And then Riley was asking him something about Andy, telling him how much he missed that man and that he’d give anything to walk into that warehouse again, and just hug him, but Brody just shook his head at him, looking entirely too uncomfortable, not even looking at his friend.
“What is it, Brody? Spit it out,” Riley asked, standing now, right in front of Brody.
“Andy is dead, Riley. He’s been for years now. I didn’t know how to tell you. He was already dying when you saw him last, but I couldn’t tell you. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. That’s why I left when I did. It wasn’t the soldiers looking for me. It was that Andy was dying, and I couldn’t watch it happen. I am sorry, Riley,” and he walked away from the fire then, into the cave, and nobody wanted to go in there after him.
The two Alliance boys sat away from everyone, keeping their heads down, silent. Drake and Ella didn’t seem to mind them being there anymore, but the boys still seemed on edge. She walked over to them. She wanted to talk to them about Brody. Ams was hugging on Riley now, and she saw the two of them walk off to the trail, probably to the stream Riley liked so much.
The one called Trelix stood up when she got to them, as if waiting for her to bark an order at him.
“I want to talk to you both. Please sit down. I don’t bite,” she said quietly, and the kid sat down.
“Tell me about him, about Brody.” She crouched in front of them, the fire warming her back.
Loren shook his head, “We can’t. We are not supposed to talk about any of us to anybody who isn’t a soldier. But even if we could, there is nothing to tell. He is good at what he does, but he has always kept to himself. You all seem to know more about him than we ever did. We didn’t even know his real name,” and he looked up at her, and there was sadness in his eyes.
She thanked them, and made herself go into the cave, hoping he wouldn’t make her leave, hoping she could somehow help him. She knew before she got there how he’d be sitting against that damn wall, with his eyes closed, barely breathing, and he was, only he looked up at her when she walked in. Eyes dark and sad, but no wetness in them.
“I think we should take her to Waller, if that’s what she loved the most. It would be the rightest thing we could do for her,” she whispered, crouching in front of him, looking at his face, “I know it’ll be impossibly hard for you. Riley too, by the looks of him when you were talking about it, but I think we have to. Plus, I think I might like that sad little place you grew up in,” and she smiled at him, a small smile.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, “Every memory of her I have, except for yesterday, is from Waller, Laurel. Every street there has her in it. I don’t know if I can do it, if I can take being there with her gone. I know what you are thinking, and you are right to think that of me… I am scared. I should have never… I think she was trying to get me to leave Waller when she broke up with me, trying to protect me, and I was too hurt and too stupid to see it”— Brody dropped his head, and took a sharp breath—“I told her that she was right to break it off, and that she deserved better. That’s what I left her with.…” He looked at her again, not hiding the sadness from her.
She took his hand, and he let her.
“I know, Brody. It’ll probably completely break you to do it, but if it were me, I’d want to trust that whoever loved me would do it anyway, would take me to a place that meant the most to me, even if it killed them to do it,” she said and she let him be then, leaving him to his memories of Waller full of Trina still in it, and memories of everything else that made him who he was.
She hoped a little bit of that would come back once he was home, a bit of the little kid, and not just all the grown up sadness. And maybe she would learn something about these strange boys from being there, something that would help her understand why they did the things they did to people they loved and to each other, and why they were always so sad and serious and in charge, worrying about every little thing for everybody but themselves.
Part Two
CARTHAGE
Amelia
[May 12, 2236, Carthage, NY]
She knew Riley was dreading seeing Waller again, and she couldn’t really blame him for it, but she couldn’t hide her own excitement about the trip, only for her it was more about flying over Carthage. She hoped they’d find a reason to stop there for a day or two on the way back, so she could find her favorite bridge, maybe even walk on it. She didn’t know if any of the bridges were still there or the tall buildings with intricate stuff up top, at roof levels, as if someone chiseled them out of glass, steel and some kind of rock to make them look just so. She remembered all the pictures of this place from the old books in the library, and she knew the pictures were old, really old, and that the place couldn’t possibly look like that anymore, not after everything that happened since, but she hoped a small part of it still did.
She spent her free time getting ready, feeling like she was holding her breath, but only sharing her excitement with Laurel. She couldn’t talk to Riley about it, didn’t want him to feel guilty about not quite sharing in her giddiness, and Brody… Brody was even worse. She was finally able to look at him without hatred or even anger, and now all she could see on him was sadness. He reminded her of Riley in that from when she just met him, only she couldn’t see this boy ever letting the sadness go.
She came up to him the day after they all came back from that clearing; felt she needed to tell him she wasn’t angry at him anymore. He was sitting alone by the dead fire, staring in front of himself with that strange blank look on his face, as if he wasn’t actually looking at anything, but forgot to close his eyes.
“Hey, Brody. Can I sit?”
He nodded, without looking at her.
She sat next to him on the log and waited, hoping he’d say something first, but he didn’t seem to want to talk.
