When Night Falls (Regeneration Series Book 1)

by Airicka Phoenix

  One boy in particular.

  “Let’s find a seat in front!” Hunter motioned to where a small cluster of girls sat, evidently having had the same idea. But they weren’t making it quite as obvious. They’d had the sense to bring along books and pretend like they were reading, while stealing peeks over the top and giggling. There were other small groups scattered throughout the chamber. Most of them girls, but there was the odd boy. Hunter waved at a group on the other side. The girls there waved back.

  “Come here often without me?” Scarlett teased, picking her way carefully down the marble steps.

  “Only when you’re working and I need a … distraction.”

  Scarlett rolled her eyes, biting back a chuckle. Hunter was a shameless flirt, which would have been fine if he wasn’t abnormally charming to boot. It was impossible to deny him anything when he flashed those adorable dimples. Scarlett had never been attracted to him in the way some of the girls at the Academy had been, but she could see what drew them to him.

  He was tall and lean for an operator. It annoyed her that he never worked out, yet had the body of someone who spent hours either getting surgically altered or sweating on a workout bench. When you took that into account and added his wavy, light brown hair and dreamy green eyes and those dimples … it was a recipe for danger. And Hunter had a bad track record for breaking hearts. This week’s obsession was Jack Wick, a tall, masculine boy with a headful of glossy black hair and eyes too blue to be real—which they probably weren’t. They could have easily been enhanced. It wasn’t unheard of. Most people from his class could once afford the body upgrades and modifications. Scarlett had always wanted to get her blue eyes lightened to green and her auburn hair darkened to black, but the credits were too high. It just wasn’t worth the cost when there were more important things to worry about, like clothes and food. Her grandmother worked too hard for her to go squandering the little they made. And Hunter barely made enough as a novice. What he did make, he used to help pay for the necessities they needed. Scarlett brought in what she could from the few hours she worked in the fields, but harvesting was one of the no-brainer careers. Just about anyone could do it with a little muscle and it was the one that everyone applied for because it was so easy. Due to the overflow of applicants, the pay was lousy and Scarlett really couldn’t do much else. She could never be a marshal or an operator. She had no upper body strength to speak of, or talent for computers. Harvesting was the only career that required only the most basic skills and that was all she had.

  The metallic clang of barbells jolted her back to the present and the reason behind her presence there. She let her gaze roam the oval chamber, spotting all the different uniforms and sashes labeling most of them as novices. The majority, she noted, were vendor class, clad in their gray trousers and blazers. There were the odd operators in their navy blue uniforms and harvesters in their black outfits. Then there were the marshals. None were in their brown uniforms, because they were the ones keeping the spectators entertained in the arena. They were the ones in black sweat pants, their bodies a work of art drenched in perspiration. They put on a good show for their guests, stretching and pulling the muscles on their arms, the roped planes of their backs, their broad chests and limber legs. Every practiced motion was fluid and somehow much slower than it should have been if they weren’t doing it to get a reaction from the crowd. The only one who seemed to actually be working out for working out purposes was the one person Scarlett couldn’t stop watching.

  Rolf Gray.

  The first time she’d seen him was three years ago as they stood deck, waving goodbye to their families. Her mother had forced her into a lacy white dress with a bright, red ribbon in her hair, even though Scarlett had been fourteen and not four. Scarlett had wanted to put up a fuss about it, but it seemed like such a small thing considering she wouldn’t be seeing her parents for six months.

  Rolf had been standing at the railing several feet away from her, focused on a pretty brunette with brown eyes and a little girl of seven with a riot of blonde curls and enormous blue eyes. A man stood with them, but he had his back to the ship while he talked rapidly on his commu-link. Scarlett had guessed they were his family.

  He hadn’t noticed her. At least, she had assumed he hadn’t until a week after when he’d cornered her in an alcove, holding her ribbon.

