For weeks now she waited for him to do more than hug her to him in bed, but the few kisses they shared always ended in him pulling away from her, gently, looking serious and sad, as if it hurt him to do it, and then she could feel him watching her sleep for a long time every night, and she let him, pretending to be asleep sooner than she was, hoping he’d tell her whatever secrets he was keeping from her, secrets that made him not want to go beyond an occasional kiss and a hug, but he never did, and she was too afraid to ask.
She put her hands on his chest and he stilled, but she was done worrying about scaring him now. She reached up and kissed him, wrapping her hands around his face, wet and soft. She trailed her fingers down his neck, tracing the lines she had just shaved, and he was breathing faster but his hands were wrapped around the edge of the counter again, not touching her.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t like me anymore, Riley,” she whispered, watching his face go hard.
He shook his head at her. “You’ve no idea, Ams,” his voice so quiet, soft. “I won’t survive today if we do this, Ams. I won’t be able to let you go to set off the explosives. I won’t be able to let you out of my sight. I am sorry, Ams.”
And she knew what it was then, this fear in his face. “We are going to come back from this, Riley. I can feel it. Now, would you please kiss me back? I want something nice to hold on to when I am blowing things up.” She lifted her face up and leaned in, closing her eyes, and suddenly she felt his hands on her face, squeezing it, holding it as if he thought she’d run and there was nothing soft about the kiss that followed. She couldn’t get any air in, couldn’t move, couldn’t think of anything but his hands and lips on her, making her feel hot everywhere, too hot. She looked at him and his eyes were large and shining as if he were about to cry.
He pulled away, eyes roaming over her face, drinking her in. “I love you, Ams. I am begging you not to get yourself killed today. I don’t think I could survive it.” He let her face go and put his head down.
Everybody was ready to go by noon. She sat next to Riley in the flier, her dress making her uncomfortable. Nobody was talking when they took off, all lost to their own thoughts. She looked out the window, marking the changes in the landscape below them in her head as if she’d have to retrace this journey on foot. She gasped when all the woods and fields abruptly ended and they were suddenly flying over something that looked like it didn’t belong here, plains of dusty beiges with no trees on them at all, punctuated by an occasional tiny purple or pink hill. It was the most incredible thing she’d ever seen, and finally, her implant told her they were flying over something called a desert. It seemed so desolate and yet something about the colors of it and the soft wavy patterns in the way the sand was, as if constantly in motion, made it feel oddly appealing to her. She wanted to reach down and hug the purple hills, feel the softness of them under her body.
She wrapped her fingers tightly around Riley’s hand, pointing out the window, making him look at it. “I think I want to go back there someday, Riley. I want to walk on that.”
He smiled softly at her and nodded, just once. “Okay, Ams.”
She heard Brody telling the boys to put the shields up, and knew they must be getting close now, only she couldn’t yet see anything that would look like a city of any kind, and then suddenly it was right there in front of her as if appearing out of the haze by magic. Gleaming white towers shimmering in the heat, disappearing into the bright blue of the sky. So many towers, all looking exactly the same, clean and straight and slender, their whiteness interrupted only by the large dark windows and shiny metal roofs. And she could see the impossibly tall walls stretching around the city, curving away from view. They were aiming for a small ravine inside the walls, the one place they could hide the flier here, and she hoped their shields were good enough. This place was far too out in the open. She could see little dots of people moving along the symmetrical streets, black and white dots. She assumed the white ones were women, and she hoped Stan made their dresses exactly right. She caught Riley looking at her, concern in his face, and she realized she’d been making fists with her hands, so she uncurled her fingers and smiled at him apologetically. “I’ll be okay, Riley, I promise. I just wish there were trees here.”
She stuck her hand into the slit Stan cut in the folds of her dress to make sure the little pouch of explosives was still there in the hidden pocket, and it was, and it helped calm her nerves some. She looked around at the rest of them, catching Laurel’s eyes on her, and smiled meekly at her friend, feeling the apprehension in her, hoping they could both do what they had to do. Brody came out from the cabin and stood in front of them, not saying anything for a little while, as if trying to find just the right words.
