by R. H. Scott
. . . and suddenly her hands were free—he had cut her ties.
She froze, uncertain of what to do next. If he had wanted to kill her he could have. He tossed the knife across the room, but remained on top of her. “I told you I would never hurt you,” he reminded her.
Sloan glared up at him expecting to see his maniacal face, but instead, she found the sincerity in his eyes that had first brought her here. “You want me to trust you after you tied me up and came at me with a knife.”
He shook his head, seemingly exasperated. “I told you—I tied you up for my safety. You’re one dangerous girl when you’re angry. The knife was to cut you free—which I did. I would never hurt you.”
“You’re hurting me right now,” she countered. She glared at him as he stifled a chuckle, but he also stood up, freeing her. He offered her his hand but she rejected it, getting to her feet on her own. They stood there, staring at one another. Then she noticed blood beginning to pool through his shirt. She must have hit his knife into him when trying to break free. “Elijah . . .” She gestured. He looked down and cursed under his breath, otherwise ignoring the wound.
Sloan thought about the situation—she was stuck in the woods with him. She had two options—buy more time or kill him. And she hadn’t just ruined her life in an attempt to save his just to kill him now. “You have till tonight to convince me—otherwise, believe me when I say I will kill you.”
He nodded slowly. “Fine.”
She had watched him clean the small slash on his side. She had watched him build a fire. Now she watched him stare at her from across the fire pit. She was done waiting. “You said you could prove you were telling the truth—so do it.”
“It’s not the easiest thing to do . . . Tell me this—been forced to show off for any strangers recently?” he asked, leaning into the firelight.
She thought of Mr. Degrassi and the others, of the way she and Jared had been forced to fight for them.
“How do you know about that?”
He shrugged. “They’re investors. They help keep this place going and in return, they come and handpick their next bodyguards—their personal security who keep them alive and well on the mainland.”
She wanted to point out that he hadn’t actually answered her but he carried on speaking.
“Your conversations being listened in to—your every move being recorded. That really happens. How else would I know Jared called you a slut and then you two had sex?”
A wave of heat rushed over her. “How do you know those things?”
She felt violated hearing him describe a part of her private life aloud.
“Stone told me you and Jared were struggling and the Order was worried about it. He told me it was ti—”
Sloan cut him off. “Stone told you?”
“Yeah, he’s kind of our de facto leader . . . He wanted to be the one to tell you, to bring you into the fold, but it couldn’t be organized that way. So he suggested to Romani that we go on excursion and I tell you.”
Sloan leaned away from him. Stone—her general, her mentor, second in command at the Academy. She had trusted him with her life and now she was hearing that he was one of them. That he and the Order—and Elijah—knew about parts of her life with Jared that should have been private.
She shook her head. “He’s been manipulating me this whole time. Just like you.”
“No, it’s not like that—”
“Really? It sure seems that way.”
“Sloan, he wanted to bring you in a long time ago.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Sure, I—as his closest pupil—was too hard for him to reach.”
“You surrounded yourself with people who wouldn’t hesitate to turn us all in!”
“Like Jared? Stone could have told him too but—”
He cut her off, raising his voice. “Jared is not like the rest of us, Sloan. His family isn’t out there suffering somewhere.”
Sloan stood. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“His family is involved—here, in this place, they had a role in making it and they have a role in maintaining it. Romani is his uncle.”
Sloan fell back onto her seat. “What?”
There was no way Jared knew that. No way he would have kept all of that—all of this—from her.
Elijah took a deep breath. “He doesn’t know, if that’s what you’re thinking . . . but that doesn’t change anything. He might have been treated the same as the rest of us, but he would have never been Dismissed, and he’s definitely had closer eyes on him this whole time. So no—we couldn’t tell him and we couldn’t tell you until we got you away from him.”
Sloan couldn’t believe this. She had been manipulated—she had been fooled. “Get me away from him?”
He ran a hand over his face, struggling with this conversation. “Needing you to get away from Jared so you could learn the truth has had nothing to do with the way I feel about you. I wanted you long before I even knew the truth.”
Sloan narrowed her gaze at him. “Sure,” she said sarcastically. “It just worked out so well for you that you had Stone and whoever else helping you get me away from Jared.”
“Dammit, Sloan! Can you just let me explain everything before you start with the accusations?”
She recoiled at his angry voice, but she crossed her arms over her chest and listened. And as he spoke, her anger turned to shock and she became more intrigued. He began to tell her the story of their lives, but not as she knew them to be. He explained the Academy was an enemy base, but not all its students had been kidnapped. Those—like Jared, allegedly—whose parents knew and supported them had their children willingly trained up. It simultaneously made no sense and perfect sense. Everything that had begun to bother her at the Academy—or perhaps always had bothered her—could be explained by Elijah’s version of the story.
“Romani is the leader of the rebel faction,” Elijah carried on. “He goes to great lengths to ensure we hear warped versions of the war. The War Front Collective is pretty much a complete fabrication . . .
