Jump Zone: Cleo Falls

by Snow, Wylie

  He blinked a few times, tried to focus on the here and now, tried to ignore the acid churning in his gut. It’s not supposed to be this way. I’m not supposed to give a zhang for this savage.

  He should never have agreed to this ridiculous mission. And now he had no choice. He needed to get it done, get it over with, get back to the city, get out of her life. Get her out of his. Why, for hell’s sake, didn’t he tell Achan to stick the money up his ass and do his time in the colony? Hard labor never killed anyone.

  Though guilt could.

  And Achan played on that too.

  “These people killed your father, and by extension, your family. Libby may have survived if he’d been home to look after her. You’re mother might not have turned into a dependant. We aren’t savages, boy. We don’t believe in that eye-for-an-eye crap, but you owe it to them to get revenge on the family who irrevocably damaged us.”

  Cleo looked up at him with those big, unsure, honeyed eyes, waiting for some kind of response. He wanted to blurt it all out—the lies, the truth, the entire zhanged-up situation.

  Donning a mask of indifference, he glanced up and shrugged, falling back on what he did best. Bluff, lie, deceive...survive. “It was probably lightning.”

  “Libra,” she said, twisting her fingers around her black stone. “I know lightning when I see it, and that was most definitely not lightning.”

  “Maybe it was a flare. Someone was lost,” he said, pushing past her on the path. He couldn’t stand the way she looked at him, couldn’t get out of this godforsaken land fast enough. “But there’s no fucking way it was an airplane.”

  “I know what I saw,” she said quietly from behind him. He heard her disappointment, knew he’d let her down.

  It was too much. The tight hold he’d had on his cover began to unravel and he couldn’t deal with warring emotions pulling apart his guts.

  “No, you don’t know, Cleo,” he said jabbing his finger toward her. “You’ve never even seen a zhang-damned aer-o-plane before, so how would you know?” he mocked. “There aren’t any museums in the northern wild. You’re living centuries in the past! You don’t even have a transportation system, so what do you know about planes, about anything?”

  “I’ve seen pictures,” she shouted. “We’re not dumb, urbanite. We have teachers, doctors, statesmen—” She pulled her shoulders back and added, “And warriors, who’d kick your ass for your insults.”

  “You’re right, Cleo,” he replied, his voice thick with condescension. “Nothing but a bunch of savages.”

  Murdering savages.

  Sixteen

  Libra crashed through the forest like a hunted buck and, though she knew he didn’t have a clue where he was going, she followed. As long as he went in the general direction of the nearest grid line, she’d let him satisfy his need to stomp and charge. He clearly thought she was an incompetent guide if she was seeing mythical planes in the air.

  She thought about stopping, going her own way, but he wouldn’t even notice.

  She should. Leave him to make his own stupid way to the Cut. Maybe even detour right into the path of a hungry polar grizzly. Against her better judgement, she plowed on behind and tried to sort out what the hell just happened.

  They’d been getting along so well, at least she thought so, and despite her niggling distrust, he was an overall decent guy. But his reaction to her plane story was a complete puzzle. It was so out of character, so over the top! Doubt and disbelief she expected, but the way he shouted, with his reddened face and jabbing finger, left her cold and feeling like an ignorant fool. If he’d told her he saw a woolly mammoth grazing in a field, she may have told him to stop snacking on fermented berries, but get angry and call his entire culture stupid?

  Cleo couldn’t understand why his reaction shook her so. Her chest felt so tight, even the clear Taiga air couldn’t dislodge the stones sitting at the bottom of her lungs. Her eyes stung with unshed tears of…of… Not sad, weepy tears. Cleo Rush didn’t cry. Ever. It was more a feeling of disappointment and betrayal.

