Jump Zone: Cleo Falls

by Snow, Wylie

  On her way back up, she grabbed a rock the size of an apple. Not much of a weapon, but it would do.

  Cleo felt a rush of air behind her. Without turning, she drove her bent arms back, striking both assailants in the ribs with the hard edge of her elbows. She spun and landed a solid uppercut to the soft underside of Smiley’s jaw, this time sending him stumbling backwards. He tripped over her bedding and landed on his back at the edge of the dying fire. Her arm juddered from fingers to shoulder from the impact.

  A blast of pain ripped through her, radiating from her back like the tongues of a thousand blue flames. Someone had gotten in a kidney punch. Cleo bit back a cry as she sank to her knees. Her attacker stopped her descent by wrapping his ropey forearm around her neck, then pulled her into the brick wall of his chest.

  Cleo had to get out of this position of vulnerability. Now. Before breathing became an issue. Before she lost it like the Banger she used the same move on.

  Don’t panic. Panic will kill you. Focus. Focus, focus, focus...

  His other hand found her breast, pinched her nipple, hard. The sharp pain stoked her resolve. She would not die like her mother. While he groped, she thrust her head backward with all her might, catching him in the mouth with enough force to loosen a few teeth. Without a thought to the screaming pain ripping through her skull and lower back, she dodged his hold, turned, and drove her bony kneecap into his balls with every ounce of rage-filled strength she had.

  He went down with a breathless squeak.

  Without hesitation, Cleo spun, drew her arm back and, just as Smiley got up from his cozy spot next to the fire, drilled him in the forehead with the rock.

  Damn, kicking ass felt way better than it should.

  As for Libra, she was going to kick his ass when she found him, leaving her alone to be set upon by three rogue soldiers.

  Before the trio could recover, Cleo grabbed the only garments left—Libra’s thermal leggings and the shirt-to-beat-your-wife-in—and made for the river, dressing as she ran.

  She had to find Libra.

  The back of her head stung like devil spit and the soles of her feet were being shredded by the rock and pine needles as she ran at top speed. She glanced over her shoulder, blinking to clear her watery vision, and sighted two of the goon squad moving amongst the trees.

  “Libra!” she hissed. What if they got to him first? Killed him while she slept? What other reason could there be for his absence? What could have kept him from coming when he heard her struggling?

  “Libra!” It was more than a breathy plea than the shout she’d intended.

  She stumbled onto the narrow bank of the creek, trying to decide which way to run, when she spotted Libra.

  He was very much alive and kneeling a few yards downstream, seemingly oblivious to the drama behind her.

  “Libra? Didn’t you hear me? Run! Why are you just…” Goose bumps erupted and her feet froze in midstride, her body cued to the danger her mind had time to process.

  Libra’s head was bowed but his pale eyes gazed up at her through his eyelashes. He didn’t seem shocked to see her, nor did he speak or acknowledge her in any way. His mouth was set in a hard line and his eyes looked empty, devoid of any emotion.

  “Libra?” She took a wary step toward him. “What’s going on?” The muscles of his shoulders were hunched, coiled with tension, and she realized that his hands were behind his back, as if bound.

  “Looking for us?” A man emerged from behind a bushy evergreen to stand next to Libra. Though dressed in sightseer clothes—hiking boots and a backpack—he shared the same bristled cut and menacing look as the men who attacked her.

  And he had a gun pressed against Libra’s temple.

  The flat black disk he flipped between the fingers of this other hand looked familiar, like the one she’d found in Libra’s stuff, except it was rimmed with a green light.

  “Get away from him,” she said, drawing in her strength for another fight. She had to get him away from Libra before the others caught up. She felt every bit as ferocious as a polar grizzly protecting its young. She shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet, ready to spring. “You want food? Supplies? Take what you came for and leave before I kill you.”

  “That’s the thing,” he grinned. He swung the barrel of the gun towards her, pointed it straight toward the middle of her chest. “I came for you, Cleo Rush.”

