“Uh, wait. Say again. Last morn’s still a little fuzzy for me.”
“I bet, given the state we found you in. Your painkillers didn’t mix with Tristan’s cocktail. Tristan was trying to kiss you when we came in. Blake decked him and then downed him before telling him if he ever tried it again, he’d gladly risk Exile to get revenge. And then he carried you home and put you to bed. Your boyfriend is the ultimate gentleman, unlike mine.”
Oh my freaking-fake-boyfriend. He was messing with me. I scan for the offender and see him talking to some boys and watching our conversation intently. How should I handle this?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Blake
Well, she doesn’t look pissed. She must not have figured it out yet, though I’m not sure how that’s possible after talking to both Tristan and Bri. I don’t know what possessed me to lie to her and tell her she’d Cleaved to Tristan, but after what she pulled last morn I feel justified. She shunned me for three nights after I confessed my sins without leaving a single chance for me to explain or discuss it. And then she begs me to sleep next to her? Cleave to her? And calls me Ethan? When did she meet him? And fall for him enough to know he was “the one” from the moment they met? Granted, she was on the TB plus pain killer express, but it still messed with me. Kept me up all day. Well, that, and I can’t seem to get some of Bailey’s “offers” out of my mind. But, I’m too smart to cave, since I know what happens after things go sour, and I’m not in the mood to have Bailey’s “punishments” derail my plans for the SCI.
When Kira told me that last night was one big black hole, I filled in the blanks with a little misinformation. A harmless joke, or, okay, maybe it wasn’t so harmless since she looks like hell just froze over, and she’s stuck in the ice. She’ll figure it out soon enough and that should get her blood flowing enough to reignite hell’s fiery furnaces. If she were as evil as Bailey, I’d have to be worried about what Kira would dish back, but she’s too nice to play dirty. Shame, really.
Perhaps, if I could go skate the canyons rather than entertain the dead kids I’d be in better spirits, but Ted banned me from it. Yesternight I was getting some air that would turn a skate pro’s head when Ted interrupted. He told me that my wings were clipped until I learned to be a proper social butterfly. That really fouled my mood, and then to have to go to that whacked party and find Tristan all over Kira, well, I flipped. That jerk has been testing my patience all week. Basketball, baseball, football, lacrosse, weights…it all has to be a freaking contest. When I suggested we go board or do some long distance running, he laughed in my face, saying that it figured I would pick stuff meant for loners with no friends.
Justified or not, I’m feeling guilty for my prank on Kira. Some part of me thought she’d be relieved at the notion of being reunited with her lost true love and being able to ditch me and my mess. Instead, she appears heartbroken and disgusted at the thought of a life with Tristan. Go figure.
Crap, she just looked my way. I’m toast. She’s coming over. Best to just fess up and take the heat. Strangely, though, she’s still wearing the downtrodden body language, head bowed and shaking in disbelief. I clench my teeth as she approaches. I’m going to have to tell her. And there may very well be violence involved when I do.
“Could we walk?” she asks. “I need to talk to you.”
“Uh, yeah, sure, I guess,” I mumble, following her down a steep trail through the strobing lights and to the bottom of the canyon.
“Sit with me,” she says. “I’m still shaky.” I do, and she sits, facing me Indian-style, her knees touching mine.
“I saw you talked to Tristan and Bri. How’d that go?” I’m not sure I want to hear the answer but glance up to peek at her.
“Awkward on both fronts.” She shakes her head. “Tristan apologized. I told him I needed time to get my head around the magnitude of it. And Bri, well, she forgave me which was hard for me to hear. She says you got me out of there afterwards, so thank you for that. It sounds like I was in no state to handle things myself.” To this I can’t respond or lift my eyes to meet hers, my guilt ulcering my gut like Swiss cheese. I definitely took my joke too far.
“Before they make me move in with Tristan, I needed to talk to you to apologize to you for how I reacted the other night. Given the situation it’s a lot to ask, but will you hear me out?” She pulls up my chin and looks into my eyes, and I want to crawl under the cement floor of this canyon and rot. Instead, I nod because I want to hear what she has to say. I need to know how she plans to handle what I told her. If she turns me in, I’m Exiled at best, executed at worst.
