He caught Ella watching him. “It’s not what you think, Riley. It happens sometimes. People just wake up. It wasn’t Stan’s fault, is what I am saying. And at least when he was asleep, it was easier for him than Drake, I promise you, and he was asleep for the worst of it.”
Drake was leaning on the wall away from everybody, his eyes closed. Maybe Ella was right and it wasn’t as bad as it looked for Brody, after all. He nodded to her and went back in.
Laurel was still crying softly. “I don’t think he is asleep…. If you want to talk to him,” she said and ran out of the room.
Riley crouched by his head, watching his face, noting a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Anything I can do, Brody?”
Head shaking. Not asleep then.
Brody looked at him and he could see the pain in his eyes, all dark, no color in them at all. And he knew he was holding it all in because of Laurel. That it would have been easier for him if he didn’t make him bring her here. He would have let himself scream if he needed to, and he looked like he needed to even now.
“Stan is getting us a bottle of something that’ll make it easier. It’ll knock you out or at least take the edge off,” he said.
Brody nodded to him and reached for his hand, squeezing it hard, making his scars hurt. “Make sure she gets some of that, Riley, enough to not feel so bad. That’s why I didn’t want her here, not because I was angry at her. I wasn’t. I just didn’t want her here if something went wrong. Didn’t want her to feel worse than she does already. I am sorry I didn’t just tell you that. Frankly, I don’t know why the hell I didn’t.” And he let go of him.
And when he got up, everybody was in the room again, Stan carrying a bottle of something over to Brody, but he shook his head at him, telling him to give it to Laurel first, and he did. Afterward, everybody passed out on the floor, Drake hugging Ella, Laurel by Brody, Stan snoring softly in the corner.
Riley slid against the back wall and wrapped his arms around his knees, watching them, hoping this doesn’t become a habit. Hoping that he never had to see the inside of this room again.
History Lesson
Drake, May 28, 2236, Reston
It took Stan only a few days to pull up everything he asked him for. Drake was liking this strange man more and more. He hovered over him at the holo screens in the giant tower while the kids were shooting their guns or throwing knives, or whatever Brody was making them do. Brody was supposed to stay put for a week, or so Ella told him, but short of keeping him strapped in there was no way he was doing that, and nobody had the heart to tie that boy down anymore.
He remembered the pain he felt when Ella was cutting into him to get the tag out, and how it took everything for him not to scream then, and he knew it was worse for Brody after he woke up like that, but the kid just bloody took it somehow, not making a sound. There was something in both of these kids, Riley and him, that made them hide whatever pain they were in from everybody, even their friends, and he felt danger in it.
Stan was explaining what he was looking at now, speaking far too fast, as if he had a finite amount of time to get through it before he forgot what he was saying. Drake didn’t recall deciding that it was important for them to know enough about all the Zoriner - Alliance history. He just knew that it was, especially for the girls. Felt that they would need more than just trying to save a few Zoriner kids from what Trina went through to be able to shoot at these people; people who looked like them.
Stan was finally done. He smiled at him thinly, apologetically, as if any part of what he walked him through was his fault, and handed him the screen with the holo embedded into it, so he could explain to the rest of the group what he just learned. He’ll have to do it tonight, after supper, so they’d all have enough time to process it. They all seemed in a rush to go now and it worried him. Ams and Laurel were nowhere near trained enough, but he could tell they were becoming restless. Maybe, it was being in this city that was doing it to them. He hoped that’s all it was.
Brody demanded that somebody take him to that field with all the bones in it, but nobody wanted to go there again, not even Riley, so he finally took him, hoping the kid could take it, and Riley and Laurel both screamed at him for doing it afterward. But he felt Brody had his reasons for asking, so he walked with him, slowly, not wanting to take the flier, and they didn’t say anything to each other the whole way. Brody stopped when he saw the first patch of black grass ahead of him and just stood there looking at it, panting.
Drake put his arm around him, telling him that it was all like that, that they could turn around now and go back, but Brody shook his head and, after a while, kept going farther and farther in, off the path, walking right into the field where all the bones were, and then knelt there in the charred grass looking at it for the longest time, not saying anything, not making a sound. Drake turned away from him, letting him be, and after what seemed like too damn long even for him, he heard his footsteps on the road behind him.
Brody didn’t say a word until they were back in the city again, but he stopped when the houses just started to get taller and looked at him, face serious. “I know how they did it, Drake, what happened to all these people… I think I know how they made them do this. It’s how Hassinger took control of my crew, only with my crew, she used their implants because they have them, so it was easier to just connect through those. What I’m saying is, I think they found a way of basically making everybody have an implant if they need to. They just had to find a way of dispersing a bunch of microscopic transmitters, the same kind they use for the soldier implants, or what Ams and Laurel have in them, and they can control anything then. I talked to Trelix and Loren and they didn’t even remember what they were doing when Hassinger had them like that… It’s like it wasn’t them doing it at all. Only, if they can do this, it doesn’t make any sense for them to still be stealing people or torturing them like they did with Trina. If they could do anything they wanted to any of us with a push of a button, why would they need to do any of the other stuff, Drake? It just doesn’t make sense…”
They picked up the pace some after that and then Brody stopped abruptly and leaned on the fence outside of a house they were passing, looking at him strangely. “I’ll catch up, Drake. I know where I am now. I’ll be right behind you.” Brody put his head down.
