"Papers. Come on."
She followed him to an office adjacent to the bare concrete room where they'd received her application for citizenship. He found her papers in a green file cabinet and went over them point by point, filling in many of the places he'd left blank the first time around: place of birth, parents' names, education. By the time they finished, lights-out had been called; the man accompanied her back to her room, where she brushed her teeth in the dark.
Dumb of her to not work this out with Alden the second she saw him. She couldn't let them know they were brother and sister. It would be far too easy to leverage that information against her. She resolved to clear this with him first thing in the morning.
She never got the chance.
Alden wasn't at breakfast. Tristan ate her meal—grits, homemade; three women were still grinding corn for the latecomers—then found the dark-haired girl her brother had spoken to the day before.
"Seen Alden today?"
"Not since yesterday." The girl combed her fingers through her hair, glancing at Tristan's face, her shoes. "You're his..?"
"Babysitter."
The girl's lips tightened. "Isn't he like fourteen?"
"From when he was younger," Tristan laughed. The girl was worried about unknowingly talking with—and being attracted to—a loser. "He knows kung fu."
"I know, right?"
Tristan got up and wandered around the longhouses. She still hadn't seen him by the time they were called to work. As she helped sort and stack lumber, an icy nausea curled in her stomach. Most likely, Alden had been reassigned to another task—forty people toiled back at the housing, carrying away the dirt a backhoe excavated from a growing hole at the end of the buildings; even more worked in the fields far upriver, hacking away the weeds that had begun to poke from the soil, preparing to seed the earliest crops—but she couldn't shake the feeling something had happened to him. Something precipitated by her arrival.
Work ceased. She returned to eat, mechanically chewing the cornbread and the spaghetti with red sauce poured straight from labelless jars. The sun left. She slept.
It was the same thing the next day and the day after. The nausea ate her from the inside, hollowing her, rasping her nerves from the bone. Her calm resolve eroded, replaced by twin imps of panic and rage. Had Hollister taken him? Relocated him? Imprisoned him as some perverse punishment after ferreting out Tristan's lies? The security chief had given no sign he disbelieved her babysitting story—in fact, he'd said nothing to her at all—but it could not be coincidence. And if she went to ask, she could only expose herself, confirming his suspicions.
And then—what? Would she be imprisoned? Exiled? Executed? For all their talk of work contracts, this place was not a carefree commune. Armed guards watched their every moment. An electric fence penned them in. Every hour of their day was scheduled: lights on, breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner, lights out. She doubted a challenge to that control would be dismissed with a simple slap on the wrist.
So she hollowed, devoured by a doubt and indecision she hadn't felt since the Panhandler had taken their parents. She knew she would act soon, whether or not it was wise.
On the fourth day of Alden's disappearance, with Tristan still working on lumber, a man shouted in pain. He cursed, flung down his handsaw, and booted his sawhorse into the dust.
"That's it," he said. He walked in a circle, sucking on his bloody finger. "I'm done. That's it."
An older man came to him, speaking too softly for Tristan to hear over the death metal blaring from the security officer's pickup. The wounded man shoved his friend away.
"I'm done, okay? I'm going at this stuff like some dumb lumberjack? If they ran an extension cord out here, I could rip a Skilsaw through this stuff in three hours. Without cutting my fucking finger open, either. They don't want me to work? Fine. I'm done."
The officer clicked off his music. In the abrupt silence, Tristan could hear the murmur of the river through the trees. A radio hissed static from the cab of the truck.
Most of the others returned to their tasks. The older man argued in low tones with his angry friend, who stomped on his overturned sawhorse until it cracked to pieces, then sat on the rubble and nursed his bleeding finger. Another truck rolled down the dirt ruts to their makeshift lumberyard, its high tires birthing dust devils behind it. It swung to a stop, high frame rocking, clouding them in fine dry dust. Hollister jumped from the cab. The passenger door opened and Alden hopped down to the ground, blond hair hidden under the black cap of a security guard.
Alden trailing behind him, Hollister walked to the seated man. "What's up?"
