“So, we don’t have to worry about the virus,” Carlos summarized, “but any children we might have do, and little Jo might somehow be the key to figuring that out. And Regina suspected but didn’t tell us, and Paragon knew because they’d set the whole godforsaken thing up, and you guys knew at least some of it. And basically everyone’s been lying about it – to everyone in Paragon, and even within the resistance.” Irritation for the first time crept into his voice.
“…Yes,” Alessa admitted, registering the hurt in Carlos’s eyes.
She looked around the table and saw similar expressions on every face. And she realized in this moment that things simply could not continue to operate this way.
“We’re so sorry,” she breathed, genuinely. “We’ve all been working on a need-to-know basis for so long, we didn’t realize just how big that web of lies had grown – and how deep we were entangled inside it – until we unraveled it all. But it’s not right. We all deserve to know the truth. And I, for one, promise to never keep anything like this from you – from any of you – again.”
They all glared at her, and Isaac, and Janie, and to a lesser degree Alicia, but didn’t say a word. They didn’t have to.
Isaac hung his head in shame. “I know it doesn’t mean much right now, but we are serious. We never meant to hurt anyone. No more secrets.”
Carlos rubbed his face, exhausted from all these revelations. “And where is Lizzie now?” he uttered. “And what was Josephine saying about the Stuck? How are you two even alive?” he eyed Janie guardedly.
Janie calmly brushed the hair from her face. “What Jo said is –”
“Wait,” Alessa interjected. Something came over her, and she could sense that the time had come.
She glanced over at Isaac, and he nodded his comprehension.
They were here.
“We’ll explain everything,” Alessa promised. “But first, I need you to put down your weapons, and trust me.”
32. ALLIES
“Trust you?” Carlos spat, incredulous. “After all that?”
She could feel them getting closer, feel the savage emotion beginning to overrun her system. Alessa closed her eyes and breathed. “Guys, please.”
Carlos shook his head as if he were acting against his better judgment, but abandoned his gun on the table nevertheless. “Come on,” he nodded to the rest of them. “That’s an order.”
There was some grumbling, but everyone dropped their weapons, and Isaac gathered them into a pile and moved them out of arm’s reach.
Just in time, Alessa thought, feeling the simmering fury ratchet up her spine. She grasped the edge of the table for support – it was a lot to handle, but she could also tell that it was more contained than usual, not so out of control.
“Okay, we did it. Now what’s going on?” Carlos demanded.
He didn’t have to wait for an answer. Out of the woods emerged an army of Stuck – dozens of them, enclosing the clearing from every side, a veritable wall of muscles and claws and teeth. It was a chilling sight.
The squad jumped up from the table in unison, cursing.
“Isaac, guns!” Carlos directed with a desperate shout, his eyes glued to the threat encircling them. “Isaac!”
But Isaac didn’t move. “Trust us,” he echoed, quietly but firmly.
The soldiers tensed in opposition, but everyone seemed too afraid to make a move.
The Stuck stood motionless, but Alessa could sense the conflict bubbling under the surface. The thirst was there, as always, but that rage was tempered by something new, something that felt like… hope.
A lone figure stepped forward from the pack, and called out with a grunt, its bright blue eyes burning into Carlos.
“Carlos,” Alessa broke in softly, “you remember Joe?”
It had worked. The plan had worked. And against all odds, they were united.
When Joe had shown himself, the other Stuck had quietly retreated back into the forest, the tension loosening its grip enough to allow everyone to take a wary breath.
The soldiers still seemed jumpy around Joe, but they respected Carlos’s authority and hovered nearby the weapon stash without actually disturbing it, giving Alessa and Isaac and Janie an opportunity to explain.
“He is how we survived.” Janie walked up to Joe and smiled gently, tentatively settling a hand on his shoulder.
“Joe has been keeping dibs on us for months,” Isaac divulged. “He was there when Lizzie and Janie and Jo left Raptor before the blast, and when the bomb went off, he brought Janie and Josephine to safety.”
“And Lizzie?” Carlos asked, still suspicious.
“She wasn’t there when he went back for her,” Alessa disclosed.
“How do you know this? Can he speak?”
Alessa shook her head. “Not the way you’re thinking. He can… show me things. The same way I can feel things from the Stuck, sometimes I can see his thoughts.”
“None of this makes any sense, man,” Carlos sighed. “So what’s the plan here? They gonna stop trying to kill us, I hope?”
Joe huffed and Carlos flinched involuntarily in response.
Alessa felt a jolt of amusement from Joe. “Stop,” she mouthed in his direction, suppressing a grin.
She turned back to Carlos. “The Stuck can communicate with each other,” she explained.
“What, telepathically or something?” Carlos wondered.
“Something like that. And Joe has gotten them to agree to work with us.”
“Work with us on what?”
Alessa paused, a knowing smile spreading to her eyes. “On taking down Paragon,” she replied.
Carlos froze, an expression of curiosity settling over his features.
“They wanna fight?” A note of excitement crept into his voice.
“They’re not happy about what’s been done to them, either,” Isaac validated. “Joe just helped us redirect their anger to the… appropriate parties.”
