Sketches

by Teyla Branton

  Jaxon joined her, lightly slapping both sides of her face. Then again with a slap that left a red welt. Lyssa finally stirred, her eyes fluttering open, “What happened?” she asked groggily.

  “She’ll need time to recover,” Reese said.

  Jaxon nodded. “That’s fine. I want to hear them out first anyway.”

  His words seemed to compel Garrett from his trance. “There’s nothing to hear! They’re crazy! Traitors to the CORE—all of them. To think that we’ve been working beside Hammer all this time. No wonder none of our evidence ever panned out. No wonder we can’t find the missing scientists. I bet he’s in league with whoever’s behind it. Probably the fringers.”

  “Maybe,” Jaxon said, “but those Special Forces just tried to abduct us. Did you forget that? And someone working with them stabbed Reese.” Jaxon grabbed the drawing pad from Reese’s hand and thumbed through the pages before finding her drawing with the man bleeding out from her inflicted knife wound. He shoved it under Garrett’s nose. “This is the man who stabbed Reese.”

  “How do you know those Special Forces were working with him?” Garrett looked up at Reese and back at the drawing. Was that a hint of fear in his eyes?

  “Because I do,” Reese said.

  “And I saw his partner back there at the factory,” Jaxon said, rubbing his jaw. “He tried to flatten me.”

  This was news to Reese, so it must have happened while she was upstairs or unconscious.

  Jaxon paced the room, dragging a hand through his hair. “Forget about that for a moment. You didn’t see what we saw at the Coop. It’s like a breeding farm. They’ve killed nearly ten thousand people, and now they’re trying to get the population up to fifty thousand again. Hammer’s right about one thing—the colonists are being kept as slaves, doing all the jobs we’re too good for. What I don’t know is how our missing scientists fit in.”

  “They? They?” Garrett asked. “Who’s this ‘they’ you keep talking about?”

  Jaxon stopped in front of them, staring down at Garrett. “My guess is that pus bag Summers, who was controlling those Special Forces, but he may not be working alone.”

  “Pus bag?” The words had scarcely left Reese’s mouth when the sketch from his mind came to her. She snatched the pad from Garrett’s fingers and hurried to the desk. Panic welled inside her, not just because she was helpless to control her urge, but because of what she’d seen.

  His too-smooth face formed under her shaking hand. The rare blue eyes that she couldn’t depict with the pencil but that she saw all the same. She drew the high forehead and unmistakable widow’s peak. He was two decades older now, decades that showed around his eyes and in the thinner hair, no matter how much Nuface therapy he paid for. This was the man who’d visited Jaxon’s mother that day, the pus bag who was responsible for her death—and for Reese’s father’s.

  “Reese?”

  Her eyes dragged from the picture to Jaxon’s concerned face hovering above her. “You look ready to faint. Do you know this guy? You were out of it when I was talking with him, but he’s the one controlling the Special Forces.”

  The time had come. It wasn’t how she’d wanted to tell him, or how she’d planned to admit her complicity in the events of the past, but she couldn’t lie to him. And who knew if she’d ever have another chance?

  She stood, moving sluggishly as if in a dream. “I don’t know his name, but I’ve sketched him before.”

  “Summers,” he supplied.

  The name meant nothing to her. “When we were kids I saw him on the Teev—he was someone important back then, I think. I—” Saca, she didn’t want to say it. She wanted to run from the locked room and burn the entire drawing pad.

  “Jaxon,” she started again. His face was a blur through her threatening tears. “He’s the man who killed your mother.”

  Chapter 25

  THE MAN WHO killed your mother.

  Reese’s words reverberated around in his head. His eyes dropped from her face to the sketch. She’d captured it perfectly, as if she’d been aware instead of half unconscious when Summers ordered them taken to Estlantic—the haughty tilt of the chin, the mocking twist of the lips, the flattened nose that alleviated his face from complete weakness.

  He didn’t doubt for a moment that Reese was telling the truth. The horror in her eyes was real. She was real. He wanted to take her into his arms and find comfort—to soothe her horror and his own—but he needed to know more.

  Reese seemed unaware of his inner turmoil. “He was at your house that day. I drew a picture of him.”

  “The day she died?”

  “No, a week or so earlier. I don’t remember exactly.”

  Strange how she could so clearly draw an image of his mother that he’d seen in a premonition and nearly forgotten, but that dates faded into obscurity. Still, he wished he had her exact recall for his premonitions. Maybe if he did he could stop them from coming true.

  Especially the incomprehensible premonition he’d just experienced of Garrett sprawled out on rocky ground, the greedy earth soaking up his blood. Had his partner still been breathing? He couldn’t say, but the wound in his head looked like it came from a gunshot.

  “It’s my fault,” Reese continued. “I had to draw him, and then he appeared on the Teev. My dad saw it, and he took it from me. He made me tell where I’d seen the man—where you had seen him.”

  “You told him?” Jaxon remembered the day she was talking about, because it had been near the time of his mother’s death. It was only one of many times a man had come to seek her favors, but Jaxon detested each time it happened, even if it also meant the appearance of foods or luxuries that were usually out of reach.

  Reese cleared her throat. Jaxon was acutely aware of Eagle near the door, listening. Of Garrett standing now by the couch, also paying close attention. They should be having this conversation alone—and she’d had plenty of opportunity before now to tell him. That she’d waited felt like a betrayal.

