Gray Blood

Sean's POV
I can still feel the dry blood on my hands. Sacha stared at me for a little while, before commenting, "Sean, please don't cry. Tell me why you're crying."
"The blood," I whimpered, "I still have blood on my hands."
Sacha stood from the wooden bench and walked over to where I was crouching in the corner.
"Let me see Sean."
"Please, no."
"Sean, maybe I can clean it with my shirt."
"You can't reach it. My hands are tied behind my back and so are yours."
"Then lean forward on me! I'll clean it with my elbows!" Sacha pissed me off more than ever and the urge to hit and scream at her was burning within me with a passion. She would never understand why I cried, why I felt like fighting with her but giving up to anyone else. And I would never tell her otherwise.
"Sacha, stop being a bitch get the fuck off of me! In case you've already forgotten, I'm three years older than you and I don't think the guards are going to like it when my fifteen year old sister is groping her eighteen year old brother."
"You're really sick, you know that? Why are you being so mean to me?"
"None of your business." She glared at me, and then a curious look crossed her face.
"Do you know whose blood it is?" I froze momentarily before sitting up a little straighter and trying to make the biggest lie of my entire life to the world's greatest lie detector
"I don't know really. It might one of dad or mum's friends."
"God, that's scary. I wonder if mom and dad are okay." A lump gathered in my throat, one to big to swallow back. I closed my eyes and let the past images of yesterday cloud my thoughts.
* * *
I was hidden in Aunt Sarah's room before my mum came to find me. She grabbed me by the arm and yanked me up whispering frantically " Sean, come on, we have to go now!" I couldn't help but notice the rifle shaking in her right hand as she quietly pulled me down the hallway. She stopped at the top of the stairs and slid down the wall, pulling me down with her. At first I thought she was listening for someone but then I saw blood trickling down her chest. "Mom!" I said but never got to finish because she clamped her other hand tightly on my mouth before wrapping her arm around my head like a cobra with its victim and pulled me towards her, and placed my head on her shoulder. She whispered to me "Sean you have to keep quiet. There are bad men in the house who are looking for you, Sacha, and Sammy and I can't let them take you away." Her grip tightened on me and she kissed my forehead, embracing me in a sort of half hug. I brought my other arm around her to hug her back and we stayed there for a little while, just holding each other and I couldn't help but feel like a little kid again, being safe and protected in my mother's arms. That perfect peace ended when I heard a glass fall. My breathing stopped suddenly; mom pushed me off of her but still kept her steady grip on me. I could see tears forming in her eyes as she stood up slowly, looking just over the edge of the wall. She sighed, and picked me up, pulling me down the stairs and holding the rifle out in front of her, her entire body rigid as she took each step. We made it to the bottom step before she saw the back door wide open. I could see the backyard just slightly and noticed the grass-covered steps leading to the bushes where dad had built and underground base. Sacha and Sammy were hiding there now, but I had heard men outside and gunshots so I ran back inside instead of going back into the base. I was afraid it would have made to much noise and the men would have shot me and Sacha and Sammy but now I felt like a fool for not trying to get in. Mum turned to me and said in a much clearer whisper "Sean, I need you to listen very carefully to me. I am going to go outside and shoot five bullets out in the air. When you hearthe first shot, run over to the hideaway and open the lock as I shoot the other four bullets. Do you understand?" I nodded silently, fear gripping my chest and twisting my insides in a painful twist. Mom could see the fear in my eyes and whispered to me lovingly, "I love you Shoo Shoo. You'll always be my little boy, even at this age but I know you're tough and I know you can do this. I believe in you with all my heart and remember, your father and I love-" I never got to hear the end of that sentence. The last thing my mom would ever say, the last I love you left hung empty in the air as a flying bullet went straight into my mom and were both flung backwards. My head hit the wooden floor painfully and when i opened my eyes, i saw a huge puddle of blood gathering around me. Oh godI remembered thinking.Am I dead?I stood up slowly, realizing that there was no damage on me, but a perfect little hole was oozing blood on my mother's forehead and I then figured out how much one person can bleed form just one shot. Shock grabbed on to me and