The Only Thing to Fear

by Caroline Tung Richmond

  She fought back, her legs thrashing, fueled by heart-pumping fear. Her fingernails tore at any inch of exposed skin and she tried to shove the soldier off of her, but he was too heavy. Too strong.

  The soldier yanked at the mask again, uncovering her jawbone. Zara’s hands grew boiling hot, both of them stinging like needles. The needles traveled up her arms, and she thought she might pass out — but then the guard went limp. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he slumped over, his limbs dead weight on top of her.

  A gasp escaped out of Zara’s mouth. What happened?

  The heat receded from her hands, along with the prickling needles. She ripped the mask off her face, breathing hard, and tried to push the soldier off of her. But she froze when she caught movement on the roof.

  There was someone else here.

  A shadow fell over Zara’s eyes. A hooded man crouched next to her and rolled the guard from her body. In his right hand, he held a loose brick, its edges stained with blood. He must have used it to knock the soldier unconscious.

  The man dropped the brick and pulled back his hood. “Scheiße. Are you hurt?”

  “Bastian?” Zara cried. He offered his hand to her, but she only blinked at him.

  Raindrops splashed against his forehead “Um. Hello.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “M-My mother needed a prescription from the drugstore,” he stuttered. “When I came out, I thought I saw you heading toward the courthouse.”

  “You followed me?” The blood emptied from Zara’s face and plummeted toward her toes. Had he seen her flying onto the rooftop? But Bastian wasn’t making any accusations.

  “I was curious. I slipped into the courthouse through the back entrance. It was unlocked,” Bastian went on. “I thought …”

  “What?”

  “I thought you might be doing something for the Alliance. And I thought if I joined you tonight, then I could prove that my intentions are sincere.”

  Zara’s mouth opened, then closed. Could he be telling the truth? Her gaze found the unconscious soldier at her feet. Bastian had clobbered one of his father’s men to save her, but her uncle’s caution seeped through her. As far-fetched as it sounded, this could all still be part of Colonel Eckhart’s plan to catch both her and her uncle.

  “What were you hoping to do here? I can help,” Bastian continued.

  “I don’t need your help,” Zara said nervously. Her gaze crept toward Mrs. Talley’s body, but she couldn’t finish her mission now, not with Bastian watching. She had no idea how to explain what she was doing here on the roof. Taking a stroll? Stargazing? Fear clutched her heart. He could turn her in to his father right now, and there was nothing she could do.

  Bastian didn’t seem to be waiting for an explanation, though. He was staring at the cage instead. “Did you come to pay your respects to your friend?”

  “Yeah, I did. To say good-bye,” she blurted out, snatching at the excuse he offered her. She glanced at the rooftop door. She really needed to leave before Bastian asked her another question, but he kept talking.

  “My father shouldn’t have paraded her like this.” A jolt of lightning cracked over them, illuminating their faces, and Zara saw steel in Bastian’s eyes. His jaw hard, he strode toward the very edge of the roof where the cage sat and reached his arm around to open its metal door.

  “What are you doing?” Zara hurried after him, her pulse frantic. Bastian’s feet hugged the lip of the roof, only inches from the open air. If he fell …

  “Taking her down. She’s your friend, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but you’re going to fall.”

  He reached for the latch anyway. “The Nazis did the same thing to Opa. They dragged his body through the streets of Brussels.” The steel in his eyes had burned hot.

  “Get down from there!” Zara wasn’t going to be responsible for the death of Colonel Eckhart’s son. As lightning flashed above them, she climbed up to yank him down, but Bastian lost his footing. His arms flapped. His feet teetered. He clutched at Zara and the cage, but gravity snatched them both, along with the cage, toward the ground.

  As they careened downward, they plummeted four stories before Zara’s instincts took over. She gasped out a command in her mind.

  Just like that, they stopped. The wind cradled them, holding them ten feet above the ground. Bastian’s cry silenced in his throat. His eyes went frighteningly wide, so wide that she could see the whites of them.

  That was when Zara realized what she had done.

