by Rachel West
Certain that she’s not going anywhere, I wave goodbye to Red and cross back into Jaxon’s room. “Alrigh—“ I push the door open and begin to speak but when Jaxon looks up at me he smiles so sweetly that the words freeze in my throat and I am reminded of how completely he doesn’t belong. How none of this is right. He should be surrounded by chandeliers and furniture made of velvet but all I have to offer him is a small wooden cot and walls made of metal.
“Let’s go.” My voice is a little too high, a little too nervous. I stare hard at my shoes and hope he doesn’t notice.
He swings to his feet in one easy motion. “Let’s go!” He repeats my words with far more enthusiasm than this trip warrants. He pulls on his black jacket and yanks up the hood. I follow suit, covering my own face and hair. With our image playing across every screen in Haven it wouldn’t do to get recognized.
I swallow my nervousness and lead the way first through the Hollows and then the streets of Haven. Cull nods to us as we cross over the barrier between the two. “Don’t forget the password!” he shouts behind us.
The air outside is refreshing after the stale nature of the Hollows. The chill bite of the wind is a welcome addition, invigorating me. But even still, I think Jaxon can sense my nervousness because he keeps bumping lightly into me and offering encouraging smiles. If only he knew it wasn’t the Praetors I was nervous about. No, the fluttering heart, the sweaty palms. It’s all Jaxon.
How am I supposed to tell him what I feel? Am I supposed to tell him? I thought – I thought maybe we were moving towards something. But then ever since we’ve rescued Annie he’s pulled back. I wonder if he blames me for all of this. I don’t understand how he could feel anything but hate knowing that I’m the reason everything in his life has gone wrong.
I duck my head and force my feelings down because how am I supposed to ask him something like that? So instead I lead him through street after street towards my home, listening half-heartedly as he chatters on about the history of the area, more knowledgeable in the details than I.
As we approach my neighborhood I smell smoke on the air. I pause and look around for the rain of ash that comes with the crematorium’s burnings. But it’s too early in the day; the sun pounds down from directly above – it can’t be any later than noon. Confused, I push forward towards my street. My heart feels heavy; each beat a fitful pounding in my chest. There is a feeling that something is off, that something is wrong, but I can’t quite place my finger on it.
“No,” I whisper, then repeat as a shout, “No!”
“Evie,” Jaxon says in a cautioning tone. He reaches out an arm to stop me but I shove him aside. I can’t respond. I have nothing to say to him as I stare at the crumbling remains of my apartment. Something inside of me breaks.
I rush forward. The ruins are still smoldering. Smoke rises and is stolen away by the wind. I drop to my knees. Ash billows up around me in a cloud. I dig through the burnt pieces of wood, the discarded glass. There is nothing left.
My vision is wavering and I realize that I’m crying but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything. I push at a broken board wondering if it was the wood of the doorway. My hand brushes against a hot coal. I jerk back and stare numbly at the red mark on my hand. Is this what my life has come to? Cinder and ash?
I look behind me to see Jaxon standing silently, with his hands tucked inside his pockets. His face is carefully blank. Unfazed -- like the fact that his people destroyed one of the only things in this world that was mine doesn’t bother him one bit.
Some dark, hateful emotion crawls through my gut like a rabid animal. Tearing and destroying the best parts of me. “I hate them!” I scream at Jaxon. “How can they do this? What gives them the right? That was my home.” I turn on Jaxon and I can’t control my anger. My rage. My hate. “What kind of monsters are you people? My mother. My sister. Now my home? Is nothing safe?”
Jaxon’s face is a stiff mask as I scream at him. No reaction. No inkling of how he feels. If he even cares at all. And I wonder how I thought I loved him. If he can just look on like this -- maybe he is like the rest of them. Maybe seeing such willful destruction doesn’t bother him at all. Maybe he’s nothing but rotten and twisted inside like the rest of this goddamn city.
