The Warrior - Initiation Driven Subversive Redemption Justice

by Rebecca Royce

  Deacon took the role of “bad cop” very easily. He stepped into it without even knowing what he did, leaving Chad to play the nice guy, the charmer, the one I could count on.

  Just because I understood his plan didn’t mean I could ward myself against its effectiveness. In fact, if Deacon yelled at me much longer I’d end up giving in to him, too. All of my resolve, all of the hardness I had spent six months developing around my heart, melted away, inch by inch, minute by minute, while I remained in their presence. This feeling, this softness—was why I’d left them to begin with. How could I be hard-core Rachel in a world where so much warmth closed in on me, boxed me in, engulfed me from all sides?

  “Are you taking me down there?” I hated this game of pretend.

  Chad nodded. “Yes, we are.”

  “Against my better judgment.” Deacon followed Chad into the elevator.

  It groaned as we made our way below ground to Isaac Icahn’s empire. Above the earth’s surface, he only could moderately control the goings-on around him. His sons did their best to maintain his supremacy and even they often lost track of things.

  Vampires couldn’t be contained, not forever. Werewolves did what they were going to do regardless of his interference. Even the human beings—and there were some, I had learned, who had managed to escape Vampire captivity and avoid the harness of the habitats—were able to exist in some form of self-determination.

  Below ground, where no one knew how controlled they were, Icahn lived as a god. Controlling everything, handling all of us like we were his personal puppets. Sure, he claimed to have the best intentions. He wanted to save humanity, stop the vamps, cure the virus…except he spent his days as demigod underground, leaving his less-qualified children to do research.

  Nothing he said or did could be counted on as truth. And now I’d come bursting through his door, something I knew would, to say the least, make him very upset.

  Maybe homicidal, considering I’d been responsible for ousting him from his home the last time around.

  The elevator doors dinged open and we walked out into Warrior-ville, the part of the habitat designated for those who got to go Upwards and fight, to live. Conversation ceased at the sight we made. I raised myself a fraction of an inch to see them better.

  As I scanned the crowd, I looked for some sense of recognition in anyone’s eyes. Only blanket curiosity met my gaze. Not even an inkling from anyone they knew me at all.

  Out of the crowd, a person I recognized stalked forward. Keith Endover. His strawberry-blond hair had been combed to the left, meaning he’d actually had the time to think about it when he’d gotten up from his daytime sleep. Most of the time, Keith looked like he’d rolled right out of bed without glancing in a mirror. His gorgeous wife, Tiffani, whose life I had saved six months earlier, liked him a little befuddled-looking.

  “What is this?” He pointed to me like I resembled some kind of strange animal.

  Deacon raised his hands in the air. “Don’t look at me, boss. The Lyons brought her back home.”

  “Why are you carrying her? Who is she?” Keith spoke directly to Chad, ignoring Deacon entirely. I might as well have not existed.

  “We’re not sure. She claims to be from a tribe who knows of our existence. Says she killed a Wolf pack. We thought you should decide what to do with her.”

  Keith narrowed her eyes. “Really? Well, this is unexpected. But it’s not for me to decide. Dr. Icahn will want to meet her himself.”

  Great.

  My absolute nightmare. Some more alone time with Isaac Icahn. Or maybe I’d made it worse in my head than it would actually turn out to be. Icahn could decide to let me go, to sneak me out one of his back doors and I’d be on my way again. Perhaps I should be begging to see Dr. Icahn.

  “And you’re carrying her because…?” Like Deacon, Keith didn’t easily let questions go unanswered.

  “Because Deacon whacked her over the head.”

  Keith raised an eyebrow before turning his attention on Deacon. “You beat up a girl?”

  “The girl beat me up first. She kicked my knee so hard I fell over.”

  “Uh-huh.” Keith grinned. “Perhaps we need to rework your training if a girl from nowhere can give you a knock down.”

