Sovereign (Sovereign Series)

by E. R. Arroyo

  What he’s saying doesn’t make sense. It’s pure insanity. Chip placement is minor surgery. It’s barely beneath the skin. At least that’s what I think until I remember the headaches after my surgery. Could they have connected the chip to my optical nerve?

  “Can they hear us?” I ask, worried this conversation will be recorded, too.

  “No,” he says. “Only images, for now.”

  “Wait, how do you know all this? How did you get down here?”

  “I don’t work in chemistry. I requested a transfer to technology after a few days, and they moved me over. I can deactivate my chip and tamper with its data.”

  “Cameras? Security?” I ask, concerned for his safety.

  “I’m in technology, I have easy access to security systems.”

  “Nathan will kill you if he catches you sneaking to see me.”

  “No, he won’t,” he says, his voice turning more grave than I’ve ever heard it. “I’m his oldest child.”

  “What?” Ten tons of concrete slam into my gut and I double over. I try to face him, but he guides my face away from his again. I tug his hand off my face and pull away from his body.

  He wraps both hands around my shoulders. “Listen to me. Things are getting worse. Nathan is losing control, and now that Cornelius is gone, there’s no one to keep him in check. I don’t know what he told you in there, but you can’t trust him. He’s using you. The next time they take you outside the border, wait till you pass the force perimeter, and you run. Do you understand me? You run.”

  It takes a moment for me to realize I’ve balled both fists and they’re aching to slam into something--or someone. How am I supposed to process what he’s saying when he dropped a bomb on me a moment before?

  How is it that all I can ask is, “Nathan mates with the mothers?” My skin burns beneath his touch, and despite all the things that should be vying for my attention, all I want is for him to let me go. But he won’t.

  He holds my shoulders firmly, not allowing me to put space between us. “Of course he does. Many of the men mate with them, especially the ones Nathan favors.”

  My eyes sting, and my cheeks are warm with fresh tears. I clench my fists so tight, my fingernails cut into the skin on my palms. I try to jerk away from him one more time, but he doesn’t let me go.

  I have no idea how to process this. The epitome of scum, the pinnacle of my hatred, is the father of the best friend I ever had. The dull ache in my chest is renewed and grows stronger by the minute. My whole body trembles, and Dylan’s arms tighten around me, but they don’t feel restricting. He presses his cheek hard against mine smearing my tears on both our faces.

  “I’m sorry I never told you,” he whispers, allowing his lips to linger against my ear. I jerk my head the other direction, squeezing my eyes shut.

  “I...” I come up short, my body trembling more violently. I don’t know what to say, I can’t even form a rational thought.

  His arms loosen and he places both hands on my shoulders, probably sensing that his rough touch isn’t helping the stress of this conversation. “Please say something,” he pleads with me.

  “He’s your father,” I mutter. Are they close? Has Nathan gotten information from him? Could Dylan betray me?

  “He’s not my father,” he insists, with a hard edge to his voice. “He impregnated my mother, but he is not my father. I hate him as much as you do.” He swallows hard. “Just get out, Cori.”

  “Let go of me.” I wiggle out of his arms and step forward a little, finally feeling like I can breathe. I need more space. I need fresh air and no more boundaries, no more fences or walls. I miss Dylan so much, but I can’t deal with what he’s telling me.

  I shuffle back to my room and a nurse catches me at the door. Her eyes soak in the elevated heart rate registering on my monitor.

  “Need something?” she asks, with no trace of emotion.

  “Water.” She nods and I retreat to my tiny room, which feels like a cage. I hope Dylan gets back to where he came from safely. I can’t have him getting hurt because of me. Even if he is Nathan’s son, I’m certain Nathan, of all people, would have no problem making an example of Dylan. He’s the king of detachment.

  When the nurse brings me water, I sip it slowly. My body still quivers and my heart rate has been beeping red for far too long. The nurse checks the monitor for my temperature after testing my forehead with her hand. She asks a few questions about how I feel, and at some point in her rambling--which I barely listen to--she decides to put in an IV.

