The med floor was deserted, as she expected. If someone saw her, she'd just tell them she was sleepwalking and got lost, but there seemed to be nobody there. She walked to the main room where the doctors worked during the day, and watched one of the mutes sweeping the tiles. It must be awkward for her to do that with the band on her hands. And then the mute looked at her and she wanted to run. She looked so much like the boy, unmistakably like the boy, and not just in that dark hair dark eyes way. Even the way her hair fell over her face in waves and tangles was Riley's.
She needed the meds. She needed to not think about how the mute looked. Maybe they all looked like that, but she knew, of course, that they didn't. Drake didn't look anything like that, or any of the other mutes. She started paying attention to them for some reason today, and any time she saw one she'd try to remember their features. She didn't think about it, it just happened.
She has been knocking for too long now. She knew the mutes weren't deaf, so she had to have heard her knocking for a while, never mind that she was staring right at her through the glass. Finally, the doors slid open, and she told her that lie she made up while waiting for Laurel to fall asleep, the one about her friend with a cut on her arm, and the meds she needed. She was hoping she didn't blush too much, but she felt her cheeks burning, so of course she did. The mute knew she lied. She hoped she'd still help her.
She was staring at her very pretty handwriting, "What's your friend's name?" on a med pad in front of her face. No, she couldn't do that again. The lying. It just felt all kinds of wrong to keep blushing like a fool in front of this stranger, so she didn't. She didn't tell her anyone's name, but she couldn't stop looking at this girl. She couldn't get past the resemblance in everything. Even the way she moved had a bit of Riley in it, slow and graceful, but straight backed, as if the band on her hands wasn't there.
She wondered if this mute had a name she could take to Riley with her, if she still remembered her name. So she asked, and the mute seemed sad after that. Ella. She needed to call her by her name now, even in her own head. Ella, the mute, who handed her the kit in a hurry, seemed anxious for her to leave. Something about the asking for her name made her sad, hurt her. She didn't mean to, but she never really meant to hurt anybody, and yet it just happened.
She kept not wanting to hurt the boy, but somehow she did, first with the stupid maid band, and then the water. She would need to figure it all out somehow, with the boy, so she'd stop hurting him. But the meds, those would help take some of the pain away. She grabbed the kit, and the pad with the girl's name on it. She didn't mean to take it, but there it was, tucked neatly in the back pocket of her jeans.
Ella was looking at her with so much desperation, the door open for her to run, pointing at it with her head and then the key. She felt like she owed her something for helping her, and for the lie, something to make her less sad, so she ran up to her and told her his name, Riley's name, and ran out through the doors, the strange dread over what she'd just done making her feel cold and miserable.
But she couldn't fix this now. She would have to tell Riley, would have to find a way to do it. He needed to know what she'd done. And maybe he'd try to run then, only he wasn't anywhere near healed enough to run. She made it to the loft, groped in the dark for the two containers, and walked to the den. The boy was just how she'd left him, asleep.
She washed his jeans and socks in the spare bathroom on the floor below that nobody ever went to earlier, and scrubbed his shoes as clean as she could make them, and all of that should have dried by now on the heat vent by the wall. She found the warm heap of clothes by touch, and brought them over to the bed. She needed some light if she was going to be able to put HealX on his scars. The candle would have to do. She heard the boy stir when she lit the match, "Please don't. Don't light that." His voice sounded strained, fragile. As if she'd somehow hurt him again.
"So jumping over the wall and breaking ribs and the bruises okay. Whatever happened to you when you got those slashes and stitching them up - also okay. Warm water and a candle not okay. Am I missing something?" She knew she sounded a little angry, could hear it in her voice, but she couldn't help it. She couldn't help feeling like an idiot, not knowing what she should and shouldn't do or say, and he wasn't telling her anything. How was one supposed to help somebody who refused to help you help them at all, who made you feel all kinds of wrong for it every time you tried? So maybe she was angry at him. Maybe he'll finally start talking to her, but he just lay there, not moving, watching her, and she couldn't light the candle.