“They train us to fight our own people, the ones trying to defend the mainland. Haven’t you ever wondered why no one returns to the Academy after deployment? Those who always knew the truth hunt down those who survived long enough to discover the truth. No one ever makes it back to reveal Romani’s lies . . .
“But there is a small group of us, those who know the real story, here at the Academy. Stone brought us all in—Donny, me, a handful from Aviation, a few captains . . . It’s all been opportunistic. He handpicked every student he believed could handle the truth—you included. So many of us are from Aviation because of his time in the wings, where he could lead our excursions growing up. You’re the first one who would have been difficult to enlist—and damn, you have been difficult—but he insisted . . .”
Sloan couldn’t quite put her finger on how she felt—mad, betrayed, humiliated, doubtful? She barely knew Elijah and yet it seemed he had a greater bond with her mentor than she did, that he knew intimate details of her relationship with Jared, that he knew things about Jared that Jared didn’t even know.
She shook her head. “So, in essence, you found out you could be with me, knew Stone wanted me in his little fold of defectors, so helped manipulate the end of my relationship with the love of my life, to then tell me all of this?” she summarized.
“Sloan, it’s—”
“It’s not like that? Sure . . . you have developed some sick infatuation with me and now—” But he cut her off this time.
“You know that’s not true. You know how I feel about you.”
She stood, looking down at him. “You don’t even know me!”
He rose from his seat, squaring off with her from across the fire. “Don’t I?”
“
What?”
“Don’t I know you? I have held you each time you needed me most. I have carried you to bed. I have watched over you. I held you in my arms to try to keep you from breaking.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Elijah, you’re part of the reason I was breaking in the first place.”
He shook his head at her. “I’m so sorry I ripped you away from your perfect bubble of illusion—” he began, his voice once again rising, but she interjected.
“Don’t! Don’t you dare pretend to know anything about who I am. You have been champion for a day—I have been it for years. You don’t know anything about being viewed as the best. You don’t know anything about the constant pressure, the pushing, the objectification and humiliation and isolation of being this way . . .
“The responsibility that comes from being the Order’s prized possession—you do not know what my life has been and you helped rip me away from the only other person who understood.”
He glared down at her. “I saved you from a life of being some glorified bodyguard.”
“At least I would have been with Jared!”
He lashed his hands out at his side, enraged. “You talk of responsibility, Sloan, well here it is—this is real responsibility. You have a family who needs you, people who need you, and you’re saying you would have rather carried on blissfully ignorant as long as you had wonder boy at your side?”
She stepped away from him . . . He was right. If he was telling the truth—he was right. She did have a family, out there, somewhere, who needed her. She had people she had sworn to go out and protect. Elijah was offering her the opportunity to do what she had always believed she was going to, and she was too mad to acknowledge it. Losing Jared had hurt too much.
She turned from Elijah, stumbling into the dark, as forceful memories pushed into her mind. Tandy, the day of her Review, flashed before her. Her best friend, shaking, eyes wide, lip quivering. “Don’t let them take me, Sloan.” She had been forced to the Order by sentries, resisting tearfully.
“Don’t fight, Tandy. It’s just a conversation; nothing will happen to you.” She had let them take her best friend. She had failed her. She had failed Kenny. She had lost Jared. She had now angered the Order. She had—
Sloan choked, hacking icy water out of her mouth. The cold lake flooded her eyes, ears and throat. She struggled to her feet, gasping for air. She blinked water from her eyes and found Elijah standing there, knee deep in the lake. What just happened?
“You were screaming,” he explained, raising his hands defensively.
She coughed up more water. “What?”
“You were screaming . . . you kind of lost it. Like really lost it.”
She slumped into the lake, running her hands over her face. “Well, what did you expect?”
He stood there in silence.
After a while, she looked up at him. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?” The night sky behind him, the milky moonlight playing over his strong face. He nodded solemnly.
“Yeah, I am . . . I’m sorry.”
She struggled to her feet; he helped her up and out of the lake. She wrung her hair out, shivering in the night air.
Sloan paced the cabin, watching Elijah sleep on the sofa. They had exchanged an awkward moment before deciding to go to sleep, whereby she promised she wouldn’t kill him. But she couldn’t sleep. She could only think. And pace. She wanted to speak to Jared—she wanted to tell him everything. But if everything she had been told was in fact true, she couldn’t risk it, could she? If he really was under the constant watch that Elijah seemed to believe he was, if he really was Romani’s nephew and his family had some role in the Academy—how could she tell him?
Would he even believe her if she did—did she even really believe it all? She finally stopped pacing and looked down at his dark silhouette. She studied him thoughtfully. She had fought to keep him alive and it had meant the end of her relationship with Jared. She didn’t want to resent him, but everything he had said made it difficult to not do just that.
