The boy’s feet and hands were bound with frayed rope. His skin was shades of purple and yellow, blood dried in his hair and on his face. His clothes were ragged, ripped like he had been dragged behind a truck.  He was coiled in on himself, protecting his stomach as Jo Jo pummelled kick after kick into his ribs.

The crowds were diluting, being ushered to their quarters. I saw sanity leave Jo Jo’s eyes as his hair drew loose from its tie. I watched the boy, in his place I saw Rodney, and then I saw my brothers.

I did for this boy, what I can only hope someone would do for me, and for my family, in our hour of need. Whatever the cost.

“Stop,” I said, pacing the inner ring. The beating continued, a dozen or so members left watching. The boy grunted and swallowed cries as the beating continued.

“Stop!”

Pleading and desperate, the word echoing against the cement walls.

Nothing. I was invisible to them.

My voice was trill, and piercing, as I yelled again, “Stop!”

Jack pushed forward, his face tight. I ran for him, grabbing him by the sleeves, “Stop this,” I ordered, “please.” He looked down at me, barley noticing my grip on him. His look was glassy, going through me.

“Enough,” Jack echoed, but Jo Jo’s boot was relentless.“E-nough,” Jack shouted, staring furiously at Jo Jo until he paused, his breathing hitched.

“Go cool down,” Jack then ordered, seemingly unimpressed, as he walked towards the boy.

“He is one of them,” Jo Jo condemned, his knuckles bloodied as he stalked towards jack.

“He is just a kid,” I reasoned, stepping between them.

Jo Jo leaned towards me, stabbing his finger in my face, “You did not see what I did girl, I know what he is.”

I didn’t know what Jo Jo had seen, but I knew there was only so much I could talk this kid out of.

I stepped closer, my voice low “We all know that if he was truly one of them then those ropes would not be holding him. So either he is just a human boy, or he is an elemental, and he is doing you a great act of mercy, by tolerating your beating so that he does not have to kill us all.”

The wild fire behind Jo Jo’s stare exploded. His short fuse reached its end. Jack pushed me back, and grabbed Jo Jo by the collar, “Get out of here.”

Jo Jo stampeded through the crowd, pushing and shoving bodies away.

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked, as Jack grabbed the boy under the elbow.

 He heaved him to his feet, “Get up,” he demanded. No sympathy, no guilt.

The boy was taller than I had realised, lean and slim.   

“I don’t know.”

The boy staggered as Jack began to march from the circle, his men clearing him a path.

“Come,” he called.

I followed him down the stairs of the tunnel beyond the left exit, the space claustrophobic and damp. I knew where this tunnel lead. I’d been down there more than a few times. The boy tripped down the uneven steps, his jeans catching under his heels. Jack sighed as he dragged the prisoner along.

When we reached the bottom, the smell of settled mould was stomach turning. The cement path ended, a holding cell to our right.

Jack opened the bolted iron cell, the door dragging open with a screech. “In,” he directed.

“Can you stop talking to me in one word sentences, I am not a dog.”

He blew out an impatient breath, “My Majesty, would you please enter the cell and help the prisoner to his bed?”

“Better,” I noted, before Jack slumped the boy into my arms.

The cell was industrial, drenched in tones of grey. Buried beneath the ground, it held onto the cold like icy roads and snow filled eves. I lead the boy to the cement slab that was meant to resemble a bed, and lowered him down. The boy groaned as he rolled onto his side.

“You’re just going to leave him down here?” I asked, in a shallow voice.

The iron door slammed. My eyes darting from the boy’s contorted face, back to the locked door of the cell and Jack’s passive expression.

“This is for thinking you know better,” he smirked.

I raced to the door and latched onto the bars, pressing my face against the rough metal, “Jack…Don’t,” I warned.

He twisted the keys around his finger before he began to walk away, back up the stairs.

“You’re going to leave me down here?” I called, to his back, “With one of them?!”

Jack swivelled back to me, “He’s just a boy, remember?”

“Asshole!” I spat, before I turned and slid down to the floor, wrapping my arms around me knees.

