I Believe We're The Enemy

Glory Girl’s P.O.V.

From the moment I first saw Jet-Star, I knew who he was, and when the dracs added his name tag to my cell I felt nothing but dread. I don’t need some no-good self-obsessed desert-dwelling “fabulous” Killjoy to drag himself into here and get killed under my supervision. I’d seen him on all the BL/ind propaganda signs, and unlike the other city rebels, I didn’t look up to him and his peers. Where were they, our heros, when innocent Battery City citizens were turned into unfeeling zombies against their own will? I’ve even seen a drac shoot a citizen and use them as a shield while fighting us. How the hell could the so-called Fabulous Killjoys stand by and let that kind of stuff happen?

Jet-Star lets out a pathetic moan as the dracs toss him into the cell. For a moment I’m shocked by the severity of the gashes crisscrossing his bare arms and face, but I hide my surprise quickly. It’s a Killjoy’s duty to help one of their own kind, and if he stays where he is now, he’ll be dead by morning.

“I would move if I were you,” I call quietly. “The dracs like to come by and poke you with those electric staff things if you’re too close to the bars.” His eyes turn toward me but he stays where he is, not responding.

“I guess you’re a little worse off then you look, then,” I mutter as I cross the floor to where he lays. He still refuses to move apart from a tiny twitch of his right hand. I grab his maimed wrists as gently as I can and drag him away from the edge of our cell, propping him up against the back wall in a sitting position. Blood drips from his limp head onto the floor, and I pull his long, curly hair into a loose ponytail, securing it with one of my stolen headbands, so that I can get to his face. Luckily, his wounds aren’t that deep; only a long gash from his left eyebrow to the corresponding temple will scar. For some strange reason, I feel like I have to take care of Jet-Star, which doesn’t make sense. The Killjoys whose clothes I’m ripping up to bandage his injuries died in this cell just like he could; why is it so much more important that he survive?

Fifteen minutes later I’ve staunched the bleeding on Jet-Star’s face and arms, and when I finally lean away from him I realize that he’s completely unconscious. I sigh. Lazy bitch. Now that he’s been properly bandaged, there’s no point in staying up to keep an eye on him, so I curl up on the chilly stone floor (as far away from the Jet-Star as possible) and quickly fall asleep.

When I wake up again Jet-Star is conscious and sitting where I left him, hugging his knees up to his chest as he stares at me with wide brown eyes. By the glow of the hall lights between the cells I see that his eyes, a warmly shining hazel color, are actually quite beautiful. I give him a hostile glare just to let him know that he’s not even close to gaining my trust.

“Wow, I didn’t expect you to stay on your side of the cell all night,” I murmur sarcastically. “You Fabulous boys always seemed a bit slutty.”

He looks down at the floor sadly. “I have a girlfriend.”

“Oh, so that’s who the new girl on the posters is,” I muse quietly. “Letterbomb, correct? Yeah, she’s pretty alright.”

“Ginny,” he says softly.

“What?”

“Ginny. Her name is Ginny.” His voice is stronger now, with a tone of powerful passion humming in the background. “She is pretty. She’s beautiful, for that matter. She’s amazing and I love her.”

“That’s good for you. Just so you know, those dracs probably won’t come back for you for another couple of days, but when they patrol the halls they’ll do whatever they can to the Killjoys in the cells. Mostly they just zap you with the electric poles-”

“Kinda like that stupid chair?”

“Yeah, like the chair. But if you’re hurt badly enough, the poles can kill you, and some of the dracs like to use us for target practice with their expansive collections of knives. The tall one has really good aim,” I finish bluntly.

“Good to know. How do I get out of here?”

I sigh. “You’re a wee bit thick-headed, aren’t you? You don’t get out, unless your little friends come on a suicide mission to break you out. Either you do what the dracs say and turn into one of them, you die one way or another, or you go through cellmate after cellmate, trying to keep each one alive a little longer even though you know they’re all going to die in the end. Like me.”

His curious gaze softens. “Oh,” he murmurs, his voice way to sympathetic for my liking. “How many c-cellmates have you had?”

I could on my fingers silently. “Eleven.”

“Did you... know any of them?”

I snort. “Most were my friends. The last two were my little brothers.”

Jet-star looks revolted. “They would d-do that to you?” he stammers.

A wave of cruelty overcomes me and I grin eerily. “If they ever catch your precious Ginny, I bet I can guess what cell she’ll be in.”

“They’re not going to catch Ginny,” he says shakily. “Gerard won’t let them.”

“Jet-Star... I’m sorry, but you desert-dwellers are idiots. Nobody’s safe in the City or the Zones, not ever.”

