by Terina Adams
Jax rested a hand on Nada’s shoulder. “Thanks for babysitting Sable.”
Nada’s grin split his face. He straightened, expanding his chest like he’d been given the biggest compliment. My gaze wondered from the pride on Nada’s face, along Jax’s hand still resting on his shoulder, to Jax’s face and the loss forever cast as a shadow on his expression. His loss was eternal. Unlike my struggle, his fight would not return his family.
“Thanks for the food and the company. I hope we see each other again.”
I caught Jax’s brow pinch at what I said. The familiarity in the way he spoke to Nada and Islia, I thought he visited regularly, which meant we’d be this way again enough times for me to make friends. Maybe I was wrong.
Islia ghosted into the doorway of the passage that led to the exit and the alleyway. Jax joined him, and they turned and disappeared into the dim light heading for the front door.
“I meant what I said. I hope we see each other again.” It was my turn to rest my hand on Nada’s shoulder.
“It may not be safe,” he said with the courage of an adult.
“Friends are worth visiting, no matter what.”
“You bring danger to the fringe.”
Jesus, I’d not been expecting that. “I’m sorry….” What do I say?
“This is not who you are. I know that. It’s a matter of time before they know that. And here in the fringe, we’re not treated like everyone else.”
I’d been slapped, gut-punched. It felt like the biggest rejection I received in forever—actually, since I first met Jax, but I hated him too much to care back then.
One mental slap later… “You’re right. I’m really sorry. I never thought about the danger of coming. Jax should never have brought me here.”
Nada shrugged. For the second time since coming to Islia’s home, the heaviness of my pain turned me into a lump of rock. All Nada needed to do was roll his eyes at me, and I’d be fighting the swell of tears. I resisted wiping the few small strands of hair from his forehead, resisted a gesture so familiar to me yet loaded with memories. When destruction seared hot through my heart like a warning lance to my fragile feelings, I spun away and headed after Jax and Islia.
Jax stood in the alley, Islia holding the door like he was waiting for me to leave so he could lock it behind me. I slipped past him but faced him halfway out. “Thank you for what you’ve done.”
“I can’t decide if you are foolish or brave.”
“I’m anything but brave.”
“Sometimes, the foolish become the brave.” His dirty-green eyes became my conscience, my reality, my fear.
What were we doing? What did we hope to achieve? An impossible task. We could not hope to win. Carter had an army; the senate had more. What did we have but just a handful of people with hope?
“We have to go, Sable.”
Islia tilted his head in a gentle gesture of respect then closed the door.
Jax was already walking, forcing me into a light jog to catch up.
“Next time, you listen to me.” His voice short, terse.
I wouldn’t tell him it was Islia’s suggestion. “We went to the market for only a few minutes.”
Jax kept a mean pace, nothing unusual there, but this time the march was coupled with heated vibes emanating from the rigid swing of his arms and the piston-punch of his legs through the dirty alley.
“Why do the sweepers target the children?”
“Let’s just clear the fringe first.”
“You can’t talk while you walk?”
“There’s too much to say.” His words were staccato as we stormed along.
We passed through market spaces puncturing the gray of the fringe with their dazzle of color, tuning my senses, into many alleyways, suffocating, dirty, and dull, which sucked the life from my breath. I had no hope of finding my way to Islia’s on my own… or the platform. I quickened my steps to keep close to Jax.
My head spun at the speed in which Jax snapped me back from the mouth of the alley. With one arm across my stomach pushing me in the gut, the other jabbing at my shoulder, I was hustled backward until I tripped over my feet. A hand under my shoulder, Jax hoisted me up like a rag doll, propelled me around, and sent me stumbling back the way we’d come.
“What’s going on?” My question was left behind as Jax pulled me into another alley.
“Move it,” he barked, pushing me in the back.
The steel in his voice sent me scurrying as best as I could around the debris and rubbish that littered the alley. Panic-laced anger, that was the emotion behind the force in his voice, which had me break into a jog. My feet obeyed my own welling panic, rushing up behind me like some black messenger of death. The hard pump of my pulse would likely burst a vein, but destruction would burst through me first.
Holding back destruction became my biggest fight, and our mad flight through the alley wasn’t helping.
“Jax, stop.” I fell sideways, slapping my hands onto the rough, cold brick wall. A rush of heat scalded my palm as a fine fissure split the brick under my fingertips, zigzagging up the face of the wall. “Jesus.” I jerked my hand back, curling my nails into my palms until it hurt.
Too busy looking behind us, Jax had not seen. “We don’t have time for this.” He wrenched me off the wall.
“What’s happened?”
“Sweepers are combing the fringe. We nearly ran into one just now.”
I pulled out of his hold. “Does Islia know? What about Nada?”
“I’ve warned him.”
“How?” Of course, stupid. “Your cephulet. But wouldn’t that mean the senate can keep track of him?”
“His is a black-market variety, which keeps him off the senate’s grid, but the particular sort he has is unreliable and prone to frying your brain.”
“Are they here for us?”
