The Warrior

by Rebecca Royce

Jason was gone.

  I suppose they could have had to run away for some reason, but I highly doubted it. No, it was more likely they decided to leave because they got tired of waiting or—and this was the possibility I’d dreaded having to face—they’d never intended to stay in the first place.

  One week?

  Who sets time limits like that?

  Who leaves your son’s sixteen-year-old girlfriend alone in a Vampire lair?

  A man with no intention of seeing her again. Or maybe it was worse. Maybe Jason had known how this was going to play out from moment one. They’d worked it out.

  Andon needed something from me. He wanted me to see the humans in the cage. Maybe he felt guilty about it. Just as likely was that he had his own agenda for forcing that on me. In any case, what is the best way to make a stupid, lonely sixteen-year-old girl do what you want?

  Convince her that your cute son wants her and only her for the rest of his life. All of it had been too good to be true, and I had walked right into it.

  I covered my face with my hands. There were so many questions I didn’t ask, so many things I didn’t pay attention to, because Jason had been there to capture my entire existence.

  Jason who lay drugged and unmoving when I left. Jason who that girl had screamed was hers as she ripped me off of him. Jason who had held me close and not pressured me for sex. Jason who snuck into my bedroom and held me even after his father had told him he couldn’t.

  Was he a phony? Had it all been for show? Or had his father not wanted us together?

  I looked up as a silhouette of a man appeared in the clearing of the woods. My heart picked back up. Could it be?

  It was someone I knew, someone I had not counted on seeing ever again. And whose welfare I should have, maybe, cared more about. How he had gotten to where I was I had no idea but for the first time in my life, I was happy to see my father’s face.

  “Rachel,” he spoke softly so I almost missed it. “Right now, for a second, you looked so much like your mother I thought I had stepped back in time.”

  I swatted at my eyes. He didn’t like to see me cry. It only made him drink more. “Nope, sorry, Dad. It’s just me.”

  He looked around. “What are you doing on the ground here alone? Keith said you had gone off to be with Werewolves. I thought that sounded crazy, but I came to say goodbye. I couldn’t let you leave without doing that.”

  “They left me. They were supposed to be here and they aren’t. Whatever happened, they’re not where they said they would be.”

  He came and sat down beside me in the dirt. I could smell the distinct aroma of whisky on both his breath and his clothes. Clearly, being Upwards hadn’t made his drinking problem poof away.

  “Why would they do that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I have a feeling I was part of a large elaborate hoax.”

  “A hoax that involved this guy, this wolf you were coming to meet?’

  “Yes, Dad.” I was shouting now. “A boy who played me like a fool or who did what his father wanted despite what it would mean to me. I don’t know. In any case, it sucks and I really can’t make you feel better about it right now.”

  “Okay.” He patted my back, awkwardly, but I appreciated the effort. “We can just sit here.”

  That seemed like a good idea. It was what I was going to do anyway, and if he wanted to give me some company—well, fine.

  One thing about my dad, when he says ‘we’re going to sit’, that’s what we do. He didn’t try to talk, didn’t ask me any more questions but sat, silently, next to me for what might have been hours. I lost track of time.

  The sun moved in the sky. My stomach didn’t grumble. I doubted I would want to eat anything ever again. I closed my eyes. The cold from the ground seeped up through my coat and into my insides where it found a nice warm place to destroy.

  I had once thought that the Warriors changed. Their bodies became leaner and so did their soul. They lost their sense of humor; they weren’t interested in the goings on around Genesis.

  Now I just wondered if it was this place. If the world above Genesis was too hard, too unforgiving, too filled with plots and untruths for us to ever survive up here.

  I’d thought Jason and I could be a family up here. Together. The two of us making it better if for no one else than ourselves.

  I’d been wrong.

  A noise in the distance startled me, and I turned to look as my father stood up. “What is that?”

  My father hooted. “It’s a car.”

