Stateless (Stateless #1)

by Meli Raine

I close my eyes, letting my hearing, sense of smell, taste buds, my skin pick up on the locations of others. All of the buildings are locked, windows shuttered, normal operations suspended for one night. If sunrise comes and the alarm is blasted throughout the compound and no one is dead, we all failed.

  And we're all kept here for another year.

  No one will tell us how many years these training exercises have been going on, but we do know this: There has never been a failed year.

  Jason is making it clear this won't be the first, either.

  Someone comes to my left, making a high-pitched whistling sound between tongue and roof of mouth.

  Kina.

  “Hey,” she whispers, Glen next to her on my right. I say nothing, letting Glen's narrow-eyed look burn off me. Staying in small bands is smart, to fend off an attack. Then again, small group dynamics under extreme stress are notoriously unstable. I’ve done my calculations.

  I know my chances, with or without a group.

  I know Kina's chances, too.

  She needs me to survive.

  And I need her if I survive.

  “What's your plan?” Glen asks, amped up, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Who are you going for?”

  I freeze. “No one.”

  “What? You're the strongest in the class. Well, the strongest guy in the class. You could take out any of us. Why not do it and get it over with? Prove yourself.”

  “There is no proving here. No benefit to being the one who kills.”

  She laughs, the sound malevolent and disturbing. “You believe that? You really think Romeo and Angelica won't care? Or that Smith and Sally won't be impressed by whoever does it? You're more likely to get into The Field if you kill.”

  “Who says that?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Who in charge says that?” I clarify.

  “They don't have to,” she argues. “It's obvious.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  I don't even bother to respond.

  “He is! Callum is afwaid,” she says in baby talk to Kina, who looks pained.

  “Not wanting to kill someone in a contest where being the killer doesn't lead to rewards isn't about fear. It's about judgment.”

  “Since when are we supposed to use judgment?”

  “Since when are we not? This entire exercise is about judgment.”

  “No,” she says disdainfully. “It's not. Not one bit. If it were about judgment, we wouldn't be doing it at all.” Her eyes gleam in the moonlight. “It's about bloodlust.”

  Kina gasps.

  Glen has decided to tell the truth.

  “Of course it is. And I want nothing to do with it,” I say firmly.

  “Why not?” Glen's serious. She can't fathom why I wouldn't want to get my first human kill right here, right now.

  “Because then I'm just as bad as the people who run the governments we're trying to topple. If that's the case, why bother?”

  “Do you think our instructors and leaders are as bad as the governments?”

  “What? No! I never said that. This is a needed exercise. Everyone knows we need to learn.”

  “Here's your chance, buddy. Time to learn–” Her voice breaks on the last word and suddenly, Glen takes off, running hard, rolling in brush at the base of a tree.

  A knife vibrates in the tree right next to where her face just was.

  Swiftly, I grab it and pull Kina down, slipping the knife in my belt as if I were picking up someone's discarded food wrapper. Every weapon, however acquired, increases our chances.

  Her face is tucked in, cheeks ghostly white, face covered in sweat.

  A loud laugh rings out from the direction of the knife. The crashing of a large animal through the leaves adds to the noise.

  I assume that animal is human.

  “What's your weapon?” I whisper to her.

  “Cyanide. It's useless,” she replies.

  “Cyanide?”

  “Romeo offered it to me.”

  I want to strangle her. “You could have had a knife or a wire or a bow and arrow and you chose... that?” None of us knows what, exactly, the other weapons are. Cyanide never occurred to me.

  What else hasn't occurred to me? What dangers are out there that I haven't planned for?

  “I figured I could either kill someone with it or take it myself.”

  Cold horror runs through me at her words. “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No, you'll never use it on yourself. Promise me that.”

  “I can't.”

  “Why not?”

  “What if I need to use it as part of The Mission?”

  “Kina.” The mere thought of her sacrificing herself for our training, the idea of her spasming and going lifeless to prevent a greater terror, makes my stomach turn. My heart punches my chest wall with an uppercut that makes my throat ache.

  “I can't promise you–”

  “KINA!”

  All the steady denials and refusals from her crash together as I hear my heartbeat in my ears, her lips against mine, the kiss unplanned, horribly timed, and as impossible to stop as ordering my own heart to go still. Soft lips press against mine with years of yearning. I know this because mine are doing the same.

  This is a kiss that could kill. This is a kiss that could end both of our lives. This is a kiss that is wrong on every level. There is no justification, no explanation, no logical reason for it.

  But I'd kill for this kiss to last forever.

  “What are you doing?” she whispers, pushing me away, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.

  “Do not ever say those words again,” I demand.

  “What words?”

  “That you'd use the cyanide on yourself. Promise me!”

  “I–I–” A hungry look shines in her eyes, her gaze dropping to my lips.

  So I kiss her again.

  Because I am stupid. But more than that–because I can't help myself.

  She sinks into it, one hand on my chest finding a tight grip on my jacket, the other moving up behind my neck, the soft curve of her palm like the whole world is in her hand.

