The Warrior - Initiation Driven Subversive Redemption Justice

by Rebecca Royce

  “He’s cute. Everyone thinks so. He has a ton of girlfriends. So many we can’t even keep up with them.”

  I looked at Tia. She stood just a few inches shorter than me with sandy-blond hair and bright blue eyes. So far, she didn’t lack for confidence. I bet she didn’t have trouble dating, either.

  “I have a boyfriend.”

  Tia’s eyes lit up. “I saw him when you came in. He’s really cute.”

  People loved to express their opinion on how good-looking they found Jason. I couldn’t blame them. The first day I’d met him, I’d been blown away. Lately, I’d started to wonder if they weren’t also telling me how cute he was so I could be sure to know what a catch he was for someone like me.

  My beauty didn’t get discussed like Jason’s. Most people thought I’d really lucked out to have found him, not the other way around. Well, my parents were the exception. They wanted Jason out of my life and mostly thought I was too good for him.

  A slight twinge of homesickness rocked me. How much longer would I have to stay here?

  Micah meandered back in our direction. “I hope my sister hasn’t made you want to run for the hills.”

  “Not yet.” I smiled at Tia. “It’s nice to see another girl.”

  I guessed I meant what I said. I didn’t have too many girlfriends anymore. Jason took up most of my time. The extra hours I did have, I didn’t want to go bar-hopping with fake IDs in New York City. There had to be some middle ground. I just hadn’t found it yet.

  Tia grinned. “I think we’re going to be really good friends.”

  I stared at Tia. I might not have gone so far to declare a person I’d only met moments earlier a good friend but then again, I probably wouldn’t have told her all about my family within seconds of greeting each other, either. She really had a strong, forceful personality.

  Micah leaned over. “Watch out. Once she gets her claws in you, she never lets you go.”

  It wasn’t Tia’s claws I wanted in me. I smiled at Micah. “Would that mean I get to see more of you if she did?”

  Even as I said them, I couldn’t believe the words that left my mouth.

  His face lit up with a real, broad smile, different than the flirtatious one he’d given me earlier. “Would you want to?”

  A growl filled the yard, coming from behind me. I whirled around. Had someone let a dog into the party? For a second, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A giant Wolf tore through the grass toward us. I gasped, covering my mouth, too horrified to even scream.

  The feral creature charged in our direction, and I couldn’t be sure why I knew with such certainty it had death in its eyes. But as much as I knew my own name, I knew the beast wanted to kill someone.

  It leaped in the air the same time I did. Instinct made me push Micah forward and out of the way of the creature’s assault. I screamed as the Wolf and I hit the ground together. For a second, I could see seemingly familiar crystal-blue eyes staring at me before I blacked out.

  ***

  Now

  “The Warriors live in this part of town.” Micah pointed down the block where I knew his family resided. “But, I think, for now, we’re going to stick you elsewhere.”

  I could have laughed. I hadn’t gotten to live among the Warriors when I’d actually been one of them because of my father’s behavior. I’d had to live with the rest of the population. Looked like, from the direction Micah steered me, we were going back to my old neighborhood. Maybe all the old biddies could stare at me out of their windows again and point like I had two heads and three arms.

  “Am I going to be living alone?” I stared up at the ceilings, watching as the lights used to replace sunlight dimmed to late-afternoon substitution. I’d gotten so used to living above ground. How on earth was I going to adapt, even temporarily, to this again?

  “Unless you’d like a roommate.” Micah raised his eyebrows, staring at me with heat in his eyes.

  I missed a step and almost fell to the ground before I righted myself. Seriously? We were back to this? All the years I’d lived in Genesis with him, he’d thought of me as a sister, a best friend, an ally, and eventually, his brother’s girlfriend. Never as a romantic interest. All of Micah’s flirtations with me had happened before we’d been cryogenically put away.

  “No thanks.” I swallowed. “You’re not my type.”

