Fracture Me (5 page)

After breakfast, which was actually closer to lunch, I tend to Brendan and Winston
for a bit, and set them up on the floor so they can get some proper rest. James and
I had collected a decent stash of ratty blankets and pillows over the years, so there’s
just enough to go around, and thank God for that, because it’s cold as hell. We even
wrapped a blanket around Castle’s shoulders. He’s still barely moving, but we forced
him to eat, so at least he’s got a little color in his cheeks now.

With Brendan and Winston settled, Ian and Alia and Lily fed and comfortable, James
safe and sound, and Castle resting, Kenji and I are finally ready to initiate some
new plans.

“I’m going to go out,” Kenji says. “Get on base and get nosy. Listen for rumors and
whispers of what’s going on—maybe even find Juliette, give her a heads-up that we’re
coming for her soon.”

I nod. “That’s a great start.”

“Once I know more about what’s going on, we can make a firm plan, scoop her up, and
bring her home.”

“So as soon as she’s back,” I say, “we’ll have to move again.”

“Probably, yeah.”

I nod a few times. “Okay. All right.” I swallow hard. “I’ll wait here until you get
back.”

“Sounds good.” Kenji grins, and then he’s gone. Disappeared. The front door is yanked
open and yanked closed, and I’m staring at the wall and trying not to freak out too
much about what’s going to happen next.

Another mission. Which means another chance to screw everything up and get ourselves
killed. And then, if we’re successful, we’re rewarded with more running, more instability,
more chaos.

I close my eyes.

I love Juliette. I really do. I want to help her and support her and be there for
her. I want us to have a future together. But sometimes I wonder if it’s ever going
to happen.

This isn’t easy to admit, but part of me doesn’t want to put James at risk again—on
the run again—for a girl who broke up with me. A girl who walked away from us.

I don’t know what the right thing is anymore.

I don’t know if my allegiance is to James or Juliette.

Kenji is back after only a couple of hours. His face ashen, his hands trembling. He’s
breathing hard and his eyes are unfocused and he sits down on the couch without a
word and I’m already panicking.

“What happened?” I ask.

“What’s going on?” Lily says.

“You okay, bro?” This from Ian.

We pepper him with questions and he doesn’t answer. He stares, unblinking, a replica
of Castle, who’s sitting in a chair across from him.

Finally, after a long moment of silence, he speaks.

Three words.

“Juliette is dead.”

Chaos.

Questions are flying and screams are muffled and everyone is shocked, horrified, freaking
out.

I’m stunned.

My brain feels paralyzed, unwilling to process or digest this information.
Why?
I want to ask.
How?
How? How is it possible?

But I can’t speak. I’m frozen in horror. Grief.

“It wasn’t Warner who came after her,” Kenji is saying, tears falling fast down his
face. “It was Anderson. Those were Anderson’s men. They made the announcement just
a couple hours ago,” he says, choking on the words. “They said they bombed Omega Point,
captured Juliette, and killed her just this morning. The supreme has already headed
back to the capital.”

“No,” I gasp.

“We should’ve gone after her,” Kenji is saying. “I should’ve stayed behind—I should’ve
tried to find her—it’s my fault,” he says, hands in his hair, fighting back tears.
“It’s my fault she’s dead. I should’ve gone after her—”

“It’s not your fault,” Ian says to him, rushing over and grabbing his arms. “Don’t
you dare put that on yourself.”

“We lost a lot of people,” Lily says. “People dear to us that we couldn’t save. This
is not your fault. I promise. We did our best.”

Everyone is consoling Kenji now, trying to reassure him that there’s no guilt necessary.
No person to blame for all this.

But I can’t agree.

I trip backward until I hit the wall, leaning against it for support. I know who to
blame. I know where the fault lies.

Juliette is dead because of me.

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I am an hourglass.

My seventeen years have collapsed and buried me from the inside out. My legs feel
full of sand and stapled together, my mind overflowing with grains of indecision,
choices unmade and impatient as time runs out of my body. The small hand of a clock
taps me at one and two, three and four, whispering hello, get up, stand up, it’s time
to

wake up

wake up

“Wake up,” he whispers.

A sharp intake of breath and I’m awake but not up, surprised but not scared, somehow
staring into the very desperately green eyes that seem to know too much, too well.
Aaron Warner Anderson is bent over me, his worried eyes inspecting me, his hand caught
in the air like he might’ve been about to touch me.

He jerks back.

He stares, unblinking, chest rising and falling.

“Good morning,” I assume. I’m unsure of my voice, of the hour and this day, of these
words leaving my lips and this body that contains me.

I notice he’s wearing a white button-down, half untucked into his curiously unrumpled
black slacks. His shirtsleeves are folded, pushed up past his elbows.

His smile looks like it hurts.