“What about my neighbors?” I scream at him. I want him to react. To show any kind of feeling at all. To prove to me that he’s human. “Where are they? Am I going to find their bones buried in there? Would the Praetors have told them to leave? They probably burned them up like they were nothing. Like they were less than nothing. How can you just stand there?” My final words crack into pieces just like the rest of me. My throat burns with acid and there’s a sick, empty feeling in my stomach. I wipe at the tears on my face, uncaring of the muddy ash it leaves behind.
My blood hardens, strengthening me as I push away my emotions. Shutting them down like I’ve had to do my entire life. There is no use fighting against the Millennials. All they do is take and take and take. Nothing can stop them. Nothing can control them. They’re monsters. Every damn one of them.
Jaxon takes one halting step forward. “Evie,” my name sounds strangled coming from his lips. He takes another step forward. We are inches apart. I want to hit him. To hurt him. To show him that he can’t do this. That stuff like this shouldn’t happen. But I am frozen because there is some inexplicable emotion swirling darkly in his eyes.
Jaxon pulls me against his chest. I stumble forward. My face is pressed into his shirt. I idly notice the chill of a metal button against my cheek. I close my eyes. I stand stiff, refusing to give in to his touch.
“Evie,” He says my name again and his tongue stumbles over the syllables. “I am so sorry.”
A strangled sob forces its way up my throat. I give up. I give in. I throw my arms around Jaxon like he is the only thing in this world holding me upright. I burrow my hands into his shirt. I cry and cry and cry. My eyes burn and my face feels swollen to twice its size and still I can’t stop. My body gives up on me, my legs go weak and crumple. Jaxon holds tight, slowly lowering me to the ground. Suddenly the distance between us is gone like it was never here to begin with. The gaping hole between what he is and what I am becomes nothing more than a memory as I feel the beat of his heart and the warmth of his arms around me.
The bump of my knees against cold asphalt brings me back to reality. I’m making a scene; breaking down in the middle of the city when Jaxon and I are wanted fugitives. I try to bring myself to care. I dare the Praetors to come now. I would kill them. I would throw myself on them and tear them limb from limb. I would leave less of them than they have left of me.
“I hate them,” I sob into Jaxon’s chest.
“I know,” Jaxon says.
I pull back from Jaxon’s shirt and look him in the eye. “I want them to pay.”
“They will,” Jaxon says and his words are an apology and a promise all in one.
***
When we return Red and Annie are sitting on the ground. A deck of cards rests between them. Annie is laughing at something Red just said. I feel a moment of resentment. It’s childish and stupid. But Red is mine.
Red looks up while I am standing in the doorway and immediately jumps to his feet. “What happened?” He demands. He grabs my shoulders and twists me to each side - checking for injuries maybe.
“They burned my building down,” I say--the words so twisted and mangled they are almost lost in my throat.
Red turns hateful eyes on Jaxon like it’s his fault but when he speaks it’s to me, “I’m sorry.” His words bring me back to when Jaxon said the same thing only an hour before. While I was making a fool of myself sobbing in his arms like a child. A rush of shame burns through me. I scratch uncomfortably at my arms feeling like embarrassment seeps from my pores for everyone to see.
“I’m going to kill them,” I say like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “All of them.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I’m going to
kill all of them and then we will finally be free. We’re never going to be safe with the Praetors around. Not just us. No one is. If we were safe,” I wave my hand around us, “a place like the Hollows wouldn’t exist. It wouldn’t have to.”
“It’s not the Praetors,” my sister pipes up from the floor. I am momentarily startled to hear her address me for the first time in days. “It’s the Millennials,” she brushes at her cheek as if pointing out tattoos.
Jaxon stands unruffled under the stares of Annie and Red. I am tempted to jump to his defense, but I know something of Jaxon now. I know that despite how much he pretends otherwise, pride is one of the things that keeps him going.
“I am not ashamed of who I am,” Jaxon replies with steady conviction.
“You should be,” mutters Red. Red gives me a look as if to say, see what you make me deal with.
