And yes, I hate myself for being angry about it all. I’m sitting beside one of the strongest, most exceptional individuals I’ve ever met, and I’m upset that his perfection isn’t enough. That there’s an Impossible too great for him to overcome. I’m livid that the man I love is content as a martyr.
The blaze springs me from the couch.
“Wake up, Kaleb! You can’t go home. There is no such thing as home for you. There will be no future or us in the real world. You’re holding on for nothing.”
“Andie, I—”
“Quiet! They’re never going to let you leave here until you come clean and give them what they want. You may see this as some complex game but it’s simple: like it or not, you’ve picked a side. You either get it together and cooperate with the side you picked or turn yourself in as a traitor who changed his mind. Those are your choices.”
I need to stop. The words are already singeing my lips, incinerating my lungs. I want to hurt him. No, I want to hurt myself, and I’m doing a damn good job of it as the expression on his face crushes me into the concrete floor.
“What do you think it’s like to grow closer to you every day, knowing you’re a ticking time bomb that will eventually explode and destroy both of us? I’m falling in love with you and fantasizing about a future I can’t have. You really want to protect me? Then end this pointless standoff so we can live in reality for once and see what that looks like. If you want to end it, then end it!”
That’s the speech that follows me as I run from his office. The words that sear his devastated shock into my brain. The legacy I leave for the man who owns my soul.
I make it all the way back to my room before I throw up.
I skip dinner that night. I make up some non-lie about being sick, because let’s face it: my stomach heaves every time I think about the poison that spewed from my mouth toward the one person who doesn’t deserve it. I would have vomited all night if there’d been anything left to come up once lunch was flushed.
Time does nothing but torture me with helplessness. Staring at the ceiling, listening to the hiss of Vi’s breathing, the suffocating night becomes a screen for replays of my crime. She’d been worried about me, but I assured her it would go away soon. And it will, because this disease has a cure.
01:48.
Only seven more hours until I can fix this. Until I throw myself at Kaleb’s feet and trade my anger for the truth. I’m going to unleash my heart. Pour it out in a messy puddle he can pick through. I’ll tell him how I love him. How my rage was actually a deep fear of his dilemma. That I admire him. That his honor is contagious and it kills me to think someone is trying to destroy his radiance. That I’m terrified of losing him. That there’s no way to process the fact that I will, no way to let go when he’s all I want to hold onto. I will make him understand my own pain at watching him torture himself and live a lie he doesn’t deserve. The frustration of helplessness that someone could sacrifice as much as he has and then be asked to do it over and over again. I will leave no doubt that I hate them, both sides, for shoving him in the crosshairs, and I do understand there’s little difference between his enemies and his friends. He will know he has an ally. That I will die for him.
01:53.
This night is forever. The temptation for distraction lasts only a second before I’m frozen with guilt. How many nights does Kaleb lie awake, tortured by memories and fear and confusion? How many hours staring into the darkness, shivering against the pain of forces bent on crushing his beautiful spirit? I know he wouldn’t hesitate to fight for me, to absorb my wounds if the roles were reversed. He would have borne my demons, and he has. His character bleeds from him. Saturates every action, his very presence.
But what did I do? What did I say to the man who’s done nothing but protect, comfort, and defend me since the moment I arrived at this horrible place?
Fact: I told him to turn himself in as a traitor. I told him to literally go to Hell.
I cough and clutch my stomach.
“Close the door.”
I’m shaking. No. Facts. Fucking facts!
“Close it!” the voice barks.
I press my back against cold steel and stare in horror at Sergeant Dennel. Everything about this office, this moment, is wrong. I blink to clear the scene, but it’s still the wrong person rising from Kaleb’s desk. Frantic, I scour the room.
“He’s not here,” Dennel spits as if trying to puncture me with every last syllable of his statement.
I move my head in denial, fire and ice blistering through my body at once.
No. No!
“What did you say to him after our meeting?” Flames shoot from his eyes like he expects poisonous fangs to jut through my lips.
His gaze narrows. “He’s in a holding cell, Andie. He turned himself in. They’re holding him as a traitor. They think… they think he…” His anger fades into bewilderment.
Sobs drop me to my knees. I wrap my head in my arms and melt into the floor at the horror of what I’ve done. This is… He trusted me. Cared about me so much, and I stole his hope. Shattered his character. Twisted every beautiful thing he is into a flat-out lie with which he should go impale himself.
“Andie…” The sergeant’s voice is softer now, but I don’t want compassion. Fuck forgiveness. I want him to stab me in the heart. Rip it out and crush it like I’d done to Kaleb.
I expose my face, certain the mess in my gut is poisoning my features. He wants fangs? “It’s my fault. I did this!”
I stagger toward the desk and grasp the edge, waiting for Kaleb to appear. As though he’s hiding underneath one of the cabinets. Any place more plausible than being locked away in a prison cell for a crime that doesn’t make sense.