Carlos glanced around the clearing, and Alessa followed his gaze, noting with satisfaction that most of the crew seemed mollified by this turn of events.
“All right,” Carlos sanctioned. “Let’s make those bastards pay.”
33. PLEDGE
Deion poked his head out of the alcove and peered as far as he could see down the deserted alleyway and onto the street. “No sign of her yet.”
He and Alex ducked back deeper into the recess. “Didn’t we say we’d learned our lesson the last time we snuck out past curfew?” Alex bemoaned.
“We did,” Deion sighed, “but after everything she told you… aren’t you curious to see what she has to say?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Alex replied, resigned. “Against my better judgment,” he added under his breath.
Deion peeked into the alley again and considered all that Lizzie had revealed to Alex. He’d seen her face when she ran out of the drama airing last week, and it was clear that she at least believed everything she said. But could such a sordid tale really be true? Could all of this really be happening right under their noses?
“I don’t know why exactly,” Deion said. “But I just trust her.”
“Me too,” Alex admitted. “Otherwise, believe me, I would not be here.”
Alex was a good friend, but his temperament had always led him to be less inclined to stick his neck out for other people than Deion was liable to do. The fact that he was here spoke volumes about how he must feel about Lizzie, Deion knew.
Light footsteps echoed down the vacant alleyway. This time, Alex peered around the corner, and his face lit up as he registered who was approaching – it must be Lizzie, Deion deduced.
A moment later a whirlwind of blonde hair spun into the alcove.
“Thank you guys so much for meeting me.” Lizzie spoke quietly, but tension practically screamed from her eyes. “There’s one more thing I want you guys to know, something I didn’t tell Alex the other day.” She looked earnestly between the two friends, but before Deion coul
d ask what she meant, she finished, “I think it’s best if I just show you. Come on.”
Lizzie briskly started down the opposite end of the alley. Deion raised his eyebrow at Alex, who shrugged and quickly followed after her.
The sun sunk lower in the sky casting long shadows against the buildings, which the trio stuck to as they paced efficiently and unobtrusively through several backstreets until they reached an unlocked back door many blocks away. Lizzie led them inside and up the nondescript stairwell, and they exited, panting, a dozen floors up into an abandoned office space.
She crossed quietly into a deserted office, opened a drawer of the desk, and withdrew a pair of binoculars. Clearly, she had been here before.
Lizzie motioned to Alex and Deion to join her by the window, and she gently nudged the blinds aside and pointed at the building across the street. “Do you guys know what that is?”
“The old hotel,” Alex answered. “I stayed there a couple nights when I first arrived in the country, before I met my host family.”
Deion remembered the opulent and glamorous building well – even though he’d never been a guest, his family had sometimes gone to brunch there when they visited him at school. He hadn’t thought much about it since the outbreak had happened; he guessed he assumed that it had been converted to living space like his efficiency unit.
“That’s where the Ruling Class lives,” Lizzie explained.
In the fading twilight, the building almost looked abandoned. Could all of the horrors Lizzie had told them about really be emanating from this one spot? “Those are the people in charge?” Deion clarified.
“They think they are,” Lizzie rolled her eyes, “and they do make a lot of recommendations, that’s kind of their job. But ultimately it’s the Engineers calling the shots. They take a lot of liberties, though. Some more than others,” she added darkly.
Deion got the sense that she was building up to something, so he just watched the building in silence, waiting for her to continue. After a few moments, a handful of rooms on the dark upper floors across from them lit up.
Lizzie sighed. “Here we go.”
She picked up the binoculars and handed them to Alex.
“Take a look,” she directed, nodding towards the lit rooms.
Alex lifted the lenses and focused the view. Deion could see his brow crinkling, his lips curling into a grimace, as he struggled to interpret what he was seeing.
“Is that…?” he muttered to himself before trailing off. He lowered the binoculars and looked with consternation at Lizzie. “That can’t be what I think it is…”
Lizzie gently took the lenses from Alex’s hand and pressed them into Deion’s grip without breaking Alex’s gaze. “It is,” she nodded, solemnly.
Alex gasped, a look of horror settling into his countenance.
Puzzled, Deion raised the binoculars and peered through them in the same direction Alex had been looking.
As they could easily see even unassisted from their vantage point across the way, most of the upper floors were dark and seemingly uninhabited. But a few rooms shone with a dim light, so Deion focused his search there.
The viewing device must have included some sort of digital enhancement, as the image appeared much brighter and more detailed than he would have expected.
Through the open windows, he observed what looked like pretty standard (though well-appointed) hotel rooms: one or two large beds, a dresser, desk, various lamps, and unremarkable artwork adorning the walls.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until he noticed movement on one of the beds. Concentrating, he watched – his face flushing with embarrassment – as a scantily clad woman sat up from the sumptuous pillows and reached up to brush her hair back from her face. For some reason, her arm stopped abruptly at the crown of her head, and it was only when Deion zoomed in a little more closely that he could see why: her wrist was chained to the headboard.
