by T. R. Graves
Chapter 4
Beautiful Watchers
Carlie
Running with Jayden reminded me why Surrogates Soldiers like Jayden were born and bred to be our protectors. Jayden was as fast and graceful—and deadly—as a cheetah.
The difference between Jayden and every other soldier I'd ever met was he was the worst kind of pain in my ass.
And he didn't miss me at all.
He pushed, taunted, demeaned, demoralized, and belittled me. Basically, he did whatever it took to manipulate me into following his orders and pushing myself to be more than I thought I could ever be and to do more than I thought I could ever do.
Everything, that is, but ask sweetly.
For the longest time, I'd resented him and the way he'd tested me nonstop, but I'd never blamed him. He was a Soldier first and foremost. Like all Surrogates he'd been created from the sperm of a man who'd been labeled as superior and the egg of an equally dominant woman.
No one knew exactly who appointed Surrogate Creators, the government officials charged with selecting people perfect enough to parent the flawless Surrogate Soldiers who were bred—through in vitro fertilization and surrogate mothers—to protect Aspect Nation. We only knew that such people existed because there were thousands of young soldiers roaming the nation, meaning someone had been orchestrating their conception.
Creators had proven time and time again that they'd known what they were doing. I'd never met a Surrogate who'd been anything less than inconceivably beautiful and inhumanly strong, fast, and calculating.
There were theorist who believed President Barone himself made every last selection and others who'd suggested he and he alone had fathered every Surrogate Soldier ever created. Something about the idea of him fathering tens of thousands of soldiers sickened me just a little. I'd hoped on more than one occasion that particular theory was fabricated out of pure lies.
For Jayden's sake, I hope it isn't true.
Somehow our Surrogate Soldiers', our Watchers', rumored parentage only made them more alluring to the millions of teenage Aspect girls who appreciated their godlike qualities and had secretly nicknamed them our Beautiful Watchers.
In much the way Surrogates had gotten their unofficial names, anyone who was not a Watcher was a Procreate, someone born through a natural union between a man and a woman. I was a Procreate. For us, there was no in vitro fertilization or surrogate mothers. We knew who our parents were, and unless they died, our parents lived with and raised us.
Stopping my train of thoughts was the sense of déjà vu I felt while running through the field with Jayden. I was reminded of Jayden when he was sixteen years old and my father's charge. He'd spent weekdays at Gran's estate, training me in the art of self-defense and self-preservation.
As if preparing for the Armageddon, he and Dad had insisted we all spend weekends camping, hiking, target practicing, and hand-to-hand battling. Jayden, my eternal torturer, had enjoyed our weekends more than anyone in their right mind would have. I, on the other hand, had hated them with a passion.
As if Jayden were reading my mind, he said, "I think I missed our camping weekends the most, princess. I mean… I haven't met the first person since you left who could complain for an entire forty-eight hours about the lack of electricity or their discomfort at being forced to sleep on the ground."
"I hated every last second of them. You know that. Right?" I hissed.
He snickered. "Every second? I seemed to recall a time when you were pretty eager for the weekends to come."
Dammit!
I cringed, knowing exactly what he was referring to. There had been a brief moment in time right after we'd begun the weekend trainings when I'd developed a humungous crush on the ass next to me. Looking over and seeing the shit-eating grin on his face as he ran beside me, I knew he was referring to my infatuation, and I was embarrassed at just how obvious I'd been.
"If you're referring to the time you hit me so hard that I was knocked unconscious and, in my head-injured daze, told you I loved you, I can assure you those few seconds are among the ones I hated the worst. In my hallucinatory fog, I thought you were Leaf Luke. I was proclaiming my love to the teenage heartthrob that every girl my age adored, not you. I didn't love you then, I don't love you now, and I'll never love you. That much I can assure you," I claimed defensively.
Again, Jayden laughed quietly, and everything about it reminded me why I traded my schoolgirl crush for mortal enemy hate. Much like he was doing now, he'd mocked me about my awkward confession of love since that day. It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd not made fun of me in front of anyone and everyone, but he had.
The straw that broke the camel's back for me had come one day after school. He'd been ordered by Dad to take me for ice cream while he'd finished a meeting with President Barone.