Drake could see he was breathing hard, his hands digging into the wood of the fence behind him. He ran over to him, Brody shaking his head, not wanting him to touch him for some reason.
He seemed okay after a few minutes of this, looking up at him, eyes angry. “Why doesn’t anybody ever listen to me anymore? I said I’d catch up, Drake. I would have.” And he wouldn’t talk to him after that.
He told Ella about it, Brody looking in pain like that, but she just smiled at him softly.
“That’s why I wanted him to stay put for a week. It’ll take a bit of time for him to heal, and hiking for however long you did today wasn’t part of the recovery plan. But he’ll be all right. I’m surprised he made it all that way and back at all. I fully expected you to end up carrying him.”
That was yesterday, and he remembered now why he thought of all of this, and what Brody said to him; why it suddenly seemed important. There was a lab in the holo they were looking at earlier with Stan that had something to do with these transmitter things, Neuro-Tech or something written on the door, but the people running it weren’t scientists. They looked military, only not like Brody’s boys, older, and their clothes were different. But they were definitely soldiers. He remembered it now. They would have to try to figure that out with Stan.
Ella made sandwiches for supper and brewed some tea and coffee. Riley must have asked her for some. He was getting addicted to that stuff. They ate in silence at the huge table, less the occasional giggle from the girls. He liked that they could still do that.
Drake connected the holo, stood up, and went through it as quickly and calmly as he could, starting with the wars in 2106, and the economi
c mess that followed. He told them, showing old footage on the holo, how everybody, even the city folk, was suddenly poor, too poor to feed their kids, and everybody was getting desperate. And how there was this man who couldn’t take it anymore, and he collected a small group of people from outside Carthage, farmers mostly, people who were all desperate because nobody in Carthage would trade with them, and they couldn’t keep their loved ones alive. Anyway, they were pissed off, so they set the Council building in Carthage on fire. Blew themselves up in it, too. After that, the governments pushed all the cities to stop trading and started making their food differently somehow.
And he told them how over the following decades, they made it so that nobody who looked like those men could get work anywhere in any of the cities or trade anything…. They were all pushed out and pretty much forgotten for a while after that. He told them about Dr. Groning and how she tried to make it so people couldn’t get pregnant, not unless they really wanted to, and they made every girl in the cities like that, infertile until she was ready, and then they’d give her a different shot to make it okay for her to have a kid. Only, something went wrong, and after a few generations, fewer and fewer of them could have kids at all. And when that happened, the Alliance Council made it illegal for any Zoriner to be with one of their people, because they were scared they were losing their populations already. Only, human nature doesn’t work that way.
He looked over at Ams and Riley at that, smiling, and took a few sips of his tea. “That’s why they made all these walls around their cities and did all the other stuff that you all grew up with— to keep the populations completely separate. But they knew that even that might not be enough. So they spent all these resources for many decades to make the Alliance people believe that Zoriners were a different species, animals, no better than apes, so they didn’t ever feel sorry for anything they were doing to them, but mostly, so no Alliance girl would ever want to be with one of them…”
Riley got up, a strange smile on his face, and started dancing around Trelix and Loren, making monkey noises, scratching himself, staring at them. The boys had their heads down, looking embarrassed.
Drake grabbed him by the neck, not too gently, and turned him around, glaring at him. “What the hell is wrong with you, Riley? These boys are volunteering to give their lives alongside you and you are going to shame them for something they didn’t bloody do? Apologize. Now!”
Riley shook his head, looking him dead in the eyes. “No.”
He grabbed him by the face. “Riley, you will apologize to Trelix and Loren or you’re not coming. I will leave you here with Stan, I swear I will.”
Riley tried to squirm out of his hold, his face tense and hot under his hands. Drake let go of him.
“I was pretty sure Brody was in charge of this whole thing, Drake, not you. Now, if you are done with your lecture, I’d like to get some sleep,” the kid hissed and stepped away from him, walking to the door, not looking at anybody.
Brody ran after him and grabbed his shoulder, turning him around. “Apologize, Riley, or you can’t come. I am in charge, and I won’t let you in the flier with us if you don’t make this right by my crew.” He said it quietly, softly.
Drake could see Riley breathing hard, and then he ran over to where Trelix and Loren were, and they both stood up, keeping their heads down, faces serious.
Riley dropped to his knees in front of them, put his head to the floor as if he were praying to them, and said loudly enough for everyone to hear: “Forgive me, oh lords of the pure skin and blond hair. I shall never again make you uncomfortable for seeing me and my kind as little better than insects. It is only due to my defective genetic makeup that I am too blind to see how superior you are in every way. I beg your forgiveness for—”
He didn’t seem done, but Brody pulled him up roughly by the shirt, and he shut up.
