The Choice (The Gamble Series Book 2)

by Kathryn Jacques

  The Choice

  Kathryn Jacques

  Copyright © 2020 Kathryn Jacques

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: Katie Rasinski

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Mom, Dad, Neil, David, Lisa, Louis, Kelly, Genevieve and Emily.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY- ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY- SIX

  Acknowledgement

  About The Author

  Books By This Author

  “The hardest thing in life to learn, is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”

  –David Russell

  CHAPTER ONE

  When I woke up the morning of April fifteenth, I was convinced my number would be called in the Gamble and less than twenty-four hours later I would be escorted to my death. It would be a sacrifice for the greater good, to ensure the continuation of ROC and the last 50,000 survivors of the human race.

  But I wasn’t selected, Rey was. Rey, the boy I’d grown up with, who had been my best friend since we were six and who asked me to marry him so I wouldn’t be forced into an arranged marriage of my father’s choosing. Rey, the boy I realized I loved.

  Even love can’t stop the Gamble and his death nearly destroyed me, leading me to the toxic surface of the Earth, which no one had walked on in nearly a century after the nuclear fallout of World War III. I was going to the surface to die so Rey and I could be together again in whatever world exists after we leave this one.

  Or at least that’s what I thought.

  There was once a time I thought I knew so very many things. I accepted the truths of the world as they were told to me. I put faith and trust in the people around me. Why shouldn’t I have? Why would the people I love lie?

  But they did. So many lies I am still trying to sort through them and navigate how deep they run. Those lies, and the people who spoke them, have hurt me and crushed me and picked apart my insides like parasites. They haunt me every moment of every day as I wade through a vast swamp of truths versus betrayals.

  Now I know the real truth. That the nuclear bombs were a lie, the radiation never existed, and the people leading ROC; my own father included; have crafted a web of lies to suppress and control their own citizens. I still don’t know what their end game is, but I don’t ever want to be a part of it again.

  Now I know that people live on the surface, they always have, fighting their own wars against their own enemies and tyrants, like Sawyer and Elijah and the rest of the League; a radical group who have made it their newfound mission to destroy me simply because I’m from ROC. I’m a Sub, and so therefore they hate me.

  But now I realize those truths weren’t even the hardest to handle. In fact, at this moment I have forgotten everything else that has happened in my life, a brief reprieve from the astounding madness born from decades of deceit. It’s as if someone has hit a pause button on my world. The breath freezes in my lungs and I am left motionless in the middle of the dark woods.

  For what feels like an eternity, no one speaks or moves or does anything other than stare at each other in dazed wonderment. A breeze rustles the trees, crickets chirp in the grass, but the heavy disbelief surrounding the three of us drowns all the other sounds out, as if we have been sucked into a vacuum, a black hole into where my sanity has also disappeared because this? This is truly insane.

  I must be dreaming, or hallucinating or maybe I am already dead and this tortuous vision is payback for all the lives I’ve inadvertently ruined and the people I have murdered. Or maybe he’s a ghost or I’ve gone totally nuts, the events of the past few weeks putting so much strain on my mind it finally snapped like a slender twig bent in half.

  But regardless of dream or hallucination or shear lunacy, I know this can’t be real. I watched him go into that chamber and I know there’s no way out. People don’t live after they’ve been chosen by the Gamble. Ever.

  As I continue to stare, immobile as if suspended between reality and a dream world, Rey moves forward, his pale hair glistening silver-white in the light of the moon. Even in the near dark, I can see the brilliant crystal blueness of his eyes as they sparkle, wide and confused, mirroring my own. My heart wrenches in two with a stabbing anguish because all I’ve wanted is to see him again, see those wonderful eyes and golden hair. Knowing this is an illusion is torture unlike any other I have experienced yet.

  Then he speaks.

  “Kelsey?” It’s only one word, only my name, yet it floats and flutters in the air between us like one of the delicate, stunning butterflies I now look for whenever I am outside. Coming from Rey’s lips, hearing his deep voice again, I never realized how beautiful my name could sound.

  “Rey… how… what… I- I don’t understand,” I stammer, standing less than two feet from my best friend. My best friend who is supposed to be dead with his ashes sealed in a wooden box imprisoned two miles below the surface of the Earth. Now I am close enough to touch him, to hug him… to kiss him once more. My eyes dart over his thin body, across his sunburned face, the rest of the world tunneling away.

  Shock radiates through me like bolts of electricity, causing me to tremble and shake and I take hold of a nearby tree to stop myself from falling. Tears sting my eyes, though whether from sadness or madness or confusion I have no idea. “You died…”

  “Kelsey,” he says again, “how did you get out? How are you here?”

  “You died,” I repeat softly, unable to find any other words, my fingers digging into the bark of the tree as though it is all that teethers me to the ground. It’s the only thing that feels real anymore as it buries under my fingernails.

