Olga stood up, flask in hand, and pushed it at Gus’s face. “Just one drink, Gus. It won’t kill you.”
She was braver than I was, but then, that wasn’t hard. We held our breaths. No one talked to Gus like that. He stared up at the patch of sky above us, the branches encroaching on the view, and swore. Snatching the flask from her chubby hand, he gazed into the opening. He sniffed it once, and his face relaxed. Raising the flask, he said, “moy syn,” and took a large swig. I watched him roll it around in his mouth and swallow it like it was a spoonful of honey. Man, he was a tough guy.
I leaned towards Matt and asked, “What does moy syn mean?”
Matt glanced down and I noticed he was flexing his injured hand, testing his fingers. They seemed sluggish.
“It means my son, Joe,” Matt whispered sadly.
“Oh.”
When the flask came to me, my head was already dark with memories: Cal’s crazed eyes when I’d burst into his hospital room, ready to tear him apart, a fan of perfect, dark-brown hair, blood. But I also thought of Gus. Most of the time, I forgot he was a father too, that he had lost both his children. He was just Gus, strong, gruff, and unemotional. I didn’t pause for long before I placed the flask to my lips and drank. The harsh liquid burned down my throat like charcoal-flavored acid. I coughed and spluttered while the older members of the group laughed at me.
I wiped my mouth and let myself smile, my eyes stinging with tears from the burning fluid. The alcohol pooled in my stomach and created an unfamiliar, warm sensation. The darkness got darker, shrouding my memories in a wavy fog and putting me in the present. I liked the feeling.
I passed it to Matt, and he declined. “Not a path I can go down again,” he muttered, still staring at his hand. I shrugged and took another small sip. It didn’t taste as bad the second time. Elise watched me from across the circle of Survivors and Spiders, curiously, with a small smile playing on her lips.
Matt stood. “Now as you know, poor Ansel was supposed to be the accompanying Survivor for the Palma mission.” Everyone bowed their heads. It seemed so long, though it was only weeks ago that Ansel was killed by those brutal men on our journey to the Superiors’ compound. Matt cleared his throat. “I would volunteer but… my hand…”
I jumped up, the sudden movement causing me to sway a little. I forced my body to straighten, to look confident, competent.
“I’ll go.” I was desperate to keep that distraction going, focus on the action outside of my brain, not the destruction going on inside.
“But you’re wounded, Joe,” Desh said, shaking his head as he hugged his body against the cold. That’s never going to change, I thought.
I made eye contact with Gus. “I’m fine, I feel perfectly fine,” I told them and myself. Moving closer to Gus, I talked in a hushed, pleading tone directly to him. “Please, let me do something.”
He groaned, and then his head fell into a begrudging nod. “All right, boy,” he conceded.
I clenched my fist and pumped it at my side. This would be a good thing for me. I blinked up at the stars, peeking out between branches that looked like spidery veins tangling across the air. A door was opening, but I had to close one first.
The Palma Spider stood and held out his hand. “My name’s Nafari,” he said, his strong handshake out of proportion to his small size. He looked up at me with almost black eyes like buttons and grinned. “My friends call me Naf.”
I shook his hand and returned his smile. “Ok Naf, where do we start?”
He threw his head back and laughed, his voice was deep and roaring, like an engine.
“I said my friends call me Naf.” He poked my chest with his brown, scarred finger, which hurt. “We are not friends… yet.”
I shrugged and forced a smile, which gradually became less fake as I stared into his strong, rebellious face. “By the end of this mission, I’ll be calling you Naf.”
He slapped his leg. “Oh, I hope so!”
“So Nafari,” I said, annunciating every syllable carefully, “where on the wall do you think we should place the bomb and the video?”
His eyes were as round as the moon, but more intense, brighter. “We are not going to place the bomb on the outside. We are going to stroll right in and we’re going to blow the gates open from the inside.” He swung his elbows dramatically and raised his legs up high, doing his strolling impression while he laughed.
My face froze in disbelief, which made him laugh harder.
