The Cross (Alliance Book 2)

by Inna Hardison

  He gently put his hand on Brody’s shoulder. He didn’t move, just kept staring at him, a question in his eyes.

  “Brody. You have to tell me what happened there. I heard you screaming.”

  He shook his head, not moving anything else, gray-blue eyes without any suns in them, looking at him blankly.

  “It’s Riley, Brody. We grew up together, remember? I am the asshole who wouldn’t shoot you to get Trina back. And that giant of a man looking for sticks, that’s Drake. You know him too. He was always good to you, Brody, good to all of us.”

  Brody shook his head, not talking.

  “Please, talk to me, Brody. Whatever it is they did, you can tell me,” he whispered softly, but he didn’t even look at him. He was staring at the grass he was sitting on, hands running through the blades.

  He got up and went to find Drake. He needed to know. Whatever it was, Drake would have to tell him now. Drake had a large pile of sticks ready, sitting at the edge of the clearing, and he kept adding to it, as if he planned on camping here overnight.

  “He won’t talk to me, Drake. I don’t think he even knows who I am, so you have to tell me what you saw. I can take it, whatever it is, I promise. You have to,” he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. He crouched in front of the giant, looking up at his face, waiting. Drake sat down in front of him then, and nodded.

  “They had him tied up to this chair so he couldn’t move. Not even his head. He was alone in the room and there was this long screen in front of him, and they were showing him things. Things they did to Trina. They were showing her having these babies, four of them, Riley, and they didn’t look like Zoriner babies, they were all light, Alliance light”—he swallowed, and shook his head, eyes on the ground—“They’d take these babies out of her, and then they’d hold them up in front of her, and she was screaming, reaching for the babies, but they wouldn’t let her hold them or anything. They drew blood from the babies, from their little feet, and then this Alliance woman looked at the blood through this silver machine and I couldn’t hear what she said then, but they took the two little ones away and the others… They put them in these tubes and they were gone. And Trina was just lying there in the bed, strapped in, screaming like they were ripping her heart out, and calling out for Brody. She was screaming his name, Riley. It was only a few seconds of footage but they kept running it for him on a loop, and he couldn’t turn away from it, couldn’t do anything. He had his eyes closed when I got to him, but he could still hear it, could still hear Trina screaming his name.” Drake shook his head again and looked at him, sadness all over his face.

  “We have to get him back to the flier, Drake, even if we have to take turns carrying him,” and he walked back to where Brody was, still sitting where he left him, fingers running aimlessly through the grass, not noticing him approach, not noticing anything.

  “Can you walk, Brody? We need to go back to the others. We’ll carry you if you don’t think you can,” he asked.

  Brody got up without word, not looking at him, and nodded. It took a very long time to make it back through the woods, too long to do it in silence.

  He stayed close to Brody the whole time, but Brody just walked, not paying attention to the branches hitting him in the face, not even trying to move them aside. Drake ran ahead of them, probably to tell everyone to leave Brody well enough alone. It was eerily quiet in the flier when they got there. Drake handed a thermos of tea or likely spiked tea to Brody, but he just shook his head at him, walked over to his old seat, slumped down in it and closed his eyes, and nobody could think of anything to do or to say to him after that.

  THE TRACKER

  Laurel

  [May 14, 2236, the Flier Outside Waller]

  Nobody could do what Drake told them they did when he came into the flier, panting, like he’d been running for a long time, and finally telling them all to not say anything to Brody, to just let him be. Nobody could do something that heartless. But of course they could. These same people made a whole city of people go into the fire. She remembered that. Would always remember that.

  She sat next to Brody as he slept, or at least she hoped he slept, and after a long time of just watching his face, and him not moving at all, just breathing, she reached over and took his hand in hers, and he didn’t seem to notice it, so she held it until she was finally tired enough to drift off. He was still sitting next to her when she woke up, as if he hadn’t moved at all, eyes still closed. She didn’t know what she could possibly say to this boy, after what he saw them do to Trina, didn’t have the words for it, so she silently held his hand, waiting for him to stir.

  She felt and then saw Riley lean over her, handing her a small thermos.

  “This will make it bearable for him for a little while, if he needs it, Laurel. I don’t know how he’ll wake up from this. I don’t know if he’ll know who you are, or any of us for that matter. He didn’t seem to know me or Drake yesterday. If you think he needs to just sleep again, this will help,” he whispered, and walked away, leaving her in charge of this broken boy.

  Everybody was down in the clearing but her and Brody. His eyes suddenly flew open, and he jerked his hand away from her, staring at her with anger, and in a flash, his hands were around her neck, strangling her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything. She wanted to scream, but not getting any air in made it impossible, so she just sat there, looking into his eyes, at the sparkles of gold in them. Something changed in his face and he let go of her, jumping a few steps away from her, hands in fists at his sides.

