3.1.4

Friday came around and Alick was finally finished with finals. It had certainly been a harder end-of-quarter than he was used to, but he was at least fairly confident that he had at least been able to grab a passing grade on all of his exams. It was for this reason that he left his home in the congregation yet again to access the library's computer systems and check his grades (if the congregation didn't have phones, they certainly didn't have computers). Early Friday morning he found himself back on the tenth floor, standing at one of the computers that was set up with the means of being used only for locating call numbers for books, searching up his grades. This was the tenth floor how it was supposed to be experienced; Alick's head was blessedly free of anyone's thoughts but his own, he couldn't even hear whispers from the floors above or below him. If there was anyone in the library at all, they were probably located on one of the bottom four floors below the tower, where all of the main seating and computers were. A graduate student here or there maybe, but certainly no one was actually trying to study anymore. Still, even with the inconvenience of having to stand at a computer that had a keyboard positioned practically behind the monitor, Alick kept to his tenth floor out of habit. It was where he had been studying all year and he was a sucker for that kind of loyalty to inanimate objects, brands, or places.
He checked his history class first, since it was the first exam that he had taken. The grade was a nice surprise - a solid A-. Certainly enough to pass college and land him a job that was likely to make more than enough to support whatever home he took in the congregation. With satisfaction, he went to check his math grade next-
"Alick."
Alick jumped and spun around. The voice had come from right behind him, how had someone managed to come up right behind him without him hearing their thoughts? One look at who it was, however, and it all became clear.
"Agro," Alick growled. It wasn't just Agro behind him, though. Carey and Donovan were standing a little ways off farther behind him. Alick knew why he hadn't heard them; all three had been sonating their thoughts, blocking off whatever it was that they were thinking about. It never turned out well for Alick when they did this. Agro had never liked him, everything that Alick did offended him in one way or another, and although Agro was only a year older than Alick, the congregation normally sent him whenever anyone had done something and was in need of repentance.
Which was exactly what Alick was worried about.
"What do you want, Agro? Why couldn't this have waited until I got home?" It was rare to see Agro outside of the congregation, much less Carey and Donovan, as the three of them all did work on the produce farm that the congregation owned.
"Well lately you haven't been home all that much, Alick," Agro sneered, "it could have taken another year or two before we had this... confrontation."
The phrase confrontation set off a warning in Alick's mind. With Agro, confrontation was dangerous. Really dangerous. He made the snap decision - everything had to be snap because Carey and Donovan were both descriers - to run for it. He bolted left, dropping his backpack and hurtling towards the door to the stairs.
But there's really no point, a small voice in his head said, when you know that you'll have to come home to us eventually.
The thought made sense to Alick. He had nowhere to go, whatever was coming would come eventually. Mid-stride, he didn't stop but stumbled a little, and a little was enough for Carey and Donovan to overtake him and tackle him to the ground.
"Hold him."
The command came from Agro, who took his time walking over to where the scrabble was taking place. Carey and Donovan each grabbed one of Alick's arms and twisted them behind him, forcing him into a kneeling position. He cried out as their twisting threatened to pull an arm out of its socket, and struggled to regain at least a little control of his own appendages.
"Alick," Agro stood in front of him, looking down to meet his gaze, "do you know why we're here?"
Alick glared back up at him, "I'm sure I've done something against the wills of the congregation. Will you just tell me what it was and get on with it? I don't see why this has to be done here." Alick regretted his choice of wording a little. Whatever he had done that was against the congregation must be righted, that was the law. He accepted this and knew that whatever it was had to be atoned for, he just wished sometimes that it wasn't Agro who was always the one to confront him, since Agro so clearly didn't like him anyway.
"It's not as simple as that, Alick," Agro paced in the small aisle between the stacks, "see, the atonement must be made for this where the event happened, and so it must be here." Agro waited for comprehension to dawn on Alick, and was not disappointed.