  “Really?” He laughed, staring up at the ceiling for a second. “No one says that to me.”

  “Oh? You think you’re some kind of gift to women? I’m supposed to swoon because you dared to suggest I spend the night with you?”

  He shrugged. “Basically. Yes.”

  Micah ushered me up to a cabin, and my heart dropped into my stomach. I couldn’t move, my feet frozen to the ground as my mind reeled against what I saw.

  “Something wrong?”

  I wanted to scream about Icahn’s sick sense of humor. I would not, could not, live in the cabin he’d assigned me. I’d already spent too much time inside of it when I’d lived with my father in Genesis. This place? It held too many bad dreams for me.

  The Rachel whose nights had been spent inside the four walls of the small cabin in front of me had been so alone in the world she hadn’t known how to get through even one day without feeling hopelessly lost. I didn’t feel like her anymore. I could be on my own and not even experience any loneliness. Still, I didn’t know if I wanted her crawling into bed with me every night and threatening the newfound confidence I’d created for myself.

  I smiled at Micah. “No, just remembering another time.”

  He nodded. “Did your tribe have homes like this?”

  I wished I’d never uttered the word “tribe.” Why couldn’t I have come up with something else? I’d made my bed and apparently I needed to continue to lie in it.

  “Why are you thinking about trying to locate other humans? You know, so you can hit on them, too?”

  The lightness returned to Micah’s gaze, and he opened the door to my former home for me. “You’re really something, aren’t you? Are you sure I’m not your type?”

  “Well, maybe I’m certain I’m not really yours.”

  I wandered through the small rooms, letting my hands stroke the walls while I did. The touch beneath the pads of my fingers made the whole experience feel less remote and more real. Nothing about this place had the power to change me. I’d left here; I’d made myself who I needed to be. The building couldn’t release fairy dust onto me and turn me into a whiny, confused version of myself.

  “You okay?”

  I spun around to regard Micah. Out of everyone I’d left, I knew he’d understand what I’d done. Micah had been a dream of mine for so long, something I’d carried over from one life to the next. A crush in both realities until he’d become so much more. He might like to pretend he wasn’t deep, like he wanted to be some kind of modern-day Lothario, but I knew better. Micah had depths to his soul no one had seen yet, and if anyone could have understood what it meant to finally take control of my life, Micah would get it.

  “What if I told you there was a whole world out there you knew nothing about?”

  Micah tilted his head to the side to regard me. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Places not on any maps. Schemes and plans controlling our lives without us even knowing anything about them.”

  “I’d say you sound like you believe in conspiracies.”

  I took a step toward him. “I live in one.”

  “Who are you?” The teasing Micah had fled the room.

  Good. I wanted him gone. For a mere second of time, I needed my friend back. “My name is Rachel.” I smiled.

  “You know I wasn’t asking your name.”

  A knock sounded on the door seconds before it swung open. Whatever Micah and I would have said to one another ended with the arrival of his sister. I almost called out her name in relief. Fortunately, I caught myself before I slipped up. She strode in with her head down, staring at her feet.

  Micah swore, turni
ng over his shoulder to look at her. “What are you doing here? You should be in bed.”

  Tia’s eyes met mine, and I couldn’t believe how she’d changed in the months since I’d been gone. Gone was the Tia who had been my best friend and my biggest critic. Even after she’d given birth at seventeen years old, she’d had a levity about her, a certainty of her own worth and importance. This person looking at me now seemed defeated, exhausted, and beat down.

  “I don’t want to be in bed.” Tia swallowed visibly. She’d lost a ton of weight, and as she walked forward, I could see her bones poking out from beneath her loose shirt. She pointed at me. “I want to see her.”

  “Are you sick?” I knew I shouldn’t ask. In this life, I didn’t know her well enough to intrude and yet seeing her like this felt akin to having a knife stabbed into my gut.

  “Not sick.” Micah answered for her. “Crazy.”