“You’re going to be just fine Asher,” Jack finished, before his steps turned into patters, and he was gone.

I was sure I heard rat’s racing under the benches, on either side wall. Already, the boy’s deep breathing was driving me mad. I hated small spaces, and rodents, and annoying repetitive noises. I was on my feet in seconds, leaning over the boy, a hand either side of his head. “If you tell anybody about what I am, so help me, I will hunt you down and kill you, if it is the last thing I do. You got it?”

The boy coughed, choking on blood, before he nodded. His face had been left sliced and swollen, I took a few breaths as I stared at the wounds – I knew they were going to heal, fast. Too fast.

I grumbled, as I twisted and took a seat on the edge of his bed, “How could you have been as stupid as to let yourself get caught be these people?! Couldn’t you tell who they were? Didn’t you know they would kill you or sell you off?!”

I ran my hands through my hair, exasperated.

Rehabilitation centres had stalked my nightmares since the Confederation had been erected in 2002. White walls, locked doors, solitary insanity. And that was if you were lucky.

If you got caught by the Collective, they were more than likely to hand you over to a bounty hunter who’d deliver you to the Confed, and then a centre. There was usually a five grand bounty on any elementals head, twenty if you were difficult or on their list.

I was going to be insulted by a bounty that was anything less than fifty.

He coughed again, “Thank you”.

The wheezy pathetic voice he used almost had me feeling sorry for him.

“Don’t thank me yet, it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to be able to get you out of here alive,” I assured with curt confidence. I was nothing if not a pessimist.

Jack plays his cards close to his chest, but I’d bet every penny that he’s got a good hand, and he knows how he’s going to play it.

The nameless boy slept off his injuries, our bodies needed time to heal. They were resilient machines, biologically flawless, if only for their reliance on our energy.

Hours later I heard steps grow. Someone coming. I stood from the position I’d remained in, dusting of my legs, ready to be released. I could tell by the even and familiar steps that it was Reaves.

I stood by the door.

When he came into the light, his face was a distorted form of harrowing. He stared at the sleeping boy with a lip-curling disgust before he looked to me with an ugly distaste.

He shoved a silver plate under the cell door, a brown mush on top; dog food.

“What is that?” I asked, his attitude spiking mine.

“Dinner.”

I rammed the bars, reaching for him, “We have plenty of rashes left.”

“We don’t waste our food on prisoners,” he told me, patronizing and slow. He stood just out of my reach. “Bon apatite,” he sung, before he bowed and headed for the stairs.

“I am not a prisoner,” I yelled, as I slammed my fists against the bars. A snicker came from behind me, choked and weak.

I grabbed the plate and brought it to the boy, crouching by his face, “You think this is funny? Well then eat up.”

The boy brushed back his long dark hair that hung in locks around his forehead. He looked at me: equally dark eyes, and a pale face that was angular and young. With a muffled grunt he heaved his body so that he was sitting against the wall behind his head, his legs bent. He took the plate from me as he examined the slop.

“That’s what I thought,” I huffed, before I took a seat at the end of the bed.

He put the plate down, leaving us in silence, before he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Don’t ask me questions.”

Best case scenario: We got out of there, and never saw each other again. The less we knew about each other the better.

“Ok,” he exhaled, “not a people person.”

I stared back at him darkly.

The boy dropped his head into his hands, running them over his forehead. His shoulders convulsed with a chuckle that seemed both hysterical and exhausted.

“What?”

He shook his head, “It’s just…there’s no one like you where I’m from.”

I swivelled my body towards him, “And by ‘like you’ I’m assuming you mean intelligent, articulate, and attractive?”

“Something like that,” he responded, looking at me with intrigue.

“Yeah well, we’re a rare species,” I smirked, before I closed my eyes and leant back against the wall.

The isolated cell was lit with grey light. Everything was wet, the floors, the walls, and the air. I ignored the cold, wrapping my arms around myself, and focusing on trying to get some sleep.

I was acutely aware of the boy, still staring at me, as I tried to lose myself in the darkness.

“Can I ask you something?” he tested, after a good half hour of silence.

