“Go ahead, Riley. Hit me. Beat the shit out of me. You can’t possibly not want to. Do it.”
But he couldn’t do it, and strangely, didn’t want to. He shook his head and dropped down on the log by the fire, Brody looking at him as if he were disappointed that he didn’t beat him.
“Riley! We found us a cave!” Ams voice caught him off guard. She was smiling at him. Ams had probably never seen a cave before, not even in those old library books. Of course she’d be excited. And a cave would be a better place to hide than out in the open.
He let Ams and Drake move all the backpacks to the cave. It was larger than he expected, when they finally all settled there, the ceiling tall enough to where even Drake didn’t have to bend down to stand. Brody sat against the far wall, his tied hands in fists in front of him, not speaking, and refusing anything to drink or eat that was offered him. He seemed entirely uninterested in what they would do to him. After a small supper, Drake and Ams moved into one of the inner chambers, away from them, as if sensing that he and Brody weren’t done with whatever they needed to work out. He heard them wrestling with the blankets and making another fire to keep themselves warm. They’d be asleep soon enough. Something he couldn’t possibly do now.
He sat staring at his friend through the fire, not saying anything, hoping he’d find the words soon enough. Hoping, too, that Ella and Laurel could be saved, and that Brody would help save them. Something in the way he was looking back at him told him that he couldn’t make him help them. That something terrible happened to this boy and there was nothing at all he could promise him or threaten him with.
“I am sorry I let Anders hurt you, Riley. I wanted you dead, not hurt. I still do. It would make things easier for me, but I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t lie to you about the girls. I would have killed you if I could. I want you to know that.”
He believed him. There was no reason for him to lie now. It hurt knowing that he wished him dead, but he understood it too. And he remembered the last time he ever saw him, when he chased after him down that street in Waller, but Brody wouldn’t stop, and then Brody just shaking his head at him. He remembered that now, couldn’t help remembering it, and knew that he wanted him gone even then, that he couldn’t bear take anything from that life where he was going.
He nodded, leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes to keep all the tears in, and said in almost a whisper, so there was no chance Drake and Ams would catch any of it, “If, by some miracle, you do help us get Ella and Laurel back, I will let you, if you still want me dead then. However you want. You just can’t tell Drake or Ams about it.” He looked at him, to make sure he understood, and when he knew for sure that he did, walked right up to him. Brody stood up, breathing hard, and looking like he was about to cry. It didn’t add up, what he just said to him and the way his face was.
He pulled the knife out of his pocket, but Brody didn’t seem to notice it or to care. He was just watching his face. He cut the tie at his wrists, registering a look of surprise on his face, then took his right hand and shook it, squeezing it hard, as hard as he could. Brody flinched, but returned the handshake, and put his hands out in front of him again.
He cuffed him with regular old cuffs, the ones with a tiny key that they got from Brody’s supply bag, and put the key into his sleeve pocket. These would be a bit more comfortable to sleep with, though less comfortable than the slave bands. He still couldn’t bring himself to put that on Brody. On anyone.
“You should get some sleep,” he whispered, and unrolled one of the blankets at the wall for him and then threw an almost empty backpack on it for a pillow, but Brody just shook his head at the offering, slid down against the hard clay of the wall and closed his eyes.
T
HE
C
AGE
Trina
[
Crylo, May 14, 2233
]
She loved him from the first moment he looked at her in a grown up way. They were standing outside the school, and Brody offered her one of the smokesticks he stole, likely from his uncle’s warehouse, only these were old looking, shorter, all the dried grass wrapped in paper. She took it from him, and he touched her hand when he lit it. She felt that touch in the pit of her belly, a warmth and a sharp ache. He must have felt it too, as he looked at her with those gray blue eyes of his, so full of suns in them, so full of light, and she knew she wanted this boy to like her. She blushed when he asked her if he could walk her home, and nodded, hoping he couldn’t see her blush through her dark skin.
