The Hard Way (Box Set)

by Stephanie Burke

  “I said they have Luster! Are you happy now? They have Luster! Get up, you fucking bitch! They have our leader!”

  I didn’t know if I was stunned more by Glimmer’s harsh words or the news that she brought.

  Luster, my Luster, was caught!

  “Where?” I stammered. I tried to unwind myself from the covers and rise to my feet. “Who has him?”

  “The Titans! Who do you think? They have what they want. The resistance is dead without him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The trees! The trees told me. I told Glow and he said to get you, though I don’t know why. Powerless, magicless waste of space that you are!”

  I ignored her and reached for my discarded gown. I had to get to Glow and find out what was going on.

  Fear seemed to freeze my heart in my throat as I haphazardly pulled the gown over my head and raced to the door. I absently noticed that Glimmer followed.

  As did the eyes of all the rebels gathered there, once I exited the tent. I could feel their burning gazes, the anger and uncertainty they tossed in my direction. It made my feet move faster. By the time I made it to the tight knot of warriors, I was nearly running. I knew their anger was directed at me, and my guilt was making their mistrust harder to bear.

  “Glow!” I all but screamed as I reached the gathering, which appeared to be a war council. “What is going on?”

  “They found the box, Sinopee. They knew that he would come for it. They set a trap.”

  “What can I do?”

  My heart was pounding, but I pushed back the urge to scream and rant like a madwoman. Luster needed me, needed a plan, and I wanted to help in any way that I could.

  “Why is the box so important, Sinopee?”

  I realized that Luster had kept that aspect of our relationship a secret. But it was time for the secrets to end. They had to know what was going on! They were risking their resistance for him, for us, and had a right to know.

  “Without it, I will die.”

  “What a shame,” Glimmer snarled, shooting daggers at me with her eyes.

  “And without me, Luster will die. We are bound.”

  Glow nodded once, then turned his attention to the gathered warriors.

  “What can I do to help?” I asked, my heart, once dead, now pounding in my chest.

  “You can go and wait.”

  I blinked at Glow’s words. What did he mean, wait? “I want to help!” I protested. “Luster is my man, and I want to save him!”

  “What can you do, Sinopee?” Glow stated this kindly, but the words still burned. “You have no magical abilities, you can’t track, you are not a hunts-woman. You have no skills that could help save Luster, and having you along will slow us down.”

  “Yeah.” Glimmer snorted in my direction, tossing the fringes of her blue hair. “You would only get in the way.”

  “I can think!” I cried out, desperate to help. “You need me!”

  “You can think here,” Glow stated with finality.

  Glimmer snickered, damn her blue hair!

  “As will you, Glimmer,” Glow added.

  “What?” She turned surprised eyes to Glow, too stunned to do anything but stare at him.

  “You will get in the way, Glimmer. You are to stay here and… guard.”

  “But I talk to the trees! The plants hear me! I can be of help.”

  “Glimmer,” Glow sighed with a long-suffering look. “You are too young and full of yourself. You need to learn control. Maybe Sinopee can teach that to you while we go and get Luster. But for the hours that she has left in our world, you will be with Sinopee.”

  That said, Glow motioned to his chosen men, and they began to prepare for battle.

  “But I can help!” Glimmer wailed as she watched the warriors and their departing backs.

  Saying nothing, I turned and made my way back to Luster’s room. I had plans of my own, and I needed a moment to organize my thoughts for my attack.

  “This is all your fault!”

  Glimmer’s words followed me down the hall, but I ignored her. I had more important things to think about.

  “I am talking to you!”

  I felt her hand around my arm and reacted without thinking.

  I gripped her thumb and yanked it backwards, toward her wrist. While she gasped in unexpected pain, I drove my elbow back into her stomach, knocking the air from her lungs, then using her weak grip on my arms, I slammed her into the wall.

  “Don’t fuck with me, bitch,” I snarled, reaching out to grab a handful of her hair to pull her face to mine. She was still gasping, trying to get air into her oxygen depleted lungs, eyes wide with shock. “I have to go and get my man.”

  Snorting in disgust, I released her hair and gave her a little shove, just to drive my point home. Then, calmly, I turned and made my way back to Luster’s room.

  “What do I know?” I asked myself, pacing in silence. “What do I need?”

  The Titans would be easy to find, maybe. All I had to do was let myself get caught. But once there, what to do?

  I stopped pacing and sat on the bed.

  “Think, Sinopee!” I berated myself.

  First I had to take my problems one at a time. That way, I would not get confused and screw up too badly. One at a time and very scientific.

  Identify the problems. Easy enough, I thought. The Titans, who for some unknown reason wanted to wipe these people out of existence, had just managed to catch the rebel leader.

  Problem: How to rescue him without loss of life -- mine or anyone else’s.

  Problem: How to get the letterbox back. Fuck finding a way to keep me here! If I could get the box back and we could have another year’s long wait, I would be content. I just didn’t want him to die.

  Solutions: None immediately apparent.

  Sighing, I again tried to get my mind to work, to get over the shock of not having Luster here. The only thing I could think of was to allow myself to be caught. Once captured, I would figure something out. The most important thing was to go to Lust.

