Follow Me Through Darkness

by Danielle Ellison

  I gasp and look at him. “What is it? What did you hear?”

  His eyes meet mine across the room. “They said your last name.”

  “How would they know that?”

  The words of the gray-bearded man flash in my head. He asked for one, and he gets two.

  “Did they mention my father? Or the Elders?” I straighten up and move toward Thorne. “Did they?” His eyes give me the answer.

  Suddenly, I can’t breathe. We have to escape. We have to.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Thorne says. “We’re going to get out of here.”

  DEADLINE: 12D, 9H, 42M

  SOMEWHERE IN THE DESERT

  “HELP!” I SCREAM I pound against the heavy stone door. It’s eleven minutes before someone responds. I don’t recognize the man who opens the door, but he’s there, looking at me. My eyes flood with tears, and I point to Thorne.

  He’s lying face down on the ground. His shirt’s wet with sweat and blood. I sob over-exaggerated tears, heave in breaths of air. The man bends down to Thorne, looks at me.

  “What happened?”

  I only cry. It comes so naturally that stopping isn’t going to be easy.

  The man pushes me against the wall, crumples up my shirt in his fist. “Tell me!”

  I don’t need to respond. Thorne whacks him over the head with the large bowl. When the man falls over, Thorne steals his club, and the sound of it colliding with the man’s head echoes through the room.

  Another voice yells from outside and comes toward us. Thorne hides behind the open door, and the gaunt, dark-skinned man looks confused. He rushes inside, toward me and his friend on the ground, when the door closes from behind. Thorne’s there again, attacking the new man with the club. He ducks and

  Thorne misses. The man punches Thorne, making him fall over. I freeze, not sure what to do.

  Then I remember my knife.

  My pack is across the room on the ground, and I dig in the pockets for the little knife. I don’t know why they left it, but right now isn’t the time. It’s not much, but it’s all we have. Without thinking of anything else, I charge toward the man and stab the knife into the back of his neck. He stops kicking Thorne and crumples where he stands.

  I killed someone.

  Thorne stares at me, gasping in air, and I move to help him up. We don’t say anything about the man or the blood pooling on the ground. We just go.

  DEADLINE: 12D, 9H, 22M

  SOMEWHERE IN THE DESERT

  THORNE AND I TRY TO BLEND in with the others as we traipse around in gray robes that are too long, and I trip as we walk. We don’t know which way to go, but we’re following the other men in the robes. Not many people wear them, but they must mean something because the others barely glance our way as we pass. As if they’re afraid to look at us.

  A clanging fills the air of the camp, and everyone seems to freeze. The gray-bearded man appears in the center and looks up where our room was. The girl who told of my awakening stands outside, yelling something in their language. I wish now I could speak as they do. Whatever they’re saying, it’s about us, because the robed people all pull out their weapons and ceremoniously remove their hoods. Then it’s everyone, removing their hoods and yelling over each other. Weapons appear-chains, knives, one person with a clay pot-and they all move toward us.

  The small boy from before is one of them, and he dodges legs. The knife in his hand glints under the sunlight.

  “Faster!” I yell to Thorne.

  We run, but there’s only the edge of the rock and down. We race along the edge, but down is a long way. We’d never survive.

  Thorne pulls me into a crevasse in one of the rock walls.

  There’s no way out of this.

  I stand as still as I can on my shaky legs. Thorne’s erratic breathing fills my ears. I exhale, and that’s when someone reaches in for us. Hands come at us. Hands and then bullets. Neither of them gets us because Thorne pulls us to the ground. A sound of something breaking echoes, and rocks tumble in around us. Hands grab for us from the other side, and someone finds my leg and I scream. Thorne reaches for me, but he’s not fast enough. I cry out as my body slides across the rocky ground. I try to kick my free leg, to wriggle my other out of the men’s grasp, but it doesn’t work.

  I’m brought before the gray-bearded man and tossed like a sack to the ground. Thorne’s lip is bloody and swollen when they push him beside me.