  I lay shaking in bed, covered in layers of sheets and blankets, listening to the sound of my IV beeping for an hour or so before my system calms and my body stops trembling.

  Chapter Eight

  It’s early morning in the training room and I look around at all the boys, who look as tired as I feel. The last week brought more running, more target practice, more classes. Titus taught us to march in perfect synchronization. He barked orders, which we obeyed. He taught us to fight with knives, incorporating fake ones into our combat classes.

  We’re all covered in bruises and cuts. We’re beat up, but getting stronger. We’re becoming soldiers. We are a unit, but we are not the same. Not since Twig.

  Titus arrives after a few minutes. I’m careful to ignore the feeling that Titus is a friend, yet I can’t help but trust him. I wish I didn’t. And though Titus stands before me for some task or another every day, it’s Dylan I dream of each night.

  The night he found me in Medical, I dreamed of Dylan and Nathan side-by-side, laughing at me as I lie bloodied at the feet of Sean. Another night, I dreamed of him in my jail cell, threatening me like Nathan did. One night he snuck in and strangled me in the shower, then transformed into Nathan, and back into himself. Last night, he haunted my dream again, but didn’t hurt me. He just watched me while I slept. It was the first night in a week I managed to rest.

  Titus has us all lined up in a row, each with our own giant punching bag. Titus marches up and down the row watching us as he barks commands. Kick. Knee. Jab. Elbow. Cross. And every other thing we can throw or slam into a heavy sack. Eventually he stops commanding us and allows us to come up with our own strikes and patterns. I focus on punches, trying to figure out different ways to incorporate my elbows into combinations.

  Titus stops beside me more than once to watch.

  “Back up from the bag,” he says as the others continue fighting imaginary enemies in the form of canvas and sand.

  I give Titus a puzzled look.

  “Seriously.” He leads me to the open space away from the punching bags. Titus doesn’t let on that anything is different between us, but it is somehow. I still want to ask him about Cornelius, but I haven’t found the right time.

  “Was I doing something wrong?” I replay the strikes I made trying to figure out which drew his attention.

  “No.” He puts up his hands, and I follow suit. He looks me in the eye. “You fight like you’re small, and you’re not.” He throws a lazy punch, and I block it. He’s right, I’m not short, we’re almost eye-to-eye, but, then again, he’s not as tall as the other guys either.

  “Okay.” I don’t know what he wants me to do, so I just bounce on the balls of my feet until he gives an order.

  “Jab...Cross...Jab...Hook.” He absorbs the light strikes into his open palms. “Breathe.” I keep my hands up, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. He calls out the pattern again and I repeat it, not sure if I’m supposed to be hitting hard or not. I don’t even know what the point of this is, but I don’t question it. I just do as he says.

  Over his shoulder I see Captain Marsiana doing a similar exercise with Jayce. The others still hammer away.

  I repeat the punch pattern another dozen times, before the orders change.

  “You have long legs, and legs are stronger than arms. Kicks and knees are your best tools. Use your height to your advantage.” He extends his hands toward my foot. I turn and balance on my left leg whil
e I extend the right toward his hands. He grabs my ankle and directs my heel to his ribcage, where the kidney should be.

  I retract my leg and mock the strike to his ribcage.

  “Good. Focus on the thigh and rear muscles, and break the ribs. This is a powerful kick.”

  Titus grabs a cushion and straps both arms into the loops. Then he holds it just in front of him.

  “Kick,” is all he says, so I kick the pad. I lean on my left leg and make sure to tighten the muscles in my right leg and buttocks while I extend my heel, aiming toward Titus’s ribs and slamming into the pad. He counts off sets of five, letting me breathe in between sets. After that, he shows me how to kick a man in the throat--the goal of which is to crush the trachea--and I’m surprised how high I can actually kick. Although I shouldn’t be surprised since I worked on things like this with Vance. Although, my sessions with Vance had mostly been focused on self-defense, and this is very much offense-focused.

