She hadn't thought of any of it like that until just now, in telling it all to Riley, and the fear and sadness in Laurel's face must have shown on hers, because he was holding her to him, patting her hair, kissing the top of her head. He didn't say anything for the longest time, and she was afraid of what he thought of her now, only more than she was back at the stream after the serpent thing . And she knew that it was because Riley saw her kick at Keller, and then watched her hit him like that, and he had to think that maybe it wasn't completely Ams doing these things.
She stepped back from him to see his face, and he was looking at her with his sad Riley look, and she just needed to not have anyone look at her like that now, so she ran from him, ran all the way outside, hearing his footstep behind her, and kept running to the building. He caught her by the arm, and turned her around to face him, panting, "I can't tell you what I think you want me to, Ams. And I don't want to hurt you by telling you the other thing. One way or the other you will be sad or hurt or angry. But I can't lie to you, Ams. So here goes. I don't think the implant made you do what you did with Keller and with me. I think you were angry at everything Keller was to you, at the way he was with Drake, and you didn't think it was right of Drake to do what he did for him in the end. That's why you kicked him. And you were ashamed after that, ashamed that you did it and that I saw you do it, so you did what you did to me, because of that, because of the shame." He was watching her, worried look in his eyes.
"Ams, those things you did, they weren't as bad as you have it in your head, they were just really bad to you because you never did anything like that before and it scares you, knowing that you can do something bad. But we all can. It just makes you human, Ams, not a monster or whatever it is you think you are," he said softly, and let go of her arm and took her hand in his. They walked the rest of the way in silence. She knew he was right, knew that she wouldn't have felt how she felt if it wasn't her doing all of those things. Somewhere in her she knew it was never the implant.
"Riley... They can't touch the implants. They would have found Laurel and I already if they could see the implants at all, like they could see Drake's tag until Ella got it out. Or maybe they can see the tag still, I don't know, but we have to get out of here, this city, because that's the last place Drake was with the tag in him. We have to get out, Riley," she was almost yelling it at him, even though he was right next to her, and he was nodding his head at her, at all she was saying. And it felt good to have thought of it, and knowing that she could make Laurel not afraid of the implant anymore.
When they got upstairs to the East room, Stan was sitting on the couch with one of Ella's pads, writing in it or drawing something. He didn't even look at them when they came in, so they let him be and went to the room on the other side, looking for Laurel.
She was standing by the window with her back to them when they came in, looking at something out there, only she knew that there was nothing new there for her to be looking at. Laurel was making a fist with her right hand, and she thought it was strange for her to do it with just the one hand, and then she knew that she wasn't making a fist, but hiding something, and suddenly all of this, the way she was standing and not looking at them, not saying anything scared her, and she ran to her at the window, lunging for the hand making the fist. Only Laurel moved away from her when she got there, and stood staring at her, shaking her head, and there were tears in her eyes, "Please stay there, Ams." The way she said it was wrong too, not at all like Laurel.
She looked at Riley for help, and he was standing there next to her, but he was all wrong too, very pale and tense all over, watching Laurel as if she was a serpent thing, "You don't want to do this, Laurel. You don't need to. There is nothing your implant can do to you. It's just data, that's all. It can't change you or make you do anything you don't want to do. I swear it, Laurel," and the way he said all of it, slow and quiet, she knew Riley knew what she was hiding in her hand, and what she wanted to do with it.
And she knew what she needed to do then, that there was no other way for Laurel to be okay. She took a few more steps towards her friend, holding her hands up a little, "Riley, you need to stay where you are and not do anything or say anything. You need to promise me." She looked at him, fear making his eyes bigger, and finally he nodded.
She was standing right in front of Laurel now, "You won't need all of it, Laurel. Take half and put it in my hand. If the implant can make you do things that scare you, it can do it to me too, and I don't want to do those things any more than you do. So if you believe that it can somehow control you like that, you have to believe that it can control me too. I need my half, Laurel." She moved her hand towards Laurel's, pried her fist open, and broke a large piece of the dried mushroom off the musky smelling gray lump.
She felt Riley move towards them and looked at him, her angry look, "You promised, Riley. You can't." He looked so pale now, his hands in fists at his sides. It hurt her to do this to him, but there wasn't another way, not with Laurel, and Riley didn't know Laurel the way she did, didn't know that she would never make her do something she didn't want to do, even if it cost her everything.
She could tell Laurel was shaking a little, her hands were at least. She was looking at the mushroom she took from her, shaking her head, "You can't do this to me. I am not you, Ams. I can't let this thing change me, I just can't. If there is even a tiny chance that I could do what Stan thinks we did, I can't let it happen. Don't you see that? The fear he looked at us with, it was real. It was the most real thing here, Ams. I can't be someone who can do that to people."