He doesn't mean when I intervened with that sociopath, does he?! A look of horror crossed Alick's face for a fraction of a second before he could cover it up again. Or that conversation with Ama. How would he have even found out about that?
"He's sonated something," Donovan announced from behind him, "his mind's just gone blank."
Agro nodded. He reached into his coat and unsheathed from the inside lining a dagger, about the size of a good kitchen knife. "Matthew 5:30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
Adrenaline pulsed in Alick's ears, he had never heard this verse used before in a confrontation, and knew that something was wrong, deathly wrong. He struggled more frantically now, but Carey and Donovan worked in the fields and were much stronger than he, their grips unrelenting.
You have dared to let our secret known to an outsider, the sentence pulsed through Alick's mind and he realized the doubt that had stopped him earlier was Agro, as he was a voice, we can't let you take that chance again, Alick. Something must be done.
Agro bent down and took Alick's jaw in his free hand, his rough fingers pushing at the area just below his ears and forcing his jaw open. Alick grimaced and tried to pull away, but Agro held him scary. "I will make sure you never endanger the congregation again," he hissed into Alick's ear, "The great Lord tells us to cut off the offending body part, and so we shall. This is the harshest punishment I have ever had to administer, Alick, know that and be shamed."
It happened in a split second. Agro took his dagger in his right hand and plunged it into Alick's mouth. The cry that came from Alick was an animal's scream, no longer anything resembling a human's. He struggled harder but Carey, all bulk, wrapped his great arms around him to keep him still. Agro took his hand off of Alick's jaw and instead stuck it in his mouth, taking hold of his tongue and...
And there it was. His tongue was no longer in his mouth, but a dead muscle, lying on the floor. Alick thrashed, his cries grew louder for a few seconds but were silenced a second later as the dagger was stuck down his throat.
Alick was silenced immediately. The pain that exploded inside of him was greater than it ever had been before. He collapsed forward, behind held up only by his arms, still held by Carey and Donovan. Color exploded behind his eyes and the whole room seemed red, or at least the floor that he subsequently fell to was.
Why did he fall? The question crossed his mind only for a moment, before it was replaced with a much more important one; why couldn't he breathe?
The world turned into a blur, and he tried to cough the blood out of his lungs only to find that he could no longer do that. He couldn't really move at all, for that matter.
Something else was moving him, though. He looked blearily, through a haze, above him thinking that he would see Agro again looking down at him, but it wasn't.
It was Ama.
Why was she here again, Alick thought weakly, why was she always here? Ama was on the phone, shouting something frantically into it, with the dagger in the other hand. Why did she have the dagger, Alick wondered, until a second later she took it, with shaking hands, and sunk it into his neck. He writhed under the added pain, or maybe the shock that she too seemed to want to kill him. He closed his eyes, wanting for nothing other than a little lapse from the pain.
Then air re-entered his lungs. He tried to gasp for breath, but his throat was so torn up from Agro that he couldn't breathe through his mouth, nor his nose. How could he breathe? Air was entering and exiting his lungs, but it was certainly not through any normal method. He tried to pick his hand up and feel his face, find out where the air was coming from, but felt pressure on his arm. He tried as best he could to overcome the pain that flooded his mind at every move he made so he made no effort to fight whatever force was holding him down. He heard something, though. Through the throbbing in his ears he could hear a voice...
"...Alick... ...it'll be okay, I swear it will, you just need to..."
The voice was clearly Ama's, she was still there? Nothing made sense to Alick anymore, what was going on? He had no idea that he was able to feel so much at once, but on top of the searing pain that was throbbing through and destroying his insides, he began to feel lightheaded as well. Blood loss? He could breath well enough now that at least he was able to think a little clearly, and realize just how much blood he was probably losing.
He tried to open his eyes, to acknowledge Ama's existence, let her know he was... well he certainly wasn't all right, but alive at least.
But all he found that he was able to do was to welcome to wave of blackness that greeted him, as he fell into a blissful state of unconsciousness.