  She didn’t even hear the bang before her world went black.

  Twenty-Five

  Cleo awoke to no lingering grogginess, no hazy vision, no sense of time having passed. Her eyes opened as if she’d merely blinked, her nerves still humming with adrenaline, fully aware that she was in danger.

  But how much?

  She was alive, all systems go, no identifiable pain anywhere in her body. The last thing she remembered was looking down the barrel of a gun. Why wasn’t there any blood, or pain, other than the dull throb in the back of her head?

  She was still somewhere in the Taiga, bound and alone.

  Oh God, Libra… She couldn’t let her thoughts go there, couldn’t let her imagination run away with the possibility that he might be hurt. Or dead.

  She squirmed, tugged, and twisted, but her position—hands tied behind her back and joined to her ankles—left her helpless, unable to roll anywhere but onto her tummy. Libra’s thin shirt did nothing to protect her skin from the uneven, rocky ground beneath her, so any movement was hard on the ribs. Determined to escape, desperate to find Libra, she persisted until sweat stung her eyes and her heart felt as if it would bang right out of her chest.

  Fear and frustration gnawed her. She needed to get the hell out of there before those men came back, but the squirming only made the knots tighter.

  You’re a trained warrior. Tap your skills.

  Slowly inhaling, ten counts in, three counts out, Cleo decelerated her heart rate. Best she could, she blocked out the pain in her arms and legs and visualized the blood in her veins as it coursed through her, feeding her cells. She focused on the air around her, the smell, the taste, the pressure and movement. She listened. She felt. Within minutes, her body was fully relaxed, her mind opened to incoming stimuli.

  It was after mid-day—the sun was already well past its apex. She counted four species of common forest birds within her immediate vicinity, but no animals—no rodents, snakes, nothing—which indicated that there had been a significant amount of human movement in the area recently. But the birds had returned, which told her it had been quiet for at least ten, fifteen minutes. Maybe longer.

  She could smell water. If it was a river, it was either very big or very slow because she couldn’t hear any rippling, running, or splashing. Last evening, she’d estimated that they were twelve to fifteen foot miles from the Trading Post. Now she had to figure out how far the Guards could have taken them, considering they had one, possibly two unconscious, bodies.

  She had to know if Libra was all right.

  If those goons had some kind of transportation, they could already be near the St. Mary, just miles away from the Trading Post. Or they could have gone west over the north shore of Superior. If that were the case, they could be close to the Dead Zone, which meant there was little hope of escape. There would be no forest to hide in, nothing she could use to fight back, to survive.

  The wind shifted and carried snippets of conversation. The voices weren’t loud, but they were certainly intense. She focused, filtered out nature’s symphony to extract only that which she needed to hear.

  Libra! He was alive. And he sounded angry.

  “…told you I could handle it! Zhang-hell!” Cleo strained to hear what he was saying, but she only picked up the odd word or phrase. “… coming willingly. You think she’ll cooperate after this? What the hell kind of moronic—”

  “No, you pu
t this mission at jeopardy when you fucked her. Not acceptable! There are reasons we do not engage these savages—”

  “She’s not…” Libra’s voice, unlike the other man’s, was being swept into the wind. Perhaps he’d turned his back. A few seconds passed before Cleo picked up the conversation again.

  “She is our prisoner and our instructions are clear.” It was the other man’s voice. “Now, get out of my sight and finish the job.”

  “I’m not… alone with you.”

  “But I don’t take orders from you. You will go. You will be accompanied by Frith and Hinton. You will follow orders and do as you’re told or I’ll tell Cade you’re a tribe-lover like your savage-lover of a father… Put your goddamn fist down, son, before you…”

  Something hummed to life, drowning out the voice.

  Cleo’s head thunked to the ground as she tried to make sense of what she’d heard. No matter how badly she wanted to deny it, it became as obvious as a punch to the gut—Libra was with them. He was with them.

