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

by Inna Hardison

  He went through the journal over and over again, trying to picture it, the kinds of people who’d do something like that. This was somehow worse than what they did to Zoriner girls at Crylo, or what they did to his father. He kept going back through the entry where Eryn learned what they would do if he failed, that first time. The one where he was supposed to put a bullet into this man’s head, a man he didn’t know.

  He found the entry easily by touch, knew where in the journal it was by now and read through it again.

  “I heard the leaves crunching as I walked, slowly, taking my time, as if I could slow it down enough for them to maybe change their minds, but the walk was far too short for that. The man must have heard me and looked up. I was still a good dozen meters away from him, but I could see that he knew what I was there to do in the way he looked at me. He was old, Alerton old, older than my father ever got to be. I walked closer and he kept his eyes on me the whole time. I felt like I needed to talk to him, tell him that I didn’t have any kind of a choice, but I couldn’t do it, couldn’t find the words. I pulled the gun out and cocked it, the man watching me, and his face wasn’t like I thought it’d be. It was calm, no fear in it. I stood there looking at him for the longest time when I was just close enough not to miss, close enough to do it right with one shot.

  “It’s all right, kid. Do it,” the man said and nodded to me, and his voice was hoarse like he hadn’t said a word to anybody in a long time. And I tried then, I really did. I took a breath, like they taught me, and took the safety off, wrapped my finger around the trigger, and started to exhale, but I couldn’t do it, couldn’t pull the trigger. The man shook his head at me and closed his eyes for a few seconds, and then looked at me again, and he smiled, and it was the strangest thing, him smiling at me like that.

  “I walked over and cut the ties at his hands and told him to run, but he didn’t move, just stared at me. And suddenly, I felt a current of pain go through me like someone was stunning me with one of those new guns, only from the inside, something I’d never felt before. I dropped to my knees, waiting for it to pass, waiting till I could breathe again, the man saying something to me, only I couldn’t hear him through the fog in my head, and then it was over, and I could hear him again.

  “What’s going to happen to you if you don’t do this?” he asked, looking at me with concern in his eyes. I didn’t know, didn’t think about it, just knew I couldn’t murder him. I shook my head and told him to please just run. Suddenly his face tensed up and I knew something was wrong, and then I heard them, Alerton and the rest of the trainers coming out of the woods, surrounding us. The two guards grabbed me and held me down, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how they knew that I hadn’t done it, that I was going to let him go. It didn’t make any sense for them to know yet.

  “One of the guards brought out that kid they almost killed months ago, that little girl, and I screamed then, begging them to please not do anything to her, screamed that I would finish it, would kill that man, and to please just let me, only nobody was paying any attention to me anymore. The guard dropped her to her knees in front of Alerton, and he took out his gun and put it to her head, looking at me, not her, and the guards were forcing my head up to watch it, not letting me drop my eyes or turn away…. The girl was crying, not silently, but full-on sobbing, her voice shrill and still somehow tiny, afraid, and I was still screaming at them and he pulled the trigger on that little kid, then turned to the old man, whose head was down now and put a bullet through him without a word.

  “They left me there with these two bodies and a shovel. I don’t remember how long it took me, but it was already night when I was done, and I didn’t want to go back, didn’t ever want to go back there again, but somewhere deep down, I knew how they knew. That whatever made me hurt like that before, they did that to me somehow, and that’s how they knew. I stayed there all night, staring at the sky, crying. My screen beeped and it woke me up, so I looked at it, afraid not to now, and there was a “Happy 16th Birthday” message from Alerton, with an attached holo of me with the man when his hands were untied already when I was telling him to run. ‘Welcome to the team, Eryn.’”

  Brody threw the journal down, disgusted and angry. He hadn’t spoken to him yet, didn’t quite know how to, and he wanted the man to get comfortable enough with them first, didn’t want to drill him, but he felt it’s been long enough. He was staying with Brandon for now, the Council having decided that those two had the most in common and that it might help Eryn if he wanted to talk to have someone like Brandon to talk to.

  He put on his boots and took a slow walk to Brandon’s house, smiling at the no longer neglected little gated yard at the front. The man had all sorts of flowers growing there, even a sweet-smelling vine twirling around the iron gate. Jasmine, he remembered, from back in Waller. Son of a bitch managed to find jasmine.

  He walked in without knocking, only nobody was in the kitchen or the small dining room, and he saw that the door to the back porch was opened. They were sitting on an old bench Loren found in one of the long-deserted gardens in this place.

  Eryn jumped up when he saw him, head down.

  “At ease, Eryn,” he snapped, not thinking about it, annoyed at the man’s discomfort.

  Eryn sat, not quite looking at him, and Brandon let them be, closing the door behind him softly.

  “Would you please look at me?” Brody asked, softly now.

  He did, but he could tell he was all sorts of tense. Nothing he could do about that.

  “The kids they had, you never mention if they were Zoriner or Alliance. Tell me.”

  The man looked at him strangely. “Alliance.”

  “Why would they kill their own? It doesn’t make any sense for them to do that.”

