City of Light

by J J Hane

  What about my foster family? Or Abishai? I was never going to see them again. Never going to walk through my favorite garden, or sit through a boring class, or watch another movie.

  Maybe if I went back, if I begged Security, maybe they’d let me in. Maybe I could convince someone that I didn’t belong out here in the wilds, surrounded by the violence of the tribes.

  But no. If I tried to go back with all that had happened, Security would blast me before I crossed the buffer zone. Even if I did get to the city, I had broken laws by stealing medicine and helping Serenity get in and out of the city. They would just send me right back out the gate. The Martyrion didn’t believe in capital punishment. Executions were a thing of the Old World. Exile was the equivalent.

  “Wow,” Serenity said after a minute. She put her hand on my shoulder, somewhat awkwardly. “I’m sorry.”

  I fell to my knees, not even caring about the jarring pain, the awakening of all the little cuts and bruises I had accrued since first meeting the girl beside me. Panic filled me, tightening my chest, crushing my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to run, to get away, but also to curl up into a ball and hide under soft blankets that didn’t exist.

  Serenity knelt beside me, hissing in pain as she did so. “You’re going to be okay, city boy,” she said, her voice quiet, soft.

  “I… I don’t know what to do,” I told her, my voice hitching between breaths. “I can’t go back. I can’t go home.”

  Serenity glanced around, almost as though she was afraid to be seen with me. I couldn’t blame her. I must have looked like a complete mess. Definitely not the sort of tough, heroic man that other outlanders would respect. I was just an awkward city teen, kneeling on the broken earth while trying not to cry uncontrollably.

  Seeming satisfied that we were alone, Serenity did the last thing I would have expected her to do: she hugged me. Since we were both on the ground, she had to sort of lean over to put her arms around me. A little gasp of pain escaped her mouth as she accidentally pressed her wounded side against me. At the same time, her left hand was solidly planted on a very sensitive bruise on my back that I hadn’t realized was there before. I flinched slightly from the pressure, trying not to push her away.

  A few days before, everything in life was fairly normal. I lived with dutifully interested foster parents, went to school, worked in the fields, all in the safety of the most advanced city that had ever existed. Fast forward a handful of days and I was kneeling on the ground in the woods, aching all over, trying not to sob, and completely at a loss for what to do.

  But hey, at least I was with a pretty girl.

  I tried not to, I really did. The situation was just too absurd, Serenity just a little too awkward. I started laughing.

  At first, she must have thought I was crying, because she gently rubbed my back, which was heavily bruised from landing on the hard-packed soil. The added discomfort was, for some reason, even funnier to me. My shoulders were shaking with uncontrolled laughter.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Serenity said quietly. The sincerity in her voice was touching. It really was. I was just too far gone.

  The next noise that came out of me could charitably be described as a barking laugh. Serenity physically flinched away from the sudden sound. I could hear her glare in her voice.

  “Are you laughing?”

  “No,” I tried to insist, but my lungs betrayed me as another round of laughter exploded from my chest.

  Serenity just stared at me. When I looked up into her face, the confusion and annoyance there just made me laugh harder.

  “Great,” she muttered. “The city boy’s lost his mind.”

  I laughed harder at that. She tried to keep her glare up, but my hysteria must have been contagious because a smile started playing at her lips. She leaned away from me, sitting crossed legged.

  “You’re an idiot,” she told me for what must have been the hundredth time, smacking my shoulder playfully.

  “Yeah,” I replied between breaths. She finally laughed too.

  I flopped onto my back, staring up at the stars as I waited for the laughter to recede. She dropped beside me, smiling. When the laughter stopped, we lay there for a long time, listening to the night sounds.

  “So…” I said into the stillness. “Can I stay with you?”

  Serenity laughed a little. “Sure. You’re a little out of luck, though, city boy: I don’t think I’m going to have a tribe after what happened tonight.”

  “That makes me feel a little better. At least the girl who got me into this mess is going to be homeless, too.”

  “You got yourself into this,” she replied haughtily. “Besides, if I hadn’t dragged you into the Martyrion Tower, you wouldn’t have been able to stop more people from dying.”

  “If I had stopped you first,” I said slowly, “there wouldn’t have been any deaths in the first place.”

  “That’s not true and you know it. You and I were both used by Azrael and your traitor. People were going to die. Maybe a lot more, at least of mine.”

  “I guess.”

  “I know.”

  Serenity’s confidence was encouraging. Maybe everything I had been through had actually worked out in the end. Maybe only some of those deaths were my fault.

  It seemed odd to be hanging out with her, alone in the dark. I should hate her for everything she had done, everything I let her drag me through. It helped that she had meant well, that she had only been trying to protect her people, just as I had been trying to help them. If I was being honest, I would also have to admit that she was the only person in the world who was going to talk to me, which counted for a lot.

  “I think I killed a man,” I told her suddenly.

  “Good job,” she replied sarcastically. She paused, then added, “Wait, you ‘think’ you killed someone?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” I amended. “I didn’t actually get to find out. I strangled him with a seatbelt.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was a traitor who was going to kill me, and he’d already killed others. Because if I didn’t, no one would have been able to warn the Council about the treachery. Mostly, though, I think it was self-defense.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Just a security officer.”

  “But he wasn’t the traitor who gave us the device?”

  “No. That was my former teacher.”

  Serenity snorted a laugh. “That sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  I thought about them. I wondered how Mr. Holt had contacted Mac. How had they started working together? It seemed like an important question, but I was too tired to figure it out.

  “Do you think the hoversled is still working?” Serenity asked, changing the subject.

  “Probably. It should still have enough of a charge to keep going for a while. I’m not sure how long. Maybe another day.”

  Serenity propped herself up on her elbows with some difficulty. “Then let’s get out of here. Your people hate us, my people hate us; we might as well go somewhere else. There’s nothing for either of us here.”

  I considered that. The idea of leaving, of not seeing the Martyrion anymore… It was so final. I knew I couldn’t go back, but if we left, there wouldn’t even be the hope of returning home anymore.

  “What do you think, city boy?” she asked, her tone teasing. “Do you still want to see the world?”

  What reason did I have to stay? What reason to say no? Sure, it was sort of Serenity’s fault that I was in this mess, but who else was going to stick with me after all that had happened?

  “I think,” I said slowly, “that I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

  Serenity huffed in irritation.

  “Tomorrow, though,” I assured her as I stood. I helped her to her feet.

  “Tomorrow we can see the world.”

  The End

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  Acknowledge
ments

  None of this could have happened without the patience and brilliance of my incredible wife.

  The beautiful cover was created by the good folks at miblart