He’s mocking you.
A tremor ran down Remko’s back. “All of this,” he whispered, his voice shaking with rage, “all of this is your fault.”
Aaron’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t waver or flinch or respond.
“Give me a reason not to pull this trigger.”
Still Aaron said nothing. He kept his eyes on Remko’s, fearless.
He’s playing with you.
“Defend yourself!”
“Resistance only creates suffering,” Aaron said softly.
His words washed over Remko like a wind and he nearly released the man, but his anger fought back, blocking out the power that came with Aaron’s words.
Are you going to let him play you for a fool?
Remko cocked the weapon, the sound echoing through the still tunnel.
“Remko, please—” Wire tried again.
“Shut up!” Remko yelled.
Don’t forget who this man is. He took everything from you. He used you as a tool to fight his battle while he hid away to protect himself. He is the enemy.
“Look through your fear and anger,” Aaron said. “See who you truly are beyond it. You don’t have to be afraid.”
This is who you truly are—a man, a soldier.
“Let it go. Listen to a different voice. A voice that calls your true name,” Aaron said.
Don’t listen to him and his constant lies.
“The power inside you gives you the strength to walk through the fear. Surrender to it.”
He wants you to give in to your fear, to be weak so he can be in control.
“No,” Remko said. He was done surrendering.
“You can be free of this—” Aaron started.
“Enough! I am do . . . do . . . done,” Remko said. His stutter came back with full force. It only added to the fuel racing through his body.
Pull the trigger; end this.
Remko’s hand trembled slightly. He wanted to see fear in the man inches from him, but Aaron’s eyes still remained calm.
He doesn’t believe you’ll do it.
Remko would if it would end this suffering. If it would free him from the lies that Aaron had sold and he had bought. But he wanted Aaron to know he would, wanted him to feel some of the fear he had placed in Remko.
“I will not surr . . . surrender to you anymore. You used me, ris . . . ris . . . risked my life, my family’s lives. You say the power gives me stre . . . stre . . . strength, but I have strength. I don’t need yours,” Remko said. “You said we wou . . . would be free, but we are more imprisoned than ever.”
Aaron’s expression stayed solid. Remko resisted the urge to pummel the man, his anger soaring to new heights.
“Admit it! Admit you lied to us,” Remko said. “Ad . . . admit there is no freedom.”
Aaron said nothing.
Remko pressed the muzzle of his gun harder against Aaron’s temple. “Admit it!”
“There is freedom,” Aaron said, “but only in surrender.”
Remko let out a vicious scream as his anger took over his arm and his finger pulled the trigger on the weapon in his hand.
“No!” Wire yelled, and a part of Remko registered movement, but the majority of his focus was on the trigger his finger had just pulled. The world slowed, the seconds inched forward as Remko waited for the gun chamber to release a steel bullet and echo its disposal with blaring clarity.
But nothing came. The gun only clicked, as if there were no bullets at all. He pulled the trigger again. Once, twice, three more times—with no reaction. Aaron’s eyes still held their eerie confidence and Remko was suddenly struck with a different kind of fear. Something he hadn’t experienced before. A fear that came from awe and understanding. Aaron was as he said, filled with a power beyond comprehension.
Before Remko’s mind could register another thought, shame poured over him like tar. It coated every inch of his skin and hung heavy around his shoulders. What had he just tried to do? He saw the gun in his hand, the end of it forced against Aaron’s forehead. His hands shook and his throat tightened. Had he . . . ? His mind was unable to comprehend what his anger had fueled. What kind of man . . . ?
His thoughts were broken by the tugging of arms as the others dragged him down and away from Aaron. His instincts told him to fight, but his body had gone numb, and he let himself be pulled to the ground.
You could have been freed, you could have ended this, but you were too weak!
Pathetic. You deserve to suffer.
Shame pounded inside his head as the voices dispensed more ridicule.
Failure is all you are. All you’re good for.
You were a fool to think you could be anything more.
His body numb, his shame vengeful, and his will utterly broken, Remko let the darkness creeping into his mind rapture him.
Voices drifted in like soft, far-off noise that he hardly heard.
“We have to secure him.”
“Help me move him.”
“This is impossible.”
“The gun was fully loaded.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Remko blocked out the voices completely. He wanted to be alone in his suffering and shame. He wanted to give in to the darkness closing in, wanted to let go of the will to fight.
He might die like this—all those around him might die—but he couldn’t care anymore. He wouldn’t. Aaron had told him to let go, to surrender. So he would.
He let go of the will to live and surrendered to the darkness around him.
25
Remko had been lying in his darkness for a while. Time had no value to him. He knew it was passing, or at least he suspected it was. Then again, the world could have ended while he was deep in his own sludge. It wouldn’t matter to him anyway.
A small part of him, somewhere deep within, itched to be awakened, to come back to the land of the living, to reconnect and remember that technically he was still breathing. But according to his wife, who was dead or dying, living was more than breathing. She had said as much the last time they had spoken. When he’d let his tone cut like razors and he’d questioned everything they’d built their fragile life on. When he’d been angry that she would choose anyone over him, when he’d felt certain he deserved more consideration than she was giving him.