“Don’t worry. Trust me,” he said through giant, white teeth. One tooth was missing, a black square punched through his mouth. He grabbed the flask and licked his lips before drinking. “This is going to be fun!” he garbled with a mouthful of alcohol.
The others didn’t argue. We had let the Spiders run each mission. They were the experts on their own towns after all.
The videodisc seemed heavy in my pack. Even though it only weighed about two hundred grams, its importance and my responsibility dragged me down until I felt like my feet were making deeper impressions with every step. Now that the alcohol had worn off, I felt less brave and more nervous. Nafari slapped my back, his springy steps making me even more tense, and began to push me through the gap in the blackberries.
“Let’s go, big man!” He laughed as he threw me a colored shirt to pull over my camouflage one.
Pelo and Desh waved me good luck as I turned around one last time. Matt and Gus had already told me to be careful a dozen times and were now packing.
We were swallowed in thorns and rustling leaves.
“Now, you remember what we practiced?” he whispered as we moved through the briar.
I nodded my head more times than necessary. “Yes.”
We burst through the other side and made our way to the dirt road that led right up to the gates. Our feet un-quiet, strolling casually or, in my case, trying to look casual and looking more stiff and edgy.
Nafari’s head swung from side to side like he was looking for something as he sauntered towards Palma under the light of the cloud-shadowed moon. Suddenly, his upper body darted down and he snatched up a discarded basket. It was rotted and crusted with dirt, a large hole worn through its side. He pressed the hole against his body and poured the frozen berries we had collected into it. He did it swiftly, never breaking his gait, brushing the dust off as we moved.
The cloud cover made it hard to see the road, but above the gates, two lights streamed over the opening, giving us quick illumination as they flicked on and off when the guards walked in front of sensors. I slowed as we approached. Those giant guns slung over their shoulders would make a hole in me the size of Nafari’s basket.
Nafari clipped the side of my head and yelled, “Hurry up! See, they’ve already closed the gates. Idiot!” He smacked me again, almost having to jump up to reach the top of my head. I flinched and ducked as his palm slapped my skull.
“Ouch,” I growled.
“It has to look realistic,” Nafari murmured under his breath as he grabbed my shirt and dragged me towards the gate.
I held my breath as they raised their guns and one of the guards shouted, “Stop!”
Nafari ignored him and kept walking. And I braced myself for a bullet.
“Stop!” the guard screamed, his voice peeled of aggression, sounding afraid.
A warning shot fired at our feet, dirt and gravel spitting at our knees. I leaped into the air like I could avoid it.
Nafari shot me a glare with his moon-like eyes and then turned to the guards, swearing at them, waving his fist around in anger while I tried not to gawk in horror. “Is this what I get for spending my outside time collecting berries for Ursra?” He cursed again, and the guards lowered their guns in confusion.
Nafari kept storming towards the gates, dragging me with him, blaming me for slowing him down.
By the time we were at the gate, the guns hung slack across the guard’s stomachs and the looks of puzzlement and almost apology on their faces had me struggling not to laugh.<
br />
“Are you going to let me in or what?” Nafari asked, his tone so convincing and demanding.
The guard paused under the lights. We stood still for so long that they turned off. When he moved to get his keycard, the lights clicked back on.
I kept my head bowed, my eyes narrowed.
“Wait,” the guard paused, flipping the card over in his fingers. He pulled a scanner from his holster and held it out. “Your wrist, please.”
Nafari rolled his large eyes and stuck his wrist out. The barcode was there, but a thick, red line ran across it, making it unreadable. I took a deep breath. This was it. We were going to be gunned down. My muscles tensed, ready for the fight.
The guard stared down at the red mark, his scanner shaking in his hand. He made eye contact with Nafari, who smiled wide.
“What’s taking so long, man? I’m cold and I’ve got a drink with my name on it waiting for me inside,” the other guard snapped, jumping from leg to leg and rubbing his arms.
