The Wanted (The Woodlands Series Book 4)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  The chair moved awkwardly over the carpet as I wheeled right up to the window. They had recommended I change my home, lower it to the ground. But I knew this was temporary. They even suggested an electric chair, but I needed to feed my own movement. My toes bumped the glass; I couldn’t feel it, just the resistance. From here, I could look down on them, but it was a pathetic victory. The girl’s jacket swung below her knees, and I was reminded that she was a child. A foolish, insignificant child.

  I clenched my fists on my chair arm when her eyes met mine. She didn’t shy away from my gaze. She glared directly into them, those odd eyes, that spirit. It fueled me because it was begging to be broken. I wheeled back from the window, unused to anyone giving me such extended eye contact and smiled to myself. There was so much I wanted to show her.

  JOSEPH

  I thought about her always. She was just there, in my mind, by my side, smirking, frowning at me. Because she was a ghost. I tried not to think of her broken, bleeding body surrounded by dead soldiers, toppled like Orry’s blocks, but it was a flashcard wedged permanently inside my brain. I tried to bend it, push it aside, and think about Orry and what she had done for me. But the strongest feeling was wishing with every part of my hopeless body that she hadn’t done it.

  We sat around a campfire, except for Rash, who was standing as far away from me as he could. I was the plague to him, and I kind of agreed with his assessment. He glared down at me from behind the circle of crouching people. His face was pure hatred glowing behind the fire. It didn’t sit right on his usually jovial face. He should be smiling, joking, and I took that from him.

  For twenty-four hours, we’d done nothing but walk in silence. After they found Rash and convinced him to stay with the group, there was nothing to do but continue with the mission. I came because they wouldn’t let me go back to the Superiors’ compound, and they wouldn’t let me return to Orry on my own. They didn’t trust me.

  Now, we were resting briefly before more walking.

  Matt came and sat next to me, his whole form heavy with grief and responsibility. “How are you?” he asked warily.

  “Do I need to answer that?” I replied as I drew circles in the dirt with a stick.

  “No… you don’t,” he whispered, his voice small and broken into pieces. “So… we’re heading to Birchton first.”

  My shoulders were set. I didn’t want to talk. So I didn’t. Matt sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He wanted to get through. I didn’t know how to tell him there was no point; there was nothing on the other side of this wall I’d put up.

  Desh nudged my leg with his knee as he sat down on the other side.

  “Give him a break,” he pleaded. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to Matt or me, but silence followed, which was fine.

  After about five minutes of awkwardness, Desh finally started talking again.

  “I’m nearly finished adapting the projectors,” he said to Matt over my dipped head. I continued drawing. An image of Rosa’s dark face pushed out of the dirt, her forehead creased with pain and then suddenly peaceful. Even in sleep, she never looked peaceful. Only when she was dead.

  I let out a huge sigh, trying to breath out the hurt.

  “Great,” Matt said. He turned and grabbed the bag of image discs behind him. The plastic rattled around like shell casings. “Here are the images. Will you be able to get this done by tomorrow?”

  I saw Desh nod his head in the corner of my vision. He grasped the bag and put it by his feet.

  “Easy,” he replied confidently. Something other than the mush of crappy emotions I’d been feeling surfaced, just for a second. Pride. Desh was the smartest guy I knew.

  Matt leaned across me. “Easy?” I tilted my chin up to see his eager eyes full of wonderment. “Can you talk me through it?”

  Matt was almost as bad as Alexei when it came to new technology, new information. He ate it up like a hearty meal. I pictured Alexei holding Orry’s hand and leading him ‘up’. That was all she’d said, Take him somewhere ‘up’. I shook my head. Somehow, everyone knew exactly what she’d meant. When her words failed, her eyes, the emotion in her voice, did the rest. Grief was as heavy as a backpack full of lead bricks. I slumped down further, my fingers swirling in the dirty pattern in front of me.

  I don’t want to forget her. I don’t want to remember her.

  Desh laughed, and I was pulled back to their conversation.

  “Sure…” He put his hand on my back, and I flinched. “Do you need anything before I go?”

