“Say it then,” he said sharply, the tension making his voice loud, angry.
He felt his father stiffen next to him, heard him take in a breath and then slowly let it out. He didn’t look at him, didn’t want to see what was coming on his face.
“Trina… they took her because of me, Brody, not you. They were still watching you after we were gone, and they saw you with her. We made that tape to keep them from killing you then. I just didn’t think you’d run. They thought they lost leverage over me when you did. They knew by then I was pretty convinced that my girls were gone, so they took Trina and brought her to Crylo. I did my best to keep her alive for three years. I didn’t know they killed her until Lancer told me, Brody. I thought I was saving her when I put her on that flier, I really did.”
Brody squeezed his eyes shut against the image of her body on that grass, the white of her dress and all those flowers, Laurel’s flowers around her.
He shook his head hard and felt his father’s hand on his back and he flinched away. “Who were you protecting when you almost killed Lancer and me?” He looked at him, but the man kept his head down still, hiding from him.
“I need to know why I went through that… tell me!” he screamed and stood up, making him stand.
He finally looked at him then, eyes full of water. “I was protecting you, Brody. They knew who you were when you showed up in Crylo, and they would have found a way to kill you, likely in front of me, or worse. They would have also killed a whole lot of people, for good measure. I had to convince them that I wasn’t fighting them anymore, that I was a good, loyal soldier. I knew who Lancer was and that he’d find a way if he could. I just had to let him get to his lab and buy you some time. Only you weren’t supposed to take me with you…. You were supposed to shoot me.” He shook his head, said more quietly now, “I tried my best to get you to do it since. Frankly, I don’t understand why you didn’t just pull the damn trigger after everything. I would have never told you any of this if Lancer didn’t tell me about Trina and that Reston got nuked. I thought it’d be easier on you to just think of me as a monster than this. But you need to know what’s at stake, all of you. You need to know what they are capable of.” He turned away from him, hands behind his back, eyes trained on the tiny sliver of water glistening in the waning sun.
His voice was distant when he spoke again: “When your crew got me on that flier, Loren took what he thought was a tracker out of me, only it wasn’t. It’s a transmitter. That’s how they always knew everything I did and said. They have something on almost everybody in the Council, Brody, some kind of leverage, like they do with the S-Squads. Maybe not to the degree they had with me, but they do. Every time the Council was about to vote on something that would change the way things were for Zoriner populations, they would suddenly change their minds. Every single bloody time. The people behind this group… I don’t know who they are, but you can’t fight them, not unless you’re willing to let an awful lot of people die.” He turned and looked at him, face serious.
“Maybe you are right, maybe we can’t fight them, but we have to at least try. There has to be a way, there always is, and we’ll find it. We have to,” Brody said softly. He was looking at his father’s face, his eyes worried now, the eyes he had when he held Riley to his chest when he was little, and he wanted so desperately to throw his arms around him, only he didn’t trust himself not to fall apart. He took a tentative step toward him, and stopped, not daring to touch him, and suddenly he felt his father’s shaky hand on the back of his head, pulling him in, holding him close, his fingers running gently through his hair, and he let him hold him like that for a long time, and for the first time in far too long he felt completely safe.
His father didn’t say anything, just held him, and after a while, he stepped back from him, looking uncomfortable. “I spent so many years just trying to keep you alive, Brody, I lost my way. I couldn’t let them hurt you, but I never wanted you to live with the guilt of knowing any of this…. I’m so sorry, son, I truly am,” he whispered and dropped his eyes.
He reached over and grabbed him by the shoulders, hard, forcing him to look up, not feeling embarrassed anymore. “I’d rather this than what you tried to do before. After Trina died, everybody was lying to me to protect me, and it just made everything worse. I don’t ever want to go through that again…. I can survive this, I really can. I don’t think I could have survived thinking of you in that way, or pulling the trigger on you.” He let go of him and turned toward the water, neither of them saying anything for a long time after that.
They took their time walking back to the fire. Brody told him that they took Trina back to Waller and where they buried her. And he told him about Laurel and how she was, and that he was pretty sure he loved her, only he seemed to know that already. And about Riley and Ams. And reluctantly, he told him about Lancer, and how he hated him at first for what he’d done, and how he hurt him and that kid in front of him. How he didn’t know about what Lancer had gone through, didn’t know about Telan or any of that, but he knew he screwed up with the kid, Lancer too, that he shouldn’t have done it. But Lancer was like Riley in that way, too bloody decent to hold any of it against him. He felt he needed him to know about all these people he somehow collected, people he felt responsible for people he loved….
And he thought of that wall in the tower in Reston that Stan put all their names on. Crazy Stan who took the thirty seven girls from Crylo to some orphanage on one of their very own fliers and they haven’t heard from him since, and he hoped nobody paid for those girls’ lives with theirs. And it hit him for the first time why Stan erased the horror of what happened to that place from that wall and put their names on it instead.
Nobody was by the fire when they got there, but he didn’t want to go into the flier just yet. He wanted more time alone with this man, even if he wasn’t talking anymore. They sat on the log, staring at the dying embers, silent as ghosts, and after a while his father’s arm was around him, his voice soft - a gentle whisper when he spoke.