I pull myself into a seated position and Warner shifts to accommodate me. I have to
close my eyes to steady the sudden dizziness, but I force myself to remain still until
the feeling passes.

I’m tired and weak from hunger, but other than a few general aches, I seem to be fine.
I’m alive. I’m breathing and blinking and feeling human and I know exactly why.

I meet his eyes. “You saved my life.”

I was shot in the chest.

Warner’s father put a bullet in my body and I can still feel the echoes of it. If
I focus, I can relive the exact moment it happened; the pain: so intense, so excruciating;
I’ll never be able to forget it.

I suck in a startled breath.

I’m finally aware of the familiar foreignness of this room and I’m quickly seized
by a panic that screams I did not wake up where I fell asleep. My heart is racing
and I’m inching away from him, hitting my back against the headboard, clutching at
these sheets, trying not to stare at the chandelier I remember all too well—

“It’s okay—” Warner is saying. “It’s all right—”

“What am I doing here?” Panic, panic; terror clouds my consciousness. “Why did you
bring me here again—?”

“Juliette, please, I’m not going to hurt you—”

“Then why did you bring me here?” My voice is starting to break and I’m struggling
to keep it steady. “Why bring me back to this
hellhole
—”

“I had to hide you.” He exhales, looks up at the wall.

“What? Why?”

“No one knows you’re alive.” He turns to look at me. “I had to get back to base. I
needed to pretend everything was back to normal and I was running out of time.”

I force myself to lock away the fear.

I study his face and analyze his patient, earnest tone. I remember him last night—it
must’ve been last night—I remember his face, remember him lying next to me in the
dark. He was tender and kind and gentle and he saved me, saved my life. Probably carried
me into bed. Tucked me in beside him. It must’ve been him.

But when I glance down at my body I realize I’m wearing clean clothes, no blood or
holes or anything anywhere and I wonder who washed me, wonder who changed me, and
worry that might’ve been Warner, too.

“Did you . . .” I hesitate, touching the hem of the shirt I’m wearing. “Did—I mean—my
clothes—”

He smiles. He stares until I’m blushing and I decide I hate him a little and then
he shakes his head. Looks into his palms. “No,” he says. “The girls took care of that.
I just carried you to bed.”

“The girls,” I whisper, dazed.

The girls.

Sonya and Sara. They were there too, the healer twins, they helped Warner. They helped
him save me because he’s the only one who can touch me now, the only person in the
world who’d have been able to transfer their healing power safely into my body.

My thoughts are on fire.

Where are the girls what happened to the girls and where is Anderson and the war and
oh God what’s happened to Adam and Kenji and Castle
and I have to get up I have to get up I have to get up and get out of bed and get
going

but

I try to move and Warner catches me. I’m off-balance, unsteady; I still feel as though
my legs are anchored to this bed and I’m suddenly unable to breathe, seeing spots
and feeling faint. Need up. Need out.

Can’t.

“Warner.” My eyes are frantic on his face. “What happened? What’s happening with the
battle—?”

“Please,” he says, gripping my shoulders. “You need to start slowly; you should eat
something—”

“Tell
me—”

“Don’t you want to eat first? Or shower?”

“No,” I hear myself say. “I have to know now.”

One moment. Two and three.

Warner takes a deep breath. A million more. Right hand over left, spinning the jade
ring on his pinkie finger over and over and over and over “It’s over,” he says.

“What?”

I say the word but my lips make no sound. I’m numb, somehow. Blinking and seeing nothing.

“It’s over,” he says again.

“No.”

I exhale the word, exhale the impossibility.

He nods. He’s disagreeing with me.

“No.”

“Juliette.”

“No,” I say. “No. No. Don’t be stupid,” I say to him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say
to him. “
Don’t lie to me goddamn you
,” but now my voice is high and broken and shaking and “No,” I gasp, “no, no,
no
—”

I actually stand up this time. My eyes are filling fast with tears and I blink and
blink but the world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible
and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can’t bear to see it.

The ground is hard.

I know this to be an actual fact because it’s suddenly pressed against my face and
Warner is trying to touch me but I think I scream and slap his hands away because
I already know the answer. I must already know the answer because I can feel the revulsion
bubbling up and unsettling my insides but I ask anyway. I’m horizontal and somehow
still tipping over and the holes in my head are tearing open and I’m staring at a
spot on the carpet not ten feet away and I’m not sure I’m even alive but I have to
hear him say it.

“Why?” I ask.

It’s just a word, stupid and simple.

“Why is the battle over?” I ask. I’m not breathing anymore, not really speaking at
all; just expelling letters through my lips.

Warner is not looking at me.

He’s looking at the wall and at the floor and at the bedsheets and at the way his
knuckles look when he clenches his fists but no not at me he won’t look at me and
his next words are so, so soft.