  I stood next to him. “A car? Like the ones on television?”

  “Like the ones we had when I was a child.”

  “You remember them?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Despite what you think of me, Rachel, I haven’t lost all my faculties.”

  “You’re well on your way.”

  He nodded. “Probably.”

  Another thing about my dad, he always told the truth. Even if it was his version of it.

  The car pulled up—I guess technically it wasn’t a car. I wasn’t sure what to call it, but it was bigger than the cars I’d seen in black and white movies—and my father and I stood there like statues, unable to move. It took me a moment to realize who had arrived because I had, stupidly, decided that maybe Jason had gotten a hold of a car and had come back to me.

  Still, even as my heart sank deeper into the pit of despair that was my stomach, I had to smile. I knew the four people in that car, and I’d never been happier to see anyone.

  Tia was the first to get out, almost before Chad had turned the thing off. It was on my mind to ask him how he powered up the vehicle and when he’d learned to drive, but then my best friend was in front of me grabbing me by the shoulders.

  “No, I don’t care what you want. You can’t go off with the wolf. If we have to, we’ll find a way so he can stay here with you. It’s totally unacceptable that I won’t see you anymore.”

  “Tia…”

  She kept talking. “I’ll tell him so. Forget it. You’re not leaving.”

  “I’m not.”

  She blinked. “You’re not?”

  I pointed at the sunglasses on her face. “How do you like your first trip Upwards?”

  “Oh,” she laughed, “everyone is up now. Dad says he’s afraid the whole habitat is going to blow up. You should see everyone wandering around and then Chad showed up with this car. Well, never mind. We’re not letting you leave. End of story.”

  She turned around. “Tell them, boys. She’s not leaving.”

  Micah leaned against the car next to Keith. I hadn’t seen him since I’d been back, and as I stared at his face, the one that had filled my heart with so much glee just weeks ago, I felt nothing but friendship towards him.

  He’d always be that. It was an amazing revelation. Even with all the plans I had made in my heart towards Jason going away, Micah did nothing for me romantically.

  He smiled. “Don’t leave, Rachel. Tia will be a mess if you do.”

  Keith didn’t smile. “Where is the wolf pack?”

  “You know,” I answered, “I wish I could tell you. I guess I placed more importance on the timing than they did.” I could feel the tears starting again and I pushed them back down. They could come later. When I was alone. “You might have been right about the whole thing, Keith.”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel.” He didn’t move, which I appreciated. The fact that I had Tia and my father so close was about as much physical contact as I could stand in my personal space. “I didn’t want to be.”

  “Couldn’t keep those coordinates I gave you to yourself?”

  He shook his head, a smile playing on his lips. “Apparently not.”

  Chad finally spoke from where he stood on the other side of the vehicle. “Do I need to hurt someone for you, Rachel?”

  “No.” I rubbed my face. “I think there’s been enough violence for an eternity.” I pointed at the vehicle. “Where did you get the car?”

  Chad’s
whole face lit up. He patted the car like it was his pet. “This is not a car, it is a Sports Utility Vehicle and I found it, years ago, when I first came Upwards. A couple of the guys helped me move it to the habitat—it took months and we ended up basically having to take it apart piece by piece—and then I fixed it up using old manuals I found in the library.”

  My father moved forward. “How do you power it?”

  “Gasoline.”

  “Where are you getting the gas?”

  “Well…”

  I interrupted. “Can we go home?”

  Everyone turned to look at me. “I’m about three seconds from losing it. I mean really losing it. I feel like the biggest idiot whoever walked the planet, and I’d really like to not be here when that happens. So can we go home?”

  Tia put her arm around me. “Yes. I’m sorry, Rachel.”

  “No.” I sniffed, as the pressure threatening to turn me into a weeping mess got worse. “You all came to get me. I can’t tell you what that means.” I looked up at my dad. “If you had come and they’d been here, I might not have been so happy to see you. I think that makes me a really, bad person.”