  Zara panicked, losing her focus, and they tumbled toward the earth below them. She hit the grass hard, twigs snapping beneath her, the air fleeing from her shocked lungs. She gasped for breath and tried to move, but her ankle crumpled. A hot pain climbed up her foot, and one searing thought burned through her mind.

  Bastian knew. He knew about her power.

  As she struggled for air, Zara heard Bastian groan and stagger out of the boxwood hedge that he had fallen into. The cage lay by his feet, its door creaking against the rattling wind. Not far from the cage, Zara’s gaze fell upon Mrs. Talley’s body, planted facedown in the wet grass. Anguish flooded through her at seeing Mrs. Talley so horribly disfigured — Zara wanted to grab the body and run — but then Bastian asked a question that made her go cold.

  “You’re … you’re an Anomaly?” Bastian rasped.

  Terror screeched through Zara’s veins. She had hidden her abilities for so long, but now she had exposed them to the son of a colonel. How could she have gotten herself into such a mess? Bastian was going to serve her on a platter to his father, and she would be executed just like Mrs. Talley.

  Shouts echoed from inside the courthouse, and Zara forced herself onto her feet despite the aching in her ankle. Desperate to escape, she tried to hobble away from Bastian. Any second now, he would shout at the guards to come arrest her.

  Bastian, however, only took her by the arm. “We need to find cover — now!” The clatter of thunder muffled his voice, only to be followed by a sudden burst of rain, drenching them with its cold blast. “Some of the magistrates must have worked late tonight. We have to leave before they send the guards.”

  Zara wasn’t going anywhere with him. She had to get home and wake her uncle before both of them got hunted down by the Colonel. With her heartbeat banging, she pushed Bastian away from her, but he looped her arm around his neck before she could fully break free.

  “This way!” He led her toward a garbage-scented alleyway by the military museum, but Zara fought him at every step. She was about to elbow him in the stomach, but she went limp when she heard boots slapping against the pavement. Another shout echoed behind them.

  Bastian pulled her behind the Dumpster. “Stay still!”

  “Let me go!” She tried to knee him in the groin, but he lurched away just in time. He wrapped one arm around her waist and clamped his free hand over her mouth.

  “Please,” he whispered. “You’ll lead them right to us if you don’t stay quiet.”

  “You’ll turn me in anyway!” Zara said, but each word came out muffled against his palm.

  The shouts multiplied. Footsteps pounded. Zara squirmed against Bastian again, but his arms were like iron around her. Why wasn’t he calling for his father’s soldiers? He had caught an illegal Anomaly, a prize for the Colonel; but Bastian remained hunched behind the Dumpster, wincing at every sound.

  Once the shouts faded, he slowly removed his hand from her lips. “You can trust me. I’m not working for my father.”

  Prove it, Zara wanted to say, but the words felt hollow on her tongue. Bastian had knocked a soldier unconscious for her. He had hidden her from the guards. All of his actions pointed toward one conclusion, but she still didn’t know if she could accept it yet. It was too preposterous.

  He was a Nazi. An Eckhart. The son of the man who had orchestrated her mother’s death.

  She couldn’t trust him.

  Could she?

  “We can’t stay her
e,” Bastian went on. He peered around the Dumpster. “The guards might circle back. Can you walk?”

  Zara hesitated. She couldn’t stay in this alleyway, but she couldn’t get very far on her ankle. Then, without warning, Bastian hoisted her into his arms and carried her down the street, hurrying until they entered the threshold of the trees. Only then did Zara remember her original plan for the night.

  “Mrs. Talley!” she gasped.

  “It’s too dangerous to go back there,” Bastian said, not daring to stop. That left Zara staring helplessly as Mrs. Talley’s remains grew smaller and smaller. She had failed her friend again.

  I’m so sorry, Zara thought, fighting back tears. I tried.

  Bastian carried her over the dead leaves until the streetlights faded into jeweled specks. With his breaths labored, he finally stopped and set Zara on a bed of soggy leaves, where she scooted away from him and huddled beneath a young pine, shivering at the disaster she had gotten herself into. Not only had she botched Mrs. Talley’s burial, she had revealed her power to Bastian Eckhart. And for some wild reason, he kept trying to convince her that he was on her side — and she was starting to believe him.

