by Frankie Rose
“Kit, this is obviously quite a shock for both of us,” Caius says. He pushes his tea away from him, even though he hasn’t touched it. He runs his hand through his hair and sighs. “Take the night to get used to the idea that I’m still kicking around on Planet Earth. I can see that it’s troubling you.”
“Cai, that’s not—”
He hurries out of the canteen before I can object to his wounded attitude. I want to tell him that I’m not having trouble with the idea that he’s still alive. Not in the way he thinks I am. My reaction is purely down to the shock of seeing him, alive, living and breathing, standing in front of me, after I’ve thought for so long that he was dead. That does things to a person. That takes a moment to get used to. I want to say all of that to him, but I’m not quick enough. Caius disappears into the stairwell, and I’m left to stare blankly into my tea.
******
Being summoned by James is almost as bad as being summoned by the High Priestess. I haven’t been able to find Ryka since the resurrection of Caius earlier in the evening, no matter how hard I look, and so I’m sitting in his room waiting for him to return when Luke tells me my presence is required. I’m relieved to find Opa with James when I reluctantly follow my brother down the stairs.
“You have to understand, James, my people don’t participate in this…Faith. Your religion bears startling familiarities to the life they’ve just left behind. It’s no great surprise that some of them might find it hard to accept new leadership based on the soothsaying of an old woman they’ve never met. In their mind, now that they’re free of dictatorship, they should be able to choose their own paths. Their own leaders.”
Opa sits on the cold concrete steps in between levels eleven and twelve. His body is comprised largely of his rotund belly—it has to make up at least sixty percent of his body mass—highlighting that his has been a life of decadence and luxury. He’s never had to work or fight. Not until now. He doesn’t seem to be complaining. This is the first time I’ve seen him since he feigned a heart attack back in the Colosseum, and he hasn’t even looked me in the eye yet. I don’t blame him. Caius is like his adopted son by all accounts. When Luke said Foster and his brother were deadly shots, he was simply repeating what he’d heard. He hadn’t realised that Foster’s ‘brother’ was, in fact, Caius. Opa had said nothing about Caius being alive when we’d come for him. Hadn’t breathed a single word.
James leans stiffly against the peeling white paintwork three steps down. Against the pale walls, his dark hair, dark eyes, dark expression make him look even more intimidating. I don’t spend too long studying him, because he inspires such volatile emotions in me. Emotions that might lead me to stabbing him.
“Your people can follow whomever they choose, old man. All I’m saying is that those of us from Freetown are bound to follow Ryka.” The words don’t seem to faze James. In fact, he seems to believe them wholeheartedly. I can’t help but peer at him out of the corner of my eye—he’s completely composed. No pinched together brows. No poorly concealed fury. Either James is an excellent actor, or he really does respect the priestesses’ decision to make Ryka Freetown’s protector.
“You haven’t been through and counted heads recently, have you?” Opa muses, rubbing one hand over the back of the other. “There are twenty-eight people from the Sanctuary here in this building, and what…seven of you from Freetown?”
“There’ll be more. By the end of the week, our numbers will be close to a hundred.”
This is news to me. Luke watches the conversation unfold, and James eyes him curiously—a look I don’t like on his face when it’s aimed at my brother.
“Luke, why don’t you go see if you can find Ryka for me?” I ask. The exasperated expression Luke gives me—I hate you more than anything in this world—tells me he’s still not feeling his emotions to an appropriate level. He shoots me a foul look and storms off up the stairs, and even though he doesn’t look back I know he’s muttering under his breath.
“Sorry about that,” I mumble.
“Nothing to apologise for,” Opa tells me.
“It took me a while to master the emotions I was feeling, too. He’ll get better at it in a few days.”
Opa smirks, finally looking at me. “I wouldn’t count on it. Being a fifteen-year-old boy is hard. His hormones are supposed to be all over the place. I’d give him another three or four years yet at least.”
