Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller

by Inna Hardison

  “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. I got carried away, and—” he stopped, looking for a way to say it that wouldn’t make it worse.

  “I look like my mother,” Brandon said. “I can see it on you. Brody, too…. It’s all right. I get it.” He walked over to his cot and sat, his head down.

  Riley crouched in front of him and cut the ties, catching a look of surprise on Brandon’s face. “I’ll tie them before I leave but I won’t do it as hard and at least you’ll have some blood flowing to your hands for a little while.”

  Brandon just nodded. He seemed lost in his thoughts and Riley knew better than to rush him. He waited, counting the tiles on the floor, and the hairline fractures on the drywall after that.

  Finally, Brandon spoke, his voice calm, quiet. “The White Eagles…. My family started it generations ago when things first went bad with the pills or whatever it was that made it damn near impossible for us to have kids. The Alliance Council even back then didn’t want to turn it into any of this; didn’t sit well with most of the members. The few of them did though, the few who couldn’t imagine their descendants not looking like them, I think. One of them was my great great grandfather. He found a few other members who were sympathetic and they started this whole thing. He was smart – an asshole, from what I’ve gathered since – but savvy as politicians go. He knew they needed control in all the right places so they made sure to have their people in every Alliance city, but more importantly, they started making deals with the most corrupt of the officials in Zoriner cities. He believed people would do anything out of fear so he used that to start the propaganda war on Zoriners. You know most of the rest of it. What you don’t know, because nobody does, is that he put it into the Eagles Charter that a member of his bloodline will always serve on their High Council for as long as the organization exists….” Brandon put his head in his hands again, catching his breath.

  Riley let him, not moving, not saying anything.

  “I didn’t know about any of it until my mother reached out to me when I was already at that lab in Reston. Didn’t know anything about my family’s involvement in it. When you let me go then, they came and got me from the lab and took me to this mountain facility. The whole damn place is underground. That’s where I learned all of it. I have an uncle, my mother’s brother, and he is there now – I’m told in charge – only he is a raging alcoholic and nobody trusts him to live very long. He is largely ignored. That’s why it’s been quiet lately. If they manage to get rid of him, I’m supposed to take his place on the council. I don’t know if they can track me in any way but they have tech I’ve never seen before. They’ve been kidnapping scientists for a very long time and they’re not the kinds of people very many can say no to. They find a way to own you, is what I’m saying. Anyway…. I can keep going but none of it is going to help Brody. You can go to the council and tell them that I will give them every detail I can on all of it. It should be worth something. Enough to let your friend go. I won’t do it unless they release him, and do it so he walks away from this stupid trial with his honor intact.”

  Brandon stood and put his hands out for the ties, nodded to him.

  Riley tied them as softly as the metal would allow. “We need to scan you, make sure you don’t have anything they can track on you.”

  “I know,” Brandon said and smiled at him, a small smile that disappeared as quickly as it came. “Brody told me it’s not genetic … how she was, you know? That I'm not going to be like her because it doesn’t work that way,” he swallowed hard, “only I think in some ways it does, and I am likely how she was in those ways, but I’m trying my best not to be.”

  Riley winced at the thought of it, living with something like that for however long it’s been for this man. “I told him that. That it wasn’t genetic. A long time ago. But even if I was wrong on that, I learned something here a little while ago. I always thought that we were basically wired a certain way and after all the wiring is finished, at whatever age that happens for each of us, we’re the kind of person we’d always be. We might change some habits here and there, little things, but fundamentally, I didn’t think people changed all that much. I met someone recently who proved me wrong…. So either way, I don’t think you’re going to be like her. Not unless you want to.”

  Brandon dipped his head, his face serious. “Tell Brody I know he lied to me,” he said quietly, “Laurel told me. I’m not angry at him for it. I’m just glad I couldn’t pull the trigger. You were there that day, weren’t you?”

  He nodded, not wanting to talk about it, hoping he wouldn’t have to. Brandon must have sensed it, not asking anything for a while.

  “I killed her, didn’t I? The girl he loved,” he asked in a strained voice.

  “No, Brandon. Your mother killed her. She used you to help her do it but you didn’t kill her.”

  Brandon nodded and turned away from him without a word.

  Riley watched him for a beat, wishing there was something else he could say, but of course, there wasn’t anything. He left quietly, grateful that this sham of a trial of Brody was over, that there’d be no sentencing but knowing, too, that they underestimated this group they’ve been fighting. That they were terribly outnumbered and outmatched.

  15

  Hearts Of Giants

  Drake, July 3, 2244, Reston.

  They’ve poked and prodded at Brandon for days and still couldn’t find anything and he didn’t trust it. It didn’t seem likely that they’d not be tracking him in some way. They just had to wait for Stan to come back from whatever lab he was at, and that wouldn’t happen for another few days. He was surprised, too, that Brandon let them do all of it without a question or even the mildest protest.