"I'm done." The man shook his head at the stacks of unstained wood. "Not until you get me some proper tools."
"You've got what you've got."
"A big old pile of bullshit? You try it. You pull that saw through boards all day, then tell me it makes any goddamn sense not to run a cord out here." He flung his arm at the pillars of steam rising across the river. "I mean, what's all that about? That thing could power half of Seattle. They afraid a single saw's gonna brown us out?"
Hollister rubbed his thumb and forefinger in the corners of his eyes. "Stand up. Pick up your saw. Work."
"Get me a Skilsaw and you'll have to drag me to bed."
Hollister grimaced, as if he were struggling with a bout of gas, and turned to Alden. "Just like I shown you. You ready?"
Alden stared at the seated man. "How will I know when it's good?"
"I'll say when. Don't hold back. That's how you wind up hurt."
Work had stopped across the yard. Gulls cawed from the river. Alden reached for a flat black baton dangling from his belt. The seated man smirked. Alden swung the baton down on his head.
Frozen by his disbelief, the man didn't flinch until the last moment. The baton caught him on the side of his head. He toppled off the lumber, catching himself on one hand, barring the other above his head. Alden's first swing hadn't been all that strong—his forearm had been too tense, his elbow hesitant and stiff—and the surprise, if anything, was what had knocked the man over. But the first blow unstuck something in Alden. His eyes flashed. His second strike carried the same loose power he put into his snapping punches. The stick cracked into the man's wrist. He yanked back his hand and yelped. Alden followed him in, aiming another blow at the man's head; the man twisted, catching it on the shoulder instead.
That was the last real defense he mustered. Alden unleashed strike after strike, short, snapping bursts that whipped the baton into the downed man's ribs and head. Wet thumps and sick cracks echoed past the gaping workers. Alden's mouth twisted, lips peeling from his teeth.
Tristan read the pain on his face as clearly as a billboard. Whatever he'd suffered in the months since the aliens had snatched him away—the hurt and helpless wrath—he now turned it on the fallen man.
Tristan launched forward, grabbed Alden's biceps as he cocked another strike, and pulled him away. "Alden!"
He turned on her, eyes burning, struggling against her grip. His left fist jabbed for her ribs. He saw it was her and shortened his punch, knuckles tapping her side.
Hollister moved at the edge of her vision. She let Alden go. Hollister swung his club at her head in a flat arc. She stepped back with her left foot while pivoting toward him on her right, lashing the blade of her left hand into Hollister's wrist. At the same time, she wheeled her right elbow across her body and into his chin. He'd been stepping into the blow and the combined momentum clotheslined him. His feet left the ground, swinging up as his head jarred back from her elbow. He thumped to the dust.
The guard who'd radioed him in skipped sideways from the truck, rifle pointed dead at Tristan's chest. Hollister groaned and rolled facedown. He pushed himself up, snatched up his baton, and pulled back his elbow. Tristan bent her knees.
"Don't!" Alden said.
Hollister looked to the boy. The rage froze on his face, quenched by cold calculation. "Stand down, Moises."
The guard lowered his rifle. Hollister replaced his baton at his belt. He smiled at Tristan. "You can't blame a girl for wanting to protect her little brother."
Tristan's heart jolted. She brought down her hands to her sides. "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened."
"You reacted to a threat." Hollister circled her. "Must run in the family. Alden's got it, too. It's going to make him a great soldier."
She kept her face blank. That explained his absence. They'd pulled him from gen pop to convert him into a guard. "Alden—"
"Do you know the penalty for striking an officer?" Hollister said.
"I don't imagine it's one of those good penalties."
"A whipping. And no, it's not one of those good whippings." He glanced at Alden, the mist gone from his glassy eyes. "But you're new. You didn't know. Things got heated. Part of good policing is knowing when to crack down and when to show mercy."
"Sure," Alden said.
Tristan smiled. "Whatever you think best."