  Her heightened emotions were most likely the sum effect of the last few weeks—from the exhaustion and extreme high of winning the gruelling trials of the leadership competition to the depths of the lowest lows when she’d realized that Jaegar had to leave, not to mention where he damn well went. Then there was the whole drowning thing, getting tied up by an outsider, and lest she forget the most serious: breaking an indefensible tribal rule which was going to get in her in a shit-load of trouble with the elders. Perpetuating harm toward a leader, sitting or elect, was taken very seriously; hence the rule that the three runners-up in the leadership competition must undergo memory-death, thereby eliminating any threat.

  Drugging her father’s tea with a three-day sleeping potion was the only way to ensure her head start in getting to Jaegar. Technically, even though she committed the act as leader-elect, she could be sentenced to true death.

  Death. Again. Seemed like a running theme for her. Been there, done that, and she wasn’t eager to try it again for many years. For the love of ducks, no wonder she was a mess.

  Cleo refused to credit her vacillating emotions to the man who walked forty paces ahead. She stuck her tongue out at his back.

  Don’t trust outsiders.

  Thankfully, Lewin Rush would never learn of her stupidity. How naïve to think she could know someone, trust someone, after only a few days.

  Urbanite. In this case, it was synonymous with idiot. Damn him, carrying on like a seal-starved polar grizzly. What a difference from yesterday, when he looked at her with such mind-blowing intensity, her nipples tightened into hard little diamonds. Or this morning when she awoke wrapped in his arms, their bodies pressed together. She’d dreamt of his kisses in her hair.

  Libra was right… She was an ignorant, stupid girl from the backward Taiga.

  Lost in her own self-pity, Cleo didn’t notice the root sticking out of the ground. She stumbled forward, throwing her hands out before her face connected with the dirt.

  She leapt up, pride driving her fleetness. Her palms stung from the impact. She picked out the tiny imbedded sticks and pebbles, then spit on her hands and rubbed them against her thighs. It didn’t help. Now they were sore and streaked with dirt.

  He hadn’t even turned around to see if she was okay. She could have bumped her head, been knocked unconscious, but did he once check his back? It was a damn good thing for him that she’d lost her knives. She mimed pulling a blade from her weapons harness, closed one eye, and locked on target. Drawing her arm back, she flung the blade forward, almost hearing the whoosh as it travelled through the air and embedded itself in the back of Libra’s neck. Bull’s-eye!

  Now that he was imaginarily dead, Cleo looked down and concentrated on the tips of her sandals as they shuffled along the increasingly rocky path. She gave herself a mental cuff upside the head. She needed to keep her mind on task, not on him.

  So why couldn’t she cover ten feet without her thoughts eddying around him and only him, replaying every comment, every movement, every tidbit of personal information he’d shared since the moment they met. Libra, the oddly named Sagittarian.

  “Not so ‘fair and balanced’ today, are you, urbanite?” she said, intending to flick eye-daggers and surprised that he no longer occupied her line of sight. Cleo found him halfway up Raccoon Ridge, a mountainous obstruction with a ridiculously steep incline, difficult and dangerous to climb. Which is why there was a perfectly good path that veered around it.

  Libra had nothing to grip but a few misplaced saplings that found shallow life in the cracked stone—nothing to break his fall if he slipped.

  If time wasn’t of the essence, she’d enjoy watching him ascend, just to see him come back down when he realized the other side was a sheer cliff.

  She growled with impa
tience, cupped her hands to her mouth, and yelled, “You can’t go that way!” The rest she huffed to herself. “You dumb outsider.”

  Libra paused and turned slightly, acknowledging her warning. The dumb-bug ignored her and kept going.

  Cleo let out a deep sigh and watched him try to gain a foothold on the angled slope. By the time she’d caught up, he was almost to the top, but the loose shale was severely inhibiting the climb.

  “Be careful. It’s slippery when it gets wet,” she mumbled. He didn’t believe her when she said it was going to rain, so why bother shouting the warning.

  Feeling righteous, she stuck to the footpath as it forked west. Once he made it to the top and realized that he couldn’t go down the front face, he’d figure out how to follow the ridge westerly until, lo and behold, it came out on the very same path she was already on. Only he’d be exhausted from clinging to shale and a good half hour behind her.