  “Keith.” Deacon’s gaze held venom, and all of it directed toward the Warrior leader. “I’m not convinced she’s untrained. She moved like one of us.”

  Had I? When would he have had the chance to notice?

  “Do you think the Vampires are training Warriors now?” Keith shook his head. “This isn’t up to us, anyway. Take her to a holding cell while I go speak with Dr. Icahn.”

  Chad nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Sir? Chad continued to hold me in his arms as we traveled to the jail area of the compound. I’d been in it more than I wanted to remember. In fact, it had been in the holding cell when Chad had first confessed his feelings to me, totally catching me off guard. I’d been in love with Micah and then Jason, never considering Chad as anything more than Tia’s brother.

  Things changed rapidly after his announcement of his love.

  Chad took me into the cell, and a musty tinge of mold made me sneeze when he set me down. They needed to fix the air filters in this part of the habitat. The repair squads were probably behind schedule.

  Icahn had needed to repair the whole place even before he’d rezapped everyone’s minds six months earlier. A lot of places must need to be fixed up.

  Chad closed the barred door, locking me in the cage. If this had been my first experience being locked up, I might have panicked. In fact, I had when I’d been brought to jail a year and a half earlier. Now? It felt familiar.

  He drummed his hands on the bars staring at me. “You seem like I know you. I’m not sure why.”

  Breath left my lungs. I hadn’t anticipated this from Chad. He’d been dead. As a clone of himself, I expected him to be the one most programmed by Icahn.

  “I don’t know you.” A cold sweat broke out on my back. I knew him so well I could remember vividly what his mouth had felt like pressed up against mine, how my body had heated up when he touched me.

  “Of course not. How could we know each other?” He shook his head, his eyes focused on something other than me on the back wall. I wondered if he saw anything at all or if his mind’s eye had traveled elsewhere from the room. “Still, I guess it feels like a dream.”

  “Weird.” The last time I’d seen him, they’d just woken him from the cryogenic sleep where they’d regrown him from his DNA into the Chad I saw before me.

  He’d known. Chad had been one of the few clones who had awoken with the sense he’d been dead. He could even remember when I’d stuck a stake through his Vampire heart.

  With a compulsion I couldn’t control, I thrust my hand through the cage bars and placed it on Chad’s chest where his heart beat beneath my fingers. The thump felt steady and strong.

  He jerked like I’d struck him and took a step back. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Rachel.” I avoided my last name. Presumably, in this new version of Genesis without me, he knew my parents. “What’s your name?”

  “Chad Lyons.” He took another step back. “You’re here until our leader decides what to do about you.”

  I nodded. “Understandable.”

  Chad walked out of the room with a fast gait that told me he couldn’t wait to be somewhere else. I couldn’t blame him. I’d want to run away from a strange girl like me, too.

  I sank to the floor, tiredness invading my bones. It must be because I’d come back home. I hadn’t slept well in months. Nighttime proved to be the worst part of the day for the what-ifs I tried to ignore. What if I could have found a way to outsmart Icahn without having to give up my whole life? What if I could have convinced him to give Chad a second shot at life without having to give up Genesis? What if…?

  The doors to the room banged open and the man himself entered, holding on to a cane I knew he didn’t actually require to
walk. Like everything else he did, the instrument fell into the “let’s pretend to be someone I’m not” category.

  I’d give him credit—he could fake-limp like a champ. I stared at his foot, not even trying to hide my line of sight. I’d long since stopped pretending to have manners for the Icahn family.

  “What are you going to do for your next act? At some point, they’re going to start to notice you don’t really age.”

  “Oh, Rachel.” He shook his head. “They never have before.”

  “Right.” I banged on the bars. “What was the point of sending me after Andon and his crew if you knew the Warriors were hunting in daylight?”

  Icahn narrowed his gaze at me. He looked like a snake getting ready to eat a small rat. “First of all, we have exactly three minutes until the security cameras turn back on in here and everything we say is recorded.”

