by Lewis, Anna
As soon as Wade knew that she was okay once more, he did his best to rally them all around, to gear them up for the day ahead. He didn’t feel confident about it at all, but he didn’t want B or Talia to know that. He knew that they both needed him right now, and he wanted to be their rock, he wanted to be the person that they could rely on. If they ever got out of this alive, he wanted them both to know that he would be there for them no matter what. He wasn’t sure that it would be any comfort, but he had to hope that it could at least help a little bit.
“Well,” Wade said with a fake determination on his tone, looking between them all. “I’ll see you on the other side, I guess.”
Talia had no idea how Wade always managed to keep such an upbeat attitude when the odds were so clearly stacked against them all ever making it, but she appreciated it all the same. It helped her to feel a little better about everything too. It made her feel that maybe things weren’t as hopeless as she’d first assumed after all.
He pulled her in for a hug, and B wrapped his arms around them both too, in a bittersweet moment that she couldn’t fully partake in. All the while she was thinking, How the hell am supposed to gear myself up for the biggest fight of her entire life when my heart is breaking?
“Right guys,” Wade forced them apart before the emotion consumed him entirely, and looked into their eyes. “Let’s go and do this.”
B stared at him, wanting some of that confidence too, but weirdly despite their bond, he couldn’t seem to get any of it. His emotions were jangled, and he could not read others’ emotions properly. All he could sense was, either Wade was faking his confidence to help him and Talia through the war, or he was hiding something huge. B hoped that it was the first one, he knew that he would hate to be betrayed, but he was also aware that it would totally crush Talia. He honestly felt like that would be something that she wouldn’t be able to come back from. He shot her an anxious look, wondering if she was picking up on it too, but of course she couldn’t experience things in the same way that the Ec’dua race did… plus it looked like she was so caught up in her own thoughts that she wouldn’t have been able to spot it, even if she did have the ability to do so.
Do this… let’s just get it done. Talia tried to think of it as confidently as Wade, but she couldn’t quite do it. She listened intently as Wade gave her all of the information that she needed, but her mind was all over the place too. It was hard to focus when the only life she ever wanted, the life she had only been able to live for a day, was falling apart before her eyes.
Chapter 5
Talia followed the instructions that Wade had given her, but she still wasn’t totally sure if she was headed in the right direction to where this damn battle was supposed to be happening. She hated the fact that she had to go alone, but of course she couldn’t exactly be seen with the enemy, especially not today of all days. That would be crazy… but that didn’t stop her from fearing everything that was about to happen.
There was just so much that could go wrong, and she couldn’t stop the possibilities from spinning through her mind, driving herself crazy. She, or either of them, or all three of them could end up dead. She was almost more afraid of losing what they had together than her own life…
Plus, on top of that, she had no idea if any of the other humans knew about this so-called final battle – and that was really terrifying. The more she thought about it, the more she realized how little she knew about everything, and that was having a massive impact on how confident she felt about her ability to survive.
She had been out of the loop for far too long, and even before her, B, and Wade had locked themselves inside that cottage. She didn’t ever go to the human gatherings, so she never really had any idea about how it all worked; how battles were planned, or how communication took place. She had no idea if there was any communication and that absolutely terrified her. She realized now that instead of getting caught up in her confusing feelings for B and Wade, she should have been pressing them both for more information. She had been naïve, crazy and swept up in her impossible-to-grasp emotions and now she was paying the consequences of that.
Her heart raced painfully in her chest as she approached the field of battle, feeling more terrified than she’d ever done in her entire life. But then she quickly spotted a whole cohort of humans, at least confirming that she wouldn’t be alone, walking straight into a slaughter. That had been one of her biggest fears; dying alone in an ambush, or being recaptured.
However, then she found herself with another problem. How the hell was she going to approach these people? How would she connect with another human when she hadn’t done in forever? She hadn’t contemplated just how difficult this was going to be…
When she really thought about it, even before Wade and B, the only person that she had ever befriended when she was a very young child, Bonnie, was also one of the Ec’dua race – she had never actually been friends with a human person, and that was a thought that had only just hit her.
“On my God Talia,” a voice suddenly called out, causing her to spin around in shock, shaking her from her intense, overwhelming fears. “Is that you?”
“Ye… yes…” she stammered, looking at a face that was oddly familiar to her, but one that had been locked away in the back of her mind for a very long time. Was it who she thought it was? Or was she going insane, hoping for things that weren’t actually possible? Her mind certainly had been under a lot of stress recently, she supposed that it wasn’t too hard as stretch to imagine. “D… dad? Is that you?”
