And I tell him the choice I made, and how easy it was to put my life before hers.
He just sits there, and I can’t tell if his lack of reaction is painful or calming. I need to tell someone what happened that day, if only to relieve the pain in my chest I’ve been carrying around ever since then, like the words are a physical presence, weighing me down.
I finish by telling him about Sophia, about how I found her as if that would make up for Bea’s death, but I know now that it can’t. That nothing can.
‘And you really think,’ he says slowly, as if he’s picking his words, ‘that after all of that, there’s no more to Kole’s story?’
‘What?’
‘You tell me you killed a girl, and then you tell me all of that, but you can’t consider that maybe Kole has a story like that, too?’
I go quiet, staring into nothing as I think.
‘We all have a story, Quincy,’ he says, standing up. ‘Maybe you should let him tell his.’
16
I find Kole downstairs in the store room, going over the supplies with Nails. When he sees me he freezes, his eyes widening.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks, unsure, his voice unsteady.
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes and tightening my hands into fists, Jay’s voice replaying in my head.
‘I’m ready to let you explain.’
Kole and I find an empty room, and we sit down on the floor across from each other, though Kole won’t make eye contact.
He starts without any urging.
‘My Father was a military man,’ he says, raising his knees to his chest in a gesture I still find out of place. ‘That’s what I grew up with. That’s what he was before he became President, and that’s what he was at his core, afterwards.’
Kole doesn’t look at me as he speaks.
‘After he became President, he married my mother, because his advisors thought it wise to have a perfect little family for everyone else to replicate. A year after they were married, my mother became pregnant with me. My father was happy; he’d always wanted a son. But he’d been cheating on my mother, and the woman he’d been with was about to have a child of her own.’
‘Aaron,’ I breathe.
He glances at me, reading my expression, but quickly goes back to staring at his boots.
‘Yes. When Aaron was born, his mother came to my father, asking him to take Aaron in. She thought he would have a better life with us than with her. She was Pure, but she had a job, and she didn’t have anyone to look after a child while she was at work. My father wouldn’t take him, though. He was afraid that if the public found out, he’d be taken out of Office. So he paid her to take care of the kid.
‘I was born a few months later, early, and a little too fragile for my father’s tastes. He set about toughening me up. When I was four, he bought me a knife for my birthday. My mother cried and cried but wouldn’t say anything about it, because she was too afraid of him. By the time my next birthday rolled around, I was better with a knife than any man in my father’s force, and my father was satisfied that he was doing the right thing by me.’
He leans forward, showing me his hands, the scars running across his knuckles and palms.
‘A lot of these are from that knife. This one,’ he says, showing me a particularly long, raised scar running along his palm, ‘is from the day I got it. I didn’t realise how sharp it was.’ He shrugs, as if this is normal.
As if any of this is normal.
‘Anyway,’ he shakes his head, clearing away memories. ‘Another year rolls by, I’m turning six, and my father comes home with Aaron. His mother had died a week earlier, and when my father’s cheque to her bounced back with an acknowledgement of her death, he decided to take Aaron in, under the guise of a charity ward.
‘Aaron was my antithesis. He was always angry, always ready to snap, and fiercely competitive. He was naturally better built than me, but where he beat me with strength I beat him with skill. My father started pitting us against each other, because he thought it would make us improve faster. Aaron became obsessive, but no matter how hard he worked, he was the secret shame of the family. Inside he was treated the same as all of us, but outside of our home he wasn’t to be seen or heard.
‘Now I’m thirteen. My skills far outweigh any of my father’s Officers, and I’m better, even, than Aaron, who up until this point had been my only real challenge. As my father’s focus lands solely on me, the competition he started between us becomes almost unbearable. Aaron hates me. He believes that I don’t deserve any of the attention my father is giving me, and that the lack of any human affection he’s receiving is entirely my fault.
‘Now I’m sixteen. I’ve been convinced we’re under national threat, that the rebels outside of Oasis are planning on burning it to the ground, with everyone inside it. I’ve been convinced that the only way to save the lives of everyone inside Oasis’ walls is to take out the people who threaten it. So I do, and I’m good at it. I hate every second of it, and every kill makes me feel closer to losing my mind, but I still think I’m doing it to help people, so I keep doing whatever my father tells me.
‘But the problem was, it never stopped. The threat never left, and the more people I took out, the more targets I was handed. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, because all I could see were the faces of the people I’d killed. I knew I was doing something wrong, I knew it in my bones, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t let my father down.’
He goes quiet for a moment, and I can’t tell if that’s it. I can’t tell if he’s done but I can’t move my limbs, frozen in shock as I watch a range of emotions pass across his face.
He stretches out his wrist to me, and for a moment I don’t realise what he’s doing, until I see the tattoo on the inside of his wrist.
‘Thirty-two Xs,’ he says, his voice so thin I can barely hear it, but the pain I can hear. I hear that like an echo of the feeling in my chest. ‘Thirty-two Xs on the inside of my left wrist, for the thirty-two people I killed while I was inside Oasis.’
I can’t breathe.