Great. Three or four years. Perfect. By the flicker of amusement in James’ eyes, he finds the prospect of me wrestling with my pubescent brother’s temper tantrums highly entertaining. “Did you ask me down here for a reason?” I snap at him.
“Yes, actually.” He straightens, brushing old flakes of paint from his shirt, all the while pinning me under his gaze. I hate that. I refuse to meet his eyes, and stare at his knife belt instead. It’s stacked with weaponry, completely mismatched blades that would never have belonged together. I am still studying the bizarre collection when he says, “I have a job for you. You know some of Opa’s people. We need you to train them. Make them competent with a knife.”
I’m shaking my head before he can finish. “Most of them were fighters, themselves. They don’t need training from me.”
“Most of them were Theron,” Opa says. “They were servants. And I’ve watched you fight for the past ten years. There’s a reason you never lost a fight on that Colosseum floor, Kit. You’re made for fighting. It’s second nature to you. You’re the most logical choice.”
“What about Caius?” His name still makes my throat seize up, makes it hard to breathe.
“Cai’s duty is with Foster. He’s an excellent fighter, but he’s even better with a rifle in his hand. No one else can match him for accuracy, and we need people protecting this building from the roof. Between the two of them they could keep a unit of guards back for a considerable amount of time. Long enough for us to rally, anyway.” Opa seems to have this whole thing figured out. James looks up at me, an impatient frown on his face.
“Well?”
It doesn’t look like I have much choice in the matter. “Fine,” I huff. “But I’m not killing anyone. This is just training, right?”
“Sure,” he says indifferently. “Just training.”
“Are we done here?”
“Yes. You should probably get some sleep. You’ll have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.”
I don’t let him bait me. I turn on my heel and take the stairs two at a time. I’m halfway up the next flight when he calls out. “Oh, and Kit. If you’re looking for our illustrious leader, maybe you ought to take a look on twenty-three.”
******
Twenty-three is a red floor, officially unsafe for me to be walking around on. It’s also abandoned. Unlike the other floors, there are no partitions here, no corridors leading to rooms whose purposes were forgotten a long time ago. The whole level is one big shell, the only structure being the sporadic support pillars that maintain the integrity of the building. Worryingly, most of those seem to be compromised, leaning at odd angles. The far wall of the level is gone entirely, and the ruined city sprawls out beyond in the darkness, a lurking spectre. I can’t see it, but I sense it. Just like Ryka senses me the moment I step foot out of the stairwell. He stands at the very edge, his body a dark smudge silhouetted against the stars overhead. I don’t saying anything until I’m standing beside him, seeing exactly what he’s seeing.
“How long have you been up here?”
Ryka remains perfectly still. “A while.”
“Ryka, I—”
“It’s okay, Kit. I understand.” He runs a hand across his jaw. He manages to make the action look pained. “Things just got really complicated.”
I can’t deny that. “They did.”
“I feel a little foolish,” he whispers.
“Why?”
“Because fate has a way of screwing things up. My mother. My father. Liv. I should have learned to expect stuff like this by now, but I have got to say”—he shakes h
is head, his eyes shining brightly in the dark—“I did not see that one coming.”
A manic laugh bubbles up out of my chest. “You’re telling me.” I flex my hand. He’s only inches away and I’m desperate to reach out and touch him, but he seems so distant right now. It makes my stomach churn.
“How did he…how did he survive?” Ryka asks. Back in the canteen I rejected the possibility that Ryka knew Caius was alive straight out of hand, but I have to admit to a little relief when I see the genuine confusion in Ryka’s eyes. He didn’t know. He can’t have watched the recordings where Cai explained his plan. I have watched them now, though. I know what happened, or at least I know what Caius planned before he walked into the arena with me that day. What happened afterwards, I learned from my brother of all people.