While we were at the Cold Creamery Parlor, Xyla, a beautiful cheerleader from school who was Jayden's age, began flirting with Jayden. Somewhere in the middle of their back-and-forth banter and while Xyla had been getting someone else their ice cream, Jayden'd mumbled to me, "Why can't she proclaim her undying love for me?"
He'd been mocking me for months. Theoretically, that's exactly what he'd been doing that day, but the way he said she had been my undoing. Why can't she proclaim her undying love for me? He'd looked toward her with the kind of reverence I'd wanted him to have only for me… That he'd never had for me. That he'd never have for me.
Swallowing back a golf ball-sized lump, I'd sat back and watched their flirting get bolder and the tension between them grow more palpable. Then it happened. The green-eyed monster that apparently lived deep inside me, one I'd never met before, had reared her ugly head with a vengeance.
Believe you me… she was ugly.
The way Jayden had taunted me for years had always been good-natured. That had not been the case for me. At least, it hadn't been on that day. It had been with a mean-spirited jealousy that I'd set out to embarrass him.
Loud enough for Xyla to hear, I said to Jayden, "Mom told me Surrogates are bred to be sterile? Is it true you can never have children?"
The Aspect Nation was population controlled. One child per couple. That meant every girl I'd ever known—everyone but me—had planned to have the one child allotted to her and none would spend their time with someone who would never be able to help her fulfill her white-picket fence, husband, and child fantasies.
With my question, Xyla's face had flushed as red as Jayden's—hers with embarrassment and his with rage—right before she cleared her throat, excused herself, and ducked into the back of the parlor. The ice cream that had been chocolatey delicious before I'd poked my nose in their business might as well have instantaneously been infested with maggots. I couldn't eat another bite.
I'd accomplished my goal of stopping Jayden's and Xyla's flirting, but I'd never felt lower in my life because I used something that had been shared with me as part of my research training, something very few people talked about, and I'd done that in order to keep Xyla away from Jayden. My Jayden.
If Jayden's glare could have killed, I'd be dead today. I'll never forget the way he snatched me up by the arm, dragged me out of the ice cream parlor, shoved me into the back of Dad's limousine, and left me in there alone to wait for Dad's meeting to be over. To this very day, I have no idea where he went or how he'd gotten back to our house.
Immediately, I'd wanted to apologize, but I hadn't been able to. I'd been humiliated by what I'd done and had been worried he would tell Mom. I'd convinced myself that if she'd known what I'd done, she never would have told me anything important again. If that had happened, my research training would've come to an abrupt halt and my chances of achieving the great things she and Gran had achieved would have been lost forever.
That I knew.
Alone and ashamed, I'd bitten back the tears of hurt and disgrace and sprawled out on the seat. Dad's meeting had gone on for hours. After it'd turned dark, I'd fallen asleep and hadn't awakened until Dad had pulled me from the
back of the car and carried me up to my room.
I'd been groggy, but I could still remember asking Dad, "Where's Jayden?"
"He had to meet someone, Carlie. He won't be back for a few weeks," he'd hummed, almost as if he were singing a lullaby.
Dad hadn't been angry or disappointed in me, and I'd known by his tone that Jayden hadn't ratted me out. That fact had only made me feel more guilty. He'd always been a better person than me. Always.
Suddenly, my eyes had opened wide. Hysterical, I'd squirmed so much that Dad had to put me down.
"What's wrong, Carlie?"
"I-I need to get a message to Jayden. Does he have his phone with him?" I'd asked hysterically.
Dad had shaken his head and turned into the general in charge of our nation's defense, one I'd always been afraid of.
"He's on a mission, Carles Anise Enoche. He doesn't have time for your schoolgirl crush. He's been entertaining you at my request, and that's not a problem under normal circumstances. Right now, he's doing something that could get him killed. He can't be distracted or disturbed."
Dad had used my full name, and he only ever did that when he'd had his fill of me. His frustration told me that his very long meeting with President Barone had not been a good one and that President Barone—not Dad—had sent Jayden on a mission, one Dad thought to be too dangerous for our young Surrogate.