The guard holding the scanner pressed the trigger, looked at the screen, and said, “Nothing, let them in,” without giving me a second glance.
The iron gates opened with a creak, and we were inside. Walking fast, but not too fast. Once we were out of sight, Nafari pulled me into a gap between two buildings and pressed me against a wall.
“What the hell…?” I started to ask. I had so many questions that I didn’t know where to start.
“Sh!” Nafari grinned in the dark, his white teeth glistening like they were painted on. The black gap looked solid.
“But… how?”
“Let’s just say, our resistance has a few officials in its pockets,” he whispered, his voice whistling, his face slanted in shadow.
I swiped my forehead with my shaky hand. “I can’t believe it. Nothing like that would ever happen in Pau. I was sure we were going to be shot!”
I took a wobbly breath. Palma was more than just a little different.
He nodded, I think. His teeth moved in the dark anyway.
“I think they’re getting just as tired of fighting us as we are of fighting them. We threw cans, they took them away. We threw bottles, so they took them too. If all we’d had was the spit on our tongues, that’s what we’d throw.” I watched his dark lips pass over his teeth and listened to a true rebel. “Now we are forced to scavenge for food because they keep taking every potential weapon from our hands before we even use them. Our biggest problem has been access to decent weapons and large enough explosives. This,” Nafari said, patting the bomb in his pack, “will change everything. Come on.” He pulled me away from the alley and into the main street.
“Where are we going?” I gasped, my heart galloping with excitement.
“To place the videodisc.”
ALEXEI
The decking creaked underfoot as I reached out and pulled down a handful of evergreen. Crushing the needles in my hand, I lifted them to my nose.
Apella, darling, we wanted this life. And now I had to live it without her. It seemed… unfair, sometimes… empty.
Apparently, this place used to be a ‘ski chalet’. An old chair lift hangs overhead, frozen in time. It boggled my mind to think of the lives people led before, both fascinating and frightening.
Faded pictures of families long gone hung on the timber walls. Dressed in shiny suits and holding black sticks in their hands. I missed my reader. You’d understand. To me, it was like an appendage. I remembered ‘skiing’ from the archives. People would shoot down snow-covered hills wearing long shoes. It looked terribly dangerous.
Two very different pairs of arms wrapped around my legs. I felt joy. Joy and then guilt. I didn’t want to move on. But these boys, these beautiful children, they forced you whether you wanted to or not.
I bent down and opened my hand. “Smell this.”
Hessa pushed his whole nose into the pine, green bits sticking to his chubby face. “Mmm.”
But Orry, he had so much of his mother in him. He stood back, looked up at me with those incredible eyes, and squinted suspiciously. I moved closer. “It’s ok, Orry. It’s safe.”
He poked it with his finger, swirled it around in my palm, and lifted his own finger to his nose. I couldn’t tell if he liked the smell or not; he didn’t smile or react. Hessa tried to pull on Orry’s arm. Orry shrieked, but then he laughed. They tumbled about on the deck play fighting. They can laugh. I was so glad that after everything they’d been through, they could still laugh. But they needed their parents.
I need you, darling, but I’m coping. I knew my role, and I was doing my best to fulfill it.
Orry shouted, and I heard crunching in the snow. I knew it couldn’t be them, but I always hoped.
“Reeeeen, reeeen!” Hessa waved frantically at Careen as she marched up the hill, three birds slung over her shoulder.
I tell them about you every day. I tell them about Rosa, Joseph, and Deshi every day too. Our adopted family. My biggest fear was that they would forget them. I wasn’t so worried about Orry. But Hessa hadn’t seen Deshi in more than six months. There was a time when I would have done anything to be called Father or Dada. Now, I dreaded it. I bowed my head in silent prayer.
I had to believe they would come for us.
Careen climbed the stairs and threw her prey on the deck. She pulled up a chair, selected a bird, and began plucking the feathers. I cringed a little at her ruthless efficiency when it came to butchering. But then, she’d kept us well fed this past month. I took the boys inside to spare them the gore.
