Intermix Nation (14 page)

Lumi agrees, nodding her head. “Yes, it was
unnerving! I watched myself and my sisters build a snow fort back
home when we were much younger. I can’t believe I ever looked so
awkward! Remember those days, Ani?”

“Sure,” Aneira responds.

“What was your memory?” Nazirah asks.

At that, Aneira breaks out a rare grin. “My
mom,” she says simply, and leaves it at that. Nazirah smiles at
her.

“Irri, what was your memory?” Cato asks.

“Remember the first time we ever cliff dove
in Rafu?” she asks, knowing Cato remembers it well. “A few years
ago?”

Cato’s reaction isn’t what Nazirah expects.
Instead of laughing about it, he looks upset and confused. He leans
into her, trying and failing to speak privately. “That was the
memory you saw?”

“That’s what I just said!” Nazirah laughs,
trying to put him at ease. “You all should have seen Cato’s face,”
Nazirah tells their friends. “He was so scared!” She punches him
gently in the shoulder. “Why?”

Cato is thoughtful. “It’s just,” he says,
hesitating, “that was my memory too.”

“What are the chances the two of you would
see the same one?” asks Taj.

“Not good, I would imagine,” Lumi
replies.

Nazirah thinks about how Adamek said to
trust him, his playful look. It wasn’t a coincidence after all. “I
don’t understand,” Nazirah says slowly. “Why would Morgen show me
the same memory you had?”

There is silence. Then, “Maybe he wanted to
see it again,” Aneira suggests.

Cato and Lumi visibly tense. Nazirah glares
at Aneira sharply. Now, of all times, the girl chooses to really
speak up? Nazirah recalls how Cato looked at her on those cliffs,
how she felt at fifteen … free and uninhibited enough to strip down
to her skivvies. Could it be true that Adamek wanted to replay
that?

“No, that’s not it Ani,” Nazirah snaps.

Aneira shrugs and resumes staring at the
fire.

“Everyone’s started calling him Renatus, you
know,” Taj says, breaking the silence.

Nazirah scoffs. “Not everyone.”

She most certainly isn’t calling him that.
But Taj is right. It started as a joke at first, around the
compound, but the name unfortunately stuck.

Renatus.

Reborn … just like their country.

Nazirah hates it. Adamek doesn’t respond to
the name, as far as Nazirah knows. But it disgusts her how quickly
people forget the past. Adamek isn’t reformed just because he’s
given them some helpful information. He will never be worthy of
absolution.

Lumi’s eyes narrow. “He’s not a monster,
Nazirah. People make mistakes.”

“I’d like to know how his family is handling
this,” Taj says.

“The Chancellor has placed a huge bounty on
his head,” Cato says. “So I’d say ‘not well.’”

“But to leave his mother like that,” Taj
says, uncharacteristically bitter, “in her condition. If I still
had a mother, I would never do that.” He shakes his head.

Victoria Morgen’s battle with disease is no
small matter of gossip throughout Renatus. Rumors have circulated
for years that Victoria struggles with an obscure lifelong illness.
She has apparently taken a turn for the worse in the past few
months. It’s said the Chancellor is desperately seeking a cure.

Nazirah often questions if it’s all a ploy
to get Adamek back into Mediah. Nazirah wonders if that’s why
Adamek is teaching Bairs’s class – because he relates to her
circumstances.

Nazirah remains quiet for the rest of the
bonfire. She mulls over the future, wonders if she has one. She
thinks about the final assignments they will receive in a few
weeks’ time. What territory will she be assigned to? What will they
ask her to do there?

Nazirah thinks about Adamek. He said he has
secrets and she wonders for the millionth time what they are. Why
does Niko trust him? Why did Adamek request amnesty to begin with?
What if he’s a spy for Mediah, sent here to bring down the
rebellion from within? The recruits are even training with Medi
technology now … who knows how else they’ll be brainwashed? Who
knows where it will all lead, how it will all end?

Nazirah sure doesn’t.

#

Nazirah enters the small abandoned
classroom, prepared to use the Iluxor for a second time. The
recruits haven’t trained with Adamek in over a week, since he has
been away on recon with Aldrik and Lord Grigori. Nazirah doesn’t
have the faintest idea what the rebels hope to accomplish on these
missions, and she knows it’s pointless to ask. That’s Niko’s style,
trying to protect Nazirah by not telling her anything. Until, of
course, he has to tell her everything all at once.