“So… here we are. The trek to the block we need should take me and the girls twenty minutes at the most. Loren will drop the flier on the roof of 214 on my cue and drop off Lancer and Trelix, and bring it back here. We can’t hide the flier on the roof for more than a few minutes without risking it. So we’ll have to move the flier to 112 when they have everybody collected. Provided there is no resistance in the lab, getting the girls should take ten to twelve minutes. I need everyone to put in their coms and test with each person on your team. The explosions should provide enough of a distraction for a half-hour, which is more time than we should need, even if something doesn’t work out exactly as we anticipated. Stan is in charge of dealing with all comm traffic. Lastly, and I really wish I didn’t have to say this part, but as discussed, if any one of us gets in trouble, the rest of you will stick to the plan and get those girls out of here. That’s what we are here for. We will not risk the lives of these twenty-two girls to save any one of us.”
Everyone nodded at Brody and then the blue light came on overhead, and she knew they had landed. She suddenly wished they had more time to prepare for this. A day or two more at least. She looked over at Riley and he seemed calm. She wished he could go with her and Laurel instead of Brody, but of course, looking the way he did, he couldn’t. She would have to leave him in the flier with Ella and Drake and Stan. Laurel and Brody were off the flier already when she got up, Riley standing now too. He took her hands in his softly and looked at her for a long moment and then smiled a small embarrassed smile at her. “Try not to die, Ams.”
Brody led them at a brisk pace up the side of the ravine and into one of the narrow streets leading into the city center. He was walking just a few steps ahead of them, and she desperately wanted to hold on to Laurel’s hand, but she couldn’t do that here. The few people on this street didn’t pay any attention to them, and she knew Stan did a great job on their dresses, and on Brody’s uniform. They looked just like everybody else here, and she forced herself to breathe deeply and run through the plan in her head over and over again, only her mind kept drawing pictures of Riley from earlier, his head tilted back, fear in his eyes, and the desperate way he kissed her afterward as if he couldn’t get close enough to her.
She shook her head, trying to clear it, Brody’s voice sounding alarmed in her ear: “You okay, Ams?”
“Okay, Brody,” she whispered back.
They turned into the main street that the lab building was on. There were a lot more people here, and Ams hoped they still looked the part. A young man winked at her from across the street and she blushed, not quite knowing what the expected reaction to something like that was, so she ignored him and kept walking, eyes straight ahead. That’s what she did wrong, she knew now. She needed to stop looking around as if she’d never been here before.
Brody’s voice cut into her thoughts through the comm: “Second building away from us, we are stopping. I’ll be ten steps away from you, but don’t watch me. Drop the packages into the collectors on the sides of the door and keep walking until I tell you to stop.”
She put her hand inside the slit of her dress, wrapping her fingers around the small pouch and pulling it closer to the surface. She looked over at Laurel, her face set, s
erious, and whispered, “You get the one closest to us.”
She felt Laurel slow down and took a few more steps toward her bin. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to her. Her hand was sweating inside the fold of the dress, fingers clenched tightly around the seam of the pouch. She was at the bin now, passing it, but the pouch was stuck in the fabric. She stopped, pulling on it, afraid she would rip the dress if she pulled any harder. She felt panicky and forced herself to breathe, her fingers tracing the outline of the pouch inside the dress and finding the damn thread that was holding it captive. Finally, it was in the bin and she picked up her pace, searching the sea of people in front of her for the familiar shape of Laurel, only she couldn’t see her anywhere. She kept walking, not wanting to use her comm with so many people around her, and finally, Brody’s voice told her to turn right at the next street.
