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

by Inna Hardison

  She glanced at where Riley was as much as she could without turning her head, and he was staring at her with so much fear, she looked away. Had to look away. Loren and Drake were gripping him hard, not letting him move, and she was grateful for that. She looked at Brody then, feeling the burn from the knife on her face. “There are seven other compounds like this, Brody. They wanted to use me as propaganda against mixing with Zoriner blood, so you should watch out for anyone like me–” She felt hot water gushing out of her neck, her brain going fuzzy.

  She looked at Riley and for some reason, he was on his knees, his head down, and it didn’t make any sense for him to be like that. He looked like he did that day he saw all those bones in Reston, as if he wanted to pray but couldn’t find the words to do it. She wanted to tell him that it was all right and that she lied to him about not ever loving him, but the words wouldn’t come out, and then she couldn’t see him anymore, couldn’t see anybody, and she let herself fall. She heard her name whispered over and over again in the voice of the kneeling boy she lost and then the voice of the mute who wasn’t a mute, but she couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t move anything at all.

  The hot water stopped running out of her neck making her feel cold everywhere and she wished she could tell them that, wished she could tell them how much she hated the cold. It seemed important for them to know that for some reason, and she had it then, why it was important. She didn’t want the baby to be cold. She tried to open her eyes but nothing in her listened to her anymore, and the cold was getting to be too much; she felt it everywhere, covering her like mist, and she was too tired to fight it, too tired to fight anything.

  2

  The Oath

  Riley, August 24, 2244, Reston.

  He knew he wouldn’t forgive any of them even if she did wake up. He couldn’t even look at Brody, not without wanting to kill him. Any one of them could have easily put a bullet into that man’s back before he knew what hit him before he sliced into Ams like that. They couldn’t kill him because of things he knew that they needed from him, Lancer dared to tell him afterward, and that they would have sacrificed any of them for the same. Only they didn’t. They sacrificed Ams.

  He’d sat by her bed in the Med wing for almost a week now, watching her sleep, only he knew it wasn’t quite sleep, not if she couldn’t wake up from it. Ella told him that it could still happen, that it wasn’t too late for her, but he could tell from the way she said it that she didn’t really believe it. He put a cot in here days ago so he could sleep by her side in case she did wake up, and spent all his waking hours talking to her, telling her things only the two of them knew, hoping to reach her with the words somehow.

  “Will you ever speak to me again?” Brody’s whisper from the door made him shut up.

  He jumped up and spun around, facing his oldest friend in the world. “No, Brody. I will never speak to you again,” he spat at him and turned away.

  He heard the door slide closed and paced, calming himself, hating this bloody bright room and the smooth cold walls. Everything here was too clean, sterile, empty. Maybe that’s what it was that was keeping her like this, he thought for the first time, and suddenly he wanted more than anything to bring her home to their little house, with its lived-in smells and her things still in it. It felt right to do it for her, even if she never did wake up again.

  Ella didn’t fight him on it, and he took it as a bad sign. Laurel just nodded in that way she had with him now and then helped him clean the whole house, making it as spotless as it had ever been. She brought huge vases full of sweet-smelling blooms from her garden and put them all over the house, making the little place smell strange, exotic somehow. They moved Selena and Telan to Loren’s place, for now, Loren surprising everyone by volunteering to take care of them. Riley didn’t want to see Loren any more than he wanted to see Brody or Drake, but he was grateful to him for taking the kids.

  He stayed up the first two nights she was at the house, watching her. He thought for sure something would change in her now that she was home, and that somehow he’d know it when it happened and he was afraid to miss it, so he only left the room when Ella came in to change the IV or give her a sponge bath. He wanted to at least do that for her but felt he had no right to, not after she left him the way she did, so he let Ella do all of it without a word, downing far too much coffee just to stay awake while she worked.

  He must have drifted off sitting on the old couch waiting for Ella to get done. He felt someone’s hand on his shoulder and opened his eyes, Brody’s face taking shape in front of him. He tried to get up but didn’t have it in him for some reason.

