Brandon stayed where he was, wishing for whatever this was to just be over, so he could breathe normally again, for however long he’d have left.
“Stand up. There is something I need to ask you, and I’d rather not do it like this,” Loren said sharply.
He got up, slowly, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Loren’s.
The man took a step toward him, his face uncomfortably close, and took him by the wrists as if to keep him from running. “I need to know if you want to do this because of what your family has done or because you are ashamed of how you are. I need to know that before I stick a bloody bomb in you, and I need you to swear to me that you’re telling me the truth.”
Brandon blanched and dropped his eyes, couldn’t help it. Loren waited, not moving, not letting go of his hands.
He forced himself to look at him again. “Both,” he whispered and wrenched his hands away, stepping back, Loren letting him.
“I can’t do what you’re asking then. I am sorry, but I can’t. We’ll find another way,” Loren said in a surprisingly soft voice, then turned away quickly, abruptly, and pulled his shirt back on, as he headed for the door.
“How did you know?” he called after him.
Loren stopped and faced him. “What are you really asking? You know how I knew.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” he swallowed, looked at the man’s face. He wanted to ask him if there were others like them, if Loren had somebody and if it was all right here be with someone. If he could maybe stop hiding someday, but he didn’t feel he had the right to ask any of it of this man.
“Whatever it is, Brandon, I will tell you, if I can. And I won’t lie to you,” Loren said quietly, took a few steps closer to him.
“It doesn’t matter…. I just didn’t think there were any like me here, anywhere maybe.” He walked over to the bed, looked at Loren over the shoulder. “I’d like to stay here for a little while. Alone if that’s all right.”
Loren silently dipped his head and left.
Brandon stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. He needed a bit of time with all of this, needed to think through what he said to him. He drifted off, enjoying the silence in this room, the strange quietness of it. Someone was shaking him awake, so he opened his eyes and Brody was staring at him. He sat up, realizing that he never put his shirt back on and that it was far too late for him to cover up. Brody handed him his thermal without a word and turned away from him.
“What did he do to you?” Brody asked after a few moments, facing him.
“He didn’t. He was going to put the explosive into me, but he didn’t. In his own head, he was right not to. I can’t tell you any more than that.” He got up and walked to the door, Brody trailing behind him silently. “I won’t run, Brody. Not without telling you and saying goodbye, so you don’t need to tail me. I’m going for a long walk and I’d rather you didn’t follow me, not any of you.” He reached for the door.
“All right,” Brody said simply, and that was that.
Nobody was in the lab or outside the building when he got there. He walked to the place by the water Brody took him to that night, and it took a long time to get there, long enough for him to feel tired and hungry. He smelled the river before he saw it, cool and fresh, smelling entirely unlike the lakes he was used to. He stripped and waded in, letting the water swirl warmly around him. He wished he had learned to swim, but the few times he tried when he was little, he almost drowned, and he never found the courage to risk it again. He was pretty sure he had it now, only he didn’t know what his body was supposed to do to stay on top of the quickly moving soft liquid, and he was too embarrassed to ask anyone to teach him.
He dunked his head in the water and then stood still, enjoying the feel of the silky wetness on his skin, letting his hair dry with all the river smells in it. He felt someone behind him and spun around, not the least bit surprised to see Loren standing on the bank, smiling at him. He was sufficiently far away and covered up to his neck with the dark water, but he still felt exposed, and he was angry at this man for following him.
“What does it take in this place to have some bloody privacy?” he snapped at him.
Loren took a step to the water, still smiling, amused for some reason. “Knowing how to swim, for one. Brody told me you’d likely come here. He did mention that you didn’t want to be followed, so it’s not his fault, it’s mine.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “So Brody assumed I would come here to drown myself?”
Loren shook his head. “No, Brandon. He assumed, correctly, that something happened between us, and that it was left unresolved.” He sat on the bank, watching him, not smiling anymore.
“I’m completely naked. Can I please have a moment to put my clothes on?”
Loren got up and walked away without a word.
Brandon trusted him not to look, but he still dressed quickly, by habit, his thermal clinging wetly to his chest and back, making him uncomfortable. Loren was making a fire well enough away from the water, so he waited until he had a decent flame going and then sat down next to it, watching the other man from across the flames.
“I’ve already seen you naked. When I had to scan you. We knocked you out for the few things we had to do.”
He blushed, embarrassed, and then suddenly felt every kind of angry at this man. “You should have told me. You should have told me how you were before you did any of that.” He stood and walked over to him, Loren standing too now, looking uncomfortable, but not hiding.
“I know. I never had to tell anyone before, not really, and I didn’t know how to do that with you. I didn’t mean to pry or anything, I swear, but there was nobody else who could do it, not until Stan got back,” Loren said very quietly.
“It’s all right,” he said, knowing all too well how it was to feel like that. He put his hand on Loren’s arm and the man froze, his head going down. “I’m not angry at you, not for that.” He went back to the other side of the fire and sat there staring at the flames, ignoring the man in front of him.
