He heard him before he saw him, heard a branch snap. He stood, waiting for the man to approach.
“You can tell me to go away if I’m intruding. I won’t get offended.”
There was something disarming in his face, something innocent almost, which didn’t make any kind of sense with the life he’s had. “How old are you, Lancer?”
The man smiled. “Twenty-eight tomorrow, and feeling every shade of ancient for it.”
Same age then. He’ll be twenty-six in a few months. They shouldn’t feel so old yet. None of them should. He slid down the tree, Lancer settling in front of him, picked up his thermos, took a small sip, and handed it to Lancer.
The man nodded and took a long swallow, looking at him curiously.
“It’s just sage. I always add a bit to my tea. It relaxes me, or at least that’s what I tell myself…. I can’t figure you out, soldier. I don’t think I’ve met anyone like you before, and it makes it hard for me. I don’t know how to talk to you, is what I’m saying. I see how you are with everybody, and I trust that. It’s just–” He shook his head, not finding the words.
The man was watching him, face serious. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything that I can.”
“Your parents, family?”
“Gone. A long time ago. I was twelve.”
“Gone how?”
“I was told Zoriners killed them. Downed the flier they were on and torched it, with everybody still in it. That’s all I know.”
“Where was home?”
“Stockton. Camp Copley after that.”
“Have you killed anyone, not counting this place?”
“Yes. Two rebel soldiers. I had to. They were young, Drake. Brody and Riley young, but I had to,” he said quietly and put his head down for a beat, but then looked up at him again, face calm, waiting.
“Do you have someone?”
The man shook his head. “That I can’t talk about, I am sorry.”
“At the lab when Brody went in, you played him. Why?”
“I am better trained than the rest of my men, and I could tell something was off. Brody would have tried to do the same thing. It’s just what you do when you are in charge.”
“Loren said you wouldn’t have talked, no matter what Brody did to you, not unless you wanted to. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Lancer dropped his eyes. “I’d rather not if it’s all right.”
He nodded, the man looking at him again.
“Why did you stay in that lab for so long after what happened here, Lancer? I never quite got that, feeling the way you did about it?”
“I was trying to protect my men. They have a nasty habit of nuking places like that lab if things go wrong.”
“There were seven of you in that lab from the old scans. What happened to him?”
“Killed himself when he saw the footage of what we did. Couldn’t take it. We made it look like an accident afterward.” He said it flatly as if discussing the weather.
“You didn’t like him very much, I gather–”
Lancer winced. “No, Drake. I loved him. He was the only friend I had in that lab, the only friend I’ve had in years.”
Drake stood, hoping he didn’t hurt this man by asking him any of this, and feeling that he had. Lancer got up, too. “I’m sorry, Lancer, I truly am.”
The man was watching him, a small smile on his face. “I know. It’s written all over you, but don’t be. You didn’t do any of it, and I don’t blame you for asking. You have the right to know whatever you need to know. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t trust me either,” he said and he wasn’t smiling anymore.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I trusted you since after the boys brought you back from that field. I just didn’t know what to make of you. I’m not sure I do now, but I know enough to not need to pry anymore. Thank you, for telling me.” He stuck out his hand. Lancer shook it and then turned away from him and walked back on the trail, not making any noise. So he broke that branch deliberately, not wanting to startle him.
“Hey, Lancer?”
The man turned, looking at him.
“I think I am ready to go back too if you don’t mind my company. I won’t talk, as likely as not.”
The man smiled. “Promise me something, Drake. Don’t think better or worse of me than I deserve. Everything else I can live with. I wouldn’t have told you anything I didn’t want to tell. I am very good at keeping secrets. Everybody in the S Squads is. It’s our most valuable skill.” There was no humor in his voice when he said it.
They walked in silence for a long while, lost in their own thoughts
Lancer stopped him right before the street with the tower was on, looking uncomfortable. “What you asked me before, about Brody, I am sorry for snapping at you like that, it’s just… I’ve been trying to get through to the kid for days now, trying to get him to stop being so bloody embarrassed in front of me. Every time he sees me, it’s like he wants me to hit him or lash out at him in some way, and maybe it would make it easier for him if I did that, but I can’t. I know why he did what he did. I wasn’t even angry at him then. I like the kid, that’s honest, but I am worried about him, and with what he just learned about his father, I don’t know what he’ll do if he ends up in the same room with that man. We have to make sure it doesn’t happen, but looking at him, I think he is going to try something. Anyway, that’s everything,” he said and walked on ahead of him, hands in his pockets, not looking back.
He believed him, everything that he told him adding up to a more complete picture of this stranger, enough to know how he was. Enough to know he would do right by these kids. That he’d do right by all of them.
13
Leverage
Riley, June 10, 2236, Reston
He thought it was somebody else—a stranger— when he saw it, but then the towel fell away from the man’s face, and Lancer’s gray eyes stared at him, angry.