  “I should have kept my damn mouth shut about the aer-o-plane,” she mumbled. Of course he didn’t believe her. Aer-o-planes hadn’t flown since the fossil fuel depletion. By the middle of the Polar War, even combat flying had ground to a halt, reducing the war to a fierce and bloody ground operation that lasted for another decade.

  But it was a plane she’d seen. It had to be! She’d only confided in him because she thought they shared…what? A journey, a friendship, a connection? And maybe a small part of her hoped he’d validate her claim, that maybe the urbanites had developed a new energy technology that made air travel a reality again.

  Fool.

  She assumed he broke contact the moment he woke that morning because he was embarrassed that he was practically groping her in his sleep. Now she knew better; he was horrified at touching a Taiga woman, a savage.

  How long had she lain, enjoying the feel of his body against hers, wishing she had the nerve, the confidence to turn in his arms, slip a knee between his legs, and sleepily bury her face in the crook of his neck? Thank goodness she hadn’t. The humiliation would have been devastating.

  Cleo’s head perked up at the sound of a rumbling boom in the distance. Thunder. She couldn’t help feel a little smug after he resolutely refused to believe her. Who was the fool now?

  She walked and stewed, every distant rumble pushing her feelings of righteous victory.

  What the hell did an outsider know about survival? Adventure, ha! Why do they even bother coming up here? They should stay in their precious cities with precious universities and corporations and choke on their Nutrishit.

  Before she knew it, the better part of an hour had passed. Cleo looked up as she rounded the edge of the escarpment, just to make sure he’d found a path down from the ridge. She could feel an “I’m first!” bubbling to get out, if she decided to speak to him at all.

  She scanned the side of Raccoon Ridge, but there was no bobbing blond head in sight. Her heart tripped a little faster as her eyes swept the terrain again, more slowly, searching for some sign of him coming down, through the scrubby trees, some sign of him at the top.

  Nothing. No Libra.

  She really didn’t want him to be ripped to shreds by a polar grizzly. Not until he got her to Gomeda, anyway.

  Cleo squinted, a hand across her forehead to fight the nonexistent glare, but there were no signs of man nor sated beast.

  She paced back and forth along the curving path, straining her neck, trying to see around the natural obstacles in her line of sight. Cleo swallowed, trying to prevent the frantic worry that made her jaw tighten and her mind bounce to horrible conclusions, all of them ending at Libra’s broken body.

  “Libra?” she called. An anxious echo mocked her.

  This was ridiculous. Worrying was not productive and, by its very nature, counterintuitive to everything she’d been taught. She expelled her breath and, with it, her growing panic. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on breathing, letting the sounds of the forest consume her. She was searching for footsteps, his voice, that little clanking noise his pack made whenever his left foot came down.

  Nothing. Nothing but another rumble of thunder, louder this time.

  Her eyes snapped open and the panic rushed back like a tidal wave.

  She should have insisted he take the path. Should have warned him shale and raindrops do not mix.

  And what if he tried to get down the cliff? Could he be that stupid?

  She placed her hands across her stomach, felt it roil like she’d eaten rancid squirrel.

  “Libra!”

  Imagining him lying at the bottom of the cliff face, broken, shattered, bloody, just for the sake of getting there ahead of her, Cleo ran.

  Seventeen

  Libra scanned the landscape while waiting for his breathing and heart rate to return to normal after an anger-fuelled climb. He’d completely forgotten to take note of rock formations as per Achan’s request but frankly, all these rocks looked the same. Unless he meant the rock rivers Cleo mentioned earlier. But how big a secret could they be if they were visible from satellite? No, despite the vague instructions he’d been given, he was fairly confident that Achan was looking for something abnormal, like massive excavation or something that didn’t jibe with the rest of the Taiga, and he’d witnessed nothing out of the ordinary thus far.

