New World Ashes

by Jennifer Wilson

  “I know who he is. His name is Ryker James.” Triven’s hand loosened slightly on my wrist. “Prea, he’s the one who saved you.”

  “Saved me? SAVED ME?!” Triven flinched as I screamed at him. “If you call electrocuting me until my heart stopped, breaking my arm nearly in half, starving me for days on end, and then making me think you were dead, saving me. Then I guess this man is one hell of a savior! I must owe him my life!”

  I dropped the gun, letting it clatter to the floor and yanked my arm away. This time, Triven let me go.

  “You have no idea what hell I have been through! And this man…” I pointed a shaking finger at Ryker. “This man saw to every second of that torment!”

  Despite myself, tears of anger and betrayal sprang to my eyes. I clenched my fists until the nails bit into my palms. I burned with desire to kill Ryker for what he had done to me. To hit Triven for letting it happen.

  A multitude of emotions flashed across Triven’s face. Finally, his eyes hardened turning on the Major. “You tortured her?”

  Ryker, who had remained silent during the entire exchange, finally shifted his weight. His eyes traced the floor, not able to meet ours as he spoke. “Regretfully, I must admit that I had a part to play in order to keep my cover. I played it well. Yet, everything I did—no matter how seemingly cruel at the time—was done to save your life.” Ryker now pulled himself up to full height, no longer looking apologetic. “You have every right to be angry with me for what I did to you Prea, but given the choice I would do it again. My calculated brutality kept you alive and without my protection, you would not have lived to see today. It was the same thing you did for those children.”

  Ryker’s words hung in the air like a fine mist. I stared at the spot on the wall where the bullet had struck. I could feel both men’s gazes on me, waiting for me to make the next move. He was right, I did do the same thing to try and protect those kids. But I hated myself for it.

  Pointedly, I marched up to Ryker, jutting out my chin as I closed the gap between us. It pleased me to see him flinch at my approach. My whole body shook with anger and emotional fatigue as I spoke. “I owe you nothing. Consider us even. You literally took my life from me once, and now you have given it back. We’re square.”

  I strode past Ryker without a second glance and into the hall. It wasn’t until I was several steps down the dimly lit hall that I realized I had no idea where I was going. I paused. From behind me there was a gratifying thud of a fist meeting a face, followed by a muffled groan. I could just make out the low hiss of Triven’s words.

  “I am grateful you brought her back to Mouse and me, but that is the last time you lie to either of us.”

  Triven strode through the door rubbing his knuckles. He muttered something that sounded like, “Not even close to being square…”

  Moving past me, he walked away down the empty hall expecting me to follow. I smiled faintly at the point between his shoulder blades. Chivalry wasn’t always that bad. After only a few steps, I reached for Triven’s arm, my gentle touch halting him in mid-stride.

  “Triven… I have to see her. I have to know she’s…” I swallowed, unable to say the word alive aloud. As always, he understood.

  Triven’s breathing was heavy as he glared over the top of my head down the hall. Ryker was undoubtedly standing there, watching us. Hesitating only briefly, Triven gestured to the hallway on his left, letting me walk ahead. His hand brushed against the lower part of my back as I stepped past him.

  Once we were out of Ryker’s sight, Triven took the lead again, taking me to a door much like the one we had just left. Pressing his finger to his lips to request my silence, he soundlessly turned the handle and pushed the door inward. The room was dark, but the shapes of two beds were visible. One bed was perfectly made. In the other was a small lump breathing steadily. I could see a crown of brown hair peeking out on the pillow. I took a strangled breath. Mouse’s face was just as I remembered, perfect and unharmed. Peaceful even. A strange impulse overtook me. It was a nurturing desire to run to her, to touch her body, to hold her in my arms, and ensure that she was in fact safe and whole. I watched her deep breathing and pushed those feelings back down. My eyes lingered on Mouse for a moment longer, as if she would disappear when I blinked. Slowly, reluctantly, I stepped away. Nodding once, I pulled back from the dimly lit room and let Triven close the door again.