In the past, I'd overhead Dad venting to Mom about the danger President Barone had always been too willing to put Jayden in. There had been no doubt in my mind that if I'd stood vigil near their bedroom door and eavesdropped on their conversations that night or the next morning, I'd have learned that Jayden being in danger was the source of Dad's anger and frustration.
Embarrassed by what I'd done and hurt to find out that Dad had been making Jayden entertain me, I jerked my arms out of Dad's grip, turned away from him, and ran to my room.
Dad had known something was wrong and knocked on my door every few minutes for hours, asking to come in. I'd refused. Instead, I'd crawled in my closet and waited for my safe room door to open for the night.
The safe room had been something Gran had built for me when I was a baby because he'd been convinced there'd come a day when people would try to kidnap me, using me and the technology embedded within my heart against him and Mom and demanding information about their inventions or their research.
If only he hadn't been right.
"Holy hell! Are you getting winded," Jayden asked, once again snapping me back into the here and now.
"No. I'm not."
"You're slowing down, and you're getting winded. Dammit! Your Dad swore to me he'd make sure you kept training."
"I'm not winded, and I have been training. You're just pissed because he doesn't push me until I'm ready to throw up or taunt me until I'm angry. I should also mention that he doesn't make Tawney and me compete for his approval. Dad is more comfortable leading by example," I said more defensively than I intended.
"I've seen your Dad, and he hasn't gotten soft. In fact, he looks like he's in the best shape of his life. You haven't been training with him."
"I'm training all the time. Most of my time is spent with Dad. The rest is with Mom in the lab. Training is training," I said without the first ounce of apology in my tone.
I didn't feel like telling him that the only difference between what Dad and I had been doing was while I worked in the lab, Dad worked on the farm. Dad's manual farm labor was more of a workout than anything Jayden could ever concoct for us to do. I didn't tell him because I was sure he'd take that information and use it against me by making me haul hay, shovel out stalls, and hoe gardens.
This time, it was Jayden who came up short and slowed, asking, "Don't… don't you think President Barone has enough Enoche researchers, Carlie? Why are you working in the lab?"
What he said took me off guard. I expected him to be focused on the farm work. Instead, he was worried about me working in the lab, something I loved doing.
I scoffed. "You've never worried about me before. There's no reason for you to start now."
His next breath was exasperated. "I've always worried about you. I'm the one who convinced your parents that weekends spent in survival training was the best thing they could do to prepare you for what's to come. I think that proves I care about your family, about you, even if you don't believe it."
"So… you finally admit it. You are the one that came up with that torturous ritual."
He shrugged.
"It was all I could think of to do."
"At least now I know who to blame for my aborted social life, massive split ends, and calloused hands," I teased, and he smiled timidly.
"You didn't need a social life. You had me." He winked.
Actually, I'd known for a long time that the Surrogate Soldier through and through had been the one to convince Mom, who'd been afraid for me, and Dad, who'd been a traditional soldier himself, that if they'd wanted me safe, they'd have to stop thinking safe rooms and practically kill me by putting me through the fine art of survival training. If I admitted what I knew, he'd quiz me about my intelligence source, and I'd have to admit how often I eavesdropped.
No way I'm going to let anyone in on that secret.
As always, my thoughts of survival training brought me back to the ice cream parlor incident because after that, things between Jayden and I had changed.
As an olive branch and after spending hours in my safe room, trying to figure out what I could do to make things right between us (at least as right as they'd ever been), I'd decided I had to apologize. Realizing the words might never come out of my mouth, I'd written Jayden a letter asking for his forgiveness, scrolled his name on the sealed envelope, and given it to Dad the next morning, begging him to get it to Jayden for me.
That same day I'd freakishly stalked Xyla from the Cold Creamery Parlor and told her Jayden was like a big brother to me, one I hadn't wanted to lose to anyone, not even her. I'd told her I made up the story about him being sterile, that I'd never seen him look at anyone the way he looked at her, and then I'd pleaded with her to give him another shot. She'd seemed smitten. Before I finished with her, she'd agreed to go on one date and give him a fair shot.
I'd still been extremely jealous when I thought about them together, but I felt like I'd righted a wrong.
