by Mya Robarts
I steady my breath and add, calmly, “I pity you so much. Taking out your pain on the people who love you most. Or, should I say, on those who used to love you? You’re so broken, so pathetic. I pity you.”
My words hit him harder than my fists. I can tell he’s in agony as I leave. I drag Azalea straight to her room.
“Don’t say anything to Dad,” she says in a shaky voice.
Azzy is always so clever and strong that I sometimes forget she’s still a child who needs protection. The guilt that corrodes my veins forms a lump in my throat. My head bows, my shoulders hunch. How could I have failed to prevent this from happening? Damn! Maybe it’s because there was a sense of security when Aleksey was around. Besides, I thought the danger would come from the military staff. I hid the twins from them, but I didn’t see the need to protect my sister from a friend.
I slump next to Azalea on her cot and wait for her to say something.
She doesn’t.
“There were other Comanches around,” I say in the kindest tone I can muster. I don’t want her to think that what happened has anything to do with her. Why didn’t she scream?
Her green eyes are unfocused. “I … my mind went blank and I couldn’t move,” she says, her voice detached.
Dad has explained this to me. When someone attacks you, your instincts take over. One instinct commands us to fight. Another orders us to flee. But more often than not, our instincts tell our bodies to freeze.
“Starting tomorrow, you’ll train with the Comanches.”
Usually, she gives me a hard time about the physical education component of her homeschooling. This time, she doesn’t.
* * *
Rey clenches his fists and takes deep breaths as he strides around the small room. “I won’t let a monstrosity like this go unpunished.” He turns his eyes to the bibles that crowd his apartment. “And I swear to God I won’t let him harm anyone else. I’ll get help for him.”
“I know he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been attacked … I wish him well,” I lie. “I want him to recover, but I hate him. I—”
“I’ll never hate my brother, but he should have risen above the circumstances. It’s not like he didn’t have other options. I’m so sorry he hurt Azzy.”
“What now?”
“He needs treatment. Spiritual treatment. I’ll convince him to join the seminary. And—”
A loud knock startles us.
Rey opens the door to find Cara looking disgruntled. It’s evident she’s been crying. “Priest, it’s over. They …”
Rey’s eyes widen with confusion. “What?”
Cara wraps her arms around us. “The recruitment ceremony … they just announced … it’s still on.”
“No!” I pull my hair with both hands, hoping the pain will overcome my anguish. “They can’t! The ones who aren’t dead should be badly injured! They—don’t have a train!”
“Half of the soldiers survived. They’ve recovered already and will arrive in two days by helicopter. The ceremony is—”
I close my ears to her words, already knowing the cruel reality. Recruitment is not only still on. They’ve pushed the date ahead.
The day after tomorrow.
50
Broken Illusions
Weak candlelight illuminates the room. I look at my reflection in the cracked mirror. My outfit is the same one I once wore to seduce Rey: a button-up shirt over a tank top, a skirt, and tie-side underwear. It’s been weeks, and I’m different now. Only one thing hasn’t changed: I still dread what will happen tomorrow during the recruitment ceremony.
Tonight I’ll explore and get to know my body for the first time before the troops take control of it.
Closing my eyes, I lie on some old hospital mattresses and partially cover myself with Sara Jenkins’s bridal sheet. My hands slide slowly over my thighs, my hips, and my breasts, but the spark is missing. I pucker my lips. I yearn to be kissed, and I need to kiss him. If only these hands on my body were his hands.
I stop the touching. It’s pointless if he’s not here. His grunts, his ragged breathing, his erection pressing against my body. The heady sensation that I was the only girl in his life. It’s not practical to yearn for what I can’t have, but I can’t help it.
At that moment, someone touches my cheek. I sit up, startled.
Rey’s flushed face and leering stare tell me that he’s turned on. His voice has a breathy quality. “I kept calling you and you didn’t answer.”
I hastily cover myself with the sheet as though I weren’t still fully dressed underneath it. My family is spending the night at the clinic, so I thought that I was alone. I forgot that Rey has the key to my apartment. I try to get up, but he grabs my wrists.
Before I know what’s happening, he’s kissing me, forcing me against the mattress.
I push him forcefully. “Whatever you saw, I’m not needy.”
“That doesn’t make me want you less,” he says, climbing back to the mattress and hovering over me. “I want you to know that … I’m willing.”
“I told you, I’ll never marry you.”
“I’ve accepted that. I’ll take whatever part of you that you want to give me.” He presses his lips against my neck. “Let me make love to you. Now.”
I look at him in shock. “Why did you change your mind? Charity work, Rey? You don’t have to …”
He talks with emotion, his eyes brilliant. “No. I can’t think of a life without you.” His fingertips brush my cheeks. “I don’t have much in my life. No money, no future to offer a woman, but you … you’re one of the best gifts life has given me.”
I shake my head. “I was thinking of him when—”
“Don’t you have feelings for me, Lily?”
“I love you as a friend. You and I … it’d be so wrong … because there’s someone else … in your heart and—” I swallow. “—in mine.”