“Don’t you ever bloody knock?”
He could still see his back in the mirror, and he couldn’t talk, couldn’t think of anything at all to say. He ran out the door, Lancer calling after him, but he ignored him. He had to tell Brody and Drake.
He took them out of the big room into the hallway, Loren following them.
“I don’t even know how to say it. Lancer… I walked in on him after his shower, and… I think he was tortured by somebody, tortured like I never imagined anybody could be. I don’t know how anyone could have survived it either,” he whispered, not wanting the girls to hear him.
Loren put a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t torture, Riley. It was training, and you need to let it go.”
He turned to walk away, but Brody stopped him. “Spill it, Loren. Whatever it is you know that you are not telling.”
Loren just shook his head, his face flushed.
“Loren, I mean it. Talk,” Brody snapped and gripped Loren by the arm, not letting him leave.
Loren shook his head again, looking at Brody, not talking.
Riley could see anger on Brody’s face.
“I need you to tell me what you know, soldier. That’s an order.”
“It isn’t mine to tell, Brody. I can’t.”
“Put your hands behind your back.”
He did, and Brody snapped a tie around his wrists, shoved him into the comm room, and pushed him roughly into a chair. “We’re supposed to go to Crylo tomorrow and my own crew is keeping secrets from me. What are you protecting? Bloody answer me!” Brody screamed into Loren’s face, holding him by the neck.
“You need to let him go.” Lancer’s quiet voice reached him from the door. Riley didn’t even hear him come in. Lancer had a black thermal on and pants, but his weapons belt was missing, and his hair still wet.
“I can’t do that, Lancer. He is my crew and he is keeping secrets from me. Secrets about you, and being that you’re one of us now, whatever it is he isn’t telling me, whatever it is that�
�s important enough for him to hide, makes me uncomfortable with both of you, which means one of you is going to tell me what it is, so I know what I am dealing with.”
At least he wasn’t holding Loren by the neck anymore.
Lancer took a few steps to Brody, looking at him. “All right, Brody. I’ll tell you,” he said in a strained voice
Loren was shaking his head, telling him not to do it, to please not do it, and he had a feeling Loren had a good reason for it, that he was protecting Lancer from something he really needed to be protected from.
“Brody, let it go, please. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I told you. Please, just let it go,” he said, glancing over at Drake, hoping for a bit of help from him, but the giant was leaning on the wall, keeping his head down.
“Shut up, Riley.” Brody didn’t even look at him, still watching Lancer.
Loren put his head down, not saying anything anymore.
Lancer walked over to him and lifted him up from the chair. “Riley, free his hands for me, please, so he can leave.”
“You don’t get to do that, Maxton. He is my crew, and he is not yet free to go,” Brody hissed.
Loren slumped back in the chair, looking very much afraid.
“I’m really sorry for this, Loren,” Lancer said softly and then walked over to the door and locked it.
Riley watched him slowly walk to the window, and he could see the tension on him and felt every kind of guilty for all of this.
Lancer took a deep, loud breath and faced them. “All right. But it doesn’t leave this room. Ever.”
Brody nodded.
Lancer cursed under his breath, turned around and pulled his shirt off, flinging it on the windowsill, and stood unmoving, hands in fists at his sides.
Riley looked away.
“What, exactly, do you need to know, Brody?” Lancer’s voice taut as a wire reached him and he looked at Brody then.
Brody was staring at the man’s back, looking every shade of embarrassed, not saying anything. Lancer waited, not moving. He looked eerily calm, except he was breathing much too fast for that.
“Who did this?” Brody finally asked in a shaky whisper.
“Alliance. Next.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. They needed to know that I could keep their secrets if I had to.” He turned around, hands behind his back, eyes on Brody’s.
“It doesn’t make any sense, Lancer. Zoriners don’t torture people like that. Who would you have to keep their secrets from?”
“I can’t tell you that. I wasn’t given that information.”
“How did you stand it? I don’t see how anyone could….” Brody’s hands were in fists, his eyes down. He looked angry and ashamed and was likely regretting every moment of this.
“I couldn’t afford not to.”
“You could have died… looking at it, you should have,” Brody said.
Lancer walked over to the table, everyone looking at him, and took a screen from his pocket, flicking it on. He looked at whatever was on it for a few seconds, his face hard, and threw it on the table. An image of a little Zoriner kid with strange gray eyes was looking back at them, his face serious, and looking very much like Lancer’s, if it weren’t for him being so much darker.
Lancer was watching them, waiting, but nobody said anything. “His name is Telan. He is seven now, but a bit younger when this was taken. He is my son. A few years ago the HQ seniors decided they needed leverage over those of us who’d be in charge of the S Squads, something that went well beyond fear of any kind of pain or death. He was mine.” He leaned over and picked up the screen and put it back in his pocket, walked to the window and pulled his shirt back on, and finally faced them again.
