by E. R. Arroyo
“Oh,” I mumble, remembering an article about those. Decades ago telescopes were used to view space. Now they’re pointless because of the cloud cover. I guess they’ve found another use for it.
“Take a look,” Walter encourages.
I look into the eyepiece and see an enhanced view of distant terrain. Not only can I see across the open plain between the perimeter and the inner fences, I can see people inside the compound. I can also see all of the interior guard towers, and two other perimeter guard towers.
My chances of escaping unnoticed are slim to none. I can’t escape today. It’ll have to be at night, and even then, they probably have night-capable cameras.
They’ll never put me on perimeter security, so trade convoys are my best bet. So how do I get on them? I glance back over at Titus who’s now watching me with his hands in his pockets.
Walter and the redhead take turns explaining the weapons they have, which are powerful, and long-range. One of them stands on a tripod, and probably weighs more than I do. I’m leaning in to look into the scope when Titus finally speaks. “Let her shoot it,” he commands, so authoritatively it takes me aback.
The redhead scratches his day-old beard, pondering for a moment. He turns the gun a certain direction and checks the scope, making adjustments. He finally nods with a strange grunt, and steps away from the weapon. I step up and peer into the scope. Some type of carcass hangs from a tree by black cord. It looks fresh. Maybe the grounded birds aren’t the only animals left.
“Aim for the head, love,” Red tells me. I place my arm across the gun and try to figure a comfortable way to position my body around it. I put my eye to the scope and line the red dot up with the center of the animal’s head.
When I pull the trigger, the gun kicks so hard it dislocates my shoulder, but I bite my lip to keep from crying out in front of all these men. They already think I’m weak, I can’t give them more of a reason. Red checks the scope and claps me on the back with a laugh.
A few other men check the scope for themselves. “Dead ringer,” one of them says, with pleasant surprise in his voice. I try my best to smile, but Titus catches my eye with concern in his features. He knows I’m hurt.
“Movement,” Walter yells as he checks the scope himself. The men swing into a flurry of activity, locking and loading weapons, checking monitors. No orders are barked, these men are a well-oiled machine. “Get her out of here,” he shouts at Titus.
Titus grabs me by my good arm and drags me back into the elevator where we zip to the ground momentarily. We run back to the truck, me following his haste, a little unnerved by his sudden worry.
Everyone in the tower is distracted, and I’m running with no one paying me any attention besides Titus. If there was ever a time for me to break away, this is it. Titus is strong, but he’s big. I can outrun him.
A few yards from the truck, I begin to dip toward the woods. Before I’ve even taken a step out of line, Titus sweeps me up into his arms and runs the rest of the way to the truck, shoving me inside before climbing in after me.
I’m not getting out this time.
The truck flies into motion, Titus driving like mad. He takes us to the first bronze pole and opens a portal. We whiz through and Titus slams on the brakes. Hard.
He looks behind us checking for something, then looks me in the eye. Without a word, he reaches toward me and I pull back. When he latches onto my right arm, I realize he’s trying to fix my shoulder. He doesn’t even warn me before he yanks my arm, forcing it back into the socket.
I let out a groan, but manage not to scream. His hand lingers on my shoulder, massaging the tissue around the injury. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.
“What was that about? What movement?” I replace his hand with my own, rubbing my shoulder.
“You’re not authorized to see that.” He sits back in his seat, with his hands on the wheel, still breathing heavily from the run.
“What’s out there?”
“I just needed to get you back inside. Everything’s fine. Our men handle these kinds of incidents according to standard protocol, and they are very skilled. There’s no need to worry.”
I’m hating the way he sounds all business. I want to talk to the Titus that I thought was becoming a friend.
I try to look back outside the border, but he turns my face back toward the colony, my prison. Will I ever be free?
“The men in perimeter guard are the veterans of our team. Very skilled. They keep us safe.” It strikes me odd how he’s answering questions I didn’t ask.
