The Choice

by Third Cousins

  CHAPTER 4

  Nathan

  I was happy to give my life in exchange for Sarah’s father being released. I wasn’t lying about that. I wasn’t lying about the fact that it gave my life some purpose. But that would only become a purpose realized, a dream come true, if the city actually released her father. I loved Sarah’s hope about it. I loved the fact that she truly believed that handing me over would free her father from his life of imprisonment, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe in her dream.

  I’d brought it up to her before. I tried when we’d first left Natasha behind, but she’d been so closed off that she’d shut down the conversation straight away. We knew each other better now. We’d talked more. I wondered whether perhaps, she’d be willing to listen to me without putting up her walls.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said, when she shifted under her blanket and I realized that she hadn’t fallen asleep yet.

  Her body rolled over, so that she was facing me. The moonlight was starting to dip below the windowsill, but I could still see the tired strain in her eyes, as she looked at me. “What’s up?”

  I wondered whether I should just let her sleep. The conversation I wanted to have with her was heavy. We didn’t have time for me to be waiting for the perfect moment, though. We didn’t have time for me to approach the subject carefully. We were going to be in the city in a day, which meant that most of the day would be dedicated to walking. “It’s about your father.”

  I waited for her to roll over or to shut me down, but she didn’t. She just blinked and waited for me to continue. “I’m happy to walk through those gates with you. I’m happy to hand myself over so that you can be with him again. But why are you sure that’s what will happen? Are you sure that they will free him?”

  She didn’t say anything straight away. She just sat up and pulled the blanket over her shoulders. Her legs slowly pulled inwards towards her body, until she could rest her chin on her knees, which she did, before she turned to look at me.

  “I’m not sure,” she said honestly, and I was struck by her unexpected words. “How could I be sure? The only thing that I have is hope. It’s the only thing that I’ve ever had. You had your mom taken from you and that is the cruellest torment a child must face, but if she had survived, if she had been taken, would you have been able to give up on her? Would you have been able to walk away if you knew, there was even a slight chance of being able to free her?”

  She was right. I would never have been able to walk away from my mom knowing that there was a chance to save her. “What about the lives you’ve exchanged for him, though? How many people has it taken to free him?” I asked. I wasn’t stern. I kept my voice gentle, so that she knew I wasn’t trying to have a go at her.

  She looked down at the floor. I could tell that she was thinking. She looked back up and her eyes caught mine. It was only for a split second, before she moved them quickly towards the back of the room, but I could see the deep shame within them.

  “You’ll be the one hundredth person that I’ve taken back to the city,” she admitted.

  “Wow,” I said before I could stop myself. “Why was the price so high for him?” I wasn’t a bounty hunter, but I knew that they made a good salary. A hundred people would be the equivalent of a small fortune in gold.

  Sarah shrugged. “It’s just the price they put on his head. I don’t even know why he got arrested in the first place. I don’t remember any of it. I was just a kid.”

  That seemed pretty messed up. “How old were you when he was taken?”

  She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I was eight or nine, I think.”

  “He was taken during the resistance? Was he an old worlder?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said and she sounded frustrated. “They haven’t let me see him since they locked him up. They haven’t told me anything about him either. All I know is that I need to pay off his debt, so that he can be free.”

  “So, you can’t even be sure that he’s alive?”

  “Why would you say that?” Sarah’s voice was curt. I could tell that I’d stepped over the line. I could see the hurt in her eyes and the anger spreading across her face. “What a shitty thing to say. He’s alive. I know he’s alive. He has to be, so can we just drop it?”

  I nodded, but she didn’t see me. She was already lying back down on the floor. She turned her back to me and I couldn’t see her face.

  I followed her actions and lay down. It felt cold against my back, but that didn’t matter. I knew that it wouldn’t be something that would stop me from falling asleep.

  Sarah’s gentle breaths were the only sound in the room. The howling wind had stopped at some point during our conversation and I was thankful for that.

  I listened to the sound of her breathing getting deeper, until I was sure that she was asleep and then I closed my own eyes. Sleep came quickly, but not before my mind showed me the hurt look in Sarah’s eyes again in the ghostly image behind my eyelids.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sarah

  We’d stayed up far too late and as a result we’d slept for far too long. The sun was already well up in the sky when I opened my eyes. I sat up straight away. I didn’t have time to let sleep gently fall away from me.

  I nudged Nathan, who was still sleeping beside me. “We need to go,” I said, standing up and pulling the blanket I’d been using together, so that I could put it in my bag. “We over slept.”

  “I guess we needed the sleep,” Nathan said, as he stretched his arms above his head, as though he had all the time in the world to wake up.

  I kicked him gently with my foot, so he would start moving faster and he took the hint and stood up. “A lot of ground to cover today, huh?” he asked, as he folded his own blanket and passed it over to me.

  “Enough to keep us busy.” I pulled my bag closed and threw it over my shoulder. We had about twenty miles to cover before the sun went down. As long as we did that, then we’d be at the gates before lunch the next day.

