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

by Inna Hardison

  A few of the boys laughed, but Jake glared at them, and they were all quiet after that. All Telan had to do was hit him on the right hard enough and he’d go down. He had to know that, but he didn’t move.

  The big boy regained his balance and without a word of warning rushed at Telan, knocked him to the ground, and then he was punching him, Telan curling in on himself, protecting his head.

  He was up and running to them then. He grabbed the boy by the neck and lifted him up, spinning him around, the kid’s feet dangling off the ground for a beat, rage mixed with surprise on his face. He half dragged, half shoved him out of the ring, and slammed him hard against a tree, hand wrapped around the kid’s throat. “How much do you weigh?” he asked in as quiet a voice as he could muster, relaxing his grip just enough for him to talk.

  The kid just stared at him with a confused look on his face.

  “I asked you a simple bloody question. Answer me!”

  “About seventy-two kilos, I think.”

  He nodded. “I am about sixty-five now. Lost a bit of weight recently, but that’s all right, as I have a few centimeters on you, so I’d say we’re pretty evenly matched. If you so much as a whimper, I’ll kick all your teeth in. If you give up before I release you, I’ll whip you bloody in front of everyone. Is that understood?”

  The kid looked mortified. “I am not fighting you,” he croaked, “I don’t care what you do to me, but I am not fighting you. I’m just not.”

  He could tell by the way the kid kept looking around that he was afraid of embarrassing himself in front of the other boys, only the idiot didn’t realize that he already had. “All right. Jake and Telan need to see you fight, so you will fight in front of them. The rest of you boys, go home. You are dismissed.” He glanced behind him. Telan was sitting against a tree, his head in his hands, not looking at him. He hoped the kid would forgive him for this. Jake stood next to Telan, his quickly bruising face hard, hand on Telan’s shoulder, and he was grateful for that.

  He waited for the other boys to leave before releasing his grip on the kid. “You got a name?” he asked sharply when the other boys were gone.

  “Clarence,” the kid whispered.

  Lancer laughed, couldn’t help it. “Such a pretty name for such an ugly human. Your parents should have named you something more appropriate, kid, like Brutus or Butch.”

  The boy inhaled sharply, eyes darting down, and he knew he hit a nerve, but he wasn’t feeling particularly charitable towards a kid who just did what he did to Telan.

  “Get in the ring, Clarence,” he snapped at him and unclipped his weapons belt, throwing it on the ground far enough away from the dirt ring he was now standing in.

  The kid shrugged and walked over to him, staring at him defiantly, hands in fists in an old-school boxer stance. “All right, defend your kid then, since he clearly can’t do it himself.”

  He hit him harder than he would have if he just didn’t talk, a fast, angry jab to the chest.

  The boy staggered backward, wincing, then walked towards him again, hands at the ready.

  He saw his arm flex, eyes darting to his chin. He blocked it and hit him on the jaw with a left hook.

  The kid went down, but he knew he wasn’t out by how his eyes were.

  He stood over him wordlessly, waiting.

  The boy sat up and slowly hauled himself to his feet, shaky, and the hands went back up. A bully, but not a coward then. Maybe there was something there for them to work with that wouldn’t require killing the son of a bitch, he thought, staring him down. The boy stood still, meeting his gaze, but not moving towards him, and he knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t attack anymore. The kid knew he was outmatched, but he couldn’t walk away from this, so he’d let him hit him until he was done. Smart of him, and if it wasn’t for what he just watched him do to two much smaller boys, he might have let him off the hook, but he couldn’t do it. He wanted him bloodied and hurting for what he’d done.

  Lancer rushed him, dropping him to his knees with one punch, and then hit him everywhere not vital that he could reach.

  The kid covered his face with his arms after a little while, but he didn’t make a sound and he didn’t try to get up again.

  He finally stopped whaling on him, feeling that he’d had enough. He knew he’d hurt for days, and that the bruises would embarrass him; could tell that he likely hadn’t lost a fight in a long time. He picked him up by the shirt and shoved him against a tree. The boy wouldn’t look at him now, head down.

