An Outcast and an Ally

by Caitlin Lochner

  12

  ERIK

  TO LEAVE THE rebels’ underground headquarters, we take a tunnel that snakes up—turning into full-on stairs a few times—before ending at a thick metal door set in the ground amid a bunch of boulders. The place looks just like everywhere else Outside. Barren. Full of rocks. If you didn’t know exactly where to look for the door, you’d never find it.

  As nice as it is to be aboveground again, I don’t get the chance to enjoy it. As soon as we’re topside, we’re moving.

  Our team consists of five people. There’s Joan, of course, plus Siobhan, Jared, and Lily. I don’t know Siobhan that well, but Jared and Lily are a pair of siblings who’ve talked me through a few stories about my past life with the rebels. It’s nice having some familiar faces around.

  Joan leads the raid. I’m really only here to follow orders and provide support since Ellis didn’t give me a specific role. Mostly, I just hope we don’t have to kill anyone. I don’t think I can slaughter a bunch of defenseless Etioles.

  The rebels don’t have a lot of technology, and what they do have, they save for more important missions. Which means our group moves out on foot.

  The moon hangs overhead, a sliver of orange. We don’t risk lights, so even though the thin moonlight sucks, it’s all we’ve got. I stick to the back and make sure no one can get the jump on us.

  It feels like we sneak around for hours before Joan finally holds up her hand for us to stop. We crouch in the cover of some boulders without speaking. With everyone dressed in all black, in the dead of night, even knowing where to look, I can barely see some of my teammates. They don’t budge an inch.

  And then we wait.

  I watch the moon as I fiddle with the power crystals on the silver chain Ellis gave me. I’ve added a couple more since joining the rebels. Apparently it’s pretty common to trade them. It’s like a wish, Gabriel said as he gave me his own neutralization crystal before we left earlier. I felt guilty accepting it, adding more pressure to him, but as bad as I felt, I don’t want to die. His hand lingered over mine. A wish for someone to come back safely. Everyone has friends they want to return alive, so we’re all trying to increase the odds of that however we can.

  A wish. I’ve gotten so many of those from strangers over the last two and a half weeks it doesn’t feel worth counting them all. But looking at my string of crystals, it’s weird to think of each one as someone wishing for me to make it back okay. I guess there’re a lot of people watching out for me, but it doesn’t really feel like it. If anything, they’re weights dragging me down. A reminder. A curse. The person they really want to protect is the old Erik. The real Erik is selling all of them out. It’d be better for them if I didn’t make it back alive.

  A murky green one stares me down. Lai’s. Above all else, you have to live.

  I close my eyes. Don’t think about it. Everything will be fine. Everything is fine.

  No one says anything, but there’s a shift. Everyone stiffens. The air hums. A buzzing crawls up my skin before it reaches my ears. They’re here.

  The actual appearance of the trucks follows after the rumblings of their engines. There’re three total: one supply truck and two smaller armored trucks on either side of it, lights flashing over the dead, empty landscape.

  We wait as they drive toward our hiding place. My muscles groan from crouching for so long. My heart is about to break some ribs as the trucks get closer, closer, almost on top of us.

  They pass us.

  Siobhan jumps out behind one of the armored trucks, and with an upward swipe of her hand, thick vines break through the ground to wrap around it. The wheels screech as the truck tries to keep going forward and fails. The vines tighten.

  “Don’t damage it too much,” Joan orders crisply as Jared and Lily sprint to deal with the second armored truck. “If we get rid of its occupants, we can take it for ourselves.”

  “Understood.”

  Joan glances at me, but she doesn’t say anything before taking off. I follow her.

  It feels like a lifetime since I was on a battlefield. It’s hard to keep my head on straight. Everything’s happening too quickly—where’s the Order? Lai definitely said they’d be here to counterattack, but there’s no sign of them. Did I mess up when I sent her the location?

  The other armored truck’s driver must have realized what was happening and tried to fight back, but they can’t do anything against a change in landscape. Lily’s gift is making holes appear wherever she wants, and so the truck now sits in a pit as deep as the truck is tall.