  “Because, Brody, they assumed that killing a Zoriner, kid or not, would be no more difficult for us than killing a squirrel or a rat. We weren’t supposed to think of them as human.”

  Brody heard an edge in his voice, and it surprised him. “But you did? Think of them as human, I mean?”

  Eryn stood and turned away from him, hands behind his back. “My mother was Zoriner. I am a half-breed, only I don’t look it. It’s how I ended up where I did. I was the price that had to be paid for my parents’ indiscretion. It was them handing me over, or having me put down. They just chose wrong,” he said, sounding oddly detached, as if he were discussing someone else, and faced him again.

  Brody took a few steps toward him.

  Eryn shook his head, stopping him. “Don’t. I know what you’re going to say... But don’t. I was four when they took me, so I don’t remember them. It doesn’t matter.” He turned away again. “I need to see her. Ams, I just need a few minutes. I can’t ask Riley, don’t know how to, but there is something I need to say to her…. Can you help me do that?”

  “All right.”

  Eryn just nodded, not facing him again, and he let him be after that.

  Ams and Riley were off today, probably hanging out by the river, and he didn’t want to disturb them. They both needed a damn break, so he went home and then off to the range with the younger boys. The sun was just starting to set when they were finally done there. He could see the lights in some of the houses and could smell the cooking as he neared the center of the city. Laurel was probably doing the same now, singing something or other Drake taught her while she was at it. He liked spying on her when she did that. She’d always stop when anyone was watching, so he’d sneak up through the back and lean against the thin window there, watching, listening, quiet as a ghost.

  He dismissed the kids and walked to Riley’s, needing to just get it over with, the thing Eryn asked of him.

  Ams looked him over as if there were something wrong with him when she opened the door, and then grabbed his hand and dragged him in. “Hungry?”

  “No, not hungry, Ams.”

  “Spill it then. Riley went off to empty his nets, so it’s just us. What did he say? Eryn? What is it?”


  He blanched at her somehow knowing that his visit had to do with that man. She always guessed at the strangest things. “He said there is something he needs to tell you and would like me to please ask you for a few minutes of your time,” he said evenly, looking at her.

  “All right. He has about an hour then. I’ll be here. I don’t want any company for it, Brody. It’s private.”

  Brandon opened the door at the first knock and then took him out front down the steps, to where all the new flowers were. “I think we need to talk to Ella or somebody for him, Brody. He doesn’t sleep, I don’t think. Have you ever had the same nightmare over and over again that you just couldn’t get rid of?”

  Brody winced, Trina’s body lying in that grass coming unbidden into sharp focus….

  “Shit … I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry,” Brandon whispered.

  “It’s all right. Go ahead.”

  “Well, I think it’s like that for him. He wakes up screaming every bloody night and then he won’t go back to sleep, no matter what time it is. He paces around the house or outside, but he won’t sleep again. I don’t know how long someone can do that and still be okay…. Anyway, I thought you should know.”

  He told him that Ams would see Eryn if he went there now, if he still wanted her to, and started back, hoping that whatever he and Ams needed to work out wouldn’t make it harder on either of them, hoping they could both sleep afterward. He caught a whiff of jasmine as he was walking past the gate, and it all came back in a flood, the girl’s body with the yellow flowers in her hair and that sweet smell of jasmine that was always on her, that he could smell on her hair still when he kissed her in the Cryo unit when she was already gone….

  He ran as fast as he could make it through the dark, ran until his legs hurt and he couldn’t breathe right, finding himself at the damn field of bones at the edge of the city, the place Riley went to that time when he lashed out at his boys and where they took Lancer so many years ago.

  There was grass there now, weeds of all kinds, not bones, but he was sure they were still all there, under all this green and the new dirt. He sprawled out on top of it and wept, all the years of trying to forget spilling out of him, soaking into the sharp smelling dirt of the field. And all the guilt for being happy with Laurel, guilt for still being at all.

  She’d be waiting for him, worried by now, but he couldn’t bring himself to go home, couldn’t share this with her. He stayed where he was, not letting himself move or sleep, replaying every moment he shared with Trina over and over again in his head, and then everything that happened after that. He stayed there until the sky turned pale pink and then, the kind of stark blue that he hadn’t seen in years, the kind that was too bright to look at without shading your eyes.

  He spotted flowers growing across the road from the field, white and purple field flowers, and he plucked a few for the girl who loved him now. The girl who told him yesterday that she was carrying a child.

  15

  Blanche

  Amelia, September 29, 2244, Reston.

  She couldn’t get over how everyone was kind to this man, the man who ran a knife over her throat, the man who killed her child. It didn’t make sense for all of them to suddenly be like that to him, especially Riley. That made the least sense of all. They all tried telling her about what they found in that damn journal, but she never let them. Didn’t care to know, she told them, and she didn’t. There wasn’t anything in the world that could make what he did to her okay, she told them, and finally, they gave up.

  She paced around the kitchen, stopping at the window now and then, watching, and then pacing again. She felt calm, calm enough not to kill him right off at least, but she made sure she had her gun and knife on her anyway.