Two weeks later, Jayden had returned. He was different… angrier and more determined than ever that we had to learn how to survive in the wild. I was the typical narcissistic teenage girl and assumed Jayden's demeanor had everything to do with me and what I'd done at the ice cream parlor. I'd only known one way of getting information and that was to slink around listening to conversations not meant for my ears.
One night after I'd supposedly gone to bed, I heard Jayden telling Dad there'd come a day when an entire army of Shadow Citizens would make it over Aspect Nation's borders, tear down the walls, and invade. He'd sworn none of us would be safe if that ever happened because Shadow Nation had turned into a country of people who were comparable to rabid animals. He'd claimed they hunted, killed, and ate anything… anyone who came near them.
The next thing I'd known, Dad had gotten up and closed his office doors, preventing me from hearing another word of their conversation. Even though it was late and I was supposed to be in bed, I'd refused to let the hour, Jayden's mood, or the information I'd just heard deter me. I owed Jayden the date I'd snatched away from him. I paced outside of Dad's office until the two of them came out. On a mission, I'd ignored Dad's somber mood.
"Carlie, what are you doing up this late? You have school in the morning," he'd said when he saw me in my pajamas, standing in the hall.
At first, I'd cowered under Dad's glare. Then I squared my shoulders.
"Dad, I need to talk to Jayden just for a few minutes," I'd mumbled.
I still remember the way Jayden glanced at Dad, silently pleading for him to refuse my request, and how I'd almost rolled my eyes.
Dad's stare had bounced between
the two of us a few times. Finally, he nodded. I'd assumed he'd decided we'd definitely needed to talk if there was ever to be peace in our family again.
I'd stared after Dad until he was out of earshot. Then, I'd turned back to Jayden, who'd been standing with his feet spread apart, his hands gripped behind him, and his eyes on the ground.
"I-I asked Dad to give you a letter. Did you get it?" I'd asked quietly, biting the corner of my lip so hard that I still have a knot of scar tissue where I'd punctured it and it bled.
Without looking my way, he'd nodded solemnly.
Under normal circumstances, I'd have walked away and pretended as if that had been all I needed to do to make amends, but I'd had two weeks of guilt eating me away from the inside. I'd been determined not to back down. I had something I needed to do, and I'd planned to do it no matter the humiliation I suffered.
"Well…" I'd paused, trying to decide how to tell him what I'd done. "Well, I also spoke to Xyla and told her what a horrible person I am and what a wonderful person you are. She's agreed to meet you at the Cold Creamery for a kind of mini-date. You know, since I ruined it for you the first time you were trying to talk to her."
The instant the words left my mouth, I'd felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. When his incredulous glare shot at me, it occurred to me that whoever said no good deed goes unpunished had been right. He'd looked at me as if I'd just turned into termites covered by maggots being eaten by roaches.
"What did you do?"
His response… his unexpected response had made my cheeks flame as if they'd suddenly caught fire. Rather than back down, I'd shrugged.
"I-I talked to Xyla. You know… the very pretty girl you were flirting with at the ice cream parlor. I told her you'd meet her for ice cream this Thursday after school."
His laugh was sardonic. "You… you set me up on a date,"—he'd used air quotes around date—"with the girl in the ice cream parlor. Do I look like someone who needs you to interfere with his life?"
I'd chewed on the already punctured and bleeding lip and choked on my words. "N-no. I just thought it was the least I could do after… you know."
"I'll tell you what. I'm going to go because… You know, I don't really have an option now. Do I? But let's just agree that you aren't to interfere with my life ever again. Do we have a deal?"
I'd wanted nothing more than to run and hide out in my safe room for the rest of my life. Instead, I'd swallowed my pride and bobbed my head.
"Good. This Friday and every Friday from now on, our survival training will be much more difficult. It seems to me that you have too much time on your hands."
Without another word to me about that subject or Xyla, he'd turned away from me, walked out the front door, and headed toward the guesthouse he lived in.
After that encounter, there'd been nothing teasing or playful about Jayden or his attitude toward me. The new Jayden had been business. All business. Because he made me work harder than Tawney and he nagged me tirelessly, I'd accepted the reality that he hated me, that my apology and my attempts at matchmaking had not led to the forgiveness I expected.
