Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller

by Inna Hardison

  “There isn’t a way I can pay for that, Telan. There’s never going to be a way for me to pay for that,” he said, louder than he meant to.

  Telan just shook his head at him, his eyes serious but soft, still looking at him.

  He dropped his head, embarrassed, clenching his jaw, and he felt Telan’s arms around him, just hugging him, and it felt alright to let him, so he did, until he felt calm enough to talk again without embarrassing himself. “Your father, he knows. He went through my files, so I didn’t have any kind of choice about not telling him after that. And I think I needed to tell somebody, needed to just let it out…. I always thought I had it worse than anybody, you know, only I’m not so sure now. Whatever happened to that man, to Trevor, I think maybe it was worse for him, and I didn’t even think about it. I just wanted to hurt him, to get back at him for what he did to those little kids, to the girl you like.” He stopped, needing to catch his breath, Telan not saying anything.

  “I need you to promise me something.”

  “All right.”

  “I need you to tell me if you think I don’t belong here … if you don’t want me here, is what I’m saying. Any of you. I need you to please do that for me.” He hated how shaky his voice was.

  Telan gripped him hard by the shoulders, looking at his face. “It’ll take a hell of a lot more than you just being human for me to do that. Frankly, I think you managed all right, better than I would have. Now…. I’m starving and I really want that fish, and I still need to shower and change. Come on,” he said, and pushed him not too gently down the street, to where Riley and Ams were probably setting the table, and where the other girl, Laurel, was likely laughing with Brody at Lancer’s clumsy attempts at helping, and where nobody would look at him with hatred or fear in their eyes.

  And he wished with all his heart that he did belong here and that he could maybe someday make it alright for someone to be kind to him again without feeling like he needed to run.

  12

  The Big Dipper

  Trevor, September 19, 2244, Reston.

  Trevor didn’t mean to be late, but by the time the kid was done with him, he barely had enough time to change, and he ran, fast as he could, to the Council building, but the other guard was already gone. He looked at the screen, noting that he was seven and a half minutes late when he finally got to the cell Eryn was in. He rushed in, and his heart stopped for a beat. The man was on his cot, on his back, but something about the way he was screamed wrongness to him, his face calm but entirely the wrong color. And then he saw it, the thin strip of fabric around his neck, from his shirt, he guessed. Just a flimsy piece of fabric that made his face not look how it was supposed to.

  He ran to him and cut the fabric from around his neck and then called for Ella and Loren and Riley and everybody. He grabbed the man by his shoulders, not knowing what else to do, and shook him, hard, over and over again, telling him to bloody breathe, but he wouldn’t breathe, and he could tell by the way he was that he’d likely never breathe again.

  He paced around the room long after Ella had Eryn taken away, paced in the empty cell until Riley got there, and he tried to tell him that it was his fault because he was late and that he was sorry, but Riley just took him by the shoulders and told him to take an hour or however long he needed to calm the hell down, and something about it not being his fault, only he knew that it was. Because he was bloody late.

  He ran to the clearing nobody used for target practice anymore, because all the trees there had too many holes in them, ran as fast as he could, hoping that maybe Ella or that other strange scientist man with the freckles and missing buttons on his shirts could make that man not be dead, but he didn’t think they could, didn’t think anybody could.

  He paced around the clearing, unable to get rid of the image of that man lying there like that, with the stupid bit of cotton around his neck that made him not breathe anymore. He had guarded him for all these weeks now, watching him through the door, the man pacing, always pacing in the cell, steady measured steps. And every time Trevor walked in to check on him, he’d face him, eyes calm, no hatred in them, just a strange waiting look on his face. He always let him do what he needed to do without a word or a complaint, too, so unlike the other people they kept prisoner. Eryn never talked to him, not really. Nothing beyond asking for his name the first time and then just nodding in acknowledgment, but he always thanked him whenever he brought him his food and water or checked on his wound….