Hollister considered her, confidence receding from his eyes the longer she stared back. He turned to the other guard. "Get that man to medical. The rest of you—" He twirled his finger at the crowd of workers. "Slack-jawed staring isn't in your job description. Don't make me come back here."
The guard went to the unconscious worker and dragged him by his wrists from the scattered lumber, stirring the smell of sawdust. The others bent to their tasks, boards clattering, saws sighing. Hollister beckoned to Alden and Tristan. Alden sat between them in the cab of the truck. Hollister flipped the car around toward the barracks just inside the gates.
"What do we do with this sister of yours?"
Alden shrugged. "She was just trying to protect me."
"And our laws are here to protect our way of life. Tough call, man. Very tough. That's another angle to the job—judgment. You'll have to learn that one on your own, out in the field."
"Yeah."
Tristan gazed out the windshield. "Did you volunteer for this, Alden?"
"Lieutenant Hollister asked."
"When?"
"The day after you got here. Why?"
"Because your sister's too clever for her own good," Hollister said. "I hope we aren't going to have any issues."
"Did you enjoy hitting that man?" Tristan said.
Alden squirmed. "I don't know. He wasn't going to work."
"The laws are the laws," Hollister said. "You don't enforce them, how is anyone going to respect them?"
"Are you going to make Alden hold my whip?" Tristan said.
Hollister grinned. "Don't tempt me."
"I'm not going to whip you," Alden said.
Tristan gestured back toward the lumber yard. "If that man recovers and still won't work—"
"Enough," Hollister said. "More than enough. One more word, and I'll void your contract for sedition."
Tristan laughed bitterly. "What's the penalty for sedition? Beheading?"
"Sedition goes straight to Daniel Morgenstern." Hollister slowed, tires grinding the gravel in the barracks lot. "Last kid convicted hasn't come back."
He rolled from the cab. Tristan got out and waited while Hollister clapped Alden on the back and pointed him inside. "Great job out there. Get you to Sergeant Fredricks. And don't worry, I'll go easy on your sister."
"Thanks," Alden grinned. He jogged inside.
Hollister turned on Tristan, jaw tight. "Don't fuck with me."
"You started it."
"Inside." He gestured her through a door further down the barracks. It opened to a spacious office. A poster of a blond woman draped over a red convertible hung from the wall. A space heater grumbled from the corner. Hollister didn't offer her a seat. "I have decided not to whip you."
"I'm jumping for joy," Tristan said. "Inside, of course. Wouldn't want to threaten you with sudden movement."
"I should put you on your knees and shoot you. This isn't the first time you've tried to betray me."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You've lied to me since you washed up at the gates. That was no accident. You came here to find your brother."
She tipped back her head. "Did you put it together yourself? Or did he have to tell you?"
"You never meant to stay. Signing that contract meant nothing to you. The rules, the law, this fragile light in the darkness—you'd sweep it all off the table if it meant taking him away with you."
Hollister moved around his desk and smiled in her face. "Well, he's mine now. And if you try to take him—if you try to leave—I'll give him a choice: shoot you in the head, or I'll kill you both on the spot."
33
Ness couldn't catch his breath. His head went light. He felt himself stagger.
"Ness?" Kristin grabbed his arm, helped lower him to the floor. "You okay, Ness?"
"Dizzy," he heard himself mumble. The spots receded from his eyes. Somehow, he'd seated himself. The three others watched him from above, Kristin's eyes flicking between his, Shawn's creased with annoyed impatience, Sebastian's froggish and unreadable. Ness found his feet and shoved Shawn in the chest. "What's your problem?"
Shawn caught himself on Kristin's dresser. "What's yours?"
"What do you care whether these people live or die?"
"Plenty of these people are no worse than you or me. They're just here doing their thing, trying to grab hold of a little peace."
"You're such a piece of shit."
Shawn laughed in disbelief. "For wanting to save their lives?"
"You've been a dick to me your whole miserable life. Just when I found a little peace, you bust through the wall and try to get me kicked out of Mom's."
"I didn't try to get you—"
"That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" Ness shoved him again. Shawn's lips went white. Ness flinched but held his ground. "Don't fake like you care about them. You don't even care about your own brother. All you care about is looking like the cool guy."