  Keith shook his head. “Rachel, Isaac Icahn is a really bad person. You’re not a bad person. I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t wanted to take off and run away from the habitats at least one hundred times a week. Hell, I left my habitat and crossed an ocean to get here. I’ll never see my family again. I don’t exactly think any of us are in a position to judge.”

  Keith’s words made the tears that had been threatening overflow the dam that had been holding them back. They hit me so hard I wasn’t sure I could remain standing. I bent over at the waist and cried harder than I ever had before in my life.

  I don’t know exactly what I was mourning. It was more than Jason, although his loss was the most prominent. But I think it was more than just him. I had made the biggest mistake of my life in trusting my heart to someone I’d just met, something inside of me died.

  I wouldn’t have believed it of myself. All the years I’d taken care of my father who should have taken care of me, all of the years I’d crossed the bridge to Warrior town by myself, should have taken care of any vulnerability I had left. The Warrior training was designed to make us hard, make us capable of handling any eventualities that hit us.

  But it wasn’t until I met and lost Jason that I truly understood the meaning of loneliness, and I think that’s what really had me crying, bent over in Tia’s arms, like my world was ending.

  Because it was.

  Chad picked me up in his arms, and no one spoke a word until he’d placed me in the back of the car. His Sports Utility Vehicle had an open backseat. He wrapped me in blanket as he made sure I was warm and comfortable before he handed his keys to Micah and told him to drive.

  Micah hooted as he ran around the side of the car. Keith climbed in the front next to him, which left Chad, Tia, and my father in the open back with me. It could have been a traveling group of clowns for all I was aware of their presence. My eyesight was blurred under my glasses, and I couldn’t form words to save my life.

  Chad sat next to me, and I leaned on his shoulder. Maybe it was wrong, to cry on Chad about the loss of another guy. But he didn’t seem to mind. Gently, he stroked my hair while my father discussed with Tia her first impressions of the outside world.

  It was meaningless conversation and eventually the bumps of the car driving over the rough terrain lulled me into a state of zoned out numbness. Darkness fell around me as I leaned on Chad’s strong shoulder and cried away the remaining pieces of innocence I had stupidly hung on to for such a long time.

  When I woke up, I was inside of a tent. For a second, I wondered if I’d imagined the Jason not showing up thing, but then I heard Tia’s loud remarks going on outside of where I slept.

  I rubbed at my eyes as I stood up and stretched. My muscles were stiff like I hadn’t used them in a week, and I wondered how long I had slept. I stepped out into the next small room where I saw Tia sitting on the floor with her mother, Carol, and her three younger siblings, Lamont, Silas, and Grady. I smiled at the way Tia looked sitting there with all of them. Out of the whole family, she was the only girl and her mother had liked ‘different’ sounding names.

  “Hello.” I looked down at the floor, feeling foolish and small.

  Tia laughed. “I was coming in to wake you. It’s been eighteen hours. I wasn’t sure you were still alive in there.”

  “Eighteen hours?”

  Tia’s mother stood up. “Yes. You poor dear, you needed rest. I’m glad to see you’re up. We need to feed you and get you out there so you can get to work. The Warriors are barely controlling the chaos of having all the non-Warriors to protect. They could use your help.”

  Carol’s not so subtle speech let me know in no uncertain terms that I was not going to be sitting around moping about my lost love now that I was home. It was fine. She was right, of course. It was important to be busy.

  Tia’s mom handed me a cup of juice and then she went over to the little area that must have been the makeshift kitchen to fix me something to eat.

  I sat down on the ground next to Tia and watched her play cards with her little brothers for a second.

  “So why aren’t you out there doing crowd control?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a Warrior yet. They’re keeping to that sixteen and older rule. They only let me come and get you because there were so many Warriors surrounding me. Otherwise, they were going to make me stay here.”

