Outcast: A Corporation Novel (The Corporation)

by RaeLynn Fry

  ७

  “You up, yet?” Eta yells from somewhere in her small house—sounds like it could be the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I'm up,” I call out. I scratch at the back of my head before pulling on my pants. I walk out into the kitchen, which isn't too far from my room.

  “You're shirt's dry.” She tosses me the thin, tan fabric from the back of a chair, without looking my way. I catch it, mid—flight. It's still warm from the fire as I slip it over my head and onto my body. I look down. All evidence of Kalaen is gone.

  “Thanks,” I say pulling out a chair and dropping into it. “Heavy schedule this afternoon?”

  “Afternoon is over. It’s evenin’ time, now.”

  I look out the window. Sure enough, the light is low. “Did I really sleep the day away?”

  She takes a seat across from me, setting some stale bread and what looks like paste in a bowl for supper. “When you haven’t been sleeping at night, your body will take what it needs whenever it can get it.”

  I take her in, it looks like she's aged a good ten years since Karis and I came back from Dahn and my father took Ajna. This isn't an easy time for anyone.

  “I've been thinking about these dreams of yours.” She takes a bite of the paste.

  Her statement takes me by surprise. I haven't said anything to anyone about my dreams. “Don't know what you're talking about.” I take a hearty bite of the bread and swear I'm pretty close to breaking a tooth. I chew it, with aching jaw, before I swallow the dense lump.

  “Ethan, my house isn't so big that I don’t hear you tossing and turning with the ferocity you put behind it.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  She studies me with her stare. “Why don't you tell me what they’re about? Maybe I can help, or at the very least you something to help with sleep.”

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “When your nothing starts keeping me up at night, it becomes my something.”

  “I can deal with it, get it under control. I can make them stop. I mean, there are tons of alleys in Neech; it really isn’t anything special I found the one from my nightmare—they all look alike. It was just a coincidence.”

  “You found the alley from your dream, in Neech?” Her voice lilts up in surprise.

  “Yeah.” I let my shoulders drop a fraction of an inch. Carrying around this seemingly nothing of a secret, especially after finding the alley this morning, draws a lot of my strength and mind. Two things I need every spare inch of if I'm to break the hold the Corporation has on Neech.

  “Tell me, Ethan.” The softness of her words works at my resistance.

  I take a breath, deciding to go all in. “It's not really a nightmare, I guess. Nothing bad is happening, but there's just something about it that scares the living daylights out of me. Every time.” She nods for me to continue. “I'm young, no older than eight, and I'm running through the streets of Neech. I turn down an alley and hide in the shadows. I'm so scared. I think I'm trying to get away from something, but I always wake up before I can find out what.”

  She nods her head slightly. “And it's the same every time?”

  “Every time.”

  We’re both silent. “There’s more. Tell me.”

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “You live with me, boy. I already know you’re crazy, but I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.”

  “It’s more of a feeling, or a sense of truth. That somehow, Karis is connected to this dream. I don’t know if it’s in a real sense or not—I don’t think it is—but she’s a part of it somehow and when I’m awake, I dunno, I feel like,” I pause to think, “like I don't really know her anymore. Or myself. Like part of me is a different person, somehow, and that part of me doesn't love Karis. And that scares me.”

  “A house divided cannot stand, especially the one inside of us.” She thinks it over. “Sounds easy enough, though. I'll give you some tea tonight that will help. We'll see how that works and go from there. Now tell me what happened in the alley this morning.”

  “I was in the Square, waiting for Kerick, and I recognized the area of town I was in. And not from just my time here. It was more than that, it was familiar. Then, it kind of hit me—I knew this place. I'd been there before. It was the alley from my dream. I don't know how, but I know for certain it is.”

  Her expression doesn’t change. At all. “I have some tea that will help.”

  “That's it?” I ask, a bit let down. I was hoping for more fanfare than that. A bit more ooh and aah. Most of all, I was hoping for the answers I didn’t have.

  “The right tea can fix just about anything.”

  “Even the fact that I didn't recognize Karis or Journey when they found me, toppled over in my own vomit?”

  “Tea has seemingly magical properties sometimes.”

  I stretch my arms over my head. What I wouldn't give for a hot shower right now, rather than her tea. “Sounds good.”

  “Tell Karis about these dreams of yours yet?”

  “Uh, no, not yet. I wasn't going to, actually.” This catches her interest.

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” I take my time, in an attempt to grab the right words. “There's no real reason to tell her about them; I mean, I don’t even know what they mean yet. Besides, she has a lot on her mind as it is.”

  “Or they could be something and it'd be a good idea not to keep them from her.”

  Okay, now Eta is just irritating me. Why the detailed interest in Karis and my relationship all of the sudden? Time for a subject change. “Find anything useful in Karis' canisters?”

  “Not yet, but if there's something to be found, we'll find it. How are the meetings going?”

  I shrug a shoulder, taking a bite of the porridge. “Okay, I guess. Karis and I are trying to gather more members, but Neech isn't exactly overflowing with courage these days.”

