The Cross (Alliance Book 2)

by Inna Hardison

  She stood up. She would give him some time, and she would talk to Riley about it. Ams she couldn’t talk to, not about this, not yet.

  “I wouldn’t be doing it out of pity for you, Brody, if that’s what you think… I don’t know you enough to feel that, and I hope that if I ever do know you enough, it still wouldn’t be pity. This, I would be doing it for me,” and she walked out, hoping Riley was close by.

  She found him dead asleep by one of the strange black and white trees. Nobody seemed to be by the almost dead fire anymore. She shook him gently by the shoulders, until his eyes flew open at her and he sat up, fully awake now, “What is it, Laurel? What happened?” He sounded worried.

  She needed to do this just right, she knew, needed to find the right words to tell him.

  “I know how we can get Trina back, Riley. I figured it out, but you have to promise me that you would let me do what I want to do if I tell you.”

  He shook his head, “No. Not unless I know what it is, Laurel.”

  She just had to tell him then. She couldn’t see how he could keep her from doing what she wanted to do. She wasn’t a prisoner here. That was it, that’s what she had to tell him.

  “Am I your ward, Riley? Yours or Ams’? Or am I free to do what I want to do? Because if I am not, this is no better than the compound for me, just a different kind of prison with better company and much more sadness…” She waited, crouching by him, Riley looking at her strangely now.

  “You are not a prisoner, Laurel. But you are my friend and I swore to keep you safe. I intend to do that. I have to do that,” he said sharply.

  “I told Brody that I want to go back, and I meant it. I am not Ams, or you. I am not cut out for this. Ever since that field in the city, I’ve been dreading what I’ll see next, and I don’t want to. If Brody takes me back and they let Trina go, I will have at least done something that I could feel good about. I don’t have anybody waiting for me anywhere, Riley. I will never know what happened to my parents, I know that now. That was my initial plan, to find our parents, mine and Ams’, but I can’t find them, none of us can. Our names aren’t even our own. So I want to do one good thing for somebody, while I am still free to do it. And you have to let me,” she said softly, so he knew she wasn’t angry at him, and walked away from him, leaving him be.

  She found Ams sitting by herself on the other side of the clearing from where Riley was. She was angry at him again for something, only she couldn’t think of anything he’d done this time.

  “Hey, Ams,” she dropped down on the grass next to her, hoping she’d tell her whatever it was that was bothering her, before she had to tell her what she planned to do. She knew it would make her angry, and sad maybe. She couldn’t help that. Sooner or later she felt she would end up back at one of the Alliance places. Some place clean, and safe, and not so full of people pointing guns at each other’s heads all the time or breaking each other’s ribs.

  “I hate him, this Brody. I really, really hate him, Laurel. And Riley seems to think there is something wrong with me for it, but I can’t help it, not after watching him put that gun right to Riley’s head like that, and making him get on his knees… Not after he hit him so hard Riley couldn’t breathe. I could see it from where I was, Laurel. He couldn’t breathe for the longest time after that, and then he let that other kid almost kill him, and he just turned away from it. But there was no place I could turn away to, so I had to watch it, all of it, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. I was screaming at him, begging him to stop it, but he didn’t even say anything to me, just stared at me as if I was crazy for screaming. Did you see how he made Riley get on his knees? He shot at me in front of him, Laurel, right by where my feet were, and then threatened to shoot me for real. What kind of a friend does that to somebody? Riley thinks I am some kind of monster again, for still being angry at the boy, but I can’t turn it off like he can. I want to kill him for what he did to Riley. I am serious. I think I could.” She looked up at her then, eyes sad and serious.

  She hugged her close, whispering to her, “I don’t think you are a monster, Ams. I wasn’t there for most of it, but I can’t imagine watching him do any of those things. He felt he had to, so the crew believed it, but I don’t know if he had to do it that way. I never loved anybody but you, Ams, so I don’t know what I would do for someone I loved. I don’t know if I could do what he did to keep you safe, Ams, but that’s me. I see how broken he is, and ashamed. I don’t think he would have killed Riley or you. Don’t think he has it in him. But I am sorry he hurt Riley, I really am.” She got up then and walked to the fire, getting it started again, because she couldn’t tell Ams what she wanted to tell her after all, at least not tonight. Riley wasn’t in his spot by the tree anymore. It was just her then, her and Ams, maybe for the last time.

  “Feel like helping me get this thing roaring, Ams? Nobody else seems interested in eating today. I need some sticks, and dry leaves. And a bit of laughter or I am going to go crazy with all the silences.” And she watched Ams running through the woods around the edge of the clearing after a little while, collecting anything dry enough to burn, and dropping large piles of it by the fire, and finally they had it going, as big as they wanted it, big enough to light up this whole clearing, and for the first time since they got here, she noticed how pretty it was.