  My back muscles tensed, and I stood up suddenly. I pulled my hands through my hair, scanning the group of people. They were all watching me, waiting for me to do… something. Rash mirrored my movements and moved around the circle away from me as I tried to exit it.

  “Joe?” Desh questioned.

  I grunted and made my way to a gap in the trees, leaving the smell of sweet tea and smoke behind.

  Sharp, grey rocks tried to trip me as I climbed away from the group. Leaves rustled in the background and I swung around to Pelo’s face, lit up by my torchlight. “Where are you going?” he asked, concerned.

  Stop being nice to me, I wanted to scream, holler, punch into the ground, and wear across my chest. My fists vibrated at my sides. I wanted to do more than shout. I wanted to push him back towards the campsite, hard. Violence lived in me like a virus. I breathed in sharply though my nostrils. The shock of pine and crushed grass swirled around me like a memory I wanted to keep and forget.

  “I’m not running away,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just want some… space.”

  His eyes were so hard to look at. His sad, grieving face even worse.

  I need space from everything and everyone except you, Rosa. Space between us is like a wall of knives.

  I stormed away from him. I heard the branches snap back and his footsteps fade away.

  Do you want me to be there for your father, comfort him? I shouldn’t ask because I can’t do it. I’m hollow. There’s nothing left inside me to give.

  My breath felt like a hard ball in my chest. Cold and concrete. Panic kept rising and subsiding with thoughts of her. Was she angry with me for deserting her? Was she suffering?

  Putting a hand out, I grabbed at a jutting piece of rock to steady myself. I gulped back tears. If I started thinking about what they were doing to her, it would kill me. It was killing me. This guilt, this fear, was living and growing inside, trying to take over. I didn’t know how to stop it. If it could just ease for a second, maybe I could breathe. Keep moving. Live. Like she wanted me to. I gripped the rock so hard I felt I could almost rip it from the ground.

  Voices carried to me from below, a small, orange glow visible through the trees. Someone laughed. I couldn’t stand the way everything just went on. Without her.

  I kept climbing, desperate to escape their noise, until all I could hear were the leaves bristling against each other and the echo of wind deepening the curves of the stone.

  My palms were roughed up by shards of rock. I was sweating even in this cold. The breeze picked up as I got higher, and I shivered. Her arm wrapped around my back, stretching to shield me. She could never quite reach, but her hand always found my heart. She patted it once. I put my hand through her ghost.

  I climbed a few meters more, and was at the peak of one of the many rocky hills surrounding Birchton and Radiata. In front of me, swept with moonlight, were the craggy mountains we would have to climb over to get to Birchton and further below, the sleeping town lay nestled into the side of a cliff. Each ring shone softly.

  Rosa’s hand slipped from my heart to my palm. Her thin fingers threaded through mine. Not that way, she used to say. She hated holding hands like this; she always said my fingers were too large and forced hers apart painfully. Like this, she would say, placing her palm against mine. I sat down and shook it off. The feeling that she was here with me, that she was actually a ghost, was not true. It couldn’t be.

  “I won’t give up,” I whis
pered to the air.

  The tower lights of the compounds glimmered like weak candles. We weren’t far. I narrowed my eyes, imagining the walls exploding, people running through the gap. I would focus on that. Destruction. It matched my insides well.

  I sat there for an hour. Breathing. Thinking. Remembering. Trying to suppress her and revive her at the same time. I looked to the sky, knowing she was probably boxed in. White, swirling flakes streamed towards my eyes.

  Snow.

  ROSA

  In sleep, I can have him. In the back of my mind, in the pretty little corners he opened up, he’s waiting. I want to retreat to those corners forever.

  If I could live there, I would.

  “Bang! Bang! Bang!”

  Gunshots clipped the air and shredded the curtains, tearing them into strips that dripped with blood. My blood. Wet and flapping against an open window. The streaks horrific, murderous.

  “Bang!” One frustrated noise.

  I pulled my knees to my chest, curling into a ball like a centipede tapped on its back, covering my head with my ineffectual fingers.

  Bullets tear through everything, and when it’s close enough, so does a knife.