Adamek is there already, amnesty pendant
glinting in the sunlight, snarky expression in place. He has
injured his shoulder again. There’s a thick bandage under his
shirt. Nazirah’s eyes linger on the injury as she shoulders off her
bag and drops into her normal seat by the window.

“It’s rude to stare, Nation.”

Please! He’s always staring at her, trying
to make her uncomfortable, trying to get a rise out of her. “If
it’s rude to stare,” she argues, “then you wrote the book,
Morgen.”

Adamek smirks and sits down across from her.
“Exactly,” he says. “So I know it when I see it.”

Nazirah crosses her arms, watching him fill
the two syringes. Adamek places the syringes on the desk beside
them. “What happened to your shoulder?” she asks.

“Oh honey,” he says, “I didn’t realize you
cared.”

Nazirah uncrosses her arms. “I don’t,” she
answers honestly, resting her hands on her exposed knees. It’s hot
out today. She’s wearing a white oxford shirt and a plaid skirt.
Cato teased her at breakfast, telling her she looked like a Median
schoolgirl. All she needed to complete the look were some pigtails.
Nazirah spilled coffee on him.

“That’s what I thought,” Adamek says.

“Let’s get this over with,” she sighs.

Adamek ties the elastic around her arm. It
unnerves Nazirah, being this close to him, memorizing the angles of
his jaw, the slope of his nose, the deep green of his eyes. It
bothers her that she wants to do these things. She liked it better
when he still had bruises all over his face. She felt safer that
way.

He gently tugs up the cuff of her sleeve,
fingers slightly calloused. Nazirah feels tingles shoot through her
at his touch. She tells herself to get a grip. But in her mind, she
wonders if this is what Lumi felt when she first gave in to him. Is
this how every girl feels?

She stares at his hands, focusing on his
scratch marks, on his kills. She’s seen them countless times
before. But today it hits her again exactly who he is and what he’s
done. There are so many scratches on each hand, hundreds. They
crisscross and tally in completely irregular patterns. Some are
bigger and some are smaller. Nazirah cannot keep track of them all.
She wonders if he knows how many there are, how many lives he’s
taken.

Nazirah is disgusted with it all, with him,
but mostly with herself. Because she has inexcusably forgotten for
a while.

Lumi is wrong.

He is a monster.

He hasn’t injected her yet. Nazirah looks up
to find rage in his face. He knows exactly what she was looking at,
exactly what she thinks of him. Adamek unstraps the elastic from
her arm, dropping it next to the syringes. “Get out,” he says.

“Excuse me?” Nazirah asks, bewildered.

“You’re excused,” Adamek says coldly. “Now
leave.”

“No way, Morgen!” she snaps, cheeks heating
in anger. She reaches for a syringe, intent on injecting herself.
“I need this!”

Adamek smacks the needles away. They fly
against the wall, shattering. “Let’s get something straight,” he
growls. He leans in close. “I don’t give a fuck about what you
think you need. Or, for that matter, what you think at all,
especially about me. I don’t give a fuck about you.”

Nazirah leans as far back
in the chair as possible. Adamek Morgen is a loose cannon and she
never has any idea what will set him off. “So what
is
your problem?” she
asks.

He snatches her wrists, pulling her towards
him. “My problem is very much you, a nosy, judgmental bitch who
never knows when to quit. And I’m fucking sick of it.”

“Well, too bad! I’m not sorry I question you
or your motives! And I’m not going to stop, either! I have no idea
how you managed to brainwash my brother, Renatus. But I’m not
fucking buying it.”

“I never asked for that name! I don’t want
it!”

“You sure do embrace the role, though,”
Nazirah fires back.

“This is life,” Adamek says. “We all have
our parts to play … even you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” he says, his voice a deadly
whisper, “that when it comes to fakers, princess, you’re the
biggest one here. And I’m not fucking buying it.”

Nazirah kicks him in the shin. Adamek hisses
in pain, wrapping his foot around the base of her chair, rapidly
dragging it forward. Nazirah opens her knees, spreading her legs
out a second before their chairs collide. His grip on her wrists
tightens and he takes in the full view up her skirt. “Aren’t we
welcoming today,” he says.

Nazirah is burning this skirt later.