  The thing had been snatched from her hair by a breeze the morning of the launch and she’d given up hopes of ever finding it again, yet there it was, fluttering from between his two fingers. She’d started to thank him, when he reached out and took her hand. She’d watched in stunned silence as he wound the ribbon around her wrist, all the while peering unwaveringly into her eyes. His thumb had skimmed her knuckles before he drew away. With a slow grin, he’d inclined his head and walked away without ever saying a word.

  That was the one and only time she’d ever seen him smile.

  But now, he was draped over a leather bench, no longer a boy, but a man of nineteen, hoisting a metal bar over his head while Jack stood over him, spotting him. He wore a mask of pure concentration, somehow managing to ignore the murmurs and girlish giggles surrounding the room. Scarlett wasn’t sure how he was able to do it; the low, irritating buzz would have driven her crazy.

  But that wasn’t what had her stomach in knots.

  A loud crescendo of giggles rose around her. She turned in time to watch as Rolf relinquished the bar to Jack and sat up. He snatched a towel off the ground and dabbed at his face, his neck and chest. A harmonious chorus of sighs floated through the air. Scarlett merely stiffened, torn between the panicked need to escape and the undeniable urge to melt.

  She was vaguely aware of Hunter abandoning her and making his way down the steps. Her attention was fixated on the man unfolding himself from the bench. He was still staring down as he wiped the sweat from the back of his neck and ran the towel over his hair, sweeping the dark, shiny strands back from his square face. Casually, he slung the towel around his broad shoulders, said something to his friend and then looked up, straight at Scarlett.

  Every inch of skin, hair, fiber … freckle prickled as if he’d physically caressed them. Piercing eyes the warm shade of untainted tea—a soft, golden brown with just a hint of red in the light—bore straight into her very soul from amongst shaggy black fringes, and Scarlett nearly choked on the wisp of air she’d stupidly attempted to draw in. She watched as he broke away from the pack, away from his adoring fans, and climbed the steps towards her, his movements graceful, beautiful, the riveting motions of a predator. At last, he reached her and stopped, one step below hers yet he still somehow managed to tower over her.

  “How are you?” he murmured in a voice designed for hot moments in dark corners.

  His eyes burned into hers, pools of fire against a face crafted for sin. Scarlett felt herself melting in all the places his presence always stirred awake.

  Miserable, she wanted to tell him. Lonely.

  Instead, she nodded slowly. “I’m okay.” She ran a tongue over her lips. “How are you?”

  His gaze searched hers and traced the lines of her face before resting on her eyes once more. “I’m okay.”

  Slowly, practically stripping her with his eyes, he took her in, everything from her black flats to her bare legs under her pleated grey skirt to where her black t-shirt was a bit too tight around the chest. He lingered there a moment before lifting his gaze to meet hers. His hands fisted around each corner of the towel draped over his shoulders, his knuckles white with his restraint.

  Slowly, while she had the chance, her gaze rode over him, following the valleys and grooves of his sweat-kissed body. Every dip and groove was a road map she wanted to follow with her fingers, her lips … her tongue. She wanted to trace a path from the lush folds of his mouth, to the hollow of his throat, all the way down the hard plates of his breasts to the deeply etched ripples of his abdomen. It was all so perfect, every toned inch of him.

  “I have patrol tonight,” he sai
d at last, reminding her just how inappropriate her thoughts were when they were surrounded by onlookers.

  She was excruciatingly aware of the eyes on them. Hunter’s included. She could feel every hot jab like a knife piercing her flesh. The hatred and anger brewed with curiosity and hung as thick and bitter as the stench of sweat, moldy gym socks, and polished leather. She wondered if he felt it, too. If he cared. No. He didn’t. His focus, his entire focus, was on her.

  For a moment she couldn’t remember why she was restraining herself from jumping him, why she never allowed herself to fully fall for him as she so desperately wanted. Then a long, pale arm slipped through the crook of his and she remembered all too well as a petite figure moved to stand at his side.

  “Rolf?”

