The Cross (Alliance Book 2)

by Inna Hardison

He did, and he felt Drake put a metal tie around his wrists, pulling it tighter than he needed to, tight enough to hurt even when he wasn’t moving his hands. He let him push him over to a tree, and sit him against it, and then wrap long straps around his whole body so he could barely breathe. He didn’t mind any of it. Drake was right to be furious with him. They all were. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, not wanting to see the anger and disgust on Drake’s face.

  He must have dozed off again. He felt Drake shaking him awake, not too gently, and then pulling him up, and marching him towards the fire. He hoped Riley would just shoot him. There wasn’t anything he could do about Trina now. Maybe they would let her go anyway, after they learned that he died trying to capture one of the replenishers. He didn’t know if they would, hadn’t thought of it like that before. Maybe that would be enough. His crew would eventually stop with the holding pattern and get the other one safely to one of those compounds they kept them in. That ought to count for something with the Alliance. Only he couldn’t tell his crew what his plan was, or why he was hunting this group through the woods for all these days. They didn’t know anything about Trina and the deal he made with Hassinger.

  He saw the bandages around Riley’s chest and the bruises on his face long before Drake dropped him to his knees in front of him. And then the girl needing to help him up, him swaying like that, he knew how badly Anders hurt him, only it wasn’t really Anders. It was him that did it with someone else’s hands. But he was still glad Anders was dead now, or he’d try to kill him himself. He didn’t understand at first why Riley had Drake and the girl leave like that, and why he was now handing him the gun, asking him to shoot him. It didn’t make any sense for the longest time. And then it did. Riley really thought he wanted him dead. And he couldn’t blame him for thinking it after the way he was with him. Riley, too, was making a deal for the people he loved, his life for Ella’s and the other girl.

  And he wished he could do this for him, keep everyone safe, and suddenly, he had the makings of a plan in his head that wasn’t there just a moment before. He just had to get Riley angry enough at him to pull the trigger. Ella and the other girl were his only leverage now. He could trade on that for Trina’s life. He couldn’t think of a single reason for them to hold her if he were gone… He just hoped he could get Riley to do what he needed him to do. So when they got to the cave, he told him that he really wished him dead, and he could tell from the way he looked at him that he believed him.

  Only he didn’t, in a million years, expect him to still volunteer to let him kill him on the off chance they got the girls back. It didn’t make sense. He was doing this for him, and it hurt worse than anything to shake his hand after that, and him putting the blanket down for him was too much. It made him feel every kind of wrong just looking at it. He couldn’t sleep anyway, not now, not after what he did to his friend. So he sat there for the longest time, with his eyes closed, trying to find just the right things to say to make it easy for him to pull the trigger.

  He knew asking Riley to do this was the worst kind of thing to ask of anybody, and that he’d fight him on it, even if he did truly hate him for what he had done today and for what he was about to tell him. But short of trying to steal this girl he seemed in love with from him, he couldn’t think of anything else to do, and he couldn’t do that to him. Couldn’t live with himself. So this last play he had left, that’s all he could do… That he could live with. He got up, and walked over to where Riley was lying on his blanket. He was on his back, eyes closed, but he didn’t think he was asleep yet. He was breathing too fast for that.

  “Riley, we need to talk. I’m sorry to wake you, but we have to,” he said softly, not to scare him.

  “All right, but we’ll have to do it outside. I’ll grab us a ray.”

  He watched him go through his bag looking for a wide enough ray for them, and suddenly, he wanted a bit more time alone, time with his thoughts without Riley or Trina in them, so he walked outside the cave to the little clearing, surrounded by birch trees. He has always loved these slender trunks with their strange spots. He sat down, leaning against one of the larger ones, and waited, smelling the delicate, barely there sweetness of birch sap.

  Riley’s ray caught him full in the face, making him shut his eyes for a few seconds to get rid of the red spots behind his eyelids. He watched him slowly sit on the grass across from him, still obviously in pain. Watched him stick the ray into the soil at an angle, so now the light was pointing up and to the side, enough to clearly show his bruised face. He was glad he put a shirt on, so he didn’t have to see anything else he’d done to him.

  “Still don’t want to hit me? This might be your last chance… I really wish you would. It would make it infinitely easier for me to tell you what I need to tell you.”

  “I am not going to hit you, Brody. Spit it out!” Riley hissed, looking at him with contempt.

  That he could live with. He knew it would turn into full blown hatred in a few minutes anyway, so he nodded, closed his eyes, and told him everything he knew how to tell. Told him that Zoriners took Trina to try to get to him, and that they turned her over to the Alliance, when they didn’t get what they wanted out of her. Zoriners wanted to know if Brody was a spy. He had no idea what the Alliance wanted with her or with him, for that matter. He told him how he didn’t know about what happened to Trina for a long time, until one day he saw an image of her suspended in some glass box on his screen, with a caption: Waller, #31.