Trelix and Loren didn’t move, but he could see them blushing even from where he was. Brody dragged Riley to the other side of the room, turned him around, and punched him hard in the jaw, knocking him out, and without saying a word to anybody left the room. He made everyone else leave then, even Ams and Ella. He knew the kid was just knocked out, and he wouldn’t need her. He crouched next to him for a long time, trying to think through this, trying to figure out what to do with this kid now. It didn’t make any sense for him to lash out at these boys, of all people. They’ve been good to him this whole time, respectful-good, almost too respectful.
Riley grunted and sat up on the floor and then shakily got to his feet. Drake reached out to hold him, but the kid swatted his hand away and made for the door. He walked around him and leaned against it, blocking it, staring at the face he’s known his whole life and seeing nothing but anger in it. “Spit it out, Riley. You know you can’t fight me and I am not moving until I know what the hell this was. Talk.”
Riley, shook his head, staring him down, not moving.
He let him. He had a lot more patience for this than Riley did. The kid desperately needed to get out of here and go blow off steam shooting at targets, or punching trees, or whatever it was he did when he got like that. He saw his face relax a little bit after a while and he finally talked.
He told him how Trelix came at him with the gun, calling him ‘a darky’ at first, when they got to the Trina clearing, and told him about Brax, and what Brody did to him, and how nobody looked at him that way after that. And what Hassinger said to Brody before she shot Trina the way she did. How she laughed the whole time she was shooting at her as if she saw her as a rabid dog or a bug. And that he didn’t trust any of them not to see him that way now, or Drake, for that matter. He just never put it all together like that before and that it finally made sense how someone could kill all the people in that field.
How he didn’t trust that Ams and Laurel didn’t see him the way all those people in the holo did because of how they were raised, how they lived with it their whole lives. He told him how Ams looked at him, when she first met him, with so much fear in her eyes, and then Laurel staring at him like that, too, only he didn’t think about it then but now, he knew where it came from… And that maybe, the only reason Brody was ever decent to him at all, is that he didn’t know any better, living with them the whole time as one of them but that was Brody, not the rest of them…
Drake put his arm around him, not quite knowing what to say. He walked him over to the couch and had him sit, then crouched in front of him so he could see his face. “I can’t tell you how to feel, Riley, so I won’t try. All I know is you are as wrong as I’ve ever seen you be about all of these people here. Trelix and Loren and the girls. But I have a feeling this isn’t about them at all, and I don’t know where that comes from in you. It’s like you don’t think yourself good enough for anyone to care for you. I don’t know if it’s easier for you that way, given all the people you’ve lost. Maybe you think it is, but it’s not right, Riley. You can’t do this to them, to Ams and Laurel, and your best friend. You just can’t. It’s unfair to all of you….” He got up and turned away from him. “You are free to go,” he said quietly, not facing him again.
He heard the door open and close softly after a while, and he hoped the kid didn’t do any more damage to anybody or himself tonight.
4
The Flight
Brody, May 31, 2236, Reston
Brody planned on avoiding him, didn’t want to see him, didn’t know what to say to him if he did, and thankfully, Riley made it easy for him. He was never at their target ranges or any of the rooms they camped in. He hadn’t seen him at meals for two days now, either, and he was good with it, until Ams, looking frantic, walked up to him first thing in the morning and told him that nobody had seen Riley for two days. That he’s just gone, and nobody went out looking for him, and no matter how bad what he did was, somebody had to at least want to find him again. She had tears in her liquid gray eyes when she said it, and she was right, of course. He didn’t realize Riley wasn’t just hiding from him.
> He grabbed a light go-bag, just in case, and went to the edge of the city, to the bloody field of charred bones. It was the first place he thought of. He could almost picture Riley sitting there in the one place that would make him feel the worst because that’s how he was. He saw his small form from the road and stopped. Riley was kneeling in the grass at the side of the field, not moving, head bowed.
He was still angry at him for what he did to his boys, too angry to want to comfort him, so he walked over and told him in his soldier voice to get up. Riley didn’t move.
“Bloody get up!”
Riley stood after a while and faced him. “They did this, Brody. They made all these people come out to the fire and just walk in, kids and all. They did this because they felt about them the way Brax did about me, the way I think Ams and Laurel did, too, at first. I don’t know how to wrap my head around it right. Don’t know how to trust that your boys aren’t looking at me like I’m not an ape now because they watched you put a bullet in Brax’s head. Or that Ams actually loves me and I am not some kind of an experiment to her; something for her to laugh over supper with her friends when she is older like what those rich girls did to the warehouse kids in Waller….” Riley turned to the field again, his voice quieter now. “There are bones here that were too little to walk on their own. They couldn’t have done it if they thought of them as human, Brody, nobody could have, not to tiny kids… and I don’t know how to be okay with it.” He put his head down, not saying anything anymore.
Brody put his arm around him and started walking him back to Reston, slowly, not wanting to rush him, and suddenly he felt Riley go limp on him as if he was going to black out. He grabbed him by the shoulders, looking at his face, and he could see him sweating. “Riley, when did you eat last?”
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 35