  His comm beeped, telling him to be at Max’s at 20:00 hours. He flicked it off, wanting to smash it against a tree and run. That bloody boy who must have known him from somewhere. Colton, as likely as not. He should have just told him he had guard duty and if the kid couldn’t decide quickly enough if he wanted to get back at him or not, he should have just run. But something about the boy made him hesitate. He could see the brokenness in him, and it felt wrong to run.

  Max’s house was full of light. He could smell the cooking they did long before he got to the door, but he didn’t think he could stomach any food now. He looked at the screen to make sure he was on time, but not wanting to go in early. He wasn’t, so he made himself knock, hoping that whatever they’d do to him would be quick and that they would still take care of Sam.

  Max let him in, his face not looking like somebody died, and it surprised him. Everybody was crowded around the table, talking in loud voices. Riley pointed him to a seat next to Brody and went off into the kitchen to get him a plate and a glass. It felt almost like they were celebrating something. Riley set a plate full of food in front of him and told him very quietly that Eryn might still make it, that he wasn’t quite dead yet, and that he got there just in time, so he ought to stop beating himself up for it and bloody eat. And that there was something else… something they found under Eryn’s cot that might just make it easier for them to end this war once and for all, but that he had to eat first and stop looking like death itself.

  Trevor forced himself to swallow a few bites of whatever was on his plate, not paying any attention to the taste of it. He waited for someone to just tell him if he had anything to worry about, at least as far as Sam was concerned, but nobody did, and finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He stood and told them all that whatever happened with Eryn was because of him, because he was late to his post, and that they needed to just tell him what they were going to do to him, and that he needed to know if they would still take care of Sam.

  Riley grabbed him by the arm and took him outside, pushing him to sit on the top step of the porch.

  “I don’t know how else to say it, Trevor, but whatever it is that’s making you feel like this, you need to stop. You’re one of us, have been, and nobody in that house or any place else in this whole city thinks you killed that man, and that’s if he dies, which I’m told he likely won’t. But even if he does…. We’re not going to throw you out or anything, is what I’m saying, and you need to find a way to trust it. And you need to stop trying to pay for something you did when you were a kid. Telan told me where you were. I’d rather you didn’t do that again. You’ve paid your debts. To everybody,” he said softly, looking at him in that way he had, where you felt everything was bearable, even if not all right.

  “I owed him. That kid … I don’t even remember him, you know? It’s strange that I don’t. But I know whatever it was I did to him, he remembers it, so I owed him. Anyway…. I truly am sorry I was late. I know what he did to Ams and all that, but I couldn’t hate him. I wanted to. I didn’t know he wanted out, didn’t see it on him. He seemed stronger than that. Stronger than I ever was.” He dropped his eyes, embarrassed, knowing that Riley would know exactly what he meant and not wanting to talk about it now or ever.

  “Look up,” Riley asked, pointing up at the sky, at a tiny sliver of a cloud-free dark patch with all the stars in it, “the smallest star on the edge of that, the edge of the Big Dipper is the most important. My mom told me that years ago. It points to where the North Star is, o
nly I don’t remember how it does that exactly anymore. I never got it when I was a kid, what she meant by that, you know? Never gave it much thought, but now…. It’s like we got everything wrong. We fight for all these big things, and it’s easy. Too easy, I think. We are all angry enough to want to change how things are and to make them pay and I get all that, but then I have these moments when we are out there fighting or training and all I can see is Ams’ face or Brody’s, or Ella’s, and I know then I’m not fighting for anything but to keep seeing those faces. I’m fighting for them.

  “And I know it’s tiny, infinitesimally tiny, but it doesn’t bloody matter because them I know. I don’t know the rest of Zoriners or the rest of whoever we are fighting for, but I know them and I’d die for them in a heartbeat if it came to that. I know that. And in those moments, I don’t need to know anything else”—Riley took a deep breath, his eyes squeezing shut for a long moment and then looked at him again—“You’d die for that little green-eyed kid you love. I know that, and I don’t need to know anything else about you to know how you are. Maybe he is your point North, Trevor, and maybe it’s enough.” He stood, offering him his hand.