  Drake didn’t care to see him but Brody has been spending all his time in this building and he needed to talk to the kid, only Brody wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t even look at him. He found him sitting with his head in his hands in the narrow hallway outside Brandon’s room last night. Drake slid down the wall next to him and finally told him why he said what he said to him, why he felt he had to do it that way. It wasn’t the entirety of the truth of it, of course, but he couldn’t tell him the other thing, not yet. Maybe not ever. Brody let him talk, not once lifting his head. Drake put his hand on the kid’s arm afterward and he let him, not fighting him, still not saying anything, and that was the worst thing of it – Brody shutting him out like that.

  He’d be at the meeting this afternoon, they all would be, going over everything Brandon told Brody and Loren. Drake steeled himself for whatever was going to happen, taking the long way to Riley’s house.

  Everybody seemed to already be there when he came in, crowding around the table. Brody didn’t look up, his eyes trained on the screen in front of him. Drake sat next to Riley and waited for someone to start this thing, only nobody did, and he noticed for the first time that Lancer was missing.

  Drake got up and walked over to Brody, needing to just get it over with. “We’re going for a walk, Brody. Get up,” he snapped at him.

  He did, still not looking at him.

  Drake grabbed him roughly by the arm and shoved him down the street, a few blocks away from Riley’s. “We’re going to figure this out right now, whether you want to or not. We’re all supposed to be working together and I can’t do it like this. So we can deal with it however you want to but it gets settled now,” he said as soon as they stopped walking. He knew he sounded angry. He was, too, and it didn’t matter to hide it anymore.

  Brody glared at him, clasped his hands behind his back, and didn’t say a word.

  “All right…. What do you want? I’ve known you too damn long for us to be like this. I get that what I said to you hurt you but you can’t possibly think that I meant it, only for some stupid reason, I think you do. So I need to know what it would take for you to feel that I’m sufficiently punished for wounding your bloody pride. Tell me!”

  Brody shook his head and he couldn’t take it. He g
rabbed him hard by the shoulders, shaking him, screaming into his face that he better spill it. That they weren’t leaving here until he had.

  Brody let him, hands still behind his back, nothing moving on him at all.

  Drake finally shoved him away and tried to get his breathing under control, feeling more enraged than he remembered being in a long time. “All right,” he said very quietly, took his weapons belt off and threw it on the ground at Brody’s feet, “whatever it’ll take for you to feel that we’re even. I don’t care what it is. Do it. I bloody order you to, as your senior here!” Drake put his hands behind his back and took a few steps to the kid.

  Brody bent down, picked up the weapons belt and flung it at him, then turned around and started to walk away.

  Drake chased him, grabbed him by the neck, and spun him around, pissed off. “I did not release you, soldier. You do not get to walk away until I do!” His voice shook from all the anger in him.

  “Are you going to try me for insubordination?” Brody asked quietly, without any humor in his voice, lifting his hands out in front of him. “Do it. If I am not free to go, make it official. Otherwise, we’re done.” He looked at him with so much hatred Drake blanched.

  “You’re free to go,” he whispered and turned away.

  He listened to Brody’s soft footsteps disappearing behind him for a beat, took the few steps to where his belt was, and dropped to his knees in the dirt, fighting the overwhelming sadness at losing this kid he’d known his whole life. He closed his eyes and waited, and finally when he could breathe normally again, he got up and put his belt on, not turning around, afraid that Brody was hiding in the shadows a block or two away, watching him. He pulled out his council screen, typed in I resign, and crushed the screen into the dirt. They’d likely try to talk him out of it but this was all he could do now to make it right.

  He walked slowly to an old clearing he liked, the one place nobody but him ever went to. He felt drained, empty, walking by memory alone, barely noticing the spiderwebs sticking to his face and hands or the sharp, metallic smell of an impending thunderstorm on the unseasonably cool breeze. He stopped deep in the clearing next to an old oak and sprawled out under it, closed his eyes, and let himself drift off.

  The first cold drops of water hit his face and hands after a while, sharp and small as pinpricks but growing larger, colder. He thought dimly of getting up and running back to the city but couldn’t bring himself to so much as open his eyes; didn’t have the will to do much of anything. He lay still for a long time letting the water lash his skin, flashes of lightning burning purples and indigos into his eyelids, and listened for the distance between them and the cracks of thunder. He counted the seconds by habit but he knew even as he was counting that he wouldn’t be able to move from this spot for a long time and he found it strange that it didn’t bother him.

  He drifted in and out of sleep as if suspended by the very force of nature that was making him feel incapable of moving even if to keep himself alive, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard a faint whisper of his name, someone calling out to him through all the noise, but he couldn’t place the voice or where it was coming from, and he felt too drained to want to find it.

  He heard a strange crack far too close to his ear. It didn’t sound like thunder, and then his face was burning. Drake opened his eyes, blinking all the water out of them, and they focused on Brody’s face in the wetness above him, Brody’s hand slapping him across the face, his lips moving, saying something that didn’t register. He closed his eyes again not wanting to see that, telling himself his mind was going and it was all a bad bloody dream, and that when he finally wakes up, he wouldn’t be lying in a puddle of cold water under this tree, and Brody wouldn’t look at him with hatred in his eyes. But this phantom Brody wouldn’t leave him alone. It kept slapping his face, hard, shaking him, and screaming at him in the voice of the kid he lost, “Please, wake up. Come on, Drake, wake up. Bloody look at me!”