“Laurel doesn’t want me to be mean to you anymore, not after what happened to you yesterday,” she said bluntly, looking at him, trying to elicit something other than the lifeless blank stare into the embers.
“You have every right to hate me, Ams. I would prefer that to you feeling pity for me. I don’t want that from you, from any of you,” he said without looking at her, and moved to get up, but she grabbed him by the hand, keeping him on the log.
He still wouldn’t look at her.
“I thought you’d say that. Sad, how predictable you are. Riley, too. I could always tell when he was about to go into the ‘please, don’t touch me, don’t comfort’ me speech. But here is the thing. I do feel bad for you, for all that happened to you. I can’t turn it off anymore than I could turn off my anger at you earlier. But I no longer believe that you meant to hurt me or Riley that day. I think you honestly felt you had no choice, because I can’t imagine you ever wanting to hurt Riley. I see the way you are with him, and I think you’d give your life before you’d take his.”
He wrenched his hand free and stood up, staring at her, “Amelia… What I did to Riley, I don’t want your forgiveness for it. I can’t take that. I don’t want it. I am okay with you being angry at me, I really am. I’ll talk to Laurel so she doesn’t make you do this again.”
She was standing now as well, looking up at him, his eyes an incredible collection of colors, always changing, in motion. He was strikingly good looking, she noted for the first time, but he didn’t seem to know it or care. She watched him stand there, head down, ashamed, and felt the same ache she felt when she was washing Riley’s back all those months ago, when they first met, the ache of having hurt someone without meaning to.
“It’ll hurt you real bad going back, won’t it? Only you know you have to. It’ll hurt Riley too. I can see it on him. I don’t know what it’s like to feel that much pain about a place. Never really had one that meant anything to me, and the one they took me away from, I don’t remember it at all. Just Blanche, my dog. I remember him… Anyway. I think I’d trade any pain I could possibly feel about going back someplace with memories in
it that I made, memories that were all mine, for not having a place at all, but that’s me. I could be wrong about that. When we get there, if it gets too much, you can share some of it with me if you need to. I am a much better friend than you think. But you ought to stop beating yourself up for everything that’s happened. It wasn’t your fault, Brody. Everybody but you knows it,” and she walked away from him, Brody looking at her with surprise in his strangely colored eyes.
Drake and Ella told her all they could about Waller and what to expect when they got there. She liked talking to them about it. They didn’t seem to be hurting every time they mentioned a street or a building or a person there, and it made it easier to picture the place with them describing it, the little town with sad little houses in it, and the old brick school, and Andy’s warehouse. She wanted to see that place from everything Riley told her about Andy. She wished she got to meet this Andy person. She liked him in all the stories she heard, even the one where he slammed the door in Riley’s face. She spent all of her time making these two tell her about Waller, and when it was finally time to board the flier, she felt that she knew the place, knew what it would feel like and smell like, knew its streets and some of its inhabitants, as if she herself had been raised there, and not in a compound, a place that had no markers. But she knew, too, Laurel and her wouldn’t be able to leave whatever clearing they’d land in, looking the way they did, but maybe just flying over this place she felt she knew now would be enough for her to feel something for it.
Trelix and Loren were doing their best not to intrude on anything that was going on in the camp. They did what Brody ordered them to without question, but beyond that, kept to themselves and left everyone alone. They seemed uncomfortable, and she didn’t know if it was because of the Zoriners or the fact that her and Laurel were with them. She tried to get them to talk to her a few times, but it didn’t go anywhere, so she decided she would treat them as she did the guards at the compound, all but Drake. They would do whatever they could to keep them safe, but they weren’t going to be her friends. She was okay with that.
They left right after lunch. Riley strapped her into a translucent seat, and told her not to worry, that these were the safest things around, and nothing bad had ever happened to anyone in them, not once.
“Would I care if the first time is when I happen to be a bloody passenger in one of these?” she was trying to make light of it, make light of her fear. She never told Riley that she was petrified of this whole flying thing, but he seemed to have figured it out anyway.
“Ams, just close your eyes, and you won’t know how high up we are. Go to sleep if you want to and I’ll wake you up when we land.”
But she couldn’t do that. She would miss all of Carthage, and she didn’t want to miss that, not any of it. She took his hand, and leaned back, waiting for something to happen, only nothing did, but they were suddenly hovering over the clearing, the strange black and white trees getting smaller and smaller and finally disappearing completely, and she must have squeezed his hand really hard then, because Riley had his arm around her, whispering how it was all going to be all right into her hair.
And after a while, it was. She got used to the strange feeling of not having the ground under her feet, and of watching the world go by so very far below her. She couldn’t tell how fast they were going. She’d never gone anywhere but on foot or in an elevator that she could remember. They kept flying over never-ending woods, some with trails cut through them. She saw a glimmer of a river or a stream below, couldn’t tell which, and then more and more woods. Riley sat next to her not looking through the window, keeping his eyes on her instead, as if still worried.