She did, and after a few minutes of walking she could see Laurel and Brody standing under an awning to some store, waiting for her, and she smiled at them, couldn’t help but smile, regretting it immediately as Brody’s voice chided her, an angry whisper: “Don’t do that, Ams. Not yet.” Brody’s dark-clad form separated from the wall, Laurel following a few steps behind. She caught up to her, not saying anything, just walking, looking straight ahead. The street came to an abrupt stop, and Brody turned into a small courtyard between two short buildings. They were finally alone.
“I can’t go any farther or I’ll be out of range to detonate. I want you and Laurel to go back to the flier. I know we didn’t discuss this earlier, but I don’t know what’s going to happen once these things go off. You’ll be safer on your own.”
Laurel shook her head. “I am staying, Brody. I am not going anywhere.”
Brody’s face tensed up. “You promised me you’d do what I say, Laurel. You need to do that now. You can be angry at me after this is over, I don’t care. Right now, you and Ams are going to get on that street, turn left and go back to the flier.” His voice was barely above a whisper, but she could feel the anger in it, the anger he was trying hard to control.
She walked up to Laurel and took her by the hand. “We are going, Brody, all right? We are going,” she said and Laurel let her lead her away from him without a word, not looking at him either.
Maybe it was better that way, both of them angry at each other, angry enough to want to keep fighting later. And she understood why Riley has barely touched her in weeks leading up to this day, what he was trying to spare her from.
They found their way back to the narrow street easily enough and they were almost at the end of it when she heard the booms of the explosions. It sounded quieter than she thought it would, like one of those old school guns when they shot them back in the clearing at Reston. She picked up the pace, hoping they’d make it to the flier without anyone realizing they had something to do with the commotion far behind them, and hoping for Laurel’s sake that Brody was safe, following them, that he’d show up at the flier a few minutes after them and Laurel wouldn’t look like she was about to cry anymore.
Riley met them at the door of the shielded flier. She wouldn’t have seen it if it wasn’t for him standing there smiling widely at them from the opening, and she ran to him, forgetting all about Laurel for a moment, forgetting about the streams of smoke breaking the shimmer in the haze behind them, letting him cradle her in his arms and finally relaxing the hands she’d been clenching. Drake and Ella hugged them, full of smiles, but she could sense the apprehension in Drake’s face, could see the question in his eyes that he didn’t want to ask.
“He didn’t want to risk us with the things going off so close, Drake. He should be right behind us,” she said as calmly as she could, and then Stan came out from the cabin, his face without any smiles on it and she knew that Brody did something stupid, could sense it. Brody wasn’t trying to keep them safe, he needed them gone so he could do what he must have planned on doing all along. And she hoped Lancer could protect him, could keep him safe.
She went into the cabin, Stan following her.
“Is he at the lab?”
A nod.
“Is he on comm?”
Stan dropped his eyes. “No, Ams. He clicked it off as soon as he got into that building. I can’t track him. He is on his own. I am sorry, Ams.” And he looked sorry when he said it.
And not for the first time she wished they never met that boy, and Laurel wouldn’t be standing behind her now with tears in her eyes, trying her best not to cry, and Riley wouldn’t look like it was hurting him to breathe.
She was hugging Laurel when the comm in the flier clicked on: “I have the girls. I need you guys on that roof in four minutes.” Lancer’s voice, calm, too calm.
She didn’t trust that. Loren already had them up in the air, heading to the short building they were supposed to pick them all up from. She could hear the sound of gunshots even before they landed. Riley and Drake had their guns drawn, standing at the door, waiting, and then she saw them, the girls sliding down the rope toward the roof, most of them screaming. She spotted Trelix, gun drawn, pointing backward, and suddenly she could see soldiers running after them, could hear them screaming commands at each other. Somehow they must have lost access to their comms then. Her eyes were searching wildly for Brody and Lancer, but she didn’t see them anywhere. As she watched, the girls kept landing on the roof, and Drake was ushering them into the flier, and she was grabbing them by their hands, without thinking about it, dragging them in, urging them to go faster and faster.