She couldn’t believe it. Was this real or was she somehow still dreaming? It didn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever! Her mind freaked and her body trembled, but the more she looked this man up and down, the more obvious it became that he looked a little like her. He had dark hair like hers, and the same piercing eyes. There was no denying that they were related. There was no denying that this was the man that she’d last seen many years ago, that day as she got dressed for school, the day that she had kissed him goodbye having no idea that everything was about to change. She thought back to that moment, remembering how bittersweet that had been, and it made her emotions flutter around her body like crazy.
She had never expected to see him again, and now that he stood before her, she just didn’t know what to do or say.
He enveloped her in a deep hug, making her feel incredibly uncomfortable. He might have been her father, but in her mind he’d been dead for a very long time. She had no idea who this man even was really, and he was treating her like a daughter… it was too weird for words. She went home at six years old after an attack on the school, to find her mother dead and him gone… that was just how it was, and she had accepted that. She wondered where he had gone, or if he would come back for her, but when he didn’t, she decided that he must be dead. She had done her best to not think of it again… she’d had more important things to worry about.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he gasped into her shoulder, shaking as he was clearly crying. “I have been looking for you this whole time, imagining what you would look like, and you’re exactly what I thought.”
“What… I don’t know…” Talia didn’t even know how to process that, never mind speak. “I don’t…”
“When the attack started, I ran away,” he admitted, pulling back to look at her, spilling out things that he’d obviously been holding in for a very long time. “I watched you mother get killed by the aliens, and I heard about an attack on the school, and I just assumed that there would be no hope.” A tear splashed down his cheek, that made no sense to Talia… her brain was simply everywhere all at once. She couldn’t quite understand anything. “But I was wrong. I went back to find you a few days later and bodies littered everywhere… but not yours.”
This was clearly a memory that haunted him, it was evident in his eyes. But all Talia could think about was her own experience. She was only a young child who had been left with nothing and no one. He had left her alone, and now that
she discovered him living, there was some definite resentment there. She had been forced to fend for herself, to feed herself, to look after herself when she was barely able to even think for herself. She had been much too young for that.
It was too much for anyone to have to deal with, and all of that was floating to the surface now that she found herself faced with the one person who should have been there to defend her. It hurt, it really cut her deep, and her body was shaking just attempting to process it all.
She had always considered herself a badass, but now she could see that she’d just defended herself because she’d really needed to, because she had no one else. She’d been forced to become that person, which was actually really sad.
“Dad, this is too much,” she told him, pulling away, needing her own personal space for a moment. “I can really only deal with one thing at once, and we have this war to deal with right now. I appreciate that you’re here, and that you’re… you’re saying all these things, but… I just don’t know…”
She glanced over to where the aliens were now gathering together, waiting for the fight that had somehow been agreed. Seeing the Ec’dua all in their natural form made a weird sensation flood Talia. B was over there, somewhere. He had to be, and she didn’t know where. That was terrifying… how the hell was she going to know whether or not he’d got hurt? How could she keep an eye on him, when she couldn’t tell which one was him?
This was going to be challenging enough, she really didn’t need her long-lost father showing up on top of it, playing havoc with her already tender emotions. Her brain might just explode under the pressure of it. Dealing with her dad was going to have to wait.
“I’ll… I’ll talk to you afterwards, okay?” She pushed her dad away, and tried to get her feelings in check. She didn’t want to come across like she was callous and uninterested, but it was what she had to do to get through this day. She didn’t really want to die on this battlefield, she wanted to be able to come out of it on the other side, and she needed to do what she needed to do. “I’ll just find you later.”
She sucked in a few deep breaths, trying to calm down her panic, trying to narrow down her focus, but it didn’t feel like anything was really working. She moved away, to be by herself, ignoring the evident pain in her dad’s eyes, and tried to prepare herself for the impossible, even though she couldn’t.
And then the fighting began.
Chapter 6
As the aliens started their attack, it instantly became an unfair and terrifying fight. In the way that it had always been, in hand-to-hand combat, the humans were leaps and bounds above the aliens, but the Ec’dua had the better technology which was killing people before they could get too close. The aliens had the advantage.
Talia couldn’t cope with any of it. She couldn’t fight because she didn’t know where B was, but she couldn’t hide either. She started to realize that she probably should have just stayed away – that would have been the best option for everyone. She tried to get involved, she kept trying to dip in and out of the fight, but a cold fear gripped on to her heart and it was rendering her limbs stuck in one place. She couldn’t get her head around anything and that was making her more of a liability than anything else. She was useless, and even worse than that, she was pathetic.
Realizing that, she pushed herself to the back of the field, trying to sort out her thoughts, while combat burst around her. She needed to calm her thoughts down, to start making some smart decisions, and while she remained in the middle of the activity in such a state, she threatened others as well as herself. Everything seemed to be happening so fast that she could barely focus on anything… it was all too much.