  Up ahead, the supply truck screeches as it twists and makes a break for it, but the field of boulders blocks its path. If the truck wasn’t made of starlight metal, I could’ve stopped it with my gift. As it is, with a glance between me and Joan, I lift her through the air with my gift and send her flying into the back of the truck. She latches onto a door handle with one hand. With her sword gripped in the other, she jams the blade into the thin crack between the doors and tries to pry them open.

  I can’t lift myself through the air, so I have to run after the supply truck to catch up. Not that I have any chance if Joan doesn’t stop it. Even with the heightened speed of a Nyte, the idea of outrunning a truck is ridiculous.

  Shouts and screams break the air behind me, but I don’t look back. Just keep running. Go.

  I can’t see what’s happening ahead of me, but guessing by the ear-shattering crash that splits the air, Joan must’ve formed a wall of ice in front of the truck to force it to a stop.

  I pick up the pace. Whether or not I actually want to get there any faster is another question.

  After the crash and the screams just seconds before, the air feels dead as a graveyard now. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.

  When I reach the truck, there really is a wall of ice, the fender smashed up against it like a crushed tin can. Faint moonlight plays over the shiny black shell of the truck, and without any movement or sound around me, it feels like I just stumbled across a long-abandoned piece of the sector rather than an until-recently running truck that I helped bring down. My stomach turns.

  The back doors slam open and then Joan is there, beckoning me over.

  I jog up to her. “The driver?”

  Her pale, ice-blue eyes glitter in the shadows of the truck’s cargo hold. They drop away. “She escaped.”

  “She escaped?” I repeat. “How in the gods’ names does some Etiole in hulking Outside armor escape you of all Nytes?”

  Joan’s eyes snap back to mine. She lifts her chin. “She wasn’t even armed.”

  “Since when has that ever mattered?” Haven’t they been killing defenseless civilians? Isn’t the rebels’ sole goal to wipe out all Etioles—innocents included?

  Joan scowls. “Shut up and get in here already.”

  I don’t argue. I’m more relieved than anything—one less life on my conscience. There are already more than I want. But I wasn’t expecting mercy from any rebel, let alone efficient, reliable, cool Joan. Maybe there’s more to her than I thought.

  Joan backs into the truck so I can join her inside. Soon, our teammates will be here, too. Come on, Lai. Where are you?

  “Is this thing still operational?” I ask. “I noticed it had a small, ah, accident.”

  “If not, then we load everything into the armored trucks,” Joan says. She kicks one of the crates lightly with the toe of her boot. They’d probably been stacked before, but with the chase and the crash, they lie randomly across the floor. At least it doesn’t look like any broke open. “We don’t need a slow, bulky vehicle like this. Better to abandon it and take back only what’s useful. Start looking for the food and I’ll see what else we can use.”

  “On it.”

  Distantly, a scream goes up.

  Footsteps head toward us. Joan and I both look to the barely open doors, but neither of us move. There are a lot of footsteps. More than the number of our teammates.

  My heart hammers. The Order. Do they
know I’m on their side? Probably not. They’re going to attack me the same as Joan, intending to kill. Lai warned me as much, but it really does suck being in the middle of two warring sides when you can’t actually fight either of them.

  Joan lifts her sword. I take out my compressed weapon, and with the click of a button, the cylinder unfolds and snaps out into my sword. The hilt is surprisingly reassuring in my hand considering how much I hated the thing when the military first issued it to me.

  The footsteps stop outside the doors.

  Joan lifts her hand toward them.

  The door creaks open.

  A blast of ice bursts through the doorway at the same time a wall of earth rips the doors off their hinges.

  Joan runs straight into the chaos, probably because she’s crazy, but after stopping just long enough to pick up some crates with my telekinesis, I follow. If I get separated from her, I’m dead.

