Free The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) by Amanda Witt Page B

Rafe ate buckets of the things.”
    The voice stopped and I was afraid that somehow it had heard
Farrell Dean, that the spotlight would spring up again and pin us in its glare,
but when the words resumed they continued in their former track.
    “You have been tested and found wanting,” it said. “You, Rafe , are a cancerous cell in our body.”
    They would flog him and lock him away in prison. I wouldn’t
see him for ages. When he came out he would be pale from lack of sun, thin, his
muscles shrunken from inactivity. That was what happened when someone seriously
displeased the Watchers: you were put away, and when you came back, you were never the same.
    “But perhaps—” the voice was silky now,
persuasive, offering hope. “Perhaps the blame is not entirely yours. Perhaps
someone else was involved.”
    Instructor Rafe’s gaze
flickered. It was the slightest of movements, almost imperceptible, but I saw
it.
    “Perhaps you didn’t steal the pills,” the voice
said. “Perhaps someone gave them to
you. Who was it, Rafe ? One of the physicians?”
    Instructor Rafe shook
his head, and I could have sworn the tension around his eyes eased. “No,” he
said, his voice loud and firm. “There was no one. I only bear the blame.”
    As he spoke, three black-clothed wardens marched
through the prison door and out to the center of the circle. One was carrying
handcuffs. He gestured to Rafe —I think he was
telling him to turn around—but Rafe stared past
him blankly and didn’t move. The other two wardens carried handguns.
    Guns?
    Not stunners, but real guns. I registered this
fact as the Voice again spoke: “Cancer Rafe , your
sentence is death.”
    The crowd inhaled sharply and then everything
happened very fast. Rafe moved. He swung at the
nearest warden and brought him down hard, the man’s head hitting the pavement
with a sickening crack. The fallen warden convulsed once and lay still as Rafe turned toward two other wardens rushing in, and I was
rushing forward too, not realizing I was moving until I was almost there, but
just before I reached Rafe an arm went around my
throat, choking me, pulling me back. Rafe’s fist
flashed out. The pressure on my throat vanished and everyone was shouting and
the warden who had grabbed me was clutching at his own throat, and Rafe looked me in the face and yelled something over the
chaos and shoved me away, toward the rows of people on the steps.
    Another warden was circling around toward me,
his gun pointed at Rafe , trying to get a clear shot,
and now more wardens were running toward us from the prison, and I would have
rushed in again, not because I could help but because I couldn’t stand there
and do nothing, but someone caught me and pulled me against him, burying my
face in his chest, hiding my eyes, covering my head with his arms.
    I knew it was Farrell Dean but I didn’t care
that it was him, didn’t care that he was trying to protect me. I fought him but
he held me too close and I couldn’t get free though I struggled and kicked and
bit.
    Rafe’s voice, sounding strangled, called out the same indistinguishable words he’d
shouted before. A shot rang out. Farrell Dean’s arms around me tightened.
    Behind me, with a dull thud, a body struck the ground.
    “Thus ends the first city meeting,” said the voice, and the
spotlight went dark.

Chapter 8
    In the chaos and darkness Farrell
Dean yanked me away, pulling me out of the throng of bodies and into the long
silent streets.
    “No,” I said, still struggling, trying to dig in my heels,
trying to stay. He was hurting me, or I was hurting myself trying to get free.
“We have to go back, we have to help him.”
    “There’s nothing we can do,” Farrell Dean said. “He’s dead.”
    But people fell down and got up all the time, that was what
they did, and physicians could fix all sorts of things. Just because Rafe had fallen didn’t mean he was dead.
    “Don’t say it,” I told Farrell Dean. “Don’t say it