There was a small light by the far wall she noticed earlier, not enough light to be spotted through the window, so she flicked that on, and walked away from the den so he could put his jeans on. It felt right to give him this little bit of privacy, though he had to have guessed by now that she undressed him in the first place.
"Thank you. For the clothes. And yesterday, what you did. I don't even know how you did it, but..."
He seemed uncomfortable. He was standing by the bed, shoes and jeans on, watching her. She walked back and moved the chair by the wall, so she'd have enough light to fix the scars. He let her spread the HealX on them, sitting there like a statue, not moving, not breathing either. She could see the muscles working in the side of his jaw. She was somehow hurting him again, only it didn't make her want to cry, it made her want to scream at him for making her feel like this. She didn't. She walked over to the sink and washed the oil from her hands.
She brought the two still hot to the touch containers over to him, "I brought you some soup and tea. I couldn't get anything else quietly enough. I also brought you pain meds, but you should eat first." He turned around in the chair, facing her, nodding. He gulped the soup down, and took a few sips of the tea, not looking at her. He seemed done.
She handed him a half dozen small pills, "These taste awful but they'll make it not hurt anymore. They might make you a little sleepy, at least they did me when I had to take them once." He shook his head at her, not taking the pills. Why wouldn't he take the pills with everything hurting like that? "I'll be okay. It's not so bad anymore, but I can't take these. I have to stay awake, in case I have to run. I can manage now, really. Thank you... For helping me. For everything," the boy said quietly. He wanted her to leave. That's what he was saying. She was being dismissed. She flushed, and hated her face not for the first time today for betraying her like that. Without thinking, she reached into her back pocket, took out the med pad with "Ella" written on it and threw it at him. Now she would leave.
She was only half way to the door when his hands roughly dug into her shoulders. They were shaking too, she could feel that. He spun her around and was staring at her as if he wanted to strangle her, squeezing into her skinny shoulders till it hurt. She held her breath, trying not to cry. She was done crying in front of this boy.
"What have you done?" Quiet, too quiet. So this would be his version of anger or rage then.
She was collecting these tidbits in her head without trying to, drawing a person she could understand out of what little he let her see. He walked her back to the den, not letting go of her shoulders, and sat her down on the edge of his bed, crouching in front of her, and finally let go. Her shoulders burned where he dug in and she really wanted to rub the pain out, but she didn't want him to see that he'd hurt her.
"Please, tell me where you got this. I need to know what happened, need to know where this came from," he was showing her the pad, but not looking at it himself, his voice a little calmer now, not so full of that awful quietness.
"No!"
She didn't even mean to say it. It just came out, but she didn't owe him any more telling, not when she got nothing from him but the name. And if she told him what happened with Ella, she'd have to tell him she gave up his name too, and she no longer wanted to do that. Didn't want his rage or his anger or sadness or whatever it would be this time. She just wanted to leave. She could do that now. Now that she fixed him up as well as she could. No
w that he wanted her to go.
She got up, "I'm going, Riley. There is plenty of HealX left in the kit. It'll keep your scars from getting infected." This sounded colder than she wanted it to. He stood up too, looking at her, hurt in the brown eyes, she could read that much now, and then he moved away letting her pass. He turned away from her, from her leaving, hands behind his back, the scars glistening raw pink under the HealX. That's how she'd have to remember this strange boy then. She was okay with that.
She was almost at the door when she heard him, "Ella... Ella is my sister. A sister I lost when I was six."
She stopped and looked at him, but he was still standing as she left him, his back to her. She walked a little way back, stopping far enough away to where he couldn't touch her if he turned around. He didn't.