  The white of the trees catching the light and glowing, in a way the insides of white candles glow, but not trees, never trees. It was as if every one of these slender trunks was filled with snow on the inside, and someone set the snow on fire, only it didn’t melt the snow, it just made it glow softly, whitely from the inside. She watched, fascinated, making a mental note to ask someone what these trees were called, and to remember it, so she could take it with her. This memory she wouldn’t mind keeping.

  STORIES

  Brody

  [May 7, 2236, Woods Outside of Reston]

  He knew what Riley was up to when he came at him like that, pulling him away from Ams, taking her gun from her, as if he really believed she could kill him. He could hear it in his voice and he was afraid he’d try to make him hold a gun against his head again. He would die before he ever let that happen, he knew, but he followed him to the stream, because he still had things to tell him, old things. He needed him to know why he pushed him away like that back in Waller, and that he never really wanted him dead or gone. He had to find a way to tell him all of that somehow, and he knew he couldn’t do it at the fire with everyone looking at him like he was a monster. Not that he didn’t deserve it.

  He caught the way Riley was looking at the stream, the water sparkling like melting icicles when the sun hits them just right, throwing glitter across the tiny waves. Riley seemed to want to turn into the stream, but then didn’t, and he felt it had something to do with the girl, the little one at the cave, the one who was unapologetic about wanting to shoot him. He liked her for that. There was an honestly to her, and she didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought of her. She was pretty too. He noted that much. Those impossibly large, liquid gray eyes staring right at you. Nothing timid in her look, too, as if she had no secrets. He was glad for Riley that he had her, and he really did seem in love with her, begging for her like that. Riley, who never begged for anything in all the years he’d known him. Not even when his father took that belt to his back for something stupid he got him into at school. He just took it, never screaming or pleading.

  His father did it in front of him once, probably to make him stop getting Riley in trouble, and he did for a long time after that. He couldn’t take it, watching him swing the narrow belt at the kid’s back like that, and Riley standing there with his eyes closed, not making a sound. He remembered begging his father to stop, swearing he’d never get Riley to do anything bad again, but he just wouldn’t stop hitting him for anything. He ran up to that big man finally and begged him to hit him instead, because it was his fault in the first place, and he knew how unfair it was that Riley was getting punish
ed for it. He stopped then, and threw him out of the house, slamming the door in his face.

  He watched Riley stop at some rocks, and take whatever he brought with him out of the bag. He saw the two guns and a knife, and knew for sure what they were here for; that Riley was making good on his promise. He wondered if he ever trusted anyone the way Riley was trusting him now, even after all the horrible things that happened to him. Or maybe it wasn’t trust. Maybe Riley really did think that he could kill him, that he would want to, and was willing to let him do it. Maybe he wanted to atone for betraying him last night, tricking him like that, and he knew that if it were anyone else, anyone but Riley who did that to him, he’d shoot them without thinking about it. He watched him stand up and put his hands behind his back and he knew what it meant before Riley said anything, knew that he wouldn’t fight back.

  And when he told him that he was okay with it, if he really wanted to do this, there was no anger in his voice. He just looked at him, openly, apologetically almost. He knew the waiting was killing him and he couldn’t bear let him stand there like that for another second, couldn’t bear let him think that he ever truly wanted to hurt him, but he didn’t trust himself to not fall apart, so he waited for the flood of everything he was feeling to be manageable, so he could speak calmly enough to at least ask him to take the stupid band off, so he could hug him.

  He believed him when he told him how he didn’t think they would have let Trina go, and that he would have done what he had asked of him, if he thought it would save her. He believed he’d do that for him. And as angry as he was at him for not telling him this earlier, before dragging him to those rocks like that, he understood it too. It would have felt like cheating to Riley, like he wasn’t quite keeping his promise. And all of it made him even more ashamed at what he’d done to him earlier. That he couldn’t even bring himself to beat him with his own hands, even when Anders was breaking his ribs.

  He saw him clench his jaw when he leaned down to pick up the slave band, and he couldn’t help blushing. And the way he looked at him, asking for his word, he wanted to promise him anything, just to stop him from looking at him like that. He couldn’t hurt any of his people now, he just wasn’t so sure about himself. That he could live with himself after all of this, not if he did all of it for nothing, and Trina was gone. But he owed it to Riley, owed it to him after all he put him through, so he gave him his word, and it hurt to do it, knowing that he couldn’t just put a bullet in his head.

  He felt like he was intruding on everyone when they got to the fire. These people had every right to hate him, he knew, and they seemed to, all but the other girl, Laurel. She looked at him with softness in her eyes, and he couldn’t understand why she would look at him like that, not after what he would have so easily done to her. So when she came into the cave and called him by name like that, all soft, he wanted her gone, but she wouldn’t leave, and after a while, if felt good to have someone leaning against the wall next to him. It felt good to not feel so alone, even if he didn’t deserve it.