  And how he spent all his time from then on trying to find her, and finally how he learned that she was at Crylo, on the other side of the continent, not any place he could get to on foot, ever.

  He told him briefly about joining the soldiers’ unit after all of that under a fake name, hoping he’d either end up learning something useful or dead, and how they were thrilled to have him because he told them he had inherent knowledge of how Zoriners were, having lived with them for so long. And that finally, they put him in charge of teaching younger boys wilderness survival tactics, because he was good at it. He knew that Riley was looking for Ella, kept tabs on him by any means he could, just to know he was safe, and then finally, he told him that he got a comm call on the emergency channel about an escaped group from the compound outside Carthage, the one closest to Waller, and he knew that Riley was involved, could tell from the way the woman, Hassinger, described him.

  He had to tell him about the deal he made, what she promised him, so he did, “She must have done research on me and found out who I really was, Riley. She knew about Trina; I don’t know how, but she did… She told me that I would get her back, unharmed, in exchange for one of the replenishers. She was sure, somehow, that the other girl would follow, and it was unreasonable for her to ask me to get them both. I had to keep it all quiet and do it alone, without my crew, so nobody knew that she lost the replenishers in the first place.

  “That’s why I sent my crew away with Ella and the other girl. I just wish you hadn’t run out there like that, and that the girl who likes you, Ams, didn’t show that she liked you when she did, when my crew could see it. I would have sent her away instead. Astor is just a front, code for close radius holding pattern. My crew will keep them safe and close by, until they hear from me or someone on the ECH, and I planned on telling them to let them both go. I just needed the one.”

  He needed a break, so he stopped, still keeping his eyes closed, not wanting to look at Riley’s face when telling him this last thing he had to tell him, this lie to make it easier for Riley.

  “Here is the worst part, Riley. If I didn’t realize that Drake was still out there someplace, I think I would have killed you and tried to hand that girl over to them, to save her, to save Trina,” he looked up at Riley then, to make sure he got all of it, all of what he had done and was willing to do. To make sure he believed him and hated him for it, enough to be okay with what he needed him to do.

  Riley was staring at him as if he’d never seen him before in his
life, bewildered look on his face.

  “Why the hell didn’t you just tell me? I would have done anything to help you, Brody, if you’d just bloody told me,” he said in his quiet voice, his mad voice.

  He put his hands out in front of him, the chain of the cuffs making all sorts of noise, “Please, help me up.”

  Riley stood him up, still staring at him in a way that made him want for all of this to be over.

  “I will get Ella and the other girl out. I just have to talk to my crew, and I’ll have one of the boys escort them to this clearing by morning. I will also send them an encrypted message for Hassinger and route it through Bruner’s comm, stating that I died trying to capture one of the replenishers who got away from me. This has to count for something with them. You’ll need to attach a shot of me and a DNA scan, so they’d know it happened and that it was, in fact, me. I’ll set it to not go out without the attachments, so the time print matches. They took her because of me. They’d have to let her go when I am gone. I wish I’d thought of this earlier, so you wouldn’t have to be the one to do it. I’m sorry for that. My comm and my screen are in Drake’s bag, side pocket. You’ll need that and your gun.”

  Riley was shaking his head at him, not saying a word, as if he couldn’t find any.

  He took a deep breath, and put his cuffed hands around his face, “I won’t contact my crew unless you promise to do this my way, Riley. I won’t, and there is nothing you can do to me, nothing you can threaten me with to make me.”

  Riley stepped back from him, “No. There has to be another way and we’ll find it; all of us. I am not going to kill you or let you kill yourself. And you can’t hold Ella and Laurel as leverage over me, you just can’t. Not you.” He wasn’t even looking at him any more. Just shaking his head, and breathing hard, hands making fists.

  “You don’t have a choice. Not if you want your sister and the other girl back. I’m sorry, I truly am, but you don’t.”

  Riley looked at him like he finally wanted to hit him, and dropped his eyes and went back to pacing in front of him, and he thought he had him when he came right up to him, staring at him with what looked like actual hatred, and wrapped his hands around his neck, squeezing hard, making it impossible to draw any air in. He didn’t fight him, didn’t want to fight him, so he closed his eyes and let him, and he let go then, and turned away from him. It took a few minutes to get enough air into his lungs, and it hurt to speak even then.

  “You are not hearing me, Riley. There is nothing you can say or do to me that’ll make me contact my crew. You can break every bone in my body and I still won’t do it. You can spend the rest of the night hurting me or begging, and it won’t change anything. I know you want them back. You have to do this my way, if you ever want to see them again,” he said slowly, quietly, so Riley knew he meant every word. Riley stared at him as if he had just hit him again, hurt written all over his face, hurt and sadness. He leaned his head back against the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes.

  He heard him walk away towards the cave. Heard the snaps on the bags as he was looking through them, and finally the footsteps outside. He was carrying a gun, one of theirs, stunners. He could tell that it was on and likely on high, judging by the sound it made. He smiled at his friend then, for the first time since he saw him after all these years, and reached his hand out for the comm and the screen. The messages only took a few minutes. Riley waited, unmoving, the gun hand dangling at his side. He signed off and handed the devices back to him.

