Under: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 5 (The Othala Witch Collection)

by Conner Kressley

  But that wasn’t what they were at all. They were real, horrible, and unimaginably dangerous. And we had to keep them out, which meant we had to pay attention and not waste time or energy fighting with one another.

  We were soldiers in a war that could never take place, and our focus had to stay there.

  To that end, I marched to the wall with what was left of my hair pulled up in a no-nonsense bun and my face free of makeup.

  Mother had always told me that my hair was my best feature. It made me look like a real woman, graceful, like someone more than I was.

  But I didn’t need to be graceful today. Perhaps I never needed to be so again, seeing all the good it did me.

  Nope. I was fine with just being little old me—plain, perky, and practically invisible.

  “Razz!”

  Okay, maybe not that last one.

  I cringed a little as Aarid came rushing to my side. His right eye was nearly swelled shut, while his lip was fat and split open. And his face was speckled with fresh black-and-blue splotches.

  “Are…are you all right?” I asked, trying not to wince at how painful his face looked.

  “Me? Yeah. Never better.” He grinned. “Can’t you tell?”

  I stifled a grin. I couldn’t start this up again.

  “Listen, Aarid,” I said, sighing loudly and clutching at the ends of my jacket. “I appreciate you trying to make the new girl feel at home, and you standing up for me like you did last night. But I don’t think—”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” he said. “Think, that is.” He shrugged. “It always got me into more trouble than it was worth.”

  “I can see that,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

  “I get it,” he said. “Too much, too fast.” He laughed again, his chuckle sounding as if it had a bit of bitterness beneath it. “Story of my life, I guess.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” I said, remembering the way he was trying to ply me with drinks just twelve hours ago. “I’m not sure I’m your type anyway. Besides, it looks like you and Henrick have a lot going on.”

  His eyes narrowed, as though he was trying to decide whether what I was telling him was an insult.

  “It’s not like that,” he said. “I’ve never had a problem with Henrick before. We’ve barely even spoken before yesterday, for regent’s sake. The whole thing was just nonsense. He’s just afraid that—”

  “I don’t care what Henrick is or is not afraid of,” I said. “I can’t imagine it has anything to do with me. I’m sorry you got hurt out of it, but I don’t have time in my life for this. I just got here. This whole world is new to me, and I need to take some time to get my legs firmly planted on the ground before I can even think of…”

  I took a deep breath. Giving Aarid the ‘I don’t like you that way’ talk wasn’t high on my list of things to do today.

  “I don’t care about any of this,” I continued. “Whatever crawled up Henrick’s backside has nothing to do with me.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” a voice said from behind me.

  I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. Although I had only met him yesterday afternoon, I had the feeling I wasn’t going to be able to get the sound of his voice out of my head any time soon.

  I started to turn, but I felt a presence at my back.

  The breath caught in my throat as I realized just how close Henrick was to me. A flash of last night shot through my mind’s eye. He’d almost hit me when I jumped in front of him.

  Upon reflection, it wasn’t the rage in his eyes or the anger on his face that stole my notice. It was the muscles in his arms, the broadness of his shoulders, and the dimple in his chin that my memory lingered on.

  And it was those same muscled arms that reached past me now, brushing against my own arm as I felt his firm chest press against my back.

  The heat of him was palpable as he grabbed a wrench from the cupboard beside me.

  And his scent—the smell of sweat, heat, and a touch of something sweet—danced across my nostrils and sent chills running down my spine.

  Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice the tiny convulsions as he pulled away from me.

  I spun toward him. The instant my eyes landed on him, I wished I hadn’t done so. He was put together again today with his hair brushed back, leaving his striking facial features prominent and unmarred. He wore the standard worker’s uniform, though there were two stripes across his chest, indicating he outranked Aarid and me by a full stripe.

  I cringed. How was I supposed to hate him when he looked like that?

  “And maybe you should care,” he added, close enough to me that I could feel his breath rush against my cheek.

  “Care?” I asked. Just the sight of him had wiped my mind of any useful information.

  “About what’s going on here,” he said. “Not about what crawled up my ass, as you so delicately put it.”

  My mouth dropped open. “I didn’t say—”

  “All of us should care about the world we live in, Razz,” he said, leveling the full weight of his gaze toward me until I was certain the look alone could steal the air from my lungs. “It’s what stops us from being complacent. It’s what keeps us useful.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to be useful, Henrick?” Aarid asked. “Not everybody has to be like you, you know. Not everyone has it in them to be—”

  “Are you for real?” I asked, cutting Aarid off in a way that was as inconsiderate as it was unintentional.

  I couldn’t stop myself. I had to know if this ‘purveyor of social justice’ thing was more than an elongated pickup line.

  Aarid blinked hard and looked down at me. The ever-present half smile he’d worn since the moment I met him finally vanished. It was as if he finally realized everything I said to him about not being interested was actually the truth.

  Then his mouth twisted into something harder. “I think I need to get back to work,” he said in a detached voice that sounded almost foreign to me.

  He marched off without any protest from either of us.

