Dark Justice

Chapter 5

Five

Justice tugged on the latch holding the grime-coated window closed. Countless years of dirt and muck had sealed it shut. No matter how much she yanked on it, the latch would not budge. She pressed her face to the patch of window she had cleaned with the bottom of her shirt, heart pounding.

Three large boys stood in a circle around a little girl huddled in the middle of the alley two storeys below Justice’s room. The boys hefted rocks in their hands, menace in every movement as they taunted the crying child. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the effect on their victim was clear. The little girl’s head flung up, eyes wide with fear as she looked for a way to escape.

From the state of her ragged clothes, the girl was a half-breed.

It wasn’t uncommon to see humans tormenting a half-breed, despite the fact they could all trace their ancestry back to humanity before the freak infection.

But this was a little girl, not deserving to be punished simply for being born.

Justice banged her fists on the window, desperate to draw the human boys’ attention away from their target. ‘Stop it. Leave her alone.’

It was useless. They couldn’t hear her. She spun around and strode across the room.

‘You’re not going out there.’ Jonah, her bodyguard for the last two years, muscular arms loose at his sides, moved to block the door. Scarred face impassive, he stared down at her.

Justice glared at him. ‘Get out of my way. They’re going to hurt her.’

‘So? She’s not your concern.’

‘How can you say that? She’s just a child.’

‘Your duty is to observe. Not interfere.’

‘This is different. Gaea can’t expect me to sit back and watch while a little girl is beaten right in front of me.’

‘Don’t look.’

‘Please, Jonah, I’m begging you. If you won’t let me help her, then you go out there.’

He didn’t answer, pity and understanding in his green eyes.

Justice dashed away tears, refusing to show weakness. Instead she scanned the room she and Jonah had been holed up in for the last two weeks. Bare of furniture, the only things in it were their rolled-up sleeping bags and the backpack containing what she had managed to salvage when they’d been forced to flee their last place of refuge. She snatched up the backpack, rummaging through it for something she could use to break the window.

To hell with duty. It was time to dispense some of her own justice.

‘It’s too late.’

Justice stiffened at the bleak tone of Jonah’s voice. She turned around and saw he had left his post at the door and now stood at the window.

‘No.’ She dropped the backpack and ran across the room, pressing her face to the window, crying out at the sight of the little girl, left bruised and bloodied in the middle of the alley, no sign of her vicious tormentors. Justice watched as a boy not much bigger than the girl, dressed just as raggedly, ran into the alley and helped her to her feet. The boy half carried the girl to the mouth of the alley and they disappeared from sight.

Justice sagged to the floor below the window, leaning against the wall. Jonah wisely refrained from offering comfort. Instead he set about securing the sleeping bags to the backpack, shouldering the bundle once satisfied it was tied securely. With quick, economical movements he hid a variety of weapons on his body.

‘We need to leave if we want to catch the bus to Brimfield,’ he said finally.

‘What’s the point? It’s all going to end soon. It might as well end here.’ Her twenty-fifth birthday was just days away. Days until the duty Gaea had imposed upon her would be fulfilled.

‘We’ve stayed here too long as it is. I’d rather leave before trouble finds us again. Unlike you, I’m not invulnerable.’ He rubbed the jagged scar on the underside of his chin, one of the many he’d earned since becoming her unwilling bodyguard.

Justice gave a weary sigh as she got to her feet. She might be invulnerable, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel pain.

It had been fifteen years since her first bodyguard had taken her away from the monastery. Fifteen years of hiding from the people who were determined to stop her fulfilling her destiny, of bearing witness to the horrors mankind perpetrated on one another, unable to do anything about it.

As a child she had longed to experience life outside the monastery walls. Once her wish came true, she’d quickly discovered she was still caged, forced to hide, protected by unwilling bodyguards who had been compelled to protect her against their will. Brimfield would be no different. How could it? Her only consolation was that this would soon be over.

On her twenty-fifth birthday, the scales of justice would be weighed up inside her and Gaea’s judgment made. With all she had been forced to witness, Justice was sure the scales would not dip in mankind’s favour. In a world where the beating of a child was a common occurrence, surely the complete obliteration of the human race was the best outcome? The Earth would be given time to heal, and maybe those who came after wouldn’t make the same mistakes.