And finally, she was angry. Angry at Brody for looking like these people, angry at her own people for bringing her here, for giving her up like that, and angry at herself for not fighting while she still had a chance to fight, even if it ended up with her dead. She would fight now, would have to. Maybe get one of these sunless people angry enough at her to just shoot her with those buzzing weapons they all had. Anything to get out of this glass cage, before she went crazy. Before she became angry at herself for falling in love with a boy who wasn’t one of them.
L
EASHED
Brody
[
May 6, 2236 Woods Outside of Reston
]
He hoped that Riley would be smart enough to know there could be soldiers there that simply had their regular comms off. Hoped this kid, the smartest person he knew, would choose something other than a straight line to get to where they were going. The boys he was teaching here were better trained than they looked, and there were 20 of them. If his crew ran into Riley’s group on their own, it would be over. Nothing he could do to protect his friend and still get his hands on one of the replenishers, and that he had no choice about. He heard him before he saw him, his little-kid-excited voice calling his name, his old name, screaming it at the top of his lungs. Not so smart then.
He had seen Alliance soldiers humiliate Zoriners they caught so many times, he knew what he had to do as if he’d done it himself before. He had to convince his crew that he was in charge and get rid of them. He had to do this, hopefully, without killing Riley. But when he obstinately refused to kneel, he wasn’t so sure he could keep him alive. At last his crew was gone, all but Anders. He didn’t care for Anders, that’s why he picked him. The kid was a bully. He’d have to find a way to deal with him.
He had the replenisher tied up at a tree, only he wished it wasn’t the one who apparently liked Riley, the way she ran to him, but he couldn’t do anything about it after she did that. If he’d known about her and Riley upfront, he would have found a way to take the other girl, but it was too late now. This had to look believable to his crew. If Riley just got down on his damn knees when he told him to, this girl would have had a fifty-fifty chance. Now she didn’t. He was half mad at Riley for this, but it wasn’t his fault. He should have known that kid had too much pride in him, only he knew it wasn’t just pride. They had too much history. He didn’t think he’d kneel if he were in Riley’s place either.
He had to make sure it was just the four of them. He could find a way to manage this, so that he got Trina back and didn’t have to kill Riley to do it. The girl eyeing him from the tree, he felt bad for her, but he knew they wouldn’t hurt her. Just make her do what they raised her to do, in comfort. She’d make babies with the unbroken genes for the Alliance. She’d never have to worry about anything for the rest of her life. It wasn’t so bad. They pampered these untouchable girls as if they were queens. In a way, he thought, they were. She would never spend a day in a tiny glass box. He knew that much.
He was digging through the pile of screens his boys found on Riley’s group, and saw Drake’s name popup on Ella’s over and over again. Recent too. So Drake was somewhere around here. He remembered Drake, the soft-hearted giant, remembered him well. Rumor had it Drake was a guard at one of the compounds. It made sense for him to be with this group then, but it surprised him that Hassinger didn’t mention him. Drake probably arranged their escape in the first place. He didn’t think Drake would kill him, that he could kill anybody; just didn’t have it in him. And he knew Drake always had a soft spot for Riley, and not just because he was always in love with Ella. He had to get him to come out of hiding. Had to contain him somehow. He had to make him believe Riley would die if he didn’t. There was no other way.
It was hard for him to throw the first punch at Riley, to see all the air go out of him like that, and his eyes looking at him, more hurt than in pain. He knew Riley would have never done what he was doing, no matter what, and it made him angry that he knew it with such certainty. In the same way it made him angry at Riley for not walking away from him when he needed him to, when everyone else in Waller had. For trying to comfort him after all the things he just heard Max say about his kind, calling them animals. It couldn’t have not hurt him, hearing it from Max, and yet there he was still, trying to make him, the bloody offspring, feel better. He never got over asking him if he’d walk away, trying to make him angry at him for asking, and the way he looked at him then.