“Remember when you killed that dragonfly for Riley and he wouldn’t forgive you for it for the longest time? It’s like that, Brody. We do what we think is right, only somebody always dies or suffers for it, and we find a way to move on, if we can, or we run. But along the way, if we are very lucky, we run into people who make the journey bearable, people who love us, no matter what we’ve done. And if they truly love us, they help keep us decent, even when it’s the hardest thing in the world. They become our anchors…. Your mother was always that for me. I couldn’t afford any friends after the girls were gone, couldn’t afford to risk anyone, but I had her. What you have here, this strange alliance… you are one of the few lucky ones.”
He moved closer to him and put his head on his chest, listening to his breathing, slower now, and smiling at him being here, and him being who he always hoped he was, and at all these people around him being how they were. And thinking, too, how there was one more name he needed to add to that wall in Reston. And that maybe, just maybe, they could do enough to where Telan had a real chance of making it, and where Ella and Drake didn’t have to worry about losing their kids to some experiment. And maybe Riley and Ams could have a family some day, and raise their kids with only the fears of branches breaking under them when they climb the willowy trees.
He could see it so clearly in his head, the way it should be, the way he’d want all their lives to turn out, it was palpable, real, and he knew with absolute certainty that all these people here would do what they had to do to make their journeys worth the memorial of their names on that stupid wall.
But he knew, too, that their fight had just begun in earnest.
Epilogue
Lancer
The kid needed some space, after what he had just heard, so he let him run. Everybody was silent, lost in their own thoughts, all but Laurel. She was sobbing softly into her hands, Ams’ arm around her. Fuller stood in front of them, head down, shadows masking the w
etness on his face. He walked over to him and unlocked the band, not saying anything. Not quite knowing what to say to him.
“Walk with me, Lancer,” Fuller whispered, and started walking into the woods, away from everybody.
They walked silently for a while. Finally, Fuller stopped and leaned on a tree, facing him.
“There isn’t anything else that’ll be useful to you that I know. Loren has all the cities on that screen. I shared the net addresses for the chats on there as well. That’s all the intel I can give you…. I need you to please end it.” Fuller dropped his eyes for a flash and then looked at him again. “Tell him that I love him, if you can. Not now, but someday, when it can’t hurt him anymore. Just tell him that… I’m ready.”
He knew he’d ask him to do this when he took him away from the fire, and hoped the man wouldn’t hate him for not being able to do it now. “I am sorry, Max, but I can’t,” he said softly.
The man’s eyes flashed with anger. “You can. A bullet is much better than I deserve, and you, of all people… you know that. I am not coming out of here, Maxton. I’m asking you, as a soldier, to help me or leave.”
He took a step to him and gripped him by the shoulders. “I asked Riley to shoot me when I first met him. I damn near begged him to, couldn’t live with myself after what I’d done. And that kid, that young kid, made me feel like the biggest coward for it. Running is easy, Max, the easiest thing in the world but you can’t. Brody loves you. He sat by you for hours, watching you sleep, after what I did to you, crying over you. I’ve only seen him cry once before, and that was when he found out you were in Crylo. Your son doesn’t cry, but it broke him, thinking that of you. Maybe you could have done something differently, I don’t know….” He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and let it out. “You asked me who kept me from screaming. His name is Telan. I have a son. I had to give him up to keep him safe. I gave up my son. I don’t know what I would have done, if I were in your place, but I can’t imagine risking my kid for anything. You need to go to that stream, and find him, and you need to tell him that you love him, no matter what it costs you to do that.” He let go of him, stepped back and unhooked the band from his belt, Fuller watching him. He could see the anger on his face and hoped he would forgive him for this someday.
Fuller took a small step to him and lifted his hands for the band. “Do what you need to do,” he said quietly, and it surprised him just how much like his son this man was.
“I don’t want to put this on you. You’re not a prisoner here anymore, so I wouldn’t be doing it for that. I’d be doing it so you don’t hurt yourself, and it feels every kind of wrong to do that to you. I’m not as good at this as Riley, but what I’m saying is, I want you to stay with us and help us fight this somehow. There has to be a way we can do something. And if not, at least help us keep the girls safe and be here for your son.” He stuck his free hand out, looking into the gray-blue eyes, waiting.
Fuller finally shook his head at him, not taking his hand. “I don’t know if I can do what you’re asking, Lancer. Don’t know if I can bear it.”
He locked the band around his wrists and took him back to the fire, Fuller not fighting him, not saying another word to him. He walked him right into the middle of the circle, all eyes on them. “I asked Fuller to stay with us, not as a prisoner, but as one of us. I had no right to do that without talking to all of you first. So I’m asking you now. Fuller would rather I shoot him, so this isn’t him asking. I can’t judge him for trying to keep the people he loves safe, don’t know what I would have done in his place, what any one of us would have done. What I’m saying is, I think he is decent, and I trust him, and I think we can use him. Anyone who has a problem with him needs to speak up.” He glanced at Fuller’s face, noting that his jaw was clenched, but he was keeping his head up. Nobody said or did anything.