  The thought of going to the gates stopped me in my tracks. A heavy feeling settled in my stomach and for a moment I found it hard to move. It had never been my plan to get attached to Nathan. I had never intended on liking him. I had never intended on asking him questions about his camp or answering them about my father, but we’d somehow found ourselves in that situation and this was the result. I didn’t want to hand him over.

  I pulled open the heavy door that creaked under my touch and waited for Nathan to walk through it. He took slow and tired steps, which fed the seeds of my frustration. “You need to hurry up,” I told him, as I pulled the door closed behind us, so that it looked undisturbed. I started walking through the village so that we could make our way out from the other side.

  We’d slept for perhaps six hours, but it had been enough for my body to totally energize. I could feel the strength in my strides, as I took them. I could feel the way my feet were pushing against the ground beneath them, as they propelled me forwards. I kept the good pace and refused to slow for Nathan, who was stumbling behind me.

  “Can, we, just, stop, for, a, minute?” Nathan called out breathlessly.

  I sighed with frustration and stopped on the spot, so that he could catch up with me. We’d been walking up a steady incline for about a half hour and I could feel sweat dripping down into my cleavage, but I was ready to keep on walking.

  “I just need to catch my breath,” he added when he’d reached me. He bent over and started to pant heavily.

  I watched him. It took him a couple of minutes before he could stand straight again. When he did, his cheeks were still red, but his chest had stopped convulsing. His eyes caught mine. I wanted to turn away from him, but I couldn’t.

  “We need to go,” I said, as I tried to break the moment that had started to creep all around us. I could feel the heavy shift in the atmosphere, as his eyes slid down to my lips.

  He nodded. “I know.” He didn’t move though. He kept his eyes on my face. They w
ere drifting between my eyes and my lips, as though he couldn’t quite decide which were better. He took a step forward, but I could tell that it wasn’t an indication that he was ready to start walking.

  He was close to me. I could feel the disturbance in the air from his breathing. His eyes had become fixed on mine. I guess my lips just couldn’t hold his attention in the same way. “What are you doing?” I asked. But I knew exactly what he was about to do and I knew how much of a bad idea it was.

  He didn’t say anything. He just brought his lips down onto mine in a gentle, ocean lapping the shore kind of way. I wanted to pull back. It was my first reaction. I could feel the muscles in my neck stiffening as they got ready to, but the warmth of his lips. The taste of mint on his breath that cooled everything back down. I couldn’t. I couldn’t pull away from that.

  The kiss lasted longer than it should have done. We didn’t have time to waste. We were still in the heart of the jungle. We were still in the feeding grounds of the creatures which had been born from nightmares.

  None of that mattered though, even after the kiss had finished. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. I couldn’t take another step, knowing that it would bring us closer to saying goodbye forever.

  “I don’t want to hand you over,” I admitted, when he took a step away from me and the breeze broke through the heat we were making together. “I don’t think I can hand you over.” My head was shaking. I was trying to imagine actually doing it. I was trying to image actually standing at the gates as the guards took him away, but I couldn’t.

  “You have to.” His voice was forceful. I could tell that he meant what he said. I could tell that he had already made his peace with the sacrifice he was going to be making.

  “I can’t,” I said again. “What if you’re right? What if my father isn’t even alive? What if he’s someone who isn’t worth saving? How could I live myself, knowing that I’d handed you over?”

  He frowned at me. “You’ve handed ninety-nine people in before me. What makes me so special? Why should I be the person you spare?”

  I wanted to tell him. I wanted to scream it at him. I wanted to jump up and down, and wave my arms around while yelling his name at the top of my lungs, but I couldn’t.

  I let my eyes fall to the ground. I shrugged. “This is just different,” I said without really explaining anything.

  CHAPTER 6

  Nathan

  I could see the torment in Sarah’s eyes. She meant what she said. She didn’t want to hand me over to the city.

  “If I were to walk away, what would you do?” I asked, although I was pretty sure that I already knew the answer.

  She looked up at me. Her dark hair flying around her face, as the breeze played gaily with it. “I’d find someone else to take your place,” she said and I could see the realization dawning in her eyes.

  She knew that I wouldn’t allow that to happen. She knew that I wasn’t about to exchange my life for somebody else’s. “You’re going to make me take you, aren’t you?” The look in her eyes was painful for me to see. I wanted to take her head in my hands and whisper that it would all be okay, but that was a promise I couldn’t make.

  “You know that it’s how it must be.” I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her small waist. I could hear her breath getting caught in her chest. The soothing whispers I wanted to share with her were screaming in my head.

  Why shouldn’t I comfort her? Why shouldn’t I tell her that everything might work out? For her it might. There was a chance, no matter how small, that her father would be released to her.

  She stepped back away from my arms. Her eyes looked red. I could see the intense sparkle that only come when tears are just behind them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must seem crazy to you.”