That was a year ago now. She loved everything about him, even when they fought on rare occasions, there was a sweetness, a tenderness to him, even through that hard facade he put on for everyone else. For Riley, and his uncle, and Mr Sanders. As if he didn’t care about much, but she knew him better than anyone, and care he did, deeply. She caught him sneaking bits of what little food they were given for lunch into his bag and handing it to Spartan, the scrawny stray that followed them home from school. Brody would always give him a bit of something he’d saved, and talk to him, soothingly, as if he were talking to a little kid. He seemed embarrassed the first time she saw him do it, but didn’t seem to mind after that.
She loved how he’d always bring a few sweet smelling blooms to her mother in the Spring or Summer, whenever he came by, and how he’d help her put the dishes away, and listen to her talk. He had a way of making you want to tell him things, secrets even. A way of listening without judging.
She loved that he didn’t rush her into anything. He didn’t want to hurt her or scare her, he said, and when they finally did kiss, it was her doing the kissing, at least at first. She’d been wanting to kiss him for so long, she couldn’t help herself, so she took his face in her hands and watched his eyes get darker, all gray now, and she kissed him, her hands moving up to his neck and then going all the way down his back, and she felt him freeze at her touch. She let go then and he stepped away from her, his face flushed, and he looked at her with so much fear, she hoped she didn’t hurt him somehow.
“Are you sure? I need to know this is for real for you. Because I couldn’t bear it if it wasn’t,” he said quietly, not letting go of her eyes.
She walked up to him then and threw her arms around his neck, nodding, whispering that it was for real, that she’d been wanting to do it since the first time they met, and that she was pretty sure she’d want to keep doing it for the rest of her life.
She sat there, in the Zoriner Council’s chambers, thinking about all of it, about Brody, and what would happen to him if they find him, and to her. She hoped she could somehow convince these strangers that she broke it off with him right after she saw the feed with the traitors, his parents on it. She was pretty sure there were cameras in the room, recording her, and tried to make her face look calm. The doors slid open and a smallish woman came in. She looked older than her mother, by a few years at least, creases around her dark brown eyes. She had a large screen with her and was typing away on it as she sat down.
“Trina, right?”
She nodded, timidly, she hoped.
“You and Brody were a couple, I’m told, for about a year. Is that correct?”
She nodded again. It seemed easier to nod than to speak.
“I need to know how he felt about Zoriners and the Alliance. Conversations you had, all of them that could give us a glimpse into his thoughts.” She was looking at her, openly, waiting.
She shook her head, “We never talked about that. It just never came up. Not until after the feed from his parents, but I broke it off with him as soon as that happened, so we didn’t even talk about it then.”
The woman got up and walked right up to where she was sitting on a hard metal bench against the wall. She looked at her, kindly, she thought, and nodded her head, “It is very, very unfortunate then, I’m afraid. You will be transported to an Alliance center at dawn. I suggest you say your goodbyes now,” and she handed her a screen she could use.
She didn’t understand why they would do this to her. Zoriners didn’t give up their own to the Alliance; at least she’d never heard of them doing it. She couldn’t think of anything she could type to her mom and dad. Couldn’t think of anything to say to anybody that would make it all right. So she simply typed “I love you,” sent it to her house and handed the screen back to the woman. She needed her gone now, so she could cry in peace.
“Can you please leave?” she hoped she sounded soft enough and polite enough, not angry. The woman put her hand on her shoulder and held it there for a bit, and then left the room, silently, except for the swish of the sliding doors.
It didn’t make any sense to her that her people would try to punish the kids for something their parents did. Zoriners weren’t supposed to do this sort of thing. It sounded like something the Alliance would do, not them. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. They had been looking for Brody all over Waller. Zoriner soldiers. They had asked her a million times if she knew where he was. She didn’t. She told them she hadn’t spoken to him since after the feed, that they broke up, that she broke them up. She wasn’t lying, they could see that much. And now they were going to use her as bait. It didn’t make any sense. She knew she hurt him, deeply, when she broke up with him. He wouldn’t come looking for her. He probably hated her by now. The way he looked at her when she handed him the little necklace back. There were tears in his eyes then. He knew what it meant. He took the necklace from her hand, and flung it hard into the woods outside the school, looked at her crying face and whispered something she couldn’t hear or read on his lips. He leaned in and kissed her on the top of her head, turned and walked away from her, quickly, not once turning around. That was the last she saw him.
