by Kit Rocha
"Shh." Jade leaned in, burying her face against Scarlet's throat. Mad's arms tightened, leaving Scarlet surrounded by warmth. "How old were you?"
She couldn't talk about that, couldn't think about it. "I have to get out of here."
"You can't," Mad said softly. "Not yet."
The door scraped open, and Bren came in. Six met him in the doorway, and he embraced her before lowering his voice to speak to Dallas. "The drones have withdrawn."
"Is it safe to go out, or could they come back?"
"They can do whatever the fuck they want," Bren growled, then sighed. "Sorry. I don't know. Maybe they'll come back for a second wave, maybe they won't. It's impossible to tell."
"They didn't in Three." Scarlet's voice cut through the tense silence, startling even her. "They dropped the bombs and never looked back."
Dallas hesitated another heartbeat before releasing Lex. "Mad, get to One. Talk to your cousin. We're going to need help. Jas, organize teams. And send someone to find Doc and sober him up. Lex—"
"Declan."
"Alexa," he replied, voice firm. "You, Bren, and Six gear up. We're going to get your sister."
She stared up at him, naked adoration warring with gratitude. "Together."
"Damn right, darling. Now move."
She hurried out of the basement, with Bren and Six hard on her heels, and Dallas turned to face Scarlet and Jade. "You know that sector, Jade. We could use you there, if you think you can do it."
Jade straightened and nodded, cool and collected except for the painful grip she still had on Scarlet's hand. "I can handle it."
If she could set aside her fear, so could Scarlet. "Me, too."
"Good." Dallas squeezed Scarlet's shoulder.
She suppressed a wince. The last thing she wanted to do was walk into hell. She was a selfish fucking asshole, but she couldn't help it. She'd fought so hard to put the darkness behind her, and now here it was, threatening to swallow her whole.
But Jade was going, and more than ancient history awaited her in the burning rubble. The least Scarlet could do was be there for her, to help make sure the memories she found today could turn into scars, not nightmares.
Lex
When Avery was little, no more than four or five years old, she'd fallen while running—she was always running somewhere—and skinned her leg. The abrasion wasn't deep, but it was wide and ugly, welling enough blood to terrify a child.
She refused to try and walk on such an impressive injury, so Lex carried her, even though she wasn't much older. Nearly half a mile, with Avery's tiny, trembling arms wrapped around her neck.
Lex heaved another shattered slab of cement out of the way, and a sharp edge sliced her palm. Her fingers had already been scraped raw, but the pain was inconsequential. Unimportant. All that mattered was finding Avery.
It had taken them far too long to find her patron's small compound in the midst of the sector. Even knowing its exact location didn't help, because such total destruction completely changed the landscape. There were no trees or signs left, no streets that weren't buried in two feet of rubble from the collapsed buildings on either side.
By the time they found Gordon's house, the minutes had already ticked into hours, and Lex could feel their chances slipping through her bleeding fingers.
Dallas tugged her away from the huge piece of rubble she was trying to lift. "Let Bren and Flash move that one. You're going to hurt yourself, Lex."
"Hurt." She laughed. Nothing hurt as much as not knowing.
Dallas wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back a few steps, giving Flash space to slip past her. Heavy gloves protected his huge hands, and he didn't have to wait for Bren. With a grunt and a heave, he lifted the concrete out of the way.
"Let him dig for a minute." Dallas forced Lex to face him. "Let me check your hand."
"It's fine. Nothing a little med-gel won't fix. Later." Later, when she wasn't consumed by dread, by thoughts of what lay under the shattered remains of Gordon's house. When she wasn't scanning every inch of the debris for a hint of life.
He pried her fingers open anyway, and wiped away the blood with his thumb. "We'll dig until there's not a damn stone left to move, darling. But if you keep hurting yourself, you're going back to Four over Flash's shoulder."
He'd do it, too, she had no doubt about that. So she opened her mouth to agree, but a shout from Bren cut her off. "Over here!"