  I looked around trying to spot the devices. I didn’t see any. “When did you have them put in?”

  “Seemed like a good idea after Keith killed my son in here last time around.”

  I shrugged. The incident had been horribly traumatic—until I’d seen the man walking around Redemption and learned the Icahns could actually make clones of those they felt like reincarnating. It seemed influence ended death these days. I’d exploited that fact to bring back Chad and my mother.

  “I don’t want to keep using up energy to bring back my own family time and again.”

  “Your sons are very annoying. It might actually be a blessing if you could, say, let them die.”

  “Your mouth gets you into more trouble.” He seemed unaffected by my rudeness, and I intended to stop being horrific to him. If nothing else, I enjoyed it.

  “Did you come in here to talk to me about energy resources?”

  “No. I came in here to find out why you’d gotten caught. Now, however, I see you were all but sent here on some sort of task.”

  “Your son made me think it had been sanctioned by you.”

  He fell silent. “Interesting.”

  “Trouble on the home front.” I moved around my cell, touching the cold metal of the bars.

  “Sometimes the boys need to be reminded who is in charge.” Icahn nodded, his thoughts private.

  I preferred his inner dialogue stay in his own head. I had enough trouble with my own.

  I continued. “Sometimes, the boys need their father to be doing the research he should be doing to solve the Vampire problem, considering he’s a genius—and yes, I use the term loosely—and they are not.”

  “Let me tell you something, Ms. Clancy.” He sighed loudly. “I have been doing this research for a lifetime. I am entitled to take a break now and then.”

  “Sure.” I nodded like I cared. Or I hoped it appeared as if I did because I hated him right then as much as I could ever detest anyone. “Or you could admit the so-called Vampire virus you participated in making is never going to get better. All of those people are gone. They’re monsters. It’s time to kill them and move on.”

  “Rachel….”

  I wouldn’t be interrupted. “You could stop pretending you keep your little group of people alive while everyone else in the world languishes.”

  He stared at me, anger glowing in his eyes before it vanished. Wow. This man could really get control of himself. I wondered if he could give lessons.

  “We have a problem. Your little story about being part of a tribe…it’s garnered too much interest. They want to go looking for human tribes.”

  For this, I actually had a moment of uncomfortable remorse slide down my spine. The few humans wondering the world somehow surviving on their own from Vampire attacks and Werewolf kills didn’t need the Warriors of Genesis hunting them down.

  “You’re a very bad liar.”

  “I know. I don’t have your decades of practice.”

  Icahn leaned over. “I’m going to talk them out of it. And you are going to stay here until I do. Then you will sneak away. In the meantime, I will figure out what to do about my sons and whatever plan they’ve cooked up for Andon.” He took a step back. “Do see if you can control yourself while you’re in here. I’d hate to have to mess with these people’s minds again. I’m not entirely certain how many times I can mess with them before it causes permanent problems.”

  I gulped. I didn’t want brain damage for my friends. I already had one brain erase square on my shoulders. I didn’t need permanent damage on my record.

  “How are you going to justify letting me out?”

  He turned to look at me. “I don’t have to, child. Right now, these people think of me like a god. Or don’t you remember?”

  I did. Too well. And it was my own fault these survivors had taken a step back into this horrible direction. “What do I need to know so as to not be surprised about how things have changed?”

  Icahns watch dinged. “Uh-oh. Time’s just about up. Not enough seconds left to tell you about the alterations in Genesis. But I might avoid your parents, if I were you. Have no idea what the shock of seeing your mother might do to you.”

  With those horrible words, he turned and left the room.

  I wanted to throw up.

  Chapter Five

  Then

  The food at the picnic kind of sucked, and I longed for my iPod so I could slip into my own world for a while. Mrs. Icahn—call me Betty—had gotten behind the raw-food movement. We didn’t have any hot dogs or hamburgers. Just mushrooms resembling burgers and onions, beets, and carrots for the hot dogs. I liked my vegetables but I liked them on the side. Or in a salad. Or cooked.