  Decision made, I leapt to my feet and began to search his room. He had to have footwear here somewhere. That and I needed a weapon, other than that dagger. That dagger was special. I had no magic to defend myself, so I had to depend on good old reliable steel.

  As I was rummaging through his chests, I heard footsteps behind me. I had no idea how long I had been thinking and searching, but it had to have been a long time. When I tried to stand upright, my back ached and my muscles pulled.

  Turning, I was stunned to see Glimmer there, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “What do you want?” I asked, at my coldest.

  “To go with you. To help you. I have to help the man I love, even if it means teaming up with you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Stealthily, we made our way to the hidden exit of the Citadel.

  When earlier I had shown my shock that we could find a way to leave, since Glimmer couldn’t move trees with magic and I had none, she laughed at me.

  “We all can’t move trees, Sinopee. In fact, Luster is one of the few who can. So we all need an alternative route to get in and out when our leader is not with us.”

  Smart, I thought. But then I never thought that these people, these rebels, were a stupid lot. They were just ignorant about some things, like the positive use of science and analytical thinking.

  Glimmer motioned for me to follow, and I brought my mind back to more important matters. Like sneaking past the guards.

  They were rebels to the last one, but Glow, Luster’s second-in-command, had given the order that we stay inside. The guards would probably do everything short of killing us to make sure we stayed inside.

  Glimmer led me to the exit, touching roots that we passed along the way. I knew that she was gleaning information from them. But still her earlier words bothered me. She was in love with… Luster?

  No. She didn’t say Luster, but the man she loved.

  I
was puzzling over this when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “We have to move if we are going to make it past the guard,” Glimmer said. “Privacy break.”

  I nodded in understanding and we both scurried up a narrow path that led to the roots of a large tree.

  “If you had any powers, you could be of some help. But since you don’t, you had better start to climb.”

  I said nothing, but sighed deeply, then began to look for handholds in the roots.

  Climbing wasn’t easy, and Glimmer seemed to almost walk through the roots, knowing where to place her hand or foot next. But slowly, I managed to make the muscles of my arms strain and pull me upward until I felt a gap where the stone wall should be.

  “This is it,” Glimmer whispered as she disappeared into the hole. “Come on!”

  Saying nothing, I forced my way through the crevasse, reminded sickly of the abyss I was sure to plummet through if we didn’t retrieve those letters, and soon.

  It took mere seconds to pull myself through the damp, warm place, and soon the heat of the waning sun caressed my face.

  “How much time do I have left?” I wondered out loud as I stared at the sky, watching the deepening blues and purples as the sun began its descent.

  “About six hours, and then you go back where you come from.”

  Glimmer didn’t know about the restrictions or the letters, or had paid no attention to what I had told Glow. Or just didn’t believe me. I bet she thought I sent Luster out on a feminine whim.

  Again, I was silent as we began our journey through the forest.

  “Where are the Titans?” I asked. “What do they look like?”

  “No one knows,” she said, sidestepping over a few fallen branches and piles of leaves.

  “Then how can we find them?” I realized that as we walked, we were getting closer and closer to the area where the tree line ended.

  “I’ll think of something.” Glimmer pushed aside a young leafy branch from a low-hanging tree.

  “What?” I questioned, feeling like an idiot, yet still following her.

  I narrowed my eyes and glared at her as the branch swung back, striking me a stinging blow to the chest. “Oof!” That would leave a welt.

  “You have to watch what you are doing,” she sniffed at me as she moved on. “And stop making so much noise. I want to surprise them and not have them surprise us.”

  “I’ll ‘noise’ her,” I mumbled, rubbing my chest. “Right on top of her blue head!”

  For a short time, we marched onward, Glimmer flinging bits of earth at me and me doing my best to dodge them while resisting the urge to kill her.

  By her actions, I knew that she had to want Luster. Too bad! He was mine, and I was not going to give him up to a spoiled little girl. But my animosity made the trip easier. I used my anger toward her to keep moving through the strange and foreign land that my home had once resembled.

  Finally, we reached the sandy hillside where Luster, Glow, and I had come under attack from the Titans. The falling sun cast shadows across the land. All was quiet, and that worried me.

  “Where are the animal sounds?” I whispered. I had become so used to the sounds of birds and other small animals that I instantly noticed their silence.

  “Hush!” she hissed.

  “But…”

  “They are near.”

  Deciding it was prudent to listen to her, for now, I held my voice and waited.

  We didn’t have to wait long.

  There was a gravelly sound, like metal on stone, and then deep voices. She pointed to the right, toward open land.

  I gasped, trying to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. This couldn’t be right!

  I half rose to my feet, stopping only when Glimmer’s hand latched onto my arm.

  “This can’t be right!” I whispered. “No!”

  But the truth was right before my eyes. I knew what the Titans were.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “This is not right!” I breathed. “This is impossible!”

  The Titans! They were wearing…

  “Get out there!”

  Before I could gather my wits, Glimmer shoved me out into the open.

  Stunned, I froze while the two men, dressed in tunics, the familiar, male style of tunic, turned in my direction.