  Dainty like a beautiful flower, Kiera Hash smiled up at him with eyes much too large and blue on her oval face. Her long, blonde hair was braided down her slender spine and stopped in a thick plait inches from the back of her knees. Scarlett resisted the temptation to grab a fistful of all those silky, rich strands and shake the girl like a maraca.

  “Are you finished?” she asked, blinking her scary-doll eyes up at him. “You promised to walk me back to my chambers.”

  A different, stronger prickle of heat swept through the pit of Scarlett’s stomach. She stifled it by folding her arms across her abdomen and cupping her elbows. Her gaze dropped to the delicate hand resting small and pale against the crook of Rolf’s arm and she had to look away.

  “I should get back to Hunter,” she murmured, gesturing with a random nod in her friend’s direction.

  Rolf’s brown eyes flickered in the direction of her nod. Something sparked in them before they made their way back to Scarlett.

  “I won’t keep you then.” He took a single step back and it felt infinite, like he’d pressed both hands against her chest and shoved. It struck her like a physical rejection, which made no sense. But then nothing about her elusive relationship with Rolf Gray made sense.

  “Be safe on your patrol,” she said for lack of anything better.

  Rolf inclined his head before gradually allowing himself to get tugged away. He never glanced back.

  “What was that about?” Hunter asked when Scarlett joined him on the step. “Since when did you and Rolf Gray become buddies?”

  That was a good question. She’d wondered about it herself countless of times. Had it been the morning he returned her ribbon? Or was it the night they both wound up at the disposal hatch with the same idea in mind? It was hard to say when they never really spoke. The single night they spent together every year never consisted of talking. They met in the cloak of darkness by the same hatch. Then they just sat there until dawn. The rest of the year was spent stealing glances and the occasional murmured greeting, but nothing more. Him approaching her as he had was a surprise, even to her.

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  “You mean he just woke up this morning and decided to talk to a complete stranger?”

  Scarlett frowned at him. “We’re not exactly strangers, Hunter. We’ve been on the same ship for three years and he’s a marshal in my sector. I see him like every day.”

  “So you’ve spoken to him.”

  She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “A couple of times.”

  He was staring at her like she’d just told him she’d been on the moon. “Not sure how it could get stranger than that.”

  It killed her that she couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t tell him how they’d saved each other and continued to save each other every year on the night of her birthday. It somehow felt like a betrayal to confess that Rolf was the only one she felt remotely sane with on that night. Hunter would be crushed. He’d be so angry and hurt. He wouldn’t understand.

  “Attention all passengers!” The captain’s cold, brusque voice shattered the tension like a fist through glass. “Report immediately to deck eighteen for an important announcement. I repeat. All passengers report immediately to the conference room for an important announcement!”

  Scarlett, who had never cared either way about Captain Isabella, felt a surge of gratitude for the interruption. It was just enough to pull Hunter’s attention away from her encounter with Rolf and focus instead on getting them to the meeting. But it wasn’t enough to keep the self-loathing from eating her up alive.

  Chapter Two

  Deck eighteen was brimming with the steady flow and chatter of people. It was the only room large enough to accommodate the number of passengers onboard. It used to be one of the thirteen movie theaters, but grander to impress the high end cliental the luxury cruise catered to.

  It was also where the original captain had met Isabella, if the rumors were true. The whirlwind romance had been a big deal three years ago, before Captain Marcus had unexpectedly passed away and Isabella took his place. But that had never interested Scarlett.

  She’d been fourteen when the cruise liner had made its first ever launch. A month later, the ship lost contact with the main switchboard on earth. The trip had been cut short as they turned around and went back, taking a full month to return only to find a charred ball where their home had once been.

  “Kinetic bombs,” Captain Marcus had told them. “We found the projectile platforms during one of our orbits. There were eight of them from what we could detect, each strategically placed for maximum impact. We believe the projectiles were undetectable by tracers on earth and meant to burrow into the earth’s core and simultaneously erupt, causing irreparable damage.”

  He’d been standing where Isabella stood now, a tall, handsome man with a headful of salt and pepper hair and kind brown eyes. Like everyone else, he’d lost family in the blast and stood as pale and shaken as the rest.