“My name is Ray.”

“That’s good for you. As I was saying, I never thought they’d kill my brothers, but I watched Daryn bleed to fucking death where you’re sitting right now. Nobody is safe.”

“What about your other brother?” he asks hesitantly.

My gaze turns into a furious glare. “Nate? They killed him in that damn chair of yours. I don’t know if it was the electric shock or the razors shredding his face to bits that did it; I just saw them dragging his body away.”

Ray looks like he’s about to cry. “I don’t want to die,” he whispers, staring at the floor with a childish expression on his face. “And if I do, I want to see Ginny again first.”

I snort. “What’s the big deal about a girlfriend? They’re pointless. Just another person to hurt you when they die.”

More blood starts to seep out from underneath the bandages on his forearms as he looks up at me, wide-eyed. “I love her, Glory Girl.”

“Your mistake.” He doesn’t reply.

The dracs come back for him later that day, and as they drag him into the hallway, carelessly ripping off the bandages that I worked so hard on, I make a silent promise to take care of him no matter what happens. Even though his take on love is completely idiotic, it gives me more hope than I’ve had in years. If this Ginny ever does get captured, I don’t want her to have to spend her remaining time with Ray like I did with Daryn, watching him bleed his life out onto the floor.

What’s life like bleeding on the floor, the floor, the floor...

Ginny’s P.O.V.

At first, my dreams of Ray consist only of screaming, but as the days wear onward I start to see knives, razors, and even the occasional ray gun. And blood. Alway blood. Three days after he’s captured I see a few precious locks of his silky brown hair lying in yet another pool of his blood. “They cut his hair,” I tell Gerard when her wakes me up. He doesn’t seem to believe me.

“You can’t cut Ray’s hair. Th-that’s not possible,” he murmurs, looking at me strangely.

“They did, Gee, I swear.” He shakes his head and rolls over, leaving me feeling terribly alone. Mikey was the only boy who hadn’t started acting incredibly strange toward me. Frank was practically a walking awkward silence, while Gerard, normally so affectionate and caring, had become unusually blunt and unfeeling.

“Gerard?” I whisper, suddenly near tears.

“What?”

“What happened to you? I don’t mean to sound selfish, but... You don’t seem to care anymore. What happened to my big brother?”

Gerard is silent for a moment, apparently pondering my words, and then he rolls back over to face me, throwing his arms around my body and pulling me into his chest. “Fuck, Ginny, I’ve been treating you like shit,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry, baby. I... I didn’t mean to. It’s a long story...”

“Why does everyone keep calling me baby?”

He laughs. “It’s a term of endearment. You’re endearing. I guess it just slips out.” I sigh inwardly with relief; one boy being madly in love with me is enough. Still, I don’t like being called by that name.

“So, what’s the long story?” I mumble, my voice muffled by his shoulder.

“You remember when we first got to the hotel, and Mikey and I were kinda... tense?”

“Yeah. You got super protective of Frank all of a sudden.”

“Well... That’s a different story. Mikey thought Frank and I were secretly in love with each other.” I chuckle.

“Mikey seriously thinks love is a disease, doesn’t he?”

Gerard gives a spluttering laugh. “I guess so. But Mikey had a good point that day,” he continues. “He said that you and Ray were starting to seem really dependent on each other, and that if something happened to one of you, the other one would just fall apart. We agreed to try and teach you how to rely more on yourself, but... I guess I was going about it the wrong way.”

I struggle to understand what he’s getting at. “So... You stopped being my big brother to teach me how to live without Ray?”

“Yeah... I guess,” he mutters. “We just want you to be safe, Ginny.”

“You could teach me how to shoot a blaster.”

“Maybe. You’ve got good enough aim already.”

“Or hand-to-hand combat?” I suggest.

He snorts. “I’m sorry, babe, but you can’t punch to save your life. Maybe we do need to work on that.” There’s that damned word again.

“Tomorrow. Teach me how to fight.”

He pulls away from me enough so that he can see my face. “I’ll make Ray proud of you.”

“If we get him back,” I growl. “The dracs are hurting him a lot. I can even feel it when I’m awake. If he’s all alone in Battery City, he-he’s not going to last much longer.” Tiny shivers travel the length of my body, and Gerard envelops me in one last brotherly hug.

“Don’t think about it, just sleep. Do you want me to sing for you?” I nod eagerly.

His voice drifts eerily into the air around us, instantly calming me. I don’t catch most of his words, but the last line before I fall asleep reaches my ears distinctly:

”The hardest part,
The awful things that
I’ve seen.”