  “Nice try,” the gray-bearded man says. “You almost pulled it off. To think we were going to give you a proper meal.”

  “What should we do with them?” one of the men asks him. The hoods have all been replaced to hide the Remnants’ faces now that we’ve been caught again. They don’t need to prove themselves anymore. That, or they don’t want us to see them. It was a test to see if they could find us.

  The man raises a hand. “They are no longer our property. Their new owner is here.”

  There are least a hundred people watching us wordlessly from behind their leader. They circle us, and until the gray-bearded man speaks, no one even seems to breathe. The Remnants in the robes and long dresses all turn their heads toward the newcomer.

  I hold my breath.

  They’ve found me. This is how it ends after all this death and fighting-with the Elders dragging me back to the Compound. Will I become one of their experiments? Or will they kill me immediately?

  But when I look up, it’s not my father.

  It’s not him.

  The man in front of us is tall, his pants marked with dirt and faded with age. He’s got a dark goatee that covers his chin, and his hair is cropped short against his head. Arms bulge out of the rolls of his shirt sleeves, but his face isn’t hard and evil as I expected. Instead, his eyes are a soft brown, warm like honey, and something about them strikes me as familiar as he looks between Thorne and me, lingering longer on Thorne.

  “I don’t appreciate my cargo being handled like this,” he says. His voice is deeper than I expected, coarse and relaxing, and his eyes seem friendly, even as his angles are sharp. He speaks with certainty and has a commanding presence. No one is able to look away from him. But, beyond that, I feel like I know him, even though I have never seen him before.

  The gray-bearded man stumbles over his words. “They were trying to leave, sir, but we procured them again.”

  He bends down toward us, his eyes locking on Thorne’s bleeding lip. He yanks my chin up, and his fingers are warm on my skin. “They’re damaged. She looks sickly.”

  “Some things are damaged during shipping, as you know.”

  The man stands and faces the gray-bearded man. He towers over him by a foot at least. “No, I don’t. If someone pays for a whole product, then they get a whole product.” He digs in his pants pocket. Hands something to the gray-bearded man. “I believe that should be more than enough, considering the damages.” Then he looks to us. “On your feet.”

  Thorne sends me a warning through our connection, but I stand anyway. We can escape one man better than we can a whole camp. Our new owner gathers a set of chains from one of the hooded men. He cuffs us together and nods toward the gray-bearded man.

  “Until next time,” he says, and he leads us out of the camp, chains clinking against the hard ground.

  He loads us into the back of a large black van, more gentle with us than I expected. The doors close and Thorne whispers, “We’ll escape,” as I sit next to him.

  The man gets into the driver’s seat, and when the door closes, he looks back at us. “You don’t need to escape. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

  His voice is heavy when he says it, and it sticks with me in a way that makes me believe him.

  DEADLINE: 12D, 4H, 39M

  SOMEWHERE IN THE DESERT

  THE SKY IS SO CLEAR we can see the stars. There’s a crisp breeze in the air that treads along my skin. The chains are digging into my wrist, leaving deep red cuts and bruises there. When the man hands us some food, I pause. Thorne doesn’t
eat either, and the man looks at us.

  “It’s not poisoned,” he says, and to prove it, he takes a bite himself.

  I shove the sweet, juicy bites of oranges into my mouth. Our new owner watches while we eat. His eyebrows crinkle together as he stands, unmoving, next to the black van. Trees surround us to the left. Owls hoot somewhere in the distance. Crickets chirp. Without the chains, this would be a perfect night.

  “We’ll sleep in the van tonight. Head on in the morning. And I got your packs,” he says. His voice still has a tinge of the coarseness in his words, but it’s softer, lighter. Relieved. “They’re in the front seat.”

  Thorne’s stance hardens beside me. I wipe away some of the juice from my lips. “Thank you,” I say.

  He nods in response and takes a bite from an apple before turning away from us toward the trees. His hand runs over his short hair, and the whole motion sends me reeling. I know that movement. It is equal parts Thorne and Kai.