  Drowning was an agony she wouldn’t wish on her mortal enemy, but this hurt ten times worse. His betrayal cut at her insides, deep and gouging. She tried to curl her knees into her tummy but the rope pulled taut, leaving her writhing in the dirt against the physical pain.

  She had trusted him. She let him into her mind. She let him into her body.

  Cleo squeezed her thighs together, the flesh still tender, still throbbing from his invasion.

  He’d befriended her, made love to her, and handed her over to the Guard, Achan’s Elite. The same men that murdered her mother.

  Don’t trust outsiders.

  Her father had drilled that into their heads. By the time she and Jaegar were teens, they’d roll their eyes and mouth the words behind him. They mocked Lewin Rush, but in the end, he was right. And Cleo was proven the fool. Again. Was there no end to her stupidity?

  All the training, all the competitions, all the winning, yet nothing prepared her for Libra’s kisses, for the way his hands moved over her body so reverently. The depth of emotion in his eyes when he entered her, filled her. God, she was so naïve, so stupid to think that she meant something to him, that their act of sex was lovemaking, not just…screwing.

  Her tummy lurched, bringing bile to her throat.

  Libra was a tool for Achan Cade, the man who destroyed her family.

  For pity’s sake, why did it have to hurt so much?

  She lifted her head a few inches from the ground and let it drop, then lifted it again and let it drop, over and over until the ache spread from inside her chest to her skull, a small punishment for her imprudent behaviour.

  How could he, her knight in shining armor, be associated with a massive creep like Achan Cade? He wasn’t army, clearly didn’t have much in the way of training for survival in the wilderness. For the love of all things scaly, the man couldn’t even fish! Most importantly, Libra had spent too long in the Taiga and would have been caught if he were a soldier. She wasn’t sure how her people tracked soldiers who came past the Cut—something to do with their communications network, she believed, but she’d overheard Lewin and Jag discussing their c-net tracking. She regretted not paying closer attention. But Libra wasn’t tracked, so he couldn’t be like Trevayne. If the inter-tribal alarms had been triggered, every available warrior within a thousand square miles would have been all over them.

  So no, Libra couldn’t work for the Guard. But assuming as much didn’t compensate for the fact that he handed her over like a trapped muskrat.

  Cleo’s head pounded from the hard ground, lack of water, lack of sleep, and abject humiliation. To think he was doing those things to her because he had to. Oh God, he must have been cringing inside, laughing at her. Did he even grow up with a single mom, or was it all an elaborate cover story so they’d have something in common? So she’d stupidly opened her heart to him. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Naïve and stupid and stubborn and… The shame was unbearable.

  At least she could cling to the fact that those suspicions she’d had when they’d met weren’t totally off. Her instincts hadn’t flared up for nothing. And looking back, she ignored some pretty obvious clues. The K-Bar knife—definitely Guard issue. Not too many sightseers could afford a fine piece like that. And that damn black disc—the red flags were flapping in her face, and she had ignored them. Basic warrior training: trust your instincts.

  So back to the original question, the one she should have pursued from the beginning but had been too afraid to ask because she hadn’t wanted the answer. Who is Libra?

  Cleo lost track of time as she lay on the hard ground and vacillated between anger and hurt. If she spent less time on revenge plots and more time figuring out how to get out of her current bind, she might not still be stuck like a rabbit in a snare when she heard the whirring noise.

  Something or someone was coming at her through the bush. She took a deep breath, ready to scream her fool-head off if Libra appeared. Over the top of the shrubs and long grasses, the head and shoulders of a man appeared. Not Libra. It was the one who’d shot her. His movements were smooth, as if he were flying toward her.

  Solar board. He sailed a few feet above the ground on a sleek black board, slowing as he approached. The low-profile wheels weren’t engaged, but he hovered high enough for her to see the bottom of the rims sticking out from below.