He should have done the rest of it himself, the beating, knowing that Anders actually enjoyed hurting people, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not to Riley. So he let this boy hurt his best friend, because he was too much of a coward to do it himself. Riley was looking at him, not Anders, not making any noise, just taking it. He heard something break in him, and it scared him, and he had to turn away from it, hoping Drake didn’t take much longer.
He watched the face of the girl. She wasn’t screaming anymore, but pleading, quietly, her face wet. She was watching him, her eyes much too big for her face, and suddenly she looked surprised. He hoped Anders didn’t kill Riley. He spun around and for some reason couldn’t see him clearly enough, his vision going dark. He registered the swaying form of Drake hovering over him, pointing something at him, and hit the ground.
He woke up to Drake pouring tea into his mouth and making him swallow it. It tasted of some kind of herb he didn’t recognize. He hoped it was poisonous, remembering how Riley looked when Anders pummeled him at that tree, and the girl screaming, but Riley just taking it, looking at him, looking right at him until he finally couldn’t take it anymore and turned away from him.
He coughed and spat some of the liquid out, and sat up. Drake grabbed him roughly by his shirt and yanked him upright, and as soon as he was standing, slapped him hard on the face with his gigantic hand, making his ears ring.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Brody? How could you? You, of all people? Your best friend in the whole world, you son of a bitch. I hope he does to you what you had done to him when he wakes up, or worse. I’d shoot you right now if I could, Brody, I swear I would, and I’ve never shot anybody, before that animal you brought here, and even that was an accident. The damn dial must have moved to lethal in my backpack. So in a way, you are lucky I didn’t shoot you first,” he was shaking him roughly, screaming the words at him. He’d never heard Drake scream at anyone before, and then his voice went all quiet, “a part of me wishes I had, Brody, wishes I killed you, instead of that other kid, if only so Riley never had to look at you again.”
He looked down, hoping again that whatever was in that thermos would kill him, “I wish you had too, Drake.”
Drake looked at him strangely at that, as if trying to make sense of it.
“Put your hands behind your back, Brody.”
He did, and he felt Drake put a metal tie around his wrists, pulling it tighter than he needed to, tight enough to hurt even when he wasn’t moving his hands. He let him push him over to a tree, and sit him against it, and then wrap long straps around his whole body so he could barely breathe. He didn’t mind any of it. Drake was right to be furious with him. They all were. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, not wanting to see the anger and disgust on Drake’s face.
He must have dozed off again. He felt Drake shaking him awake, not too gently, and then pulling him up, and marching him towards the fire. He hoped Riley would just shoot him. There wasn’t anything he could do about Trina now. Maybe they would let her go anyway, after they learned that he died trying to capture one of the replenishers. He didn’t know if they would, hadn’t thought of it like that before. Maybe that would be enough. His crew would eventually stop with the holding pattern and get the other one safely to one of those compounds they kept them in. That ought to count for something with the Alliance. Only he couldn’t tell his crew what his plan was, or why he was hunting this group through the woods for all these days. They didn’t know anything about Trina and the deal he made with Hassinger.
He saw the bandages around Riley’s chest and the bruises on his face long before Drake dropped him to his knees in front of him. And then the girl needing to help him up, him swaying like that, he knew how badly Anders hurt him, only it wasn’t really Anders. It was him that did it with someone else’s hands. But he was still glad Anders was dead now, or he’d try to kill him himself. He didn’t understand at first why Riley had Drake and the girl leave like that, and why he was now handing him the gun, asking him to shoot him. It didn’t make any sense for the longest time. And then it did. Riley really thought he wanted him dead. And he couldn’t blame him for thinking it after the way he was with him. Riley, too, was making a deal for the people he loved, his life for Ella’s and the other girl.
And he wished he could do this for him, keep everyone safe, and suddenly, he had the makings of a plan in his head that wasn’t there just a moment before. He just had to get Riley angry enough at him to pull the trigger. Ella and the other girl were his only leverage now. He could trade on that for Trina’s life. He couldn’t think of a single reason for them to hold her if he were gone… He just hoped he could get Riley to do what he needed him to do. So when they got to the cave, he told him that he really wished him dead, and he could tell from the way he looked at him that he believed him.