  “What’s happened to you? I didn’t think I’d-“

  “You died!” I scream, my shrill voice shattering the quiet surrounding us.

  Eyes large and round with disbelief of his own, face colorless in the poor light, Rey steps forward and clasps my shoulders. His hands are solid and strong, erasing any thoughts that a ghost stood before me. He’s real. He’s Rey. And despite all odds, he’s alive.

  “I escaped.”

  I reach up and touch the backs of his hands as they rest on my shoulders. My fingertips run over his rough skin, calloused and scarred from his work in the air ducts, and I guess from whatever he’s done to survive on the surface. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe he is her
e, that I am touching him again. My eyes meet his as I search for answers. “How?”

  “We don’t really have time for this,” Jax says as he moves to my side, almost protectively. I’d forgotten he was even here, his voice jolting me back to reality while he gently pulls me toward him with his injured hand, half mangled from a fresh gunshot wound. His good hand rests on the weapon hanging at his side as he glares at Rey with wary distrust. “We need to get back to the new compound before more of the League find us.”

  With his bandaged hand, the first signs of blood seeping through the fabric, Jax tries to take my wrist and guide me away. I shake him off and scramble back, closer to my friend. “Rey is coming too.”

  With a tight jaw, Jax refuses to acknowledge Rey, eyes narrowing at me instead. “He’s a Sub.”

  “Seriously?” I spit, hands balling into fists. “This crap again? I’m a Sub! You have a freaking barcode on your wrist now too so by everyone else’s standards, you’re practically a Sub. What does it even matter what he is other than my friend?”

  Jax’s eyes flash with menace while he looks Rey up and down as if assessing an opponent. I’m reminded of how Jax looked at me the first time we met, how he wanted to just shoot me because he realized I was a Sub too and he hated me for it without even knowing me at all. After all this time, so little has changed.

  “That’s different,” he says. “You’re different.”

  “No, I’m not, Jax. I’m not leaving him so he’s either coming or I’m staying. Which is it?”

  Calculating the two choices I have offered, Jax’s lips tighten into a thin line. He then pulls a small handgun from the back of his jeans and holds it forward, grip first, offering it to Rey. “You know how to use one of these?”

  “No, Jax he’s never-“ I begin, but am cut off.

  “Yes,” Rey says with confidence. Taking the weapon, he expertly checks the magazine to find six bullets left, slides the rack and flicks off the safety. And he does all of this with the expert precision of someone who has handled weapons for years, which is impossible because they are illegal inside ROC with the exception of the Gendarme.

  For the second time in a matter of minutes, I’m left dumbstruck, mouth hanging open. “Where did you learn how to use a gun?”

  Running his tongue over his chapped lips, Rey lifts his eyes until they catch mine again. They’re the same clear blue flecked with bits of grey that I always remembered and thought I’d never see again. Yet now they seem different; alien; swirling with something I don’t understand, a cool harshness so foreign to Rey. I falter backward slightly, fingers wrapping into my mother’s heart-shaped necklace as if it’s the last thing left that can offer any sort of comfort.

  He grinds his teeth and tousles his dirty, tangled hair as if deciding what secrets to share. “Kels, there’s a lot I’m going to have to explain and a lot we need to talk about, but your… uh... friend is right, we need to get out of these woods first. Given all the gunfire I heard, it’s not safe here.”

  The snap of a branch causes us all to flip around. The shadows shift and change, the dark outline of a figure advancing toward us.

  “Get down!” shouts Rey, yanking me sideways as he fires two rounds at the attacker, who quickly twists behind a tight cluster of thin birch trees. Jax fires too, the pop of bullets echoing in the night.

  A muffled grunt and a dull thud come from the underbrush.

  “Is he…?” I ask, not really wanting an answer either way.

  “No idea, but let’s go,” orders Jax, shoving Rey and me forward before taking the lead. With the uncomfortable reminder these woods are far from safe because the League wants us dead, I swallow my shock at the night’s events and tromp through the underbrush of ferns and shrubs behind Jax with Rey in tow.

  Our weapons are drawn, senses alert and every time I hear the smallest sound, I flip toward it convinced the League has snuck upon us again. In their black uniforms and military-style training, a surprise ambush is more than likely. Hair prickles the back of my neck and I’m convinced Elijah lurks behind every tree or thick bush. I can almost feel his eyes boring into my skull and picture his lips twisted in their wicked grin.

  A mile behind us, the fire rages as it consumes the League’s mall. Smoke and soot float in the breeze, descending upon us like black snow. The smell following long after the forest blocks the scene from view.

  We don’t speak, too busy listening for sounds of an attack, but I can see tension in Jax’s body, his shoulders bunched and neck stiff. I don’t think it has to do with fear of running into the League.