  Trevor let him pull him up and faced him. “I’d die for you, too, Riley,” he whispered.

  Riley just nodded, watching him.

  He meant what he said, too, and it wasn’t because he felt he owed him.

  “Do you think we’ll ever get it right? I keep thinking what would happen to everybody if whoever is in charge wasn’t anymore, what it would mean for someone who grew up like you did. And I keep thinking that we’ll screw it up somehow. Nobody would die for how they were born or forced to do what they do to those girls. I get all that, but for the rest of it–” He shook his head, looking for words, and not finding any.

  Riley stared at him strangely, his face serious and old all of a sudden. “All the time. I think about it all the bloody time, and it scares the shit out of me. I don’t know if any of us are decent enough as people not to screw it up, and I know it’ll take that. Someone who’d never do something out of anger, or fear, or revenge, and I think most of us here don’t know how to not do that. I know I don’t…. But I keep thinking that maybe one of these kids, kids like Telan, and Selena, and that boy, Clarence, would do better than we have. And the littler ones, kids like Sam—I don’t think they’ll screw it up. We just have to make it that long and do what we can to make it easier on them.”

  He heard someone coming up the path and turned, Telan and the boy from earlier looking at them, surprised.

  “A word, Clarence,” Riley said in his soldier voice.

  Telan nodded to everyone and ran into the house. Trevor turned to go too, but Riley stopped him, arm around his shoulders, and walked them a few steps away from the house where it was just light enough to see each other by, and he couldn’t help but notice the discomfort on the boy’s face. He seemed embarrassed, keeping his eyes down, jaw clenched.

  “Clarence, meet Trevor. He is a good man and he is my friend. If you feel you need to get even with him for something he did when he was a kid, I need you to tell me, and I’ll help make it happen, I swear, but it won’t be like what you tried to do today. You don’t get to do that to him, to anybody, no matter your history with them.” Riley’s voice was sharp. “Look at me, kid!” Riley snapped, and it surprised him, the sudden anger in him.

  The boy lifted his face, looking every kind of uncomfortable, nodded, and took a step towards them, eyes on his. “I am sorry, Trevor. It won’t happen again,” the boy said dipped his head.

  He couldn’t take it, this kid feeling bad for what he felt he had every right to do. He shook his head at him. “Whatever I did to you, I wish I could take it back, wish I could take all of it back, but you’ve got nothing to be sorry about.” Trevor stuck out his hand, the kid shaking it, hard, looking at him.

  “But I do though…. Selena told me you weren’t like that anymore, like you were then, only I was too angry to believe her. I’m sorry for that. And for whatever happened to you before, for whatever made you how you were,” the kid said in a strange, quiet voice.

  He winced, not expecting it from someone so young, someone who didn’t know. He turned to Riley, but the man was inexplicably gone. It surprised him that he didn’t hear him leave, Riley always walking in that heavy way he did. He turned back to the kid, and his eyes were down again. He put his hand on the kid’s arm and told him to look up. He did, eyes on his again. “No, Clarence, look all the way up.” He pointed at the patch of sky he and Riley were looking at before, suddenly wanting to tell this boy what Riley just told him about the tiny star up there.

  The kid shook his head. “I can’t,” he said in a shaky voice, not looking at him anymore, and he noticed his hands were in fists. Whatever it was that happened to this boy, he couldn’t look at the stars for it, he got that much, but he couldn’t imagine anything as bad as that.