  Tia flinched and with an instinct I couldn’t have controlled even if I’d wanted to, I punched Micah in the arm. “Don’t talk to her so meanly.”

  “Damn.” He rubbed his skin where I’d struck him. “You really can hit.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Well, this is my sister, Tia. She’s not really supposed to be out among the general population unescorted.”

  Tia hadn’t uttered a word to defend herself. I stared at her again, looking for a hint of the girl I’d left behind. Her gaze held mine but seemed vague, like she didn’t really know where she stood.

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s nuts.” He shrugged. “But then again, maybe you two can talk conspiracies together.” Micah rubbed his arm again. “Someone will come by later with food, and I guess you’ll be expected to come to the morning meeting tomorrow.”

  The what? It must be something new. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what a morning meeting is.”

  “It’s when the great Dr. Icahn tells us what he expects from us during the day.”

  Micah spoke those words without even a hint of irony hidden in them. In case I’d had any question as to how far Icahn had turned them when he’d reworked their minds, I no longer wondered. Even before we’d caught Isaac Icahn the first time and realized he’d been lying to us, we’d not been in love with him. He hadn’t determined what we did with our days. He controlled the Warriors but not much else.

  Apparently, Icahn had decided a good dose of hero-worshiping had to be included in the redo he and I had arranged. It didn’t surprise me he’d done this; all it did was add to my already formed disgust.

  “I guess I’ll leave the two of you alone to get to know each other, since you’ve snuck out to meet our new visitor. Would hate to see it all go to a waste. I’ll give you ten minutes, Tia. Then I’m telling Mom you’re out.”

  I waited a full minute until I heard his footsteps travel completely away from my childhood home before I spoke to Tia again.

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t have anything to offer you to eat or drink.”

  She lunged forward, knocking me backward with the force of our bodies colliding. The wind knocked from my lungs, I rolled, looking for a weapon, but I’d been completely disarmed when they’d brought me inside of Genesis.

  It took me a moment to realize she hugged me. Shorter than me by a few inches, Tia’s head rested on my shoulder as we both lay on the floor. She panted like she’d run a race.

  “I knew when I saw you.”

  “Um—”

  She didn’t let me finish whatever I would have said, although what I would have uttered, I had no idea. “I’m not crazy. If you’re real, then I’m sane and everyone else has…forgotten or something.”

  I peered back to look at Tia, pulling myself slightly out from under her as I did so. Her eyes were wild and bloodshot. The poor girl. She must, somehow, be remembering what she shouldn’t. Why hadn’t Icahn corrected it? Did he know? This was unequivocally my fault. What was the right thing to do?

  “I need to clarify some things.” My heart beat fast against my ribs. “You know who I am?”

  She sat up on her knees. “You’re Rachel.”

  I nodded. “Did you know my name before someone told you?”

  Tears swam from her eyes. “I did, and if you’re Rachel, then the other things I’ve remembered have to be true as well.”

  “Like what?” Even as I asked the question, I wished I hadn’t. Tia hadn’t been a good Warrior. She’d not been able to handle the fight, had become catatonic the first time she’d encountered a Vampire.

  “We were living one kind of life. I was married to Glen, like I am now, but he didn’t hate me or think I couldn’t be around our baby. I was sane. We were happy. I didn’t want to fight. You were around. You loved my brother, Chad.” She sat farther up on her knees. “He died and you replaced him with some Werewolf.”

  Not exactly. Tia’s perspective, however, didn’t surprise me. She’d always been limited when it came to understanding other people’s motivations.

  “Then everything went askew. I went to sleep. Woke up somewhere else and we all had different memories. You weren’t here and I was the only one who noticed things had changed. Why doesn’t anyone else know?”

  The better question had to be why Tia did. I’d wanted Micah to remember. I needed a friend in here if I was going to get out and continue on my mission to bring down Icahn.

