The Choice (The Gamble Series Book 2)

by Kathryn Jacques

  I should be used to having weapons trained on me by now, it seems to happen every other day or so. Sometimes twice a day if I’ve pissed off enough people, but it terrifies me every time because eventually one time will be my last. An ironic fate considering I always assumed the Gamble would kill me.

  However, all I can think as I stare down the steel barrel, is that at what point will people on this planet stop aiming guns at me? I’m one very small girl who didn’t even mean to cause half the problems now plaguing us.

  “What is going on out here?” a loud, baritone voice booms, causing me to jump as I whip my head toward the entrance of the building. Taking up the entire front door stands a tall, broad man, his shoulders nearly touching each doorframe and his form blocking out whatever dim light comes from inside.

  Even though they look nothing alike because this man has dark hair lined with only the first hints of grey, jet black eyes and olive- golden skin, I am reminded of my father. They both stand the same way; powerful and strong and imposing, chin held high and with a gaze so laser- piercing that seems to go straight through the object of their focus, which at this moment appears to be me.

  Stomping down the steps he marches across the grass, his heavy boots thumping the earth. As the man strides toward us, behind him I glimpse Charlie, Randolph and Evy, all with the same expressions of horror at the situation before them. Charlie hurries forward, marching after the towering, dark-haired man.

  “Lower the weapons!” the man commands, his voice slicing through the air like a bullet of its own.

  No one moves.

  Raoul’s eyes flash, Jax clenches his jaw and I don’t think Rey has blinked once in the last minute. The only one that partially follows directions is Ivan, but when no one else does the same, he pauses with his gun half angled at the ground and glances sideways at Charlie, pleading for some sort of guidance.

  “Now!” the man roars from deep in his chest. Even furious, he still remains composed, which is almost more frightening than if he let his fury free.

  All four men lower their guns, pointing them to the ground though none flick the safeties back into place and the tension over our little group has only intensified to the level of suffocation.

  “Now, who exactly are you?” the man asks, turning his attention back to me where I stand with my hands still stuck in the air. His gaze floats over my face, examining me from head to toe and it feels like my veins have iced over. If I could melt into the dirt and disappear, I would happily do so.

  “Kelsey. Kelsey Keslin,” I stammer, keeping my arms up in case he decides he wants to aim a gun at me too. Everyone else has, so what’s one more?

  Head tilting, he regards me with interest, his lips turned into the slightest allusion of an amused smile, accentuating two dimples and the clef of his chin. “Escaped the League twice now, in addition to ROC, if rumors are correct. Word on the street is you survived a gunshot too. You’re the young lady that seems to have caused a considerable amount of commotion around here.”

  “That seems to be the short version,” I grumble, relaxing enough to allow my arms to return to my sides. The man’s jaw constricts and he continues to stare around at our group. I subconsciously shift closer to Jax, he’s saved me twice before after all, and besides, he stands the closest.

  Then this coal-haired, stately man bursts into hearty, full-blown laughter, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Then who’s the gangly blond kid?”

  “My best friend Rey,” I say. “He’s from the O.Z. too.”

  “So now you guys are multiplying?”

  “How did he get up here?” Charlie asks in bewilderment, moving forward until she stops beside the man.

  I’m short. Which means that by my standards, nearly everyone else is tall, including Charlie, but even though she stands with her shoulders squared back and her chin lifted, he dwarfs her by comparison, both in height and shear mass.

  Casting a hurried glance at Rey, making sure for the millionth time he hasn’t vanished like some figment of my imagination, I lick my lips and swallow the lump that’s been sitting in my throat for hours. “I don’t know. He… I… I thought he was dead.”

