She holds her hand out at her side and listens. Fein’s cries seem to echo through the base, and I realize that is what she is listening to, with her eyes looking up at the sky and a smirk on her mouth—pleased by the tormented sound. Fein sobs, and Arletta lowers her hand. “Okay…now.” She gently pulls my wrist back in place and taps the barrel of my gun. Smiling, she steps back and nods.
I’m sorry, Fein. I pull the trigger. She falls like her brother. I lower my gun. Before I stand at attention, I look back and forth to Floyd and Fein, giving them a moment of silence.
Richard, Arletta, and the Premier pat my back, saying, “Good job, Kylie,” as they pass me and walk to their white truck. Their hands are like weights smacking down on my body. I don’t acknowledge them, keeping my gaze pinned on the peak of a mountain in the distance.
I finally look away when Richard orders the Creations standing at attention by the general’s door to get the bodies and throw them in the back of their truck, and then informs us they will be leaving.
Jord steps to my side, grabbing my shoulder. “You did what you had to do.” He squeezes my shoulder before he walks away.
I replace my gun. My movements are slow, but I keep my stance strong while still in everyone’s presence. Luke comes to me, grabbing my head and places his forehead to the side of mine. He says in my ear, “Ky, don’t let your discomfort show.” He lets me go and turns to our groups. “As you all were.” Most of them quickly disperse, but some take a minute out of shock.
With my head held high, I wipe the sweat from my brows. Marshal runs to me as I head for the rec hall. “It sucks we had to get rid of a friend,” he says. “If they were working for them, they weren’t our friends anyway.”
“Right,” I say with a plastered smile, rubbing my hands over my head. We walk into the mess hall, and he goes to his table. I find mine, accompanied by Luke, shortly thereafter.
I sit next to Marc and lay my head against his shoulder. Deep breaths, I tell myself. I take four before the discomfort is gone. He grabs my hand and pulls me to leave with him.
We stroll away, and by the time he speaks, I’m feeling better. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“How can you tell something is wrong?”
“This feeling you’re giving off, and you’re quiet and resting against me with everyone around.” He shrugs. “You’re sad.”
“I had to execute Fein and Floyd.”
He stops abruptly. “Why?” he asks with an edge of surprise raising his voice an octave.
I suck in a jagged breath. “The Premier and Guidance were here while Marshal caught her reaching out to the outsiders.”
Marc’s head droops forward. “Damn.”
“Exactly.” I grab the shoulder straps of my vest as I throw a glance to the sky. “They told me good job.”
He crinkles his nose. “I mean. If they weren’t your friends, you would feel the same way, Ky.”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “I guess. But I’m fine now. It’s just that I didn’t want to be the one tasked with killing them.”
He pulls me in front of him when we get behind a house. “You want me to hug you?”
I hug him, hating that our vests separate us.
“Let’s go. We have training,” he says, pulling me with him to head back. “Sean may be pretty upset, but we don’t have a choice in anything, Ky. Anyone willing to risk being caught didn’t deserve your mercy.”
“Okay, Luke. I don’t need the big brother talk right now. I just needed a minute.”
Marc pats my back. “You don’t have time to take a moment. Get back to work. Pretend it doesn’t bother you.” He brushes his knuckles across my cheek and says, “We’ll talk it out later tonight,” before jogging off to his responsibilities.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Work on your posture, Non-Creations. Shoulders back, spine straight, head held high, face even,” I yell to my group while they charge through the open field, warming up by running suicides.
They’re all too afraid to address me, and each of them are quick to follow orders without complaining. They know how close Fein and I were, and some of them are probably scared I’ll shoot them since I didn’t hesitate to execute a friend.
“Now practice combat, turn to the person beside you, left to right.” I’m deflated; I can’t take anymore. “Practice that, combat moves in war against other humans.” I sit on the floor. Fein falling to the ground replays in my mind like a scene from a movie. It would have been better if it were Collins. I could put a bullet through her head without a second thought.
Danny comes over. “I don’t have a partner. Come on.” He extends his hand to help me from the floor. I take it.
Time flies, and before I know it, the lunch bell’s ringing.
“Floyd and Fein were implants?” Collins says, shocked, stirring her soup. “Serves them right to get shot down.”
“Shut up, Collins,” Sean orders in a stern tone.
“Don’t get upset with me for expressing my feelings because your girlfriend got shot down by Kylie.”
“He said shut up, Collins,” I snap. I will have no problem stabbing her with my fork today.
“You shut up, Kylie. You’re the one who shot them. Wasn’t she your friend?”
“Ky, you try to break her nose this time,” Sean begins. “I won’t stop you.”
She smiles. “Marc will stop her.”
“No, I won’t.” Marc responds, stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth.
“No one at this table will stop her, but your sister,” Luke adds. “And she’ll only be able to stop her if she can make it through us.”
I drop my fork, ready to throw my fist across the table. “I’m just playing, Kylie.” Collins laughs me off. “I’m not serious, Sean. Fein was a nice friend to all of us, but her being an implant voids that. Each of you should feel the same way.”
