by Tracey Ward
You need to choose whether or not you want to survive or you want to live.
“I didn’t want to die, but I knew I couldn’t live,” I breathe brokenly.
Ryan stands beside me silently, his hand clasped around mine, somehow warm despite the cold air.
“Can I show you something I found?” he asks, tugging on my hand.
I nod mutely, reluctant to pull my eyes from the brown earth. I feel like I’m failing her. I won’t go over there, I know that, but it hurts to think I’m abandoning my friend. She’s the first person I’ve lost in years, and while we weren’t that close, it still stings. It’s still an opening of a wound that should have been closed forever a long time ago.
It’s still a strike of flint, an itch in my veins that makes me want to run.
When I realize where Ryan is taking me, I want to dig in my heels. I want to root myself like those carrots out in the garden, buried under the ground and oblivious to the burn of embarrassment that’s building in my gut and on my cheeks. But I don’t back down because he’s right—I’m brave. And stupid. I’m beginning to think the stupid is getting stronger every day. Ryan doesn’t see it that way, though. Stupid to me is what sweet is to him.
When he stops in front of the wall at the back of the building, I cringe. It’s still there. The writing in white rock that I impulsively scrawled on the rough brick. The message I wrote to him in the hopes that it would find him someday. It was a moment of plain, simple honesty that was too big to keep inside at the time. Now standing here next to him, it seems too big to hide. It’s always been too much, this thing with him. It always has been and always will be more than I can manage.
I miss your kiss.
“That’s your handwriting, isn’t it?” he asks softly.
He’s doing me a favor by not looking at me. His eyes are fixed on the wall, his shoulder pressed up against mine.
“Yeah,” I admit weakly.
“You wrote it before you got out?”
“Yep.”
“Why did you write it?”
“Because I couldn’t say it.”
“Because I wasn’t here.”
“No. Because I’m broken.”
I feel him look at me, but I stare straight ahead. My eyes are fixed hard on the ‘m’ in my message. They keep following the lazy roll of it—up and down, up and down. Like waves on the ocean.
“You’re not broken, Joss.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re alive.”
I shake my head in silent protest.
“Every day when I saw your writing on the wall, I knew you were still out there. You were telling me you were still alive. Do you know what this message tells me now?”
I feel my chest tighten, my fear of the words I’ve told him not to say rising in my veins so thick they might burst. “No.”
“Even in here, even in prison when they had you trapped, you didn’t give up. You don’t know how to quit. You don’t know how to die. You may have been a ghost for six years, Joss, but you’ve always been alive.”
I close my eyes, a wave of dizziness rushing over me. I’m not surprised when he kisses me softly, lighting me up inside like the sun rising over the river behind him. I’m grateful for it. His arms around me, his lips on mine—it steadies me. It pushes away that dizzy, sick feeling in my head and my heart until I’m standing straight. Firm. Solid.
Until I feel more like me as I’m wrapped up in him than I have in a very long time.
Everything is changing. Everything is different than it ever has been before. I’ve always felt like Ryan was taking something from me, stripping away the layers of shadow and shroud that I’ve covered myself in while trying to hide. To survive. And I let him. I grudgingly let him do it, and now that I’m standing in the sun beside the water with him holding me, seeing me, knowing me more than anyone has in my short, painful life, I feel less afraid and more alive than I ever thought I could.
***
We sleep for most of the day. My schedule is getting all turned around. I’m going nocturnal and I don’t know how much I like it. I prefer the daylight. I like the warmth of the sun on my skin and light in the sky. I like seeing what’s coming. Too many shady things happen in the dark for me to ever trust it completely. I read once that up in Alaska there are weeks in the summer where the sun never sets. I thought that sounded like heaven until I got to the next chapter. Turns out in the winter there are times where the sun never comes out. Hard pass on that noise. Alaska can keep their wonky hours.
Once we get up, Ryan and I join Vin in his office again to talk about where we go from here. Trent is MIA—he was gone before we woke up—but I know he’s somewhere; he wouldn’t leave Ryan on his own, and part of me is pretty convinced he wouldn’t leave me either.
“Who do you have locked up?” I ask Vin.
He eyes me shrewdly. “Who are you looking for?”
“No one. It’s just a question.”
He stares at me, unmoving.
“Fine,” I groan. “Melissa.”
“Why Melissa?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Penance? Forgiveness?”
“No.”
“Yes. She was Caroline’s closest friend. Do you have some things you want to say to her? Or more importantly, do you have some things you want to hear from her?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Stop that,” I growl.
Vin sits forward in his seat, his arms coming to rest on his desk. “Melissa won’t forgive you and even if she did it wouldn’t help. You don’t feel bad for her. You don’t even feel bad for Caroline. You feel bad for yourself.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“He’s right,” Ryan says quietly.
I stare at him, shocked. “Are you siding with him?”
“He’s right,” he repeats.