  Going through the motions, I realize it makes sense that my legs can do more damage than my skinny arms can.

  Another hour passes with Titus showing me other ways to kick and knee an opponent. I look over my shoulder to where Marsiana teaches Jensen how to do some sort of jump-kick.

  I turn to Titus. “Can you teach me that?”

  He nods toward the captain. “She can show you.” He puts away the pads we’d been training with and wipes the sweat from his face on his sleeve. “Good job, today.”

  I beam from his compliment while he walks away. If I ever had a brother, I hope he’d be like Titus.

  Everyone seems to be winding down, including Marsiana and Jensen. Maybe I’ll ask her to teach me that move once we’re alone in our room.

  The next day, they split us up to begin learning the various functions of the colony. Marsiana, especially cranky today, walks me down to the supply building to learn about inventory. She scans her finger and her access chip and we enter the building. I’m taken aback by how much is in it. This place is so full of lies it churns my stomach.

  “Where does it all come from?” I ask, trying to sound timid to hide my anger.

  “We trade with other colonies.” Other colonies--I knew it! Her eyes examine me for a reaction, but I don’t make one. “These documents represent the inventory. We keep a month’s advance on supplies in case there’s any unexpected hindrance in trade.”

  “Who keeps the inventory?”

  “Soldiers with an aptitude for numbers, usually.” She’s matter of fact, and a tad distant.

  “Do they bring it here? I’ve never seen any deliveries.” I’m trying to hide the fact that I’m jumping out of my skin from hearing about other colonies. I just can’t let my questions give me away.

  “We meet them outside the borders. For the safety of the colony, we don’t let them come close.”

  I remember Dylan mentioning some sort of perimeter besides the fence. “Is that why we have a force perimeter?” I say it confidently, but I’m not sure I said it right.

  “It’s a forcefield, and yes it’s there to protect us.”

  Growing up, they told us they took measures to protect us from animals and savages but I wonder if it was really other colonies they were worried about. They don’t want civilians to know anyone’s out there. They shelter them from the killings, the punishments. They’re giving them the illusion of safety. Keeping the food scarce so they think nothing else is out there. And any other human instincts that might question Nathan’s ways are squashed with medications.

  I spend a couple of hours with Marsiana learning about inventory, though I can’t get her talking about trade. This is my out. I have to convince Nathan to put me on a trade group--a convoy--so I can get on the other side of that forcefield.

  Next, we meet up with the on-duty guard at the women’s facility. They explain basic security to me, and allow me to “keep watch” for about five minutes while the guard takes a bathroom break. Part of me hopes I’ll get to see Alyssa, but who knows where in the building she might be. I ask if we can see the other guard posts, but Marsiana tells me we don’t have time.

  The women who roam the facility seem to be moving without much purpose. To my understanding, most of these women work in Population (mothers, caretakers, and such). I’ve already seen a dozen pregnant women. I wonder if Alyssa is pregnant yet. I cringe at the thought.

  When we’re back outside, we hear a commotion by the front gate. The captain jogs toward it, and I follow her. Once we’re closer, I see that the commotion is Sean and Billy fighting. A few guards rip them apart and Titus gets in Billy’s face and shouts at him, something I can’t understand.

  A huge patrol soldier, dressed in gray camouflage, speaks up. “Titus. We have to go.”

  Titus looks around and his eyes lock on me. “Take her. These two can go tomorrow.”

  “Come on, then,” the huge one says to me, then turns his attention back to Titus. “Not alone, though. I’m not a baby sitter.”

  “Right,” Titus answers. “Captain, see to these two?”

  Marsiana nods in reply, and escorts the boys in the other direction. Titus crawls into the patrol truck, cramming me into a tiny space with him. It’s the kind of truck with a bench seat in the front, and two tiny seats turned sideways behind them. The back of the truck is an empty space, maybe originally intended for carrying supplies or other things.

