"escravos de jó"
What's this? 👀 A little backstory? Aka Sami had an idea for a drabble and got too excited. Relevant background information: Espa and the others are around ten to eleven in here (six years before the main story).
Espada Masterlist
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CWs: Child whumpee (as stated above), multiple whumpees, whumperee, living weapon whumpees, referenced past torture, minor character deaths, guns and violence, brief vomit, slight gore, starvation (ish).
Far in the distance, poking out from between the large branches of trees, the stars glimmered.
White, dainty like pale drops of powder, scattered along the endless, infinite dark that reached out for miles and miles in every direction over them. The only source of light besides the faint moon. It almost thought it saw one of them blink at it. But no. Every single star was still. So very still. The blue a distant memory from here, what replaced it now stretching out towards eternity, hiding everything in its shadow. Nothing else was to be seen. Even the clouds looked heavier. As if they were looming. Waiting. It made it tense up against itself.
The night sky was too scary out here.
Espa wasn’t used to outside missions. At least not like this. Out in the forest. It half expected the woods to be inviting, verdant and full of life. Unlike in its imagination, all that filled everything around it was silence. Sparsely broken by obnoxious steps. And the low breathing of two people. It all sounded wrong, here. It didn’t like it. It didn’t seem like there was a single soul in the place. It couldn’t say for sure if there had ever been.
But the uncertainty of what it was sent here to do might have scared it the most. It was mostly used to be assigned simple targets to just finish off or hurt some more. Safely. It wasn’t with its usual handler, either. Mr. Cláudio was busy with another operation. It’d been issued to Mr. X instead.
It didn’t know his actual name. It’d only heard some of the older siblings calling him that. The nickname was always accompanied by a bitter pinch of detestation.
They were deep into the forest, now. Far away from the vehicle that got them here from the base. Before the destination—that clearing—it wasn’t even that long of a walk, and Espa knew its nerves were the only ones to blame. When they did get there, however, the abundant moonlight in the area almost knocked its breath away.
It looked like it was straight out of a fairy tale.
The handler suddenly grabbed its arm. It bit back a yelp, yanking its eyes out of the view. It was pulled into a little bunker hidden in between bushes, but it didn’t need to be manhandled. Espa felt a little offended at the roughness. It knew how to be obedient.
Mr. X pulled a little card from somewhere in his clothes to open its door, and led them both into darkness.
Espa wasn’t scared of the dark. With the circumstances, it was glad to not be. In front of them, a pitch blanket obscured everything that could otherwise be seen, so unlike the mysterious wilderness behind their backs. No; it felt somehow safer, in here, in between the concrete walls. This was an environment it was used to.
“Follow,” he said. Just as soon as Mr. X gave the order—which was already unecessary—he pushed them forward again. Espada was starting to find this bothersome. It was trained well. Did he not know that? It could be good. For a Crane. Its handler liked to say it wasn’t too far from being a Vulture, actually. But it did not tell him that. It could tell it’d just be slapped for speaking out of turn.
The weapon and the handler kept walking lower after the bunker closed up by itself behind them, and he’d lit up a small lantern from a belt somewhere along the way. Espa didn’t need it. It had a good vision for the dark, and just followed right behind him. In not long, a well-known pungent smell invaded its nostrils, and it almost froze up.
Blood.
It wasn’t like it was unfamiliar—Espa knew it very well. Enough to recognize it from miles away. It knew better than to halt without being told to (and Mr. X would just push it again, no doubt), but it made it nervous. It forced itself to keep it at bay.
A slap came, regardless.
Espa bit back a wince, dazed by the pain. It looked up.
“Stop with the shaking,” Mr. X chastised. Espa felt its cheeks warm up. It had nothing to do with the hit.
It hadn’t noticed.
“I’m sorry. Yes, sir.”
He didn’t mind the apology. Just kept walking. Espa decided to forget about the scent. If it was meant for it to care, it’d be told to do so in the given moment. It was hardly meant to be actually important. These bunkers always stenched of it, somehow.
Mr. X walked them down the rest of the way, turning a few corners, and it got progressively darker the further they got. Espa barely catched a glimpse of other corridors as they did. The shadows just turned heavier and heavier. This one looked like a maze. At some point, he turned off his lamp, and Espa could only tell how wide was the room they’d entered in because of the echo of their steps. It made it feel a little self-conscious. It wished they were more silent.