“But they’re not here.” His face reveals an internal battle. “They’re the past.” He sits me on his lap, and his arms encircle me. “You still want to lose your innocence before the troops come. Don’t you realize that I want to be with you in that way? In every way?”
“Rey, I have strong feelings for another man. I’ll leave Starville. I—”
“Then why don’t we not waste the limited time we have together?” he whispers in a deep voice. His lips brush my earlobe, sending a thrill throughout my body.
He takes off his shirt and places my hands on his shoulders. He presses his lips against my collarbone. From there, he places kisses all over my neck.
“If you want to, it would be only tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll be your friend again.”
His lips move urgently on my mouth. As his hands travel up and down my back, my mind repeats: The recruitment is tomorrow. This is your last chance.
But my lips refuse to cooperate.
Rey takes off my shirt, sliding his hands up and down between my waist and neck. His mouth is still ravishing mine. He pulls up my skirt, and it becomes a messy bunch of fabric surrounding my waist. I can’t think straight. This doesn’t feel right in my heart, but my body responds as if by reflex, and my mind keeps telling me that this can’t be worse than recruitment. Recruitment!
He is still all hands and lips when he lays my body on the mattress and removes my skirt.
I feel naked, although I’m still wearing a top and my underwear. I cover myself with the bridal sheet—the one that, by design, should allow him to enter me, but that won’t allow him to see my body.
In the blink of an eye, his body is over mine. “You want me to continue?”
His question provokes internal turmoil. This is war, and it’s not the time to hesitate. But my heart becomes an enemy working against me. I wish Aleksey were the one I could trust with my mind, body, and heart. I almost expect to see him burst through the door and interrupt us as he once did.
Rey’s beautiful face is sweaty, his breathing is ragged, and he can’t hide the look of hurt in his eyes at
my hesitation. I know it would shred him if I said no at this point. Unless … What if he’s the one who changes his mind? The thought scares me. This is my very last chance.
I order my heart to cooperate, and I put my arms around his neck, pulling him closer. Still covering my body with the bridal sheet, I untie my underwear and toss it to the floor. Shivering all over, I force my hips to express my consent.
Rey understands and positions his body between my legs.
* * *
I feel a strange sensation on my face, and I run my hand over my cheek. Moisture. I must have shed a tear or two.
Rey kisses my forehead. “Are you okay?”
I nod, although my heart feels heavy. The whole thing felt like an out-of-body experience. My body overrode my brain, and my hormones cooperated, but it was as though another girl was on this mattress, and I was watching the scene from another place. I barely remember how it was, except that physically I felt something close to relief. In my heart, I know this was a painful, bittersweet victory. I’m not emotionally satisfied. Not at all.
I run my fingers over my thighs and find some of his release.
I look down at the white bridal sheet and a strange compulsion to burn it runs through me. I settle for tossing it to the ground.
Why am I so irrationally upset? It’s absurd. I made a decision, and I shouldn’t second guess it. Perhaps it’s the events of the last few weeks that have left my feelings raw and exposed.
Later, Rey wraps me in his arms and falls asleep. I wonder if it’s normal to be thinking about someone else while I’m in the arms of another guy.
I cover my eyes with both hands, feeling a pang of sadness for the lovers Aleksey and I could have been. We both fought hard to share this moment together, and we failed. Those illusions are dead, irrevocably gone because I let the opportunity slip through my fingers.
I turn my back to Rey.
Knowing that, as much as I wish things were different, Aleksey will never come back makes me feel as though an iron hand is tearing my heart to pieces. He marched away thinking I feel nothing more than a girlish crush.
Of all moments, my traitorous heart had to choose this one—when I’m in bed, wrapped in a different set of arms—to realize that I’m in love for the first time. In love with a man who will never become what I need him to be: the first man who makes love to me.
His red cape, his half-smile, those strong arms that wrapped themselves around me when I had nightmares. The man who played a sweet melody on his bass to lull me to sleep. The one who told me he loved me without realizing it. All those memories of him come to my mind, accompanied by pangs of longing.
“I love you, Aleksey,” I whisper to my mental picture of him.
As much as I struggle to fight them, a few tears make their way down my cheeks. The sobs that I’m repressing are burning down my throat.
I inhale as deeply as I can, enjoying one last instant of regret. After I exhale I promise myself that these are the last tears I’ll ever shed for Aleksey Fürst.
That’s when I hear the helicopters.
The troops have arrived.
In warfare in ancient times, the spoils of war included the defeated populations, which were often enslaved, and the women and children, who were often absorbed into the victorious country’s population.
World Heritage Encyclopedia
51
Spoils of war
Naked and scared, I rub my intimate areas with a desensitizing cream before swallowing Dad’s pills. My father’s inventions—the cream and the anti-rape pills—are my only protection against what I’ll face today.
In an attempt to calm my nerves, I inhale and exhale deeply in Aunt Olga’s bathroom before I don the recruitment uniform: a tank top and white pants made of an almost translucent fabric that reveals my white underwear. My thigh wound is bleeding, and I’m struggling to keep the uniform clean. Today we’re not allowed to wear anything that isn’t white.