  I nodded. It seemed to me if I was capable of wandering around by myself, Tia was more than able to handle the same thing. But I didn’t make the rules. Isaac Icahn had, which maybe meant Tia should start breaking all of them immediately.

  “How did I get here?”

  She looked up at me, a sly grin on her face. “My brother carried you like he was Prince Charming and you were Cinderella.”

  I looked down at the floor. Chad. That was right, I had wept on his shoulder, probably soaked through his shirt. “I’ll have to thank him.”

  “Uh-huh.” She put down her cards. “I forgive you, okay? Don’t beat yourself up about thinking you wanted to leave. No one is mad at you for that.”

  I loved Tia like my family and my relief at seeing her when she’d arrived in the car had been palpable. But, if I’d thought the gulf between us was wide on my sixteenth birthday, it was an impossible pit to cross right now.

  “I’m going to go see if your Mom needs help.”

  I needed to keep busy. It seemed like a good idea.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I stood on a makeshift bridge, looking down at rolling water that, apparently, threatened the little community we were building above Genesis. It hadn’t, despite our dire fears, blown up. Perhaps Isaac Icahn had never thought to get caught.

  I didn’t know. This was ‘grown up’ stuff, and since I had safely returned six weeks earlier, I was now back to my status of first year Warrior, or One as they called us. I was apparently old enough to stand still and hold the measuring stick Patrick had thrown at me when he’d told me to hurry up and get over to the bridge.

  “Look,” one of the non-Warrior agriculture experts spoke. He was a little man with no hair left and a strange, crooked nose. “I’m not an expert on life above ground but I think it’s very likely that if we get any more snow—and considering that it’s only January I think that’s likely—the river is going to flood. My best advice, move the colony to higher ground.”

  Patrick sighed. “Again.”

  “You guys are in charge.” The little man shrugged. I couldn’t remember his name, if they’d even told it to me. “It’s what I would recommend.”

  “Okay, Paul. Thank you.”

  He shook his head and trotted away with the gait of a person who was not in charge. I could tell the difference now. The Warriors were all walking like they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders, and Patrick looked like he’d aged ten years.


  “What do you think, Rachel?”

  I blinked. “What do I think?”

  He nodded. “That’s what I asked.”

  “I think I shouldn’t have an opinion. It’s up to you guys. Do we move or don’t we? I have no idea.”

  “You were listening, weren’t you? Or were you off in the la-la land you inhabit these days?”

  Ah. So this was what he wanted to talk to me about. This was one of those adult times when they say one thing because they actually want to lead up to speak about another topic.

  “I was in and out of paying attention.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  “It’s not like I have some sort of special knowledge that can help with this. I’m happy to help haul out the tents or to move us back underground if that’s what it comes to.”

  Why on earth were we talking about this? I shifted from one foot to the other.

  “I know. You always do your job. They say you took down two Vampires all by yourself and that you’re practically training Deacon all by yourself.”

  “I don’t mind training him.” He was a fast learner and he didn’t talk much when I didn’t feel like talking. “So what’s the problem?”

  Obviously there was one or Patrick wouldn’t be standing here, staring at a river, giving me some kind of life lesson I was missing.

  “Life is not just working. I haven’t seen you light up in six weeks.”

  A certain wolf with curly blond hair that was always messy had gone away and taken all my light with him. Except no one wanted to hear me say that anymore. Everyone wanted happy and I’d thought I was doing a good job of giving it to them.

  Apparently, I’d been wrong.

  “There’s not much to light up about. We have to take care of all these people. They’re all depending on us to keep them alive up here. It keeps snowing. It’s cold all the time and we have no idea how to handle any day-to-day living above ground.”

  Patrick moved until he stood next to me. “They always did depend on us. Now they get to do it head on. That’s not such a bad thing. And as for the rest?” He threw his hands in the air. “I guess we’ll either make it or we won’t.” He grinned. “You might as well get happy about it.”