Reborn (Alpha's Claim 3)

Corday did not see one gunshot victim. This carnage had been done with bare hands.

The deeper they moved, the more obvious it became. Something very wrong had taken place here.

Shepherd, his Followers, had done this, and then they had shut it up.

Why?

Why seal up the Premier’s Sector? Why not make use of the arms, the food, the space, the warmth? Under the Dome, even Shepherd’s soldiers were suffering from the cold.

They found what might be an answer in the most prominent room in the mansion. With a view overlooking the icy mountains in the distance, sat a desk, a flag every citizen of Thólos had seen via COMscreen during Premier Callas mandatory weekly address to the population behind it. There was not a wall, a piece of furniture, or even a window that was not grimy with old, crusted blood spatter. What was left of Callas body was in pieces scattered all over the floor. Fingers, parts of an arm, segments of leg... his limbs had been splintered, ripped from his torso, and flung about. Even the ceiling held traces of mushed organs stuck to it.

Shriveled up innards coated the floor, lay tossed aside in the corners, the broken, splintered edges of exposed bone a testament to the rage of his killer.

Not two hours prior, Corday had imagined committing this very type of violence against Shepherd. Seeing it in person was extremely sobering.

He could not do this to another person...not even the man who’d murdered his people.

Leslie went to her knees near the fragmented and crushed skull of the man she claimed was preparing to make her his bride. “I knew he was dead, but this...”

Corday had watched her when her eyes roved over the scene in the safe house, seen how she’d looked at the lifeless body of her uncle... as if she didn’t understand what she saw. Her face had been blank, her eyes blinking slowly. Never had she cried.

It had been the shock, he was sure.

Now, there were tears on her face.

Corday watched Leslie grieve over a man who had been one of the first true casualties of the breach, and wondered at the difference between her impassive, determined reaction to her uncle’s body and her silent tears seeing the old remains of the man she’d loved, ripped to shreds.

Something seemed strange in the behavior.

A loving uncle who had secreted her away so that even the resistance might not harm her, and Leslie Kantor would not even help in removing his body from the wall it was nailed to. Now this, her open weeping over a man she admittedly accepted as long dead, her fingertips tracing the sharp edges of his cracked skull.

“You must have loved him very much.” Corday took a deep breath and let a sigh past his lips. “After you left your parent’s safe room, why did you not come here first?”

Open apology in her wide china blue eyes, Leslie admitted, “I tried to. I could not turn the crank on the door with my strength alone.”

There had not been a single set of footprints in the corridor’s dust. If she had tried a few months ago, then the accumulating grime would have shown some trace of her tracks. She was lying.

Corday was unsure if it mattered, so he nodded as if he understood. “Of course.”

Hand to her knee, Leslie abandoned the bones of Premier Callas, and pressed her body to stand. “We found what we came for. Now, you and I must draw the resistance here.”

It was not going to be quite that simple. If they had been infiltrated, then Corday understood it would be an easy thing for Shepherd to learn of this new place. “If your plan is going to work, Shepherd cannot be allowed to believe the resistance perseveres. We have to let him believe we’ve given up.”

“Agreed.” Wiping her hands on her pants, Leslie offered a sad smile. “We must make him think we’ve failed. Let Shepherd believe the murder of my uncle broke our lines. The resistance as it is today will fade away. A new rebellion will rise up in the shadows where our oppressor cannot see. He’ll never even know we were here.”Looking out her window, Claire tried to focus on distant snow covered peaks. But there was a much brighter, far more tempting view sitting behind her. Fingertips cold on the glass, thread warm in her chest, she felt pulled in two directions.

The familiar rasp purred, “You are thinking of my shoulder. You wonder if I am in pain. Would you like to see it?”

She always wanted to see the place where she’d bit him, could hardly suppress the need to touch her fresh mark when he was near. But Claire didn’t answer, aware he was trying to tempt her from the view.

Her anxiety spiked with the understanding of how easily he could do it. Shepherd’s purr heightened, she calmed.