  “When did you eat last, Riley?” Brody’s voice grated on his nerves.

  “Leave, Brody. Please, just leave. I don’t want to fight with you and I don’t want to hear how bloody sorry you are. Don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Not now, not ever. Leave.”

  Brody opened a thermos and forced it into his hand.

  Riley took a few gulps of the warm, salty liquid and set the thermos down on the floor.

  “You swore the same oath I did, same as Ams did. We all knew what we’d have to do if it came to that. You can’t hold it against us. It would have been the same if it was Laurel they had. You know that,” Brody said in a strained voice.

  He looked at him finally, and he knew he meant it, meant it about Laurel, and it saddened him more than anything. He shook his head at his friend. “You are a better soldier than I’ll ever be, Brody, I’ll grant you that. All of you are. I’ll resign from the council, I don’t belong on it anymore. I don’t care about the bloody oath I took, don’t care about any of it…. About this fight, the Eagles, not any of it. The only thing I care about is lying in the other room, not waking up. So think of me what you want, strip me of whatever duties I still have here, rank and all, I don’t give a shit, but let me mourn in peace.” He stood, Brody standing too now.

  “You should go see Eryn. The guards won’t let you do it alone, but you should talk to him. There is something you need to know and it’s not mine to tell,” Brody said and left, closing the door softly behind him.

  It scared him, what Brody just said, something in it sounding an alarm through every cell of his body. He drank the rest of the broth, took a quick, scalding-hot shower, and dressed quickly, not even letting his hair dry.

  He sprinted to the council building, ordering the very first guard he saw to take him to Eryn’s cell. “I need to speak to him in private.”

  The guard shook his head at him.

  “Tie my hands if you need to for all I care, but you will give me privacy,” he snapped at the young man and put his hands out.

  The guard dipped his head and left the cell without another word.

  Eryn was lying on his cot, keeping his eyes closed through all of it, but he knew he wasn’t asleep by the way his chest was moving. Still, he waited, leaning against the wall. The man was delicately, deliberately made, with everything fitting neatly into place. He was long-limbed, but not lanky. His face full of angles, but there was a childish softness to it too, innocence in the smooth skin. It was so thin, he could see blue-green veins pulsing at his temple and on his neck, and he had to fight an impulse to put his hands on that pulsing vein or run a knife over it.

  He walked over to him and snapped at him to get up.

  Eryn’s eyes flew open, smiling at him. “Alright,” he said quietly and drew himself up, hands tied with biters in front of him, his long fingers dangling limply, relaxed. The man was either not at all afraid of him or wanted him to think that he wasn’t. “So … the sleeping beauty still sleeps?” he asked, without any humor in his voice.

  Riley just stared at him.

  “I’ll take your silence as a yes. You know, I expected it to be so much harder to get to her, Riley. It should have been much harder, but you’ve neglected her for so long, she practically fell into my arms…. The first time I ever touched her, she was shaking like a leaf, as if she hadn’t been touched
in years,” he whispered, a small smile playing on his lips.

  Riley stood still, keeping his hands in fists at his sides, the man watching him for a reaction.

  “Your medic girl, the one who looks like you, she didn’t tell you then? You poor, poor man. It was you, after all. She was carrying my child, you idiot, and I was still willing to let her die. But you…. You’re all so very brave with those guns of yours when they are pointing at someone else’s wives or husbands or children, at anyone you don’t know, but with her…. Seeing someone you love die–that brought you to your knees, soldier. You are a bloody coward, Riley. Even in the end, you couldn’t fight for her–”

  He lunged at him, pinned him to the wall, and punched him over and over again, not holding anything back.

  The man didn’t make a sound, letting him, not calling for the guards.

  Riley dropped his hands after a while and stepped away from him, pale blue-green eyes watching him intently.