  “Zombie, huh? Well, come inside, let’s get you settled in” the man says, motioning me toward the closest building’s front door. “It sounds like you and Rey have a lot to discuss.” Then, with his face stern and gaze as sharp as a knife, he turns to Jax, Rey, Raoul and poor Ivan, who still appears baffled and alarmed. “As for the rest of you. This is my compound, therefore my rules. I highly doubt Charlie allows you all to point loaded weapons at each other, but just in case, if I see any of you do it here again, you’ll start losing toes or fingernails or whatever is easiest that still allows you to be useful. I don’t have the time nor the patience for this nonsense. Am I clear?”

  Everyone nods, eyes wide; even Raoul though I can see it pains him to bite his tongue; as they hostler or shoulder their respective guns. Jax, Rey and I scurry through the doorway behind the man, Randolph and Evy trailing as we hear Charlie reprimand Raoul. If I had a choice, I like to see him lose his tongue instead of a few fingernails.

  Evy grabs my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze and pulling my attention away from all the men. “Kelsey, I’m so relieved you’re ok. What happened? How did-“

  “Kelsey, Rey,” the man says, interrupting. “I imagine you’d both like some time to speak privately. That door there is an old office, no one will bother you.” He indicates a wooden door hanging on a slight angle due to rusty, bent hinges. The words Resident Advisor are painted in faded gold letters across the top panel. “Randolph and Evy, you both should get some rest as I understand you’re on scheduled to help in the fields later this afternoon. Jaxon, let’s go see someone about your hand. That looks like a lot of blood.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Jax argues, shifting closer to me.

  Nole places a firm hand on his shoulder, steering him to the nearest hallway. “Doesn’t matter. It needs to be looked at. Battle scars impress the ladies, gangrenous infections do not.”

  As he’s guided away, Jax twists to stare at me. He wears a mixed expression of concern and puzzlement and a little bit of fearfulness. Probably the first time I’ve ever seen him actually look worried.

  I duck my head to avoid his gaze and feel my heart sink in my chest. With Rey back, however it has somehow come about, my entire world is about to be flung upside down again. This time it will toss Jax into the turmoil as well.

  “Who is that guy?” Rey asks as Jax and the man vanish around a bend in the hall.

  “Nole Santiago,” Randolph replies. “He’s the leader of the Risers.”

  I lift my eyebrows. “Risers?”

  “It’s what the group here calls themselves. They rise over their obstacles or something like that. They helped us attack the League. Nole’s had enough of being terrorized by them too and after our compound was destroyed, he invited us here. I think he’s got a thing for Charlie.”

  “You’ve got a thing for Charlie,” Evy jokes, poking her older brother in the ribs.

  He scrunches his face. “Charlie is like twice our age.”

  “And still pretty darn attractive. Hope I look like her when I’m that old.”

  “And how old do you think that is, Miss Chung?” asks someone behind us. We spin around to find Charlie entering the building, a slight smile drawn across her lips.

  Evy’s golden skin transforms into twelve shades of crimson. “Uh… I…”

  “Don’t you two need to get some sleep? You’ve had a very long night.” Charlie says with an arched eyebrow. “And Kelsey and her friend need some time alone.”

  Randolph and Evy, heads down and bickering in hushed tones, scamper off into the depths of the complex. Charlie chuckles softly to herself and shakes her head before facing Rey and me again. Reaching out, she smooths my hair and rubs my upper arm.

  “Kelsey, I’m glad you’re alright. There will be a tiny little girl very happy to see you once you and Rey
have had a chance to talk. She and Jax are on the third floor in the old dormitories, suite 307. And Rey, I don’t know where you’ve been living since you got to the surface, but you are welcome to stay here as long as you want. There’s plenty of space and as long as you can pull your own weight, Nole and I are happy to have you, whatever some of our people might lead you to believe.”

  With a last pat on my shoulder, she glides down the hall turning away at a stairwell, until I am alone with Rey. A moment I had fully believed I would never have again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Kels,” he whispers, drawing me into a firm embrace until there’s no more space between us; like we are two magnets that have fought so painfully hard to be together again. Now everything is right in the world.