Jaxon’s shoulders stiffen at Red’s words. Without another word he turns and stalks away.
“Way to go,” I snap peevishly after I hear the slam of Jaxon’s door. Red doesn’t even have the decency to look remotely guilty.
“It’s true,” Red shrugs. Annie nods along on the floor.
“How many Millennials have you met? We don’t know anything about them. But Jaxon-- name one thing he’s done to deserve how you treat him.”
“He’s breathing,” Annie cracks from the floor then shares a high-five with Red.
“That’s not funny. Without him you would still be imprisoned.”
“Without Millennials I would never have been arrested.”
I know she’s right but it’s not fair. I hate that I can’t find the words to explain to them. But Jaxon doesn’t deserve their hate. I felt the same way as them when I first met Jaxon. He was arrogant and rude and so utterly dismissive of my life. But it’s only because he didn’t know any better. When he got to know me, when I got to know him? We both saw the truth. If only the others would give him a chance. If only they could learn to not blame him for what he is and learn to accept him for who he is. Jaxon can’t help what he was born into any more than we can.
“Without him we wouldn’t be fugitives,” Annie continues.
“Damn it!” I swing my hand out and knock something of Red’s off the table but I am too annoyed to care what it is. “It’s my fault we’re on the run. Without Jaxon I would have probably just gotten myself killed. Why don’t you see that?”
I follow Jaxon’s earlier lead and storm out of the room in a fury. I don’t have the patience for this right now, not when the loss is still so fresh. I cross the hallway and knock quietly on Jaxon’s door. When he doesn’t answer I push the door open. Jaxon is stretched out on his bed, ankles crossed together and head resting on his arms.
“Hi,” I say awkwardly. I sit at the end of his bed, down near his feet and wait for him to acknowledge me. “I’m sorry. For them I mean.”
“They’re right you know.” I can see what it costs him, to admit such a thing.
“You’re different than the rest of them,” I say.
“No,” he sits up and pulls his knees in. Pulling as far back from me as he can. “No, I am not.”
“Don’t say that.”
“No,” he says. “You don’t – You do not truly know anything about me. You do not know the things I have done. You do not know the kind of person I am.”
I feel something akin to panic. Suddenly afraid that Jaxon is going to announce he was a spy all along. Or playing me. That this was all some kind of game. I know that I shouldn’t feel that way. I trust him, I finally do; it’s just a lifetime of betrayals is hard to shake off. But Jaxon has been there time and time again for me. He’s held me up. Held me together. If he ever betrays me – I will do what I need. But until he does, I choose trust.
“There was a boy…” Jaxon starts then trails off as he stares down at his clenched fists. “When I was younger. A servant really. Zhou. He wasn’t a Millennial. I don’t know what my father promised his family to have him sent to us but we grew up together. He slept on the floor at the end of my bed. Took lessons with me. All the trappings of a Millennial without any of the obligations. Or at least I thought. One day we skipped a dinner – some stupid celebration over a new contract. But Zhou and I wanted to watch the FireSparks over Lookout Pointe that night. When we got home….House security came. Took him away screaming. My father sent him to a work camp. Said he was distracting me from my duties,” Jaxon finished bitterly.
“That has nothing to do with who you are. That was your father.”
Jaxon rests his head on his knees and looks up at me with the carefully blank eyes of someone barely holding themselves together. “I did nothing to stop it. A few years later, when I was older, friends with Darren. Darren hacked into the Loupes-Fee database to try to find him for me. Zhou had died a year after being sent to the camp. Not even twelve years old. I could have done something. I should have done something. But I did not even try and Zhou is nothing more than a number on someone’s list. Because that’s the way things are and I have spent a lifetime knowing it will never change.”
“That was a long time ago, Jaxon. Since I’ve met you, you’ve done nothing but help me. Don’t tell me who you are because I know who you are. I know you.”