  He made himself open his eyes again and there he was, Brody, looking much too real and pissed off or scared. At least he wasn’t hitting him anymore.

  “Can you move?” Brody asked, his voice sounding strange, frantic.

  He didn’t know if he could. Didn’t think about it yet. Didn’t know if he could talk either and he didn’t want to try and not be able to.

  Brody grabbed him by the arm with his one good hand and helped him up, and then he was standing, feeling dazed, shaky. He put his head down, embarrassed, remembering that he was there because of Brody in the first place. That he ran to get away from what he’d done to him and the last thing he wanted was for him to be there now.

  “Please, look at me, Drake.”

  He needed him gone. He was awake enough to know that. “Go, Brody. Please, go. I’ll find my own way back,” he whispered without lifting his head.

  Brody’s hand gripped him by the shoulder and he felt the ache, the sadness come back in a flood. He slid down the trunk of the tree and put his head into his hands, waiting for Brody to go, and when he knew for sure that he hadn’t moved, begging him to please just leave.

  “I can’t,” Brody said softly. “You’ve been out here for hours and I need to get you back. I didn’t mean for it to be me who found you. We all went looking for you when you took off like that. Please, just let me take you home.” It was a plea, his voice strained.

  Drake shook his head without looking at the kid. He just wanted him gone.

  “All right,” Brody whispered after a little while, and he felt him sit next to him, not saying anything after that.

  The rain kept running over both of them in biting, cold waves but the lightning stopped. He was shaking, the cold and the wetness finally getting to him. He leaned his head back against the bark and opened his eyes, watching the water run in uneven streams on slick dark branches and trunks of the trees in front of him, snaking down the grooves like eels.

  He could hear Brody breathing next to him and he felt bad for him being here like this, freezing and soaked, hurting again because of him. He glanced at him and the kid was watching him, his eyes dark gray in this light. He dropped his head, not wanting to look at his face.

  “I won’t try to talk to you again so you don’t have to worry about that. You should also know that I resigned so I don’t have any seniority over you. You’re free of me, is what I’m saying. Now, please, go home,” he said just loudly enough to cut through the rain and closed his eyes. He felt more than heard Brody take a sharp breath but nothing after that and he didn’t think he could take much more of him sitting there next to him, hurting. He wanted to lash out at him just to make him leave but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, couldn’t even bring himself to look at the kid.

  He felt Brody move after a while and thought he’d finally left, that it was over. He stood then and opened his eyes, Brody’s burning into his. Brody’s whole body was coiled up tightly as if for a fight.

  “It’s all right, Brody. Go.”

  Brody took a step toward him and Drake froze, afraid, shaking his head at him, knowing that he’d fall apart if he tried to touch him.

  He didn’t. He just stood in front of him, much too close, staring at him. “Swear to me that you didn’t think that of me, not for a second, Drake. Swear to me on your honor that you didn’t mean what you said to me.”

  “I swear, on my honor, on my life, on Ella’s life, on anything you want. I never once thought that of you,” he said, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Brody’s. “I never could think that of you. Now, I’ve never asked you for anything in my life, and I never will again, but you need to let me be. I am begging you to please let me be.”

  Brody didn’t move, just stood still looking at him, ignoring the water running down his hair and his face. “I’m going to hug you, Drake. Try not to kill me for it,” he whispered after too long of the silence between them.

  He shook his head at him, begging him with his eyes to not embarrass him, but the kid ignored him and w
rapped his arms around him, breathing like it was hurting him to do that, whispering to him that he was sorry over and over again.

  “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. This one is all me. I earned every bloody bit of it,” Drake said, keeping his eyes down, suddenly grateful for the rain.

  Brody was watching him, he knew, could feel it, but he was too drained to fight him.

  “I’m soaked and freezing. If you promise not to hug me again, you can walk me home,” he finally said.

  Brody took him by the arm without a word and guided him back on the trail.

  They walked in silence all the way to his house. Ella looked like she’d been crying for hours when she met them at the door, her face fragile. He pushed Brody inside and went to find them some dry clothes to change into. Ella hovered over the stove heating water and food while they changed. When they were both dry, she made them drink steaming hot spiked tea and fed them. And finally, she kissed Drake softly on the lips, nodded to Brody, and then let them be.

  Brody’s eyes were down again when Ella left them. “I know you hate him. I’m not sure why exactly, but I can see it on you every time you look at him. What I did to him before … I would have killed him I think. I hadn’t thought of it in years, of how I was with him—” he shook his head, guilt written all over his face when he looked up at him again. “I think he knew even then that I was swinging the knife at him because of something his mother did. It’s like in his own way he was already paying for it and he was okay with it…. I don’t know why he didn’t shoot me, Drake. It doesn’t matter. I owe him for from before, for what I did to him then. I think I’ll always owe him for that.”