“What’s your job when you’re not training kids?” I ask, unable to stop the spite in the last word. I’m thinking now’s the only chance I’ll have to get him talking. He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get us back to the compound, so I want to take advantage of the privacy.
“Personnel. Troop management. I make assignment recommendations. Evaluations. Things like that.”
“You’re a people person,” I deduce.
“I can be. More importantly, I’m a good judge of character.” He takes a deep breath, calculating his words. “I know people,” he tells me. The conversation seems to be relaxing him, but there’s still an edge that might be dangerously sharp. I don’t want to push it, but I do anyway.
“What do you know about me?” I ask, tentatively. He meets my gaze, curiosity growing in his expression. Like the curiosity I saw in Medical. I try to keep my face neutral. I still don’t know if Titus is someone I can trust, so I can’t give anything away that might incriminate me. If I let on that I’m planning to leave, he could have me arrested for treason.
He studies me a moment longer.
“In Medical you said you understood something. What?”
He hesitates. “I understand what Cornelius saw in you. You’re...exceptional--”
“I--” I interrupt.
“But...” he forcefully interrupts me in return. “But you do not like to be told what to do.” How could he possibly know that? I’ve followed orders flawlessly during my training.
“I obey,” I tell him, a little too defensively. His eyes are glued to mine now, and I wish I could look away. Eye contact was never meant to be held this long.
“That you do,” he says softly. I can’t take it anymore, so I finally break his gaze, picking at the dirt beneath my fingernails.
“What assignment recommendations will you make for me?” I say it casually, but it’s of upmost importance. He puts the truck in gear and lets his foot off the brake. We accelerate slowly across no man’s land.
“Which assignment would you like?” He’s being sincere. I’m treading lightly.
“Trade.” He stops the truck again. I think that was the wrong answer.
“Why?” he asks, looking deep into my eyes again. Searching me. I don’t know what the right answer is, so I don’t give one. I shrug my shoulders, thinking of saying I don’t know, but he speaks again. “You’re very...”
I wonder if this is what he’d wanted to say in the medical wing. I force my voice to sound tender. “I’m what, Titus?”
“Mysterious. You’re the only person in all of Antius that I can’t seem to figure out.” Intrigue. Because I’m different. As if I need more proof I don’t belong here. I wipe the exhaustion from my eyes and peer out the window at the cold, open field surrounding us. “Hey,” he whispers, placing his hand on my knee. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
I try to ignore his hand on my leg, but it’s searing through my skin, burning down to the bone. Ignore it, ignore it, I tell myself. I can’t risk offending him. I still honor the choice not to speak, though.
“You seem like you could be a person that does something really special. Something great,” he continues, his sincerity burning into my heart. He believes in me. But why? Did Cornelius?
And what does he mean anyway? What does he think I’m capable of? Being Nathan’s demented minion? A captain in his army?
I try to fight back the cynic screaming questions in my he
ad, because I don’t think that’s what Titus means. There’s something in him that catches me. Something human that Nathan hasn’t managed to kill: it sounds like hope.
What does Titus hope for?
I stare at the hand on my knee, and watch as he pulls it away. He pats me on the head like one might touch a child, then puts his hands back on the steering wheel.
“I understand why Cornelius loved you so much.” Here’s my chance to ask, I think.
“How well did you know him?”
“He asked me to look out for you, which isn’t easy with a girl like you.” I stare at nothing while I process that Titus really was close to Cornelius. And it seems Cornelius really trusted him. “He talked about you a lot.”
We fall into a silence for what must be several minutes, but only feels like a second. I realize I miss Cornelius. And I wonder if Titus does, too. Maybe that’s really what our newfound bond is about. For a moment I’m grateful that someone else is here to share Cornelius’s memory.
A single tear escapes down my cheek, and Titus reaches across the divide between us and wraps an arm around my shoulder. I try not to squirm, I can’t risk offending him. He makes the assignments, and I need him to assign me to trade.
