting cold of the air around the wounds and the scream of pain that went through his bones at being pulled up roughly from the ground. He saw the younger version of himself nearly crying but making no sound as the acid destroyed him and entrapped his soul within the pain of his body. He remembered the lurch of the fear that he had felt at the sight of one of the sumnuffs looking to him with her whip in hand and a sadistic smile lining her face as she forced him to turn around to face her. The whip struck his visualized memory of himself as the acid ran across his wounded back, and he heard two echoing shouts of pain simultaneously as the weapon cracked in his ears.
Insie’s eyes burst open at the sound of the scream to his right and his head snapped to the direction it had come from. His rage returning in full swing, Insie abandoned the running stream of liquid and immediately made his way to the scene of the fight. Once there, Insie felt the atmosphere of the once jovial crowd change to one of fear and apprehension in his presence. Insie grabbed the attacker by the shoulder, spun him around, and threw him to the ground. The boy’s body flew backwards, slamming harshly against the rock below him. The acid made the floor slippery, though, so he slid back at least four feet before his form came to a stop directly in the stream of a running showerhead. Shouting in a mixture of surprisal and surely pain, the boy, seemingly irate, picked himself up and headed straight towards Insie with rage and vengeance dancing in his eyes, until a nunker that Insie recognized as Dominance stepped in front of the fuming boy while waving his hands frantically to signal that a fight against Insie was not one he could win. Only once the frantic Dominance boy had identified his potential opponent did the greenhorn freeze in his tracks. Based on the alarmed expression that quickly replaced the formerly enraged one, Insie was known as someone to be wary of even in the Dominance pack.
Good, he thought.
The spray of liquid from all of the showerheads stopped abruptly and the tone for nunkers to begin heading back to their cells sounded. All in the room quickly dispersed, with all but two nunkers trying to evacuate the showers at once. Once the room was mostly empty, Insie turned his head to look at the familiar face of the nunker on the ground below him. Before him laid a soaked and fully clothed Jamie. From the looks of it, the boy would only have a few bruises to worry about and one cut on the side of his left cheek, the cut most likely being what startled the shout out of him, but he didn’t have any major injuries.
The pair stayed there staring at each other for a moment, Insie not minding his nudity and Jamie not minding his drenched clothes. Insie was the first to decide he was done with the minor interaction, turning and heading for a towel to dry himself off with as he went for his clothes. Whether the boy had come in because of fear or guilt, Insie didn’t know, and he didn’t plan to ask. He got dressed out of routine, not caring at all that there was someone else in the room who had now seen him naked, as most of the male nunkers had at that point, due to the showering arrangements. Once he was fully clothed once more, Insie turned and went straight to the door, ready to leave. He hated himself for pausing and looking back.
The next morning came with the bell that Insie had only learned to be the predecessor of the scream that never failed to follow immediately. He couldn’t determine which sound was more disturbing: the bell that reminded him that he was still stuck inside of this prison, or the scream that reminded him that he wasn’t the only one. He rose from the cot inside of his cell, slipped on his necklace of doves, which he had taken off and stored safely in his cell the night before so as not to let the acid from showering harm it, concealed the doves under his shirt, and promptly left to go to breakfast. From the moment he stepped into the room, Insie could tell that something was off. The atmosphere of the room was too quiet yet too hyper all at once. The air was full of an unknown tension, coinciding with the dread that filled the walls. The way the nunkers of different packs all looked at each other with the same energy was electric. Dangerous. The cafeteria was just starting to fill in, as he had gotten there so early that the only one from his pack already in the room was Rodent, who was always there first. Insie’s eyes were slowly shifting across the tables, suspicious of all movements in the room. His eyes landed on Rodent, who was apparently watching him since as soon as he looked at her they made eye contact. He walked over to their table, taking note of how she stood and wasn’t in line. She was waiting. Whether she was waiting for something to happen, for Insie to say something to her, or for something else entirely, he couldn’t be sure, but if Rodent was standing idly then there was always a reason for it.