Her heart didn't leap into her throat or sink into her belly or any of the other flowery phrases she'd always heard. It seized, shuddered to a stop, and only seeing what Bren had uncovered—the probably terrible, awful thing he'd uncovered—had even a chance of starting it up again.
Avery's patron lay there in the shattered glass and pulverized brick, facedown, still and pale under the fine coating of ash that clung to his skin and hair. But the sight didn't kick-start her heart—it froze it.
One of the man's hands had been crushed, and his fingers curled at odd, unnatural angles, stiff and rigid. Lex stared, consumed by the memory of watching those fingers drift lovingly through her sister's hair.
She sank to her knees and started to dig again. "She's close," she choked out. "She has to be. She wouldn't leave him."
Dallas dropped next to her and silently began to help. Flash and Six joined them, forming a line that shifted rubble faster. They freed Gordon's body, and Lex squeezed her eyes shut as Bren and Flash carried him toward a clear area at the edge of what used to be the street.
A thud jarred her eyes open. It was muffled, so faint that it sounded far away, but it shook her hard enough to snap her teeth together.
"Lex!" Six swiped debris away with her leather-clad arm and rapped on the surface beneath—not concrete or wood but steel. "There's a vault or something down here."
A floor safe, the kind popular in the city as well as the more affluent sectors. It was the kind of security measure people used to protect their most prized possessions from theft and loss. And Gordon had shoved her sister into one.
Her morbid, relieved humor evaporated when she realized it wasn't just shut. It was locked.
"No." Once upon a time, she'd survived by breaking into safes exactly like this one. And she was damn good at it—when she had her tools. But her sensors and drills were back in Four, shoved into the depths of a closet. It would take time to send someone for them, time—and air—her sister might not have.
Lex pounded on the dented metal and screamed.
"Lex—" Six nudged a tattered, leather-bound book off the door's surface. "Look."
Beneath the book, shielded from the dust and debris, lay tacky smears of blood. At first, it looked like Gordon had been clawing at the door, but when Lex examined the surface more closely, she could make out a series of numbers—smeared, shaky, but still legible.
"Oh my God." She punched the numbers into the keypad, but her hands were shaking so badly that she fucked it up, and the lock buzzed angrily. She took a deep breath and tried again, more slowly this time, and the bolt gave way with an audible click.
"Let me." Six gripped the handle. Bracing her weight, she pried the door up.
Avery clung to a narrow ladder, her pale face inches from the door, her bare feet slipping off the rungs. When she spoke, it was on a ragged sob. "Alexa—"
Lex hauled her up, spilling them both back on the ground. Glass cut through her jeans and into her legs, but Lex didn't care. Her sister had survived, and that was all that mattered.
Chapter Five
"You're all right, Olivia." After fifteen hours of breathing the dust in Sector Two, Jade was hoarse, and it was a struggle to keep her tone soft and soothing. "I know it hurts, but he's almost done."
Fear lined Olivia's young features, but she dug her teeth into her lower lip and turned her face away from where Dylan concentrated on stitching up the gash on her arm.
They'd run out of med-gel two hours before dawn. The painkillers were long gone, and no one knew how quickly Finn would be able to coax mo
re out of the new leader of Sector Five.
Hours of digging out the rare survivors—and the far more frequent dead—had left everyone in a state of numb exhaustion. Half the O'Kanes had gone back to Four to recover enough for a second day of rescue operations.
But Jade couldn't stop. She couldn't leave. Not when the girls she'd known since they were children were bleeding and suffering and dying.
Olivia sucked in a pained breath as Dylan started on the next stitch, and Jade touched the girl's cheek with a soothing murmur. She'd scrubbed her hands clean so many times they were raw, but that was a minor discomfort, one she'd stopped feeling a lifetime ago.
"It hurts," Olivia whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.