“Hey, it’s okay. I like to think he’s in a better place now.” He leans his head against mine while he pats my shoulder, and in a moment his touch becomes white hot fire on my hyper-sensitive skin, and it brings me to my senses. Titus is touching me.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong!
“You can’t touch me. I’m sorry,” I mumble as I push him away. “You can’t.” I can’t look at him. What is he thinking? Reckless. Completely haphazard. My hands begin to tremble.
“You’re not alone,” he says, as though what he just did wasn’t illegal.
“Yes, I am alone.”
“It’s okay to let people in,” he encourages. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s a traitor to Nathan, too.
“It’s illegal to let people in. Or have you forgotten who you serve?” I steel my voice, and it hurts like icy needles in my throat.
He takes a deep breath with a long pause. “Right.”
We both keep our eyes forward, but I can see him gripping the steering wheel in my peripheral vision.
I want to tell him that it’s okay, and I appreciate him trying to comfort me and doing what Cornelius asked of him, but I don’t say it. I can’t let myself get soft. I’ve gotten way too comfortable with him. This is still a dangerous place, and Titus works for my enemy.
“Is that what this was about all along? Because I’m the only female you have access to?” I almost regret the harshness of my accusation, but this has to stop. I can’t let him be close to me, no matter what the motivations behind it are.
“It’s not like that.” He almost laughs. “I have access to plenty of females, Cori.” He must be approved for reproduction.
“Well, I’m not a mother,” I tell him, referring, of course, to the only contact allowed in the colony.
His jaw is clenched tight, his voice strained, growing irritated. “I know that.”
“Then don’t treat me like one.”
He simply nods, his lips in a tight line across his face.
Titus drives us back to the compound without a word. I let myself out of the truck and march toward the recessed elevator, which I call up by pressing my fingerprint onto a panel on the ground. By the time it rises from the ground, Titus has caught up to me and gets inside with me. When I look up to see the other body in the elevator with us, my heart stops cold as Dylan steps between me and Titus.
I miss Dylan so much I consider hugging his neck and never letting go. I could talk all this confusion out with him, and maybe he’d have some pearls of wisdom for me.
The small space is filled with beating hearts and deep, heavy breaths, all for different reasons. I want Dylan to speak to me, to tell me what’s going on in Technology, and how he’s doing. If he’s seen Alyssa. Why would he, though? I don’t ask, and he doesn’t tell. He simply steps off the elevator on his floor.
Titus and I return to the training floor where the other pledges busy themselves with weapons and ropes. Captain Marsiana watches over them. Nathan isn’t here, and I’m sure it’s because of the incident at the perimeter, whatever it was.
“Time for a run,” Marsiana announces when she sees me. Apparently she’d been waiting for us to get back. She doesn’t look at anyone, she simply leads the way to the elevator. Looks like there’s no sleep in the near future.
The run is surprisingly refreshing. The air in my lungs seems to clear my thoughts and steady my emotions. I realize I probably overreacted with Titus, and deep down I know he wasn’t trying to do anything inappropriate--and why would he if he has access to the beautiful women in Reproduction? I’ve just become so used to my independence, I reject any semblance of need. He wanted to comfort me, but I didn’t need it. I still don’t understand everything that happened in the truck, and if it’s going to change anything. I can only hope that I haven’t made a huge mistake, or that he wasn’t entrapping me.
I unknowingly went directly to the source--Titus--about the assignment I’ll need in order to escape. I’m not sure what the odds are he’ll find me suitable and assign me to a trade convoy. He knows I’m good with any weapon. I’m vigilant, level-headed. And I obey orders. I have to be a viable candidate, and I hope he’ll take my request seriously. It’s my only shot.
There’s always a sneaking doubt lingering in the back of my mind that Titus doesn’t take me seriously. After all, there’s no reason for me to trust him, or his intentions. Titus is Nathan’s puppet. I can’t let myself forget that. Everyone here is dangerous. Maybe even Dylan...
But him I still trust. And he’s right, I have to get out as soon as possible.