  “Can you walk?” he asked, calmly, for a change.

  “I can.”

  “All right then, let’s go.” He nodded to Jake, Telan still sitting the way he was before, not watching any of it. “Telan, we’re going back,” he snapped at his son.

  Telan got up without a word and started to walk to the trail with Jake, only Clarence didn’t move from that tree.

  Lancer picked up his belt and quickly fastened it around his waist waiting for the kid to move, but he didn’t budge. He told Jake and Telan to go on ahead and that they’d catch up, not wanting to embarrass the boy in front of them any more than he had already.

  “I need to get back, Clarence. If you can’t walk, tell me, and I’ll get us a flier. If you can, you need to start walking.”

  The kid shook his head without looking at him. “I can’t go back,” he said in a strange voice.

  “All right. I’ll get Loren to bring us a flier.”

  “It’s not like that. I can walk, I just can’t go back there. I’ll be all right. You should go…. Please, just go.”

  Something was wrong. Something that went beyond the embarrassment of having a trained soldier beat the shit out of him. He grabbed him by the chin, lifting his face, and was surprised that he didn’t see any wetness on it. The kid was breathing hard, but he didn’t fight him and he still wouldn’t look at him. He let go of him and took a few steps back, giving him a bit of space, worried he did more than just teach him a lesson.

  “Do you want to talk?” he asked as softly as he could make himself with this kid after waiting for what seemed long enough.

  “No,” he said flatly, without taking any time to think about it.

  He pulled out his comm and told Loren to bring the flier and a medkit and to come alone, sat down cross-legged in front of the kid, and waited. He could hear him breathing, but he didn’t move at all, his hands dangling limply in front of him, head down.

  The flier landed too close to them, the boy not moving even then. Loren stared at the kid for a little while, shook his head, and then walked over to him and without asking took his shirt off him, the kid’s torso tinged with a multitude of greenish blues and yellows already. He didn’t recall hitting him all that hard, but it looked like he had.

  Loren made the boy lie down on the grass, Clarence not fighting him, but not helping him either, and touched around his ribs and some of the other bruises. “Nothing’s broken, not that I can tell, but Ella should look at him if he’s in pain. If he is not now, he will be, once the adrenaline wears off. You want to tell me what the other guy looks like?”

  “You’re looking at him,” he said, without any humor.

  Loren just shook his head and told the boy softly to get up.

  He did, still not looking at anyone.

  Loren took him by the shoulders and pushed him gently towards the flier, but the boy stopped.

  “I’m not going back. I told Maxton that already. I know where I am and I know where the other camps are. I need you to give me my shirt back and let me be,” the kid said, quietly still, but there was an edge in his voice now.

  He was quickly losing what little patience he had with him. He walked over to him, pulled out a band from behind his back, and told him to stick out his hands.

  “No.” The kid finally looked at him, only he could read nothing but hatred in his eyes. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t leave him here like this, and he was done negotiating with him.

  He grabbed his wr
ists and closed the band around them, the boy glaring at him, angry, and then he surprised him by turning away and walking to the flier, his back rod-straight, too straight for someone who was hurting the way he knew he was. The kid wasn’t adding up.

  Loren was staring at him, but he couldn’t tell him any of it yet; didn’t understand it himself. “Later,” he whispered and followed the kid into the flier.

  Clarence kept his eyes on the floor of the flier on the way back, still and silent as a statue and he let him be. He took him by the arm when they landed and told him that he was staying the night at his house, that he didn’t have any kind of choice about it. The kid let him shove him down the street and push him into the house, without a word or a glance, as if he were sleepwalking, and it unnerved him. He wished Max was back from wherever he took off with Stan. He wanted to talk to Max about today, wanted to talk to somebody who was better at dealing with kids than he was.

  He pushed him to the table and made him sit and then ran into the kitchen and quickly put on the kettle and heated some leftover soup. The kid didn’t touch any of it, didn’t even look at it when he set it in front of him, just glared at him again in a way that made him question his judgment about not just leaving him behind in that clearing.