  Scarlett had been sitting in the back with her grandmother and Hunter, too numb to even breathe. She sat staring at the stage, wondering if it was all some kind of sick joke someone was playing on them, because if it wasn’t, that meant her parents were gone. Her friends. Her neighbors. Everyone she had ever met no longer existed. They’d all been destroyed in a single day. On her birthday.

  “Who would do something like that?” was asked a lot, but not even the ever wise Captain had a response to that question.

  “How can you be sure it’s the whole world?” someone in the crowd had shouted.

  Someone else had agreed, leaping out of their chair. “We should go down and see!”

  Captain Marcus had shaken his head, face grave and looking much older than he’d been that morning when she’d seen him at breakfast. “We have already sent probes down. The data reached us this morning. There is nothing down there and, from what we detected, won’t be for a very long time, if ever.”

  His calm explanation didn’t appease the masses.

  “Earth is a big place! We should try to land somewhere else. Europe maybe.”

  “I’m sorry!” Marcus had said again. “There is nothing there. No land. No water. No life. It’s all gone, a wasteland of fire.”

  “What are you saying? That we’re the only ones left?”

  Marcus straightened his shoulders. “I’m afraid so.”

  “But we have family down there!” a man shouted.

  “My children are down there!” a woman cried, sounding hysterical. “I left them with my parents. I … I promised them I’d return!”

  “I’m sorry!” Marcus had said again for what felt like the millionth time, as if the world getting destroyed was somehow his fault. The look of torment on his face at the woman’s anguished wails spoke very clearly just how much he meant his apologies. “We’ve all lost people, but there is nothing any of us can do now. We have to keep going.”

  “How?” someone demanded, sounding angry. “We can’t just live on a space ship!”

  Others had shouted their agreement.

  “We can!” Marcus had argued, silencing the crowd. “The cruise liner was designed to maintain life for extensive periods of time. If we are careful, we can make our supplies last
for quite some time. The rays from the sun will power our solar panels, giving us heat and electricity. We will keep in orbit until we think of a better solution.” He’d paused, peering over the crowd. “And we will find one! I am confident that this is not the end. There are other planets and I will find one that we can make our own.”

  “Red?”

  Scarlett jolted from the memory, stomach nauseous. Hunter had a hand on her shoulder. His fingers tightened when she dropped her ashen face into her palms.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  “I hate being here,” she mumbled, scrubbing at the tears clinging to her lashes.

  His hand fell away. He dropped back in his seat. “Yeah, me too.”

  Scarlett reached for his hand and squeezed his fingers.

  “Attention, please!”

  Captain Isabella stood on stage, a breathtaking woman with a mane of glossy brown hair, almond-shaped eyes the soft grey of pearls, and lips that could shame a rose. She studied the crowd before her down a narrowed nose placed strategically in the center of a heart-shaped face.

  Behind her, seated on a plastic chair, hands folded neatly in her lap, sat Eira. She had a polite smile on her face as she watched her stepmother. Her cap of chin-length curls framed her pretty face, the thick ebony a striking contrast to the milky-white of her skin. Her eyes sparkled like blue gems beneath delicate brows and surrounded by long, thick lashes. Both women were gorgeous, but only Eira glowed from the inside out, warming everyone she came in contact with. Scarlett had never met Isabella personally, but even from a distance, the woman exuded a lofty disinterest that seemed to shroud her like a coat of winter.

  One seat over, Dr. Ora, the ship’s resident physician, sat anxiously shifting between crossing and uncrossing her legs. Her green eyes flicked over the crowd, then back at the hands she had squished together in her lap. Every so often, she would pause in her fidgeting to push back a coil of caramel-blonde hair off her cheek and yawn. She did this often. Working as the only top medical adviser on a ship supporting seven thousand people had to weigh on a person after a while. There were dark circles under her eyes and her face was drawn as if all she really wanted was to stretch out on the stage and sleep.