Shawn sidestepped another shove, tugging his jacket back into place. "How about we shelve the family drama until a time when we're not about to eat a nuclear inferno?"
"There you go again. Oh, look how rational you are. I'm sure Kristin's real impressed. The alien who can't even fucking hear you is surely about to hold out his pad for an autograph."
"Stop it!" Shawn stepped forward, clunking his forehead into Ness'. "You think I liked seeing you hide out in your room all day? Snickering over your computer? You were supposed to be at college getting laid and learning to make those games. What happened?"
"I don't know!" Ness shouted. "Maybe if you and Mom weren't always breathing down my back! How am I supposed to go anywhere when she won't let me go and you're always pushing me back down?"
"You mad, bro?" Shawn said.
"What do you fucking think?"
"Good." Shawn grabbed him, hugged him. "That was what it was all about. Getting you mad enough to do something about it."
Ness wriggled, fruitlessly trying to escape. "That's why you moved into my room, huh? Not because you lost your job and your house?"
"You had it easy since the day you were born," Shawn said. "You got so shook-up when Dad left that Mom never had the balls to give you a kick in the ass. She never tried to send me to college. Know what she said to me when I turned eighteen? 'You can pay rent to me or you can pay it to a stranger. You got two months to figure out which.'"
"That's so cool of you to take it out on me."
Shawn released him, stepping back and gazing at the floor. "I won't deny it. I resented the hell out of you. That was part of it. But most of all, I didn't want to see you get lost."
Ness stared down, too. For all Shawn's protests, not all of his spite had stemmed from a Fight Club-ish, "Boy Named Sue"-esque strategy to goad Ness into angry self-improvement. More than a few of Shawn's taunts and punches had come from the mean-spirited glee of knocking little brother down one more peg.
But he'd never seen Shawn talk like this, either. Except, perhaps, after their mo
ther had died. He'd been as hurt then, too. As humble. As willing to let down the walls. No longer too afraid of looking dumb to be honest or to trust.
That was his own flaw, too, wasn't it. Except where Shawn turned it outward, he turned it inward. Shawn hid behind bluster; Ness, a computer. He was trying to hide away again. To let the aliens take care of it for him. To erase this place. To salt its fields with spent uranium. While he dissolved into nothing.
Himself at sixty, alone in a chair, the cold light of a monitor piercing the darkness of the room.
Ness bent over his notepad, scribbled, held it up to Sebastian. "I need you to understand this. We're going to stop the meltdown."
The alien gestured frantically, waved its pad. "NO CAN'T"
"Yes we can," he wrote back. "Kristin knows how. Do you know what Daniel and Roan look like?"
"YES PICTURES"
"We're going to stop the meltdown. Then we're going to kill Daniel and Roan. For all they've done and all they'd do in the future. Do you understand?"
The alien stiffened its body, limbs shaking like a tree on the fringe of a storm. Ness forced himself not to step back. To keep his eyes open. To stay present.
"TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADERS," its tentacle waggled. "KILL DANIEL ROAN"
"No way," Shawn laughed, glancing from its pad to Ness. "Does it know—?"
"They probably didn't decide to kill us until they spent the whole trip watching our TV." Ness hoisted his rifle. "If you two are too stupid to let this place die, let's get going."
Kristin arched her eyebrows. "Glad to hear that saving my colleagues is stupid."
"How about the part where we're running toward the nuclear meltdown?"
"Okay, yeah. That part is stupid."
Despite all their yelling, the hallway was still empty. No one had even pounded on the wall. Probably hadn't wanted to tempt trouble with the maniacs. Ness led the way down the metal stairs, holding up his palm as he exited into the moonlight. Still no sign of security or alerts. He gestured the others out and they jogged to the control building, sticking to the walls of the buildings along the way.
Security cameras watched them from above the door, but if anyone was at the monitors, they didn't protest as Kristin scanned her card, punched her code, and ushered in two traitors and an alien killer.
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 66