  “Keep trying, they'll come around.”

  “Yeah, but we have a little issue called time. My father is a calculating man, and I know he has something big planned, and it can’t be good. We need to be proactive, be on the offense.”

  “And what exactly is your plan?”

  “Not sure yet, but it'll come to me—faster if I had more people to work with.”

  “Have patience, Ethan. It's going to take some time for folks in Neech to know they can trust you.”

  “I wish Karis' word was good enough.”

  “If only things around this place were that simple.” She gets up, taking our bowls and setting them in the sink. “Just keep your head down and stay out of trouble.”

  I grab our dusters from their hooks, handing Eta hers. I open the door and wait for her to pass through. She wraps her scarf around her neck, pulling it snugly. I snap the elastic bands of the mask around my head. “I never go looking for it,” I say.

  “That's what's so disturbing.” She pats me on the cheek and walks out into the street.

  ७

  Except for Java, the owner, The Tavern is empty. He's sweeping the floor when I enter and mutters a muffled greeting to me, without ever looking up.

  I take the chairs from the table tops and arrange them in rows in front of the speaking area Java's set up. Really all it is is a tall, round table for me to place my papers on. Nothing fancy. In Dahn, we would have had a great podium with lights and voice enhancement. Cushioned chairs for the spectators and refreshments. There would have been music and laughing and chattering.

  Here, there's only dim light, creaking and uneven wooden chairs, the smell of stale food fringed by the faint odor of old urine and garbage that hasn't been taken out yet. If I’m going off past attendance, there won't be many people that turn up, which is a blessing, since The Tavern isn't all that big to begin with, just enough space for about twenty or so people.

  Karis is late. Again. It used to be that she was here in time to help me set up; although I don't need much assistance lining up a f
ew chairs. But lately, she slips in just before we’re getting ready to start.

  There's a creak and a cool breeze that wraps around my ankles and shins. I turn around to see her slip through the back door. She unwinds the scarf from her neck and chin and tugs her mask down on top of that.

  “Sorry I'm late,” she says, short of breath. She must have hurried to get here. “I had to run a quick errand after work.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  She stiffens ever so slightly. “Oh, you know. Not really.”

  I can't shake the feeling she's not telling me the truth, but I don't know why she would feel she needs to keep something from me; which makes me want to find out what that something is.

  “That's nice,” I say, instead of pressing her for more information like my instincts tell me to. But then, she smiles up at me, and I'm less suspicious. “How was your day?” I ask.

  “It was a day.” She shrugs her slim shoulders and shrugs off her duster.

  “Hey,” I say, wrapping my arms around her, “about this morning.”

  She shakes her head. “It was nothing. Don’t worry about it. We all have so much on our minds lately.”

  I look her in the eyes, really look at her, and smile. “I love you.”

  She stares at me for a moment, like she's looking for something. “I know,” she finally says, wrapping her arms around my waist and sets her head on my chest.

  I rest my lips on her hair, breathing her in. We stand there and I think to myself, Forget the rebellion. Forget my father. All I want is this, and I’ll pay any price to keep it. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” she says as she pulls away, but not all the way. She goes up on her toes and kisses me gently.

  That one moment of contact grounds me and brings me back to Earth and puts everything in a new perspective. It's okay if she’s keeping something from me, because if it were important, she’d tell me. I have no doubt. And when I know more about what's going on with my dreams, I'll tell her about them. Then, we won't have anything between us anymore.

  I pull her tighter against me and lift her up a little, kissing her again. “I love you,” I say for the second time. I set her feet back on the ground, her cheeks flushed.

  “I love you, too. But we'd better finish getting this place set up. People will be here soon.”

  “Yeah, all five of them,” I say with a sigh. Karis smoothly removes herself from my hold and lays out the remaining few chairs.

  “I hope more people start showing up. If we want to change things—if we want to make a difference—we're going to need more than a handful of people,” I say.

  “We will. But it will take time. Just wait, more people will come.”

  “That's one of the several things we don't have.”

  “They're scared, Ethan,” she says with sudden irritation. “They're fearful that the Corporation will find out about the meetings, that they'll be punished somehow.”

  “That's a possibility, I'm not going to tell them otherwise, but it's worth the risk. We'll never see freedom if we play it safe.” My voice rises a little. Our tender embrace moments ago seems to never have happened.

  “Hey,” Karis says, “You don't have to convince me. I'm on your side. You just need to stop having such high expectations. This will all come, but in time. If you rush anything, it will only backfire on you.”

  “I know we're on the same side. I just feel all this pressure from every angle, and I feel like I'm doing this alone. When we came back to Neech, I thought it was with the understanding that we were going to do this together.”

  “What's that supposed to mean? I'm here with you; I'm getting people to come to the meetings. I'm trying to figure out what Déjà and the others are up to. I want to take down your father as much as, if not more than, you do. But I'm also being realistic and not ridiculous in my expectations.”