Careen blinked up at me, her hood falling down to reveal her sad eyes. “Any change?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, no, he’s not worse, but he’s not getting any better. He’s…”
She put her hand up to silence me. I stopped talking and ushered the boys inside.
I kneeled down to them and said, “Who wants to help me turn the lights out and light the candles?”
They jumped up and down and followed me, giggling and jostling each other, playing with the switches. We only had a small amount of solar power we could use every day.
I moved to the bedroom door and knocked. No answer. I turned. “Boys stay here.” They nodded and ran to play on the stairs.
Pietre lay so very still. I dipped my head down just to check he was breathing. He was, barely.
I’m praying to you, Rosa. I know you’re the one I need to count on, the one that’s so stubborn, strong, and willful that you’ll get here.
We need you.
ROSA
I don’t know this girl. This girl is younger, stupider… she’s losing her grip on what she’s learned like a kite not tied to its spool. The string unwittingly unraveling as the colorful cloth gets caught in the wind and soars into a cold, blank sky.
Torture was over for the day, but was I in for more?
Denis closed the door and leaned his back against it, locking it with a swift flick of his fingers behind him. I drew a sharp breath as I started to worry that this had been a trick. I was an idiot to fall for the line. He’d just wanted me to threaten Grant, catch me out. Then I’d be thrown into a real prison. Not this pretty cage. Not that it mattered—the containment, the lack of freedom was the same. I was a bird clipped of her wings wherever they put me. I imagined bars and grime, placing my hand to my throat. No, they would just kill me.
Denis’ movements were unconsidered, brief, which was odd for him. His eyes had the intensity of a sun flare. He took a large step towards me. I glanced around, wondering where he had shoved me so suddenly. I shouldn’t have just let him take me. I should have fought. The room was darker in color than mine. Heavy, black curtains hung from the windows, the bedspread black and white stripes. It was a very masculine room. A music player rested on the bedspread. I was in Denis’ bedroom.
I shuffled backwards, my hands reaching out behind me and finding a desk. Two computer screens startled to life when I knocked something.
He stalked closer and closer, until he was hovering ove
r my bent back body. He wet his lips and spoke. “How do we kill my father?”
I wasn’t relieved. Tears pooled in the corner of my eyes. Could I be a murderer?
I think I’d wanted it to be a trick. I had wanted this decision to be definitively ripped from my hands.
I glared up at him. “Back up,” I said flatly.
Suddenly realizing how close he was, how scary he was acting, he jumped back and unrolled himself like a poster, slotting back into his controlled persona once again. When he carefully sat on the edge of his glossy bed, I sighed, in a shivery, dreading way, and told him how to kill his own father.
“When I was, er, revived, there was one step Grant seemed to be unaware of, one that my friend Deshi made sure I had here.” I tapped my hand. “I’m sure Deshi wanted me to hide it, and I did.”
I swear Denis flinched at the mention of Deshi’s name. “Did you… know him?” I asked slowly.
He shook his head and flicked on a lamp. “Not very well but we worked together for a short time towards the end of construction on the healer. Dad wanted me to take it over when… um…”
“When they terminated Deshi?” My anger pulled and played with me. The reasons stacked up as to why I should do this.
Denis nodded.
“So you know how the healer works, but you didn’t know about the final step you must take before healing is complete?” I asked, suspicion putting a block between my words. Trust.
I hesitated. This was a big move. One I wouldn’t be able to retreat from. “I don’t know…” I mumbled, struggling with whether to tell him or not. It was my only leverage. Could I hand it over to him?
He shuffled forward on the bed until his knees nearly touched mine. I leaned away, my back anchored to a squeaky computer chair. “You can trust me on this. I want things to change. Neutralizing Grant is the first step.”
Neutralizing. We weren’t tying his hands behind his back—we were plotting to kill him.
I shook my head back and forth slowly. “And what will happen to me when it’s done?” I was scared of the answer. I wanted it too much.
The Wanted (The Woodlands Series Book 4) Page 15