  He didn’t mind telling her about Trina, needed to tell somebody, and so he did, telling her almost everything, except for what he said to her that last time. He didn’t want this girl to feel pity for him. And afterwards, when she put her hand on his, he thought she did anyway, and he didn’t want that warm touch, didn’t think he had any right to let her comfort him, so he told her that he would have given her up to save Trina, and he wasn’t lying then. He would have done it before, would have done almost anything before.

  He expected her to scream at him for it or hit him. He would have been okay with any of it. But her telling him that she would have let him take her to the Alliance, that she still would, if it helped him get Trina back, he couldn’t take that. It didn’t make sense for this girl to offer to do this for him, not after all that she saw him do and all the other things that she knew now. And when she was gone he was grateful for the silence again. He sat there, trying to think a way out of it for himself, for Trina, sat thinking for a long time, and finally his eyes closed and he slept.

  Too much light coming into the cave woke him up. Something was going on outside that made an awful lot of it, as if the whole clearing was on fire. He poked his head out, timidly, not wanting to scare anyone, and there it was, a roaring fire much too large for so few of them, much too large for this tiny clearing. Laurel and Ams were running around it, holding hands, giggling, looking very much like little kids who’d never seen a fire before. They were lost to whatever game this was and didn’t see him, so he leaned on the wall of the cave and watched, trying to remember the last time he giggled or ran around like that, without a care in the world. Trying to remember the last time he was as happy as these two girls looked now.

  And he had it, the last time he laughed. It was Riley’s 16th birthday, only Riley didn’t ever remember it anymore, or if he did, he never wanted to do anything, so Trina made him a surprise supper, and it was just the three of them, at Andy’s warehouse. He remembered trying to save all the candy they could for months, and Trina stealing candles and soft pillows from her house. He caught a bunch of fish the night before, and he hoped they could cook them just right on the little camp stove at Andy’s.

  Janet gave them nice plates for this, and cloth napkins, and silverware, and when Riley walked in, because he asked him to come by to help him with something, the whole warehouse was full of candlelight, and it smelled like food, and Trina’s perfume, and candles, instead of old rusty machines and motor oil like it always did.

  Riley knew what they did as soon as he opened the door, and he had tears in his eyes and a huge grin on his face. They ate the fish and potatoes out of nice plates with flowers on them, sitting on the soft, embroidered pillows on the floor. And then every piece of candy they had stashed away for this after that. They took sips of Andy’s moonshine out of a bottle, not a thermos, and they didn’t have to steal any of it. Andy left it for them in the middle of a table, with a Happy Birthday note to Riley under it. And afterwards, they ran around the warehouse with bags of milk and salt, trying to make ice-cream, hitting each other with them, spilling the milk onto each other’s faces, and laughing. They learned how to do it this way from the old crazy woman who always talked to them when they walked to school in the mornings. Nobody in Waller seemed to know who she was, not even a name. She told them people in the old days used to make ice-cream just like that, only it didn’t work for them, but they didn’t care that it didn’t work that night.

  He must have closed his eyes remembering, because he didn’t see Laurel walk up to him, but there she was, standing right in front of him, pulling on his hand, trying to get him to move, “Come play with us, Brody. Ams promised me she wouldn’t try to kill you anymore, at least not tonight, because she said she is too happy to be angry now, even at you, so she won’t.”

  He saw Ams standing on the far side of the giant fire, still smiling, waiting for her friend. He couldn’t do this.

  He shook his head, “I can’t, Laurel. I am sorry, but I can’t.” She nodded softly letting his hand go, and ran back to the fire, her arms waving wildly, child-like.

  It didn’t matter if Laurel got Riley to let her go with him; he couldn’t take her. This girl running around the fire was good, Riley good. He couldn’t make her go to a place behind the walls, without trees, and fires and Ams in it. He could never do that to her, even if she thought she wanted to do it. Even if it was the only way for him to help Trina. But he could tell she had her own reasons for this, from before him. He had to find a way to talk to her, get her to tell him what happened to her, so maybe he could help her not want to go back anymore. He walked over to them, smiles suddenly gone from their flushed faces, and looked at her, “Can we talk, please,” and went back to the cave, hoping she’d follow.

  She did, after a while, and stood there in front of him, watching him, waiting.

  “I need to know why you want to go back. Not because of Trina, but from before you met me, the other
things. I need you to tell me, if you can, need to know what happened to you.”

  She slid down the wall and sat next to him, like the last time, and told him about all of it, starting with when Riley fell into the compound, and how Ams saved him. She told him about Hassinger, and what she did to Riley, and how Ams had to stitch him up after that, and he couldn’t help but flinch when she told him that. And about meeting Kaia, the non-mute mute, and things not adding up for her after that. She told him about Drake, and how she snuck sage leaves to him for years without anyone knowing. How he helped them run, and then Drake and Keller, and how he was kind to Keller in the end, and he knew she told him that part because she wanted him to think of Drake in that way, but he always had anyway.