I can’t move, clinging to this last reminder of the man I love. The man who cares about me enough to listen when I tell him he’s not worth the pain. To protect me by removing himself from my life. End it.
The bitter smell of the office makes me want to throw up again, but there’s no time for that.
“We need to get him out.”
“What?”
I turn to Dennel. “How do we get him out?”
I say it with pragmatism that draws a squint from Dennel.
“He’s in a military prison. We don’t get him out.”
I lock my stance. “We have to. He’s not a traitor. He’s not a criminal. He should be on a farm.”
Dennel huffs a sigh. “Come on. I’ll take you back to your room.”
I yank my arm away. “I’m not going back to my room. Where’s the prison? I want to see him.”
“See him? You can’t see him, Andie. I can’t even see him. You’re not understanding what’s happened here. By turning himself in…” He draws in a calming breath and studies me again. Grabbing my arms, he delivers a gentle shake. But my cozy denial makes it safe in my head. Who wants facts when they look like this?
“You’re in shock. I’m going to take you to my office. I can’t leave you alone right now. We’re going to work through this, I promise, but right now I need you to return to the strong, level-headed woman we knew yesterday, okay? That’s the woman Kaleb needs at the moment.”
I blink. I remember that woman. She says terrible things. She lies. She fucked up and will not survive the night knowing she sent the man she loves to his death.
Dennel wasn’t kidding. His office is twice the size of Kaleb’s, but I couldn’t care less about square footage or fancy views. The cool outside air should have sobered me. Dennel’s calm reassurance should have done something to kick my brain back to a functioning state, but by the time we arrive, I find my way to a window where I sit and outline decades-old grime with my pupils.
Dennel’s inbox has no patience for the torment of injustice. He lets me be a plant on his windowsill as he settles at his desk to catch up on the day. Several messages wait f
or him, only one gets returned. He calls his wife who’s worried their furnace isn’t functioning properly. It’s not old; their house was just built two years ago, for heaven’s sake. How could it be broken already but she needs a shower. Plus, the dishes and laundry. Well, that wouldn’t be the furnace, that would be the water heater. Was she vacuuming in the basement again? Did she check the breaker? Oh. Yes, next to the router, in the electrical panel. Not that one. To the right. Just flip it.
Kaleb is going to die because of me.
It’s a perpetual stab, goring me every time it breaks through my protective wall. Just when I think I can breathe, it comes back, extracting precious air and sending my brain into blank space where it’s safer. Then slash, the cycle continues.
“Andie. Hey!”
I blink again and position my head toward the sound. Now that the furnace-slash-water heater crisis is under control, Dennel is ready for Kaleb’s problem. Death sentences can be so disruptive.
He kneels before me. “I know this is a lot to handle. I know how much you care about him, but I need you back. Kaleb needs you, okay? Can you just give me a couple hours of strength?”
“What’s going to happen to him?” I regret the question the second it comes out.
He looks away. All the answer I need.
I stare at my ancient window stains again. Dennel does have a nice view despite the moldy filter. Kaleb’s office is buried in the basement of Building 9B so Dennel’s is a palatial suite by comparison. Floor 4 of an admin building. Probably used to be faculty offices if this was once a university.
But trauma is a deceptive creature, masking warring factions of subconscious with shock. That numbness, though, protective and sneaky in its denial, must have been hiding something stronger. Fear, guilt, horror, and pain clash together to crown a new champion: resolve. I feel it steeling up my spine, shooting through my arms and legs. A jagged tension turns me from houseplant into machine within seconds. I turn on Dennel with a violence that fires him back a step.
“What do you know about the Kalik Closer, Sergeant?”
“The Kalik Closer? Andie, are you all right?”
I clench my fist. “No, you were right. We don’t have time to grieve. Right now, we need to plan. The Kalik Closer. Is it on your radar or not?”
His discomfort says yes. “I’ve heard of it. Why?”
“I know it claimed Kaleb’s leg. I know it means something to this whole mess.” Dennel is still absorbing, but I’ve wasted too much time on my own baby steps. “We need to figure out who the leak is and—”
“Leak? Okay, back up.”
I tense because I have people to hunt, prisoners to free, travesties to avenge. I also have zero common sense at the moment so Dennel adjusts to prevent me from bolting from the room, sword drawn.
“First, let’s start with what happened after you went back to his office yesterday.”
“What does that matter?”
“Did you tell him what happened?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he say?”
Simple questions with weighted answers. I have a split second to determine Dennel’s role in my quest, and I shudder at the thought of putting Kaleb’s fate in the hands of my poor judgment, but what choice do I have? The sergeant isn’t just my best hope. He’s my only one. I rack my brain for evidence, replaying conversations, anything Kaleb may have said to indicate the man is a reliable ally. If only I’d had the chance to ask Kaleb… if only I hadn’t told him to prove his character by sacrificing himself.
“He told me about his kidnapping. About the torture, what they did. He told me everything, including how they used your own techniques on him.”
I can’t read his face.
“He did? What kinds of things did he say?”