  “Take these.” He pushed three pills across the table, “it’ll take the edge off the pain some.”

  The kid shook his head.

  “How old are you?”

  The boy ignored him, didn’t move a muscle.

  “All right,” Lancer said, feeling more than a little annoyed. He took out his Council screen, searching for anyone named Clarence in the database of recruits. He knew all the kids who were accepted as cadets had to go through medical and psychological screening, so they all had a file of some kind.

  The boy was watching him intently, and he could see something other than hatred on his face. He seemed apprehensive, afraid maybe.

  “What am I going to find, Clarence?” He set the screen on the table, face down.

  The kid blanched and dropped his eyes for a flash and then stared at him again, not talking.

  He picked up the screen and was finally looking at the long file on this boy. Born Clarence Dillon, February 9th, 2228. Parents deceased in 2239. One sibling, deceased, 2239. He was scanning the rest of the file skipping through a bunch of medical data when the kid interrupted him: “I am not staying here no matter what you tie me up with. You can’t legitimately hold me here against my will. That means you don’t need to know whatever it is you’re digging for. It’s private.” He said it slowly, carefully, but he could tell he was on the verge of tears by how his voice was.

  Lancer looked at him for a long time, trying to read him, and still saw nothing but fear and maybe anger on his face. He put the screen down. “You beat up two boys in the worst way, so I can legitimately hold you. What you did is criminal. I am digging through your file so I know what I’m dealing with, not so I can embarrass you or whatever it is you think I get out of this. Frankly, I’d rather you just tell me what it is you’re so afraid I’ll find, but one way or another, I need to know. You don’t have any kind of choice about it. So… are you going to tell me?” He raised his eyebrows at the kid, his fingers curling around the screen.

  The boy stared back at him for a long moment, took a deep breath, and shook his head. “Whatever it would take for you to release me, you need to just do that. I don’t care what it is. Try me and punish me for what I did, or however it works here, but you have no right to anything else.”

  Lancer nodded and picked up the screen, not looking at him again. He finally got to the part he was looking for, his eval, and read through the questions and answers for a long time, trying to make sense of it. There was a fire, a fire that was somehow the boy’s fault. That’s how his whole family died. He ran after that, living on the streets…. The only orphan who looked like him amidst all the Zoriner kids. Never stayed in one place for more than a few months since he was eleven years old. Has nightmares about a girl named Shannon but wouldn’t talk about it. He scrolled back up to the med logs. Signs of multiple beatings, fractures, and breaks in most of the kid’s ribs, a badly healed knife wound on his left side. He stared at the image of a jagged scar with uneven spaces between where the stitches must have been. It looked like the kid stitched it up himself. Maybe he had. He winced and threw the screen on the table. He’d seen enough.

  The boy was at the window, his back to him. He didn’t even hear him move.

  He walked over, the kid tensing up at his approach. “Give me your hands,” he asked softly, he hoped. He did, and he unlocked the band and hooked it into his belt, the boy turning away from him as soon as it was off, drawing his hands into fists in front of him, but he already saw that they were shaking. He was surprised he didn’t bolt. He half expected him to, but he just stood there, straight-backed and still, staring at the darkness outside. He stood next to him, watching his face in the barely legible reflection in the glass, not quite knowing what to say.

  “I used to go on these runs in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. Training, you know? I wanted to be a soldier, even back then. I’d always light a candle to get dressed by, not to wake anyone up. My room was upstairs, so I’d climb out the window and run and then climb back in so nobody ever knew I was gone. I forgot to blow out the bloody candle that night, is all. The curtains must have blown into the flame from the open window…. The house—it was old, wooden. It was my grandmother’s. There wasn’t anything left when I got back, just these little toy cars. Shannon’s…. She loved playing with those tiny cars. She was going to turn seven in a few weeks, and the only thing she wanted for her birthday was another one of those cars. I had one all picked out for her too, this pale-blue Sportster, the last one I found in the basement. They were ancient, these toys, from back when people still used cars. My grandmother collected them for some reason. I came back to that. Charred bones and a bunch of half-melted, tiny toy cars. I knew when I got there, could feel somehow that I did that, even before anybody told me anything. Remembered that I didn’t blow out that damn candle. I killed them, Maxton.” He said all of it quietly, matter-of-factly, but there was a finality about it too, a resignation. The boy wouldn’t let himself treat it as the accident it was, and he knew why he ran and why he kept on running.