A switch clicked, lights flickering on. Bright, white and harsh. Espa recoiled, against itself. It could barely note how the room was completely empty—bloodstains on the floor, old and faint already, no windows and a few holes on the not-that-tall ceiling it recognized as ventilation—before Mr. X shoved them forward. Again. Espa knew better than to resist and just let itself be pushed, but it was starting to be genuinely annoying. It decided it did not, in fact, like Mr. X.
“Stay,” he ordered. Blunt and dry. Espada, however, did not need any further instructions.
“Yes, sir,” was all it said. As it should. The handler looked around, a hand on his hip, before turning on his heel and walking back.
Espa’s stomach dropped, but it didn’t let it on. It chewed on its lip.
Was it being punished?
What for? It wanted to know. Espa didn’t like solitary confinement. No—not liking was an understatement. It was humiliating, how little it could handle it. How long would it be kept in here? It did not have the audacity to ask, but Espa was sure that, if Mr. X turned behind, it’d be kicked for having started to tremble.
(Though a hit might actually still be preferrable. It was that or being left alone.)
To its relief, he stopped to look back at it, then, as if having a second thought. Before disappearing for good into the corridor that led them here, he laid a hand on the wall and stared into its eyes.
It struggled to keep any frown off its face.
“There’s more of you coming,” he informed. Espa immediately felt its body be washed down by relief. “Some targets will be joining you later,” the handler tapped a finger against the wall, “await further instructions. This is an executioning operation. You better not disappoint.”
Executioning? Oh. That was also a relief. Espa didn’t have experience in much else. It wondered if the targets would struggle. Restrained, perhaps? Or it might be combat practice. It wouldn’t complain.
Await further instructions.
“Yes, sir,” the weapon answered, but Mr. X was already walking out. Regardless if he had or not, he acted like he didn’t hear it.
Espa watched as the handler left them in between the four walls, under a labyrinthic maze with nothing but darkness stretching in every direction beyond the square of illumination, dozens of meters under the ground. Not for punishment. For a mission.
Its blood pumped hard on its ears, but it didn’t pay it mind.
Await further instructions.
There’s more of you coming.
The weapon laid its back against the wall most far away from the entry. The room’s lighting wasn’t actually that strong once the contrast against the pitch darkness faded away. It was almost dim, if compared to the nursery up at the base. Almost pleasant. But still bright. It felt embarrassingly grateful about it. Solitary was always worse, somehow, when it was dark.
It sat, diligent, eyes to the door. It didn’t want to be surprised when the others came.
Turns out, it ended up being a long while before anyone did. Espada had already grown nervous. This wasn’t solitary, Mr. X had said so, but it didn’t actually feel any different from that. It had brought its knees up to its chest at some moment.
It wasn’t that Espa minded the underground itself.
It would just rather not be alone in it.
At some point, its breathing had picked up, and it tried to force it to even back with the breathing exercises it’d learned. Its inability to do it drove frustration into its mind. It tasted blood. Lip ripped. Again. It was happening more frequently lately. The space was eerily silent, the only sound in its ears that of its own heartbeat—and, too loud, the sound of its breathing too. Which was pitifully trying to stay composed. It was failing.
The sensation was so familiar it was agonizing.
Nothing moved, including Espa, who stayed just as still as the stones over its head. Distantly, it realized the most smart choice would be to... move around a bit, do some exercise, because it’d give it something to do and it’d be less pathetic than being like this, but at some point, it lost the will to move. Espa would rather stay curled up like this. Which was painfully embarrassing, but it couldn’t talk itself out of it.
It couldn’t tell the time, either. In that, it could have been hours—maybe an entire day—or mere minutes after (though Espa did not want to believe it’d been that briefly, or else its lack of composure and resilience would be so shameful it’d want to die), when at some point, its ears finally picked up something that wasn’t the wind blowing from the ventilation. At first it thought it was imagined. But then they got closer, and Espa almost sobbed in relief. It bit down to let the pain drag it to alertness, breathing forcefully even to force back the trembling.
They were steps.