  Like a specimen caught in the high beam light of a microscope, I froze. The two men turned to me and one of them smiled.

  “Get her!” one shouted, and my feet finally decided to take action.

  I turned away from the two and looked over my shoulder. Glimmer, that traitor, was behind me, and the Titans were blocking the only way out.

  Almost screaming with frustration, I tried to dart past them. Remembering some old forgotten footage of some game played with a pig-skinned ball, I rushed the men, hoping to force a break in their dual barrier.

  It worked. For a minute, anyway. Then they both dove at me, driving me to the hard unforgiving ground.

  “Get off!” I bellowed, but my answer was a sharp prick in the neck, and then the world began to swirl in a mass of pretty colors.

  “Why?” I whispered. The edges of my vision began to darken and my throat refused to work.

  But I didn’t know if I was asking Glimmer why she had done it, why the men were dressed in clothes from my world, or why my life had to be so damned hard.

  * * *

  I woke with my hands tied above me and a dull ache in my head.

  No, I was awakened. Voices had pulled me back from the black void, and now my mind struggled to sort out what was being said.

  “I brought her, as promised,” Glimmer was saying. “Now release my man!”

  “We did have a deal,” a man said. “So I guess it would be fair of me to actually own up to what I said.” Another male voice chuckled, and the first one went on. “Okay, your man may go free, but it doesn’t matter. It’s only a matter of time before we have all of you… abominations back where you belong.”

  I had no idea how long I had been out, but it seemed that someone else had been doing a bit of thinking while I had been trying to hatch a plan of my own. Glimmer, blue hair and all, was proving to be more cunning than any Thinker I had ever heard of.

  I slammed my eyes shut as I heard footsteps approaching me.

  “Where are they?” Glimmer sounded nervous. Good to be nervous when you made plans with the devil.

  “Let them go!” I heard someone call. “Because of this one, we will have the whole lot soon enough!”

  Then I heard a voice that I’d thought I would never hear again.

  “Glimmer!” he called, then I heard the sound of rushed footsteps. “What did you do?”

  “I had to do it!” I heard her say. “The trees told me what happened, how you were ambushed. Then they told me of the ultimatum. Her for you! What else could I do? Without you, the resistance is at an end!”

  “But at what cost, Glimmer! What is the cost?”

  “I had to!” she cried desperately. “For our future, for our child.”

  That brought my eyes open. Glimmer was pregnant?

  “Oh, I see you are awake,” a voice said, and I knew that I had given away my opportunity to gather more information. “Did the happy reunion wake you? We must teach them to be silent.”

  I glared at the man in the tunic as he continued to examine me.

  “What kind of creature are you? You don’t look like the others. You look… strange.”

  Well, you ain’t no picnic yourself, I thought. But I only snorted and turned my head so that I could see the two people lost in each other.

  Glow wore a shocked expression on his face. He stared at Glimmer, who had tears running down her blue-tinted cheeks. So that was who Glimmer was in love with, and apparently the feelings were returned.

  A baby, I thought. Was there any justice in the world when a blue-haired idiot like Glimmer got to be reunited with her love and have a baby? Probably not. Suddenly, the gods testing Luster was not such a farfet
ched idea after all.

  “Jealous?” the guard asked, and I had to turn again to look at his ugly face. “No matter, you will soon be reunited with that freak of yours. We have been waiting a long time for this.”

  “Sinopee,” Glow said, his voice raspy. “We will succeed.” He had Glimmer under one arm, placing her body behind his as he stared at me, helplessness in his eyes.

  “I had to!” Glimmer tried to explain, her body shaking with sobs that she tried to hold in. “I had to! We are going to have a baby! I just had to save him!”

  I understood, but I was still pissed. I looked at her and then at Glow, then made a gesture I was extremely proud of.

  I wiggled my wrists until I could get my right hand forward, and I shot her the bird. Immature, I know, but my head was aching, my arms were going numb, and I was trapped with no way of saving my man!

  All things considered, I was pretty eloquent.

  Glow snickered and Glimmer gasped, but then Glow turned and pulled her out of the clearing. Almost instantly, it seemed that they disappeared into the growing shadows.

  And the shadows were, indeed, growing. The sun had set while I was out and torches were now lighting the area. The day, and my time, were almost up.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They carried me over bare ground and soft grass. It seemed like hours they carried me, but never complained about the distance or the journey. As they trudged along, I sat in a cage, my hands tied above me, as I swung in rhythm to their walking.

  It was a good time to think.

  Part one of my original plan was in effect. Now I had to quickly come up with part two.

  The sound of raised voices knocked me out of my reverie. I sat straighter, paying attention now, as I was taken to a huge building hidden in some trees.

  Camouflage! That was how the Titans survived, but it was also how the rebels had outsmarted them for years. As we drew closer, I saw several more men and women, all dressed in tunics and carrying, of all things, lab equipment.

  One woman held a radiation guide and another had a doctor’s kit. Several carried small weapons strapped to their belts, the source of the Titan lightning. They were using laser guns, the very same guns that had been outlawed several years ago.