He glanced in the direction we’d come. “They come all the time to harass the people. It doesn’t have to be about us.” He swung his attention on me. “You don’t know how to act around sweepers. Out here, your tattoo alone is not enough to protect you. The senate is aware of the trade in illegal tattoos. Your naivety will raise their suspicions, and that alone will have you taken.”
“But they wouldn’t guess I’m an alien, surely?”
“There are other more serious reasons for being taken.”
“I have the tattoo of Aris. We’re allowed to be together.”
A muscle twitched in his left jaw.
He did not understand the depth of my need, so he had no right to judge.
“What’s done is done. Get over it.” My blood thrashed through my ears followed by a sudden wave, which swept out of my body. Chips of brick flung off the wall to the left and right of us, showering us in a fine spray of dust I inhaled deep then coughed out. Caught in his own anger, Jax did not seem to notice how close destruction was to doing major damage.
He took a stride toward me. “You don’t understand what you’ve done. You’re locked out of the one place you may have been safe, and you’ve limited your ability to finding your mum and brother.”
No, he was wrong. I had not made that mistake. I couldn’t have. “No one cares who or what I am in the fringe.” This great rush of emotion poured through me, sharpening my voice. Did Jax hear the accusation I’d not bothered to disguise?
“What are you going to do, Sable? Hide here until it’s all over?” He took another step forward, spearing his face too close. Destruction took it as a threat. I bit my inner cheek until I tasted blood. My vision swam with tears of pain, but it was what I needed to make destruction back down.
“Nowhere is safe, especially not the fringe.” He seized my chin between his fingers and forced my head to the right. “This tattoo, this lie, will get you killed.” He released my chin. “You could cost everyone their lives for being here.” The expulsion of his anger thrust him backward away from me, thrusting destruction deep down inside.
The fight drained through my pores, de
struction defeated. Standing there with hands on hips, eyes to the ground, there wasn’t any fight in Jax either.
“My world will twist your soul,” he said.
“It hasn’t twisted yours.”
He hmphed a sarcastic laugh. “That’s debatable.”
What did we say, now that the tension eased from the air? Jax wouldn’t look at me, staying behind his wall of complicated emotions.
I wanted to ask him what he thought would make this world better, but I got the feeling he was lost. Dad’s actions were the trigger that drove his conviction. But without his revenge, what kept him going was what kept me going; there was no way out. Fight or die, they were our two choices, just like in Dominus.
“Sweepers will be stationed at the platform. Our best hope is to head back to Islia’s.”
“Don’t they check the houses?”
“Most homes have false floors or walls. If you can find shelter, you’re rarely detected.”
He drew me back the way we’d come, but we managed a few steps before fringe dwellers ran past the mouth of the alley. The expression of fear on each face hammered my heart. With a violent wrench, Jax spun me toward him and shoved me up against the wall. My breath oomphed out. I was about to spit a protest, but he pushed his body up against mine and pressed his lips against my neck before his hand wandered down to my hip then snaked around to my ass.
“At least pretend you’re enjoying this.” His whisper tickled my skin.
Pretend what? How? Oh, Jesus. There was no escaping, no hiding, except for this. I wrapped my arm around his neck and tilted my head to the side, exposing more of my neck, which gave me a good view of the alley entrance.
A lone figure passed up ahead then jerked to a stop and looked our way. The man was dressed similar to Jax, in all black, including his helmet, which disguised his face, thick-soled combat boots, and a belt from which dangled a variety of implements—my guess, weapons. A shimmer of air surrounded him, like hot air rising off asphalt on a summer’s day.
“We’ve been spotted. Someone’s coming toward us, all black.”
Each step he took rose destruction inside me. “There’s something surrounding him.”
“It’s a sweeper.” Jax lifted his head. Rather than look at the sweeper, he stared at me. “That’s a protective barrier.” We were close. He only needed to whisper. “The barrier’s to protect against factional nature attack, giving the sweepers the upper hand.” He gave up the pretense of our intimate interlude and stepped back, leaving a cold emptiness to take his place. He’d yet to face the sweeper’s way. “Let me talk. If things get ugly, you need to run. Do you think you can get back to Islia’s?”
I nodded, a lie, but I didn’t want Jax worrying. “And, Sable, don’t allow your factional nature through. I’m serious. I can’t begin to explain how bad that would be.”
I closed my eyes as if to suck his words from my memory. Too late, he already uttered the call, and destruction obeyed. The taste of blood lingered in my mouth, a reminder. It did not have to become me. We were one, but I was the greater. I had to believe that.
Jax turned to meet the sweeper, stepping in front of me, which only strummed the strands on my flimsy control of destruction. I peered around Jax to see the sweeper had stopped. As if sensing a threat, he raised his weapon. “What is your purpose for being here?”
“Looking for somewhere secluded.”
“You’re not from the fringe. Why are you here?”
In the silence, my factional nature tickled along the underside of my skin.
The sweeper waved his weapon at Jax to help loosen his tongue.
“We’re here on a dare. And then we found this alley and… it looked private enough….” He let his sentence trail away, indicating the sweeper should fill in the rest with his imagination.
As he didn’t question further, the sweeper was likely consulting his cephulet. Then he barked out, “Name.”