“Because they’re dead, love. They’re all dead.”

My body locks.

My bones, my blood, my brain freeze in place, seizing in some kind of sudden, uncontrollable
paralysis that spreads through me so quickly I can’t seem to breathe. I’m wheezing
in deep, strained inhalations, and the walls won’t stop swaying in front of me.

Warner pulls me into his arms.

“Let go of me,” I scream, but, oh, only in my imagination because my lips are finished
working and my heart has just expired and my mind has gone to hell for the day and
my eyes my eyes I think they’re bleeding. Warner is whispering words of comfort I
can’t hear and his arms are wrapped entirely around me, trying to keep me together
through sheer physical force but it’s no use.

I feel nothing.

Warner is shushing me, rocking me back and forth, and it’s only then that I realize
I’m making the most excruciating, earsplitting sound, agony ripping through me. I
want to speak, to protest, to accuse Warner, to blame him, to call him a liar, but
I can say nothing, can form nothing but sounds so pitiful I’m almost ashamed of myself.
I break free of his arms, gasping and doubling over, clutching my stomach.

“Adam.” I choke on his name.

“Juliette, please—”

“Kenji.” I’m hyperventilating into the carpet now.

“Please, love, let me help you—”

“What about James?” I hear myself say. “He was left at Omega Point—he wasn’t a-allowed
to c-come—”

“It’s all been destroyed,” Warner says slowly, quietly. “Everything. They tortured
some of your members into giving away the exact location of Omega Point. Then they
bombed the entire thing.”

“Oh,
God
.” I cover my mouth with one hand and stare, unblinking, at the ceiling.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

“Liar,” I whisper, venom in my voice. I’m angry and mean and I can’t be bothered to
care. “You’re not sorry at all.”

I glance at Warner just long enough to see the hurt flash in and out of his eyes.
He clears his throat.

“I am sorry,” he says again, quiet but firm. He picks up his jacket from where it
was hanging on a nearby rack; shrugs it on without a word.

“Where are you going?” I ask, guilty in an instant.

“You need time to process this and you clearly have no use for my company. I will
attend to a few tasks until you’re ready to talk.”

“Please tell me you’re wrong.” My voice breaks. My breath catches. “Tell me there’s
a chance you could be wrong—”

Warner stares at me for what feels like a long time. “If there were even the slightest
chance I could spare you this pain,” he finally says, “I would’ve taken it. You must
know I wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t absolutely true.”

And it’s
this
—his sincerity—that finally snaps me in half.

Because the truth is so unbearable I wish he’d spare me a lie.

I don’t remember when Warner left.

I don’t remember how he left or what he said. All I know is that I’ve been lying here
curled up on the floor long enough. Long enough for the tears to turn to salt, long
enough for my throat to dry up and my lips to chap and my head to pound as hard as
my heart.

I sit up slowly, feel my brain twist somewhere in my skull. I manage to climb onto
the bed and sit there, still numb but less so, and pull my knees to my chest.

Life without Adam.

Life without Kenji, without James and Castle and Sonya and Sara and Brendan and Winston
and all of Omega Point. My friends, all destroyed with the flick of a switch.

Life without Adam.

I hold on tight, pray the pain will pass.

It doesn’t.

Adam is gone
.

My first love. My first friend. My only friend when I had none and now he’s gone and
I don’t know how I feel. Strange, mostly. Delirious, too. I feel empty and broken
and cheated and guilty and angry and desperately, desperately sad.

We’d been growing apart since escaping to Omega Point, but that was my fault. He wanted
more from me, but I wanted him to live a long life. I wanted to protect him from the
pain I would cause him. I tried to forget him, to move on without him, to prepare
myself for a future separate and apart from him.

I thought staying away would keep him alive.

Stupid girl.

The tears are fresh and falling fast now, traveling quietly down my cheeks and into
my open, gasping mouth. My shoulders won’t stop shaking and my fists keep clenching
and my body is cramping and my knees are knocking and old habits are crawling out
of my skin and I’m counting cracks and colors and sounds and shudders and rocking
back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I have to let him go I have
to let him go I have to I have to

I close my eyes

and
breathe
.

Harsh, hard, rasping breaths.

In.

Out.

Count them.

I’ve been here before, I tell myself. I’ve been lonelier than this, more hopeless
than this, more desperate than this. I’ve been here before and I survived. I can get
through this.

But never have I been so thoroughly robbed. Love and possibility, friendships and
futures: gone. I have to start over now; face the world alone again. I have to make
one final choice: give up or go on.

So I get to my feet.

My head is spinning, thoughts knocking into one another, but I swallow back the tears.
I clench my fists and try not to scream and I tuck my friends in my heart and

revenge

I think

has never looked so sweet.