‘Why—’ My breath won’t come back to me, but I push on. ‘Why did you leave?’
He closes his eyes briefly.
‘I found records of a conversation my father had with the captain of a unit of Officers out west, about restarting the programme.’
I look at him, my eyebrows drawing together in confusion.
‘I was the programme, Quincy. Me and Aaron. And we were successful. When I found out that they planned on doing that to other people, to other children—’ He takes a shaky breath, and he looks like he’s going to throw up. ‘Everyone has a breaking point.’
‘And that was yours?’ I say, my voice a raspy whisper.
‘That was mine.’ The look on his face is too many different kinds of heartbroken for me to process. ‘Later, once I escaped, I figured out why they needed people like me. The rebels are rising up, everywhere, not just out here. Inside Oasis. Sometimes inside Oasis’ elite. And when someone with that much power was about to start spilling secrets, or if they were thought to be aiding any form of rebellion – well then, there was me and Aaron. We took care of that problem.’
And that is it. That is Kole’s story, that is his history. I can’t decide if Jay was right, if this was the right thing to do, because his words crash around inside me, ripping things apart and putting them back together, and I can feel things shifting inside me that I don’t think I’m ready for.
I look back at Kole, and I feel like I’m looking in a mirror, and more than anything, that’s what scares me.
17
I dream of Kole, of shadows and shattered glass and bullet casings, of shaking hands and the metallic taste of fear in the back of my throat, the sound of Sophia screaming in the back of my mind.
No.
I shoot straight upwards, my heart in my throat as I realise the screaming wasn’t a dream, but Sophia, twisting in her sleep, her face tight with fear.
‘So
phia. Sophia. Sophia!’ I shake her awake, and her eyes snap open, sitting up straight as she quickly takes in the room, searching for something that’s not there.
‘It’s okay.’ I try to sound calm, but my own heart is still pounding from the sound of her screams. ‘It’s okay. You’re safe.’
She shakes her head, closing her eyes tightly as she pulls her knees to her chest, hiding herself.
‘Sophia,’ I say gently, placing a hand on her knee. I take one of her tight fists in my hands. ‘Sophia, you’re safe now. I promise.’
‘You can’t promise anything,’ she mutters, still shaking her head, causing strands of her pale blonde hair to come out from her ponytail, flying around her head.
‘Hey.’ I pull her close to me, and my voice sounds intense, even to me. ‘I promise I will keep you safe.’
She pushes her face into my neck, and the sound of her crying rips my heart in half.
‘Why do you care about me?’ she sobs, her small fists knotted in my T-shirt.
‘It’s complicated.’ My voice is a hiccup and a gasp, like the sound of seams ripping.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ she says, sniffing.
‘I know.’ My voice cracks as I rub her hair. ‘I know.’
An hour later she’s calm again, and her tears have dried completely. I kneel down next to her, handing her the cup of water I went to get a moment ago.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask, making my voice gentle.
‘I’m fine,’ she says, and I almost smile.
I sit down beside her, looping my arms around my knees. I insisted we were put in a room away from the others, half because of Sophia’s nightmares, half because I’m paranoid.
‘When did you see her last?’ I ask, fiddling with the hem of my T-shirt.
‘About nine months ago.’
She doesn’t sound bothered by the question. I think she’s already stronger than me.
‘What about your parents?’
‘They died when I was three, so I don’t really remember them.’
‘Bea was your only family?’
‘Yeah. I was fostered in the Inner Sector until I was tested. Then I was put in the same Dorms as Bea. But a few months ago some girls were picking on me, and Bea tried to stop them. She got sent to the South Dorms to keep her out of trouble. I got into trouble on purpose, so they’d let me go there with her, but by the time I got there …’
‘They didn’t notify you?’ I ask, horrified.
‘No. Not until I asked where she was when I got to the South Dorms.’
I don’t have any response for her. I stay quiet, trying to imagine what that was like for her, to find out that the last of her family had been dead for weeks and no one had even thought to tell her.
That is so much more than a child should ever have to deal with.
‘How old are you?’ I ask, trying to change the subject.
‘Ten,’ she says, tilting her chin up the way Bea did when I asked her that same question before any of this started. ‘Well, almost ten. It’s my birthday soon.’
I laugh at her gently, and she smiles back at me.
‘You can call me Sophi,’ she says, yawning. ‘I prefer it when people call me Sophi. That’s what Bea used to call me.’
I don’t respond, but I do pull her closer to me, my heart twisting in my chest.
She falls back to sleep like that, her head on my shoulder, pressed up against the corner wall, and I feel something in my chest move. It feels like watching the foundation of a huge building shift, staring in horror as the whole thing comes crumbling down. That’s what it feels like. It feels like that shift, and now I’m left waiting for everything to fall apart.
‘It’s hard,’ a voice says, a silhouette appearing at the door. ‘Losing family. It’s hard when you’re that young.’ Clarke steps into the room.
‘Why are you up?’ I ask quietly, trying not to wake Sophi.
‘No one in this place sleeps anymore,’ Clarke says. She comes down and sits across from me, her legs folded beneath her.