“I am so freaked out, Blake.” Her voice is quivering. “The thought of spending the rest of my life with Tristan here is, well, unbearable. I don’t want to get into all the complications of my relationship with him, but I just don’t know if I can do it. How can I spend a lifetime with someone I can’t even be honest with? And who cheated on me back on Earth? I don’t even know what I ever saw in him at this point. He’s such a tool now that it’s hard to remember the good stuff.” She wipes a tear and stares at a line of ants a stone’s throw away.
“But, my real problem and the real reason I can’t do it is you.” She looks back towards me. “My brain’s been going full throttle since you told me everything, and I admit I am angry and betrayed and hurt, but I need you to know that I do understand why you did it. You were stuck. Once they chose me, if you’d given me warning, we’d both be dead. I get that. It would’ve been impossible for me to fake my reaction when I saw Tristan and Bri had I known ahead of time. Besides, I chose to come here.” She pauses. Maybe I haven’t given her enough credit. She understands why I did it and even takes responsibility for her part in it? And I’ve gone and screwed it up worse by telling her yet another lie.
“So, Blake, I forgive you. I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you, that I shut you out, but it always takes me a while to work through stuff in my head.” I never thought she’d forgive me. I expected she’d hate me forever.
“Here’s the most important part. Despite everything you’ve done, I’m going to ask for more. I have no right to ask this, but I need to anyway. Your mission here is now my mission. If you can’t succeed—if you can’t save the Exilers, and everyone here—well, then I’m doomed to an eternity in hell. I need you to get me out of here and preferably sooner, rather than later. If I need to, I’ll get myself Exiled and hope to meet up with the others, but I can’t play Tristan’s life partner under any circumstances.” She pauses and looks me directly in the eye with a look so predatory, I shift uncomfortably. Has Bailey been giving her lessons or what? “I can’t pretend to love him when I’m pretty sure that you’re the only one I have feelings for.”
Her words penetrate me with the force of a cannon ball. Kira Donovan, the girl I once believed to be a vapid cheerleader, the girl who tried to seduce me under the influence last night just told me that she has real feelings for me. What do I say to that? Crap. I don’t do feelings. Not anymore. Especially mushy ones. She senses I’m not going to respond, sighs, and continues.
“Once I figured out I could forgive you, the rest came easy to me. I’d always planned to wait for someone I could see spending my life with, someone I could give every part of myself to without hesitation or regret. I never felt that way with Tristan which is why I never gave in to him back on Earth. In fact, I stayed sober so that I’d never even be tempted. With you, I’m tempted. Really tempted. So when you told me I’d Cleaved Tristan, everything snapped into place. I realized I’d destroyed the only future that could ever make me happy. I vowed to only ever be with one man, but I’m going to have to break that vow because I only want to ever be with you.”
Okay, now I’m really tripping. She looks like she wants to eat me whole. The feelings thing freaked me out. She has decided I’m the only future that will ever make her happy? No expectations there, buddy. I am so freaking screwed. The pressure cooker is going to explode because I can’t take it any more. I inc
h back a bit and open my mouth to speak, but she closes the gap and puts two fingers to my lips to silence me so she can continue.
“I’m really, really sorry to dump all this on you. I know it’s so unfair given what I did with Tristan last morn, even if I don’t remember it. But I don’t want him. I want you, really, really want you. So badly that I’m not sure I can hold back from kissing you and feeling you in my arms, even if that means they Exile me for Adultery.” She leans forward, pushing me back against the cement, stretches her body atop me and stares at me with those freaking gorgeous eyes before pressing her lips to mine. Stopping her action isn’t possible because my body takes control from my brain. I roll her underneath me and return her kisses with fervor, thankful for the relative darkness of our location. It’s not nuclear bomb action, but, man, it feels good.