  Bastian knelt by her boots. “Let me see your ankle.”

  “I’m fine.” Zara tucked her legs underneath her, ignoring the pain that enveloped her right foot. A part of her wanted to fly away from him this instant. With the angry clouds overhead, the soldiers would never see her — but Bastian had seen her power, and she needed answers.

  “I’ve treated sprains and breaks at my Opa’s clinic,” Bastian continued. “He was a doctor for many years, and I worked with him after school sometimes. I can help.”

  “Why didn’t you turn me in back there?” Zara burst out.

  His brows knitted together, taken aback. “Why would I do that?” He paused. “I wasn’t interested in being arrested. Are you?”

  “They wouldn’t have arrested you. You’re the Colonel’s son.”

  “That doesn’t matter to my father. He didn’t lift a finger to help my Opa — why would I be any different? I’m sure he would have jailed me himself.” His chest heaved as he caught his breath. “For hiding a non-German Anomaly.”

  Zara went completely numb. She wrapped her arms around herself, her wet shirt siphoning any trace of warmth her body produced. She felt exposed. Raw. She didn’t know how to get used to the fact that Bastian knew her biggest secret.

  They sat in silence for a minute before Bastian spoke again. “You hid your power very well. I never would’ve guessed.” There was admiration in his voice.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” she finally managed to say.

  “You saved us back there. If you hadn’t broken our fall from the courthouse …” He cringed and didn’t finish his sentence. “Thank you.”

  She didn’t answer him. Maybe she had saved their lives, but now she had to face the consequences of revealing her power to Bastian. If he told anyone about her, she’d be dead in half a heartbeat. She barely knew him, and yet now her life was in his hands.

  He seemed to sense her fear. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise you that.” His eyes locked onto hers, so wide and earnest, so unlike his father’s. She wanted to believe him, but Uncle Red’s voice drifted through her thoughts. He could be baiting you, the voice said, but the warning was dimming.

  “You’d risk your father’s wrath on me? I’m a Kleinbauer,” Zara said.

  “Yes, but … that doesn’t matter.”

  “It would matter to most Germans.”

  “Maybe so, but not to me.” Bastian kept his eyes trained away from hers. Instead, he fiddled with a fallen leaf in his hands.

  “Why?” Zara had never heard a cadet — or a Nazi, for that matter — talk this way before. The farmers and laborers were disposable in their eyes, and they were treated as such.

  “I told you before that I’m not a Nazi. I’m not working for them.” He twisted the leaf’s stem between his fingertips. “And I owe you.”

  “For breaking our fall?”

  “Not only that. For what you did for me at the academy three years ago.”

  Zara could only blink at him. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “You don’t remember?” He sounded surprised. And a bit hurt.

  She shook her head. There were hundreds of cadets at the school, and she had a hard enough time keeping up with their laundry, much less what Bastian had been up to when she was twelve. “Are you sure it was me?”

  “It was you. I’m sure of it. I was fourteen at the time — my father put me in a class of cadets two years ahead of me. He thought it would challenge me.” His voice darkened at the mention of the Colonel, but he swallowed and continued on. “A few of the cadets didn’t think I deserved to train with them. A boy named Dirk was their leader. Maybe you remember him. Dirk Kohler?”

  Zara racked her memories but came up empty. She had lost Molly three years ago, and most of her memories from around that time wrapped around that one horrible event. For months, Zara had walked around in a haze, missing her friend, having nightmares about how Molly had died.

  “What happened to him?” she asked.

  “He was expelled.”

  “For what?”

  “For … for almost killing me.” Bastian’s features twisted as he recounted the events. “One day Dirk got angry with me. I don’t know why. He waited until most of our class had left the locker room, and then he lunged at me. He had his friends hold me down and gag me, and he beat me over and over again.”

  Slowly, a blurred memory floated into Zara’s thoughts. “That was you?”

  He nodded.

