And he saw Laurel standing alone, away from everybody, her eyes liquid, not steely gray like Ams’ eyes got, but blue, almost purple blue, wetness making them glitter, and he felt an ache for this girl hurting like that, hurting because of him. He walked over to her and put his head down. He had to do this, if it was the last bloody thing he did.
“I am sorry I left you like that this morning, sorry for everything, Laurel,” he whispered, just for her, and he could see the tears making wet tracks down her face, and he wished he didn’t just do this, didn’t just make her cry.
“This is what happens to people who care about me, Laurel. Look around you. I can’t do that to you. Can’t do it to anyone anymore,” and he leaned in and kissed her on her head, softly, wishing he could wipe the tears from her face, and he didn’t care that everybody saw him do it. It didn’t matter now. Everybody who’s ever cared about him was dead or hurting. He had to end it.
He walked back to the log and looked at all of them, feeling oddly calm now.
“I am told Trelix and Loren are still my crew. I need to borrow them for a few minutes.”
The boys looked at Riley and he nodded to them. They came up to him, looking at him, sadly, apologetically.
“Do you still take orders from me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I need you to shoot me, right now, with whatever you have. That’s an order.”
The boys didn’t move, their heads down. He saw Riley running to him.
“Riley, I asked you to let me borrow my crew. You could have refused. This is between them and me now,” he snapped at him.
Riley stopped where he was, hands in fists at his sides, staring at him. He heard Laurel calling his name from somewhere close by, asking him to please not do this, sobbing through it. He blocked it.
He looked back at his boys.
“I just gave you an order.”
Trelix, finally finding his voice, “I am sorry, sir, but we can’t do that. We won’t do that.”
“You are disobeying a direct order from your superior. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When I get free of this bloody band, and I promise you I will, I am going to execute you for insubordination. You understand that too, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
They were both looking at him now.
“Still won’t do it?”
He glared at them in a way that used to make his boys just want to run and hide. But they stood in front of him, not budging, Trelix finally shaking his head, “I am really sorry, sir, but no, we won’t do it,” and they walked away from him, leaving him in front of the fire, hands banded, feeling too helpless to even scream.
He sat down on the grass and put his head in his hands, not knowing what else to do. He could hear everyone’s footsteps disappearing from the clearing, leaving him be, and when he thought for sure they were all gone, he finally looked up only to see Drake crouching there in front of him, blocking the flames.
“They care about you, Brody. Your boys, Trelix and what’s his name. Go easy on them for this. For the rest of it, whatever it is you are planning, Brody, we’re coming with you. We just need to make sure Ella and the girls are safe, but me, Riley and your crew, all of us, we’ll go, wherever you want us to. You can’t do it by yourself, and I know you are smart enough to know that, even if you are too hurt and stubborn to see it now. But we need to do this right. We need to plan it, know what we are up against. I promised Ella that we’ll stay here in Waller, try to make it a home. I owe her that. I don’t mind dying for something, but I’d rather not if I didn’t have to, because of her. So you can sit here feeling sorry for yourself or you can let us help you. You are not as good at this alone thing as you think. Trust me on that. I’ve known you long enough to know that.”
Drake got up, and pulled him up by the band, and then started dragging him to the flier.
“Riley is the only one who can unlock this damn thing, Brody. I am sorry about that,” he said softly. It didn’t matter.
He stopped, making Drake stop and look at him.
“I swore to Riley that I wouldn’t put any of you in danger, Drake. Riley of all people knows that. Everybody I’ve ever loved is gone or damaged. I can’t keep doing this, I just can’t. And I can’t do nothing, not after what they did to Trina. What they did to her at Crylo… I know there are others there. Our people gave her to them, Drake. I have to end it somehow. But it’s my fight. Mine and Trina’s. That’s it. Why can’t all of you just let me do this?”
“Because you’ll get yourself killed, Brody, and you won’t get much done beyond that. And because I bloody like you too much to want to bury you,” and he smiled at him, a full on smile, and he couldn’t be angry at him after that.
H
UXER
G
ENETICS
Ella
[
May 17, 2236, The Flier
]
She didn’t know him from before the way Drake seemed to, but she liked how he was with Riley, liked that he was so ashamed of what he had that other boy do to him in the woods. She could see it on him, every time he saw the bandages around Riley’s chest, the way he lowered his eyes… he was good, deep down good. She could tell just from that.
When he ordered his soldier boys to shoot him like that, she grabbed onto Drake’s hand, pushing him forward, worried that they might, but he just leaned in to her, and shushed her, telling her it would all be fine, and he seemed really sure of it all being fine. It’s as if they’d all arranged it beforehand. But looking at the boy, she knew he was nowhere near fine, and that one way or another, he would try again, even with the slave band on him.
After that night, the kid did what he was told. He drank his tea, ate his food, not saying anything to anybody, and then just slept or sat wherever they left him with his eyes closed. He wouldn’t even talk to Laurel, who was sweet to him, and who tried, really tried to get him to talk to her, but he just wouldn’t talk. He’d nod or shake his head at best, and the girl would walk away, looking every shade of sad. She felt for her, this little blue-eyed girl.
Everybody but him was in the clearing now. He sat in his seat on the flier, not moving anything, eyes closed, but there was no way he was asleep. It was well past noon, and she already knew he was one of them early to rise people. She came right up to him and waited for him to look at her. He did, surprised gray-blue eyes staring at her.
“I am Ella, the slave girl. Remember me? We haven’t officially met yet,” and she put her hand out in front of her.
He shook it with both of his, the only thing he could do given the band around his wrists.
“I am Brody, the asshole. Nice to meet you.”
The kid still had spunk left in him. She could work with that.