  I closed my eyes. I’d never been so torn in my life. Did I use this broken girl to help me? If she’d been the Tia of the past, there would have been no question of her competency. In fact, Tia had once betrayed me to Keith because she’d been so certain she was right and I was wrong.

  Or do I leave her alone? Make Icahn fix her somehow and go on by myself without her.

  I opened my lids. “Tia, listen to me. You’re not crazy.” I shook my head. “And I need you to help me get out of here.”

  I knew I’d chosen the most selfish option available to me. If I managed to do all the things I needed to accomplish, she’d have her mind back. If I couldn’t manage to bring down the whole operation, I’d be dead. And, despite the pit of dread forming in my stomach as I chose to confirm her so-called delusions, I couldn’t control the whole world anyway. I’d tried to six months earlier and if Tia was an indication of things, I’d made a terrible mistake.

  Chapter Six

  Now

  Tia and I walked by side by side, her head darting left and right as she stared at everything.

  “I can’t tell you how exciting this all is.” She spoke quickly, each word practically slurring into the other one. “Knowing, finally, I’ve been right all this time.”

  I grabbed her arm. “You understand you can’t say anything. No one will believe you any more than they do now, and Dr. Icahn might actually hurt you.”

  She laughed, a sort of muffled snort of a sound. “He doesn’t bother with me. He’s too busy with his fellow scientists. They’re always meeting in the conference room they built even farther down in the earth.”

  The lights above our heads changed to illuminate the coming night. I supposed the slight red hue was meant to indicate sunset. It didn’t come close to expressing the change in colors I watched every evening as it appeared over the distant hills. Some day, maybe, I’d get to see what those places looked like in this new world I lived in. If I ever completed my mission, I’d take the time to go and explore.

  Tia glanced up at the lighting, and the shift in the illumination system took away some of the hard lines that had come to mar her face since I’d been gone. She seemed almost young again.

  “They didn’t have that room when you lived here last.” She nodded her head as if confirming her own statement. “He has everyone convinced he’s doing great scientific research.”

  “I doubt there’s anything great about what he’s doing.”

  I bit down on my lip. Maybe I needed to get down there and see what he and the other so-called scientists actually used the room for. Of course, ever
y second I remained in this place, Jason got farther and farther away from me.

  “Can I count on you to help me get out of here?”

  She nodded. “Take me with you.”

  “Oh, Tia.” I grabbed on to her arm. “I can’t. You have your baby.”

  “They hardly let me be around him anymore because they think I’m crazy.” Her voice shook as she spoke and my heart plummeted into my stomach.

  “You can make them give him back to you. You know you’re right, just pretend you agree with them. A reckoning will happen. I promise you.”

  “Rachel.” Tia stared down at her feet. “I feel like this is mostly my fault.”

  I scratched my head. “Why?”

  “When I found out what you, Glen, and the others were doing, how you were blowing up the Vampire dens, rescuing people, and you hadn’t even thought to tell me about it, I felt horribly angry. I went to Keith and the others to punish you.”

  If I wanted to, I could let my emotions travel back to the way I had felt when I’d returned from what had been one of the most horrific moments of my life—seeing Jason transformed into a beast wanting to kill me—to the utter betrayal by Tia. I could feel pinpricks on my skin and a sick, nauseating sensation telling me everything I valued in the world had been yanked away from me.

  Deacon and Micah might be punished for my actions…any of our crew could be hurt….

  I shook my head. Part of deciding to take my fight solo against Icahn had been to put the political maneuverings of Genesis behind me. I didn’t have to worry about who wanted what and whose loyalty belonged to whom. I could choose to let the feelings of then float away and not bother me anymore.

  Making such a decision didn’t happen overnight. Goose bumps appeared on my arms. Getting over it was going to take some time.

  “Let’s leave those days where they happened. It feels like another life, doesn’t it?”

  Tia nodded, her lips pursed together in a thin, white line.