“No.”

“Well, I’m just going to ignore your poor social skills, and actually try to initiate some form of stimulating conversation,” he said, after a pause, continuing, “how do you stand it? Being here, I mean?”

“It’s not that bad,” I answered, too quickly.

He scoffed, “That bad? You know they’d do what they did to me, to you, tenfold, if they ever knew what you really were.”

I ignored him, keeping my eyes pressed shut.

“Doesn’t that make you furious?”

“It’s not about me, or what I want, it’s about what keeps me alive,” I spat, looking towards him.

The corner of his lip twitched, “Really? Because if I didn’t know any better I’d think you actually thought of these people as friends…you realise how f’d up that is, right?”

I ignored him again.

He hopped off the bed, a lightness in his step that seemed to affirm that the worst of his injuries had healed. “I mean, we are better than them in every sense. We’re faster, stronger, our sense are heightened, we can heal from almost anything, we are offensive weapons. We are designed to survive, we are better than ordinary humans in every way. The upgrade. Why would you even want their company?”

He paced the cell with an urgency, as I watched him. Curious.

“All of this from someone who let five men and a bit of rope take him down?”

He stopped, and seemed to bite his tongue, annoyed by my comment, “I was taken by surprise, alright?”

I shook my head, surprised by his confidence and opinion. A contrast to the vulnerable boy who had let himself be beaten and used.

“Well next time, you might want to put a bit of that offensive weapon talk into action.”

I looked over his grey v-line t-shirt, and washed out jeans. Not a hole in sight.

He exhaled, “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

I stared at him, that was something I’d had to get over a long time ago. I was almost jealous that he’d survived this long, with a fear like that. I couldn’t afford to fear hurting others.  

“Where are you even from?” I quizzed, boggled by his nice clothes, elitist philosophies, and fear of violence, “a cult?”

He shrugged his shoulders, leaning against the bars now, “Close enough.”

“Oh, so now you don’t want to talk?”

He turned to have his back to me, sizing up the bars, “You know we could break out of here right?”

“Yeah, thanks Einstein, what a brilliant idea, and then we could confirm for everyone that at least one of us is an elemental, wind up on the run, and have our names on the list for good.”

“So I guess we wait then,” he answered, mellow, before he came to sit next me.

And wait we did. For hours. Dripping and scattering breaking the heavy silence that seemed to make the room smaller, and smaller. The cold edging towards freezing the longer we sat.

Eventually the boy huffed, before he stood and ripped off his shirt, his bunched it up and shoved it by the top of his bed before he curled up and lay his head on it. He propped himself up on his elbow, “It’s ridiculously freezing in here, will you come over here?”

“No way.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a prude?” he smiled, looking me up and down.

I shook my head. Boys.

“Body warmth, it’s the only thing that’s going to make the rest of the night bearable.”

I pursed my lips before I reluctantly walked to sit by his stomach. I stayed there for a few minutes before I brought my legs up and lay my head down, keeping a good five inches between us. He exhaled loudly before he scooted towards me, my body stiffening as he neared.

He just lay there. I could feel his breath, and hear the chattering of his teeth that he tried to silence. Carefully, he wrapped his arm around my waist. I didn’t react, I couldn’t. This was the sort of affection I avoided.

I was perfectly still, bathing in the warmth and awkward closeness. Eventually I reached for his hand. I drew it further around me so I was wrapped up in his chest. I frowned as I felt his skin; hot and clammy.

“You’ve got a temperature,” I whispered.

“Yeah and three broken ribs, my bodies in over drive that’s all.”

I closed my eyes. Why was I doing this?

Slowly I lit my hands with a gentle spark. Building a heat that was tolerable. I twisted over so I was facing him, before I put my hands on his chest. He looked at me under his dark curls, “Fire user.”

I nodded.

I built the heat through my body, letting the fire simmer at the edge, so my skin leaked its fury. He sighed as he wrapped his arms around me tight, “You owe me big time,” I whispered. Before I watched him drift into sleep, wondering who this boy was, and knowing that I needed to find out his story before I let him escape with mine.