Free Children of Ash: A Meridian Six Novella by Jaye Wells Page B

barely knew but was now bound to for survival.
    “We can do this,” he said. His hand squeezed my arm. The touch felt real, more real than the nightmare out there—the desolation, the gray, the dead-end world. “We can and we will.”
    I turned my head to look out the door again, but his hand grabbed my chin, refusing to let me be wooed by the promise of nothingness. He turned my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You have more power than you know.”
    I jerked back out of his grasp. “You don’t know me.”
    “I know that you use tough words to hide your fear. I know that you want nothing to do with fighting. I know that you fight anyway because it’s not in your nature to surrender.”
    I looked away, my cheeks heating with shame.
    “You wouldn’t have done it,” he said.
    “How do you know?” I asked, looking at my feet.
    “Because you could have killed yourself a thousand times while you were in the hands of the Troika. And since then, you know damned well no one could stop you if it’s what you really wanted.” He let those words sink in for a few moments. “But I also know that even if I’m right about Saga and Icarus, you will still find a way to claim the freedom you want so badly.”
    I laughed, but the sound had no humor to it. “Oh yeah? How will I manage that?”
    He shrugged. “Only one way to find out—unless you’re too scared to try.”
    I’d only known Zed for a couple of days, but already he’d figured out the best way to motivate me. I hated him for that as much as I appreciated the kick in the ass. No matter what happened once we reached the camp, I wouldn’t let anyone tell me how to live anymore. I just had to survive long enough to be able to flip everyone the bird before I walked away.

Fifteen
    B ravo

    T he train arrived at sunrise two days later.
    I’d just started getting used to the reverse sleeping schedule, so when Matri shook me awake just after dawn, I had trouble reaching full consciousness.
    “Rise and shine,” she whispered. “We have to take some of the children and go unload the train.”
    The train meant meat, clean uniforms, and other rations. It was daytime, so our work unloading the cars would be overseen by some of the human guards, who I’d discovered were more sadistic than the vampires.
    Since my talk with Matri, we’d been busy studying ways that we could make an escape possible. This involved stockpiling some supplies under the floorboards of the barracks and informing the other prisoners that they needed to be on the lookout for signs a breakout was imminent. The only problem was I had no idea what form those signs would come in—or when.
    Beyond that, I’d spent most of the previous two days keeping an eye on Mica. Matri had made sure he hadn’t been drained of too much blood for his first bleeding, and also got him extra rations to restore his strength quickly. Granted, those extra rations were just extra potatoes, but it was better than what most of the prisoners had.
    The human guard Matri called Judas stood outside the barracks with two other guards to lead us to the warehouse next to the train track. It wasn’t a long walk to the depot, but the guards took us through a part of camp I’d yet to see. The entrance to the mines was located in the northernmost quadrant. We passed nearby, and for the first time I saw the yawning black hole that swallowed most of the camp’s workers every night and day. Even though most of the activity in the camp happened at night, the miners dug and scraped and hauled twenty-four hours a day.
    As we passed, a train that looked vaguely like a centipede was chugging toward the hole. Workers, their skin perpetually blackened from coal dust, packed the seats and stared grimly into the mine, which gaped like an empty eye socket.
    The previous shift emerged from the hole in a single-file line. Their hair, their skin, and their uniforms—all black. Only their eyes, painfully white, gave any relief to the