  I could tell from the awkward way she was standing that she’d never broken down in front of another person before. I stepped forward and put my arms back around her. I couldn’t lie to her. I couldn’t tell her that everything would be okay, but I could be there for her. I could be there for her, until I couldn’t be there any more.

  We stood silent and still. After a time Sarah’s arms reached around my waist and settled there. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but every so often I could feel her grasp on my shirt tightening, as though she was afraid to let go. It was almost unbearable. Sarah was the most complicated person I’d ever met. It seemed that every time I thought I understood her, something would change and I’d realize that nothing I had previously thought was right. She was mysterious in a tantalizing and un-ignorable type of way.

  “We need to start walking,” Sarah said finally, pushing her body away from mine. The cold hit me instantly. “We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover.” Her eyes were hard. I could tell that she was trying to bite back against whatever she was feeling inside.

  I nodded. “I think I can walk again,” I said with a small smile. My legs were still burning with fire that had been imported straight from hell, but I knew that we couldn’t hang around any longer. She had to hand me over. She had to see whether she could get her father back. I couldn’t stay in her life any longer than had ever been planned, because it would be too painful for her.

  It wasn’t just her though. It wasn’t just Sarah who would feel the pain. It was just that my pain didn’t matter compared to hers. It never would in my eyes.

  She started walking and I followed. My eyes were fixed on her hair. It fell about half way down her back and bounced with every step forward that she took.

  I breathed deeply. The air was heavy with condensation, rising from the damp ground beneath us. I couldn’t see the sun because of the trees, which had thickened since we left the small village we’d stayed in the night before. The trunks of the trees had become the covered with thick vines, which crept down and across the floor.

  I tried to keep up with Sarah. She kept striding ahead and I kept falling over the vines and fallen branches. At one point I was sure that I could hear her sniggering, as I fell for the third time in an unfortunate space of time. I could feel my knees stinging from where the rough ground had cut into them. My palms were dirty from where I’d put them out to break my fall. My skin felt sticky with hot sweat that had been left to dry.

  I was relieved when the air started to cool down. It meant that we would be stopping to rest soon. It meant that I could take the heavy weight of my body from my legs, which were almost crying over what I was forcing them to do.

  Sarah and I hadn’t spoken since the last time we had stopped. I wasn’t even sure whether there was anything left to say. I knew how she felt and I was sure that she knew how I felt too. Our feelings though, didn’t change the situation. Our feelings didn’t stop her father from being imprisoned.

  The situation reminded me of Natasha. When she had been younger, she’d developed a crush on a boy from the farming town. She’d known from the start that they could never be together, but that hadn’t stopped her from obsessing over him. That hadn’t stopped her from living out an entire alternate future in her mind where they could be together. That was what it was like for Sarah and me. We both knew that something fantastic could happen, but at the same time we knew that it never would.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sarah

  I stopped. We’d been walking all day and we needed to rest. We’d managed to cover the ground that I’d had set out for us. I was sure of that. The temperature had dropped and the wet patches on my top had turned icy cold against my skin. The trees were thick around us and I knew that we were in as good a place as any to rest for the night.

  “I’m sorry, but there are no brick walls tonight,” I said dryly, putting down my bag. I pulled out the blankets we’d had the night before and the rest of the dried jerky that I had left. “Do you want something to eat?”

  Nathan nodded and took half of the dried jerky sticks, before sitting down on the ground. He looked around him. “I’m not sure whether it’s an upgrade or a downgrade,” he joked and then
started to gnaw on the food in his hand.

  “I guess that depends on whether we get eaten through the night,” I said, shrugging. I smirked at the worried look that spread across Nathan’s face. He’d been handling everything so well that I’d forgotten he wasn’t used to the kind of life he was currently living. “I’m joking,” I said, so that he could start to calm himself down.

  “I knew that,” he said, shrugging, but I knew that he was just trying to cover his very real fear.

  “Well, I’m joking about you being eaten. There’s still stuff out there, but I’ll look after you,” I said with a wide grin. My stomach wound still felt bad, but I was pretty sure that I could face down anything that might want to take us on.

  I spread the blanket out on the floor and sat down on it. He shook his head at me and finished the jerky. “What are you going to do, when you’re handed over?” I asked, because I couldn’t help myself.

  “Do you really believe that we get a choice?” he asked with a surprised expression on his face.

  “Okay, if you do get a choice, what will you choose?” We didn’t have the time to start talking about whether the city could be trusted.

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “I think that you should accept the chip. If Natasha has been working on killing them all, then I don’t see how you could make any other choice.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  The breeze was gentle, but it was enough to disturb the branches which would have been otherwise blocking out the night sky. I could see a scattering of stars shining above us, even though the slice of sky I could see was only tiny compared to the infinite space it really offered. I thought about the light coming from the stars. It was fire. It was the destruction of the star, which burned against the night and looked so beautiful. It seemed strange that a star’s destruction could be considered so universally beautiful.