When he reached her, they maintained eye contact for a few seconds longer than normal, both of them confirming that the other could sense the tension in the air, ensuring that it wasn’t just their respective imaginations. Usually, Initiation had no order to how they sat for meals; the ensemble seemed different each day. Today, that was not the case. Insie planned out exactly where each member of their pack-and Jamie-would sit for that day. In his mind, he placed himself at the seat closest to the wall with the widest view of the room and where someone would see him first in most positions outside of the immediate proximity to their table. To his right, Stri would sit with Rodent on his other side. On his left would sit Bee with Elle next to her and Bahrya next to Elle. Directly across from him and between Bahrya and Rodent would be Jamie, which brought the table full circle. He told Rodent of his visualization and she helped him to ensure that the way he wanted things to be would be the way that things were. On days like this, none of the pack questioned why they were asked to sit in a particular spot nor why they were put where they were, they just trusted that the person who had placed them there knew what they were doing when they did it. His pack filled in quickly, each of them sitting exactly where they were indicated without question, and the bantering for the day began. Rodent and Bahrya bickered over tiny matters, Elle and Bee took turns fussing over Stri’s mobility, Elle with words and Bee with a very deliberately scolding expression, and Jamie sat silently focusing on his food, not making eye contact with anyone, but, Insie noticed, stealing the occasional glance at him or Stri in turns. He always looked away immediately after. Rodent eventually tapped Insie’s ankle with her foot after she had finished her argument with Bahrya, then, when Insie directed his attention to her, shifted her eyes over in Jamie’s direction without moving her head, then went back to make eye contact with Insie yet again. Nodding, Insie nudged both Bee to his left and Stri to his right with his knee to give them the signal that they needed to pay attention, which they silently passed on to the others at the table that Insie couldn’t reach. Once everyone was paying attention, Rodent cleared her throat to speak.
“So, Jagger,” she began, causing the boy to look up in slight alarm, “what was your first day walking through here like?” Insie made sure to keep his eyes focused somewhere other than on Jamie’s expression, but he saw the nunker’s eyes flick to his face in his peripheral vision. He didn’t look back.
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“Uhh…” the boy started, clearly unsure of how to answer the question, “I guess it was normal for this place. I walked through the crowds and eventually made my way to the doors.”
“Were you injured?”
At this Insie looked up, waiting expectantly to see what kind of answer the interrogated would provide. He could lie to save face but make himself seem untrustworthy, or he could tell the truth to gain trust but appear weak and burdening. The boy was quiet for a long moment, clearly undecided on how to respond.
“I came out with a lot of bruising and scratches. I had a few cuts and one big bruise on my side that turned a multitude of different colors and is still very painful to put any kind of pressure on. I would’ve most likely been killed if getting to the door had taken any longer.” Insie wasn’t surprised that he had admitted to being injured, but the detail that he went into did make him quirk an eyebrow. It wasn’t as if the boy had a reputation to uphold, but it was still surprising that he would be so open about what he refused to let Insie help with that same night despite the obvious pain he was in. Rodent glanced over his way, reading his thoughts, and then looked back to the boy she was questioning.
“Can we see?” she dared. Insie could see the greenhorn’s face turn paler than it already was at the thought, and the boy shook his head no seemingly as a reflex-as if he didn’t even notice that he was doing it at the time. Insie could feel the eyes of Bee, Elle, and Bahrya focusing their attention on him, but he didn’t turn to look back. Instead, he kept his sight centered on the fear that was so evident in Jamie’s eyes that anyone within ten feet of their table could sense his anxiety. He finally glanced over to Rodent, meeting her gaze and trying to determine her thoughts. The look in her eyes gave away her neutral expression to the people who knew how to read her signals and told Insie that she thought the same thing that he did. Insie nodded, communicating to the table that that would be enough questioning for the time being and that they could return to eating. They did as they were silently permitted, and things returned to normal for a short while, but the distorted normalcy that existed within the room soon vanished. Insie could sense something stirring in the minds of the other nunkers in the cafeteria, and soon became high on alert. He focused almost all of his attention on monitoring the room, watching for any sudden commotion or disturbances within the tables, while still distantly listening to what was going on at his own table and allowing his eyes to follow what his ears heard when things would temporarily get too loud or too quiet to be normal for his pack. He focused his vision back on the rest of the room when suddenly he saw mass movement at another table. He narrowed his eyes distrustfully, watching as the table’s occupants all rose from their seats and suddenly making eye contact with a nunker he knew all too well.