  I pulled in tighter; harboring my scar like it was precious. The movement caused satin to glide underneath and over my skin, and I shot up like a catapult. My dream receded. Reality cupped my chin and squeezed my jaw violently. It drew my face this way and that, stretching my eyes wide. Look. Look where you are. My dazed brain swept the room. Luxurious reds crept up the walls interspersed with strips of gold. The large bed was covered in a quilt spotted with pinwheel shapes, swirling and sucking me into its center. I leaned my head in and out as my eyes stared at the middle of the gold wheel until I felt dizzy. Shuffling back, I leaned against the wall. It was as soft as a satin ribbon. Rich honey timber glossed the corners in the forms of beautiful furniture. If I wasn’t so scared, I could appreciate it. If I wasn’t so disgusted with the opulence these people surrounded themselves with, maybe I could relax. My eyes followed the gold stripes up to the ceiling and found the black camera screwed to the wall. I felt like waving, but I was trying to suppress my normal wonts and behavior.

  I scratched at my neck, feeling my skin raised and itchy at my collar. My fingers grasped and yanked at the strangulating neck of my shirt.

  What was I wearing?

  I bounded from the bed and looked down in horror at my clothing. My black, soldier’s jacket had been replaced by a grey, knee-length skirt. My skin prickled beneath a high-necked, synthetic pink shirt and pink cardigan with tiny, pearlescent beads around the collar. Cracking my neck, I shuddered at the continuing weirdness. I would have been upset that someone dressed me, but I know I would have got myself in more trouble if Red had presented me with this outfit and forced me to put it on. I could just imagine the tug-of-war and grinned at my imagined victory. Pulling at the hem of the skirt, I wiggled in the cut-your-circulation-off stockings. No. They were coming off. I leaned down and unrolled them so my legs could receive their blood supply.

  A bang on the door startled me.

  “Miss Rosa?” A young, questioning voice.

  Quickly shimmying out of the stockings, I put on the black shoes shining like pools of motor oil that were placed neatly by the bed. I was completely confused.

  Gold-stemmed lamps rose from two identical bedside tables, the green glass shades painful to look at. I touched one tentatively, my finger bouncing off its surface. It was warm but didn’t burn me. The colors were torture. Deep, forest green, gold. I felt like smashing it and holding it to my heart at the same time. I imagined Joseph’s eyes blinking at me, him shaking his head with amusement at my strangeness, and it was all I could do not to sink to the floor, to allow myself to drown in the blood-colored carpet. To think maybe I would have been better off dead than here.

  I undid a few buttons on my shirt so I could breathe and waited for the guard to barge in. I waited, but he kept knocking until I said, “Yes. Come in.”

  The door clicked open and I remained still on the edge of the bed, trying not to slide right off. I stared at the lamp for longer than I should have. Joseph’s face, his smile… It was all running away from me, running out like the last, fresh spring in summer.

  My shaky hands ran through my hair to tuck it behind my ear, but I came up short. She cut my hair? I pulled the strands through my fingers in front of my eyes, light honey-brown strands of hair! I cursed just as the guard stepped into the room. The look of surprise was quite evident on his face. I was sure I looked ridiculous.

  I swore again, he stiffened, and I clapped my mouth shut. I needed to remember my promise—that I would live. So I sat neatly on the edge of the bed, looking up him expectantly, like a child ready to learn. I was never that child. I was the child wiggling impatiently on the rug until I’d nearly worn a hole in it. I was the child that asked too many of the wrong questions and never had any of the right answers. I chewed on my lip when the guard approached, wondering what they were going to do next. They’d changed my appearance. The next thing to change would not be so easy…

  His hair was my color, my new color, and it swept across his face like someone had smacked his forehead with a large paintbrush. He swept it over his brow and blinked at me with strange, blue eyes. We stared at each other for a while, his hands moving unconsciously from front to back like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. I got impatient and sighed. “What do you want?” I asked.

  He snapped out of it and moved towards me, which caused me to brace myself in defense. One arm crossed over my chest, the other slipping on the bedspread as my body leaned backwards. He noticed my fear and stopped, again playing with his hands. It was strange for a guard to register anyone else’s emotions. I waited for his hand to reach out and smack me. He stood with one hand below his ribs and the other behind his back like he might take a bow. I quirked an eyebrow.