“I am okay, Riley. Truly, I am okay. It’s not like it was at that window in Reston for me. I don’t feel dizzy or sick or anything.” He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek and went to where Trelix was in the front at the controls.
The woods ended and there were fields, green and yellow, stretching for as far as she could see, and then suddenly there was water, definitely larger than a stream, bluest water she’d ever seen and so much of it. It’s as if they ran out of land and everything where they were going was made of water. She couldn’t see where it ended on any side but the one they were heading towards. They flew lower now too, she could tell, because everything below them got just a little bit larger.
They swerved to the right and she saw it then, Carthage, or what was left of it, floating on top of all this blueness. So many buildings with the strange roofs sticking right out of the water, swaying below her. She could see the bridges from here too, the Brooklyn Bridge the book called it, her favorite. She stared at it, feeling a pang in her chest at how it was hanging helplessly in mid air, no longer connecting this place with the tall buildings in it to whatever the other place was. She saw the green statue from the book too, sticking out from just the chest up. It had holes in its chest and in its face or maybe they weren’t holes but marks made by something else. They looked like holes to her, as if someone got really angry at it and shot at it with a very large gun over and over again.
She wondered where everybody from here ended up after all the water came, and if they missed it from there. If they dreamed of these amazing roofs, and that bridge, and the strange green statue in the middle of the water. She knew she’d have missed it if she were from here. This place wasn’t at all like Reston, even without any people in it. It felt sad being abandoned like that. It felt like the kind of place that should always have crowds of people streaming through its streets. The sort of place with lights everywhere, on the roofs and in the windows of everything, in the shops, and houses, and food places.
She could picture it like that in her head, and the people in this place wouldn’t be sad like Brody and Riley, they’d be happy, and not in that little kid running around the campfire happy, but grown up happy. Like people who belong always feel. Drake when he is with Ella happy. That’s how this city was built. To make the people in it belong, and she knew she would have liked to live there before all the water. That this place could have been home.
THE CROSS
Brody
[May 12, 2236, Waller]
He told Trelix to put the shield up before they got anywhere near Waller, and he saw it go up, the flicker of sky and clouds, a holo of what was outside. He spent all of his time in the cryo bay, watching Trina, as if she were simply asleep, and not gone. Everything about her still looked so alive, even her skin, that soft olive with so much warmth in it. He left the flowers Laurel wove into her hair, the bright yellows striking spots of color in her almost black curls. She looked relaxed, and he hoped that the first shot stopped her heart, hoped that she didn’t really feel it. That’s what they were always told about these guns, compared to the ones that shot actual bullets, - they were a more humane way to put a Zoriner down. He hoped they were right about that.
His screen beeped with five minutes to approach notice, so he slid the top back on, covering Trina, and walked out into the cabin. Not much seemed to have changed in Waller, looking at it from so high up. He could see the long ago abandoned train tracks and then the old train yard with the warehouses, Andy’s amidst a small cluster that would be on the other side of the flier from him now. He chose the side he was on so he didn’t have to see that place just yet. They flew low over the roofs, more of them looking like they needed help now than he recalled, and headed to a tiny clearing just beyond the edge of the city. He closed his eyes when they flew over the school and Riley’s old house. He knew he’d see all of it again, knew he’d have to, but he wasn’t ready for it just yet.
Riley was talking to Ams, holding her hand, as if Ams was the one who didn’t want to be here now and not Riley. He looked around for Laurel and found her standing at the back of the flier, staring out the window, her face serious, detached. She looked like she was daydreaming about something, and he let her be.
Trelix was good at flying this thing, really good. They landed so softly he wouldn’t have known
they were on the ground if it weren’t for the blue blinking light in the cabin announcing it. Trelix and Loren would have to stay near the flier for as long as they were going to be here. He couldn’t bring Alliance soldiers into this place, not unless he had to, and he was really hoping he wouldn’t have to. He never told Riley that he planned to go to the Council, didn’t know if he would either. It wasn’t Riley’s fight, and he didn’t want to endanger his friend. But he needed to know what happened, needed some damn answers. For all the hatred he felt at Hassinger for killing Trina, he knew it was his own people, Waller Zoriners, who gave her up in the first place. He owed it to her to at least try to find out why, if he could do nothing else for her.
Everyone but his two soldiers was out in the clearing, strapping their backpacks on, waiting on him it seemed. Drake and Ella were at the front, holding hands. There was an old abandoned cemetery a short walk from here. That’s where they planned to take Trina, but he wanted to make sure the place was still there, and that they could find a tiny space there for her under a pretty tree of some kind, something she’d have liked enough to sit under in the summers and lick the icicles from its branches in the spring, because here they wouldn’t taste like coal dust the way they did in the city. It was just far enough away from all of that, but still close enough for her to see the smoke streaming from the chimney of her house when her mother cooked supper. He knew he couldn’t go to that house, couldn’t tell that sweet woman that he got her daughter killed. The not knowing was better than that.
The Cross (Alliance Book 2) Page 9