Another weapon. Espa had seen them before, though not very often. They didn’t greet one another; they were backed by another handler.
Espa knew that one. Ms. Anne, if it recalled? She was young, and always had a scowl on her face. It was a bit scary. Thankfully, she soon left, leaving the two weapons alone.
The room returned to silence. It wasn’t nearly as dense as before.
“What’s your name?” The other weapon asked after a while, still standing where they’d been left. Espa looked up at them. At him. White skin, hair as dark as its. Straighter. A fatter body. Tall. Tiny eyes. Baby face. A few moles on his face.
“Espada,” it answered. “What’s yours?”
“Sabre,” he said. He seemed to want to add something else, but decided against it, gracelessly throwing himself on the same corner it was sitting in.
Espa just nodded. It vaguely recalled seeing someone wield something with that name, once.
Not that long after—or, time just passed by faster when it wasn’t just Espa and the overwhelming nothing—someone else entered. Then another weapon, then another. Uzi, Rífe, Lança. It recognized some of them. Probably from the same sector. After a while, Sabre got up and started to stretch.
“Will you join me?” He asked, after touching his feet with the tips of his fingers. “We could kill time. And not be stiff when the assignments come.”
He had a point. Espa wasn’t the first to get up, a bit reluctant, but it did end up being refreshing. It lasted little more than fifteen minutes but every now and then, they’d stretch some more. They quickly had the other two that came after to join them. Aside from that, the room was still mostly silent. The presences were blissfully comforting.
Uzi had started humming a song at some point, sitting with her back against the wall. It rang a bell, but it did not know where it was from.
She stopped when they all heard steps. Heavier, this time. Just one set.
A handler.
It did not recognize her.
She carried a bag. Filled with rifles. Espa allowed itself to relax a little at the realization. It feared they’d have to take out the assignments barehanded. It wasn’t really good at that.
“Is everyone here?” She asked. Espa looked round. The others did the same. It didn’t know how many of them there were supposed to be. “N3-1618. And N3-6A21. Here?” She called. Sabre and one of the others confirmed their presence. The handler recited their identification from memory alone, looking mildly bored. She looked around. “N3-3108,” she continued.
It knew that number.
“Here, ma’am,” Espa said.
The handler nodded. She called for the rest of them, verifying—precisely seven weapons. Only one was N2. It had never been to that sector.
“Your mission is as following,” she threw the bag in the middle of the room. Lança flinched at the thud. The handler sent him a half-glare at that. “Thirty men and women are incoming through this hall, one at once,” she pointed behind herself. “Kill them. Someone will come to inform you when you’re done. There’s extra ammo and three canteens in there,” she raised her chin at the sack, “no preference on how it’s done. Ration the water, don’t be stupid. Check their vitals.” Her voice assumed a more rigid tone. “You don’t want to know what will happen if I find out one was left alive.”
Espa bit down to repress a chill.
“Yes, ma’am,” they answered, in unison. The handler took a good look at each of their faces, before turning and walking away.
“Don’t slack off,” she warned. “They won’t be waiting for you to get up off the floor.”
Then was gone.
Rífe was the first to walk towards the bag of weapons, as all of them got up from their spots. Sabre had been smart. Having stayed still would have gotten them sore. She got a light gun from the sack, weighing it on her hands and checking the ammunition.
“Here,” Espa called. Rífe threw the sack at it, who caught it despite her half-missing the direction. It was heavy. Espa didn’t take long to choose a simple automatic. It threw it to Uzi, who’d lifted her arm next.
Everybody got themselves a weapon. It followed Sabre’s previous idea and warmed up a little more. He shot it a glance, surprised, but quickly joined. Don’t slack off, she’d said.
It wouldn’t.
In not long—they’d been positioned by the sides of the entry, waiting—the first person entered. He came running.
By the look on his face, he was dazed. Not drugged, and alert. But he was scared; it could see his chest heaving. Middle-aged. Unkept beard. Not injured at all.
Espa was the first to shoot him. It aimed for the chest. He jerked, too slow to dodge the bullet, but didn’t fall dead. Ah. Shit. Someone else lunged towards him, pulling on his hair to trap him in a headlock. The man gasped. He had to bend down backwards. They were much shorter than him.
“Heart!” They called. Sabre was faster this time.