“Even your boy knows,” Vin tells me. “And I bet if we brought your buddy Trent in here, he’d agree too. That dude has definitely killed a time or two, but you don’t see him wandering around all sad-faced and begging everyone who will listen for forgiveness.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I tell him hotly.
“Not yet. But if you go in there with Melissa, you’ll start. She won’t say it’s okay, because for her it’s not. You killed her friend. You gotta learn to live with that.”
I shake my head in frustration.
“You told Hyperion here because you thought he’d make it all better, didn’t you?”
I want to leave. I want to pull my knife, take my best shot at him, and shut his mouth.
“But he couldn’t do it, could he? What’d he tell you, Kitten? That you’d never get over it?”
“I killed a woman.”
“You’ll never get over it.”
Stupid freaking know-it-all pimp!
“You’ve done it, haven’t you, Hyperion?”
There’s a long pause, a silence that fills the room, expands then bursts, leaving it feeling empty and cold.
“Yeah,” Ryan admits roughly.
“We all have. Anyone who really wants to live has done it.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m okay with it,” I mutter.
“No one says you should be.”
“This is pointless,” I snap, sorry I brought it up. “We need to decide where we go from here.”
“I told you, same as I told the people out there: we don’t make a move with your friends until we get our hands on the guy who killed Rebecca.”
“They’ll never hand him over,” Ryan tells him honestly.
Vin spreads his hands. “Then where we go from here is nowhere. Not with the cannibals.”
“You’re being impossible,” I growl. “You know you don’t stand a chance without their help.”
“I also know everyone here won’t work with those people, not in a million years.”
“Not even if they get Bryan,” Ryan agrees.
; “Nope. It’s just not going to happen. So I don’t care that they won’t hand him over. In fact, I’m counting on that.”
“Because then it’s their choice that you don’t work together, not yours.”
“We tried to be reasonable,” Vin says in mock sadness.
I begin to the pace the room, unable to hide my frustration. “You’ve already been living on borrowed time here, using the Leaders you captured to put on a show. That can’t last forever. Eventually one of them will get sick of prison and betray you, even if it means dying. Then what will you do? The Colony will be at your door in a heartbeat and your Guard can’t hold them off.”
“I could hand it over to Marlow instead,” Vin suggests calmly. “Absorb it into The Hive.”
“The other Colonies won’t just let that go. They’ll take it back.”
“We’ll find out.”
I stop pacing, my eyes landing on his unnaturally calm face. “When?”
“Soon,” he says quietly, watching me too. “In the next half hour or so.”
“He’s on his way, isn’t he?”
“He’s been spotted. He’s bringing an army. Just like you said he would.”
I square my shoulders, standing tall and defiant. “You don’t think that I—”
“Why would I?”
“But you don’t trust anyone.”
Vin looks down at his desk where his hands are clasped together loosely. He’s absently spinning his ring on his finger the way he does when he’s thinking, only I wonder if it’s as unconscious an act as I imagine. He pauses, pulling the ring from his finger and looking it over thoughtfully.
“Today is as good a day as any to start,” he mutters.
“What’s the plan?” Ryan asks curtly. “What will you do when Marlow gets here?”
“I haven’t decided,” Vin says on a sigh, slipping the ring back on his finger. “I’ll open the doors. I’ll let him in. I’ll listen. From there, I don’t know.”
“Letting him in is pretty much letting him have this place,” I remind him.
“It’s better than letting the Colonies have it back.”
“They’ll probably take it back anyway.”
“Maybe. But they have bigger things on their mind right now.”
“Like what?”
“Like the mess you started with the Vashons.”
I scowl at him. “We didn’t start anything. Marlow sent us to them and—”
“He sent the Colonists there too,” Ryan says.
“What?”
Vin is nodding at Ryan. “I think so. The timing is too perfect. He sent you there and days later the Colonists attack an enemy they’ve left alone for at least four years? Pretty convenient.”
“But why?” I ask.
“Because he’s not strong enough to attack them himself.”
“The Colonists or the Vashons?”
“Take your pick. He hates them both. Now they’re busy fighting each other.”
“The Hive boat,” Ryan says bitterly. “He sent us sailing down the river in the dead of night in a bright white boat, straight past the Colonies, heading for Vashon Island. He probably gave it a day, and then went to the Colonies and told them he’d been to a meeting with the Vashons. A meeting they called about joining forces and overthrowing them.”
“It’s not completely a lie,” I say.
“But it was the other way around. It was him bringing the idea to the Vashons.”
“Intent is everything,” Vin agrees.
“So now Marlow has the Colonies fighting the Vashons, two of the largest forces left in the city. His two biggest rivals.”
“And one of his closest men is on the inside of an undefended Colony building,” I say, looking to Vin.
“He thinks he’s coming here to take this place,” he says quietly. “He has no idea it’s already been taken.”
“He’ll kill people,” Ryan warns.
“Not if I throw the doors open and go out to meet him.”
“That’s why you’re opening the doors to him?” I ask skeptically. “To save the lives of the people inside?”