She heard Riley take a deep breath, but he didn't move towards them. "Ams and I don't think the implant can do any of the things you are afraid of, Laurel, but you are right, we don't know for sure. We can't know for sure until it does something to you or Ams. I know you don't know me enough to trust me, but I keep my word. I always keep my word." There was pain in his voice when he said it. After a beat, "If I see it suddenly changing you in that way, or Ams, the first time when we know for sure it's the implant, and not something else, I will help you do this thing, both of you, if you still want to. I give you my word..." Laurel stared at Riley, reading his face, and finally nodded at him, and he walked over to her and she let him, and took the piece from Laurel's hand first, looking her in the eyes, and then took hers.
She knew he meant everything he just said. He stood there in front of her, serious and sad, waiting for her to tell him that she knew, and that she trusted him enough to know if Ams was no longer Ams. And in her deepest parts, she did trust him, she knew that Riley was the best of them, better than she was, and knew then that if she ever did anything truly bad, she would lose this boy, and that would be worse than going to sleep and not waking up anymore. She nodded to him, and he left the room, and she knew she needed to let him go and do his own thinking and let all the sadness out.
When he was done and Drake could walk again, they would leave this city, and maybe not being here would make them more like they used to be. Make all the hardness she felt on everyone gone.
The Waterfall
Riley, May 6, 2236, Woods Outside of Reston
He knew Stan wouldn't go with them, even before he asked. Could feel it in the way he was helping them get ready, packing their supplies for them, running around places to get things they might need. He seemed eager for them to leave, knowing why they had to go now, and knowing that he couldn't go with them, could never leave this city for the same reason they had to. He told Riley that he knew however they made all the people here go to the fire, they didn't do that to him, because they wanted for someone to see it, to know what happened, someone to tell anyone who might find this city, the way they did.
Drake was okay now, and best of all, Ella had her voice back. She barely used it, but she had it, and hearing her say anything at all made him smile. He missed her soft voice, had been missing it for all these years. Ella putting him to bed voice, Ella making Samson curl up on her feet voice, Ella hum
ming one of mother's old songs voice. She still seemed worried about it, having her voice back, as if she were afraid they'd be found out and punished for it somehow. And there was a coldness between her and Drake that wasn't there before. He knew it was something to do with her finally agreeing to let Stan fix her voice. They would be okay, Ella and Drake, he knew that, somehow had always known that, and that gave him the tiniest bit of hope that not all things were unfixable.
They set out two days after he made Laurel and Ams the promise that he felt he had to make, just after enough light splashed into the city to where they didn't need to use their rays to see by. Laurel and Ams clung to each other, chatting, softly, comfortably in that way they had with each other now, as if they finally realized that they, too, were stuck together, and they might as well get used to this new Ams and new Laurel. It didn't worry him anymore what he promised these girls. He spent most of that night thinking and worrying about it and there was no more point in it. He had to believe that the implant was just data, or none of this made any sense and there wouldn't be any reason for them to keep going.
Stan gave them a rough map to follow that would take them to the closest city in about ten days. Drake kept listening to his comm for any soldier chatter, but there didn't seem to be anybody in these woods. Ella walking close to Drake was a good sign that they would make up and be happy again together, like they seemed for a bit when Drake first came back to them.
He slowed his walk to fall back to where Ams and Laurel were, wanting a bit of company, liking the sound of their voices, and wanting to be closer to it. They were talking about something to do with Ams, about her family, and he was suddenly not sure he wanted to hear any of it, but they didn't sound sad, so he stayed. Laurel was telling Ams that she had calculated in her head that it didn't make sense for Ella and Drake and Riley to all end up in the same compound as her and Ams unless they all came from some place that was nearby, and she knew Ams and she didn't come from Waller. But she thought that wherever they were born had to still be close to where they were, only there wasn't any way she could think of to figure out where that was without one of them remembering something, and because Ams at least remembered what happened to her, maybe they could find her family or what happened to them if Ams could remember more of it. But she couldn't. Not even what their house looked like, just Blanche. She remembered Blanche, and it made him ache for her that she remembered it.
He walked ahead of them after that, because he didn't want to see the sadness in Ams now, and he knew there would be sadness. It felt strange, this aching for someone else like that. Before Ams there was just Ella and all the years of looking for Ella and thinking about Ella, and there was nothing else for him then, after he left Waller, the day that he knew for sure Brody did that ugly thing they all said he did, but nobody believed it. He remembered that, couldn't help remembering that.
Janet was talking to him in that way she knew she had to ever since she started taking care of him, the way that didn't make him feel like a little kid, the way without pity, "You know how you asked me to look into Brody after everyone said he killed himself?"
He was sitting across the table from her. He took a deep breath and nodded.
"Well, I talked to one of Andy's old friends, the one who still had some access to the nets then. Anyway, Brian, that's his name, he tracked Brody to Boston, a hotel in Boston, Riley. He took the room for one night, and he never went anywhere else, not that Brian could find. There is no record of anything else. I'm truly sorry." She looked at him and he could tell she really was sorry to be telling him this about Brody, his Brody.