“I am going to sit down next to you, and we are going to talk, Brody. There are things I need to tell you, things I know that could help. At least I hope they’ll help.” And without waiting for permission, she sat down in the chair next to his, looking at him. He faced her, eyes calm, waiting, very much the soldier now. She hoped she wouldn’t make it worse for him by telling him what she needed to tell him. Hoped he was less fragile than he seemed behind all these walls he was constantly building around himself. She could tell she would do better just being straight with him, just what she saw and what she knew. She didn’t want him to feel that she was trying to protect him, the way everyone else seemed to.
“The babies, the ones that went into the tubes, they didn’t kill them. They took them to one of the orphanages. They treat them well enough, and then figure out what the kids would be good at, run tests on them and all that, and then they put them into the cities they built for them. Like the place we went to, Reston, only that was for Zoriner scientists, but they have a bunch more for other kinds of kids. Some of these end up as Alliance soldiers or the like. Anyway, it’s for kids who aren’t useful for the breeding thing. But they didn’t kill those babies. You need to know that. I lived in one of those places for years. That’s how I know. There were very few of us, the ones they took the way they did me, the ones who had parents. Most of them were born the other way, Trina way.”
He was looking at her strangely.
“I remember Riley’s parents, and Samson, and your old house, even the way it always smelled from the different things Dave smoked. I remember all of that, but I don’t remember you at all. I should remember you as a kid before they took you, but I don’t. It’s been bothering me that I don’t. Like there is something wrong with me. Riley wouldn’t shut up about you when you were gone, vowing to find you even then, even as a little kid. I remember the stories, him talking about you, but not your face. I can’t picture that,” and he turned away from her, putting his head down.
“I don’t remember you either, Brody. Don’t know if it makes it better or worse, but I don’t. I remember Riley being mad at you for a long time when you killed that dragonfly. I remember him sitting there with this dead bug on a needle, looking at it with tears in his eyes, hoping it would move, but it wouldn’t move, and him hating you for it, for making it not move anymore. I always thought of you that way afterwards, as the boy who killed this bug that made Riley hurt like that, and I didn’t like you very much after that. So I guess we are even on that front,” she said quietly and looked at him, his head still down.
She reached over and took him by the chin, making him look at her.
“I know you now, Brody. That should count for something. I know how you are. I know that you’d rather die than hurt anyone you care about. I don’t need to remember or know anything else.”
He winced, and she let go of him, not wanting to embarrass him, and after a little while he was looking at her calmly, the soldier again. She had to tell him the rest of it. She hoped she could do it right.
“Right after the first Rebellion, when most of the Zoriners were already pushed out of the cities, they, the Alliance realized that whatever they did to control the population growth backfired. It was an accident, but one they couldn’t reverse, and so the majority of the girls who were born were coming out with a gene that was turned off, the one they’d need to make babies, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about that. They tried everything, but it wasn’t working. So they had only a few generations to figure something out or they would all die out. Meanwhile, everyone who wasn’t in one of the cities was fine, and that was mostly our kind at the time. They gave every girl in the cities the shot that damaged the genes a few generations down the line, but we weren’t in the cities anymore.
“Anyway, there was this guy by the name of Huxer, a geneticist. He developed this test for the babies, baby girls, where they could tell if they were broken in that way or not as soon as they were born, hoping to find some that weren’t, and eventually they did, but there were so few of them, it still wouldn’t be enough to keep the population going. That’s who Ams and Laurel are. That’s why they call them replenishers. I know you know some of this already. Here is what you don’t know. Huxer figured out that he could put an embryo of an Alliance kid into an unbroken Zoriner body and at about six months or so the gene that was turned off would get turned on again, so long as the host was healthy enough and didn’t have too many white blood cells.
“But instead of taking it to the Alliance, he created his own labs and clinics in their cities, all top secret and everything, and he got filthy rich selling girls who were made that way to any family rich enough to afford them. He just needed the hosts, and so he’d make a bargain with various Zoriner Councils in smaller places, places like Waller to trade these girls for things they needed, like basic meds, antibiotics and such. That was over a hundred years ago. Huxer’s been dead for a long time, but his clinics are still there, and I don’t think either the Zorin Council or the Alliance are aware of what exactly they do there. The only reason I know what I know is because they made me work in one, and they thought I was a dumb slave who couldn’t read their screens. I think that’s why they took Trina. It wasn’t because of anything you did or anything your parents did. I thought you should know this before you do whatever it is you are planning to do. I haven’t told this to anybody yet. I thought you should know first, before you decide to tell the rest of them.”
She got up then, and he stood when she did, looking at her face, eyes wet.
“I wish I did remember you as a kid. I think we could have been good friends. Thank you, for this. For telling me,” and he reached out and took her hand, squeezing it hard.
She took a step to him and hugged him, hugged him the way she hugged Riley, and he let her, not bolting from her. She liked this kid, really liked him, and she hoped with all her heart that whatever he was going to go off and do wouldn’t kill him. That he’d find something in between now and then to hold on to, the way Drake seemed to with her.
“You should talk to that little blue-eyed girl, Brody. She means well. I know you know that already. I know she likes you, too. Everybody does by now, but she is wise, Brody, maybe wiser than all of us. She is a good friend to have, given that you won’t talk to Riley anymore. Talk to her, Brody,” and she let him be after that.
Drake was humming at that fire of his. She didn’t want to tell him any of this just yet. For the first time since they ran, she wanted to be alone, so she walked off to the cemetery where Trina was, and sat there by the elm tree trying to picture this girl when she was still alive. The girl who loved Brody. All the yellow flowers were blooming around her now, none hiding in their stalks anymore. She sat still, listening to the bees and the bugs move around, making their strange music, listening to the rustling of the leaves and the grass, smelling the fragrance of the blooms and the sap of the tree she she was leaning against, and it all felt painfully familiar.