  Insanity–this is sheer insanity. We're inviting our deaths, taking our attention away from Woods, from our peers, from this sickening game.

  And yet we cannot stop.

  “Why are you kissing me?” she murmurs against my mouth, but doesn't move away.

  “Why are you kissing me?”

  “We're going to die,” she hisses before kissing me again, her tongue cresting the ridge of my lips, the full melt into me unreal and sublime. “I wanted to kiss someone before I die.”

  “Someone?”

  “You. I wanted,” she says, kissing me between words, “to kiss you before I die.”

  “You are not going to die tonight. Not if I can help it,” I assure her before pulling away and letting reason take its rightful place.

  I can't kiss her again if she's dead.

  And no one is going to come after me. The knife in the tree was aimed at her. Not Glen.

  We have to race against the clock for the next ten hours to keep her alive.

  And if I have to kill someone to end this, if I have to become the victor to save her, then so be it.

  Maybe Glen is right.

  Maybe I am fooling myself.

  Chapter 9

  Kina

  That kiss.

  What the hell was that kiss? And of all the times and places, Callum had to kiss me here? Now? Kissing–and getting caught–is the last thing I need when I'm being hunted.

  Yeah. Hunted.

  I'm not stupid. I know Jason's out for me. He's not the only one. When Romeo offered me the cyanide pills, I knew what he was really saying.

  You're dead meat. Might as well control your own death.

  He doesn't expect me to use it on someone else.

  And it's my only weapon. I didn't tell Callum this was all I was allowed.

 
; A chill sets into my bones, making me shiver. There's a point every night, sometime around one a.m., when the air changes. It's not even close to midnight now, but that shift just happened.

  Or maybe I shifted.

  My blood, at least.

  “Come here,” Callum commands, leading me to a small but strong tree. He has me sit at the base of it and uses dry leaves to cover us, his body pressed against mine.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You're cold. I'm warming you. It's protocol.”

  “Was the kiss protocol, too?” I say into his chest.

  He stiffens.

  “Kina,” he says softly into my hair.

  “You don't have to do this.” I shove him away, rough enough to catch him off guard. “For all I know, this is a set-up. I need to find Glen.”

  “A set-up?” he chokes out, recoiling, kneeling over me.

  “Yes,” I whisper, furious. “Maybe you're just luring me into some trap so you can kill me. Be the victor.”

  “You honestly think that?”

  “Glen does.”

  “If Glen thinks that, where did she go? Why isn't she here to defend you from dangerous me?” Every word brings him closer, until the word me is a whisper of a whisper, riding on a wave of moonlight.

  “She–I–”

  A shriek pierces the night, the sound too close to be anything but an attack.

  “Damn it,” he says, his touch so painful as he wrenches my arm, dragging me across the leaves.

  “I can take care of myself!”

  “I know you can, but not now.” Reaching back, he takes his bow and arrow and aims, waiting. I go still.

  Completely dead still.

  The arrow flies from between his fingers before I can even anticipate it, the cry of pain a sound that makes me let my breath out.

  “Shit!” someone says in a hushed voice. The distinct sound of a person rumbling through the brush away from us is confirmation of Callum's hit.

  “So fast,” I murmur, standing in a crouch and moving left. If Callum would just get out of the way, I could find my place.

  I may only be armed with a useless death pill, but I am not totally helpless. I planned for this.

  For being attacked, I mean.

  Not for the kissing.

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  I ignore him, twisting out of his reach and practically bear-walking to my sanctuary. If this fails, I'm a sitting duck. If I succeed, it's a long waiting game.

  I'm five feet away when I hear Judi call my name. “Kina? Where are you? It's Judi!”

  “Shhhhhh,” I whisper, halting. Callum slams into me from behind. My skin starts to feel like it is slowly peeling off my body, the sensation too cold, too nervy, too painful. My body cannot give out. Between my earlobes and my jaw is nothing but numb pain.

  A headache is next.

  Extreme stress will turn the body into your worst weapon. We're taught this. Taught how to keep another person in a constant unsteady state of distress. We can do it with words or with actions. No one in my situation could handle this stress without some physiological burden.

  That's why I need to hide.

  Every breath without stress refills the body's reserve until there’s enough energy to get through the next crisis. Without that little bit of recharge, systems burn out.

  And when you're burnt out, you die.

  Elevation is my only choice now.

  I hate it, but it's all I've got.

  Imagining a bloomed flower closing its petals, I close myself off to emotion and turn to Judi, my voice vicious. “Are you trying to get me killed?” I hiss.

  “I'm here to warn you, bitch!”

  She's never called me a name before.

  “Warn me?”

  “Jason has convinced a bunch of people that if he kills you now, we can all go in before midnight.”

  Callum's sharp inhale reveals emotion. Judi startles and stares at him.

  “He also says it's no fun to just kill you. He wants... more.”

  “More? What more could he do to me?”

  “He wants to play with you before.”

  The word play makes it clear what he plans to do.

  “I hate having to prove your sister right,” Callum mutters under his breath.

  “What does that mean?” Judi asks.

