was supposed to start in the square. She shook herself. Someone was hurt true, but in that crowd it would be unusual if everyone was a hundred percent healthy. That she could feel it from blocks away was a worry, but it would be beyond foolish to go running into the arms of the OIP over a hunch that something wasn’t right. Then that nagging itch that told her someone needed a healer started to feel like a burn and she knew whatever was happening in the square was bad. People were being hurt. A lot of people. Not killed, not yet, but hurt.
Was the Order torturing people for information?
The burn turned to outright pain and she could no longer stop her feet from moving. She slipped out of Stolin’s fortress of an underground bunker and through the doors of the dilapidated shack that sat above it. Slipping through the empty streets, it was only as she was closer to the square and the nicer blocks of houses that she realized getting through the forces amassed was going to be quite the trick. She could not get through the bodies blocking the streets into the square without being seen, and that would raise several questions seeing as she was extremely late for a mandatory gathering.
It took her far too long to make her way through the backyards of several homes, and then through one of the larger houses bordering the revitalized square. From her place just inside the French doors where she hid, it looked like a few thousand people huddling before an even larger number of troops, all wearing the black uniform of the Order. Unlike most of the capital city this area looked like war had never touched it. The grass across the wide expanse of the gathering square was green and pristine. As pristine as the houses of the rich OIP chosen leaders that ringed it.
A pedestal had been erected in the square closest to the Mayor’s residence. The largest house almost directly across from her. On that pedestal stood a whole host of austere and intimidating soldiers, a few of the higher-ranking town officials, and three people that had been plucked from the crowd.
At least, she thought, they had not just targeted the poorest wretches among them for the show. And show it was. A show of torture for the masses. She flinched as the thwack of an energy whip was followed by a scream of pain. She twitched with every blow, her body burning hotter as more and more trauma spread across abused human bodies. Then three more people were plucked from the crowd while a stern-faced soldier’s amplified voice rolled over the crowd.
“Anyone can stop this at any time. We want the names of those who harbored the rebels in their homes and everyone else will be free to go.”
Serenity remembered the abandoned feel of the place where the rebels had stayed. She would bet a lot of OIP credits that no one was going to talk, because no one had opened their homes to them. The resistance had their own bolt holes in the abandoned places. There was no need for them to risk someone, or themselves by trusting a local with the job.
A small child was dragged up the stairs of the pedestal along with another woman in a baker’s apron. The third was another male. This one looked like he had spent too much time drinking in one of the bars rimming the spaceport, just outside the northern City boundary. But it didn’t matter because it had taken only one look at the child and Serenity was flying out of that house and pushing her way through the crowd. She made it to the steps just as the whip was raised over the child’s back. One of the black clad warriors, this one with a uniform with red details labeling his as one of the Phoenix forces, the military elite, stepped forward. In the vague recesses of her mind she recognized that the added color was a problem, but she had thought only for the child.
“Stop,” Serenity yelled. And almost wilted in relief when the light whip halted before it could touch the child. “I am the one you are looking for. I harbored the rebels,” she yelled, and was immediately grabbed and dragged up the stairs.
Planted with unnecessary force before a black and red clad figure, Serenity looked up into blue eyes so light they were nearly clear. Pale skin