Only he didn’t, in a million years, expect him to still volunteer to let him kill him on the off chance they got the girls back. It didn’t make sense. He was doing this for him, and it hurt worse than anything to shake his hand after that, and him putting the blanket down for him was too much. It made him feel every kind of wrong just looking at it. He couldn’t sleep anyway, not now, not after what he did to his friend. So he sat there for the longest time, with his eyes closed, trying to find just the right things to say to make it easy for him to pull the trigger.
He knew asking Riley to do this was the worst kind of thing to ask of anybody, and that he’d fight him on it, even if he did truly hate him for what he had done today and for what he was about to tell him. But short of trying to steal this girl he seemed in love with from him, he couldn’t think of anything else to do, and he couldn’t do that to him. Couldn’t live with himself. So this last play he had left, that’s all he could do… That he could live with. He got up, and walked over to where Riley was lying on his blanket. He was on his back, eyes closed, but he didn’t think he was asleep yet. He was breathing too fast for that.
“Riley, we need to talk. I’m sorry to wake you, but we have to,” he said softly, not to scare him.
“All right, but we’ll have to do it outside. I’ll grab us a ray.”
He watched him go through his bag looking for a wide enough ray for them, and suddenly, he wanted a bit more time alone, time with his thoughts without Riley or Trina in them, so he walked outside the cave to the little clearing, surrounded by birch trees. He has always loved these slender trunks with their strange spots. He sat down, leaning against one of the larger ones, and waited, smelling the delicate, barely there sweetness of birch sap.
Riley’s ray caught him full in the face, making him shut his eyes for a few seconds to get rid of the red spots behind his eyelids. He watched him slowly sit on the grass across from him, still obviously in pain. Watched him stick the ray into the soil at an angle, so now the light was pointing up and to the side, enough to clearly show his bruised face. He was glad he put a shirt on, so he didn’t have to see anything else he’d done to him.
“Still don’t want to hit me? This might be your last chance… I really wish you would. It would make it infinitely easier for me to tell you what I need to tell you.”
“I am not going to hit you, Brody. Spit it out!” Riley hissed, looking at him with contempt.
That he could live with. He knew it would turn into full blown hatred in a few minutes anyway, so he nodded, closed his eyes, and told him everything he knew how to tell. Told him that Zoriners took Trina to try to get to him, and that they turned her over to the Alliance, when they didn’t get what they wanted out of her. Zoriners wanted to know if Brody was a spy. He had no idea what the Alliance wanted with her or with him, for that matter. He told him how he didn’t know about what happened to Trina for a long time, until one day he saw an image of her suspended in some glass box on his screen, with a caption: Waller, #31.
And how he spent all his time from then on trying to find her, and finally how he learned that she was at Crylo, on the other side of the continent, not any place he could get to on foot, ever.
He told him briefly about joining the soldiers’ unit after all of that under a fake name, hoping he’d either end up learning something useful or dead, and how they were thrilled to have him because he told them he had inherent knowledge of how Zoriners were, having lived with them for so long. And that finally, they put him in charge of teaching younger boys wilderness survival tactics, because he was good at it. He knew that Riley was looking for Ella, kept tabs on him by any means he could, just to know he was safe, and then finally, he told him that he got a comm call on the emergency channel about an escaped group from the compound outside Carthage, the one closest to Waller, and he knew that Riley was involved, could tell from the way the woman, Hassinger, described him.
He had to tell him about the deal he made, what she promised him, so he did, “She must have done research on me and found out who I really was, Riley. She knew about Trina; I don’t know how, but she did… She told me that I would get her back, unharmed, in exchange for one of the replenishers. She was sure, somehow, that the other girl would follow, and it was unreasonable for her to ask me to get them both. I had to keep it all quiet and do it alone, without my crew, so nobody knew that she lost the replenishers in the first place.