  She saw him crossing over from the street and swung the door open, letting him in without looking at him, shut the door, and leaned on it. He looked different now, thinner, and his face was tired. He looked like someone who hadn’t slept in too long to still be standing.

  “Are you armed?” she asked sharply, hand wrapped around the handle of the stunner at her belt.

  He shook his head and stuck his arms out to the sides, eyes down. He flinched when she ran her hands over him, but he didn’t move away from her.

  “What do you want, Eryn?” she barked at him when she knew he was clean.

  His head went down, hiding, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “May I please sit down?” he asked, his voice strained, older.

  She nodded and watched him walk over to the table, holding on to it as he sat, head down again.

  “I need to tell you something, Ams, and I don’t know how to do it right. How to do it without hurting you…. But I still need to do it. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Hurry it the hell up then,” she snapped, not regretting how his face looked at that, not even a little.

  He stayed silent, his jaw working, and finally, he talked, quietly, as if it hurt to push every word out. “I didn’t have a choice, Ams. I would have never done it, not any of it if I had…. There were all these kids they had”—he stopped, shaking his head and clenching and unclenching his hands on the table, not quite looking at her—“and every time one of us, the ones like me failed at something, they’d hurt them or kill them. The more important the thing we were supposed to do, the worse it would be for the kids. What I had to do with you… they would have killed all of them, I think.

  “When Riley and the rest of them barged in, I hoped they’d just shoot me. I was convinced they would. Alerton… he, they could see what was happening, only there wasn’t a way for me to tell any of you. I didn’t know what else to do, but I hoped I didn’t kill you, just made them believe that I did, so they’d leave you alone. So they’d never look for you again.” He stood, his head still down.

  She lunged at him, couldn’t help it. She slammed him into the wall, and slapped him across the face over and over again, and then punched him everywhere she could reach, hard as she could.

  He kept his head down and let her, not saying anything, not moving anything either, and it made her even angrier.

  “You killed my child, you bastard!” she screamed through the tears, her hands hurting from hitting him. “You should have cut your own throat, you bloody coward,” she spat at him, the thing she was convinced anybody halfway decent would have done if what he just told her was true.

  He gasped, still not fighting her. “I know, Ams. If I thought for a second that it wouldn’t have cost those kids their lives, I would have.”

  “I don’t believe you, you son of a bitch!” She pulled out her knife, making sure he saw it. “Is anybody going to die or get hurt if I did it now?”

  “No, Ams, not anymore.”

  She could do this. It would be like what Laurel did to that monster, to Hassinger. She could get back at him for what he did to her and Riley. And the baby. Most of all, the baby.

  She put the knife to his throat, looking at him, but he didn’t flinch, and he didn’t look away from her, didn’t move anything at all, and she couldn’t do it like this.

  “Go ahead.” He tilted his head up, the knife drawing a thin stream of blood as he did that, and closed his eyes, not moving anything after that.

  “Drop that knife.” Riley’s voice from behind her startled her. His too quiet, full of rage voice.

  “It’s all right, Riley,” Eryn said evenly, eyes open now, looking past her, at Riley, she guessed.

  “Drop the knife.” Quieter still.

  She spun around. Riley stared at her with anger in his eyes, and she couldn’t help herself. She threw the knife into the doorjamb he was standing next to, Riley not moving a muscle, not even blinking, and then just shaking his head at her, that disappointed shaking his head, like she did something terrible again, kicking a dead body kind of terrible. She walked to the door, snapping at him to move, but he wouldn’t move.

  He gripped her by the shoulders. “What the hell were you thinking, Ams? This isn’t
just about you… do you get that?” His voice wasn’t so quiet anymore.

  “How is it that you always choose to defend some monster over me? Every. Single. Time. He almost killed me, Riley. Remember that? Slit my throat in front of you, and now you’re best friends with this piece of shit. He killed my child and you’re still fighting for him, protecting him–” Her voice cracked. She swallowed a sob and glared at him again. “How do I get on that list? People you fight for? I am your bloody wife!”

  “No, Ams. You’re not,” he said, his voice deathly quiet, and she suddenly knew how he meant it.

  She stepped back, trying to hold it together, trying to not fall apart, not in front of that man, and not in front of Riley either, not ever again. “Choose, Riley. I can’t stay here with him, not in the same town, not even in the same bloody hemisphere, I just can’t. So it’s him or me,” she snapped, not trying to keep the tears out of her voice.

  “No, Ams,” Riley said softly, “I’ve already made all my choices, a long time ago. Nothing’s changed. You need to go to Brody’s and read that journal. It shouldn’t take you long. Come back when you’re done or don’t. Whatever you choose.” And he stepped away from the door, letting her pass, not looking at her anymore.

  She took her time getting to Laurel’s, trying to calm down enough to where her hands weren’t shaking anymore; to where her best friend in the world wouldn’t coax what Riley just said to her out of her lips. Laurel was pacing around the dining room when she got there, not her normal graceful pacing either, but the concerned kind, the something was wrong kind, and she couldn’t take any more wrongness today. She seemed surprised when she let her in, too, no smiles on her face, and she couldn’t run from her, not when she wasn’t like Laurel normally was.