“Guys,” was all he needed to say to halt all conversation at his table and get them to look at him. His pack knew that tone, and they followed his gaze to the group quickly making their way towards their table. Insie heard Bahrya curse under his breath and watched as Rodent narrowed her eyes with an expression bordering a snarl on her face at the approaching pack. He rose from his seat to his full height and stepped out of his position to make his way to the front of his table. The others rose with him but waited for him to stop before they took up their own places each to the side of but slightly behind him. He always stood in the center and in front, while the rest of his pack took the places that their seats afforded, each of them making sure to stay in the order that Insie had placed them when they had arrived.
It was at this point that the group had reached the Initiation pack, and the whole room became silent. Every pack in the room watched with anticipation and listened to hear what would be said in the showdown soon to come. Insie, aware of the audience, finally regarded the person standing directly in front of him: Sipara, leader of the Dominance pack.
He could almost hear Bahrya’s enraged thoughts from where he stood, knowing the trouble between him and the pack leader wearing a smug grin before him. She turned her attention to the blonde momentarily, granting him a self-pleased smile and jovial expression before turning back to Insie.
“I heard,” the bleach blonde girl began, “that you were picking on one of my initiates yesterday, and I would like to know who made you the Cove police to interrupt their trial.” Insie chuckled at her statement, a dangerous grin of his own appearing on his face as he formulated his response.
“Well,” Insie started, “I was going to leave it alone, as I usually do when you decide to terrorize the greenhorns for your own amusement, but unfortunately, your initiate happened to pick my initiate to mess with, and I’m sure you understand that I couldn’t just let that slide.”
“Oh, really?” she responded, quirking an eyebrow in disbelief, “then where is he? Let’s see your new initiate.” Insie was going to respond, but she interrupted him before he had a chance to speak by saying, “Oh! Well, there’s a face I haven’t seen before. I suppose this must be him.” Elle stood in front of the scrawny boy, preventing Sipara from being able to approach him.
“Well, I have a proposition for you, in that case,” Sipara spoke, clearly planning something that she believed to be brilliant.
“I’m not interested.” Insie didn’t want any part of her idea for him or his pack and intended fully on making that very clear.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Sipara continued, “because this agreement could easily turn favorable for you.”
“If it helped anyone but yourself, you’d never offer it,” Bahrya spat out, anger still dominating his features. To this the Dominance leader cackled, a disturbing and dysfunctional sound that Insie couldn’t wait to hear stop as she approached Bahrya slowly, still wearing her signature grin.
“I think you’ll like this little deal too, baby b-”
“If you’re going to make a proposition just shut up and do it already!” Rodent interrupted, clearly unafraid to make her presence known. Her arms were crossed over her chest impatiently and her eyes appeared like two identical rings of flame, just waiting to consume anything she deemed worthy of her wrath. There were few things Insie had ever feared, but he knew that if they weren’t in the same pack then Rodent’s rage would be one of them. Sipara looked even more amused at Rodent’s outburst, though, but did as she was told regardless.
“I suggest that we let our initiates have a little duel. The winner will be automatically accepted into the pack of their choice, but the loser will be refused from theirs. If your boy wins, I will step down from the leading position of my pack, and leave it entirely. But if I win, Insie must do the same.”
“And why exactly would we care about who leads your pack? You’re a slimeball no matter where you go and someone else would just take up your position anyway.” This came from a rather unimpressed looking Elle standing with her arms crossed in the same manner as Rodent.
“Because,” Sipara replied, her grin growing wider, signaling to Insie that the ‘genius’ of her plan was about to be revealed, “if you decline my proposition, your prized little initiate over there will be dead by morning, along with that snappy piece of scum, Rodent.”
Bahrya threw the first punch.
In The Coves, there was no unspoken rule about one gender not being permitted to hurt the other, as women and men caused the same degree of destruction on a daily basis, so when Bahrya punched Sipara in the jaw hard enough that it sent her flying backwards onto the floor, it was regarded as just the beginning of another fight. Insie watched the blonde fall with blood flowing from her mouth and a look of pure shock in her eyes. He looked over to Bahrya and saw a very similar face, the main difference being in the eyes. Not only were they a different color-Bahrya’s cyan versus Sipara’s amber-but they clearly housed two completely different souls, one of which was in shock, while the other was consumed with rage. A moment later and the shock from the girl’s eyes had vanished and been replaced with a rage of her own. She quickly rose to her feet, standing at her full height and staring Bahrya down just as intensely as he was doing to her.