  I looked gratefully at him. Triven touched my shoulder lightly in comfort and then began to walk back down the hallway again.

  I followed, smiling sadly to myself. “When did she start sleeping in the beds?”

  I remembered the little hands so often creeping around the edge of my cots as Mouse sought reassurance in the night from beneath me. It seemed a part of her had grown up in my absence. I had missed it. Triven’s hand reached back, seeking to reassure. I took it.

  “She started sleeping like that the day we made a plan to get you out.”

  “Thank you for protecting her.” I said staring at my hand in his. His fingers squeezed mine and we both fell silent again.

  They’re alive…

  Triven led me to another smaller room, not far down the narrow hallway. He pushed the door open for me and stepped back.

  “I will wait right here.” He promised.

  When I stepped into the room he pulled the door closed behind me, sealing me in. I turned abruptly and stared at the door. The room felt oddly suffocating but I couldn’t seem to make myself move. I knew I was in a bathroom. That Triven’s intent was meant to give me privacy, but I could feel that irrational fear rising. I didn’t want to be locked in. I didn’t want to be alone. I must have stood there for some time, frozen in panic. When I finally managed to move, there was a soft knock and the doorknob began to turn of its own accord. Triven’s voiced carried in before his face appeared in the crack.

  “Prea, are you alright? I couldn’t hear the water running and just wanted…” He trailed off when his modest eyes at last met mine. The anger that had burned in them from our encounter with Ryker was gone, now only understanding and shame shone through.

  I stared blankly at him, still marveling at his gentle face and unharmed body. He’s safe. He’s still alive. I reminded myself again. Even after witnessing with my own eyes that he and Mouse were alive, I could still see their dead bodies in the street. I could still feel their blood against my skin. It felt like every time I lost sight of Triven—even just for a moment—that this was all fake, that I would wake up and find them dead again. I wondered if that feeling would ever go away.

  “I can’t…” There were no words to finish the sentence, or maybe it was that there were too many words to pick just one. Mercifully, he seemed to comprehend.

  Moving swiftly, Triven slipped into the room and shut the door behind him. He locked the door before pulling me into his arms. I didn’t resist. Normally, he was so careful about not touching me, but right now neither he nor I cared about politeness. We both needed the physical contact to remind us this was real. I rested my head against the hollow of his chest. Slowly, my body began to thaw, melting into Triven’s as his steady heartbeat thudded solidly beneath my ear. He smelled good. He smelled real. Alive.

  “You’re really alive.” I finally mumbled into his shirt, breaking the silence.

  “You’re really alive.” He whispered into my hair, kissing the top of my head.

  I clung to him as I stared blindly at the sink. “It was… The bodies were so…” I took a deep breath. “Who were they?”

  Triven sighed sadly. “Two unfortunate citizens. Fandrin chose them because they looked like us. He murdered two innocent people because they fit a mold… My mold.” His arms tensed around me, both protective and angry.

  I blinked trying to purge the images from my mind. I had been too quick to believe. Not in my right mind, I had not questioned what I saw. The bodies were so like my friends, but now I realized that their faces had been so brutally damaged to hide any potential flaws. They weren’t
my loved ones, but they were someone’s loved ones. That innocent man and child had been unjustly killed simply to teach me a lesson. They were used merely as fodder in The Minister’s personal vendetta. Hate raged in my heart and my body shook with anger, but my heartbeat was steady. I meant my next words, committing to them wholly.

  “I will kill Fandrin, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  11. ANSWERS

  MERCIFULLY, TRIVEN SEEMED to feel the same way I did about being separated from one another and agreed to stay with me. He slipped out of the room for only a moment, allowing me to disrobe and get behind the white shower curtain before coming back in. Part of me wanted him to join me in the shower. To hold me close, our skin touching as he helped me wash away the real life nightmares that ate at my brain. But I couldn’t. As much as I needed him in the room with me now, I could not stand for him to be too close while I was in the shower. While I knew it was Triven standing on the other side of the white curtain, I was afraid if I peeked out it would not be his face I saw. Maddox was dead, but the dead have a funny way of haunting you. My skin rippled at the thought of those black eyes leering at me. I doubted I could ever stand being exposed in front of someone like that again.