  Determined to show a brave face, she clamped her jaw and hoped he couldn’t see her chest pounding against the flimsy shirt.

  “Ah, Petal. You’re awake!” A thousand bugs crawled over her skin at the sound of his voice. She squirmed, pulling against her restraints as he pulled up on the t-bar handle, hovering directly above her. The heat from the solar cells around the board’s perimeter made the air shimmer, so when he looked down at her, lips pulled back in a twisted grimace, his face looked wavy, contorted. “Time for a cozy little chat, just the two of us.”

  Twenty-Six

  Frick and Frack—Libra couldn’t remember what Trevayne called them, so he made up his own names—flanked him on both sides though the corridor was far too narrow to accommodate three vehicles abreast. He twisted the throttle and gave his board as much speed as possible so they didn’t have time to duck and swerve around low-hanging branches. It was very satisfying hear them curse as bows thwacked their faces. These assholes got physical with Cleo, and that sat all kinds of wrong with him.

  The argument with Trevayne put him in an extra foul mood. The Colonel attempted to dump everything on Libra, but it was he who compromised the mission by coming past the Cut. If detected, they’d be standing before the United World Council courts for breach of security by the end of the week.

  Asshole.

  Libra squinted into wind. Not much farther, thankfully. He needed to turn around and get back to Cleo as soon as humanly possible.

  He couldn’t figure out how Trevayne found him. He hadn’t activated his satcom, which was the only way the Colonel could have found his precise location…unless he accidently thumbed it when he had shoved his things in his pack, trying to hide the ampoule from Cleo. All it took for the biorhythm to register was a swipe. Zhang hell, he should have been more careful.

  Cleo. His teeth ached thinking of her, unconscious and helpless. It gutted him to leave her behind, but Trevayne had him by the balls, and until he could figure out how to get Cleo out safely, he had to make nice and let Achan’s Elite think he was playing along. And as long as she remained in the nerve coma, Trevayne wouldn’t hurt her. Libra knew guys like the Colonel, power-hungry cretins who got off on bullying women and children, and they preferred prey that squirmed, prey that fought back, and Cleo wasn’t a challenge in her current state. She couldn’t feed his penultimate power—that could only be fueled by fear.

  They pulled up to the Cut Road and let Libra go across alone with the shopping list. Technically, the Gua
rd could enter the Trading Post, but Trevayne didn’t want anyone to know they were there, and those two buffoons were hard to miss.

  The third member of their little extraction troop had been sent packing, tail between his legs, back to Gomeda after “the poncy flower let a little girl ruffle him,” as Trevayne put it. Libra fist-pumped when he learned that Cleo had broken the jerk’s ribs. His girl did some sweet damage. He really wanted to ask Frick about the painful-looking purple lump on his forehead but didn’t want to antagonize the situation.

  When Trevayne activated her implant, Libra thought he was going to pop a blood vessel. Bastard had override controls, unbeknownst to him. How stupid to not have predicted their underhandedness. How could he have been so trusting? Fresh from a deprived life in the penal colony, he’d palmed the nifty little device and thought nothing beyond cool toy… Wonder if I get to keep it when the mission’s done instead of thinking with his brain, the one that would have told him to watch his zhang damn step around these assholes. He’d let his street-smarts slide, thinking he was playing for Team Good Guy.

  Libra sighed and shifted the overstuffed duffle bag to his other shoulder. Trepidation stirred as he approached the main gates. Mentally, he was prepared for the worst, but it annoyed the hell out of him that the Colonel didn’t think it necessary to arm him with something to defend himself. He spied a broken branch, four feet long, fairly straight and a good thickness. He locked down his wheels and leaned over to grab it, stripped off the leaves, and propped it next to his console—just in case.

  The Trading Post was marked by a wooden-bar gate, held open with a loop of rope, in a line of thick, dense spruce trees. He followed the wide road as it turned a bend and came into a clearing that made him grind to a stop. The Trading Post wasn’t anything he’d envisioned.