She couldn’t understand how he had ever had any draw on her. Maybe it was natural to develop feelings for someone you fought so hard to keep alive—maybe it was because Nuptia really had paired them, so he had some unexplainable pull on her, or maybe it was because some part of her knew he was telling her the truth, and that made him different from everyone else in her life.
“Why are you watching me sleep?” His voice just about gave her a heart attack—how long had he been awake?
Well, you threatened to kill him—it would be amazing if he slept at all.
She glanced to the countertop to see the blinking signal jammer box—it was still on; she could supposedly still speak candidly. She didn’t answer him, she just asked a question. “If you’re so against the system then why do you believe they were right in pairing us?”
He rolled over, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. “The machine, Nuptia, doesn’t make mistakes. People make mistakes.”
Sloan nodded in the darkness before slowly retreating to her bed. She fell asleep wondering how many mistakes had led her to this stage in her life.
“Stone helped transfer me out of Aviation when the Calling happened, knowing I wanted to be closer to you,” Elijah explained. He had told her about his life at the Academy, how he had streamlined into Aviation early on, learning how to fly before any other student there. Sloan had never really thought about it—the aviators generally trained with the rest of them—but they were sort of a separate group of their own.
They had been having a relatively pleasant morning—more conversations with fewer death threats. That had to be progress . . .
She dipped her toes into the cool lake. “Then why didn’t you ever just talk to me?”
He shot her a challenging look. “Would you have ever looked past Jared to me or anyone else?”
“Maybe if I thought you weren’t just lusting after me—I do have friends, you know.” Even as she said the words she thought about the level of truth in them—did she have any friends anymore?
“I don’t think I ever saw you speak to one person without Jared by your side,” he pointed out.
She wanted to protest but she couldn’t . . . Loving someone like Jared had a blinding effect on you. She wondered, if all of this was true, what sort of person Jared would have been if he had never been sent to the Academy. She wondered what sort of person she would be, if she had been left with her parents. Would she still be the sort of girl he would have loved?
“Maybe if he knew, he would see things differently . . .” she spoke, voicing her thoughts from the previous night.
“Knew what?” Elijah asked, looking up from where he sat on the bank.
“About all of this,” she said, waving her hands about.
He shot her a worried look. “You cannot tell him—that’s Stone’s call. I’m serious—if we told everyone we wanted to, some—many—would resist. Romani has the power here—imagine what he would do if there was an uprising?”
Sloan tried to imagine exactly that—a handful of students standing up and announcing all she knew now. She knew how she would have reacted—how she had reacted just yesterday to all of this. She would have defended the Academy. She would have put any traitor down.
As if reading her thoughts, he spoke. “They will all find out at some point . . . and it might not be too late for Jared. You could—I don’t know—work things out . . .” He let his voice trail off. She watched him deal with his own sad hypothetical scenario.
“I can’t pretend that’s not what I want, but I can tell you that, whether you’re telling the truth or not, we are all marching towards a war. What’s the point in worrying about anything other than staying alive?”
Sure, it was true, but she said it more for his benefit than anythi
ng else. If she could be back with Jared right now she would do it in a heartbeat.
He fidgeted in his seat, looking up to her. “Because there’s always more. Always something else—something better.” He took a deep breath. “But if this is all I ever get, just this time with you, well—that’s enough for me.”
Sloan stared at the ceiling that night, this time knowing Elijah was asleep, as he snored loudly from the sofa. They had spent the entire day talking. They spoke about his version of the war and the Others and the Order. They spoke about training and Stone. They talked about how they had never known one another before the Calling. She was talked out. And yet, she couldn’t sleep.
She had been raised on the belief that her parents had volunteered her for this, and that her superior skills and success would have made them proud. Who she was, the things she had done—the things she could do—it would probably horrify them. She imagined a woman whom she resembled, with blond locks and golden eyes, running a hospital with her husband. A hospital where many of the patients had probably been victims of someone just like Sloan . . . She wiped away the errant tear on her cheek. How could two people who saved lives ever be proud of a girl trained to end them?
Sloan stared at Elijah with apprehension, arms crossed over her chest. He had an easy smile painted across his face.
“You won’t hurt yourself, just trust me,” he laughed, resting his hand on the central yoke of the bike.
“It would be easier to trust you if you weren’t laughing.”
He laughed louder at that. Finally, he regained his composure. “Okay, do you know what a horse is?”
“Of course I know what a horse is.” Well, she knew the animal, despite having never seen one.
This time, he stifled a laugh, clearly seeing through her. “Okay, these bikes are like horses. Hands on either side of the yoke. When you lean forward, you go forward; when you squeeze your thighs—lean right, go right; lean left, go left—so on and so forth.”
She kicked at the ground, not liking feeling incapable. “How do you turn it on?”
He smiled, pointed to a scan pad on the side and brought his forearm to it. The pad registered his arm chip and the bike whirred to life—a low hum—and then it elevated several feet off the ground, hovering powerfully. She couldn’t help but smile—she definitely wanted to try.