  As it turns out, Joan created a protective tunnel of ice leading out of the truck to shield us from whoever’s waiting outside. When I make it out the other end, it’s to find more chaos waiting. People shift through the darkness like demons, too difficult to make out in the faint moonlight. I find Joan by the glint of light off her ice as she sends it flying around her. The newcomers lift something up—shields?—and the ice bounces off. Siobhan fights back-to-back with Joan, blood running down the side of her face and dim moonlight bouncing off the metal claws on her hands, but I can’t see Jared or Lily. Everything is strangely muted.

  Something whistles through the air toward me and I push my telekinesis out. I feel whatever it is sent flying back once it hits my force. Arrows? Knives? How many people are there around us? Too many.

  Joan must think the same. Our eyes meet. Does she suspect me? Then, “Retreat. Now.”

  She skips back as Siobhan races toward me, and with a wave of Joan’s hand, a long, thick wall of ice separates us from our attackers. She says nothing as we run. None of us do. But triumphant cheers follow us in the dead air. I feel like I should be enjoying that victory, too, but all I can think about are Jared and Lily laughing over an old story as they tried to help me.

  * * *

  Ellis’s palms slam onto her desk. The shadows around her office flicker, lengthen, sharpen with her anger. Joan and I stand before her, Joan with her hands grasped firmly behind her back, chin lowered, every inch a soldier reporting back from duty.

  Cal stands by the window, wringing his hands in front of him and occasionally glancing outside. Gabriel sits in the armchair beside him; only his eyes move as he looks from Joan to me to Ellis and back again. Devin lounges against the wall behind Ellis, arms crossed, unusually quiet. Even the ever-present sneer on his face lacks its usual force.

  “What do you mean some strangers showed up and intervened?” Ellis demands. Her voice is colder than Joan’s ice. But she doesn’t wait for an answer. “If it wasn’t the military and they weren’t with the trucks, who were these people? How did they find us?”

  Devin’s eyes drift to me. “I can think of one way.”

  I bristle instantly. Mostly to disguise my guilt. “If you’re going to accuse someone of something that stupid, you should at least have some proof.”

  “You were on the sector’s side. As soon as you ‘returned’ here, these bastards show up exactly where and when we’re making a raid no one should’ve been able to predict. You think that looks like a coincidence?”

  “I might have been with the military, but I don’t know jack about these randos.” I take a step forward and lift my chin, daring him to contradict me. Hoping my ability to lie is as good as I’ve always believed. “And even if I did, how exactly are you claiming I get information to them without anyone here noticing?”

  Devin steps off from the wall. Hate burns in his soulless eyes. “I don’t know how, but I know you did. This timing is way too convenient. You could’ve at least waited a little longer to make yourself look less suspicious.”

  “The timing doesn’t coincide with Erik’s arrival so much as with when we declared war,” Gabriel says evenly. He watches Devin, who holds the look angrily. “It makes sense that any group other than the military who’d been planning to fight us would wait until we were at war to do it. And this was our first attack since the war officially began. Unless you have some evidence against Erik that you’re not sharing with us, I suggest you keep your divisive views to yourself. The appearance of a new, completely unknown enemy force is bad enough without you instigating a fight amongst ourselves.”

  “Gabriel’s right,” Ellis says. “We can’t start pointing fingers blindly. Besides, it’s only thanks to Erik that we managed to recover any supplies at all from this disaster.”

  I throw a discreet, grateful glance to Gabriel, who nods slightly in return.

  Ellis stares down at her hands, still splayed over her desk. “We managed to get some more food, but it’s not enough. Especially since we don’t know how we’ve been tracked or if it could happen again. We have to figure out how they got their intel on us and put a stop to it. That’s our new priority.” She looks up at all of us. “We’re going to have to send some of our Nytes into the sector to get food however they can. Cal, get Lesedi and tell her we need her and her teleportation gift to help us out. Assemble a team for gathering food.”

  “Roger.”

  “Joan, I want you to infiltrate Sector Eight and find out what you can about this mystery group. Listen for any rumors. Try to find out who they are, where they’re located, their numbers, anything. Take whoever you need with you. Try to find a place we can strike if you can. Don’t engage until we have a plan.”