Fuller turned to him, eyes down. “I’d like to see him,” he whispered for him alone, and he could tell from the way his face was that he decided he couldn’t stay with them after all, even if all of them were okay with it.
He took him by the arm and walked him toward the stream, not saying anything. He stopped him just as he saw the water and took the band off, Fuller looking at him, surprised. He pulled out his gun, one of the old ones, and handed it to him, the man not taking it, watching him.
“Take it. I won’t be able to do it. None of us will, I think, if it comes to that, so you’ll have to do it, if you need to. I can’t force you to stay, Max. It would be wrong for me to even try. I shouldn’t have before, and I’m sorry for that. I don’t know if I could survive it either, is what I’m saying. I love your son. We all do. I give you my word that I’ll keep him safe, if you don’t come back.”
Max took the gun and tucked it behind his back.
He stuck his hand out, and Max grabbed it with both of his, pressing it hard. “Thank you,” he said very quietly, and quickly walked away from him, following the stream to wherever his Brody was hiding from everybody.
And he hoped that he would come back, that the kid wouldn’t lash out at him, wouldn’t hurt him any more than he was hurting already. He felt a strange kinship for this man, something he hadn't felt for anyone in too long now, and selfishly, he wanted to hold on to it.
Everyone was in the flier when he got back. He sat by the dying fire and waited for a long time, and finally went into the flier. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, trying to force himself to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. He took a large swig of spiked tea, hoping it would help, only it made him feel even more on edge. He couldn’t take being there, surrounded by all these peacefully sleeping people. He opened the door to the clearing and was surprised to see Brody and Max sitting on the log, Max’s arm around the kid. Brody seemed asleep. He watched them for a long time and after a while, Max picked the kid up and carried him into the cave. He was about to go back into the flier when Max came out of the cave alone and started walking away, toward the water.
It was all kinds of wrong to follow him, but he couldn’t help it. He trailed after him, keeping well enough back, and finally, the man stopped and faced the water. He watched him take the few steps to the stream, kneel down and take a few sips of water from it and then wash his face. He moved closer, close enough to where he could see the scars on his back. The scars he gave him. He winced, thinking about it now, cursing himself for not being able to read this man before. Max suddenly stood up and took the gun out, and he ran to him then, screaming at him to please not do it.
The man spun around, glaring at him, gun at his side.
“I am sorry, Max, I truly am… I couldn’t sleep. I saw you with him, with Brody. You can’t… you can’t leave him with this,” he yelled out in a rush. He was standing only a step away from him now, reaching for the gun, looking at his face.
Fuller threw the gun on the sand and turned away, breathing hard, angry. “Are you going to put the band on me again? Or are you just going to tail me from now on?”
He walked around him so he could see his face, Max glaring at him. It didn’t matter that he was angry, not if he could spare Brody the pain of losing him again.
“I think you can survive this, and even if you can’t, you have to find a way to do it. You can’t leave Brody like this, you just can’t, and I know you know that.”
The man turned on him, pushing him hard, shoving him in the chest. “What do you know about it? I am the bloody reason for every awful thing that’s ever happened to him! Do you get that? I couldn’t save a single person he’s ever loved, not one…. How, exactly, is he supposed to get past that? You need to let me do what I need to do. You need to keep your word,” he said, helplessness clear in his voice, and dropped his hands.
Lancer picked up the gun and stuck it into his belt, and then took the band out, feeling every kind of guilty for it. “I’m sorry, Max, but I can’t. Please, don’t fight me on this. I’d rather not hurt you, but I will if I have to,” he said as softly as he could and stepped tow
ard him.
Max shook his head at him sadly and lifted his hands, letting him close the band around his wrists. “I’ll find a way,” he whispered and started walking back to the flier, not saying another word.
He made him sit next to him when they got there and pulled the blanket over him, the man not once looking at him, not moving anything. He let him be, hoping that being around Brody after all these years would help fix the hurt in him, enough to keep him alive until he was all right again.
He got up before even Drake did, the sun barely starting to come up, the last of the night still lying grayly, heavily on the damp grass. He raced into the cave, hoping to get the few minutes with Brody before anybody else got up, before Fuller got up. The kid was asleep, his lips curled into a small smile. He felt bad shaking him awake, looking the way he did, but he had to. Brody got up in one fluid motion, looking at him with concern.
“I’m sorry to wake you, but there is something I have to tell you, and you need to let me.”
The kid just nodded.
“Your father… he wants out, Brody. I had to put the band on him again last night to keep him safe. I don’t know how to help him, don’t think any of us but you can. He doesn’t think you can ever get past all that he did…. He is really hurting, is what I’m saying, and there isn’t a bloody thing I can do to make it any easier on him. He asked me to shoot him last night, before he went to see you, and then when you were asleep he almost did it himself, only I tailed him, so he couldn’t. I’m sorry, kid, but you needed to know. I don’t need to know what happened between you last night or anything. I never even got a chance to ask you how you felt about him being here and I’m sorry for that—”
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 54