His aim was perfect. The scream died on his throat, and the target fell dead.
The weapon let him go, straining with the effort. They kicked the corpse, checking if he’d move.
“Dead,” they confirmed, giving Sabre a thumbs up. He grinned.
The next one was taken by Rífe. She got something else from the sack, and hit the target in the back of the head with it before they could stop her. She was fast. The rest of them prepared to shoot as soon as she moved out of the way after the first hit, but before anyone could, she pulled their head up and crushed their throat against the gun. Oh. The heavy weapon had been a smart idea.
After the third one, they’d had to start getting the corpses out of the way into the back of the room. No one would manage to enter otherwise.
It repressed a sigh. These would start to stink if it took long. Everybody else seemed to have the same thought.
“Where do you think they’re coming from?” Lança. He peeked out into the hall. There seemed to be other rooms in the way. The illumination coming from the one they were in was not enough to tell much apart from that. “They’re not escorted, but they can’t just be coming willingly the same direction we did,” he mused. “It’s a long way down, right? They would run.”
Sabre shrugged. Espa thought it over. He was right. A mystery.
At some point, they’d started using the targets to practice. It was soon learned that Sabre had the best aim out of the seven weapons, so he was guarded in the back of the room ready to take them out if there was danger. Espa had started it, wanting to see if it could kill them like Rífe had done. It quickly turned into a game.
“Hit them here first if you can’t do that,” she advised after a while, pointing to her jaw. “It throws off their balance. Then, you can deal the blow.” She demonstrated it, lightly, with Sabre. He gasped, glaring at her after falling to the floor. Espa hid a laugh.
He poked his tongue out at it.
Turns out, Rífe’s advice was pretty valuable. Everyone wanted a try at it.
They were at the fifteenth body.
“I wish I could shoot like that,” someone sighed at some point, after another certain bullet to the head prevented what could’ve been an accident. Sabre brushed his eyes. He was probably getting eye tired by now.
“We could train that, too,” Uzi suggested. “Like, take turns holding them still. Then someone shoots.” The sniper was the most enthusiastic about the idea. Espa could only imagine he was already done for with staying sitting at the same spot.
After a brief convo, Rífe was the first.
She was very bad at it.
“Come on,” Lança complained, breath hitching with the effort to hold a woman from fighting back. Espa was helping. Luckily, she was thin and short. But terribly energetic. It didn’t say anything, but it also wished she’d be a little faster. Third shot, already. It’d almost hit it.
“I’m trying,” she retorted. Sabre rolled his eyes, getting up from the dead pile he’d sat on, and got behind her, adjusting her posture.
“Like this,” he said. She tried following his instructions, narrowing her eyes. Sabre whispered something else in her ear, helping her to get the grip on the gun, but it still took her four more tries to actually kill her.
Espa fell to the ground when she did, taking a breath to compose itself. It was starting to get tired.
Sixteen bodies in the room.
The smell was weak. Barely noticeable, really. The thing that was really starting to bother was the blood. It was very used to it, all of them were—but not in this amount. It was starting to make it dizzy. It wasn’t the only one.
Espa’s second turn with the killing shot was certain, and it allowed itself to feel a little proud. Lança and a few others had skipped their turns. After a while, everybody else gave up on it too.
The thirst was starting to get annoying.
They’d avoided the water, afraid to waste it all in the first hours without knowing how much it was gonna last, but it became undeniable how much they would need it after a while. A few sips were taken and too soon, the first canteen was completely emptied. Guilt dropped in its stomach. If it wasn’t so greedy, maybe it’d last more. Lança was weirdly insistent on getting everyone to get a little too much, though. When Rífe asked, he stayed silent for a bit and said it was important.
They’d fail if they neglected thirst, he reminded. Their performance would fall dead if they didn’t drink enough. It was enough to convince everybody.
They managed to get a formation functioning for the last eleven targets. Espa pushed back the fatigue. Just a few more. Its senses were overwhelmed by the scent of metal, which was impossible to run away from at that point—thank god the chamber was this large. All the bodies might not have fit otherwise—and it didn’t really help. They all started getting slower, even taking controlled doses of water to keep running.
And it was, genuinely, starting to be boring.