  She did remember that day, but she hadn’t known it was Bastian. His face had been hidden in blood. So much of it. She’d been collecting the dirty towels in the locker room — she had thought that the cadets had already left for lunch — when she heard a scuffle in one of the changing areas. Fights broke out fairly regularly at the academy, and the cleaning girls usually turned a blind eye to them. If they ratted out the students, they could get bullied later on, so most of them kept mum. But Zara had never seen a cadet getting beaten so badly before. She had run to find the athletics instructor, who broke up the fight and carried Bastian to the health clinic. Zara had briefly wondered who the beaten boy was, but losing Molly had clouded her head like a fog that term.

  “I should’ve thanked you back then,” Bastian said quietly.

  “I was only doing my job.”

  “You didn’t have to, though. You didn’t owe me anything. After what my father has done to the Kleinbauern in this town, to your family, you could’ve looked away.” He stared at the leaf in his palm, hiding his eyes from her. “I’ve never forgotten what you did for me. I’ve … I’ve admired you ever since then, Zara.”

  That was the first time he had used her given name, and a strange shiver inched down her spine. She ducked her chin. Had he been staring at her all of these years, and she hadn’t noticed it until recently? It was possible, wasn’t it? Zara often kept her eyes cast down at school, and she avoided the cadets as much as she could.

  “It was nothing,” she mumbled. “Besides, you got us away from the guards tonight.”

  “Barely.” He smiled slightly. “I meant what I told you before, you know. I want to join the Alliance.”

  Zara could only shrug. The evidence was certainly mounting in Bastian’s favor, but so much had happened that night that her mind felt like it had been wrung dry.

  “What can I do or say to convince you?” said Bastian. The rain had trickled into a drizzle and the cold had set in, making their teeth chatter, but he made no attempt to leave. He waited for Zara’s reply, his head cocked to one side.

  “Your grandfather really was a communist?” she forced out. Maybe Bastian was telling her the truth, but she needed to fill in the gaps of his story.

  “He was.” The smile on his lips saddened.

  “His dog tags were Nazi tags, though.”

 
; “Every Belgian has to serve in the Nazi military. It became mandatory after Adolf Hitler annexed the country, or else Opa never would have joined. That was why he was so surprised when my mother announced her engagement to my father.”

  The questions kept spilling out of Zara’s lips. “He didn’t approve?”

  “He didn’t like it at first, but he eventually gave his blessing for my mother’s sake. She never hated Nazism like he did. The Germans she knew had always treated her kindly. It was her coloring, I think. She was an Aryan like them.”

  No wonder the Colonel had married Bastian’s mother, then, Zara thought. As long as his new wife was Aryan blooded, he wouldn’t sully his German lineage.

  Bastian continued, although his tone grew soft. “After her accident, my Opa came to the Territories to care for her. My father wasn’t pleased, but he was always gone on assignment. It became easy for him to ignore his father-in-law and his sick wife.”

  “He never thought about leaving your mom?” Zara tapered off, wondering if she was prodding too much into their personal life. She was surprised, though, that Colonel Eckhart hadn’t. No one would have blamed him for abandoning an unstable wife — the Nazis often quietly institutionalized the Aryan mentally ill, while they euthanized the non-Aryan ones.

  “Divorce? No, it wouldn’t have reflected well on his career.” Bitterness laced through Bastian’s every word, but it ebbed once he spoke of his grandfather again. “Opa raised me. He was the one I came home to from school. He always left a piece of chocolate or licorice on the counter for me.” He reached inside his soaked shirt collar to dig out the metal tags. “I found these in my mother’s drawer after he was killed. I think my father tried to throw them away, but she held on to them.”

  “Your dad doesn’t care that you wear them?”

  “He doesn’t like it, but they’re Nazi tags, so he lets me be for now. It’s one of the only things I have of Opa’s.”

  Zara watched Bastian tuck the chain back into his shirt, and finally she understood why he wore those tags everywhere. She had done the same thing after her mother had passed, clinging on to a pair of earrings her mom had worn even though Zara’s ears weren’t pierced. Maybe she and Bastian weren’t as different as she had thought.