  He knew he had to make it easier for Riley to do this, so he turned around, and lowered his head.

  “I know I have no right to ask anything more of you, but this isn’t really for me. Trina… She can’t know about this. It would destroy her. If you ever talk to her, please don’t tell her this. You can tell her all the other things about me that you want, just not this… I am ready,” and he closed his eyes, hoping this works, hoping that Trina will be free after this. He waited for far too long, and he still couldn’t even feel the gun at his head.

  “Do it, Riley. You bloody promised. Pull the damn trigger!”

  But he didn’t even feel him move, and when he turned around, the gun was off, tucked neatly at Riley’s belt, not buzzing, Riley looking at him, sadly, apologetically, “I’m sorry, Brody, but I can’t. I didn’t promise. You just assumed because I came out with a gun. I never said I would do this. I won’t. We’ll find another way.” He watched, amazed, as Riley pulled a slave band from behind his back and took a step towards him. He let him put the band on, too stunned to move, and watched him take the cuffs off.

  He felt tears running down his face, angry at Riley’s tears. He wanted to scream at him, wanted to hit him, but all he could do was let Riley push him toward the cave.

  “I am never going to forgive you for this,” he finally spat at him in a broken whisper.

  “I know.”

  And there wasn’t anything left to say after that.

  He knew by now that all the stun guns and anything else he could use as a weapon would be hidden safely away from him, and even if they weren’t, he could shoot someone else with the slave band on, but not himself, couldn’t bend his wrists enough to do it; that’s why he put it on him, instead of the cuffs… Riley made him lie down on the blanket he spread for him earlier, and tied a rope to his slave band and around his own wrist, so that he’d feel it when he moved. A dog on a leash.

  “Get some sleep, Brody,” and he walked away to where his own blanket was and didn’t say another word after that. And for the first time he wished he had shot him earlier. For the first time he felt that he really could have done it. And then he remembered the promise Riley made him before all of this. That he would let him if he got Ella and the other girl back. Riley had to remember it too, and now he knew that the girls would be back by morning. He had to have known he’d make him furious by tricking him into getting them back like this. It didn’t make sense, what he just did. Not unless he didn’t mean it earlier, but Riley always meant it. Riley always kept his word.

  So he would rather die than kill his friend. That’s the choice he just made. The choice Riley would always make. And it made him wish he never knew this boy who always managed to make him feel ashamed of himself. Made him wish not for the first time today that Drake shot at him first.

  THE STREAM

  Riley

  [May 7, 2236 Woods Outside of Reston]

  He woke up to an awful lot of noise outside the cave. Drake was making breakfast, smiling widely at Ella and Laurel being back. Ams was full of giggles too. He had to tell them about Brody, and he wished it could wait, so they could all enjoy this for a bit. But it couldn’t wait. When he was done with it, all of it, Ams was looking at the entrance to the cave, her hand wrapped around her stun gun, “I will gladly shoot him for you, Riley. I have no problem doing it, not after what he did to you yesterday.” He saw Brody standing just outside the cave, looking like he hadn’t slept at all, his face flushed at what Ams just said. He watched him walk right up to her, quickly, not looking at anyone else, and kneel in front of her, banded hands making fists, “I would be eternally grateful if you would,” he said quietly, put his head down and didn’t move after that.

  It hurt him to see him like this. He walked over to Ams and gently took the buzzing weapon from her hand, not quite trusting her not to do it, and switched it off. They had to find a way to help him. He knew Brody was furious at him, and he wondered if he was angry enough after last night to want to hold him to the promise he made earlier. He didn’t think he was, but he needed to let Brody know that he kept his word still. And mostly, he had to be absolutely sure that Brody wouldn’t be a danger to them, less him maybe, and he couldn’t do any of that here.

  “Brody, we need to talk. Have some breakfast or something to drink at least. I’ll be right back,” and he ran into the cave. He took a small, dark bag that one couldn’t see through and dropped in a stun gun, one of Brody’s old guns, checking to make sure it wa
s loaded, but only leaving one bullet in the chamber, one of Ella’s knives, and a few blank screens. He’d need those to let the others know. Brody was still kneeling by Ams, just as he left him. He helped him up, looked at the rest of them, none of them smiling anymore, letting them know with that look that they didn’t want to be followed, and walked on to a trail that led to the stream, Brody trailing behind him.

  He wanted to be far enough away from the fire so that if Brody decided to use the old gun they wouldn’t hear it. He didn’t think Brody ever really wanted to hurt him, much less kill him, not after what he told him last night, and even then he could tell he was lying about some of it, trying to make it easier for him. But he knew he still had to do this, if only to show Brody that even with the slave band on, he was still his equal. They walked in silence for a long time finally reaching the water, and then for a while alongside the stream after that.