And when Riley came to see her, she knew that it was because of Brody, and she couldn’t bring herself to talk to him. Riley was just a sweet kid. She couldn’t tell him she had hurt his friend like that, so she slammed the door in his face, feeling ashamed of what she’d done to Brody, hoping someday he’d understand that she was just trying to protect him, trying to make him go, leave Waller, because she knew he wasn’t safe there anymore. Everyone knew that. But when she told him after they showed the feed at school that he had to run, had to leave Waller, he just shook his head at her. She knew he wouldn’t leave for as long as she was there, so she did the only thing she could to make him go. Nobody but her knew why she did it. So them taking her to Alliance now didn’t make any sense.
She curled up on the cot by the wall, hoping they would change their minds. Hoping something would happen in the few hours she had left that would make them let her go home. But nothing did happen, and at dawn, two Zoriner soldiers woke her up, and tied her hands with metal ties, and then put her on the flier, all without saying one word to her. The youngest of them — he looked just a few years older than she was — seemed embarrassed by what they were doing. She could see the shame in his face, and she almost felt bad for him.
The flier took off silently, as if running on nothing but air. She didn’t know how they worked, having never been on one before. She looked out through the triangle of the window as they flew over Waller and then the woods and the fields and some kind of empty looking land, with strangely colored hills on it, lavender hills on beige ground. It seemed unnatural for the ground and those hills to be that color. They flew over a stark blue bit of water after that. She couldn’t tell how fast they were going, so she had no idea how large the water was. And once they were over land again, she saw an enormous city in the distance, peaks of buildings visible over the walls of the fence, startlingly white. They flew lower now, and she knew that’s where they were taking her. She knew, too, that it was impossibly far from Waller. Too far for anyone without a flier to ever find her here, even Brody, if he ever wanted to find her again. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see any more of this place, not wanting to know what they would do to her.
Two Alliance women came up to her when they were on the ground and dismissed the soldiers with a nod. The flier took off silently. The women looked like twins, same light hair, falling in straight lines around their white faces, as if they’d never been outside. Same gray-blue eyes, Brody’s eyes, only without the suns in them, and without the kindness. They put a wide metal band around her wrists and walked her down a very empty street, with the impossibly tall white buildings on both sides, but no trees, no houses, and no kids or people of any kind. They walked for a long time, the women not saying anything to her. Finally, they stopped, and pushed her inside one of these big buildings that all looked alike to her, and shoved her towards the elevator. It shot up so fast, her throat dropped into her stomach. She had no idea how high up these things went. It didn’t matter. There was nothing she could do about that now. Nothing she could do about any of it.
An older woman with white hair greeted them at the elevator with a nod, and pointed at something ahead of them. “Take her to the cage. Leave the band on,” and she walked on quickly ahead of them, disappearing down the hallway. The cage sounded ominous, but she had already given up on trying to wrap her head around any of this. She knew they would needlessly keep her here for however long it took for them to learn that Brody wasn’t coming for her. That nobody was coming for her.
The cage was a glass box. The doors slid open and closed behind her, soundlessly. She looked around and her heart dropped. She was suspended at an insane height, looking down on tiny specks of people walking around below her, the box swaying lightly. She couldn’t not see how high up she was no matter where she looked, so she leaned on one of the walls, cautiously at first, but the wall was solid enough, and she closed her eyes for long enough to get her heart to stop pounding in her head. And when she could breathe normally again, she spotted a tiny cot along one of the walls, and a small sink with a toilet near it. There was nothing else. This was her home now.