“His halo. Or some of the drugs that are used inside it, anyway. Opa was a chemist for the Sanctuary. He had access to the concoction that makes the Falin pliable and emotionless. He gave Cai a small dose of the toxin before our fight hoping it would keep him alive long enough to give him proper medical aid. It did. Barely. Opa nearly didn’t make it in time to stop him from being cremated, but he did. After that he cared for him and kept him hidden while he recovered.”
Ryka dips his chin down into his chest, processing all of this. It kills me that he won’t look at me. He turns and paces to the far wall, where he presses his back to it and slides down to a slumped sitting position. I follow, even though I’m not sure he wants me to.
“Ryka, what you were saying before Caius showed up—”
Pain flashes in his eyes. “Don’t. You don’t have to say anything. I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”
This is way harder than I thought it was going to be. He’s always been the one to know which words will fix things, make everything better again. I’ve never had to do this before. I’m no good at it. I clench my jaw, searching for the right way to word what I need to say. What I need him to hear. “You can’t do that, Ryka. You told me that you love me. You have to know that I—”
He shoots to his feet before I can finish. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Kit. I fought like hell not to feel like this about you when we first met. I knew it would end up like this. I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
He’s not making any sense. He paces furiously up and down, stabbing his fingers through his hair. Even in the darkness I can see every muscle in his body is tense.
“I don’t…I don’t understand. Can you just sit down a second?”
He doesn’t stop pacing. Doesn’t sit down. “There’s no point, Kit. Can’t you see? This is actually probably for the best.” He’s really starting to scare me now. My body stiffens, like I can sense what’s coming and I’m already bracing for the impact. “I have responsibilities, Kit. I have this stupid mark on my chest now, and I can’t do anything about it. Who knows how long this conflict with Lockdown will last. I know James wants you to train the others. We both need to focus on what’s important right now, okay, and I can’t do that if I’m busy fawning over you. It’s stupid. It’s a weakness that neither of us can afford.”
I can’t breathe. On the inside I’m screaming, freaking out, urging my body to get the hell up. To go to him and throw my arms around his neck. But I can’t. I’m too stunned to do any of that. I can’t…I can’t believe he’s saying any of this. It’s all I can do to keep forcing oxygen into my lungs. The only words that do make it out of my mouth are the ones he said to Luke when he was panicking. Words that made me feel so full and happy. So impossibly lucky. A bitter smile warps my face as I realise that my luck has obviously just run out. “I thought we were going to keep each other safe.”
He stops. For a moment we just look at each other, and humiliation’s sharp sting bites at me when I realise tears are welling in my eyes. He sees and blows sharply out of his nose. “You don’t need me to keep you safe, Kit. You never have.”
He turns and walks away, hands clenched into fists by his sides, and I manage to stay silent until he’s gone. After that I can’t help it—I sob, my body fighting against itself with every pained gasp. I sob, and I don’t care who hears it.
I am invisible. For three days I wake up each morning having experienced the same dream over and over again—the one I had back in Freetown before we left. Every night, it’s the same. I experience that desperate need to reach the woman dressed in white, to help her, to save her, and every night I see Ryka attacking with his knives. I get shot and the whole thing plays out again and again and again. When I wake up this morning, though, the final run-through of the dream was different. Caius was there, fighting, too. Fighting with Ryka.
The subconscious is a cruel, cruel thing.
I could spend hours lying in bed, replaying it time and time again, but there’s no sense in that. Instead, I get up and head to the canteen and force food down my throat. I only do it because I need the energy. I don’t taste anything, don’t hear the conversations going on around me. I don’t see any of the pitying looks that are cast my way by Opa’s people—or at least I pretend I don’t. I go to green twenty-eight and I teach people how to fight, because that’s something I don’t need my brain to do. I eat, I teach and I sleep. Mostly, I don’t let myself look at him. Thankfully, on my distant floor, I don’t catch sight of him very often. James and Ryka spend every waking moment of the day together, plotting goodness knows what. Thankfully, I have plenty to distract myself with.