"They took her away first. Before my parents. But nobody ever said she was dead. They didn't tend to kill little girls. They just made them slaves. The parents they killed. I knew that even then. But Ella was still out there somewhere in one of these compounds. I've looked for her for almost three years now in every place I could get to. She's all I have left, Amelia. And... And if you told her anything about me, you may have just killed her..." He turned around then, hands still behind his back, as if he didn't trust himself not to hurt her.
She couldn't tell him what she had done after this... He was right of course. She'd come looking for him, Ella would, asking questions. She was probably running through every room of the compound right now, looking for her brother, and she would get caught by Drake or one of the other guards. He was waiting for her to just say it. Her face was betraying her again, and even in the semi-darkness, he should be able to read the shame in it.
She could run, if she ran fast enough. She didn't think he'd try to stop her, but he didn't deserve that. It felt wrong to do that to him, to leave him with the not knowing. She didn't mean to tell Ella his name. It felt like a small kindness at the time, that's all. She just wanted to take some of the sadness away, and to apologize for the lying.
She willed herself to walk closer to him, close enough to where he could touch her, looked him in the eyes and said, more quietly than she meant to, "I told her that I needed the meds for my friend, my friend Riley. I didn't mean to at first, but then it felt right. She looked like you, Riley, I felt something. Like looking at a girl you, only older. The same everything. So I asked her for her name and she wrote it for me, but then she seemed so sad, it just came out. I really didn't mean to do it, to put her in danger, I really didn't, Riley. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She was crying, she knew, she couldn't help it.
She waited for him to say something or do something, hit her even, if he wanted to. She'd let him, but he just stood unmoving, his face impossibly close to hers, too close not to see tears pooling in his eyes. She wanted to disappear through the floor, anything to make him not look at her like that, to not see him hurting like that, and knowing that she did this to him. The other things she knew were before her, something else, memories of something maybe, but this, this she did, and this was the worst thing of all.
She smelled him before she saw him, the faint hint of sage. He was standing in the shadows, just out of range of the small light, Drake, the guard. So she did kill his sister, and maybe even Riley, and whatever they would do to her for this. She didn't know what they would do to her, hadn't thought about getting caught. But whatever it was would be better than this. She couldn't take this for another second.
She wiped her face as much as she could with nothing but her hands to collect all the water, walked up to Drake, the giant mute, and handed him her wet hands to put the cuffs on, "This was all my fault, Drake. I practically kept the boy a prisoner here. He amused me. He didn't mean to be here. You have to believe me. I'm A.L. You have to let him go, you just have to!"
She looked up at his face trying to read it and of all things, he was smiling at her. A big smile that made no sense with anything. "It's okay, Drake. She's all right," Riley, that. The mute still smiling at her, "I know, Riley. I know she is," and he wrapped her in a hug, and let her sob into his uniform, and sob she did for a very long time, until she could breathe again without it hurting so much, and until she could look at Riley again without feeling like she was going to burst into flames, and that took the longest time of all.
Broken
Riley, March 29, 2236, Compound Loft
He misjudged this little girl, misjudged everything. Looking at her crying in front of him like that, sad for what she unknowingly did. He couldn't hurt her. She seemed to want him to, waiting, not running. She could have run, he knew that. He'd have let her, too. It wasn't her fault that he didn't tell her anything, the not knowing. And when Drake came, the last thing he thought she'd do was give herself up like that, trying to save him, a Zoriner with too many secrets. It didn't make sense for her to do that for him. It was all kinds of brave and stupid, and these wives-in-the-making weren't supposed to be either. They would never need to be either, yet here it was.
He walked over to Drake when the girl stopped her sobbing, "There is more light in the back of the den here. We all need to talk." He had to know about Ella, if Drake had seen her, if she knew he was here, if she was safe. He had to know at least that much. Drake sat down on the floor, and still looked almost as tall as the girl did standing up. He must have seemed so scary to her, the non-mute mute guard, when she walked up to him like that, giving herself up, pleading for him. The girl stood off to the side, quiet now, waiting, tiny hands making tiny fists at her sides. Still scared then or worried. That he could understand, at least.
