Rune Mage [Fantasy/Adventure | Book 1 +2 | Complete]

Chapter 20: Six-Four-Five

The sullen men didn't give Seiren a second glance from their cells. The cuffs and chains on their wrists clinked with each movement. Seiren took in each of their features: haggard, rough, with empty eyes. Some of them had tremulous hands; others looked a little too jittery.

They have no idea what horrible things are in store for them.

They're on death row, Madeleine. There is literally nothing worse that could happen. They're going to die.

Better to die an intact human than a monster.

Seiren's two guards stood by her side, hands clasped across the front of their vomit-green uniforms. Seiren bit back her rebuttal; Madeleine would kick up a row if she saw what Seiren wanted to do as experimentation. She focused on her options. Her approval had arrived about five days after she'd sent it, allowing her access to death row inmates and to experiment on them as she saw fit. Security had increased threefold since that permission, with personnel guarding the inside as well as outside of the laboratory and her own chaperones when she went anywhere within the facility.

They came in all shapes and sizes. Most of them were relatively young, in their twenties or thirties. A few were older; some were so wrinkled and thin it was a wonder they still had the strength to stand. They were all men; women were housed in a different area altogether. A few were fat, but most were quite slim or even malnourished-looking, so much so that a green rune would probably kill them due to their lack of body reserves.

She picked ten who were mostly of the same build and age. Ten men, ten runes to test. The guard barked out their numbers and they marched out, swaying on their feet, staring down at their feet.

That's Marko, who wanted to be a joiner when he was a teenager. He was unlucky and fell in with the wrong crowd, and he owed them too much to leave. He got caught robbing someone at knife point several times and regretted it ever since.

And here's Jiorge, who liked to whittle wood into tiny statues. His wife was sickly and he needed the money for her medications, so he broke into an apothecary and got caught. His wife is dying as we speak because he isn't there any more.

Jonny failed mage school and made do as a metalworker. He used to make big pots and pans for the kitchen but got drunk one night and was trying to protect a friend from another drunk man. He saved the friend but accidentally killed the other guy. He's a gentle giant and everyone always said what a good man he is.

Madeleine. Shut up.

These are real people, Seiren. What I said might be fake but they all have their own stories and the system has already relegated them to nothing but numbers. They have families, pasts, dreams and regrets. You can't treat them like laboratory speci—

Seiren took off her necklace and shoved it in her tunic pocket, her mind spinning. A headache pulsed at her temple. Ever since the approval had come through, Madeleine had never stopped. She pleaded, shouted, bargained. It was only during sleep when Seiren got some peace from the constant berating, but even then the nightmares were only round the corner. She could feel the bags beneath her eyes and the fatigue tingling on the tips of her fingers. The sooner she fixed the wretched mistake from six years ago, the sooner she would get some peace and relief from the guilt.

One man, inmate Six-Four-Five, was chained to the inside of his cage when she returned to the laboratory with her two new chaperones at her side. They made themselves comfortable in the chairs propped in the corner with reading material and hot drinks, casting an eye on her from time to time. They were courteous enough to give her some privacy due to the classified nature of her research material and never asked her anything beyond the practical. Seiren liked that. Nobody interfering. Nobody telling her what to do.