  “Thorne,” I say.

  The man curses in the wind before he marches over to Thorne and yanks at the chain that connects us. They stare at each other, then the man twists on the chain until it falls away from Thorne’s wrists. He does the same to mine, and it clanks against the floor of the van.

  “I’m Neely,” I say to him. The man looks at me, and there’s something about him. He looks toward Thorne, waiting. Thorne says nothing. “What’s your name?”

  He doesn’t respond at first. The silence is covered by the sound of life around us. The part of the world that has always been. “Asher,” he says.

  Thorne stiffens beside me, a heavy sadness passing through him. “I’m Thorne Bi-”

  “I know who you are,” he says.

  My brain jumps into overdrive, and the sadness inside Thorne shifts to something confused. I wrap my hand in his because I know he’s thinking that it can’t be possible. Yet lots of things have turned out to be possible. I escaped. Thorne escaped. This world exists. Stranger things have happened. I force my eyes toward Asher. I can see it in the sweep of his dark hair, the chisel of his jaw, the smile that plays on his lips, and the warmth of his eyes-eyes I know so very well.

  I look in Thorne’s direction. He’s staring at the ground, but I feel his surprise, his doubt, his excitement. “How?” Thorne asks.

  The way Asher stuffs his hands into his pockets is so very Thorne. The look in his eyes, so Kai. Everything about him screams he’s a Bishop. The brother they all believed to be dead is alive and in front of us.

  “It’s a long story,” he says.

  Thorne looks toward Asher. Watches him as he tries to avoid looking at us. We’re all silent, afraid to break the moment.

  “You look like her,” Thorne says finally. And he does. Tanned skin and amber almond-shaped eyes, dark hair, and a softness to his face.

  “I remember her less each day. And I didn’t get to know you at all. Kai, though-I remember Kai.”

  “He’s a good brother,” Thorne says.

  Asher’s eyes flash from the trees and then to me. He looks down at our hands, which I forgot were even entwined. He looks back at Thorne.

  “He’s the best,” Asher says.

  Asher Bishop is right here. The boy who died seventeen years ago is alive. He’s saved us. Thorne’s just met his brother.

  Thorne pulls his hand from mine, and a wall goes up again. He doesn’t want me to know what he’s feeling. I look toward him, but he doesn’t meet my gaze. I wonder how they both got here.

  The short answer, it strikes me, is because of me. My eyes dart back and forth between Thorne and the brother who’s been gone for seventeen years.

  90 DAYS BEFORE ESCAPE

  THORNE HAS BEEN GONE for seventeen days, and the sky has been dark every day since he left. The fisherboats met a storm; no one has heard from them yet. No one knows if they are alive or dead. I know though. I can still feel Thorne-not that I can say anything.

  I’m doing the shopping for Sara the day he comes back, and I feel him before I even see him, as surely as one feels the sun on their skin. When I turn, he’s running toward me. My heart is light, and my body anticipates his touch, fueled by the desire I feel through the connection.

  By the time he reaches me, I can’t control myself. My emotions and his tangle together-one big mess of love and longing. His hair is damp, clothes dirty, shirt sticking to his chest like glue. He smiles-the big, boyish grin that he’s never outgrown-and my heart flops.

  “I thought I’d never see your face again,” he says in almost a whisper. I feel the truth of it, the relief of being here, coursing through his body. The love he has covers me like a wave, and the desire-the strong, strong desire-is the undertow. He’s washed up in it, and I am, too.

  His hands are running up and down my back. My branding is tingling, a mixture of emotions and his hot breath on my skin. Just as I remember the rules for residents about showing affection in public, he forgets. His mouth meets mine. The eggs I carry slip to the ground. I forget everything else right along with him. My hands wander, and my lips enjoy their moment as his fire devours me.

  When he pulls away, it’s not the embers that are still sparking within that worry me. It’s not the fear that I want more of his touch. It’s the people who are staring at us. It’s the look on their faces-filled with warning and worry and shame that we kissed in public. It’s the voice that shouts for us to run. It’s the sound of everything falling apart, like the eggs I just bought now broken under the feet of the Troopers.