He was deathly tired, so he closed his eyes and let himself drift off, images of the boy he loved slowly coming into focus behind his eyelids: Keran standing against that wall with all the red seeping through the stark white shirt, smiling at him in that way he had, and then falling, and suddenly looking so very small, so kid-like. He remembered screaming something then and the other kids laughing at him for it…. He felt someone’s hands on him and jerked his head up, awake now, Loren lifting him up by the shoulders, asking him something.
“You all right?” Loren's voice finally registered as words.
He nodded.
“Who is Keran? I’m sorry … you screamed his name when you went wherever you just went. You’ve done it before, too.”
He didn’t want to go through telling that story again, not to him, of all people, maybe not to anyone. He shook his head, and Loren let go of him, making him feel cold where his hands used to be. He faced him, wishing suddenly that his hands were still on him. “He was the only boy I ever loved, Loren. They killed him for it. Killed him for protecting me,” he blurted out. Loren nodded just once, an understanding or acknowledgment, and he was grateful for that. Grateful that he didn’t have to deal with any apologies.
“Why did you really follow me here?” he asked, looking at this strange man he never really noticed before as if he saw him for the first time. He wasn’t pretty, not in the way Keran was. His face was square-jawed and hard, but his eyes were vulnerable light-blue fisherman’s eyes. Nothing cold in them, nothing of the soldier he was. He waited for a long time, Loren not saying anything, just looking at him, putting him on edge.
“All right then. I’ll buy your guilt at having seen me naked without me knowing. You’re forgiven. You should go,” he whispered, suddenly wanting to run his fingers through this boy’s hair, wanting to touch him in a way he hadn’t touched anyone in so very long now, and it embarrassed him, the wanting.
Lore
n took a few steps toward him, hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. “I was at that clearing, Brandon with the rest of Brody’s crew. I’m the one who figured out it was you she was talking to at the lab and faked Lancer’s signal to get you to come out,” he said in a strange voice.
“Okay,” Brandon said quietly.
Loren shook his head, sighed. “Okay? That’s all you’re feeling right now, considering what Brody did to you....” He dropped his head, but Brandon saw the redness on his face anyway.
“You did what you had to do. I’d have done the same, I think. For what it’s worth, nothing you or Brody or any of your people have done comes close to the horrors my family’s been involved in for generations, so no, Loren, I’m not pissed at you or angry or anything. Not at any of you,” he looked him in the eye, “that’s honest. And now that we’re past that, you really should let me go in there. I don’t have anybody, Loren, not anybody who’d hurt if I’m gone. You can help me end it for good.”
Loren gripped his shoulders, making him flinch.
He lowered his head, wanting more than anything for this man to not be standing this close to him, wanting to be left alone.
“Look at me,” Loren said, his voice so very soft.
He did, and Loren’s eyes were strange as if it hurt him to look at him.
“I can’t. There isn’t a good way to say this to you, after everything, but even if Brody didn’t make us all swear that we wouldn’t let you do this, I don’t think we’d be okay with it. You shouldn’t be paying for what any of your people did. Max is right on that. And you do have people who’d hurt if you were gone. Brody would hurt, and Laurel…. I’d hurt.” Loren dropped his hands but didn’t move away from him. He took a deep breath and let it out, and Brandon could see the discomfort on him.
Loren sighed, looked him in the eye. “I knew how you were because I liked you, Brandon when I first met you, and I felt every kind of guilty for it, because of Brody’s girl, and what you did. And then the way you were with the little kids at our camp, and what you did to Brody at that tree…. I could have killed you for that. I wanted to. I don’t think I knew who you really were until you spoke at the council for Brody like that, what you were willing to do…. I’ll help you do it, if there is no other way, I swear to you, I will, but not until then. Please, don’t ask me to do something I can’t live with.” He took a small step back and dropped his eyes.
“Do you, still?” he asked, not quite looking at Loren’s face.
“Do I what?”
Brandon sighed, looked at him. “Like me. Do you still like me?”
Loren smiled, a small awkward smile, nodded. “Yes…. I think so, anyway. It’s been a long time since I liked anybody. I might mistake this for something else. That’s honest, Brandon.”
Brandon reached over and pulled him into a hug, Loren not fighting him, and after a little while, he felt his arms wrap around him. They stayed like that, not looking at each other for a long time, and finally Loren lifted his head, his eyes looking much darker now, and pulled back, and suddenly Loren’s hands were on his face, fingers tracing his cheekbones, and then the line of his jaw, feather soft.
His skin burned where he touched him, and he felt the familiar ache in him, making him afraid, making him want to run, only he couldn’t move a muscle, the way Loren was touching him, could barely breathe.
“The only boy I ever loved is gone too, Brandon. I don’t know if I can let myself do that again,” Loren finally whispered, and let go off him, his hands in fists at his sides, his whole body tense.
He put a shaky hand on the back of Loren’s head, just holding him. He could feel his fear in the way he was breathing, and the way his eyes were and he didn’t want him to be afraid. He never wanted anyone to be afraid of him again. “I’ll let you be if you need me to. It’s all right,” he whispered and dropped his hand.