Now such entitlements felt frivolous. His rights, his needs, his wants. The anger that had driven him to kill, to end the life of a man he’d felt loyalty to only weeks before. Then again, he hadn’t killed anyone. Aaron was walking, breathing, unscarred, unharmed. Remko was a shell of a man, fading away, locked in his own defeat and suffering, and Aaron was unshaken.
Through the haze of the last few hours, Remko knew a couple of things had happened for sure. Jesse and Wire had restrained him after he’d tried to blow Aaron’s brains out, and they had moved him to one of the only standing tents. There had been soft conversations about what to do with him. Angry whispers and fearful discussions.
They should take him with them. They should kill him. They should leave him for dead. He had tried to shoot Aaron with a loaded gun. A loaded gun that had proven useless. He was losing his mind, but they couldn’t just leave him. He had lost everything. So had they, and none of them had tried to kill anyone. Where would they go, what would they do? Maybe north, or over the mountains to the west? Without the Seers, what were they now?
On and on their mumbling broke through in spurts and Remko shut it out. He wanted to yell: What does it matter anymore? We’re all as good as dead anyway. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything. They asked him questions, but he couldn’t get the words forming in his brain to pass his lips, or he didn’t care enough to actually try. It was hard to tell through the fog.
He knew that eventually they had left him alone in the tent, bound and slouched in a far corner. They’d left him and then the battering self-hate had come. A violent wind, rushing over his flesh and chilling his bones.
He had failed everyone. Carrington an
d Elise, who were probably turning cold from lifelessness or clinging to the false hope that Remko would storm in and save them, would never be saved because he couldn’t. He never really had been able to. It had all been a lie he’d fed himself.
You’re enough. You’re strong enough, capable enough, called to this, chosen for this. Powerful enough. Fearless enough. Remko almost laughed thinking about it now, a chuckle tickling the inside of his mouth and quickly turning to sorrow. How could he have ever been so foolish?
At some point another presence had entered the tent, different from the others, and he’d known it was Aaron. Walking, breathing, not-dead Aaron. How long had it been since Remko had tried to put four bullets into this man’s skull? Certainly not long enough for Aaron to forget. He feared Aaron’s wrath. A sense of self-preservation made Remko want to move. To recoil as the man sat down beside him. He had somehow stopped bullets from exiting a fully functional, fully loaded weapon. He could probably call down lightning or fire to end Remko’s misery.
Remko should be cowering in fear, begging for forgiveness, crying out for mercy. But the haze was thick, crippling. He didn’t move; what was the point? If Aaron did strike him down with righteous vengeance, it would be the least Remko deserved.
But Aaron hadn’t inflicted painful revenge. He hadn’t even spoken. He’d only sat with Remko for a long time, or at least it felt long, his presence barely snaking through the darkness and pulling at Remko’s heart. Wisps and whispers trying to convince Remko he was missing a critical piece of this puzzle. That there was more, that this wasn’t the end but rather the beginning. Remko snuffed out each attempt. He was too tired to search for Aaron’s truth, or Aaron’s Father’s truth. Maybe it was all real, the path and the freedom, but Remko didn’t want to find it. He didn’t deserve to.
Eventually Aaron left, taking with him any warmth Remko felt, and the darkness deepened.
Time passed, and Remko moved between dense stupor and silence to chasing off nightmares and memories. A catalogue of failures and mistakes that he would silence only to find more darkness.
He couldn’t tell how long it had been when someone entered the tent again. Weeks, days, or only hours.
It was Wire and Jesse, and Remko wondered if they had finally come to a verdict on what to do with him and were here to carry out their sentencing. They rushed to him and tried to lift him from the ground.
“We have to move,” Wire said.
Remko was pulled onto his feet.
“More soldiers are headed this way,” Jesse said.
Remko pulled out of their hold. And they both stopped.
Wire glanced at Jesse and moved to re-grasp Remko’s arm, but Remko sidestepped him and sat back against the corner.
He wasn’t going with them. He couldn’t fight anymore, wouldn’t struggle for freedom that he could never earn. He would rather be taken and serve the sentence he was destined for anyway. They would all end up paying for their rebellion, and he was too weak and exhausted to prolong the inevitable.
“Remko, what are you doing?” Wire asked.
Jesse dropped down and clasped both of Remko’s shoulders. “Listen, I get it; you are numb, checked out, whatever, but they will find you and kill you if you stay here.”
Remko raised his head to return Jesse’s look. “Let them,” he said, his voice cracking and dry. How long had it been since he’d had water or food?
“This is crazy,” Wire said. “Remko, you can’t just give up.”
Someone else poked a head into the tent. Kate. “We have to go now,” she said.
“Remko, please,” Jesse said. “We need you, man.”
Remko shook his head and yanked away from Jesse. “Leave me.”
“We can’t—” Jesse started.
“Leave me!”
Wire just stood back, shaking his head. “He’s lost it.”
“Leave him,” Kate said.
“We can’t just—” Jesse fought.
“We have no choice,” Wire said.