  “I don’t think he likes me very much,” Henrick said, his eyes never traveling from me.

  “Can’t say I blame him…seeing as what you did to his face.”

  “He wasn’t much to look at anyway,” Henrick said quickly.

  “That’s not funny,” I said, glaring at him. “And for what it’s worth, I’m not a huge fan of you either, not at this point.”

  “I’m not sure that’s fair,” he said, unblinking. “After all, you don’t have all the facts.”

  “You assaulted a man unprovoked in a bar, and you nearly did the same to me.”

  “I’d have never touched you,” he said in a tone that left no doubt in my mind what he said was true. “And unprovoked? Aside from running his mouth, he was also trying to take advantage of you.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” I said.

  “Of course not,” Henrick quipped. “I suppose that’s not the reason he slipped the bartender a few extra bolts to make all your drinks doubles.”

  “He…he did?” I asked, thinking back to the volume of liquid in both my glasses.

  “Not like you would have known the difference.” Henrick raised his eyebrows. “You don’t strike me as much of a party girl.”

  “I’m not any kind of girl,” I answered quickly. “I’m a woman—one who can take care of herself.”

  “If you say so,” Henrick answered. “Should I call him back over here? Perhaps he has a crushed-up hallucinogenic he can slip into your lunch.”

  “Stop being dramatic,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Men have been trying to get women drunk since before the sector was even created.”

  “You’re right,” he said, taking a slow step toward me. The movement made my heart race. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, huskier. “And, in all that time, I bet you’re the only one of those women who complained about being rescued from one of them.”

  I blanched. “Come off it,” I said. “That
’s not what this is about.”

  “You’re right,” he said, easing up. “Truthfully, there’s a way things are done around here, Razz. I wouldn’t expect you to know that, and, honestly, I’m not sure you’d care if you did, but there are.”

  “You’re giving me the ‘poor little farm girl can’t find her way in the big city’ excuse?” I asked.

  “I don’t act in ways that require me to make excuses,” he said, his tone turning harsh. “And I never said anything about you being unfortunate because of where you came from. If anything, I envy your upbringing. Something tells me things are much simpler in the Dustlands.”

  I couldn’t disagree with him there. “Maybe not everyone wants simple.”

  “Maybe people don’t always know what they want,” he said. “Even if they think they do.”

  “What are you getting at?” I asked, setting my jaw.

  Henrick pulled a folded slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. “Farm girl or not, if you’re going to survive here, there are some things you should know. Everyone has to open their eyes one day. Maybe this is your day, Razz.” He strolled a few steps back. “Meet us tonight at that address, and I guess we’ll see.”

  I stared after him as if he were insane, which absolutely might have been the case.

  When I opened the slip of paper, I saw it was completely blank. “Is this a joke?” I asked, holding it up to him. “There is no address on here. There’s nothing written on this at all.”

  He tilted his head. “Isn’t there?”

  “Um…no. No, there isn’t,” I said, huffing loudly.

  “I guess if you’re supposed to be there, you’ll find a way,” he said. With that, he turned around and headed up to the second level.

  I looked back down at the paper, thinking about what he just said and how very little sense it made.

  “That’s one blank-ass piece of paper,” a coworker said as he passed by. He must have noticed me staring at it intently and wondered why.

  “Yeah,” I answered uncomfortably. “I guess it is.”

  The alarm to start work wailed, and I shoved the paper into my pocket as I turned toward the wall.

  It was time to get to work.

  Chapter 4

  I spent the rest of the day trying not to think about much of anything. I hadn’t been at my job long enough to be able to work on autopilot. If that had been the case, I’d have turned off my brain and not thought twice about it.

  Who knew that life in the circle would be so damn tiring? Two days in, and I was already more exhausted than I had ever been back home.

  These days were long, somehow even longer than harvest days, when we’d work from sunup until sundown. But maybe it wasn’t about the hours. Maybe it was about me missing something, about feeling as alone as I actually was.

  When I got back to my quarters, I pushed my door closed and tried not to think about my noisy neighbors.

  Back home, the only noises I ever heard came from the wind or the livestock. But here, I had to contend with shouting, fighting, transports that ran all hours of the night, and the deafening sirens that seemed to scream at me in my sleep, reminding me just how far away home was.

  I pulled off my jacket and let it drop to a heap on the floor. Mother would never have allowed that back at the house, but it wasn’t as if she was here to yell at me.

  I made my way to the kitchen, feet dragging against carpet and then hardwood as I lazily pulled open the door to the fridge.

  Looking it over made my stomach churn.

  Why was it they only ever ate trash food out here? Where were the fresh cheeses and breads? Where were the slabs of bacon and fruits that had barely fallen from their tree perches? All of this was processed. It was all bright, sugary, and abhorrent to what actually existed in nature.

  My refrigerator was an abomination of nutrition, and that somehow made me feel even lonelier.

  Empty-handed, I closed the fridge door and trudged back to the bed, where I collapsed into my sheets. But sleep would not come. Something nagged at me. It pulled me from the comfort that my tired body so craved and planted my mind square in the center of disenchantment.