  “Will you let her die, now that you know, and kill that child, or will you let it live, even if it carries my blood in its veins? You should know that she already hated me when it was conceived. She didn’t want me anywhere near her, is what I’m saying. Tell me. What will you do?” he asked in a whisper, no smiles on his face now.

  “I am going to wait until it has all its limbs and cut it out of her, and then I will make you eat it,” he spat at him, something of a shadow passing briefly over the man’s face.

  He ran to the door, pounding on it with everything he had, needing to get away from him. He ran for a long time, not paying any attention to the people outside or to where he was going, finding himself at Brody’s house of all places. He stumbled in, Laurel running to him, hugging him, and telling him softly to have a seat, only he couldn’t bring himself to sit now. He felt Brody’s arm around him after a while and turned to face him, wanting to scream at him, but Brody grabbed him by the back of his head and pulled him into his chest, not saying anything, and he couldn’t bring himself to move, couldn’t let go of this bit of comfort.

  He was furious at them for not telling him, but he understood why they didn’t, knew they didn’t trust him not to do something stupid with the knowing. He slumped down on the bench and put his head down. Laurel tried to coax him to eat something but he couldn’t eat and he heard her disappear into the garden, leaving them be. Brody still hadn’t said a word to him, but he could feel him watching him. He looked up and Brody was handing him a glass with a clear liquid in it, a smaller glass in his other hand. He downed it, not feeling the taste of it or the burn, not feeling any effect from it at all. Brody refilled his glass without a word and handed it to him and he felt a little of the pain leave him after a few moments.

  “What would you do, Brody? What would you do about the child?” he asked in a shaky voice.

  Brody shook his head. “I don’t know. I would do whatever I thought she’d want me to do, but I don’t know what that would be…. I’m sorry, I truly don’t.”

  He got up and paced around the small kitchen, stopping at the window leading to the garden, and watched Laurel trim her flowers. Her hands flew softly over the blooms, as if caressing them before clipping them for the vase, leaving dead, empty stalks in her wake, all the green leached out of them by the waning light. He turned away, Brody looking at him strangely.

  “He raped her… did he tell you that?” he screamed at his friend.

  Brody winced and nodded. “He did,” he whispered. “Laurel and I have been trying for a little while now. She doesn’t know that part, and I’m not telling her that. I can’t tell her that. Not now. I don’t know what Ams would want to do, but I know she’d been wanting a child for a while, your child, Riley, not this monster’s child, and not like that, but I keep thinking that life in her… it didn’t choose it, you know, didn’t choose how it got there. None of us choose who we are born to or how. I know enough to know that. Drake and Ella would gladly take care of the kid if you can’t. They’ve said as much. Just … don’t do anything rash. Ella had her moved back to the med wing. I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear, but she didn’t want you to have to see her now that you know, not unless you wanted to. Also, Stan says he found something that might work in one of the places he’s been going to, so in part, they are hoping it’ll help wake her up, and then you wouldn’t have to be the one to make that choice.” Brody walked over to him and gripped him hard by the shoulders, staring into his face.

  He let him hold him like that, feeling too shaky and drained to fight him.

  “You’re staying here tonight. Please, don’t fight me on it,” Brody whispered and took him by the arm to a spare room, the one Brandon stayed in until he found his own place. Brody undressed him, as if he were a little kid and put him to bed, and then sat on the edge for the longest time, running his hand through his hair.

  He closed his eyes, letting the drowsiness take him, enjoying the feel of Brody’s hand on him, and feeling like he needed to say something to him, only he was too damn tired to get the words out.

  He felt Brody lean in and kiss him on his head after a while and a very blurry ghost of Laurel doing the same, and he slept with the smell of Laurel’s sweet blossoms in the air, slept without once dreaming of Ams, without dreaming of anything at all.

  3

  Damaged

  Brandon, August 26, 2244, Reston.