It didn't take long for us to evolve into the team we were today, one that offered snide comments quicker than compliments. Without question, the only time Jayden ever really spoke to me since the parlor incident was to ridicule the fact that I couldn't run far enough, fast enough, or quiet enough. There was no doubt in my mind that our banter was dysfunctional, but it was all we'd known for so long that it was impossible to change.
Not long after we'd begun the more intense survival training the crush I'd harbored for Jayden fizzled out and flaked away. Instead of looking at Jayden through the eyes of a lovelorn teenage girl, I'd come to equate him with the brackish mildew covering the forest floor that I'd accidentally eaten each and every time I'd face-planted during our intense sparing matches, with the sweat covering us after hours of vomit-inducing hikes, and with the blood and gore that came from the wild game Jayden had forced me to hunt, kill, gut, skin and cook so we'd have one hearty meal every day.
Making me hate him more, Jayden had refused to let me eat if I'd not killed something that day. That particular mandate was harder on my family than it was on me. It was all Mom, Dad, and Gran could do to stand by while I'd been forced to sit on a log, chewing on the few pine nuts I'd gathered while my family dined on the game Jayden had captured.
Once Mom tried to silently support me by refusing to eat, but I'd quickly intervened and said, "Mom, you need to eat. I'll be fine. Jayden hates me, and I refuse to let him know he bothers me. I wouldn't eat a bite of his food anyway. If I don't kill it, clean it, and cook it, I won't eat it. It's that simple."
Mom had angrily glared at Dad, who'd avoided her irritation by looking anywhere but her way. It had seemed the only person comfortable with the fact that I wasn't allowed to eat on those days was Jayden. Taking his charades as far as I could tolerate, he would wait until Mom, Dad, Gran, and Tawney had their fill. Then he would pack up the leftovers and dump them someplace I'd never find them.
Worse than making me go hungry—periodically—was the way he'd insisted I be able to run. His mantra to me was, Run for your life. He'd claimed that if I could run, I could get myself to safety, so he'd forced me to run in the heat, rain, sleet, ice, and snow.
This was the reason he was upset. As we ran through the field toward the barn, he worried that I'd wasted years of his training, which of course I hadn't.
"You preached run for your life, Jayden. That's what I've been doing. We've been here at this seemingly safe farm, but there's danger everywhere. I haven't had you to rely on or to help me if something happened. I stayed in shape because I knew it would be up to me to save my family if anything happened. I've been here, training."
I quit sharing for a few minutes, noticing he wasn't saying anything. Then I finished. "Don't get me wrong. I haven't had anyone coming up from behind me and trying to take me down. Dad would never do that to me. But I still remember that if I can't take someone down, I'm to take off running. I'm not to stop until I'm sure I'm out of danger. I remember that loud and clear because you drilled it into my head," I reminded him.
And he had. I couldn't count on all my fingers and toes the number of times he'd come from behind and pulled me to the ground. When he'd done it the first couple of times, I'd been too dazed to do anything but lie helplessly on the floor of the forest. Then I'd come to expect it, and I fought back. When fighting didn't work, I'd take off running. When I'd run, he followed every single time.
Believe you me, he'd never held back anything. He'd tackled me, tripped me, and grabbed loose clothing. In Jayden's mind, nothing had been off limits because, according to him, Everything is fair in combat.
As if he were reading my mind, Jayden said, "Everything is fair in combat, Carles."
Carles.
I'd not been called that in such a long time. He was the only person who called me by my real name, if you didn't count my parents when they were frustrated with me.
It wasn't that long ago when I hated hearing Jayden use my real name as much as I hated him. Right now, I closed my eyes and basked in it, in the way he'd said it so reverently.
As if he's been missing saying it as much as I've been missing hearing him say it.
At that very moment, Jayden and I reached the doors of the barn. Without a word between us and without giving Jayden the first chance at helping, I snatched them open. I was ready to find out what was going on, why we'd been called to the barn, and what Jayden was doing at the farm.
The instant I saw my family huddled in a circle and acting as if they'd never see each other again, I forgot all about everything else. I didn't give a flying flip about ice cream parlors, sociopathic presidents, survival training, separatists, combat training, hate, or freaking MicroPharms.
All I care about is my family and keeping them safe and sound… and together.