  “Superior Grant has ordered me to escort you to the dining room,” he announced as he offered me his elbow.

  I snorted. “Escort?”

  He nodded, his hair falling in his eyes. Smoothing it over, he parted his legs slightly and waited. Voices echoed in my head and reminded me why I had to do as he asked. Because my arms felt heavy with the weight of a child who was no longer there. The ache of missing my child was the claw of a hammer, bluntly, blatantly tugging at my heart. I warned myself, Just do as you’re told. For him, for both of them.

  I rose and walked past the guard, ignoring the elbow I suppose I was expected to lace my arm through. In my mind, escort didn’t need to mean touching. As I passed the young guard, who still had a pimple or two along his jaw, reminding me he was probably my age or younger, I anticipated his hand clamping over my arm and leaned away. He let me through, and I think he smiled. I grimaced as I tramped forward. He followed close behind me.

  “Turn right,” he said quietly when we were in the hall, confusingly allowing me a respectful distance.

  I did as he said and followed the curve of the huge windows. I wanted to run my hands along the frames, wanted to ask about who built this place, but questions were for people whose opinions mattered and that was not me.

  We stepped quickly. My shoes slid too easily over the carpet as if I were wearing two sticks of butter. My eyes ran over the paintings as we passed them. Everything was bright and primary, bold, strong shapes and thick, black lines. Orry could have painted them. I sniffed. The ache deepened.

  The windows showed a bleak view. Close-to-black, night air pressed against the panes with a few garden lights dotting the ground below. I craved to feel it around me, chilling my shoulders and creating puffs of mist from my mouth. I shivered. I was trapped like the zoo animals, just in a fancier cage.

  I stopped and turned my head to the guard. “How long have I been asleep?”

  His eyes darted back and forth at the different cameras tuned to our movements and decided it was safe to answer. “About a day, Miss.”

  The ‘Miss’ made m
e cringe. This fakeness was surely going to end. Soon, I’d be thrown against bars, my bones would crack on cold stone floors, and I’d be forced to give up information. I shook my head slightly. They’d have to kill me. The plans lay in my stomach like iron brambles. They might try to drag them from me and it would sting and cut, but I’d rather set myself on fire than tell them anything.

  Joseph was a day away from me. It made me smile and frown at the same time. He would still be a long way in time and distance from Orry. I tripped as I thought of us, like the points of an enormous triangle. So. Far. Away. If neither of us made it back, Orry would never know us. He would forget me. The pain of that realization was crippling, and for a moment, I struggled to move.

  I pulled my hand across my stomach, the scar bending inwards. You can do this. Keep walking.

  I stomped forward.

  “Enter the door on your right, Miss Rosa,” the guard said as he halted and waited for me to follow his directions.

  I took a quick breath and placed my hand on the cool, brushed steel handle, trying not to be distracted by the silken beauty of the wooden paneling in front of my scared eyes.

  Family. In Pau, the word meant very little. It was a threat wrapped in a warning: Don’t get too close.

  I had it in my slippery fingers for what seemed like less than a grain of time.

  But I’m still tied to it. These ropes get stronger with every added piece of twine, each life I’ve added to my own.

  The door swung open with just the minute sound of the glossy timber stroking the strands of carpet. I stared down at my bare feet in my court shoes and scratched my arm nervously as I shuffled into the room, pushing against a solid wall of my own fear.

  Someone clapped once, hard, like a textbook hitting a table. My eyes snapped up.

  His stare pierced my skin like a needle, drawing out what little bravery I had managed to strap to my heart.

  “Ah! Rosa Bianca! Finally you wake.” That voice like abused guitar strings rang out in a nearly empty room that smelled like talcum powder and fresh bread. My eyes swept across the large glass table. Its shining chrome legs polished like mirrors made my reflection even more narrow and bendy than normal. And at the head of it, Grant sat in a dining chair that looked as if it had been carved from a single piece of wood, seamless. His wheelchair lay folded in the corner and I arched an eyebrow, wondering how he got in the chair.