  “I am sorry, I am so sorry, Laurel. I didn’t know who you were. I am sorry,” and he ran from her, ran down the stairs and away from the clearing into the woods. Her neck and throat hurt too much to yell after him. She followed him, slowly, trying to get her breathing back to normal. She found him after a little while sitting under a large birch, that’s what everyone called these strange spotted trees she loved so much. She was glad she knew the name for them now. It fit too, unlike some of the other new things she’d learned.

  “Please let me be. I know you mean well, but I can’t. I can’t talk about it. Not to you or to Riley or anybody. I just can’t, Laurel. I am sorry I hurt you earlier. I know who you are now. I won’t forget, I won’t hurt you again. You are safe from me, all of you. Please, just go.” His head was down in his hands and she couldn’t see anything of his face like this.

  She walked away from him, just to the other side of where his tree was, and sat down against something whose trunk was not spotted like the birches, something whose name she didn’t know yet, and waited, watching him. His hair fell over his face in waves, every bit of gold glittering in the sun. She wanted to walk up to him and just run her hands through those silky gold waves, the way she used to with Ams when she was sad, only she knew it would be different with this boy, for her.

  She closed her eyes, listening to the leaves and the bugs, smelling the tree she was leaning against, and hoping she could find anything at all to say to him that would make this bearable. But there wasn’t anything she could say, so they sat across from each other silent as ghosts for a long time, and she must have fallen asleep after a while, because she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder, shaking her slightly. She jumped up, and Brody was standing there, looking at her with all the suns in his eyes. She reached out, without thinking, and wrapped her arms around his chest, and he let her, his hands on her back, making it warm where he was touching, too warm.

  She moved away from him, blushing, and hiding it by looking down.

  “I couldn’t leave you alone here, Brody. I am sorry. You don’t need to talk to me, or to anyone, not unless you want to, but I don’t think you should be alone.”

  He looked at her strangely, eyes angry.

  “I gave Riley my word that I wouldn’t hurt myself. I intended to keep it. But it doesn’t seem anyone here trusts me enough to do that, hence Drake and Riley tracking me yesterday in the first place.”

  He reached behind hi
s back and took out a small knife and his stun gun and handed those to her.

  “These are all the weapons I have on me. Take them. There are slave bands and ties on the flier. I don’t have any on me, but when we get there, you can put one of those on me, if you want. Riley or Drake or somebody stuck a tracker on me, so they already know where I am at all times. Is there anything else I can do to make all of you just leave me the hell alone?” he screamed.

  She took the knife and the gun from him and stuck them into her jeans behind her back, not looking at his face, and walked to the trail that led to where the flier was.

  She couldn’t take any more of this, not today. She heard him following behind her, but she didn’t want to see his face. She was just trying to help, and she was angry at him for making her feel every kind of wrong for it. She heard him calling her name after a while, but she couldn’t talk to him. For the first time since Trina died, she just wanted to curl up by herself in some tiny dark room and cry, so she kept walking until she saw the rest of them crowding around the fire, Riley standing next to Ams, watching them come out of the woods.

  And then Brody was running to where Riley was, and hitting him in the face, without saying anything, over and over again, and Riley not moving anything, letting him do it. Ams was screaming at Brody to stop, pushing him away, and Riley, still looking at Brody, telling her to leave, and that she just needed to let him, and finally she stopped shoving Brody and ran to the flier, eyes full of water. Nobody else said or did anything, and after a little while Brody seemed done, because he wasn’t hitting Riley anymore, just stood there staring at him. Riley, face flushed, reached into Brody’s sleeve pocket, and pulled out something tiny, too small for her to see from where she was, and threw it into the fire. And then he grabbed Brody by his head and pulled him towards him and hugged him, without saying anything, running his hands through the gold threads.

  She felt like she was intruding on something ancient between the two of them, something that she had no right to watch, so she went into the flier to look for Ams, hoping she was all right, hoping she didn’t punish Brody for this. Ams was talking to Trelix and Loren at the front, nodding her head to whatever they were telling her.

  “You okay, Ams?” she asked as softly as she could. She was. She could tell that much just by her face. But she looked busy with whatever she was talking to these boys about. She leaned down in her seat, and pulled a blanket over her shoulders. She wished she could take back what she said to Brody when they were in the cave. Wished she could have talked him out of coming to Waller instead of what she did. She didn’t know how anybody could live with what he just saw, how anybody could survive that, and she felt every kind of guilty for encouraging him to bring Trina here.

  “We can get to Crylo in two hours and twelve minutes. Our shields still work, so they wouldn’t know we were there. You and I, they can’t touch us, Laurel. We can go right in, and we can find the ones who did this, who are probably still doing this to other girls, and we can end it. Trelix and Loren said they would help. There are plenty of weapons in the flier. We just can’t tell the others. But there is nothing they can do to stop us once we are in the air.”

  Ams was speaking quickly, frantically, and she could tell she meant it from the way she was looking at her.

  “We can’t do this to them… Taking off like that, and them not knowing where we are, it’ll kill them. We have to tell them. And we have to know what we’ll be walking into. I am sorry, Ams, but we just can’t do it like this,” she said softly.