strangled my heart and I could practically hear the Grim Reaper laughing at me now. I held my moms head on my lap, blood dripping onto my pants as I listened for a heartbeat. I brushed some of the hair off her face getting smears and smears of blood on my hands. A numb dead feeling took over me and a blurry red haze covered my vision as I sobbed over the corpse of my mother's dead body. I shook violently and laid there for awhile before the commotion outside had finally gotten my attention. I looked, tears still falling, and saw almost ten men outside, hassling and beating up my dad, screaming at him about Sacha, Sammy, and me. I watched them for a few seconds before I heard a venom voice in my ear. "Done crying lad?" The guard had a thick Scottish accent and yanked me up by my hair, pulling me outside and away from my mother. I cried outloud in pain, and tried to hit him but before he dropped me on the ground, handcuffed me, and put a mouth wrap on me to keep me from making noise. He then resumed to picking me up by my hair and dragging me over to where the guards were. The Scottish guard set me down on my knees and I saw my dad, bleeding on the ground. He was breathing heavily and when he saw me, his eyes glowed with fear. One of the guards came up to my dad and lifted his head up. "That looks like your son to me. Sean Marshall, son of Peter and Sofia Marshall, eh? What happened to 'I have no children! Its only me and my wife!' Bah, I knew you were lying, just like thousands of others trying to protect their kin. You know its penalty by death by keeping this boy a secret from the emperor? His son? How dare you?" A guard came by me and put a metal collar around my neck, pressing several buttons before I heard a ding go off, and the collar locked itself around my neck tightly. "Whats his number, John?" The man named John, the one who was interrogating my dad pressed a few more buttons on the collar before replying, "Write this down, all of you: Number-62517938271920384746281000000000037293030. Group GFE/55." The men all wrote this down, but my eyes were focused on the cloth that John had just pulled out. He placed the strong smelling cloth on my nose and cut off my air supply, making me slowly drift off into a deep sleep. I heard the last words from the leading general "Bag 625 now, kill the liar." A bag was pulled over my head and I was thrown over someone's shoulder and drifted off, hearing one last gunshot, a man screaming, and then nothing.
* * *
I opened my eyes and looked back at Sacha. " I really do hope mom and dad are okay." Mom was already dead and I heard my dad's last dying screams and the gunshots. The numb feeling crawled through me as I muttered good night to Sacha and fell into a dreamless sleep.
When I woke up, I found myself on a flat bed in a gray room. I stood up and screamed a few times for Sacha and Sammy and banged on the titanium door until my bruised hands started bleeding-a new coat of blood (mom's blood had been cleaned off)- and screamed out random curse words. Eventually I crawled on top of the bed and sat there, nursing my two injured hands.
I heard a click and looked up to see that General John or Jack or whatever his name was, was standing in front of me. He grinned at me mockingly. "Welcome to you new home 625. You have been placed in your new room and have been given the brand new clothes you will be wearing for the rest of your life. Since you are a newcomer here, you will be missing breakfast to attend a meeting with some of the newcomers who have joined your group. You will then be taken back to your room, fed there, and will be given a sleeping drug every night so you don't hurt yourself and yu can sleep easier. Behave and nothing bad will happen to you. Misbehave, and you will be kept on constant lockdown and in the worst torture room imaginable. Got that? Treat all of your officers with upmost respect and please, do keep in mind: don't try to escape. Those collars tell us where you are if you EVER leave the premises, so it is impossible to leave, and the alarm will set off if anyone escapes, triggering the satellite and letting us find you. Any questions 625?"
"My name is Sean you bastard. Don't call me by a number! That's not my name. I'm not 625-"
"No you are a much longer number, just like everyone else, we all just call you by the first three. Now don't make me say anything else again."
"Where's my sister and brother?"
"Continue this behavior and you'll never see them again. Another officer will come to pick you up for orientation but remember everything you say to a guard or a higher official is recorded and counted against you so if you're rude, you're alone. Got that?"
Anger shot through me but I remained calm, muttering the last words, 'Yes sir', getting a satisfied smile from the general and being locked away in my prison, loosing my freedom forever.