“I know what you are thinking, Brody, but you’re wrong. I don’t exist. Not an ounce of my DNA or any other record. Telan isn’t connected to me, as I’m sure you already know, given that Loren went through everything he could find on me. I had to give him up. For good. That was the trade-off. So even if I am captured, all of you are safe. They don’t have anything on me anymore. Not anything that would get me to talk. Are we done here?”
Brody just nodded, not looking at Lancer.
Lancer walked over to Loren, picked him up by his arm without asking, and walked out of the room with him, not saying anything to anybody, Drake following after them.
“I am sorry, Riley… I truly am.” Brody was pacing, hands running through his hair, putting him on edge. “I tortured that bloody kid in front of him. I can’t imagine what he was feeling.”
He didn’t know what to say. He just wished he bloody knocked. “I need to get some air, Brody,” he whispered and he left him, needing to get away from his pacing, from the ashamed look on his face.
He walked into the woods not thinking of any specific place, walking straight ahead on the closest trail, trying to get his mind to stop racing, trying to un-see what he saw. It was breezy out, and the noise all the trees were making helped get his mind off Lancer for a while until he ran right into him at the first clearing he turned into.
“I swear I wasn’t following you, Lancer. I just needed some air.” He turned away from him, embarrassed.
He felt Lancer’s hand on his shoulder. “I am not angry at you, Riley. I just wish you knocked, is all.”
“That makes two of us.”
He followed him into the clearing and saw Loren sitting by the fledgling fire, looking at the flames. He didn’t look up at him, didn’t say anything, either.
He sat next to him and after a while, couldn’t help but ask, “You knew about this, didn’t you?”
A nod.
“About the kid, too?”
Another nod.
“You think Brody would have used a little kid against him? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Loren shook his head and looked at him. “I didn’t know it was a kid. I just knew they had somebody over him to do what they did. But no, I didn’t think Brody would have done that. I just didn’t want Lancer to have to go through what he just went through in the comm room. Nobody should have to, is all.” He put his head down again.
Lancer stood on the other side of the fire, hands behind his back. “What Loren isn’t telling you because, in a way, he is right, is that he went through what I went through, so it’s personal for him…. Tell me if I am wrong, Loren.”
Loren shook his head.
Not wrong then. But it didn’t make any sense. Loren has been with Brody for two years, and he was still a kid.
Lancer must have read it in his face. “A soldier is an adult at fourteen, Riley. They can execute you at that age, so they can do everything else too.”
Loren put his head in his hands, not looking at anything now, and he didn’t know what to say to him, except he knew that he couldn’t tell Brody about this, couldn’t tell anybody, so he told him that and got up.
Lancer was still standing in the same spot, watching him.
“I am really sorry about this, Lancer, I truly am.” He turned away from him to the trail to Reston.
Lancer grabbed his shoulders, stopping him. He didn’t even hear him move. “You need to find a way of making Brody okay with it…. This really hurt him. I could see it all over him, and if we are to have any chance of making it, I need him to be okay with me.”
He faced him, looking up at the serious gray eyes, not knowing what to say, so he just nodded and ran back, ran as fast as he could, his lungs hurting from all the air by the time he got to the tower.
Brody was still in the comm room, staring out the window.
“Can I come in, Brody?”
A nod.
He pulled the door closed behind him and waited silently until Brody finally turned around and looked at him, and he could tell from the way his face was that he really was hurting.
“You didn’t know. You didn’t know anything about him back then. This doesn’t change anything.” He could see the strain around his eyes, and his
face was flushed.
“I need to ask you something, and you have to promise me that you’ll be honest with me.”
He nodded, fear making his stomach clench.
“Am I like them? Like your father… like Hassinger?”
He stared at him silently, surprised.
“Bloody answer me!”
He took a step toward him, but Brody moved away, hands out in front of him, warding him off.
“No, Brody, you’re not. But it doesn’t matter what I think. I can see that you think you are, and I can’t change that. I wish I could.” He turned away.
Brody’s voice stopped him at the door: “You said I reminded you of him, back on the roof…. Were you lying then or are you lying now?”
He faced him, feeling angry at him, angry for bringing it up and for always thinking the worst of himself. “I was pissed at you then. I said it to hurt you. You embarrassed me, and I hated you for it. I’m sorry for that, Brody, but no, you’re not like them,” he said and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him harder than he meant to.
He needed to talk to Drake or at least steal a hug from him. He found him after a while in the little kitchen hovering over something round on a big plate, something he couldn’t immediately place, but then he had it—a cake. Somehow Drake made a bloody cake. He hadn’t seen one of these since he was a little kid, back when they could still trade for enough sugar and flour for his mom to make it on his birthdays.
Drake smiled at him. “It’s Lancer’s birthday today, only nobody but me knows about it. I had Stan find me all the stuff I needed to make this. I don’t think that man has had a birthday in too many years, and it seemed right to do this, you know? A little something for all of us to maybe not feel so damn broken.”
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 44