  “Understood.”

  “Oh, and Joan?” Ellis’s voice is sickly sweet.

  Despite the fact that Joan has to know that whatever’s coming next can only be bad, her expression doesn’t change. “Yes?”

  “Next time, I expect no mercy.”

  Joan’s lips press together. It takes a minute for me to realize what’s happening. Sure, I remember Joan not killing that truck driver, but how would Ellis know about that? It didn’t come up in the report.

  Then I remember Ellis’s butterfly in my shadow and I try not to flinch. She really is constantly watching. And even though Joan did something I thought was great, I unintentionally betrayed her act of compassion. On top of all the intentional betrayal, I mean.

  “Yes, Sara,” Joan says.

  “Devin,” Ellis says, “I’m putting you in charge of examining the home base and seeing if there’s anything that could’ve transmitted information to them, any bugs or cameras. Leave no stone unturned.” Her eyes narrow. “And don’t come to me with any claims of a traitor without definitive proof.”

  He smiles slowly, coldly. “Got it.”

  “Do you? Do you really?” Ellis continues to stare at him, her eyes suddenly, intensely empty of emotion. It feels more like I’m looking at the shadow of a person than an actual human being. I shudder. The smile slips off Devin’s face. Without speaking, he nods.

  “Good.” Ellis retrains her gaze on me, but thankfully, there’s life in her eyes again. Still, my shoulders are stiff and I know I won’t be able to relax until I get the hell away from her. “Erik, I want to talk with you in private. The rest of you are dismissed.”

  My lungs sink to the bottom of my stomach. What could she possibly have to talk to me about? Despite what she said, does she actually suspect me of being a spy? If she starts interrogating me, I don’t know how well my lies will hold up against her.

  Gabriel looks like he might say something, but with his lips pursed in what might be disapproval, he just stands and heads out the door with the others. Cal glances over his shoulder at me, concerned, but I force a smile and wave him on. The door shuts behind all of them with a ridiculously loud click.

  “So?” I ask as I turn back to Ellis. I try to sound casual. If I sound guilty, she’ll think I have something to be guilty about.

  She watches me. It’s not that searing em
ptiness from before, but it’s still piercing enough to unnerve me. She doesn’t need to become a shade from hell to put me on edge.

  “When you were in Sector Eight,” she says finally, “did you hear anything about a group like this? One that was intending to go to war with us?”

  “No. But I did spend most of my time looking for information about my past—I didn’t really pay attention to anything outside of that. I could’ve easily missed something.”

  Ellis nods, but I can’t tell if she’s satisfied by my answer or not. “It’s like they’ve popped up out of nowhere. Who are they? How could they have gotten their intel on us?”

  I don’t answer. I’m not sure she wants me to, and I don’t know what I’d say if she did. I’m walking on rotting stairs here as it is.

  Her eyes are locked on a point somewhere past me, and I wonder if she’s communicating with someone through her shadow butterflies. She has that same look of half-concentration, half-distance.

  I know I shouldn’t, but I ask, “What happens if this place is ever found?”

  Her eyes snap to me. Okay, probably not communicating with someone. “What are you talking about?”

  “I just realized I never heard about an emergency plan, is all.” I hold my hands behind my back the way Joan did earlier. “If tonight wasn’t a fluke and this new group is somehow getting enough information on us to know about our raids, it’s not impossible they could find this place eventually. It’s just a ‘what if.’ But what if they attacked us here? All our supplies and everyone’s homes—not to mention the children. There must be a backup plan in case that happens, right?”

  It’s not going to happen, but I still want to know. As soon as I told Lai about all the kids here, she ruled out any possibility of attacking the rebels’ home base. She refused to get noncombatants involved—especially when they’re so young. It made my respect for her go up. And made me more relieved than I want to admit. A successful surprise attack on the home base could stop the war. But not at the cost of all the children who call this place home.