“Fuck you!” she snarls between gritted
teeth. They are so close, their noses are practically touching. She
can feel his hot breath in her face.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you,
princess?”

Nazirah stops struggling, her entire body
tensing. His grip on her wrists relaxes until it is light as a
feather. He traces slow circles with his thumbs on her skin.
“N-No,” she says. Even to Nazirah, her voice sounds shaky and
unsure.

“It’s simple, Nation,” he begs softly. “Just
let me.”

Nazirah wants to give in, but something
smacks her back into reality. What is happening? Is she actually
considering his proposition? Is this how he seduced Lumi and who
knows how many others? Well not her.

Never her.

“Never,” she says. Her voice is louder this
time, reassured. She rips her wrists away. He looks at her
wordlessly. “I would never!” Nazirah repeats herself, more
vehemently, standing up so quickly she almost knocks the chair
over. Adamek watches her go. “You’re pathetic!” she says, grabbing
her bag and walking backwards through the door. “You disgust me,”
she whispers … long gone.

Chapter
Eleven

Life goes on at headquarters until it
doesn’t.

Soft knocking in the middle of the night
awakens Nazirah from a restless sleep. She kicks off her clammy
sheets and jumps out of bed, groggy and disoriented. Nazirah
stumbles forward, pulling the door open to reveal Cato. He has dark
blue circles under his eyes and his face is puffy. He has clearly
been crying. Nazirah looks around the hallway, finding it otherwise
empty.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. Her voice is small
and frightened. “Is Niko okay? Are we under attack?”

“He’s fine and we’re safe,” Cato says,
taking her hands. “I don’t really know how to tell you this. I just
… I didn’t want you to find out from anyone else.”

“What’s happened?”

His voice cracks. “It’s Aneira.”

“Is she okay?” she asks. Nazirah already
knows she isn’t. Cato wouldn’t be here if she were.

He shakes his head. “She wasn’t happy here,
Irri,” Cato says. “I think we all knew that. But no one could have
known … could have ever imagined how unhappy. She’s at peace
now.”

Nazirah lets go of his hands, shaking. This
can’t be right. This has to be a dream, a mistake. This can’t be
happening again.

Her parents, dead on the floor.

Aneira. Kind Aneira, who was always so sad
and lonely. Who was going through an awkward phase without a mother
to guide her, and now would never blossom. Who was ripped from her
home and now would never return. Cato could say all he wanted. But
this … this tragedy … could have been prevented. Should have been
prevented. She feels sick. “Oh, God, Lumi!” she sobs, “And Yuki! Do
they know?”

“They do,” he says sadly.

She feels dizzy, is having trouble forming
cohesive thoughts. “When?”

“About an hour ago, outside,” he says. “She
stole a gun from the armory.” Nazirah turns away from him, gagging.
“She left a note.” Cato is having difficulty saying the words. “I
heard the gun go off from my bedroom window. I ran outside and
found her, but.…” He is crying too. He leans against the hallway
wall for support, unable to finish.

Nazirah understands. The guilt and the
grief, the feeling like you could have done more, if only you were
there sooner. It’s the absolute worst feeling in the world.
“There’s nothing you could have done, Cato,” she whispers. “You
couldn’t have saved her.” Nazirah gently wipes his tears and wraps
her arms around him, holding him tight.

“I wanted you to find out from someone you
trusted,” he mumbles into her shoulder.

Where’s Lumi?”

“Outside with the others,” he says. “She
won’t leave the body.”

Something intrinsic calls Nazirah to action.
They can’t just stand there and do nothing, not while Lumi needs
them. Nazirah grabs Cato’s hand lightly, pulling him towards the
staircase. “Walk with me.”

Cato stops. “Nazirah, no!” he says sharply.
“You don’t have to go down there. You don’t need to see that.”

“Lumi needs us right now,” Nazirah replies
honestly. “How can I just go back to sleep, knowing what’s
happening?”

Cato contemplates her words, searches for a
counter-argument, but Nazirah has already won. Because this is the
right thing to do, what they should have been doing all along. He
nods silently, and she leads them downstairs.

In what feels like a surreal dream, they
exit the staircase and make their way towards the back entrance.
Only a few people are scattered throughout the hallways. Most of
the rebels have not been notified yet. They remain upstairs
sleeping, unaware. The ones that are awake embrace one another
solemnly.