After mere moments, she pulls away from me, a fearful look in her eyes. She rolls out from under me and sits up to canvass the scene.
“Why haven’t they come to get me?” She looks panicked. “What I did was cause for immediate Exile. I don’t get it.” She turns to me for answers.
Not quite in control of my faculties, I stand and face her. “Uh, uh, uh.” My heart pounds harder than it would with a fast run up a steep canyon. Suddenly, a huge grin washes across her face.
“Actually, that was a lie.” She chuckles. “As was the majority of the tale I just told you. But, I think I should let you try to sort out what’s fact and what’s fiction. Kind of like you let me do. Then again, your story this evening was all fiction.”
“Oh, gads. You figured it out.” A sheepish gape plasters my face. “Of course you did. You always do.” I pause to let it sink in. “You retaliated. With kissing?”
“All part of the revenge plan.” With a laugh she adds, “And, well, you seemed to rather enjoy that part.”
I can feel the blood rush to my face. “That kiss sure felt real, whether it was part of your wicked plan or not. In fact, it was pretty hot.” I can’t believe I just admitted that to her.
She bites her lip and looks at me through her long eyelashes in a fairly coy fashion that has me wanting to grab her and repeat the act in question. “I’m a very good actress. Anyway, it is time to go work out.” She points to her watch and hops up. “Don’t ever lie to me again, Blake, or we’ll have some real issues. I’m sure you meant it as a joke, but you let it go too far by letting me leave our house thinking I was Cleaved to Tristan.”
“It wasn’t a joke. If you want me to be honest, I’ll be honest. I was trying to hurt you because you hurt me. You promised you’d have my back no matter what but completely cut me off and acted like you hated me. And then after nights of nothing, you freaking tried to seduce me into Cleaving you last morn after I pried that jerk off you. And,” she cuts me off before I can tell her that she called me Ethan. Ethan! How and where did she meet him? We are always together. And yet, somehow she met the guy, and he made enough of an impression that she begs me to Cleave to her thinking I’m him. Her eyes go wide, and she perches her hands on her hips like chicken wings.
“In my drug-induced state, I try to get you to Cleave to me and somehow that warrants you telling me I’m Cleaved to Tristan? That’s seriously deluded thinking. I never said I hated you or didn’t have your back,” she yells.
“You just went all psycho clingy chick on me! You seriously freaked me out,” I mumble. “You told me I was completely freaking responsible for your future happiness.”
“You did tell me I was Cleaved for life to my dead ex-boyfriend and doomed to stay here on Thera. I think a little payback was in order, and I didn’t let you suffer near as long as you let me suffer,” she says, pausing as if to think again. Her lips part slightly, and all I can think about is how I want to part them with my tongue. Get it together, dude. You need her back on your side. And not by using your rusty seduction skills.
“I just need to know if you can get past everything I omitted before we came to Thera.”
She paces back and forth for a minute before answering. “I’m not happy, but I do get why you did what you did, and I can probably even get past it. And I am super grateful to you and Bri for getting me away from Tristan before things did get out of hand—because if what you lied about had come true, I would have done something extreme to get Exiled, whether it meant my death or not. And despite your many, many, many faults, I do have feelings for you, but what are they? Like? Hate? Distrust? Fear? A bit of attraction? All those?” She counts off each one on her fingers, pausing between words. “Heck, I don’t know.” Thank goodness she left “love” off the table.
“Now that is something I can say right back at you.” No need to tell her that I might order the list a bit differently. And I’d replace the attraction with plain old lust and put it at the top of my list. In fact, something Bailey mentioned about whipped cream, cherries, and hot fudge could sweeten things up at home with Kira.
“Okay then. Let’s go exercise.” Not what I had in mind, but I guess we can revisit this particular action-packed conversation later.
“Okay then,” I respond, and we slowly march up the hill towards the gym. “One question, though. Why’d you call me Ethan? How do you even know him?”
“Ethan?” She stops cold and turns towards me. Even in the darkness, I can see her face go pale. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” I mumble.
“Do you know an Ethan?” she asks.