Sabre shot the man in the leg as soon as he entered, not bothering with a perfect shot. That was not his role at the moment. The target fell over his feet, and from then, Espa got over him and snapped his neck. It was easier than at the start. They’d started using the discarded corpses to kill time and prevent falling asleep.
They switched—now, guarding the door were Uzi and Rífe—and Espa sat in the middle of the room. Not in the back; there wasn’t a free seat left that wasn’t deadly nauseating. It took a spot that wouldn’t obstruct Uzi’s aim, either, taking in the saturated scent of copper. It was all that there was to take. It panted. Espa gulped down to give its throat some lube.
The guns fired, ringing on its ears. It wondered for how long they’d been down there.
“Your turn,” Sabre snapped his fingers on its face. Espa flinched. He recoiled. “Sorry. We don’t know when they’ll come.”
That was true. It got up from the floor, suppressing a groan. The targets got in at uneven intervals for some reason. They didn’t know when they’d come.
It was really bothersome.
Someone threw the water at it, seeing it wobble. They had been keeping it inside the sack. It was limited. Espa gratefully took a few sips of the almost emptied second bottle. It’d turned warm.
Overall, they almost missed a handful of marks. It was hard to be completely alert at all times, and they’d slacked off in a few moments. It was painfully tiring to keep the guard up for the entire duration of the assignment, even taking turns at that, too. They’d been too slow at times. A woman had managed to almost choke one of them before Rífe put her down with her heavy gun. Another managed to steal one of theirs—all the targets came in unarmed—and grazed at Espa’s arm with a poorly-aimed shot. It’d hissed.
Not that serious—it hadn’t actually caught on it—but it hurt.
Simple bandages. Lança proved to be good at it. Wasted water for cleaning. A sharp sting to worsen its headache. It was nauseous.
It tried not to think about it.
Two targets left. Someone in the corner started acting restless. Espa couldn’t judge. It felt the same, though it didn’t externalize it. They were waiting for the next one to come in, but it was taking painfully long.
Sabre audibly sighed.
“They smell,” he said. Nobody asked what he was talking about. It’d tuned the stench out at some point, but it only added up with every corpse.
It was a bad smell. Though they didn’t even smell like actual corpses yet. The sweat and boredom also didn’t make it much better. Uzi tried minimizing the amount of blood on a kill, attempting to choke the woman, but with little success. She quickly quit, shooting her through the brain instead. Not the smartest choice. They all cringed when gore spilled out of her head, knowing what it’d soon mean. She was the worst-smelling one in the back. Espa had gone up and tried to wrap her head in—it didn’t even know. Fabric?—something to cover it at some point.
Scrambling for a decent piece of cloth in the wear of the targets they’d put down, it found something else.
“Oh.”
“Hm?” Sabre looked in its direction.
The weapon showed him the utility belt.
It’d barely noticed whose it was. It just stood out to attention. It didn’t remember any of the targets having many belongings on them (it had definitely slacked off, then), so this was a surprise. It could see some others had turned to look at it too, though Rífe still watched the door, attentive. She was tired, too. The belt had about a dozen little lidded cups attached, little pots colored light gray. They felt like plastic.
“I wonder what’s in them,” it pondered, forgetting about the bits of stinky brain it’d gotten up to cover. It stepped down the body and set foot back on the ground, boots making a firm sound against it.
“Should we open those?” Sabre got to his feet, looking down at the cups.
Espa frowned. It took out a pot from the strap, shoving the belt on the other weapon’s hands. He took it without question. It uncapped it. The thing opened without resistance.
Pills.
“What are those for?” He peeked inside. There couldn’t be more than eight of them. Small, round and white. No smell whatsoever. Or—if they had one, it was drowned by the overwhelming stench in the room at that point. They were plain.
“I have no idea,” it responded. After hesitating for a second, it emptied its contents on the floor. Uzi watched them, a bit alarmed by the noise.
“Won’t this get us in trouble?”
It might. Who knew if the handlers wanted the pills and had just forgotten to pick them or what. They didn’t even know where the assignments were coming from or what they were for. “I’ll take the blame,” it reassured her. “What is in the others?” Sabre, just as it, had the curiosity taking the best out of him. He uncapped another, shrugging. Disappointed.
“More pills.”