"I know, honey, but you're doing so well." She stroked the dusty hair back from Olivia's forehead and tried not to remember the girl the first day she'd come to Orchid House. Nine years old, with huge eyes and the shyest, sweetest smile Jade had ever seen.
Unprotected and defenseless, just like all the girls who ended up in the four Houses.
Except Jade.
She didn't have to close her eyes. The memory was as vivid as the day it had happened, burned into her heart as much as her mind. The long, curving walkway lined with rosebushes that ended at a massive wooden door carved with even more roses. Her mother's hand, tight around her own. The tension in that beloved voice as she knelt and gripped Jade's shoulders.
"This is not home. This will never be home. Remember that, Jyoti."
"I'll remember."
"And what's your name while you live here?"
"Jade."
It had taken her years to understand why her mother had insisted on giving her a new name. At seven, she'd simply been afraid. Afraid of losing the comfortable house she'd been born in, afraid of the pain in her mother's eyes when she asked about her father.
But she'd taken the new name, and with it a new identity. She'd wrapped it around herself like armor, and by the time she was fifteen and mourning her mother's death, she no longer questioned.
When your name was the only thing that belonged to you, you held it as close as your heart.
In the years that followed, that armor solidified around her. She achieved what her mother had planned for her all along—enough wealth to secure independence, and a freedom beyond anything she'd known in Sector Two.
But the armor wouldn't come off.
"Jade."
That's not my name.
"Jade." Firmer this time, accompanied by a strong yet gentle hand on her cheek.
She blinked and found herself staring up into Dylan's warm brown eyes. Her hands were limp in her lap. Olivia was gone, and she couldn't remember her departure.
Honestly, that was for the best. She wasn't sure she could survive remembering this night anyway.
She licked her chapped lips. "Who's next?"
"No one," he answered heavily. "You need to rest."
Scarlet had said the same, and Jade repeated her answer. "The girls know me. I can keep them calm."
"This isn't optional." His voice turned into pure steel as he rose and fetched a blanket from one of the packs the O'Kanes had brought. "You're going to eat and lie down for a while, or I'll haul you back to Four and make you do it there."
She couldn't even feel the cold. She'd skated past numb with her first glimpse of Orchid House—or what was left of it. As they'd dug through the debris, she'd talked herself hoarse soothing terrified girls who were trapped, trying not to think about the fact that there were three more houses filled with equally scared children.
There wasn't time to rest. But when Dylan returned, she couldn't fight past her numbness to argue. "I could use something to drink."
Dylan placed one hand on the small of her back. "The Riders brought water."
The bikers from Sector One had arrived on the scene at the same time as the O'Kanes, and they'd come prepared. Within half an hour, they'd erected tents and organized triage stations before turning their seemingly endless determination toward unearthing survivors.
The nearest tent was only a few hundred feet away. Jade gathered her strength, which was really nothing more than stubbornness at this point, and stood as gracefully as she could manage. Dylan's hand blazed on her back, hot enough to make her wary.
If she staggered, if she stumbled, he would catch her. And when that solid warmth wrapped around her, her numbness would fracture.
The Rider in charge was standing outside the tent, counting rolls of bandages. Deacon was a tall man, broad through the shoulders, with brown hair shot through with hints of red—and a permanent frown etched between his eyebrows.
The muscles in one arm flexed as he heaved a box out of the way and lifted another into its place. "You okay?" he asked Jade.
Telling men what they wanted to hear was as reflexive as breathing, and most men revealed their desires with every breath. But not Deacon, nor any of the other Riders. They were shrill dissonance, a jarring mix of selfless pacifism and ruthless violence.
Mad scraped at her that way sometimes, too.
"I'll manage," she said finally, willing it to be truth. She had to manage. She simply would allow no alternative.
"You look like shit."
Dylan stepped between them and smiled at Deacon, the charming, lopsided grin he only used when he wanted something. "Is this tent free?" Instead of waiting for an answer, he pulled Jade toward one of the smaller rest tents.