  Titus and I are facing each other, our knees less than a foot apart. I’ve been dying to ask him questions about Cornelius. But the massive soldier and a smaller one are in the front only inches away from us.

  The truck carries us past the fences, and out onto the open field that surrounds the colony. As the terrain bounces us about in the cabin, I hold onto the seat and the window trying to keep still. A quick turn tosses me into Titus’s lap. He grabs my elbow with one hand, and my side with the other to set me back in my seat. Not a word or a facial expression of any kind give me a hint at what he’s thinking. He seems off today and I wish he would speak. Maybe he’s frustrated about Sean and Billy’s fight.

  “Walter,” he says to the big one. “Can you explain things to the kid?” The kid, I scoff in my head. When Titus looks at me, I roll my eyes and look out the window. I feel the tension between us grow palpable in the air and I wonder where it’s coming from.

  The big one, Walter, begins to speak as the vehicle slows down. “The force perimeter is hard to see, but it’s marked off every twenty feet with these poles.” He points to one on the left, and I crane my neck to see it. It’s a large, bronze colored pole that looks plain enough, but there must be mechanical and electrical things inside it. He reaches to a device on the dashboard that’s easily twenty years more advanced than anything in this antique-looking truck.

  Walter presses a series of buttons, which I want to memorize but can’t really see. The machine makes a beeping sound and then we ride straight through an opening in the force perimeter that I can’t even see. He drives the truck very close to the pole, on the right side. I’m not sure if it has to be the right side or if it could be either one and he simply chose it. Either way, I’ll remember right.

  It occurs to me that if I’d ever successfully jumped the fence with Dylan’s wings, I never would have made it out because I didn’t know this border existed. I would have run for a mile and then slammed into a wall I couldn’t see, and perhaps it would have killed me.

  Once we’re outside the perimeter, Walter presses another button, which I assume disables the opening. He turns right and begins driving clockwise around the compound. The terrain is bumpy and there’s plain wilderness as far as I can see. For a split second I wonder if there are mutated animals out there, lurking in the shadows of the trees. Titus jars me from the brief daydream with his hand on my knee.

  “Pay attention,” he says, then points to a guard tower that looms ahead. My eyes drift to the hand still on my knee, and he removes it.

  I wonder if maybe I really am meant to be completely on my own. Maybe the creatures in
the woods will welcome me. I suddenly realize, I’m supposed to be trying to escape, and instead I’m drowning my senses in self-pity. Stop, I tell myself as I try to focus on details. We’ve driven about a quarter mile on the outside, and it looks like the guard tower ahead is about another quarter mile. I can assume all the towers are spaced a mile apart, but they may not be consistently spaced.

  When we return to the entrance we came through, I should be too far for any of the guard towers to see me. But somehow I doubt they would tolerate blind spots. I must be missing something.

  The tower ahead becomes clear as we draw closer and the fog dissipates. It puts the towers inside the compound to shame in every possible way. This tower is made of metal, and it’s so tall I can’t see inside the room atop it. Walter stops the truck and we all climb out onto the dead grass. As we near the tower on foot, the grass fades into gravel that crunches under our boots. I don’t see a ladder anywhere, but there’s a security pad on one of the tower legs.

  After Walter clears his access on the pad, an elevator drops down from the tower floor. Once the elevator pulls us inside the tower, my senses are overwhelmed with the sight of instrumentation and weapons, the sounds of mechanical whirring, and the smell of ten sweaty men in close quarters.

  The only thing I recognize on the computer screens are images from security cameras. I can’t make sense of the other images. Titus stands out of the way with his hands behind his back, his face devoid of emotion.

  Walter continues educating me. “These monitors help us patrol the area. Thermal imaging, video feeds.”

  “And then there’s the old fashioned way,” a red-headed, older man interrupts. I turn to see him standing beside a cylindrical device, which I take in quizzically. I walk toward it and the man winks at me. “It’s a telescope.”