It’s an evasive response, but still within acceptable parameters to my fledgling spy brain. “What do you know about the ZB-783 vise?”
“More than I want to.”
“The rebels used that on Kaleb’s right hand.”
“They did, yes.”
“What do you know about the Glaxon Ionizer?”
Dennel quiets again before confirming the rebels used that as well.
“Razor mesh, all of it. Kaleb said they used all your techniques.”
Dennel listens to my testimony. Probably trying to make sense of it the same way my reason struggled on that side of the information dump. Then again, I have no idea.
“What exactly is Kaleb’s theory?”
Fact: “I don’t know but I think it has something to do with a suspected leak in your ranks.”
Dennel considers. Too long? Not long enough? I don’t know. “Okay, but even if that were true, why didn’t he tell us when we rescued him?”
I start to laugh. It’s probably just the crazy in my head making its presence known. His look suggests he agrees.
“Tell you what exactly? That one of you was responsible for what had happened to him? He was terrified, Sergeant. He’d been through Hell and knew someone here was working for the monsters who tortured him. I can think of a dozen reasons why he wouldn’t say anything until he could figure it out for himself. How would he know whom to trust and who would send him back for another round?”
Dennel trains a hard expression on me. After a long silence, he finally takes a heavy breath.
“Fine. Let’s say I believe his theory. Why the sudden change of heart? It’s been months since we brought him back here. Why turn himself in all of a sudden to cooperate? He had to know what was waiting for him if he did that after all this time. Kaleb Novelli is no idiot.”
I look away then. Some answers don’t translate into a rational conversation. The verbal replay is turning out to be very different than the mental one. In this moment, I have the option of the truth or total silence. I’m not skilled enough to come up with anything in between. I concentrate on the window again.
“That’s my fault. Kaleb and I had an argument when I returned after our meeting yesterday.”
I sigh at the sweet pain from nails digging into the flesh of my palms. I squeeze harder, drawing blood. “I should say, I had an argument. He did nothing but tell me the truth about what happened, how he felt. I panicked. I was afraid for him, so I said some things and took my fears out on him instead.”
Dennel pales. “What kind of the things?”
What kind of things. The kind of things that would convince an incredible man to sacrifice everything for a woman who loves him but doesn’t admit it until it’s too late. The kind of things that make the worst option seem like the only one.
“I was upset.” Emotion pierces through the recently constructed armor around my soul. “I didn’t know what to say. I was scared.”
“So you told him to turn himself in?”
“Basically.” The word comes out like a lie, and I shake my head, refusing to protect myself anymore. “No. Not basically. Yes, that’s what I said. I told him to end the game and turn himself in.”
And it’s over. My brief run with strength in the face of crisis. The tears take control now.
“I didn’t mean it. Of course I didn’t. I’d do anything to take it back. It wasn’t even the truth. He’s going to die thinking—”
“Andie, stop.” Dennel is back, shaking me from my darkness. “You have to stop thinking this way. It’s not helping anyone and he’s not going to die.”
“He can’t.” I meet his eyes. “He can’t.”
Dennel nods like he understands, but he doesn’t. It’s a hopeless truth, and even I didn’t get it until it was too late.
“Will they hurt him?” I continue after a long pause. “Will they execute him if they think he’s a traitor?”
Dennel’s expression turns serious. “Yes. And yes.”
I look away, stomach in chaos. “But the definition of traitor is p
retty complex, isn’t it?” I need something. Anything!
“Not to them.”
My breath has deteriorated into short gasps again, and I’m afraid I’m returning to that useless place where panic stops time.
“Listen to me. I’m not going to lie to you. The situation is bad, but I wouldn’t have come for you this morning if I thought it was over.” Dennel clenches his jaw. “We don’t have time for this. Novelli is in chains, and they’re going to use every means they have to get the information they want, whether he has it or not.”
I remember his eyes as he told me the story of his time in captivity, the way pieces of him unraveled with each detail that trickled out. How would he survive round two?
“What do we do?” I ask, suppressing the horror long enough to send signals to my tongue again.
Dennel exhales. “Honestly, you won’t like this, but if everything you’ve said is true, you may be our best weapon.”
We don’t have a plan. What we manage to string together is a reconstruction of the situation in pursuit of a plan. Facts. That’s what we have and what helps keep my brain engaged in action rather than a complete collapse into grief.
Fact: Kaleb is in trouble with his superiors. The same superiors who had just asked me to spy on him and earn his cooperation.
Fact: I did it, in record time, and now he’s in custody, freely submitting his will and body for the first time since his return.
Fact: From the outside, this all looks good for me. It looks like I’ve accomplished exactly what was asked of me. That I was the one person able to get through to him and draw him toward the light. Opinion: I’m a hero. They don’t know I regret every damn word I said.
Dennel thinks our best course of action is to convince them I’m on their side, that this development wasn’t a mistake but an honest attempt at justice. I need them to believe I’m helping my dear friend.
Traitor Page 12