“Evi! Ohou!” she called, causing both of the nunkers she demanded to present themselves to immediately rush to the front of their group, one of them on each side. Evi, a pale brunette with shifty eyes and a startled expression on her face, stood to Sipara’s left. Ohou, a tall boy with a tan complexion and long black hair, stood to her right with a numb look in his brown eyes. Insie had met them both before, and he knew that Ohou was Sipara’s go-to for mindless muscle while Evi was her reliable servant who ensured that things were exactly how she wanted them to be.
“What’s wrong, Sipara? Too afraid to take me on yourself?” Bahrya taunted, the rage in his expression only flaring up more when she laughed.
“Of course not, I could beat you any day, but-”
“Do it then,” he interrupted her excuse, “You say you want a duel, so why not switch it up and make this more interesting? Instead of the initiates fighting, it’ll be just you and me. Same stakes and everything involved.” Insie looked over to Bahrya with an unreadable expression; Bahyra was challenging Sipara to a fight on Insie’s behalf. Bahrya looked back to him when he noticed the shock return to his potential opponent’s face and knew she wouldn’t notice the shifting of his gaze. Insie met his eyes with confusion and saw his packmate’s own practically begging him to trust him, to let him fight instead of Insie. They may not have been the closest of friends, but Bahrya was still one of the very few people Insie had ever trusted, and he was also part of his pack; Insie trusted him with his life. At his responding nod, Insie saw the spark in his champion’s eyes light up and set a new kind of flame, that is until Sipara spoke again.
“Well if it’s interesting you want,” she began with her signature grin, “then why stop at that? The tension between our two packs has been building for quite some time, and in my opinion, it’s about time we get rid of that. I propose a pack war.” Insie could hear the blood storming in his ears, his vision went blurred and his hand twitched once, twice, three times in succession. Pack wars meant every member of each pack-including initiates-in an all-out bloodbath, to the death. There was no way to surrender, and one of the packs would have every single member and initiate killed. The last pack standing wins. If they accepted the challenge and lost, none of them would be left alive, and even if they won, most of them would likely be killed in the fighting.
Trying to gauge his pack’s reaction to Sipara’s proposal, Insie looked around to see their faces. Elle looked surprised, but always unafraid, Bee looked fearful, as she had never tried to hide it as much as the rest of them, if at all, and Bahrya simply looked even angrier. His fists were clenched at his sides so tightly that his knuckles were white and his arms were flexing involuntarily. Turning his gaze to the other side of him, Insie noticed that though she had been standing exactly where he had wanted her to just a moment ago, Rodent had moved almost directly in front of Stri, as if she were trying to physically shield him from what Sipara was suggesting, protecting him. Her hands lay at her sides and Insie noticed as her left index finger twitched in sync with her clenching her right fist. Stri stood behind her, looking entirely unsurprised yet still angered by what the Dominance leader had said. Movement in his peripheral vision caused Insie to direct his attention behind him to see Jamie trying to look unfazed, but not succeeding. The greenhorn had been standing behind him the entire time, clearly hesitant to move from the spot that his seat had dictated he stand, and was now paler than usual and his legs appeared to shake minutely. This was why Insie had put each member of his pack in a certain spot; it set them up to have the strongest formation if there was a fight, allowing the most imposing of Initiation to stand at the front, while the less suited for conflict and the injured remained slightly behind them.
“And yet again you have proven that you are nothing but a coward,” Insie said, facing Sipara directly.
“Oh?” she reacted, “And how have I done that? I’ve raised the stakes, I’ve made things more intense, and yet I’m a coward?”
“You are a coward,” Stri chimed in, “because you know you can’t win on your own. You got no chance at all of beatin’ any one of us by yourself, and you know it. That’s why you want a pack war, because you won’t have to fight yourself unless you run out of people to do it for you. You talk big, but you hide behind the people you ‘lead’ in your pack because you can’t win.”
“I am no such thing,” she defended insistently, enunciating everything word.