The sudden shout made me duck behind Jax again to see his fists ball. I wanted to rip my heart from my chest to give me some peace. The rampage of its beat harnessed destruction, rallied it into a wrecking ball.
“I want your name.”
“I’d rather not. There are certain people who are better off not knowing I’m here.”
Jax glanced back at me, whispering the words, “Now’s a good time to run.”
“You’re kidding.” Like that wouldn’t trigger the sweeper into action.
I was at war within myself. The threat from the sweeper, the tension from Jax, my mind tumbled with the pressure of withholding destruction. But the danger was immense. He was not the only sweeper. He couldn’t be. If I used destruction, how many more sweepers would arrive?
“Trust me,” Jax said.
“Have the girl move around to the front where I can see her.”
Jax turned back to the sweeper. “That’s not such a great idea.”
The sweeper raised his voice and his weapon to his eyes, both a death command. “Move to the front.”
I came around beside Jax, but he snapped his arm out to block my path. Under his breath, he said, “Can you at least do one thing I ask?”
Hearing the exasperation in his voice, I obeyed, moving back behind him, then inching farther away. On edge like this, my mind tittered on instability. The adrenaline dancing its merry tune throughout my body warped destruction to near uncontrollable.
And what did Jax hope to do? Why speak the question? I already knew the answer.
The sweeper reacted to my insubordination by waving the barrel of his weapon as he held it up to his line of sight. “Come out where I can see you, now.”
Jax became fluid in one partial inhale. Too quick for the sweeper to register, he spun, gathering momentum, and aimed a kick at the sweeper’s head. Apparently, the shield surrounding the sweeper was good against a factional nature attack, but useless against bodily attack, because he staggered backward under the assault, his arm with the weapon flung wide.
Not giving the sweeper a chance to recover, Jax launched another kick, foot to chin. And then again. Jax’s onslaught turned ruthless. He pummeled the sweeper with enough blows to send anyone to their knees. His swift attack left the guy with little room to defend.
With the brutal fight in front, the running footsteps behind me caught me by surprise. I spun to see the little girl who’d hidden under the table at the market, racing toward me. For one dazed moment, I stared at her, unable to convince myself she was here in the alley when a sweeper was so close behind.
Forgetting the fight, I rushed to her, conscious of her vulnerability. “What are you doing here?”
She grabbed my hand. “Come.”
I tried to pry my hand from hers. “This is dangerous. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you.” She bit back. “Don’t you know the rules?”
“What rules?”
“Fringe rules.”
“Which are?”
“Run.” To make a point, she pulled my hand extra hard, and I was jerked forward. “Run,” she said again, echoing Jax, but if I did, wasn’t that being a coward?
Behind me, the only person I knew in this world, the only one I trusted, fought for his life. Either I followed my desire and stayed, or I trusted Jax and went with the girl.
“Come on,” she said.
I looked over my shoulder to see the fight evened out. The protective shield surrounding the sweeper was gone, as was his helmet. The sweeper, as he’d been, was also gone, replaced by an Aris immersed in bloodlust. I didn’t need to see Jax’s face to know what he’d become.
Upon seeing the enemy, destruction swept forth.
Chapter 13
With heaving breaths, I tried to push my factional nature down into my body to hold it in.
The little girl pulled on my hand. “You can’t help.”
“No, wait.” I tried to take my hand back from her vice grip—I couldn’t flee and concentrate on holding my ability in check—but her torn n
ails dug into my wrist deep enough to pebble blood around her fingers.
“Come. On.”
With the brutality of the fight raging behind me, destruction forced itself through the cracks it found in my mental armor. My body felt zapped with electricity as destruction charged out of me. Through gasping breaths, I tried to suck it back, stemming the immensity of the flow. Too late, a fracture raced in a ragged line in front of us as we fled, splitting to a foot wide. The little girl dodged the gap and kept her pace. On seeing what I’d done, I redoubled my efforts to contain destruction. I thought I’d mastered it, but there was a new level of control I had yet to reach.
The crack was a flag to the sweepers; someone lived here ungrafted. But they would already know, or else why harass the fringe dwellers as much as they did? I now understood the danger I placed everyone in by being here.
We burst out of the alley into a deserted market space looking like the action had already passed this way. The owners had up and fled, leaving their stalls overturned, baskets scattered, fabric ripped from the lines to lay trampled under the stamped of desperate feet. Soft fruits oozed their insides. Luscious white pastries similar to the ones Nada had bought us, plus other baked food, had tumbled and minced together as they were ground into the dirt. A big boot print sliced through the corner of one pastry, the rest sticking to the bottom of my shoe as we ran by.
I surrendered to the girl’s vice grip and scurried along beside her, weaving around the chaos then into another alley.
Finally, she stopped, releasing my wrist, and knocked twice on a metal door in quick succession. After a heavy clank, the door swung wide, sucking in a small gust of wind. The woman in the doorway measured to my nose, but her face radiated a fury suited to someone twice her size. Fury transformed to surprise at seeing me, and then her blue eyes narrowed as they honed in on the little girl.