Deion was grateful then that his dark skin hid most of the extent of his mortification – he was obviously witnessing something he was not supposed to see.
The woman adjusted her position and lifted her leg slightly off the bed, and Deion could see that there was another shackle around her ankle. His stomach dropped. He knew it could be just some kind of kinky fetish, but something about the scene was just not sitting right with him.
When the door at the back of the room opened and two men entered, his instincts proved correct – she shrunk back into the pillows in obvious distress, Deion clutching the windowsill in front of him in outrage. One of the men stood at the foot of the bed undoing his belt, Deion pleading under his breath for someone to intervene while the other man stalked towards the window and abruptly yanked the curtains closed, blocking off Deion’s view.
“No!” Deion shouted, slamming down the binoculars. He turned to Lizzie in indignation. “What’s going to happen to her?” he demanded.
Lizzie looked him straight in the eyes and very quietly but firmly replied, “Exactly what you think is going to happen to her.”
Deion felt the blood rushing to his head, his heart pounding in his ribcage. “We have to do something!” he insisted.
Alex put his hand out and grabbed his friend’s wrist. “What can we do?”
“Something!” Deion spat with disgust.
“Thank you for wanting to help,” Lizzie intoned, her voice filled with emotion. “I’m sorry you had to witness that, I didn’t know how else to explain it.” She looked gravely at Alex, and then at Deion. “We will do something, if you’re both willing. We can stop this, together. Maybe not tonight, but she will be okay.” Barely audible, she added, “Just like I was.”
Deion’s heart shattered watching her drop her eyes to the floor. Alex tentatively reached for her hand, and Deion was grateful to see that she took it and looked up at him, tears in her eyes, but her expression filled with strength. He looked away to afford them some privacy.
He’d seen enough tonight. Whatever was going on in Paragon, he was not okay with it. And he would not be complicit.
Even if they had to risk their own safety, this had to be stopped. The Engineers needed to be stopped.
34. VENGEANCE
Time was running out – he needed to find Alessa before they missed their opportunity.
Isaac dashed back into camp and ducked his head from one tent to the next, searching for her. For the past week, they’d been hunting for an opportunity to test their partnership with the Stuck, and he’d just gotten word from Carlos that the occasion had arrived. But – as no one else could really communicate with them – they needed Alessa to give the order.
Finally, he located her in Janie’s tent, sitting beside her sister’s prone form and soothingly stroking her hair as Janie stared blankly at the side of the tent. She still wasn’t at 100% since her ordeal in Joe’s cave.
“Less,” Isaac announced himself.
They both looked up at him with identical expressions.
“What’s up?” Alessa replied, withdrawing her hand from Janie’s tangled bob.
“Carlos was out on recon and came across a platoon of soldiers. Paragon’s soldiers.”
“What are they doing all the way out here?” Janie wondered aloud, her voice sounding drained.
Isaac shrugged. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s no good.”
He held his hand out towards Alessa to help her to her feet. “This is our chance – come, let’s find Joe and get him to lead the attack.”
Alessa’s face lit up and she reached to take Isaac’s hand, but not before Janie grasped her wrist, holding her back. “Are you sure about this, Less?” Janie had rolled over and was searching Alessa’s face with concern.
Alessa resumed pulling herself to her feet with Isaac’s assistance, and turned back to Janie, who was sitting up now. “What do you mean?”
A pained look crossed Janie’s face. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I trust Joe. The rest of them, though? I don’t know…”
Isaac
understood where she was coming from – he felt horrible for the Stuck after everything Paragon had put them through, but at the same time, they still scared him. There was just something about them that was so… savage.
“They’ve been cooperative in the training sessions,” Isaac reasoned. “And they haven’t turned on us, yet.”
“Do you really think they can control their instincts?” Janie questioned.
“Joe’s their alpha,” Alessa argued. “He can control them. He’s proven it over and over again – it’s the only reason any of us are alive. As long as they’re listening to him, it will be fine.”
Janie nodded in acquiescence, but the doubt still lingered in her eyes. She turned to Isaac again. “You really think they’ll follow his orders?”
“I don’t know,” Isaac admitted. “But I’m not sure we’ll get another chance to find out before we head for Paragon.” And if they didn’t give the order soon, this opportunity might slip through their grasp as well, he thought to himself, getting antsy and shifting his weight back and forth between his feet.
He looked to Alessa and was surprised to find a vengeful glean to the jade of her eyes. “Does it matter?” she sizzled. “Paragon took everything from them – from all of us. They deserve to fight back.”
“I know,” Janie placated, “but did these soldiers do that? Or are they just following orders, too?”
Alessa waved her hand dismissively. “We have to go.”
Janie sighed and laid her head back down.
Isaac turned to Alessa. “You’re sure about this?”
Alessa’s eyes burned like fire with her reply. “Let’s set ’em loose.”
35. OPENING
Trees, trees, trees. Ash. Crater.
Lizzie sighed. She wasn’t sure what the producers thought they were going to find in all this satellite footage, but as far as she could tell, it didn’t seem like quality entertainment. She supposed that was why they’d asked her to sift through it – busy work for the low man on the totem pole.
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