  “Nothing. Why are you here? I thought you were planning to hide out in the water at the falls,” I ask her.

  “That's not a bad plan,” Callum muses.

  “Three other people are doing the same thing. Not safe,” she snaps.

  “We need to be on the move,” Callum says, voice like a meat grinder. “Now.”

  “No! I need to get to my hiding place.”

  “Where is it?” Judi asks.

  “If there's a mob coming for you, hiding is the worst thing you could do. We need to move around. Keep you from being in one spot. Make them guess.” Callum looks at the moon like it's another enemy. “We have to run out the clock.”

  “There's never been a failed class, Callum,” Judi says miserably.

  “Until this year. Or until I kill Jason,” he declares.

  “Or someone else is killed.”

  “That's the thing,” Judi says, panicked. “He's made all the jerks promise. Promise to give him the kill.”

  I reflexively move in the direction of my hiding place, feeling the danger in the air increase with every word we say.

  “No way Murphy or Chui agreed to that!” Callum protests.

  I take off at a dead run.

  Callum's faster than me, but not when I have a head start. My feet know these woods, have memorized the paths they need to take, the roll of my ankle bones their own GPS. We have no navigation instruments out here. No electronics. No assistance.

  It's just us, our minds, and instinct.

  That has to be enough.

  Callum catches up to me, fast, as I drop to the ground, feeling for the edge of my hole. I've designed it carefully, but there's only room for me.

  Judi and Callum are on their own.

  “This is suicide,” he hisses in my ear, the cover of the waterfall long gone. Sound magnifies here, in the woods where the brush level is low. This is why I chose this tree. A rotted outer ring leads to a solid core, but a small spot below it is enough.

  Enough space for me to hollow out a spot. A big chunk of bark from another tree is a perfect shield. In the dark, no one will suspect anything.

  “I'll be fine if you leave me the hell alone!”

  “You’ll be dead if I leave you alone!”

  “I may be dead either way, Callum.”

  “How the hell did you find the place I hide my bow and quiver?” he challenges.

  Before I can answer, Judi finds us. A huge knife is clenched in her hand, her face smeared with black grease. The finish is matte in the moonlight, giving her an eerie patina. My friend looks like a cold-blooded killer, a mercenary, a combat asset who will do whatever it takes to come out of here alive.

  She does not look like Judi.

  De-personalization is a requirement, we're taught. We have to disconnect who we are from our bodies. We have to hold tight to our instincts but also use strategic thinking. The combination is crucial.

  It is also deadly to anyone in our path.

  When Judi's eyes meet mine, I realize she could kill me.

  She seems to have the same realization in that moment.

  We stare.

  We think.

  We blink.

  We don't move.

  A slight rustling in the leaves around us makes me go cold. Judi hears it, too, her grip on the knife tightening. Callum holds his breath, nostrils twitching as he shifts to silent respiration mode.

  This isn't training.

  Our lives really are in danger.

  Mine most of all.

  Pointing my thumb to the north, I motion for them to leave me. I nod to my hiding spot.

  They both shake their hea
ds.

  Why? Why would they stay with me? Self-preservation dictates that they leave. I am no asset to them. I am pure liability. Jason and his mob want me, not them.

  Does this make Callum and Judi failures? They are revealing a stunning weakness to me.

  The weakness of connection.

  To me.

  My careful elevation wavers inside, the emotions leaking out. I cannot cry. I cannot feel. Certain death comes if I permit it.

  Certain death comes no matter what.

  The sound of movement behind Callum makes me turn my head. And then all I feel is pain, before the world goes dark.

  The last thing I remember is Callum's black leather boot toe and one word:

  “Glen!”

  Chapter 10

  Callum

  She isn't here to protect her sister.

  She's here to kill her.

  My reflexes are too slow, the information too shocking to filter through, to get to the places in my muscles where it needs to be processed. Kina's down on the ground, blood trickling on her neck before I realize who did it.

  “Glen!” Judi shouts, shock in her voice, an emotion-filled sound that tells me Judi can be trusted.

  Emotion is my blueprint for trust now. We're taught that blind loyalty to a system is a kind of soul death, but we're also taught that emotional connection to outcomes and people isn’t allowed.

  I reject that. Fully.

  But is it too late?

  “Jason hit her!” Glen screams, pretending I didn't watch her strike Kina from behind, throwing up a verbal smokescreen. Waving her arms, she appeals to Judi, who is too stunned to argue back.

  Seconds matter. Out of the corner of my eye I see Kina's chest rise and fall. She's alive.

  I have to keep her that way.

  Pulling fast, I drag her around the back of the tree. Furtively, Glen looks around, pretending there's a foe out there. Judi doesn't buy it either. I can tell.

  “Jason got her? No.”

  “Then who?” Glen's eyebrows go up, arching so high, chin down. Her look is more defiance than inquiry, daring me to name her. She’s still pretending I didn't see.

  But I did. And she knows I did.

  Reality is what two or more people agree it is. There is no objective reality. If Glen insists Jason did it when she knows I saw her do it, she's shaping my reality–or trying.