A tight knot of panic began to fill her up, which she couldn’t control however much she tried. Her chest became painful and her limbs started to tingle in a way that she’d never experienced before. Her body was freaking out, reflecting her overwhelming emotional state, and she didn’t know what to do… so she did the only thing she could and she curled herself up into a ball, falling to the ground with a thump, allowing everything to fade in and out around her…
Chapter 7
Talia was breathing deeply, trying to control herself, but she wasn’t doing much good for herself. She’d never experienced a panic attack before, and she was quickly realizing that she didn’t like it one bit. She wanted to do her bit in the war, and she also wanted to be able to protect the people she loved, but she was being useless, and however much she tried to stop it, she couldn’t seem to do so.
That was until a familiar set of arms wrapped round her, giving her the comfort that she so desperately needed. She instantly knew that it was him without even having to turn around, he had that presence that she immediately just knew, and that relief helped her to finally get a grip of herself. She could do anything with him by her side, and that was exactly what she needed.
“Wade?” she gasped into his chest as her pulse rate calmed. “What’s going on?” She knew that it was probably the wrong thing to do, but she allowed him to take her in his arms, as the crazy fighting went on around them both. “Why are you in your human form?”
“I’m fighting for the humans,” he reminded her. “I need them to know that I’m on their side. I don’t want there to be any mistakes. We’re here now, we’ve arrived a little late to allow ourselves to mix in without easily being detected, but things will turn around now. Your side will win.”
“I… I don’t know what to do,” she admitted sadly to him, gripping on to him as if he was the only person alive. “I can’t cope, I can’t seem to do anything. I want to help too, I want to fight, but I can’t seem to make myself do anything.”
“You don’t have to,” he told her kindly, holding her tighter to his chest. “You don’t know which one is B out there. It’s understandable that you can’t do it. Don’t stress yourself out too much. I know that you don’t want him hurt – I don’t either, but it’s easier for me because I can sense his mind.” He lay her down, hidden behind a bush, and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “We both need you to be safe, and to get through it alive. To be honest, it will make us all feel better if you are out of the way. B and I both wish that you weren’t even on the battle field, and I’m glad that you’re here, where I can keep an eye on you, rather than out there where anything could happen to you.”
Talia allowed her eyes to flicker over the field, seeing people falling, wounded or killed, left, right, and center, the panic inside of her growing with every passing second. It was carnage, absolutely horrible, and she wanted to turn herself inside out and throw up.
When had she become so useless, weak and emotional? When had she changed from being a badass? How could she get that version of her back? She could have really used that version of herself right now, but it had just vanished without a trace.
Her breaths became labored all over again, as she realized that there was really no hope in her getting out there and doing anything positive. She hadn’t come here to wuss out and to hide in the corner, but if she stepped out onto that field in this state, she would end up dead. The people that were fighting were dropping like flies, and she couldn’t do a damn thing. She would be nothing more than a quick kill, and that would distract B and Wade – and she didn’t want them to end up dead because of her. That was the last thing that she’d ever wanted.
She opened her mouth, wanting to answer Wade, to get some reassurance, but before she could she noticed a man walking right into danger. He stepped forward, as if he couldn’t even see what was going on around him, and although everything seemed to slow down in Talia’s eyes, it didn’t stop him from getting hurt.
“Dad, no!” Talia screamed, forgetting everything else. An intense power overcame her and she managed somehow to jump upwards. A strength had burst forth from within her, and she was using that to try and save the man that she didn’t really know, but who did seem hazily familiar as the only family she had left. She raced out onto the field, needing to get to him, pushing
all of the resentment and doubt out of her mind once and for all.
Chapter 8
The man might not have been around for any of her life, and she might have just brushed him off, but he was her dad and she didn’t want him to die. Some kind of protective instinct kicked in.
She’d wanted some more time to process the fact that he was alive. She didn’t want to lose him forever – she really needed answers, a family bond, that parental figure that had never been there, and there was no chance in hell that she was going to get that if he was dead. That was all that she could think about as she pumped her body along to field as quickly as she could manage.
As soon as she reached her father, she shoved into him and knocked him to the ground, away from the ray gun that was aiming at his head. She flung herself on top of him, trying to keep him out of harm’s way, but she braced herself too, expecting the worst. She kept her hands over her head and her body tensed, but she quickly realized that nothing was heading toward her.
“Dad?” she whispered to him as soon as she realized that the alien had already forgotten about them and moved on to someone else. “Dad are you okay?”
She moved herself off of him, but kept her body low on the ground to try and keep out of the way, and she spun her dad over to face her. She gasped in happiness as she saw his life-filled face, but then her eyes scanned down his body and she noticed something sticking out of it. Something that had the word danger screaming inside of her. She couldn’t quite process exactly what was happening, but she knew that it was bad, and that was all she could focus on.