  He took his knife out of the weapons belt, holding it by the blade, the kid looking at him strangely. “I couldn’t touch one of these for years, since I was six. Something happened and I couldn’t do it after that. I knew it was just a bloody knife, but I’d flinch every time I saw one, couldn’t go near them, so I’d always have the other kids help with anything that needed cutting or use scissors where a knife would have sufficed. When Max offered me to train as a soldier and assigned me as one of the guards, I had to do it, didn’t have any kind of choice about it…. The first time I picked one up, I dropped it. It felt like my whole hand was on fire, just holding the damn thing, so I stupidly dropped it on the floor. Brody was teaching us to throw knives in this huge, empty room, and all the other, much younger boys were there. They laughed at me. I ran then, embarrassed, you know, but I couldn’t talk to anybody about it, didn’t know how to. Riley found me after a while, and he made it all right for me. We stayed in that clearing until it was too dark to see the trees clearly enough, and all the stars were out, but he got me to not flinch when I held it anymore, got me to let go that thing that happened somehow.”

  The boy stared at him, and he could see the shine in his eyes, muscles working in his jaw. “I can’t let it go…. It’s not that kind of thing, is what I’m saying, not something I can ever let go,” he said.

  Trevor threw the knife back into his belt and gripped the boy by the shoulders, the kid looking at him again. “You can. You just don’t know it yet, but someday you will because whatever else you are, you’re still here. You’ve survived it already, is what I’m saying, only you don’t seem to give yourself any credit for that. It takes more courage than you know to do that, Clarence. More than I ever had,” he said softly, the kid blanching, eyes down again.

  “There is somebody I’d like you to meet, properly this time. That little boy you saw me with… he wants to be a soldier, or so he says, and he is too young to train with anyone yet. I’d like you to spend some time with him, just the basics for now. His name is Sam. I have guard duty for a few hours almost every night, so spend an hour or so with him after supper when I’m not there if you can. He isn’t used to the little kids, so I’m the only friend he has…. I think you two could help each other. If nothing else, he’ll make you laugh, kid, and I don’t think you’ve done that in a while. Let’s go eat before we piss everybody off more than we likely have already.” He pushed the boy gently towards the house, without waiting for him to say anything.

  He’d be there to pick up Sam after supper tomorrow, Trevor could feel it. And he knew that little boy would get him to look up again faster than anybody; would help him finally let go whatever that dark thing in him was.

  13

  Piano Lessons

  Eryn, September 25, 2244, Reston.

  Eryn couldn’t open his eyes for the longest time when he woke up, couldn’t move a muscle. He knew he did it right, remembered how he finally couldn’t breathe and how the darkness took him after too long of the pain of not getting any air in, yet somehow he was definitely breathing now and awake.

/>   He felt a warm hand at his elbow and then a needle go into his arm, felt the small pinch from it. So, he was in the Med wing, a bloody Med wing. He wanted to laugh at the craziness of it, at these people saving his life.

  He heard the door open and close and knew he was alone now, that whoever put something into his arm was gone. A pleasant fuzziness spread through him after a while and he let it take him, let himself enjoy this soft drifting away. He hoped his dreams wouldn’t chase him, couldn’t take any more of the dreams.

  The piano lessons, always the piano lessons…. He remembered the face of the man who first taught him, down to the birthmark above his left eyebrow, the one he always raised to show his disapproval, which was most of the time. The beatings he never dreamed about, blocked them somehow, but he remembered that look, the raised eyebrow, and the voice, that always-mocking-him voice.

  But mostly, his dreams were of the day he gave up, the day he turned into what he now was. He’d gone in a few minutes before he was due and told them that he was done, that he wouldn’t be a part of whatever they were engaged in, and he didn’t care what they did to him for it. He remembered how quiet it got in that big, sterile room, nobody saying a word for the longest time, and all he could hear was the tapping of fingers on the table. He kept his head down, waiting, and finally, somebody whispered something to one of the guards, and then the room wasn’t so quiet anymore.

  He watched the guard bring in one of the little kids, this seven or eight-year-old wisp of a girl, and then he felt big hands squeezing into his arms, pinning him to the chair he was sitting in. The girl stared at him, tears running down her face, her bottom lip quivering as she cried, but she didn’t make a sound, and it struck him as strange that she didn’t. He turned his head away from her, but the man who was holding him snapped at him to not do that again and squeezed harder into his arms.