Inside was a stack of cases of bottled water, some boxes of rations, and a single cot. He snatched up one bottle, opened it, and held it out. "Gideon's people are assholes."
Deacon could undoubtedly hear him, and Jade frowned. "Obviously you agree with him, or you wouldn't have forced me to stop."
"You're exhausted, and you're starting to exhibit symptoms of an acute stress reaction." He pointed to the cot. "Sit."
It wasn't a seductive word. It was sibilant to start and cut off harshly, but Dylan's voice wrapped around it with implacable gentleness. Even worse was the knowledge in his eyes, his awareness of the weight of this moment. He knew what the command would do to her, how it would sing to her.
Raw and exposed, she sat.
He crouched in front of her, so that she had to look down at him. "You're going to want to push yourself," he began, his voice even lower, gentler. "Because there's so much to do, so many people who need help. But you can't. If you don't take care of yourself first, you'll burn out, or worse."
He was right. In his place, she'd be saying the same thing. Preservation of resources was logical, and she was a valuable resource when it came to Sector Two. But when she closed her eyes…
"They're just girls," she whispered hoarsely. "Children. Why would Eden kill children?"
His answer was flat, as if it was simply a fact he'd learned long ago and was repeating by rote. "Because they can."
She reached for him blindly. Her forehead bumped his cheek, and she turned her face into his throat, as if she could hide her tears.
So much life. So much potential. So many bright lights snuffed out before they'd had a chance to taste freedom, all because Eden couldn't tolerate having less than everything.
"Shh." His lips brushed her temple, and he folded his arms around her, anchoring her against the solid strength of his chest. "We'll do what we can, Jade. Everything we can. I swear it."
If anyone else had witnessed this fracture in her control, it would have been intolerable. But there was nothing left to hide from Dylan. He'd watched her claw her way back to life through the agony of drug withdrawal, a withdrawal everyone had assumed would kill her.
Those weeks were blessedly blurry. Fevers and nightmares, day after day when she threw up everything she tried to eat. She'd grown weak by the end, hallucinating people who were long dead—her mother, one of the girls from her classes who'd taken a razor blade into the communal bathroom and ended it all, even her first trainer, who'd been turned out of Rose House for trying to teach the girls some measure of inner strength.
But the fingers running through her hair now were achingly familiar. She'd wondered sometimes if she'd hallucinated his kindness, too, because Dylan was always so cool and detached during her lucid periods. Sometimes he was even high himself.
But she knew his touch. She knew the soft warmth of his fingertips on her cheek, the way his voice rasped when he lowered it to whisper reassurances.
Maybe that explained her terrifying weakness for him, the way her body thrilled at his tender commands. After seven years of playing flawlessly at submission, she'd been so sure she understood the nuances of power games. But she'd only ever played for survival.
Dylan would demand something she'd guarded more closely. Her trust.
After two days, search and rescue was turning into search and recovery.
Tendrils of damp hair had escaped her ponytail. Scarlet finished washing her hands and brushed her hair off her face as she surveyed the base camp Dallas and Gideon had set up. At least the sight didn't kindle that familiar, choking panic in the back of her throat. When fire had rained down on Three, there were no coordinated efforts, no men and women with tents and boxes of food and collapsible jugs of clean water. Just a few scattered individuals, helping out as best they could.
Coming here, she'd been so worried about how she would deal with her memories, only to find that there were none, not for her.
Jade was another story. Scarlet had watched her, helpless, as every passing hour had drawn her tension and agony tighter and tighter, until it looked like she might break, fold in on herself until she vanished completely. She'd been on the verge of taking Jade away herself—even if they had to leave and keep going, away from the sectors altogether—when Dallas had sent Jade on to One to help set up the temporary hospital.
As long as Jade was away from all this, Scarlet would stay and move bloody bricks and busted cement forever.
"Here." Mad appeared beside her and held out a bottle of water. "There's stew at the main tent."