  “Get off the flier, Laurel. I mean it. If you are not coming, you need to get off, right now,” Ams snapped at her, staring at her, eyes angry.

  It was so like her to do something insane on an impulse because she felt hurt in the moment, because she thought she could single-handedly fix the universe. She didn’t know what to make of this new Ams, but she knew she couldn’t argue with her when she was like that, so she got up and walked towards the stairs, and then screamed at the top of her lungs, “Riley! Ams plans on stealing the flier and taking it to Crylo.” Ams had her by the throat, choking her, covering her mouth with her hand, but Riley and Brody were already running to her, running up the stairs and there wasn’t a thing Ams could do about it then.

  Riley pulled Ams away from her, and took her back down into the clearing. She saw Brody standing in front of her, looking at her, concern in his eyes. She didn’t want his concern, didn’t want his anything, so she walked to her seat, pulled the blanket over herself and closed her eyes. They would have to take it from here. She was too damn tired and too hurt to think for anybody. She just wanted to be alone. And she knew what Brody felt like, when he asked her to leave earlier, and felt every kind of wrong for not giving him the space he needed. She felt a hand squeeze her shoulder, but didn’t want to see who it belonged to, so she stayed as she was, covered up.

  “Please, look at me,” Brody’s voice.

  She didn’t want to look at him. She had too many tears collected in her eyes that she was holding in all this time, and she didn’t want anyone, least of all Brody, to see that.

  The hand pulled the blanket from her face, and she turned away from him.

  “Leave me alone, Brody. Please, just leave me alone.”

  She hoped she sounded calm when she said it.

  He reached over and took her face in his hands and held it, making her look at him, not letting her move, not letting her look away, “I can’t, Laurel. I have been a complete idiot, and I am sorry for that. Riley told me you like me… Ams must have said something to him, and I’ve been a bit of an ass to you. I’m sorry for that.”

  She felt her face burn, and she squirmed away from him, needing to hide her face, but he wouldn’t let her, and she felt a lump in her throat, the about to cry lump, and hated that she couldn’t hide now. “Please, Brody, let go of me,” she asked in a desperate whisper, and he did.

  She covered her face under the blanket again and sobbed, all the tears spilling out of her, nothing she could do about it. After a while, she felt him put his arm around her, not saying anything, just holding her, letting her cry. She didn’t know what she would do or say if she had to look at him again after this. She hated Ams for not keeping her mouth shut, and Riley for telling Brody whatever Ams told him. It wasn’t their bloody secret to tell, and she knew they knew that much, so them doing this to her was all kinds of wrong.

  The sobbing was long done, but she was too scared to come out from hiding, too scared of what she’d see on his face, so she stayed where she was, and he let her for a long time, and she could tell nobody else was in the flier by the silence. Finally, when she felt like she was going to suffocate from all the wet heat of breathing into herself, she let the blanket drop, and looking away from him told him that she did like him, liked him from when she just met him, but that she knew it wouldn’t ever go anywhere because of everything, because of Trina, and she didn’t expect it to, so she had no intention of him ever knowing, and that she really was sorry she had lousy friends who couldn’t keep their mouths shut.

  “Any chance you can look at me?” he asked softly.

  She did, and his eyes were full of suns again, so much gold staring at her through all the blue, it made it hard to look at.

  “I am far too broken right now, Laurel. I’m just trying to put all the pieces together. I can’t be with anyone like that. And I think a part of what you feel is pity, and I couldn’t do that to you. I see the way you look at me, and it hurts to see you hurting like that because of all the bad stuff that happened to me. I can’t do that to you….”

  She held up her hand, stopping him, and he shut up, looking at her, surprised.

  “I don’t want to hear the rest of it. I don’t need to. If you think any of this is pity, then you are right, it wouldn’t be fair. But I’ve never felt pity for you. Hurt, yes, but not pity. And everything that’s happened to you, I can’t help that it’s heartbreaking. But I see how you are. I liked you for that, not for
anything bad that happened to you. But you are right, Brody. I deserve better. That’s what you tell people who care about you…”

  She saw his face go hard. She knew she was throwing daggers at him, hurting him, but she couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop.

  “It’s what you do, Brody, because it’s easier. But it’s a coward’s way out. Like putting a bullet through your head… Or making your best friend do it for you,” she spat at him and stood up, knowing that she really hurt this boy, and knowing, too, that he was just trying to be decent and that he didn’t deserve this.

  He blanched, but stood up when she did, still looking at her.

  “That’s what you think of me?” his voice quiet, too quiet. She nodded her head and ran. Ran from him, and from wanting to lash out at Ams and Riley for not keeping her secret, for making her do this to a boy who didn’t deserve any of it, ran from whatever she was turning into. She ran into the same clearing she saw Brody in earlier, if only because she could still see the trail to it, and she didn’t have it in her to plan, to think of any place else to go. She slumped against the tree he sat at before, the birch one, closed her eyes and hoped nobody would come looking for her.