Leaving Uzi watching the door with a gun in hand, all the weapons assembled around the belt to empty the contents of the little cups by the floor. By the sixth, it was already clear they were all the same. Except for maybe the amount. Some cups had a dozen. Some, about five. It counted up to twenty inside one. They decided to stop without getting through them all. Seemed quite pointless. They didn’t have the energy to spare.
Rífe picked up one of the empty cups. They’d all sat by the floor at some point. The silence hummed in its ear, annoying. It ignored it.
“We could play with these,” she mumbled. Sabre frowned, but Lança spoke first.
“We won’t see when the next one comes if we waste time with play,” he pointed out.
She glared at him.
“You can stay by the door with Uzi, then.”
He sighed.
“What kind of game?” Sabre asked. “You want to solve puzzles or what?”
She paid him no mind, arranging the cups on a circle instead, bottoms facing up.
“Escravos de Jó,” she started to sing. Espa recognized the lyrics from somewhere. “Jogavam caxangá,” she continued, changing a cup and putting another in its place. “Tira,” she lifted it, “põe,” then put it back on the ground, “deixa ficar.”
“Guerreiros com guerreiros fazem zigue-zigue-zá,” Uzi completed from across the room. She looked over her shoulder to face them. “I know that one.” Rífe smiled. She held a cup out to Lança.
“So?” She was grinning. “Will we?”
It did end up being fun. She taught them the lyrics, and at Lança’s suggestion, took turns, this time to guard the door. The weapons sat in a circle, trading the cups between them and lifting them and putting them down, following to the music. Whenever someone got out of beat or missed, Rífe booed and shoved them out of the circle. It was surprisingly entertaining. They all joined with it, at some point. Trying to focus in order not to lose the game kept its mind alert.
The rhyme was the only sound in the room. It echoed on the walls, soft with their voices.
Slaves of Jo.
Played just as crabs.
Take it.
Put it.
Let it be there.
Its voice broke at a tune. Sabre giggled. Someone passed it down another cup, and it passed it down to the next, continuing the cycle. The stench of blood didn’t relent. The weapon at the door mindlessly hummed along after having lost a round, aim adjusted forward.
Warriors among warriors,
they make a zig, zig, zig, zam.
More hours must’ve gone by. The twenty-ninth target arrived during Espa’s shift—its ego was sore from being kicked, but the mission was more important. It used what it’d learned to shoot him by the leg before he could disturb the game.
It was careful not to spill his brains this time.
Escravos de Jó, they sang.
Jogavam caxangá. Someone felt sick. They threw up near the corpses. It didn’t help the smell. Nobody commented on it, trying not to retch as well. Lança begrudgingly gave them extra water. Hydration, he’d said. Espa got it. It had forgotten that from the lessons on getting sick. He had a good memory.
Tira.
Põe.
A noise. It startled all of them, tired and on edge as they were. It ended up being nothing. Sabre had just yawned at the door. He apologized, fixing his aim forward.
Deixa ficar.
It was getting harder to stay awake, but they needed to wait for the last target. Rífe’s turn at the door. She was too slow to get up, and Espa wondered if it’d be a good idea to leave her there on her own. Her aim was pitiful. She might be too tired to just hit them bluntly like she was doing earlier.
It sat down beside her.
She didn’t say anything. Just nodded, surprised and thankful.
Guerreiros com guerreiros,
fazem zigue,
zigue, zá.
The last mark—when he finally arrived—took collective effort. It rendered the playing dead. Someone definitely got hurt, though they were too tired to care at that point.
A weapon hissed in pain. The man panted, with a bloody might-be concussion at the side of his head. He cradled it, pointing an empty rifle to them. His eyes were wild.
He pressed on the useless trigger. Espa flinched against itself.
“Let me go!” He cried, voice hoarse. His gaze darted around the weapons, who had taken to circling him. Like vultures, it thought, blushing. It wasn’t actually a Vulture yet. “Tell me!” He was incoherent, clearly exhausted. It had no idea what from. He wasn’t injured before entering the chamber. “Tell me wh—where the way out is!” His voice broke.
Lança and Uzi traded a glance. Espada got what they were thinking.
Way out.