I take an extra long shower after the run, and barely eat a thing at dinner. The night brings sleep, but not rest. One moment I’m staring at the gray ceiling listening to the sounds of Marsiana’s breathing, the next I’m seven-years-old.
We’re huddled in a dark corner while my father cradles me in his arms. I’ve hurt myself somehow, and he’s trying to keep me from making noise. He wipes the tears from my cheeks and kisses my temple, but he doesn’t look down at me. His eyes dart protectively from one direction to the next, staying vigilant.
“Shh,” he whispers in my ear. “They’re close. We have to stay quiet.”
My tiny, puffy eyes close for a moment while I catch my breath. Then it’s happening. All of a sudden. All too quickly.
My father is on his feet with me in his arms and he’s running. The savages have found us, and they’re flushing us out of our hiding place. If I were bigger, stronger, faster I could run on my own and not slow my father down, but I’m too young. I’m helpless in his arms, looking over his shoulders as bloody, inhuman men pursue us.
We have a good head start, but I’m too heavy, and Dad hasn’t slept in two days. He’s breathing so heavily.
“Daddy, put me down. I can run,” I tell him.
He glances over his shoulder and gives me the chance. When I’m on the ground I realize my injury--my ankle. I must’ve rolled it, but can’t remember how. I make it two steps before screaming in pain, and landing in my father’s arms again.
It’s my fault, all my fault. A stupid injury slows us both down. A stupid injury causes him to be unable to draw his weapons as they gain on us. Stupid dead weight in his arms drains the energy he needs to fight when they catch us.
Another block of running, and we turn a corner. When my father stops in his tracks, I turn to see what’s stopped him. There are more savages ahead, while those behind us close in. We’re trapped in an alley, blocked on both ends.
My father eases me into a dumpster along with his backpack and mine. A black lid swings over and traps me inside while the sounds of enraged savages growling get closer. Dad must’ve pulled his weapons because I hear his guns firing over and over. Savages yelp, and more shots ring. There’s a
pause then more shots, but they’re slower. Scuffling, pounding, and sounds of fists hitting flesh erupt for what feels like forever.
Suddenly, I hear the roar of an engine and more gunshots that are too loud and too frequent to be my dad’s. When the noise finally ceases, I crawl out of the dumpster to join my father.
I’m caught by a bright light coming from the direction of the engine, a vehicle. In the other direction, my dad lies in a puddle of his own blood in the street. I run to him on my bad ankle, and drop before I make it, so I crawl the rest of the way screaming for him.
I finally reach him and barely take in the injury to his neck that’s too mangled to say what exactly caused it. The injury to his abdomen is more evident--a stab wound. I’m too late, and whoever showed up and scared off the savages was too late as well.
A pair of hands peel me away from his dying body. After that, there is nothing except me being held by a pair of arms that are not my father’s. And I don’t ever want to be held again.
Everything is cold and dead.
Every set of hands are cold and dead.
I’m sweating bullets when I’m jarred awake by a simple sound in the bathroom, where Marsiana must be finishing up a shower.
It takes a moment for me to realize what woke me isn’t the shower, it’s her voice. I rise from the bed and tiptoe in her direction. When I peak into the bathroom, I see Marsi in the floor crying into her hands.
I grab a clean towel and go to drape it over her naked body when I see what I assume is the source of her pain: fresh bruises taking form on both of her shoulders, like someone grabbed her too hard.
I drop to my knees beside her. “Marsiana, what happened?”
She wipes her eyes, poorly covering herself with her lanky arms. Shower water drips from her hair onto her cheeks where it blends with the tears. She clears her throat. “I’m fine, Cori. Go back to bed.”
“No. You’re hurt.” She finally looks at me, her eyes wide and her bottom lip quivering. I attempt to assure her, “Whoever it was, we can turn them in.”
Her brow furrows and she shakes her head, doubtfully, then looks back at the floor. She takes the towel from me and pulls it tight around herself.