  “Oh, kind of like how you're being realistic with your slapped together quasi-plans of getting your brother back by yourself?” I take a breath and run my hand through my hair. I shouldn't have said that and the fire in Karis' eyes tells me that she agrees. How did this fight get out of so out of control, so fast? It's like anytime we talk to each other, it's either emotionless or heated with an angry passion. “Let’s not fight. We’ll only say something we’ll regret.”

  “You mean, you don’t regret anything you’ve said so far?” She narrows her eyes.

  I sigh again. “Come on, people are showing up.”

  Karis

  I’m late to the meeting, again, and I can only hope Ethan is distracted enough he doesn't notice. But, he's well aware of my presence when I try to slip through the door unnoticed. He's probably been looking for me, waiting for me to get here.

  I try to hide my breathlessness at rushing to be on time. We exchange a few words, share a pleasant but awkward kiss, and then fight. Our basic routine, as of late.

  There are more people here tonight than there have been the past few meetings. It’s not a large number, about a dozen or so, but I'm still impressed; even if I feel these meetings are only us spinning our wheels. I'm glad for the good turnout, though, because this has been weighing on Ethan’s mind heavily. He takes Neech’s lack of involvement personally. Plus, if the rebellion is successful enough to keep Ethan busy, then I'm free to do what I need to do without trying to keep Ethan away.

  I can’t tell if he’s happy tonight or if he just feels he needs to prove himself. His words are louder. Stronger. His true passion is showing. I stand there, at his side, like the dutiful second hand man, nodding when appropriate to show my support; all while scanning the crowd, trying to get a good read on what the majority feeling is.

  There are a lot of heads nodding and whisperings of agreement to neighbors. But I also see a few people—near the back—waving their hands at Ethan's words, swatting them away, and throwing in with the occasional boo. But at least they aren't leaving. We may be able to win them over, yet.

  “Isn't that right, Karis?” Ethan's elbow jabs me in the ribs.

  I look up at him, confused, absently rubbing at my bruising bones. The meeting has bolted in the opposite direction it had been going. Everyone looks stressed and angry. Ethan isn't as confident as he was before. He’s pleading with them now. What did I miss? What happened?

  His face strains and his eyes show a bit of disappointment when I answer him with a confused look. He quickly sweeps it away and carries on as if my not paying attention doesn't come as a blow.

  “The Corporation needs to be shown that they can't take advantage of us…” He tries to regain his footing in the meeting.

  As much as I want to focus on what he’s saying, my attention is snagged towards the back of the room when someone new enters through the back. A short, squat man squeezes his tubby midsection through the door and finds an empty seat in the back. Ethan's words a buzz in my ear. I narrow my eyes and peer through the dim light, trying to make out who would be coming in so late.

  I can barely make out the whites of his eyes as they dart back and forth. He walks through the thin crowd in the back, his movements jittery and jerky—like he's nervous—and his shoulder and hip drag against the wall as he makes his way forward. The closer he gets to Ethan and me, the more his features become familiar. I know him, but it's taking my brain a moment to reconcile the reality of where I know him from. It’s impossible.

  The last time I saw this man flashes across my mind. I was hot and disoriented, lying in the weeds by my house in the middle of the night. He was being hauled through the streets by two Guards. His wife and daughter were dead in the street. No one has seen Raj Verna since that night.

  My skin prickles with awareness at the sight of him. The Corporation doesn't just let people go. Unless it serves a bigger purpose for them.

  Raj slinks down a row of chairs and slides into a seat next to one of the women who had just been booing a moment earlier. He and the woman are whispering now, heads bent together against the rumbling of t
he meeting. Whatever’s going on, it isn’t good.

  Ethan

  The meeting is probably one of the worst we've had yet. I've only been able to do half as much talking as I was planning to because it seems that the only citizens who have shown up are the ones that don't like me, don't agree with what I'm trying to do, or think resisting the Corp is impossible. Mostly, it's a combination of all three.

  There's grumbling and talking and shouting and disagreements breaking out in pockets throughout The Tavern. I can see fists being clenched and faces turning red. My control is slipping and will be gone soon.

  “If you would just listen for a minute.” I try to get my voice above the melee, but it’s swallowed in waves of anger, and drowned in the current of dissention. “Listen!” Nothing. I tug at my hair in frustration. “Karis, can you help me out here?” I look to my left. She's sitting in the chair we'd set up earlier, staring down at her wrist, tracing her Mark with the tip of her finger. “Karis!”

  She looks up at me, surprised that I'm talking to her, it seems. “Hmm?”

  “A little help here?” I gesture out to the crowd.

  “I don't think we're going to get anywhere with them tonight, Ethan. They're too upset, too angry. Nothing productive will be offered up.”

  I drop my head, irritated that she hasn't been paying attention and frustrated that she's speaking the truth. I decide to try one more time before ending the meeting. “I understand you're all frustrated. But if we want anything to change—” I stop, distracted by a new person coming in through the back door. Karis notices him, too, and sits up a little straighter. “—if we want anything to change, we have to take some risks.” I pound a fist on the tall table.