  Jason had done something to anger his father and then disappeared. His father had ordered him to take a walk and get his beast under control. His beast? Couldn’t he say temper like everyone else? Beast? No wonder Jason behaved strangely sometimes. My family should adopt him and get him out of his crazy house before he got too old to undo his father’s weird parenting. But then we’d be brother and sister. Yuck.

  Isaac Icahn creeped me out and I’d made a beeline to the back of the house. They lived on some kind of grand estate. My family had a lot of stuff and I guessed a lot of money; the Icahns redefined the parameters. I thought I might be able to walk and walk through their property and find myself in Massachusetts before it ended. The party going on inside made me want to try.

  “Are you as bored as me?”

  I leaped into the air. I’d not heard anyone approach, but then again I spent a lot of time lost in my own head.

  “Where did you come from?”

  The guy next to me stood at least six inches taller than me, and at five-feet-ten inches, I tended to tower over everyone. He had dark hair and brown, playful eyes. I’d spent enough time around guys my age to know a flirt when I met one. Still, I smiled because I couldn’t seem to stop myself. He had the kind of grin I had to respond to. And I’d bet he knew it.

  “I saw you come outside. I’m here with my brother. The Icahn Foundation pays for his college tuition. Or it will, when he starts next year. So we always have to come here and act grateful. I mean, we are, grateful. But the constant parading around like trained ponies?” The still-unnamed guy rolled his eyes and stared up at the sky, taking a sip from a cup filled with a dark cola-looking liquid. “My parents say Isaac Icahn is a big deal in government. My dad works for the FBI and he knows these things. I shouldn’t complain. Icahn wants to pay for my tuition, too.”

  “Right.” This conversation had moved way out of my depth. I didn’t know about anything to do with the government except I knew I hated the TSA. Taking off half my clothing at the airport really made everything move so much slower. I’d never given a thought to my college tuition. My mom’s job always took care of whatever we needed, and if it didn’t, Dad’s did.

  “I’m Micah Lyons, by the way.” He held out his hand and I shook it. “Your hair is gorgeous. It’s like the sunset over the mountains where we spend our summers.”

  My cheeks became beacons of flames. Or at least I assume they d
id. Hot, molten lava flowed through them, or maybe I just blushed really badly.

  “Thanks.” I looked at my feet. No one but Jason ever flirted with me. Micah was really cute, like stop-my-breath cute.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Stop pestering her.” I looked back up to see a girl I hadn’t noticed before walk up to us. She had a fast pace and her hands on her hips. “Is my brother bothering you? He thinks he has to hit on anything moving.”

  My good feelings plummeted to the ground. Micah must behave this way with everyone. He’d probably used his line a million times before, too. Sunset. Please. My hair more closely resembled an orange peel.

  The girl held out his hand. “I’m his sister, Tia.”

  “The bane of my existence.” Micah raised his glass to me and walked a distance away to stare up at the sky. I wondered what he found so interesting up there.

  “Don’t mind him. His head is always in the clouds. Sometimes literally. He wants to join the Air Force right out of high school but Dad’s insisting he go to college first. He takes flying lessons on weekends, which is where he’d be now if he hadn’t had to come here.”

  I’d just met seconds earlier and she’d pushed a lot of info about her brother on to me in that short span of time. Maybe Tia happened to be one of those girls who really liked to talk, no matter the subject.

  She pointed farther out onto the lawn. “My other brother is over there.”

  I followed her hand motion to where a guy who looked like Micah, only taller and darker, talked to an older man who must be his father, since both Micah and the second brother resembled him. “His name is Chad.”

  “Nice.” What else should I say? I’d never been so thoroughly introduced to people without actually making their acquaintances.

  I returned my gaze to Micah. Chad looked nice enough, but even if he’d only been playing with me earlier, Micah Lyons made the already warm day ten times hotter.