When someone brought it to Waller for the first time, that Brody killed himself in some hotel room a year ago, he went to see Andy, but Andy just looked at him in that way he had when you did something stupid, shook his head and said, "You, of all people, you... You, Riley, should know better. Brody would never do that to you or to me. Brody wouldn't kill himself, not for anything," and he closed the door on him then in anger for the first time in as long as he's known this man.
But he was right, Andy was. Brody was full of dreams then, full of adventures in his head, wanting so much to fix things, make them better. He was constantly talking to Riley about it too, the things he planned. How they could make it so nobody ever lost anybody again. And how because he looked so much like them, he had to be the one to do it, to break in, and then he could do it, and he would make them pay for what they did to his parents, and then to Ella, and to their parents, and he would find the asshole who shot Samson, that was the thing he seemed most angry about, and he would do something so horrible to him, something so unbearably painful, he couldn't think it up just yet. But he would, before he found him.
Riley let him talk about it, all of it. It didn't hurt him like it used anymore. He just wanted to find Ella. Nothing Brody could do would bring anybody back, he knew that, but Ella was still out there somewhere. That he could hold on to, and so he did, planning his trips to every town near a compound, learning where the compounds were and who was guarding them and how, putting everything he learned onto his screens so he didn't forget. All of that, the planning and the learning, took all of his time away from thinking things Brody was thinking, and he saw him less and less, and then that thing with footage of Max happened, and Brody breaking down at Janet's house, and the day he chased him, but Brody wouldn't stop. Then he was gone. Completely, entirely gone, without a word to anybody.
That was the hardest thing for him to get past, one of the reasons he didn't believe for the longest time that Brody killed himself like that. In his own mind, there was no way he wouldn't have said goodbye if he was never coming back. Brody could never do that to him. Only what Janet just told him meant that he could and that he did. He couldn't stay in Waller after that, or ever go back there either. There was too much Brody in Waller for him to ever go back there, Brody who was now gone, who let himself be lost. Waller was gone for him after that.
Drake and Ella already had the fire going when they got to the clearing. He missed the smell of the wood burning, pine sap spilling out of the logs. Stan found three lightweight tents for them so they wouldn't have to sleep out in the open like they had before. They'd have to share the tents, but it was better than the blankets. He knew Ella and Drake would share one, but didn't want to ask Ams and Laurel about the other two. Didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable, though by now he'd gotten used to watching Ams sleep, and the feel of her head on his chest. They hadn't done anything but that soft kiss, and he didn't mind that they didn't, but he knew he'd miss the feel of her next to him at night, the sound of her soft breathing, hair tickling his cheek. He hoped Laurel knew, and that Ams would miss it too.
"Riley, Ams is too embarrassed to tell you, but she wants to share the tent with you, and I kind of like my privacy, so, you two lovebirds, you should set up." He knew he was blushing every shade of red now, and that she could see it, even in this light. It was as if she read his mind. It also sounded very much like the old, not-at-all timid Laurel, the can't-shut-up Laurel, the one he thought he missed, up until now. Drake and Ella were smiling at him, and Ams, poor Ams was pounding on Laurel's arm and looking very much the red he felt.
It would be so easy to be angry at Laurel for making them feel foolish in front of everybody, but he was grateful. He'd get to hold Ams in his arms, and it was okay by him to have to blush a little to get that. So he walked over to the pack that had the tents in it, picked out the two smaller ones, and put them up, one for them and one for Laurel.
The food was so much better than the sawdust bars they ate after the compound. Stan found them all sorts of dried fruits, veggies, and meats that turned into delicious, perfectly spiced soups and stews when you dropped all the stuff into boiling water. He didn't think he'd ever get tired of eating this stuff. Ams was sitting next to him with her bowl, inhaling it as if she hadn't eaten in days. He smiled, watching her until she jabbed him in the ribs to make him stop looking. The strangest things still
made her embarrassed or uncomfortable, like him watching her eat, he thought, and turned his face back to the fire, but he couldn't stop smiling.
They trekked comfortably through the rest of the week, not needing to kill any squirrels or rabbits, or snakes, for that matter, to make food from. It felt good not having to kill anything anymore. He never liked having to do that before and watching Ams stare at him in that way with the squirrel, and then not even eating it, though he knew she was hungry, he was glad he didn't have to do that now.
Yesterday was the best day of all, with Ams seeing her first ever waterfall and looking at it with those impossibly large eyes of hers as if it was the most incredible thing in the world, a thing of magic. He heard it before they saw it, only nobody else seemed to know what it was by the sound of it but him, and so he told them so they wouldn't be afraid. He told them how all the water that was trapped high up in the ice needed to find a way down to the rivers and the streams, and because it was coming down from so high up, it would be freezing cold.
Ams and Laurel weren't listening anymore, they were running like little kids, racing each other to the wall of water and then into it, and they were squealing at the coldness of it and laughing, and Ella and Drake too were laughing, and between the water falling like that and the laughter, it was the best sound in the world. He told them when they were all done making so much noise that stumbling on a waterfall in these parts was as good an omen as any and that waterfalls always brought the best kind of luck.
Escape (Alliance Book 1) Page 17