“Is that what they told you?” Sabre asked. It had no idea where he got the breath from. It was giving it all to remain straight and not show weakness to the target. Though it seemed to work. He was terrified, trembling at their smallest movement. “That if you came down here there was a way out?” He tilted his head, seeming genuinely curious. Lança’s eyes seemed to dawn with understanding. That’d explain some things.
By the way the target’s breath hitched, he seemed to have gotten it right.
“N-no, it—it—” his chest heaved. He ran a hand through his already messy, coily hair. Espa kept its aim trained on him. If he just stopped moving, it’d be able to shoot. “Fuck.” Sabre hid a flinch at the bad word. “Fuck!” He repeated. “It isn’t—I just wanted to—they swore!” He was completely irrational now. It distantly wondered if he couldn’t just go and die on his own. Its arms were sore. “They swore that they’d let me go if—”
He stopped moving. For a second too long. Uzi was the one to notice it first, dealing a shot to his forearm. Far too shaky. She tsked. If it were Sabre, he’d already be dead. But he was too slow to do it.
The man screamed—the sound, even as restrained, was so loud compared to the unrelenting silence they’d gotten used to that it made them all tense up—and scrambled back, seeming to sense his end was nearing. He shot another desperate glance round them and let his stolen gun drop to the ground, shoving a weapon out of the way and making a beeline for the door. He seemed to be aiming towards another corridor. The way he’d come from? It never knew the layout of these underground bunkers.
Regardless, that had been his last mistake.
Sabre grabbed something from the ground, sending another bullet through his arm. The man recoiled with a gut-wrenching wail, but kept running. Fuck. Rífe was way too slow by now, or else this could have been done faster. Espa followed him out, Uzi jolting right behind it.
Someone threw a gun at it. It was too heavy, but it got it. Its vision doubled from the fatigue.
Another shot.
No scream. It’d missed.
Uzi, powered by adrenaline, caught up to him and pointed a gun till he stumbled backwards, not having made it too far away from the room. He fell over Espa. It held back a whine of pain, his weight aggravating the bullet graze it’d gotten a few hours ago. He was vulnerable now, belly up.
Sabre climbed up over them, sending a shot clean through his neck.
The sound echoed through the halls outside. They all panted, taken by the silence.
The thirtieth mark.
It took a long sigh of relief out of them. Espa fell limp on its belly under him, as good as dead. As if its strings had been cut.
Sabre laughed, pulling it from below the corpse.
The stench was awful, even from the other side of the entrance. They didn’t bother getting him to the back with the others. Espa almost felt the urge to vomit as well. It held it back. The floor was heavenly against its back, without the need to be on its feet.
“I hated this mission,” Lança muttered, exhausted. Sabre laughed at him, too, joining Espa on the floor. There was no joy behind it. They all felt the same.
They knew the complaints weren’t going to get out of this room.
The water was shared. For the small victory. Someone had the sense to leave a little, still. Nobody knew when the handler would come. Espa didn’t argue, despite the thirst. It was too drained for that.
In a corner, Rífe sat with her knees up to her chest and staring at the ceiling. More specifically, at the fans swinging on the ceiling. The breeze below it must be comforting.
It was a little too close to the bodies. Espa would rather not get near.
Someone slapped it before it could doze off.
“Stay awake,” Uzi said. It made it jolt away, breath hitched from the scare. After another dazed second, it actually woke up, rushing to brush its eyes and sit up. Damn it. “You’ll get in trouble.”
She was right.
“Sorry.” It strained to bring down its breathing to normal. It forced back a yawn. It wasn’t supposed to sleep before the handler arrived and dismissed them. It hoped they’d be here soon.
The silence that followed was unrelenting. Nobody moved a muscle.
Now, with no more tension holding them up, the hunger made itself painfully present, difficult to ignore. They did so, anyway. There was no other choice.
The weapons stayed in silence. No complaints were uttered.
Too long after, but so mercifully soon after the eternity they’d spent down there, it was there.
Steps.
The last thirty times they’d heard it, it brought the tension in the room up by a hundred—so thick you could almost touch it. This time, however, the sound reached its ears with nothing but sheer, pure, heavenly and long-awaited relief.
Lança was the first to get up. Clumsily. It was noticeably strained. Then, the weapon from sector N-2. Sabre followed, mindlessly offering out a hand for Espa to pick. It did, allowing him to take half its weight and rising to its feet.