“Well, that and I don’t want him damaging my home.”
“You still think you can hold onto it?”
He stands suddenly, his eyes hard. Determined. “Either I keep what’s mine,” he says severely, “or I’ll watch it burn.”
“And what happens to the people inside? The ones following you? Trusting you blindly?”
“We all have our own paths to follow,” he replies coldly.
I scoff at him. “You’re full of it.”
“Usually, yes.”
“You won’t leave these people to die and you won’t leave them to Marlow. You’re not that selfish.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Since when?”
“Since you tasted real leadership. Not control, not fear, not power. They follow you because they love you and you get off on that more than anything.”
“I wouldn’t say more than anything. I’m still a man, Kitten.”
“Then act like one.”
He grins slightly, eyeing me. “Gladly.”
“Stop.”
Vin and I both look at Ryan. He’s standing just behind me, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes locked on Vin. He’s not himself—not the warm, funny guy I’ve come to know and love.
He’s Arena Ryan, made of stone and fire.
“Stop talking to her like that,” Ryan warns Vin, “or I’ll show you what a man looks like.”
Vin’s grin doesn’t falter, but his eyes change. They’re amused. “I understand it’s meant to sound like a threat, but I feel like you’re flirting with me, Hyperion.”
“You’re not my type and she’s not yours, so back off.”
“Is that how it is? You’re finally staking your claim on her?”
“She’s not a piece of property to be claimed.”
Vin snorts. “That’s cute, but it’s a lie and you know it. Things aren’t like they used to be. Resources are scarce. She’s one of the rarest items I’ve seen in a long time and if you don’t hurry up and mark your territory, someone else will and it won’t be sweet and it sure as hell won’t be pretty.”
Ryan tenses. “It won’t happen like that. Not as long as I’m alive.”
“You’re walking around with a diamond in your hand hoping a city of thieves will let you keep it. Once Marlow marches through that door, you won’t be able to keep her any more than I can keep this Colony.” Vin’s voice lowers, softening slightly. “We’re both about to lose everything. I’m willing to destroy what’s mine to keep it from being taken. What are you going to do?”
Ryan stares back at Vin for a long time. I don’t bother speaking up. I don’t tell them I’m my own person and they don’t need to defend me, that I’m no one’s property, blah, blah, blah. They wouldn’t listen to me, so why bother? And here’s the real bitch of it: I don’t know that it’s necessarily true. I don’t know that they’re wrong.
I remember the way Marlow looked at me when I was in his Hive. I remember what it felt like to tell him I was a Benjamin, the reaction he had and the feeling it gave me in the pit of my stomach. I know what it means, I’m not an idiot. I understand what Vin can see, what Marlow wants, and what Ryan will die to protect it.
“I’ll kill Marlow.”
I close my eyes, feeling defeated.
Ryan is completely calm, completely certain, and completely out of his friggin’ mind.
“Ryan, you—” I begin tiredly, opening my eyes.
“Give me an opening and I’ll kill Marlow.”
I feel sick to my stomach, but Vin is grinning.
“Hyperion,” he says slowly, “you got yourself a deal.”
Chapter Eleven
“He’s playing you!” I shout at Ryan.
My voice echoes off the hard, gray walls of the showers. We’re waiting for the line to form outside—the line of Colonists being rounded up and sent away down the tunnels to
hide from Marlow and his men. Vin has a lot of confidence in his ability to talk Marlow down from killing everyone inside, but he’s not insane. Confidence does not equal a sure thing, so the entire place—aside from the Guard—is being evacuated. Trent seems pretty sure we can find our way out without getting lost and dying in the dark. As much as I trust his wicked sharp eyes and bizarre computer brain that probably mapped every inch of tunnel we’ve seen so far, I have my doubts. About everything.
Right now as I stand in front of Ryan shouting, I know people can hear us—especially the guards just outside the door—but I don’t care. I’m angry and they can all know it. I hope they feel it, taste it. Choke on it.
To my surprise, Ryan laughs. “Of course he’s playing me.”
“Then why did you agree to it?”
“Because it needs to be done.”
“You can’t kill Marlow.”
“He’s a man. All men can be killed. Vin will find me the opening to make it happen.”
“He’ll screw you over is what he’ll do.”
“Not on this. He needs Marlow dead just as much as I do.”
“Why do you need him dead?”
“Because it’s the only way to make sure he never lays a hand on you.”
“We could leave like you were talking about.”
“You said not until this is over. It’s a long way from over.”
“I don’t care what I said! We’ll leave right now.” I grab his arm, tugging on him hard. He’s too strong. I can’t move him. “Let’s go!”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not a coward.”
“Well, I am. Let’s go!”
Ryan smiles at me as I keep yanking on his arm. “No, you’re not.”
“I’m scared and I’m ready to run. That’s a coward.”
“But you’re not scared for you. You’re scared for me.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A lot.”
I try a different tactic—one I’ve never used before. One I don’t even know how to use.