He heard a sharp intake of breath, and then Loren was running to the trail, without a word or a glance back.
He couldn’t go back yet, not like this, so he sat at the dying fire for a long time, thinking about Keran and this other boy Loren loved. And for the first time he felt the sheer evil of what the Eagles have done in every cell of his body, and he knew that it wasn’t just because of all the people they killed, but all the ones who were left behind, broken because of it, people like him, and Loren, and Riley and Brody…. How most everybody in this place was damaged in ways nobody could ever fix, and he hoped he could find a way to end it.
And maybe Laurel would finally take care of her garden, if she believed that her flowers would still be there year after year, and that she’d get old enough for the birch saplings to turn into magnificent trees her kids would climb someday, and Brody wouldn’t feel so afraid about becoming a father. And this boy, Loren, would maybe let himself be with someone again, without it hurting so much.
Prologue
Drake, August 2, 2244, Intel Scouting Camp
Drake couldn’t bring himself to talk to this kid, didn’t even want to look at him if he could help it, his face reminding him too much of Hassinger when she tortured Riley, reminding him too much of the guilt he felt for not saving him then.
He saw him sitting alone by the stream before the sun came up and it felt wrong to run. Nobody but him was ever up this early and he thought the kid must have stayed there all night.
Brandon stood up, not turning around, his head down. “I didn’t mean to intrude, Drake. Didn’t know you’d be up so early.” He turned to the trail, not looking at him.
“Have a seat, Brandon. We might as well deal with it now.” He stopped him, pointing to a large flat rock.
The kid sat, still not looking at him.
Drake crouched in front of him, watching him, waiting. He could tell he was afraid of him and it made him uncomfortable. “Look at me, Brandon,” he said sharply.
Brandon lifted his eyes, his jaw set.
“I promised Brody I wouldn’t hurt you in any way, so you don’t need to be afraid of me,” he said quietly.
Brandon winced as if he slapped him and dropped his eyes. “I’m not afraid of you, but I know you hate me. I don’t blame you for it, either. I just don’t know how to be around you,” he said and looked at him, and there was something tired and vulnerable in that look, nothing of the defiance he always saw on him. “I won’t be any trouble for you, but let’s please not do this. There is no need. Am I free to go?” Brandon stood up, Drake standing with him, suddenly feeling guilty for the way this boy was looking at him.
“No, Brandon. Not free to go yet. There is something I need to tell you first. Sit.” He pushed the kid back down on the rock, and settled on the sand in front of him, not touching him anymore. “I was a guard at the compound your mother ran. When Riley came over the bloody fence the first time, I ran to intercept the other guards to save him, only I made a mistake. I was too wrapped up in trying to save the kid that I wasn’t thinking clearly, so I didn’t make it in time. Your mother, she made me stay in that cell with them when she tortured him.
“She thought I was a mute, all the slaves were, only whatever they did to take the voice out of a person didn’t work on me, but I didn’t let on that it didn’t…. I had to watch her swing that whip at his back, and there wasn’t a bloody thing I could do to help him. I watched her smile at him as she did it. That was the worst part, knowing that she enjoyed hurting him like that. When you had Brody tied up at that tree–I saw her in you, couldn’t get past it. Still can’t. So you’re right. I do hate you. Maybe, a part of it has nothing to do with you. I don’t know. But I can’t help but see her swinging the whip at Riley’s back every time I look at you,” he said sharply and stood up.
Brandon had his head in his hands, not saying anything for a long while, and then he stood and pulled his shirt off, flinging it on the sand.
Drake saw a multitude of thin white lines on his torso. He was all too used to seeing those by now, and then he noticed that the kid’s arms and chest were co
vered in strange round scars that looked identical, only he couldn’t tell what they were. Brandon was watching him, not hiding now, and there was anger in his eyes.
“She put her smokesticks out on me, for years. Since I was four or five, I’m not sure anymore. The whippings were for if I screamed or flinched when she did it. She smiled at me, too, Drake. You’re not wrong, is what I’m saying, except I didn’t enjoy what I did to Brody. It scared me worse than anything. But I don’t blame you for thinking of me the way you do,” he said in a strained voice, picked up his shirt, and turned away from him. “I am truly sorry for what you went through in that cell. I know how it is, to not be able to help someone you love,” he said quietly and walked away from him, not making any noise on the trail, his back scarred much the same as the front of him.
Drake winced just looking at it, feeling not a little guilty for how he’s been with him. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him as a little boy when she did that, his own bloody mother, and yet, he almost killed Brody over her even after all that. He sat by the water for a long time, thinking and hiding from him, not quite knowing what to say to him that the kid wouldn’t take as pity.
Brandon ignored him the rest of the day, not once looking at him. Drake let him be and finally, after supper, trailed him to the stream.
Brandon spun around, angry when he felt him behind him. “Please, don’t. There isn’t anything we need to say to each other. I wanted you to know that you weren’t wrong about her. Maybe about me as well. I don’t know. It doesn’t bloody matter. For whatever time I have left, I’d rather not think about her, about any of it,” he spat at him, not trying to keep the anger from his voice.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 74