Seits comes in and clears her throat. “We are taking volunteers for tonight’s sweep.” Collins stands along with a few others. They gather by Seits, and the bell dongs, calling the end of lunch.
After lunch, I make my group run the obstacle course. They go four against Gia’s group until everyone has run it. Because my group is oddly numbered, Danny sits out of training. He requested to show his improvement in combat. He’s been working hard to get my recommendation for the male leadership position of our division. I make myself available when he wants to practice or wants extra training.
“Like this.” He maneuvers himself, grabbing my arm, pulling it roughly around my neck.
I quickly get out of his maneuver, spinning around and getting him in a headlock with his arm pinned behind his back. I knee him in his spine, dropping him to his knees.
“I guess not,” he utters.
I let him go. “Nope.”
He stands, stretching his arms. “I know how to street fight. Not all these combat moves.”
“The combat moves help you when going against a street fighter. You know things they don’t. Understanding pressure points, smaller bones that, when broken, can affect your enemy as if they were bigger ones. It gives you an upper hand in a brawl.”
He nods and swings at me. I block it, not catching him swiping his leg under mine, knocking me off my feet. With his hands around my throat, he holds me down. “I got you, right?” He smiles.
I could get out of this easily by using a number of maneuvers with my legs or my free arms, which he’s neglected to hold down, but I’ll give him this one because he did catch me off guard. “Yes.” He lets me go. “Remember, when you pin someone down, you want to make sure you block off their defenses too. What if I’d have a knife in my hand? My hands were free to stab you.”
“I see,” he thinks. “Let’s go again.”
Fighting with Danny, Gia, and the rest of our group, racing each other on the course, takes up the rest of the day. My group has grown to enjoy the course, and I love ending a day without hearing their complaining. “Great job today, everybody. Get some rest, and w
e’ll pick it back up tomorrow.”
After dinner and a shower, I go to Luke’s room. “You’re sleeping here?”
“Yeah, I’ll let Marc miss me. And keep you company.”
“You found a way to get rid of your nightmares, and you still won’t sleep by yourself.”
I shrug. “That was only once. I don’t know if that will work all the time, or if all the time, I’ll dream about him. And maybe I’m not comfortable sleeping by myself. I had to perform an execution today for two of my friends. I might dream of fighting the Guidance, yelling at them for making me kill them.”
“They were stupid for contacting them here, right now, and having knowledge of the suspicions circling the Creations. You warned her, right?”
“Of course. How are we going to find out when the Vojin will attack if we won’t be able to reach out to them?”
“We won’t. They may have extra security now. We can’t call out to them.”
“No, we can’t.”
“I’m going to address the general tomorrow. I could be risking it, but I think I’ll have a good approach. I’m going to ask when we are with Harold. I know for a fact Harold is mixed. But like us, he’s turned from them.”
I lie on my back, looking around Luke’s dark room. “You want to hear something funny?”
“Sure.”
“If we were to talk to them, and they knew our change of heart, they would call us the traitors and the snakes.”
He snorts. “They would…”
I turn my head to Luke’s arm, preparing to sleep. It hits me. “Harold? Why, specifically, ask Jord in front of him?”
“Because Jord seems to be less of a person around him. He’s weak and abides by whatever Harold says. I might talk to Harold first, then I’ll talk to Jord.” His shoulder shrugs against my forehead. “I’ll make up some story about why I assume, or how I found out.”
“What if the Vojin’s plan is to attack before we can?”
He shrugs again. “I don’t think it is. With them, everything is strategic. They have to make sure everything is in order before execution.”
“It would have been nice if we had found out why Fein was trying to contact them. What was so important she needed to reach out in the middle of the day?” A soft knock sounds against Luke’s door as a girl’s small voice calls his name. “Isn’t it a little late for this, Luke?”
“It is, and they know not to come here after hours, or at night, with the Zombies walking around.” He gets up and goes to his door.
I may as well leave because he’s probably going to let her in. I sit up as she says, “They’ll come for me,” voice trembling. “They are going to find out about me and come for me.” She shoves past him, barging into his room. Her gaze lands on me, and she clamps her hand over her mouth.
“You might want to check your surroundings before you speak,” I tell her, lips pursed as I give her a lazy gaze. I don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her around. “She’s a dense one, Luke. There wasn’t a riper tomato in the garden?”
“Hold on, Ky,” Luke closes his door. “What are you talking about, Virginia?”
Her brown curls whip about with how aggressively she shakes her head and jabs a finger in my direction. “She’s the one who will do it. Why is she in your room?”
“First of all, who doesn’t know that she is my twin? Second, anything that you are going to tell me about, apart from our sex activities and intimate talks, I’m going to tell her anyway. Now, what is it? Or it can wait ‘til tomorrow.”
Nervously crossing her trembling arms in front of her chest, she sucks in a shaky breath. I’ve never seen someone so scared to talk in my life. It’s almost comical. “They are coming after the implants,” she whispers.
“You are saying you are one?” Luke asks carefully, words drawling out with an edge of skepticism.
“And she,” she averts her gaze from me, “is going to kill me.”