  He swallowed hard, suddenly feeling like he needed a drink or a dozen. He walked into the kitchen and poured two smallish glasses of the stuff he was drinking last night, the boy still standing as he left him when he got back. He handed him a glass and watched him down it in one long swallow, not cringing at the taste or the burn of it, and watched him set the empty glass on the windowsill slowly, carefully, not making any noise. “I don’t know what to say, Clarence, I’m sorry.”

  The kid took a sharp breath, not facing him. “I know,” he whispered, and they stayed silent for a long time after that.

  The boy turned finally, his face flushed. “I really am sorry for today. What I did to Jake and Telan. Tell them that, if you can. I can’t stay here, Maxton, not after … not with all those kids. Whatever punishment you need to give me for what I did, please just do that, and then you need to let me go,” he said quickly and turned away from him again. And he suddenly knew why he didn’t bolt from him before, and he felt for this strange boy.

  He put his hand on his arm and the kid flinched, so he stepped away from him, not wanting to make it harder on him than it already was. “Did you know that Telan doesn’t have any friends here? At least until today, he didn’t. I’m pretty sure he and Jake will be friends now. In your own screwed up way, you made it happen,” he said to the boy’s back when the waiting got to him, silently cursing himself for not being able to think of something less idiotic to say to this kid.

  “I wish you’d gotten there earlier, so I didn’t hurt him like that.”

  “I did. I saw the whole thing. What happened with Jake too.”

  The boy spun around. “Why the hell didn’t you stop it?
Why would you let me do it to them?” he snapped, incredulous, angry.

  “Because Telan would have never forgiven me. I am not convinced he’ll forgive me now.”

  “I shouldn’t have done it, not any of it. I know it’s not an excuse or anything, it’s just…. Every time I got to a new place, it’s the only way I knew I’d make it. I just needed them to be afraid,” he said evenly and looked at him, not hiding now. It surprised him, this strange honesty in this kid. He didn’t seem to have much mercy for himself, and he knew all too well what that felt like.

  He took the few steps to him, the kid meeting his eyes, but he could see the fear in the way he was holding himself, barely breathing, hands in white-knuckled fists at his sides. It struck him as every kind of strange that this was the same kid who faced him in the ring, no fear on him then, not even when he knew he’d lose. Yet, here he was, terrified of what he’d say. He clasped his hands behind his back, so at least the kid didn’t have to worry about him hitting him or putting the band back on him, and hoped he could do this right.

  “I’m sorry for what I did to you too, Clarence. I was angry, mad as hell. I wanted to hurt you. I think we’re even now, you and I at least, and you’ll have to find a way to make it right with Telan and Jake…. There won’t be any trial or punishment, but I’d rather you didn’t run. I know I can’t keep you from doing it, but I think you’ll be all right here. What I’m trying to say is, I know you feel you need to, and I am pretty sure I understand why, but you don’t. You don’t need to run anymore,” he said softly.

  The boy blinked fast and ran the back of his hand over his eyes, and then bolted for the door.

  He caught him by the shoulders and spun him around, the boy glaring at him with wet eyes. He quickly pulled him into a hug, gripping him by the back of his head, just holding him, the kid shaking from all the tension in him, but he didn’t fight him and he didn’t try to bolt again, and it felt like a good sign. He wished he would just let himself cry, let it all out, but he knew by now this boy wouldn’t let himself do that in front of him, in front of anybody, as likely as not. He held him without looking at his face or saying a word until the kid’s breathing calmed down some. And he knew what he so desperately needed to hear then and that it would hurt like hell for him to hear it, but he needed to.