"I asked her not to go looking for you, Riley, told her I would do it for her, the looking. She knows. She knows she can't come looking for you, not with the slave band on, not yet. But I didn't think you'd be back here so soon, so soon after," he looked down, embarrassed. After a beat, "I'll find a way to tell her that you are safe. She felt you were here, after the girl, sorry, after Amelia went to her for the meds, she was convinced you were here and hurt. I'll find her for you, Riley. I just have to be smart about it. They said they might take her band off in three days, five at the most. She could come here then to see you." His comm beeped. He looked at the screen, and got up. Riley nodded, and he was gone, taking the smell of sage with him.
The girl stood where she was, looking at the floor. She seemed so breakable.
"I know you didn't meant to do it, Amelia. I'm not angry at you. It's not your fault." He tried, really tried to make his voice soft, Ella-soft. She didn't move, and there were streaks on her face, salt water. He couldn't take much more of this, the crying, so he walked over and gently put his arm around her and walked her to the bed, sitting her down, like a child. She put her wet face in her hands, and he knew he had to tell her, tell her everything he knew or thought he knew. He couldn't keep anything more from her now. So he did.
He told her about Waller, and growing up there, and Brody, and embarrassingly, about hating Brody because of the dragonfly, and their little shack of a house, and mother's not-garden garden with mint and rosemary and other things, and he knew that she'd understand now why he didn't want her to light that candle, and maybe she wouldn't feel so bad about that. And he told her about that last walk home, and Samson not being there, and about feeling stupid for not noticing his collar on the floor, and then about how Samson never barked, and the walk back from the warehouse, and how he hoped that it wasn't true, any of it, and then how he knew that it was, and it almost killed him to tell her that part, the part when he knew for sure that nobody was coming back, the part where he knew all he had left was Ella and he didn't even have her.
And the years that passed with the woman, with Janet, who was good to him. The woman telling him that he didn't do it to his parents and to Samson, that it wasn't about him writing the words on the fence. That it was his mother who wrote those words on the door to let Janet and the rest of them know what happened. And that for a little bit after the woman, after Janet told him that, he could a
lmost breathe again and almost care about his bugs and Brody, and that he tried to, he really did, but he couldn't.
And he told her about Drake who tried to look in on him, Drake who has always been in love with Ella, and how everybody but Ella knew it, but Drake never told anybody. Drake who buried his Samson. But he couldn't care about Drake then either, not him, not anyone, not even Brody. He just needed to find Ella again.
He told her, too, about that night when he broke in here, and what Hassinger did to him. He rushed through that, not wanting to tell her about how she smiled at him, how he knew that she wanted to hurt him, that she enjoyed hurting him. And he didn't tell her that Drake was there that night, because he didn't want her to think that he could have helped him, because he always knew he couldn't have. He didn't want her to think that way about Drake. He wanted her to think of him as Drake who buried his dog, so he wouldn't have to see him with a hole in his chest.
And finally, he told her that he wished at first she didn't find him that morning, that he didn't know what to do with her then, and that he was so tired of all the thinking, and all the looking for Ella, and all the not knowing for so long that he really didn't care if she shot him, but that he didn't think she was the kind who could shoot someone. And then he was done with all the telling, not feeling any kind of relief from it, just sadness.
She hadn't moved through it at all. Head still in her hands. He put his hand on the top of her head, and she flinched, and he knew that she would need time to think through it all, to make sense of it, make sense of him, so he walked to the window and stood there, watching the empty lawn and Drake's tower, and the impossibly tall tree behind the wall.
He waited for all the things he just said to her to empty out of his head so he could think the way he needed to again. Waited for her to stop the crying or the thinking that she was doing back there on his bed. And when he couldn't wait anymore, he turned around looking for her, but she was gone. The wisp of a girl was gone.
Escape (Alliance Book 1) Page 8