“Then why are you so afraid of fighting me?” Bahrya asked, stepping forward to close some of the distance Sipara had put between them. She almost stepped back when he did.
“Some of us don’t fight people below them,” she snarled as if disgusted at the thought of having any further interaction with Bahrya.
“If I had the same opinion, I wouldn’t be willing to fight you myself, yet you’re the only one who would make any excuse not to.” Insie knew that when he said that it would trap the blonde into doing one of two things: finding excuses and proving him right so he didn’t have to face him, or getting into a fight against him that she would surely lose. He stepped towards her, and this time she did take a step back, revealing her fear of him. That was the only answer Insie needed.
“No? Then listen to me very closely,” he said, leaning so close to her that she physically leaned back away from him but didn’t dare to move from her position, “if you ever threaten any initiate or pack member of mine again in any way whatsoever, I won’t let you cower away next time. There will be bloodshed, and it will be yours. You are a coward and a weakling, but if you even think about saying one thing to or about any nunker in my pack, especially Rat after the shit you just pulled earlier, we will all come after you and I promise you that I will personally make sure you suffer more than you thought humanly possible in front of everyone in The Coves. Do you understand me?” She didn’t respond to him immediately, only fueling Insie’s fury further, and he slammed his fist into the wall next to her head, to which she visibly jumped and let out a small sound of fear in response, which was obvious to all who were watching. He brought himself even closer to her face, giving her nowhere to run and repeated at the same loud volume right in her ear, “I said, do you understand me?” while enunciating every word. This time she nodded fearfully, and he struck the wall once more just to let everyone else watch her jump.
Insie turned his back to her and walked off to rejoin his pack, leaving Sipara to face the shame she was due at his departure. The tone for dismissal sounded and within seconds the room was nearly empty, all nunkers outside of Initiation having fled in fear of being Insie’s next target. There was one thing that Insie could see reflected in each of his pack members’ eyes except for Bee and Jamie: fury. Bee only looked sad, as she usually did when things went wrong instead of responding with the anger that was typical of the rest of her pack. She walked over to Bahrya and placed her hand on his arm, looking up at him with sympathetic yet pained eyes. His rage seemed to fade some when he looked back to her and his eyes looked gentle when he gave her a sad smile. Insie knew of the complicated relationship between Bahrya and Sipara, as did the rest of their pack, but to see the way it caused them to act was something that went deeper than the facts that he stored in his mind. The pained look in his friend’s eyes always made Insie remember the effects that The Coves had on the nunkers even accidentally. Very few things could withstand the effects of their prison, and bonds were no exception. Insie looked around at the members of his pack, examining the expression of each person before shaking his head slightly to clear it of his thoughts. He mentally replaced the figurative mask that had slightly fallen from his face, then looked back to the nunkers around him with it fully intact once more.
“We need to get to stations,” he said. Stri looked to Bee, who gave a slight smile which he hesitantly returned, and Elle and Rodent nodded silently. Bee, Jamie, and Stri would go back to Stri’s cell, while the rest of the group would go to their assigned stations. Each of them began to part their ways, but Elle and Insie stayed behind.
“You’re calling in your favor,” Elle stated after everyone had left.
“You know what to do,” was Insie’s only response. Elle nodded and turned to make her way to the exit before Insie put his hand on her wrist, pausing her in her tracks.
“Make sure she’s okay for me, will you?” he asked, not needing to name the nunker that he was asking about. Insie called in favors that were owed, but he never asked for anything personal simply because of his relationship with someone. They both knew that, and that was how genuine of a request it was. Elle nodded once more, a serious expression on her face, and made her way to the door. Insie watched her go, and called out to her once more as she was about to leave.
“E,” he called, causing her to turn her head to face him, “Be careful.”
“You too,” she responded before vanishing through the door to get to her station.
After getting to his station just barely before the tone, Insie let his anger fuel the next six hours. He mined more rock in one day than he had in his entire time being in The Coves, and that was saying something. After stations were over, the bell rang for the nunkers to return to their cells. Insie laid in bed long after the dogs had done their rounds, still awake and still thinking deeply. A lot had happened lately in The Coves, but Insie didn’t have time to dwell on or contemplate these events and developments. He had something new to think about.
It was time to plan the trial.