  And thoughts—awful, restless, troublesome thoughts—poured in and out of my brain at a frequency that could have only meant they were valid.

  Maybe I had been wrong to come here? Maybe I did belong back on the farm? Maybe the voice in my head, the one that pushed me to this place, was a traitor, and I had fallen victim to what could only be described as self-indulgent wanderlust.

  And maybe it was too late to fix any of it.

  I pulled my communicator out of my pocket, realizing I wasn’t hungry for food. I yearned for things to be simpler. I ached for the safety net that came from living inside that two-story, three-bedroom house with the faded blue shutters and the rusted metal top.

  And, regent help me, I missed the people inside of it.

  Before I realized what was happening, my finger had scrolled to the name ‘Mother’ in my contacts list.

  It hovered over it dangerously, flirting with the idea of tapping the screen.

  But if I called her, what would that do? I had made my choice. Had allowed myself to be placed here. Could I really change that now, and, if I could, would it be worth the shame I’d feel crawling back home?

  I shook my head. “Stop being a child, Razz,” I muttered, stuffing the comm device back into my pocket. “You just need to get out. Have some fun. Get busy so you stop talking to yourself.”

  I threw myself upward, knowing I would never feel any better lying flat against that mattress.

  “You’re young,” I said, as if there were someone around to benefit from the advice. “Do what young people do. Go out. Meet interesting folks. Make bad decisions so that one day you can tell your children you didn’t.”

  I stood and took the three steps to the sink. After I ran cool water over my hands and face, I pushed wet fingers through my hair, looking at myself in the viewing glass.

  My dad always said I was “pretty in a rustic sort of way”. Aarid certainly thought I was tempting when he was trying to find the perfect drink combination to get into my pants.

  And Henrick… Well, I didn’t need to think about him right now.

  Or did I?

  I rushed over to where I’d dropped my jacket and dug around in its pocket until I found the blank piece of paper Henrick handed to me earlier. He’d said there was an address on here to somewhere… Somewhere I could go if I was supposed to be there.

  But how was I supposed to see an address where there was none?

  The sheet was still blank. No letters, no markings. Henrick was giving me nothing to work with.

  I flattened the paper against the table and smoothed it out.

  Maybe it was written in invisible ink. Maybe I could only read this under a special lightbulb or something.

  But I didn’t have a special lightbulb. I barely had the sector-supplied industrial light, seeing as how it flickered in and out, and they’d already told me it was the best I was going to get. And what in the wide world would make Henrick think I was a ‘special lightbulb’ type of girl anyway?

  But that was it. He didn’t. He didn’t know anything about me, other than the fact I was stubborn, liked to throw myself into the middle of fights that weren’t my own, and that I had enough power to beat back a ravager with very little help.

  “Oh…” I said as the answer revealed itself to me. The only relevant thing Henrick could have possibly known about me was that I was powerful.

  My magic would unlock the secrets of this letter. There was no other way.

  Except I didn’t know much about magic. Sure, I knew the basics. Blast at the wall until I was told to stop. That was the job. It was the only thing I knew.

  I was a Dustlands girl, after all. Magic was about as pertinent to my life as anything that may or may not be going on outside the walls of this place. It never mattered, so I never learned the nuances of it.

/>   Unfortunately, it looked like it mattered now.

  I held my breath and looked down at the paper. Why I thought holding my breath would do any good was beyond me, but I had a habit of doing that whenever I tried something new.

  The first time I changed a tractor tire, I got so lightheaded that I nearly passed out. And that was nothing compared to this.

  Still holding my breath, I placed my hands atop the paper.

  Blue energy circled around it, lighting it up, but it didn’t reveal any words.

  I pressed harder. More energy. More light. Still, no words.

  “Come on,” I said, finally taking a breath.

  I slammed my hand against the table. Sparks shot out in blue, and icicles started to form at the table’s edges. Still, all I got for my trouble was a chilled slip of paper.

  “Whatever,” I muttered, too tired for this garbage.

  After crumbling the paper in my hands, I tossed it toward the trash can, but a swirl of blue energy transformed it into snowflakes that danced around me, tickling at my nose and cheeks before finally settling back on the table.

  I gasped as I looked at them…as I looked at the address they spelled out.

  14 Mockingbird Lane

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I muttered.

  Mockingbird Lane turned out to be a dead-end alley on the other side of a factory that smelled of smoke, burning trash, and what I could only assume was condensed sorrow.

  It was the dead of night, but people still rushed around the center as though the sun beamed directly overhead. That was one of the strangest things about this place, according to my father.

  “It never stops,” he used to say. “It never sleeps. Don’t trust anything that doesn’t sleep.”

  Those words rang in my head now, loudly enough that I could still hear them even after I’d batted them away.

  But I wasn’t going against my father’s wishes. I didn’t trust this place, not by a long shot. I simply aimed at coexisting with it and perhaps being a little less sad as I did.

  Was that really such a bad thing?