The moment the cell door opened, Darius knew straight away that the young man had been expecting them. He didn’t even seem surprised to see the Guard colonel and his lieutenant. He was simply sitting in the corner of the small room with his knees pulled up to his chin, tapping out a steady rhythm against the wall. He greeted their intrusion into his seclusion with nothing more than a weary glance from his dark-circled eyes.
‘We need to talk.’ Bleist didn’t want to start off too harshly. He preferred not to have to resort to drastic measures, though such methods were not entirely unfamiliar to him.
‘The colonel has guessed.’ The young man’s emotionless, flat whisper sent shivers down his spine. Darius would have preferred stammering and the panicked terror manifesting itself in a dozen different ways. ‘That there are three of us...’ The hollow voice broke, suddenly turning into a dry sob. ‘And now the medic says they’re done for… That there’s nothing to be done…’ The soldier rested his forehead on his knees, hiding his face.
‘I need to know where those vials came from.’ Earl emphasised the end of the sentence, trying to grab the lad’s attention. ‘Who gave them to you, and why?’
The question, cast into the dim light of the cell, seemed to echo through the stone corridors with a phantom reverberation. Yet they waited patiently for the youngster’s response.
‘It was less than half a month ago that we were sent on guard duty. We were supposed to be there for a week, but as there were a lot of convoys setting off, the senior officer was driving everyone to work. The three of us were working at the gate, because that’s where we had to check who was leaving, who was arriving, and what they were carrying.’ The lad tried to tuck his head in further, but couldn’t manage it. ‘When the day was drawing to a close, the militia would start boozing. We weren’t exactly holding back either...’ He added, even more quietly than before. ‘The thing is, that day