“As scared as you are about getting caught, how are you even an implant?” he questions, chuckling. “The two that got executed today went out with pride. They didn’t whimper like you are doing. Not to mention you just revealed yourself to the female lead captain of this division.”
She throws her hands over her mouth and says, “Don’t tell anyone, please.”
“What made you come and tell me?”
“I can trust you.” She grabs his shirt and drops to her knees. “Please,” she cries, “I can trust you, right? You and your twin? Please, Luke. Don’t let them kill me.”
I roll my eyes and scoot off the bed. “See you in the AM., Luke,” I say. “Make sure she’s dead before dawn,” I order, walking to the door. “Or I’ll become her biggest fear,” I sing spookily, slowly pulling the door open. “I’ll be back to kill her before the sun rises.”
She gulps. “Huh?”
“She’s not serious,” Luke laughs, closing the door behind me.
I could go to my room and lie in my bed, but I won’t. Not with Fein still on my mind. I cross the hall to Marc’s room. I knock. There is no answer, and I knock again. Because Collins wants to just up and walk in his room now, I’ve started knocking.
Raspier than usual, Marc asks, “Who is it?” I tap on his door. “Come in.” He’s lying on his bed. When I walk in, he turns from his stomach to his back. “What’s wrong?”
“Luke kicked me out for some girl.”
“Are you going to go to sleep or hold the door and wait for him to be finished?”
“Finished with what?”
He chuckles manly-like. “Talking,” he says with a sly edge to his voice.
“No, I’m not going to hold the door.”
He yawns loudly, turning back on to his stomach. “Lie down then.” He scoots from the middle of his bed and pats the now empty space. “So we can sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Okay, there are some things we need to work on today,” I tell my group. “We will work on target practice. We will work on posture. We will work on your fighting skills. We will also work on your―for the Normals―ability to kill.” We stand in the middle of the empty field, and I take in a large group of Normals and Creations, deciding how I’m going to divvy them up into smaller teams.
They stare at me, brows knit, corners of their mouths turned down, and remorse in their color-filled eyes. I hate these expressions they wear: concern, remorse, dejection. Everyone here has tormented me with these side-eye expressions today, and it’s making me want to find a dark corner to escape them. “What?” I blurt. “What the hell is it?”
Many heads shake as they look away from me. Danny steps forward. “Everyone’s a little intimidated by you, Ky.”
I look around at them all. The thought of comforting them, offering kindness, and reassurance floats around in my mind. We must discuss their concerns. “Okay, is there something any of you would like to talk about? Something you all would like for me to address?”
“I do,” says Brandy.
Brandy does not speak out, and I only pay attention to her when I give her direct instructions or training. Her brown skin compliments her amber eyes and ginger hair that reaches her butt. She’s quite skinny and complains most when weight training. She does, however, take instructions well. “What’s your question, Brandy?”
She clears her throat, and people move from standing in front of her. “Fein was your friend. You showed none of that when you were ordered to kill her. How were you able to do that?” she asks. She stalls before adding, “And can you teach me?”
Shocked, I stare at her momentarily. I knew this would be a discussion about what happened, but I was not expecting a request for training in how I was able to keep a straight face and boldly pull the trigger of my gun and watch Fein, my friend, fall lifeless.
I look over everyone before responding. No one is shaking their heads. No one is looking at Brandy like she has requested something out of the ordinary. They are all content with her request and seem to want the same. Loudly, I
ask, “Is this something you all have discussed?”
“Yes,” many say and others nod.
I’m struck silent, proud of my team. “I honestly cannot believe this is my team standing before me, requesting this.” Enthused by my actions and wanting to copy me. My team is not that strong, and yet, here they are. “Okay,” I agree, not yet sure of my next words, shock and joy stealing my thoughts. I bow my head to hide my smile. Looking back at them, I ask, “Who are you people?” I smile wider. “When did you all gain courage and dignity? This is something you all are seeking. You all want that strength?”
“Yes. Yeah. Uh-huh,” they all respond with head nods and small shrugs.
Maybe the expressions I’ve been seeing today weren’t resentment or dissatisfaction, but envy.
“Wow,” I state profoundly, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “Seriously wow.” I look them over again. I’m excited and proud. I’ve done a good job. “Okay, let’s do this.” I walk back and forth in front of them, deciding where we will start. “First, there’s courage. What is courage?” I ask rhetorically. “Courage is the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulties, dangers, pain…anything without fear. Courage is bravery, being able to stand against anything regardless of the outcome.” I breathe, thinking of Edward. “Courage is being able to accept what has come upon you, weigh your options, and understand even if it is the worst option…it still must be followed through.” I meet Edward’s gaze. “Can you step forward, Edward?” He does. “Edward showed he has an abundant amount of courage the day I saw him end his twin. That,” I shake my head in discomfort, not sure if even I could do that, “had to be hard for him. But for Edward, there was only one option. What made him courageous is not that he knew his twin had to die, but that he was able to take the gun and kill him himself.” I gesture for him to step back with a sweeping motion. “How many of you can say you can end the life of someone you care about?” I ask, reflecting on this.
Salient Invaders: A Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Series (The Separation Trilogy Book 2) Page 20