"Marcus, you can't keep doing this to yourself," Dale said, frowning as Alexia wrapped a bandage around his fists. It didn't take long for the blood to soak through, but thankfully the bulk of the blood had already stopped flowing.
"This isn't the early days, Dale. We can't just double over when they try to cowl us. Even Tripsen has turned coat on the very people who are the life of this place." Marcus had to resist the urge to clench his fists as he considered that private from years before. He'd been the last one decent military guy in the Bunker, the only one that tried to respect the young professionals and survivors who shared his situation, but even he had been corrupted by the sleazy power Starden commanded.
"You may be right, Marc, but that doesn't mean you can lash out. The rationing--" Alexia tried to inject an argument, but Marcus wasn't having it.
Without waiting for her to finish, he stood and cracked his back. The many bruises from the fight blared like poorly concealed alarms, but Marcus just used them as a reminder that he was alive. That he was fighting for what he thought was right. He hesitated with his hand on the door, thanked the pair, then strode up to the greenhouse floor. He needed to see his wife.
The doors of the hydroponics wing slid silently open as he crossed the threshold. The gentle hum of the pumps and the occasional splash of the fish tanks did wonders for his frayed nerves, but he could still feel the strain of the last few years pushing him towards action. Towards... something more.
"I don't think the plants appreciate the increase in temperature, you know," a voice chided gently. Marcus spun, surprised that he'd been so caught up in his thoughts that he'd missed his wife tending to some of the growing beds. She rounded the corner, smiling up at him until she spotted the black eye and the bloody bandages. Her dazzling smile lost watts by the second until she was frowning. "What is this?"
"Tripsen... I caught him fiddling with the food report. The rest of his team were close by and things... escalated," Marcus said, meekly. His eyes couldn't help but drift down to Clara's belly. To the first child of the Bunker. To his son.
"Does your mother know?" Clara said, frown still firmly in place but she moved with practiced motions to adjust the bandages he hadn't let Alexia tend to properly. The velcro bits at the end pulled on my wounds but Clara wasn't particularly concerned with his pain at the moment.
"Not yet. Alan has been doing really well and I didn't--"
"When will they get up?" Clara said, straightening his shirt and spotting a bit of blood on his sleeve.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"There were six of them so I couldn't put them down quite as hard. Maybe twenty more minutes?" Marcus said, the adrenaline rush of the fight left his perception of time as something less than desirable.
"Elias won't be able to protect you from this, Marc. They will put you in the brig," Clara said, gripping his shirt with a surprising amount of force.
"I-I know. But maybe now they won't be able to hide their hoarding quite so easily. Ben and Clementine have been working hard to project our usage and if we can get a good estimate then the Bunker--"
"Marcus Metier. Again," the familiar flat voice grated immediately on Marcus' ears.
"Starden. To what does the hardest working floor of the Bunker owe the pleasure?" Marcus snapped back. Clara tried to hold him back, but he removed her hands with a gentleness he never knew he could produce.
"You know damn well what I am doing here, boy. Now move along unless things get... messier than you made them already."
Marcus turned to look behind himself as the stomp of boots echoed in the small room. He watched as one of the soldiers knocked over one of the pails of algae, spilling its contents all over that corner of the wing. The hour it was going to take Clara to clean that mess up and feed it to the fish tanks almost made him dip into the growing pool of rage in his gut. But he didn't. He strode forward as four guns trained on his chest. He recognized the black and blue form of Tripsen as he glared down his iron sights, but he ignored it. Starden was the colloquial rotten apple that spoiled the bunch.
"Marcus--"
"It's alright Clara. I'm sure these gentlemen just want to have a nice friendly chat to justify their inflated food requirements," Marcus said without missing a beat. He turned his back to them when he was less than five feet away, offering his wrists in an exaggerated gesture as he met the eyes of the other bunker survivors working the greenhouse floor that had come to check on the commotion. He could practically hear Starden hissing under his breath, but unfortunately the man didn't rise to the bait.
A pair of cuffs were slapped on his wrists and he was led up the stairway to the trio of rooms that served as the 'brig' of the Bunker. On the way up, the group ran into Elias, his mother and young Alan. Elias immediately tried to intercept Starden, but Ingrid held him back. Her eyes had met with Marcus' and the slightest shake of his head was all the sign she needed. Getting implicated with the strong arming soldiers while they worked to help Clara and poor morning-sick Agatha Fallon would serve no one. Marcus couldn't recall a time when the wrinkles on his mother's face had been so pronounced.
"Keep moving," Tripsen huffed, wedging the butt of his gun into Marcus' side right where one of the soldier's wild punches had connected. He grit his teeth against the pain, keeping his expression neutral. However, the pool of rage within him roiled and bucked against the shores of his self control. All the talks with his father and the pleas from his mother since they awoke in the bunker that had reigned in his anger fractured in the face of a cruelty he'd never experienced before.
You will all pay.