  Casting occasional glances at Rey behind me, making sure he hasn’t dissolved into nothingness, I notice he walks different now too. His lanky gate has become more confident and fluid instead of clumsy like before. In a way, he almost moves like Jax. They both slip through the trees and step across the pine needled, leaf covered earth with a beautiful, soundless grace, a talent I have far from mastered. I cringe each time I crunch on dead leaves or send a pebble scuttling along the ground.

  And as we walk, I still can’t move past my disbelief at Rey’s appearance. I don’t understand how any of this can possibly be real. I have a million questions and I want to touch him again and wrap him in my arms and prove to myself this isn’t some bizarre dream.

  I don’t though. We need to survive this night first and make it to safety or it won’t matter that Rey has been resurrected from the dead.

  CHAPTER TWO

  With the pinkish hint of morning sunlight in the sky and the last bit of energy I’ve managed to muster, we finally push through some full evergreens and find ourselves standing before six ancient brick buildings with white columns, tall paneled doors and rows of wooden paned windows. Most of the buildings are uninhabitable, with roofs caved in and walls nothing more than crumpled piles of brick and rusted iron framework, but to our far right I catch a view of several compound members keeping guard outside two intact structures, the largest of the six, each with three stories and tall, sloping roofs. In some of the windows that aren’t boarded up, lanterns and candles flicker like beacons welcoming us to our new home.

  Exhausted, we lower our weapons and march toward the guards. I exhale a long breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding, tightness releasing from my neck and shoulders. I’ve made it; survived the League yet again thanks to a combination of Charlie’s compound and more luck than I can probably comprehend. Relief floods through me and it’s all I can do to not collapse on the grass from sheer exhaustion.

  As we approach the nearest of the two buildings, one off the guards, Ivan if I remember correctly, nods his chin to Jax. “Were you followed?”

  Jax shakes his head, black hair flopping. “No. We killed four, possibly a fifth, a few miles back and haven’t seen any sign of anyone else. I think the aftermath of the fireworks have them a little busy.”

  The second guard turns toward us and I stiffen, halting in my tracks so suddenly that Rey smacks into me with an “oof”.

  From the top step or the main entrance, Raoul’s dark, haughty glare drives into me, piercing through my skin like a knife as he sneers. “Looks like the Sub survived after all.”

  “Shut up, Raoul,” growls Jax, shouldering his weapon and nose wrinkling in disgust. “Unless you want a broken cheekbone to match your nose.”

  “Who’s that?” Ivan asks, eyes filled with suspicion while he gestures to Rey.

  “Rey Zuritsky,” he replies, stepping around me. A second later I realize what I’ve done and my stomach clenches and knots.

  Jax’s head jerks around, features twisted as he pieces information together. “Zuritsky? That’s the fake last name you gave Daniel and me the night we found you.”

  Rey turns to me, stunned. “What?”

  “I- uh- it’s not… I didn’t.” I trip over three dozen words that seem to be competing for space in my mouth, all trying to escape first. My cheeks redden and palms sweat while I bounce from foot to foot.

  “Hold on,
we have another Sub?” Raoul demands, probably the only time I’m grateful he opened his stupid mouth. But his face contorts and his right hand constricts on his gun as he stalks down the steps, closer Rey. “How many more are you going to bring here? Don’t you see all the trouble they cause? That Sub you keep running off to save is the reason our entire home was burned to the ground!”

  “That Sub, is the reason your daughter is alive, or did you forget being too coward to save her?”

  “What did you just say to me, Cole?” snaps Raoul, left hand balled into a tight fist.

  Jax’s shoulders lift, muscles bulking as he takes several menacing steps forward until he and Raoul stand toe to toe. His lips curl back in a menacing snarl, reminding me of Tisis. “I said shut your mouth unless you want a broken face again.”

  “With a mangled hand? I’d like to see you try.”

  “What? You think I can’t kick your ass one-handed? I’ve already done it once.”

  Raoul gnashes his teeth, eyes narrowing into two dark slits. “Do it Cole, and I swear to God it will be the last thing you do. I have watched people die, our people, because you and Charlie and a bunch of other idiots around here think these Subs deserve to be saved. They are garbage, worse than the League even! They don’t belong here, half the compounds knows it, and if you don’t have the guts to shoot them, then I will.”

  Raoul lifts his weapon, leveling it at my chest and I don’t even have a chance to grab mine from my waistband before I become a target once again. I don’t need my gun though, because I hear a series of clicks as Jax and Rey both whip theirs forward and flip off the safeties. Ivan jerks his own gun up as well though he waivers uneasily between Raoul and Jax, unsure what to do since both are his friends.

  And this is how we stand for several long, apprehensive seconds; Raoul aiming at me, Jax and Rey aiming at him and poor Ivan at a loss of who to aim at while I quiver in the middle, hands raised and mouth parted in fear.