Waiting for the Sun to Rise

Two arches. A point.

Two arches.

A point.

Over and over again.

He’d done this many times.

He knew this shape well.

Mindlessly, his finger traced the heart in the filthy dust that seemed to coat everything down here. It was easy to ignore the dull chatter of the others despite how gratingly their voices bounced off the stone walls. He’d been around long enough to get used to it; for it to be just one of the many things pushed to the background.

What he couldn’t ignore - even if he wanted to - was her disappointed voice on the other side of the glass.

“I can see you’re getting worse.”

He said nothing, and she huffed.

“Leo, have you been to the doctor?”

This time he scoffed and finally met her eyes, “You’re a Pover, just as I am. You know people like us don’t have the luxury of seeing doctors.”

Deja scowled, calloused hands fisting into the fraying edges of her sweater, “And here I was hoping it might’ve been even slightly better for you down here. How naive of me to think that.”

“Hey, it’s not-.”

“Hands off the glass, Pover! Do it again and I take you to the warden.”

A sudden cuff to the side of his head was enough for him to shrink into himself, hand pulling back from where he had reached out as if he had been burned.

His sister-in-law stood as if to somehow burst through the glass and give the guard a piece of her mind. And she could probably do it too, but for her sake, he couldn’t let her.

“Don’t.”

Her dark eyes darted between him and the guard, who was likely sporting a smug grin on his lips underneath that smooth helmet they all wore.

Reluctantly, she dropped back into her seat.

“What I was trying to say,” Leonard waited for him to walk away before continuing, warily tracking him over his shoulder, “Is that it’s not naive to hope. That’s one of the last things we have from Before and we shouldn’t let them take it from us.”

It had the opposite reaction he had been aiming for.

“That’s rich coming from you. Last I remember, I wasn’t the one who just let them steal Sunni away to be handed off to some Grand family.”

“You know that’s not what happened,” He wasn’t ashamed to admit that stung a little. Maybe a lot, “Don’t think I willingly gave her up. You were there when they ripped her from my arms.

“The only thing that kind of helps me sleep at night is knowing that she’s finally getting her treatment; that she won’t have to worry about a single thing because whoever has her can afford it. She would have died if she was still with me.”

“Analisa would disagree.”

“That’s not fair and you know it!” Before he could really vocalise his displeasure and his hurt, before he could really let her know just how much letting go of Sunni has been affecting him, his breath was taken away by coughing so violent he was doubled over at the waist.

Barely anyone else in the room spared him a glance, except perhaps the other visitors.

His fellow inmates and the guards that regularly flexed their power in their faces were more than used to his fits.

It was just another unfortunate thing that made up this hellhole.

Deja’s anger had melted away into something close to pity, and he found himself preferring the former. That, at least, he could handle.

“It costs a lot of money to visit someone here, and I figure you didn’t come to fight.”

She only looked at him for the briefest of seconds, taking in the air of fatigue that seemed to drape over him like a blanket on most days. A blanket that was sewn into his skin, or maybe even tattooed.

A sigh.

“You’re right. I just… I thought you might want to know how Sunni is doing.”

All of the hurt, guilt, and anger could wait.

“You found her?”

She nodded and started pulling out her phone, “Months of actively looking for her always lead to dead ends, but I happened across her at the station just a few days ago.”

When she finally turned the screen to face him, he wanted to cry.

There Sunni was, looking healthier than the last time he had seen her. With relief, he noted the heart-shaped locket around her neck. It was all he managed to give her before she had been ripped from his arms.

It had been her mother’s; engraved with Analisa’s name and safeguarding an old photo of the three of them inside.

He couldn’t say who was holding Sunni’s hand in the picture, however, but he recognised the school uniform she wore: Shores Academy, the most prestigious school in the district and available only to the best of the Grands.

“You actually found her. She’s… She looks like she’s doing well.”

“Idiot,” Deja hissed, "Look closer and take that back."

And he did. Whatever she saw, he couldn't see. At least, not until she zoomed in on the grainy photo. No one was holding her hand, actually, but instead gripping Sunni’s wrist in a painful vice. What he had originally thought to be a neutral - maybe even content - look on her face was really one of discomfort.

All of his relief evaporated. Perhaps, if he looked up, he’d see it against the ceiling of the mines like some kind of cloud of disappointment.

“Who has her?”

“I don’t know, but I can try and find out. Leo,” Deja slipped her phone back into her pocket and leaned forward, voice dropping down to a whisper he had to strain to hear, “We need to get you out of here.”

A piercing buzzer interrupted them, signalling the end of visitation hours.

“Just sit tight, okay?” Deja called out when he was roughly lifted by the arm and dragged towards the shuffling line of his fellow inmates. Like good little children in obnoxiously loud yellow jumpsuits they kept their eyes cast down and obeyed the orders barked at them.

“Don’t worry about me! Focus on finding Sunni!”

He heard nothing for a couple of weeks. But he was not idle during that time.

He planned.

And he remembered.

He remembered how things had changed, slowly. Slow enough that the little red flags that had popped up every once in a while seemed small enough to brush off; to say things could be worse.

The world in the Before hadn’t been perfect by any means, but it really did get worse.

He’d looked the other way when the population was split into the Povers and the Grands. “Maybe it’s for the best”, he had tried to rationalise, “Maybe it makes it easier for them to give resources to those who need it more.”

That was not the case.

He’d kept his head down when they fired both he and his wife from the hospital. Everyone on the staff who didn’t have history with the government was replaced with someone who did. “That’s okay,” he’d thought, “We both have valuable skill sets and experience, we’ll get a job at another hospital.”

That was not the case.

He’d said nothing when they’d closed most of the schools because ‘Povers don’t need an education’. “This could be a good thing,” He’d told Analisa, “Since we’re teaching her, we’ll be spending more time with her.”

That was not the case.

His silence had been deafening when they turned his wife away from the ER, and let her die on the pavement because she couldn’t afford it. “We have to be here for Sunni,” He’d told Deja, “We’re all she has left.”

Now, that was not the case.

She was by herself, with strange people in a strange community with strange, new rules.

And he wasn’t there for her.

Because he could no longer keep his mouth shut.

Because he was unwilling to watch Sunni suffer from typhoid while they refused to see her at the clinic for the same reason they refused to see his wife.

Because he’d approached the resistance leader and offered to steal from a delivery truck holding medication, so long as he got the antibiotics as part of his cut.

Because there’d been a rat within the resistance, and the Black Helmets had come for him.

And then they’d taken her away.

Perhaps Deja’s cutting words had been right.

“Hey, Madrazo.”

He merely grunted to the inmate seated next to him.

“Tonight. After lights out, they’re coming.”

Leonard put his fork down, leaned back, and nodded.

He was ready.