  So even though I felt horribly alone and exposed, I stayed hidden behind the curtain like a coward. Hiding from ghosts that weren’t there. Focusing on my breathing, I let Triven’s deeply velvet voice tether me to reality. He was alive. I was free. I reminded myself periodically as he spoke. His stories slowly distracted me from my own haunting memories. Soon, Maddox’s face disappeared back into my subconscious, leaving us alone again. As I washed away the grime of imprisonment from my colorless skin, Triven spoke, answering my questions both asked and unasked.

  “Mouse and I managed to survive on our own for nearly two weeks. She was so amazing, Prea. You would have been really proud of her. We kept mostly to power systems beneath the city, but had to come up for food and water.” He paused, remembering his own imprisonment within The Wall. “There were a few close calls… but… well, we managed.”

  I made a mental note to ask more about those “close calls” as I rinsed the soap from my hair.

  “Part of the problem was we were a little too good at hiding. Ryker and the other rebels were looking for us the moment we crossed through The Wall, but they had to shut down the security cameras in the tunnels to keep us safe. That’s how we managed to get as far as we did, when we first came in. The rebels created rolling camera blackouts throughout the city. The Minister was blind, but unfortunately so were they. Mouse and I had no clue at the time. In our attempts to evade The Sanctuary guards we also successfully evaded the good guys.”

  Good guys? I froze mid-rinse, thinking of Ryker’s face.

  Triven must have sensed my tension because he added quietly, “The rebels are the good guys, Prea. I promise.”

  I stared at the grime built up beneath my jagged and broken nails. There was still blood caked underneath them. I dug my fingers into the soap bar. He sighed and I could hear his feet pacing the floor as he continued. “If I hadn’t gotten shot, I’m not sure they would have ever found us.”

  I stuck my head out of curtain and stared at him. “You got shot?!”

  Triven waved his hand, brushing the seriousness of it away. “It was nothing, I took a bullet to the leg trying to keep Mouse safe during a food run. It was stupid really, my fault. I let hunger cloud my judgment. We weren’t being as cautious as we should have been. I’m not you when it comes to surviving… To be honest, I’m not sure anyone could match your skills.”

  He smiled lopsidedly at me and I pulled my head back inside the steam-filled shower, shaking my head in disagreement.

  “I’m not as good as I used to be.” I murmured.

  Either he didn’t hear me over the running water or he was choosing to ignore my last comment. “When I got shot, we had a hard time stopping the bleeding and couldn’t move very far. We were trying to break into a medical facility when the rebels found us. At first, I thought we were dead, but when Ryker stepped forward… Mouse ran to his open arms. To be honest I wasn’t sure if I should scream, shoot or give up. They all seemed like rational responses at the time.”

  I snapped off the water. A towel was promptly thrust into the gap behind the shower curtain and the tiled wall. My fingers grazed Triven’s skin as I took the stiffly bleached towel. We both pulled our hands away as if an electrical current had passed between us. I quickly wrapped the towel around my body, suddenly feeling shy. Triven continued to talk as I dried myself.

  “The rebels took us in, fed us, and healed me. It was strange. There were faces I knew—people I remembered from my childhood. They seemed like ghosts of my past. My mother thought all of the rebels died when we entered Tartarus, but some of them were still here, biding their time. There are so many more of them than I thought possible and yet so few when you think of the entirety of the population here.”

  I wrapped the towel tightly around myself and reached for the curtain. When I pulled it back Triven was still speaking, but he trailed off when he looked at me. I stepped out of the shower and his brow furrowed in pain as his warm eyes fell over my body. He moved forward, wrapping his hands around my upper arms. His fingers seemed longer than I remembered.