  I close my eyes and rest my cheek against his chest. I hear his heartbeat, steady and calm. It brings back memories of our last night together, when all I wanted to do was lie with him and listen to this beautiful sound that was doomed to never sing again. Even though his eyes look different and his walk is different, his heartbeat has stayed exactly the same.

  If he is somehow a ghost, somehow not actually here and maybe this really is all a crazy illusion by my mind driven mad, I don’t care. I could still be imprisoned in the League’s basement, Rey a hallucination from the drugs they gave me to keep me compliant, and I’d be perfectly happy with that if it means Rey never leaves again. He feels real, he smells like Rey and as I wrap my arms tighter around him and he kisses the top of my head, joy wells inside me, erasing all the horrible, excruciating memories of the last few weeks. If this is insanity, then I never want to be sane again.

  We stand in the hall for nearly five minutes, locked in each other’s arms, neither wanting to be the first to end these blissful moments. I cling to him, afraid that if I let go he might fade away like fragments of a wonderful dream. I never want to let go. Unless someone pries us apart, I might stay like this forever because I’m finally home again. Not home where I was trapped underground or a prisoner to the Gamble, but home where I was safe and comfortable with no one pointing guns at my head and where Rey always stood beside me, ready to take on the world, even if we had no idea how big the world really was. We had no idea of anything, and right now, that doesn’t matter at all.

  Cupping my chin in his hands, Rey draws my face to his and kisses me, tender and soft, his thumbs stroking my cheeks. I melt against him, forgetting everything else that has happened, doing all I can to savor the moment. He tastes of fresh air and sunshine.

  As we pull apart, I gaze into his eyes. “Rey, I don’t understand. How are you here? I saw you go into the chambers. No one ever comes back out. You… you were dead.”

  “Come on,” he says, taking my hand, entwining his long fingers with mine before leading me into the old office. His soft touch sends tingles radiating through my body.

  Entering the space, I gaze around at the cluttered room filled with the last remnants and traces of someone long gone. Whether its previous owner survived the bombs or not, they have been dead a while and it’s strange to think that way. That the person probably came here nearly every day for years, organized the room, worked in here and laughed in here and lived so much of their life in here, and then one day raced out in a horrified panic to never return again.

  On one side sits a battered desk, supported mostly by large rocks since three legs have been snapped off, possibly for firewood at some point. Four mismatched chairs of varying styles circle around it like short stocky guards. Metal bookshelves line the far wall, most of the paper volumes turned nearly to dust over the past century though several plastic binders have remained intact, their edges warped and brittle and the documents inside undoubtedly unrecognizable.

  An ancient, dusty computer with a logo of three-quarters of an apple on its back panel rests on the floor in the far corner, inoperable and obsolete in a world that no longer offers electricity and with people who probably have no idea how to use a computer should power grids ever be restored. It occurs to me that Rey and I are perhaps the only people on the surface of the world who would know how to use it if it were operable. I wonder what sort of information hides on that hard-drive, never to be seen again. So many things that had once been important, relegated to useless dust and garbage when the world fell to pieces.

  A row of grubby windows overlooks the forest. Rey leads me to them where we perch on the wide wooden ledge and watch the sun start its daily journey across the sky, its bright gleam scattering the darkness.

  “I escaped,” he says eventually, staring through the grime on the glass and into the picturesque world beyond, his face reflects back so I stare at two of him instead of one.

  “But how?”

  Turning back toward me, I realize his eyes are the exact shade of blue as the sky, his hair the color of the rays of the morning sun, his once pale skin now tan and glowing with a small smattering of freckles across his nose. He looks healthier, happier, more like Rey than he ever did inside ROC. He belongs up here on the surface, he always has.