  He’d climbed high enough to see one of the Dead Lakes to the south, a massive body of water so big, the far shore wasn’t visible over the horizon. There wasn’t a sign of life on or around the choppy water, not that he expected to see otherwise.

  The canopy of trees surrounding the ridge took his breath away. A thousand shades of green, dots of yellow, snaking ridges of grey-green rock, all contained under a mostly bright blue sky. Angry grey storm clouds gathering in the northwest, offering contrast to an otherwise idyllic scene.

  He was standing on top of the world.

  So why did he feel like hell? He should be mentally planning the havoc he’d wreak on Gomeda when this shit job was over.

  The first thing he’d do once he got his points accounts secured was get his crew back together, outfit them properly, and buy a safe place they could use as a home base; a little business in the fifth prefecture. Nothing ostentatious—just a small shop to front as a legit operation—nothing that would arouse the suspicious nature of the Gomedan Guard. They’d have to find something close to the tunnels or, ideally, right on top of them. They had work to do, wealth to redistribute. And this time, they’d do it smarter.

  Libra stretched, took a deep breath of the fresh Taiga air, and turned in a circle. The angry bank of storm clouds rushed forward, quicker than he thought possible.

  Cleo was right.

  Cleo, again. Get out of my zhanging head!

  He couldn’t go three minutes without her image popping into his brain, making his belly clench and his balls ache.

  She stood between him and his freedom. The faster he cut all ties, the better. Tonight, he’d use that damn ampoule, drug her into a docile bag of putty, make contact with Trevayne, and go the hell home.

  Home. Those are the memories that should be consuming him, motivating him, driving him forward… not the sweet scent of Cleo’s hair.

  He needed to reconnect with his gang. They’d set his priorities straight in no time. He wouldn’t tell anyone but Taurus about this mission. T was obsessed with the Taiga, though he tried to hide it from the rest of them. Libra had always rolled his eyes and tuned him out, never caring to hear about any of it. He walked away at any mention of the Taiga because it stirred memories, unearthed resentment. Now he’d wished he’d stayed to listen.

  Had Taurus’s father, who did a lot of business with the Trading Post, ever dragged his family this far into the interior? Had Taurus ever seen a vista like this, on the top of the great vast world, and if so, did he feel as conflicted as Libra…So insignificant but so overwhelmed wi
th the beauty at the same time?

  T would get a raging hard-on for Cleo—the outfit, the attitude, the knife skills. Yet the thought of Taurus ogling Cleo made his fists clench.

  Zhang damn, she’d invaded his head space again. Surprise, surprise.

  He’d acted like a total shit back on the trail, but really, what choice did he have? “Oh yeah, a plane. Sure. I jumped out of one—a hydrogen-powered, orbital glider prototype that nobody was sure was going to even make it this far. It was very cool if you don’t count being scared shitless.”

  He used the bandana to wipe the sweat from his face before tying it around his forehead to keep his hair back, then looked down to examine the cliff face. Hundred and fifty feet, he reckoned, the first thirty of which dropped straight and smooth, as if the side of the hill had been sheared off. Below that, there was a two-foot ledge and then a combination of juts and angles, edged outcroppings and serrated protrusions that would take him to the ground below. Free-running had been the perfect training ground and though this jump was a good deal more dangerous than his familiar urban scene, it was do-able. He could use his rope to abseil down the top section, then use his parkour techniques, calculate his movements, compensate for the weight of his backpack, and use counterbalance to jump safely to the bottom.

  He shot a look over his shoulder, to the path that brought him. Nope, not an option. Straight down the front was the only way. The risk was nothing compared to the thought of getting behind her, having to watch those leather-clad legs, that perfectly round little ass wiggle in front of him, the sum effect of which was far worse than plunging to his death. Nope, he’d rather worry about having a knife in his back than get stuck behind her again.

  He secured the rope around his waist, found a good sturdy tree near the edge of the cliff to anchor it to, and planned his descent.