The three stood looking down at Remko as he hung his head between his shoulders and felt dark, raw sorrow finally push its way through the heavy fog. Tears slid down his face, dripped from his chin. Pain gripped him as if it had wrapped itself around his heart and was squeezing. Eventually the others left and he was alone again with his pain.
Again time lurched forward, but how much wasn’t measurable. They did come, as Wire and Jesse had said they would, two large men dressed in black, surprised to find a man bound inside a tent. They dragged him out, threw him in the back of a CityWatch vehicle, and drove him away from camp. They tried to ask him questions, but Remko kept quiet, not because he was being stubborn or defensive but because he had nothing to say. He felt as if he were nothing at all.
Carrington saw their approach from the south. Over the last several days, Ramses had been using a device that Wire had programmed to watch for activity and monitor radio communication. Two days ago, they had stumbled upon an old barn, tucked inside a heavy covering of trees. It was rotting away from time but at least had given them a roof and some shelter from the harsh winds that found them at night. They knew they couldn’t stay here long, but the children needed to rest, so they had spent the last forty-eight hours hunting, scavenging, and collecting what they could, searching for their next move.
A couple of hours earlier Ramses had picked up a radio frequency that he couldn’t make out. They were pretty certain it wasn’t CityWatch from the type of codes they were using, and a surge of hope had poured through the small group. It could be Remko and the others.
The thought gave people energy, but Carrington couldn’t ignore the worry blossoming in her chest. Something was wrong, though she couldn’t place her finger on it. The feeling had been following her for days, like a bad omen or a disturbing dream she couldn’t shake. She practiced remembering who she was and what Aaron had told her, and that alleviated the fear for a time, but it always returned. It wasn’t fear for herself or those around her; it was fear for something or someone else, and as the small group approached on the horizon, Carrington felt certain for the first time that the fear was for Remko. She didn’t know how, but she knew he wouldn’t be with them.
Her fears were confirmed as Wire, Kate, Jesse, and a teenage girl and small boy whom Carrington didn’t recognize approached.
No Remko.
Her heart burst, dropping into her gut and releasing the sorrow that had been building for days.
Others rushed to greet them while Carrington escaped behind a decaying stone wall that barely hid her. Tears streamed from her eyes, her breath impossible to catch and keep steady. She clasped her hands over her mouth to hide her sobs and slid to her knees.
Her mind begged her to consider that she might be overreacting, that she shouldn’t be jumping to such drastic conclusions, but her heart knew the truth. Had known for days.
Suddenly the overwhelming reality of it all felt like too much to bear. She couldn’t do any of this without him. The fear became more real than it had ever been. She felt as if physical hands were shaking her until it hurt.
She swallowed her pain and wiped her face as footsteps approached the wall that hid her. The steps rounded the corner and she glanced up to see Jesse. His face was mournful and she moved to stand.
“Don’t,” he said and took a couple steps to cross in front of her. He slid down the wall on her right side. She readjusted on the cold cement floor, her back pressed against the stone next to him.
They sat in silence for a little while, the warm breeze drying Carrington’s tears. Jesse yanked a long piece of grass that was sprouting up between the cement blocks and twirled it between his fingers.
“How did you find us?” Carrington asked.
“Wire picked up the radio frequency that Ramses was sending out, or at least I think he did. I don’t really understand how any of that works,” Jesse said.
They fell quiet again, neither of them wanting to go where the next question would lead.
Carrington finally worked up the courage to ask, her mind desperate to know. “Is he dead?” She choked it out through barely controlled emotions and waited for Jesse to say yes.
“No,” he said.
Carrington turned to look at him.
“Or he wasn’t when we left him,” Jesse said.
“Left him?”
Jesse was quiet for a long time and Carrington fought the urge to grab his neck and shake answers from him.
“I think assuming you and Elise were dead was what finally pushed him over the edge,” Jesse said. “The thought of losing you is what made him pull the trigger.”
Dread exploded in Carrington’s gut. “What?”
“He tried to shoot Aaron.”
Her fear and worry shifted and the conflicting emotions inside her felt like sharp pieces of glass scraping across her mind. Jesse quickly replayed the story of Remko snapping and shooting Aaron with intent to kill. How the gun hadn’t worked, how they’d tried to bring him but he wouldn’t come, how the CityWatch guards had most likely found him and how his current status was uncertain. Every word that fell from Jesse’s mouth increased the shock and despair swirling inside her. How could she not have seen how close Remko was to breaking?
After retelling the events of earlier, Jesse fell into deep contemplation. For long minutes there was nothing but wind and the faint voices of those on the other side of the wall. Carrington couldn’t even cry at this point; all she could do was wonder where it had all gone so terribly wrong.
The blame was hard to escape. Remko had followed her into this life, trusted Aaron because he’d loved her, and now she had killed him.
“This is real, isn’t it?” Jesse asked.
His words stirred her from her thoughts. “What do you mean?”
“Aaron, his way. This call, the song you hear—it’s all real.”
Carrington didn’t respond. Jesse didn’t need her to; he was working it through out loud, but he already knew the answer in his heart.
“I tested that gun; it should have worked,” Jesse said.
The Calling Page 25