  “The air ducts,” he replies, brushing a hand through his hair, the locks falling past his shoulders. “When I first started working last year, I found some really old blueprints of the O.Z. My supervisor told me they were useless and mostly wrong, which they were, but I was curious and studied them anyway because they were interesting, you know how I am about that kind of stuff. Anyway, the blueprints indicated a vent in the chambers, and a shaft that seemed to lead above ground, which made sense because the poisonous gas has to ventilate somewhere. Or at least at one point it must have ventilated through there, I don’t know. I didn’t really think much of it until my number was called. Then, that night while I watched you sleep, a plan formed in my head. It seemed crazy, but what choice did I have? I had a hand drill in my pocket, you know the one that’s really small that I always carry? Once they locked the chamber doors, I unscrewed and wrenched the grate off the vent and started to climb.”

  My eyes widen in astonishment. “And no one stopped you?”

  “Well, it’s not like Gendarme hang out in the chambers. Besides, there were several thousand people crammed in there. We barely had enough room to breathe let alone see more than a foot in front of us. Most of the people didn’t notice, and those in the chambers who did thought I was nuts and just going to die anyway. Maybe I was but I didn’t care anymore. I’d rather die fighting than cowering like everyone else, crying and moaning for their families. At least, in whatever time I had left, I could say I tried.”

  “You’ve always been a fighter,” I whisper.

  Laughing to himself, he sits back against the splintered frame of the window, bringing one knee to his chest and resting an elbow on it. “The first four hundred feet were the hardest because I had to brace myself against opposite walls with my feet and my back and climb straight up. If I weren’t so strong from all that equipment I hauled every day, and used to being cramped inside the ducts from work, I’d have never made it. After that though it got easy, the shaft mostly leveled out to a reasonable incline and I crawled for hours through the twists and turns and upward slops until I finally reached the exit above ground. It was dark by the time I got out.”

  “Where have you been since?” I ask, unable to fathom that Rey and I both escaped ROC within a few hours of each other, probably even less than a mile from each other, and had no idea.

  “I’ve been lying low the last few weeks, living in old buildings and stuff, hunting for small animals, stealing from random vegetable fields and orchards if I was certain I wouldn’t get caught. I stayed away from any people, mostly because I was so shocked there were people, you know?”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Yeah, I was a little surprised too.”

  “Oh, I can picture the look on your face,” he says, grinning. “Anyway, I saw the giant fire last night and got curious. I’d seen the League before, from a distance. With their machine guns and black armor they looked like the Gendarme and I figured anythin
g that looked like the Gendarme probably wasn’t good so I kept away. While I was wandering through the woods last night toward the fire, I heard that guy, Jax, yelling your name. I thought it was too good to be true, that it must have been someone else with the same name because you’d never be up here and yet…”

  “And yet I escaped too.” Chewing on my bottom lip, I process what he’s said, how brave he was and what he’s been through to survive. He’s had no help, no knowledge of the surface, and managed to stay alive and out of trouble. Meanwhile, I’ve started a small war, had Charlie’s compound destroyed, murdered several people and nearly died at least twice.

  “So, after all that effort to escape the chambers, you weren’t thinking about dying from the radiation?” I ask.

  “There is no radiation.”

  “Right, but we didn’t know that.” I hope he doesn’t ask me why I was willing to succumb to the radiation because I’m not ready to share my crazy story just yet, especially the part about wanting to die because I thought he had. I feel foolish because, in looking back with what I know now, the choice seems so dramatic, though I will never forget the crushing pain I felt believing he was gone. I pray I never have to live it again because next time I won’t survive. Hindsight might be twenty-twenty, but grief is insurmountable blindness.

  Lost in thought, Rey remains quiet for a long time, watching the woods surrounding our building as if it’s the first time he’s seen trees. I guess it practically is and I wonder if Jax ever sees me staring at them the same way. Or maybe the sky. I know I gawk endlessly at that vast space overhead, still in awe at something everyone else up here takes for granted and most don’t even acknowledge except to make comments on the weather.

  “I did know there wasn’t radiation,” he says eventually. “At least, I strongly suspected it.”

  I blink in surprise. “What? How could you?”

  “There’s a group, Kelsey, a small one in the Subs that believes the surface is habitable and that the Council is lying to us.”