There were only a few left, and she finally saw Brody and Lancer, their backs to the flier, shooting at a quickly increasing line of soldiers behind them, and then Lancer dragging Brody, running, and Drake and Riley were out of the flier, shielding Brody and Lancer, spraying bullets into the line of soldiers, making holes in the dark uniforms, blood spreading through the soldiers’ fingers as they tried to cover the holes with their hands.
She was staring at the face of a young man, Riley young, the look of surprise on it as if he couldn’t understand what had happened to him. He staggered forward, his hand collecting so much blood on his chest, questions in his eyes, so many questions. Somebody’s hands pulled her deeper inside the flier, and she couldn’t figure out why or what was happening anymore. She didn’t know where anybody was. All she could see was that Drake was still out there for some reason, facing all the soldiers, only they weren’t shooting at him now, and she couldn’t figure out why, and he was moving away from the flier, not toward it. Riley was screaming at him, telling him to just get in there, only Drake was shaking his head, and screaming back that they had to take off right now, and then telling Trelix to do what he bloody promised.
And she could hear Ella sobbing and everyone else screaming when Trelix stepped to the door and punched something into the code panel, and suddenly, the glass door slid shut, leaving Drake out there, cut off from them, from the flier, and she saw Drake get on his knees, and he had something in his hand that he was holding up, and she knew then why the soldiers weren’t shooting at him.
She finally registered loud voices next to her, Riley and Lancer, screaming at Trelix to open the bloody door, threatening him. Trelix just stood there, not moving, with his back to the door, to Drake, shaking his head and talking calmly to Loren on his comm.
“How much time do you need to get us up? Count me down, Loren.”
And they could all hear Loren now, voice strained, counting the seconds they needed to take off.
Trelix looked directly at Riley finally speaking, slowly, quietly: “We lost the shields and one of the reactors. We are on aux power. I am sorry, guys. Drake is wired and it’s keeping them from shooting at us. There is nothing else we can do.”
Riley walked right up to Trelix and put his gun to the kid’s forehead. “Open the door. We are NOT leaving Drake to die out there like this.” His voice was deathly quiet, full of rage quiet.
Trelix stood still, looking at him, unblinking. “No.”
Riley’s hand shoo
k, Trelix holding his in fists at his sides, not trying to fight him.
“Seventeen seconds, Trelix.” Loren’s voice.
Lancer pushed Riley’s gun down and shoved him away from the kid. She noticed for the first time that his uniform was soaked in blood, only she couldn’t tell if it was his or not. He grabbed Trelix by the throat, whispering into his face. “Wire me. I got this, Trelix. I owe him. Nobody else will die, I swear. You need to let me do this.”
The kid looked at Lancer for a long moment and nodded.
Lancer took his jacket and then his soaked shirt off and Trelix tied the vest with the explosives around him. Riley was screaming at Lancer that there had to be another way, only Lancer wasn’t paying any attention to him, and finally, the door opened and Lancer quickly walked out there to Drake. All the guns were trained on him now, but nobody was firing, and then he was kneeling next to Drake, telling him to go back to the flier….
“Stand down!” An older man wearing a white uniform walked toward Drake and Lancer.
All the guns pointed at the ground.
“I am Max Fuller. I am told my son is with you.”
Brody. She forgot all about Brody once it all went insane. She could only remember that Lancer had to drag him into the flier for some reason. She searched behind her and saw him slumped in the chair, looking as if he were asleep.
“I need to see my son.” The man stood in front of Lancer and Drake, his voice louder now, but there was something shaky in it too, an emotion she couldn’t place.
Laurel crouched next to Brody, holding the box of salts under his nose, and suddenly he was up, and then Laurel was talking to him, frantically, and Brody was on his feet, trying to get to the door, only Riley and Trelix were blocking it from him.
“Move, Riley!”
They stood stock-still, not budging and with no warning, Brody punched Riley in the jaw, hard, his head snapping back and Trelix just shook his head and let him pass.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 47