  There’s noise outside. Thorne leans against the door, panting with his hair sticking to his face. He touches my cheek and removes it quickly. “I’m so sorry,” Thorne says. “I’m so sorry. I’m-”

  I put my finger to his lips, and his eyes find mine. We broke a rule and everyone saw, and I should be sorry, be scared, but I’m not. There’s a knock at the door, and we look away from each other as Kai comes in at the commotion. He’s out of breath, staring at us, and he doesn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes says he knows we did something wrong.

  My father is standing on the other side of the door, Troopers lined up behind him. He looks between us.

  “Take him away,” Father says. The Troopers grab Thorne’s arms and haul him away. I follow after them, Kai nearby, until my father pulls me by the arm. He studies my face like he doesn’t know me at all.

  “You were warned, Cornelia,” he says. Then he drops my arm and follows the Troopers.

  Kai steps up beside me and rests a hand on my shoulder as I try not to cry. Even without a branding, I can feel his pain as he watches the only brother he has left being dragged away. I don’t speak, unsure of what to say.

  DEADLINE: 11D, 20H, 26M

  SOMEWHERE IN THE OLD WORLD

  THORNE AND ASHER SAT only feet apart all night, and neither of them knew what to say. We left the spot as soon as the sun broke through the sky. If ever there is a time to say things, this is it. Asher’s been dead for seventeen years, a ghost, a reminder of some deep sadness that I never understood. Even when I tried.

  Asher was only six when he died, the same time as their father. Sara never explained, even though it seems she has always been the center of loss. Her husband, her son, her real daughter, my mother, me, now Thorne. The vile taste creeps up my throat. I’ve made it worse for her now-first with me and then with Thorne. Kai is the only one she has left.

  “What happened to you?”

  Asher eyes me from a mirror in the front of the van. “That’s a long story.” Asher’s only twenty-three, but the deep lines on his face make him look worn and tired. In the lighting, I can even make out gray flecks in his hair.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Thorne responds.

  Asher locks his jaw, and the harsh line of it reflects back in the mirror. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt you, and I meant it.”

  He’s spunky like Sara. “Where are you taking us?”

  “Depends. Where are you going?”

  The silence resumes again.
Thorne’s hands are clenched at his side, and I hear the faint sound of his knuckles cracking. I still can’t feel his tension, but with that movement, he confirms the nervousness is there.

  “San Francisco.”

  There’s another beat, long enough that life seems to pass us by. The sun breaks the sky through the branches. “I’m what the Remnants call a Chainer. It’s my job to trade goods for people. Most Chainers do it for the profit. They make all the money and sell anyone to anyone else. They don’t care. Me? I work with the Mavericks to give people a new life. They provide everything I need to make it happen.”

  “A new life?”

  “You’d be surprised how many people are sold every day. That camp you just left? They’re the best in human trade in all the camps. I get people from them all the time. Two weeks ago, I got a young girl— maybe seven or eight,” he says. “Whole family died in a Trooper attack, and other Chainers found her in the desert when they scoped the area. Word got to me, and I took her to a settlement camp on the outskirts of the ocean. She’ll be good there.”

  I touch the green bracelet on my wrist from Delilah. It’s painful to imagine someone her age out there alone. “You saved her.”

  “I don’t know about that. But I did give her a chance. That’s more than most people get out here.”

  “How did you know who we were?” Thorne asks. Asher clears his throat. “I didn’t. I mean, I got word of two people from the Compound traipsing through the landscape and heard lots of ruckus at some of the camps about where they’d go next. They said one was the director’s daughter, and that’s who I came looking for. The Snatcher camp sent out a signal that they had prisoners for trade, and I’m the Chainer who does business with them. I didn’t know I’d find you there until I was outside of the camp. I heard your name on the outskirts from some old guy in a beat-up truck.”