‘Why are you here?’ I ask, and she doesn’t flinch. It’s one of the things that I admire about Clarke, that she doesn’t mind when people ask her blunt questions.
I suppose, considering how blunt she is, that you have to learn to take what you give.
‘I heard her screaming,’ she says, her hands reaching out as if to touch Sophi’s hair, then pulling back. ‘I was like her, once. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.’
‘Who did you lose?’ My voice is small, but this time, not for Sophi’s sake. For Clarke’s sake, because she doesn’t speak like this to me.
Doesn’t speak like this to anyone.
‘Everyone,’ she says, and she sounds hazy from sleeplessness, as if she wouldn’t be saying all of this if exhaustion wasn’t clouding her brain. ‘My entire family. All in one night.’
‘How?’ My voice cracks.
‘My parents escaped Oasis years and years ago. I grew up on the Outside. For a long time, it was safe. Escapees were few and far between, and Oasis assumed they’d die the minute they got outside. But word got back to Oasis that colonies were being set up, and that’s when the raids began. Our village hadn’t seen any attacks yet, only heard about them from travellers, but I went out hunting one day, and when I came back, the entire camp was ransacked. Everyone, all of them, dead, just like that. But that’s what Oasis does. It takes everything from you until you don’t have anything left but it.’ Her tone has recovered some of its familiar edge, as if I could cut myself on her words, but suddenly she softens again. ‘I had a little brother. Parents. I thought we were invincible. They taught me that we were invincible, but we weren’t.’
‘Can I ask you something?’ I say quietly, running my hand over Sophia’s hair.
‘Yeah, sure,’ she says, shifting uncomfortably.
‘Why did you take your family’s name?’
Her eyes shoot up, searching my face intently, then dropping back down to Sophia’s sleeping form.
‘How did you know?’ Her voice is rough with emotion.
‘Lacey told me,’ I say quietly, trying not to let my voice shake.
‘My father used to tell me stories. The old stories, from before Oasis. Of soldiers, but not soldiers – knights, he called them. If one was killed, another one would avenge him, but always with the knight’s own sword.’
I am quiet and still, and Clarke looks as if she isn’t talking to me anymore, but to herself. As if she’s recited these words so many times, they have become a prayer in her mind.
An oath.
‘Clarke was my family’s name. When I take Oasis down, I’ll do it with their name, like a sword.’ She breathes. ‘And when Oasis burns to the ground, they will know whose deaths they are paying the price for.’
18
There is a fragile calm in the base the next day, and no one says it out loud, but I can tell everyone’s holding their breath, waiting for something to happen. Kole’s been arguing with Nails all morning, trying to convince him to ignore what he saw yesterday. And what he saw was the OP’s son being forced at gunpoint into his hideout.
I walk through the halls and Nails’ refugees glare their angry resentment at me as I pass, and it’s clear where we stand. We went from uneasy welcome to outright animosity with a single mistake.
A single, deadly mistake.
I’ve only seen Ly once since the incident upstairs, and the look on his face was so enraged, I immediately swerved out of his way to avoid him. Even Kerrin, who’s been reasonably friendly, got up and left when I arrived in the common room this morning.
I’m sitting in that exact spot, Sophi by my side on the couch, when Kole comes into the room. His hair is standing on end like he’s been running his fingers through it constantly, and his eyes are a little too wide.
Jay stands up from where he was sitting a moment ago, and I automatically follow him to where Kole stands.
‘What did he
say?’
‘We have three days,’ Kole says, the muscles in his jaw ticking. I can see him drawing into his own mind, planning.
‘Three days to get rid of him?’ I ask.
‘Three days to get out of here entirely. All of us,’ he says, looking at me for the first time. ‘We need to work fast. Jay, go find Clarke, we need to figure out what we’re going to do.’
I glance back at Sophi, who is flipping through the pages of an Oasis history book, and I try not to laugh at the irony of it.
‘Lauren?’ I say, louder, so that she can hear me from across the room.
She looks up. ‘Yeah?’
‘Can you keep an eye on Sophi for a bit?’
‘Sure.’
I cross the room so I can speak to her without the others listening in.
‘I’m sorry I keep leaving you with Sophi,’ I say as quietly as I can, hoping Sophi won’t overhear us. ‘I just … I don’t want her near this stuff.’
‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I understand. It’s no problem. I’m happy to do it. She reminds me of my sister.’ She cuts herself short as her voice tightens at the mention of her sister.
I place my hand on her shoulder. We have three days to get out of here. Lauren might not know it yet, but unless she’s willing to stay here in Oasis on her own, she’s not going to see her sister. Not this time anyway.
But then I see her struggling to keep the smile on her face, her lips trembling as she fights the tears rising in her eyes, and I wonder if she does know after all.
‘Go,’ she says, shaking her head, blinking the tears from her eyes. ‘It’s fine. Go do what you have to do.’
‘Thank you,’ I whisper sincerely.
‘Quincy?’ Kole calls from the other end of the room, and when I glance back, Clarke is standing beside them, ready to go.
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