When the handler finally entered, they were all standing at attention.
One of the perks of the position was that nobody could see how its hands were shaking. It’d tried to stop it. Sometimes it just couldn’t be helped.
She took a long look at the carnage in the back of the concrete room, pinching her nose. The handler kicked the last target, who’d been obstructing the way inside since he fell down. The stench was too strong, even for her.
“Status?” She requested.
“Thirty marks, ma’am.” Rífe. “Confirmed. A few injured. None dead,” she mumbled. The handler nodded, looking distressed. Almost as if eager to come out of the bunker already.
Then, the words it’d been dying to hear it’d been hours.
“You’re all dismissed.”
It was almost audible how they all hid their sighs of relief. Thankfully, she didn’t comment on it. The handler went before them, but none of the weapons waited very long before following her.
Uzi had shoved all of the guns back in the bag. Espa decided to carry it before someone forgot. It didn’t want to get the whip for something so small.
It was painfully heavy, but Rífe seemed to notice and helped it to take it. It looked up at her, a silent glance of gratitude.
When they got out of the underground, the outdoors’ wind was a blessing from heaven. Espa took a deep load of air, filling its lungs in fresh oxygen as if it hadn’t done so in ages. Its knees almost buckled from the bliss. It was cooler, here. It felt the dirt and gravel crushing under its boots, not nearly as bothered by the sound as it was before.
The sky was painted gold. The sun set down, lazy, after blessing a day they hadn’t gotten to see underground. Espa didn’t mind. The smell of the woods was intoxicating.
There was a van with another handler waiting for them under dusk. It recognized him.
“Mr. X,” it greeted as soon as it did, quick to get to its knees before him. He was especially particular about that.
It felt the way he eyed it, looking up at the other six as well, with what it hoped was not disapproval. It really wanted for nobody to get punished back at home.
“...Good job,” he praised, blunt. Almost begrudgingly, but praising, still. It almost looked up in surprise—it knew better. When the door of the vehicle opened, it got up, blinking back at the clarity that was starting to fade and at the dizziness of the movement. It’d be nice if the sun was rising instead. It liked sunrise.
The other handler ordered them all to get into the van, and so they did without question. She got in the passenger seat. Mr. X was driving.
The roar of the engine picked up to life, and the last door clicked shut. In a few minutes, they left the clearing. Espa looked behind, vision half blocked by the other weapons taking the seats.
Miles under the wheels of the van, thirty bodies rotted, and a handful of gray cups were scattered over the floor, empty.
The forest soon consumed everything it could see from the tinted windows.
Espa reported, presented to the infirmary, ate, took a bath and trained, and didn’t waste a second after being dismissed for good that day before falling on their bare bunker facefirst. It shuddered in the hard mattress, body welcoming the texture. It’d gotten three full bottles of water, fresh and from the fridge, a while ago. It was finally free from the thirst.
It could finally sleep.
Not like it was complaining or anything, though. A mission was a mission. It didn’t complain about missions.
In that, Espa was out from sheer exhaustion before it could notice it.
Its nightmares, that day, weren’t as bad.
They were coated with friendly voices of six other people, Sabre’s laughter and a chorus of a nursery rhyme being sung out of tune . The scent of blood followed it all, all-encompassing. It coated all air, as thick as death. Copper, heavy and dirty, more than enough to twist its stomach. Saturated air; so overwhelmingly hot. Too heavy. Carried with red. The atmosphere was a silence just as heavy—but for the soft, tired chorus, that sung still.
Slaves of Jo.
Played just as crabs.
Take it.
Put it.
Let it be there.
Warriors among warriors,
they make a zig,
zig, zig,
zam.
It was too deep into slumber to notice it, but the melody made its way past its lips. Espa turned in the bed.
The soft constant humming of the weak dormitory’s AC drowned it.
———
Espada Taglist (lmk if you'd like to be tagged on main chapters only!): @otter-chaos-violence @oros-ash3s @inhurtandincomfort @swisscheesethethird @warmfuzz-ies @whumpawaydarling @catnykit @melpomenelamusa
Here is a recording of a group playing escravos de jó if you're curious. (YT shorts.)