“Well yeah. The Intern dude. I’ve run into him a couple times.”
“There’s an Intern here named Ethan? What does he look like?”
“A little taller than me and a couple years older. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Looks like he could shave multiple times a day and still have stubble. Really into some chick he met at a party.” She looks like she might faint. I narrow my eyes and ask, “So you know him?”
“Huh. I haven’t run into an Intern named Ethan on Thera.” She won’t look me in the eye. Her head is twitching ever so slightly. I can’t tell if she’s shaking it or having some sort of seizure. So she doesn’t know him? I’m so confused.
“So why’d you call me Ethan?” I repeat my question.
“Sorry.” She turns away, feet moving and doesn’t explain any further.
A muted explosion in the distance catches my attention, the light from it appearing no brighter than a bottle rocket set off on the Fourth of July. Had I not been trained to expect it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed given the canyon light show. Kira didn’t seem to. I try to gauge the exact direction, and my best estimate without a compass would be that it had been launched approximately three to four miles northeast of our current location. Without question, this means my Dad has returned to Thera and is stationed at a resistance camp he’d established in anticipation of my deployment here.
Because of the changing tides and steep cliffs descending to the beach his team determined the Eco barrier to be weakest at the Northeast corner. The location had added benefits of harboring no Garden City population, only the desalinization plant to the immediate south and main port farther south of that. If I memorized the city model correctly, the canyon we live in meanders that direction before exiting through a narrow passage into the ocean just north of the desalinization plant. So, technically, I could skate the distance, jog the beach, and get within shouting distance of my father. I’m sure he is expecting this.
The last time I discussed the plan with my father was after we’d met with Ted to sign the SCI paperwork. Ted had explained the nuts and bolts of what to expect: a week of training followed by meeting the Second Chancers and settling into our role as fellow students and amateur psychologists. Given the SCI’s strong interest in Kira and me due to our DNT levels, Ted thought they’d go all out on selling the Garden City experience. The hope was that we’d be given access to the scale model of the city which they’d use to sell career options but is actually used to track residents and plan the Eco barrier pattern.
My father once toured the Gar
den City model. The night he’d visited, a munitions specialist happened to be testing a section of the detonators used in the model. They’d been having some issues with small animals on the Eco barrier and wanted to make some tweaks to improve the system to only detonate at certain weight levels. My father saw a pattern in the triggers but at the time had no reason to commit it to memory. He visited early in his career when he was still gung ho on the SCI vision
Several vantage points from the scaled city were predicted to give me a reasonable “aerial” view of the model Eco barrier and its chemical detonators. The triggers had been painted to mirror the soil color but had a different sheen. So, in the right lighting, the pattern could be discerned. Their prediction held true. While Kira had been occupied checking out her DNT under the microscope, I picked folks to chat with who had the views I needed to figure out the pattern, confirm that it repeated, and note some landmarks where the pattern stopped and started. So, I already completed one task.
Neither my father nor Ted mentioned the existence of the other city models, so either they are newer or a well kept secret within SCI ranks. My father assumed I would have to get the other patterns out of the data center at Headquarters, but what if I could get into the models instead? On the one hand, I learned the layout of SCI Headquarters during my training. My father worked within those walls for years before happening upon a whole lot of information he wasn’t supposed to and getting booted. On the other hand, I haven’t figured out how to defeat the SCI tracking system yet, though, and if I can’t, the SCI would know if I was anywhere near a sensitive area. I believe they inserted the tracker with the shot they gave us the moment we’d entered Thera, but it’s also possible the tracker’s in our watch. Ted thinks they may have redundant systems in place to ensure they don’t lose anyone.
I, and, by extension, Ted now that he’s on Thera, have also been tasked with assessing current security levels and weak spots citywide, determining whether a weapons stash exists and where, and ideally figuring out how to turn off the Eco barrier altogether. Permanently disabling the gas triggers would be ideal. However, if we could just disarm them temporarily, it would give time for the Exilers to infiltrate the city.
What Tomorrow May Bring Page 97