Dad must be at the university gym, but my siblings are waiting for me outside the bathroom. I open my arms, and the twins take the invitation to hug me. Olmo cries while Azalea buries her face in my shoulder. I’ll leave the twins in the care of Aunt Olga. Will I be the one who will pick them up after the ceremony? Or will Dad be forced to do so because I’ll have become a recruit?
“Come back to us,” says Azzy as she pulls back from my embrace.
Rey, dressed in the recruitment outfit, meets me in front of Olga’s. Together, we head to the gym.
When we pass through the gym doors, the sight makes my bile rise. Fifty stone benches are scattered around the wooden stage. They’ll hold the bodies of recruits while the soldiers attack them. The wooden stage is lit by a set of lamps suspended from a metallic structure above. Three soldiers in the middle rows are pointing moving lights toward the stage. The ceremony has the vibe of an inoffensive occasion: a music concert, a sporting event, or a graduation.
A huge crowd is already filling the rows when Rey and I line up with the other potential recruits. A section of the rows is left empty.
As they get their cameras ready, the new cops look old and fragile compared to their predecessors. One tired-looking cop is talking loudly enough for me to hear. “I looked it up on the wireless yesterday. Prince Aleksey is a world away from here.”
“Good! He would’ve made us face the soldiers,” answers a Mexican-accented voice.
Silence spreads throughout the crowd when Kit Lee-Rivers climbs the stage and welcomes the 36th Battalion.
Herds of soldiers meld into a single unit as the troops enter the gym through the east doors. TCR’s efforts have dwindled their numbers, but even so, there must be hundreds of them, marching in ultra-coordinated, perfect formations around the court. They’re human, but their tattooed faces, artificial heights, and inhuman build make them look demonic. They emanate a stench that burns my nostrils. At the order of their superiors, the soldiers cease their military choreography and become statuesque.
A claustrophobic sensation courses through me when the doors close. I shiver.
The leader of the 36th Battalion is Sergeant Landry, a red-haired soldier whose gray, tattooed skin shows recent scars from the derailment. He addresses the crowd without a microphone. “In accordance with the protocol established by sections seven to eighteen of the Twenty-first Amendment, before the recruitment ceremony begins, we welcome the enlistees to our glorious Army.”
The first enlistee, a ragged, scrawny girl, walks toward the stage like she is trying to force her feet forward. “I pledge my allegiance to the army of the Patriot States of America,” she exclaims.
The crowd, which has filled the gym rows, applauds halfheartedly.
Several people follow her example. Enlistees are people so poor that they say it is better to serve than to starve. Enlistees who please the troops earn a meager salary and Patriot citizenship. Some families would die if it weren’t for the contributions of their enlisted relatives. Recruits, on the other hand, end up as Vassals—unpaid visitants and, in the case of girls, baby carriers. The strongest boys enter as low-rank soldiers, those who will be on the front lines during battle.
Over the last few weeks, the number of registered enlistees has increased. The air raid left many Starvillers in a dire situation. One hundred and sixty people enlist. They climb down the stage and form a line backstage.
“Starvillers, this is your last chance to submit voluntarily and improve the living conditions of your families,” shouts Landry.
When no one else enlists, they divide us into groups according to our ages. Rey is about to join the twenty-one-year-old group when his eyes meet mine. “Take care,” he mouths.
Landry tells the rest of us to parade around the gym’s court. As we do so, the troops take a good look at us. I frown. They must be choosing their favorites. Some take videos with their j-devices. This makes my blood boil in fury.
I’m not an animal.
I’m not an object.
I’m not
a spoil of war.
Finally, they make us line up at the right side of the stage. They usually take thirteen recruits among unmarried boys and girls of each age group. Because they’re superstitious, the soldiers refuse to take more recruits from a group. They say it brings bad luck.
A murmur spreads through the crowd when a group of female soldiers enters the gym from the east doors. The Starvillers keep repeating, Witches, witches. These women are as tall as the male soldiers, though less muscular. They will determine the V-status of the potential recruits. They have brought digital polygraphs, even though they rarely use them. The troops are convinced that the witches need nothing more than to touch the arm of a recruit to determine his or her celibacy status. The witches join Landry on the stage.
The lights go out, and I cover my mouth to suppress a scream. The darkness lasts a couple of seconds. I can hear the collective breathing of the crowd surrounding us. A huge beam of light illuminates Landry’s massive figure.
“On August twenty-fifth of the twenty-first year of the Patriot States Era, in the name of the Minister of War, General Maximillian Kei, I declare the eleventh recruitment ceremony officially inaugurated at exactly 1400.”
52
G class recruits
The twenty-three-year-old group steps onto the stage as a monstrous-looking captain reads their names from a list. The lights make their white garments look almost transparent. Because most of them have marriage tattoos, it’s obvious that the four eligible women will be recruited. They are spinsters in a town where women outnumber men and bachelors are scarce. All of the recruits will be assigned to the G category. The lowest rank in the military.
Landry calls the first candidate from the group. “Ingrid Philomena Wisniewska.”
A blinding beam of light follows Ingrid as she approaches Landry with faltering steps.
Landry shouts, “You will join the Patriot army as a G-class recruit.” Ingrid’s face remains impassive, but I could swear that her legs are trembling.