“What have I done for you? Gotten you nearly killed at the prison? Let you get shot? Destroyed your home? And your sister – she hates me. Next I will tear apart your family and then soon enough my father will execute you the same way he executed Zhou and I’ll be able to do nothing to stop it!”
“I don’t accept that.”
“It’s reality Evie. You cannot just refuse to accept it.”
“No,” I argue. “I do refuse. This is not the way it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“There is nothing to be done,” Jaxon says and while his voice sounds dismissive his eyes beg me for answers.
“There is one thing. One thing left for us to do if we don’t want to spend the rest of our lives running.” I grab his hands, entwining my fingers through his in a move of boldness I didn’t know was within me.
“We fight.”
CHAPTER 7
It’s been three days since I made my quiet declaration of war.
Three days in which I’ve spent every waking hour in Jaxon’s room, tossing ideas back and forth. Determination to fight is all well and good, but neither of us actually know what we can do.
“There’s something you need to see,” Red announces from Jaxon’s doorway. His lips are pinched and he has such a tight grip on the doorframe I’m afraid the wood is going to splinter beneath his fingers.
“What?” I ask.
“Come with me. Now.”
I narrow my eyes at Red’s sharp tone. Something is wrong. Seriously wrong. I climb to my feet from my position on Jaxon’s floor while Jaxon stands from his bed in a slow, leisurely manner like he has all the time in the world. But I see the concern in his eye. The fear that the moment we leave this room the world will come crashing down around us.
Red looks suspiciously between Jaxon and I as we follow him out of the room. He knows something is up, twice now I’ve caught him lingering just outside Jaxon’s door trying to listen in. Every part of me wants to go to Red and confess our goals, but I know that if I show up with some half-baked childish sounding plan to “fight the Millennials” he’ll laugh me off. I need to show him that I’m serious to convince him to join us.
“Keep yourself covered,” Red snaps at Jaxon. Jaxon, who was already pulling up his hood, turns to Red with a cross look. I shake my head lightly, a warning, though I’m not sure which of the two it’s directed at.
Jaxon and I follow Red as he leads us through the Hollows. The tall arched tunnels and unnatural light now a familiar sight. As we pass through the market I notice an eerie silence. The usually busy stalls appear recently abandoned. Smoke wavers from a hastily put out cookfire. The giant, cavernous room typically echoes with the sound of hundreds of voices. Now there is hardly a whisper.
I step close to Red. Sweat builds up on the back of my neck and drips down. We move down tunnels and pathways that grow increasingly unfamiliar. Red comes to a halt outside a large, arched entryway.
Natural light streams from a handful of windows fifty feet above us. In the room is a giant screen that seems nearly as large as one of the Millennial’s zeppelins. Hundreds, maybe over a thousand, are crowded around the screen, all jostling for space. Despite the crowd the room is silent. There’s a tenseness in the air, a sense of foreboding. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Trying to calm the fear that I won’t be able to handle another blow.
“What is this place?” I ask Red.
Red turns to me with a slightly confused look, “You haven’t been here before?”
“No.”
Everyone in the room is focused on the giant screen, watching whatever plays out on its silvery panes. I stretch to my toes, trying to peer over the heads in front of me to catch a glimpse.
“Come on.” Red grabs my wrist and drags me forward.
I reach back for Jaxon, afraid of losing him in the crowd. My fingers catch on his shirt and I tug slightly to pull him closer. “Stay close,” I whisper.
Red navigates easily through a crowd that melts away before him. I’m not so lucky. Elbows bump into me from every angle until I feel like my whole body must be bruised. My skin itches, like the sweat of everyone I pass is being rubbed off on my arms. I pull my hands in to make myself as small as possible.
We’ve pushed our way half-way to the front when I am finally able to make out what’s on the screen. A woman, a Praetor, is staring out from the display. Her reddish hair is cut severely around her jaw. I narrow my eyes. She looks familiar. The thin lips that are just starting to show fine lines, the sharp eyes that stare out like she can catch the eyes of all her viewers.