  Brandon went to see him finally; after avoiding him for over a week—felt he needed to say something to this man. It was his plan to barge in there with their people wearing the Eagle uniforms Stan made, ostensibly bringing them high-level hostages, so in his mind, what happened to Ams, was on him, though nobody here ever said as much to him. His plan worked too, surprisingly well, all the way up until this man he didn’t know showed up with Riley’s girl. He watched Riley fall to his knees, tears running down his face, Drake and Loren, his Loren, still holding him, not letting him move, even when the girl was bleeding on the floor, and he felt every bit of Riley’s helplessness in him, felt the way he did when he watched Keran die.

  Riley met him on the porch, not asking him in, not saying anything.

  He walked up the stairs and dipped his head. “I know I am likely the last person you want to see, Riley, but there is something I’ve been needing to say to you,” he said softly.

  Riley didn’t move or say anything, just looked at him with anger in his tired eyes.

  “Alright then…. I’ve never met Eryn before, don’t know anything about him or where he came from. What she said about seven other compounds, I wasn’t aware of that either. I thought this would be the end of it. I wouldn’t have done it like that if I’d known about Amelia; if I’d known about any of it. I am truly sorry,” he said quickly and turned to go.

  Riley’s hand landed on his shoulder and he spun around. “I need to know something, Brandon.”

  He nodded.

  “Did you … have you taken the oath yet?”

  He knew where he was going with this and it embarrassed him, but he owed him the truth. “No,” he said looking Riley in the eye, the man nodding once just once.

  He turned and sprinted to Loren’s, needing to get this over with.

  Loren was making dinner for the kids when he got to his place and he set a plate for him without asking, the way he always did. Brandon listened to Telan and Selena chat excitedly about this new cave they found when one of the trainers took them to the woods for a few days, smiling despite the sadness in him. He drank his tea, not able to stomach any food, and finally, the kids cleared the dishes without anyone needing to ask them and noisily left the house. Loren watched him from across the table for a while, a question in his serious eyes, and then just snapped at him to spill it.

  “I went to see him, went to see Riley just now. Why didn’t you kill that man? I know he has intel and all that, but you had all the others at gunpoint. Why would you let her die? I don’t bloody understand it and I need to,” he spat at him, feeling the anger rising in him. “I ke
ep thinking what it would be like for me if it were you standing there with a knife to your throat and your people were holding me down the way you did Riley…. I don’t think I’d survive it.” He got up and turned to the window, away from him.

  “We took an oath, you know that. Riley did, too. Years ago we couldn’t let one of us die and we almost lost everybody. We had to make sure we never let that happen again. Nobody forced any of us to do it, we chose to. But that’s not what you came here to ask, not really. Yes, Brandon, I would have let you die. I would have had to, and I would have wanted you to let me do the same,” Loren said sharply.

  He spun around, facing him, Loren standing just a step away, looking at his face with those vulnerable eyes of his, waiting.

  He knew he meant what he said, and it hurt, but he understood it, too. “I should go,” he whispered.

  Loren stepped away from him without a word, letting him pass, eyes on him, watchful, and he wanted to throw his arms around him, but he couldn’t let himself do that now.

  He walked slowly to the door, still feeling Loren’s eyes on him. “I wish I’d known this before…. I would have never let it happen between us if I had,” he said, without turning around and reached for the handle.

  “You don’t mean that. There are better ways to hurt me than lying,” Loren’s clipped voice reached him.

  He faced him, the man’s eyes angry, hands clenched into fists at his sides, but he didn’t move toward him. He had to end it, had to end it for himself, so it never came to that for the two of them.

  He walked over to him and put his hands on Loren’s face, feeling him flinch. “I can die for you without blinking, without thinking about it, but not that. I can’t ever do that. What you did to Riley … I’m sorry, but I just can’t,” he said softly, leaned in, and very quickly kissed him on the lips, Loren’s arms wrapping around him as he was pulling away, pressing him close. He let him hold him like that, not moving anything, and his eyes weren’t angry anymore, but dark and full of water.