As usual, Penny is the first person to arrive for training. If she’d been Falin, I think she would have been even better than me. The only problem with training her now is her anger; it holds her back. She’s so filled to brimming with it that she’s sloppy. Easy to provoke and therefore easy to control. This only makes her angrier. She charges into the room—much like level twenty-three where I found Ryka, except this one has all four walls intact—and throws down her gear. None of my understudies have knives yet, thank the Gods. They’ve been training with whatever we could fashion into batons, so they can simulate the motions and the strikes without stabbing each other to death.
“Have you spoken to him yet?” she demands. She asks the same thing every morning. I give her the same answer I gave her yesterday and the day before.
“Cai’s made it perfectly clear that he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“You’re both as stubborn as each other. You know exactly where he is, Kit.”
“He knows exactly where I am, too.” I don’t want to talk about this with her. I don’t want to talk about this with anyone. I wrench back my arm and throw my knife as hard as I can. The blade smashes through the thin wooden board we’ve been using for target practice and probably would have sailed straight through if it weren’t for the knife’s hilt. I stalk over to the board and yank on it, wrestling to get the damn thing out.
“You owe it to him to at least—”
“I owe him too much!” I snap. “The debt hanging between us is way too big. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to look at him, Penny.”
Her pale cheeks flush, and her eyebrows sink into a viciously pronounced frown. Penny does angry really well. Her auburn hair is tied back into a tidy bun at the back of her head, which makes her look even more severe. “Your life isn’t something you owe him, Kit. It was a gift. I honestly don’t think he expected to come out the other side of that fight alive, and he certainly didn’t expect you to be this… this…”
Overwhelmed. I am completely overwhelmed, but I’m not telling her that. I’m not telling her anything. I’ll be forever grateful to Penny for helping me back in the Sanctuary, but I’m not deluding myself out here in the real world. She didn’t help me back then because she liked me, and she didn’t help me because we were friends. She helped me for her brother, because it’s what he would have wanted her to do. Her open hostility in our new home is what I’ve come to expect from her. I suck in a deep breath, ready to gear up for the fight she’s just itching for, but thankfully we’re cut short.
My other pupils arrive, and I’m saved from more heartache. Micah, the Theron that served Penny’s house, stands up front, eager to learn, while nearly everyone else mills toward the back of the room. There are twenty-two of them, twelve of whom used to be Falin, the rest Theron. The Theron are more receptive to my training, the ex-fighters less so. Their very presence—that they’re even alive—means they all have the blood of at least one person on their hands. Now that they’re out of the arena and far from the cheering crowds, they seem disinclined to participate in any activity that might lead to more bloodshed. I can’t say I blame them.
“Alright. This morning we’re learning defence. How many of you know how to effectively block a knife attack?”
“Kit, this is ridiculous. We’ve been learning defence the past three days,” Penny says. “When are we learning to attack?”
That’s it. I’ve seriously had enough of her this morning. I grab the Balisong from my knife belt, whip it open in an icepick spin and launch the thing at her feet. The blade’s tip is sharp enough to dig into the concrete, though I’ve probably just blunted it for good. Penny yelps and staggers back.
“Pick it up,” I snap. She looks at me with slitted eyes.
“You’re crazy. You could have hit me.”
“If she wanted to hit you, you’d have a knife in your foot right now.” Everyone turns at the soft voice that comes from the stairwell. Callum hovers on the periphery of the room, his hands buried deep in his pockets. The shock of seeing him hits me hard; he looks like hell. Shoulders rounded in, eyes that were once a vivid, bright blue now washed out and faded—he looks like he’s fading away altogether. My eyes meet his and I immediately think of Max. The loss of his twin brother is taking a huge toll on Callum, and I have no idea what I can do to make it any easier for him. He pulls his mouth into a taut line, an attempt at a smile. “Mind if I join you?”