  “I swear to you, I have been doing nothing but trying to get you back since that day. I’m so sorry, Prea… I failed you. So much has happened to you and I wasn’t fast enough. It’s my fault.” His eyes dropped to the floor in shame, tears visible under his dark lashes. It was the first time I had seen him so vulnerable.

  I turned my head to look in the small mirror and was horrified by the face that stared back. I hadn’t looked at myself when I first came in and in fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen myself. The girl staring back at me was shocking.

  My face had become too thin, the cheekbones protruding grotesquely through sallow skin. The eyes staring back looked hollow, sunken into dark rings surrounding them. My once slight frame now looked outright emaciated. I might as well have been a skeleton. Adorning my skin were a smattering of yellowing bruises and freshly healed pink scars. The healing-serum had not completely fixed everything.

  “How long?” I said staring at the mirror. He needed no elaboration to understand what I meant.

  “You were held captive for thirty-four days.” His body shuddered with a silent sob.

  Thirty-four days… It had been over a month.

  Not wanting to look at the sickly girl anymore, I turned back to him and placed my hand under his chin. It took a moment for his eyes to meet mine again. My stomach sank when they did. Not only had The Minister managed to break me, but in doing so, he had also managed to hurt Triven.

  “You and I have been through hell and back—probably twice—but despite it all, we are still standing here, together. And the truth is, I would go through it all again if it meant yours and Mouse’s safety. I do not regret my decision to sacrifice myself for you both and I forbid you to take the weight of my choice onto yourself. It was your face that got me through many long nights and it was the knowledge that you were still out there that helped me survive. I am not the same person I was before I went in there—I know that—but I was also not the same person after I met you. You made me a better person, Triven.”

  He swept down with a practiced movement, his fingers winding in my hair as he pulled my body tightly against his. As it had so many times before, his mouth stopped just before it reached mine, waiting. I barely had to move forward and his lips claimed mine for the first time since our reunion. A part of my broken heart healed a little. For six years I hadn’t needed anyone. I would never admit it out loud, but right now, I needed him. And from the urgency in his lips, he needed me too.

  THE WATER RUNNING in the shower behind me nearly drowned out our low voices. But that was the idea. Triven had pulled a grey silken robe from beneath the sink. I felt naked wearing it, its light fabric strange against my skin. Its sleeves were much
too long. I was perched on the edge of the tub, shivering occasionally, but not cold. Triven sat stoically across from me on the floor, his knees bent in front of him as he watched me. He looked smaller somehow than I remembered.

  We had been locked in the bathroom for nearly an hour. For the most part, I had retold what had happened to me. The torture I endured, what I was forced to do to those children. I had to stop several times to remind myself it was over—that I wasn’t there any more. Still, if I closed my eyes I could see their faces, smell the salty blood on the mats, and hear their screams. There were always screams in my head now.

  Out of a selfish need for preservation, I had toned down the parts when I feared I had become insane—mainly for two reasons. Irrationally, I thought Triven might not ever look at me the same if he knew. Being damaged was one thing, but being clinically insane… that would change things. And then there was the terrifyingly rational side—I had lost my mind in that cell. Even now as we spoke calmly, I would get residual flashes of rage and fear for no reason. They would come on like tidal waves enveloping my entire body, swallowing me whole until I couldn’t breathe, until I couldn’t feel anything else, all rational thought was gone. The girl I once was had become consumed, eradicated by the overpowering fear flooding my mind.

  Then it was gone.

  It was a struggle to keep my breathing regular.

  After a particularly bad flashback, I had to drop my head between my knees, my long wet hair hung dripping on my toes as I tried to open my lungs. I clutched my head, pressing so hard it throbbed. Triven sat helplessly against the door, his fists curled. I asked him not to touch me, unsure if I might accidentally lash out.

  “I hurt those kids… I told myself everyday that I was trying to save them from a worse fate, but I still hurt them. I can’t even remember all of their faces or names. After a while I tried to forget, to block it out. Remembering only made it worse. It didn’t really matter who they were, because to me every one of them was Mouse.” I gagged.