  “When he heard your mom was dead, Dad started packing up, throwing everything of value into a couple bags. I don’t know where he planned to go, but across the Coop, at least. Maybe outside. Cecilia, his girlfriend, said he shouldn’t have done what he did. Something about the picture. I didn’t know it then, but I think my father might have tried to blackmail this Summers guy. Everyone knew what your mother was . . .” She trailed to a stop, obviously not wanting to call his mother a hooker. But he understood the implications. Slumming in the Coop, taking advantage of a poor colony woman the CORE was supposedly helping, might have ruined the pus bag’s career.

  Reese wasn’t finished. “I ran to your house because I was hoping you’d come back, even though I knew you wouldn’t. They left without me. I never saw him again.” She shut her eyes, spilling tears that had gathered, though she wasn’t crying.

  When she opened them, her eyes were cool and green and remote, her face impassive. “If I hadn’t drawn his face and let my father see the picture, your mother wouldn’t be dead.”

  The moment stretched out between them. Jaxon hovered between anger at her and pity for the child she’d been. He couldn’t help the hurt and guilt that always accompanied thoughts of his mother. He should have taken care of her. He would have taken care of her if Reese hadn’t drawn that picture . . . and let her die.

  Eagle had come to stand on the other side of Reese, moving so quietly that Jaxon hadn’t been aware of his approach. Apparently, he already had the diagram of the room in his mind and no longer needed to feel his way.

  “Summers must have had them killed,” Eagle said. “I’m sorry, Reese. I didn’t realize. None of us did.” He put an arm around Reese’s shoulder, and she leaned into him.

  Jaxon wished he could have been the one to offer his arm, but he was hurting too much. As a boy, he’d sworn to find and kill the man responsible for his mother’s death, and today he’d been so close. If only he’d pulled the trigger sooner. Instead, he’d let her killer walk free.


  Reese’s eyes sought his, but Jaxon looked away. Her fault, my fault. So many things they’d done wrong, and all of it beyond their control. He couldn’t blame her or himself, but somehow he did.

  He walked away from the desk. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Shh!” Garrett said, motioning him to a standstill. “I think someone’s coming.”

  They turned to the door as it flung open. Two guards with guns stood ready in the doorway, but when they detected no threat, they pulled back slightly to let someone pass.

  El Cerebro.

  He came through the door, his step confident but not commanding. “I think it’s time we had a little chat. If some of you will sit on the couch, my men will bring more chairs.” They were already bringing them in—ancient wooden chairs with legs that might possibly become a weapon if things worked out right.

  Jaxon found himself on the couch between Garrett and Lyssa, who was now seated and looking more alert. Eagle and Reese sat on chairs placed next to the couch, and El Cerebro settled on another in front of them. Hammer had also reappeared, bringing his own chair, but he stood beside it, arms folded over his wide chest. Two other guards stood by the door and more outside, most of them young men, but one of the guards by the door was a middle-aged woman, with shorn hair and haunted eyes. Every so often her finger tapped softly on the trigger, as if waiting eagerly to use it.

  “Why have you brought us here?” Jaxon demanded.

  El Cerebro let a few seconds pass before replying, his words vibrating softly with the voice modulator on his neck. “I know you have questions, but if you can hold onto those for a while, I’ll tell you what I know. That may resolve a lot.”

  Jaxon’s only reply was to sit back and fold his arms. Lyssa leaned over to him and whispered so softly, it was almost a breath. “Lyra’s here. She’s talking to someone at division now.”

  This far underground, the enforcers wouldn’t begin to glimpse their CivIDs or ping their iTeevs that had been taken from them, but with Lyra’s help, once they were topside—if they were allowed topside—the enforcers would be ready.

  “Some of this you already know,” El Cerebro began. “Sixty years ago, two decades after the total economic collapse and ensuing nuclear holocaust that we now call Breakdown, the refugees who couldn’t support themselves were divided and sent to build and work in the welfare colonies. In the chaos after Breakdown, the formation of these colonies to help the poor and displaced was hailed as the best and most compassionate act of humankind. But what it actually became was enslavement. They are the workforce for the CORE, so that most everyone else can have clean, safe jobs and extended weekends.”

  He paused, his dark eyes sweeping over them. “I know you saw how it was at Colony 6. The people imprisoned there and at all of the other colonies will never be released. However, the current setup only works if the population balance is maintained, both inside and outside the colonies. Order and control must be absolute.”

  “Even if that’s true,” Garrett said, “from all accounts, many of those in the colonies are lazy troublemakers. To hear some of Jaxon’s stories about the place, we are all safer without them roaming our streets. We must keep our cities safe. And we must stop those who would destroy the CORE. That is our job as enforcers. The CORE’s only goal is to prevent another Breakdown. You have to see that.”

  “The only goal?” El Cerebro’s eyes flashed with the venom in his voice. “You are wrong. Many leading the CORE glut themselves on power and control. Enslavement of those they consider inferior is and always has been their goal, even back when they were picking up the pieces after Breakdown. They aren’t helping the colonies, they’re profiting from them. And as you can see by your current companions, the rumors of the laziness and inferiority of those who live in the colonies is greatly exaggerated.”

  Garrett’s eyes flashed to Jaxon. “Maybe.”

  Jaxon hadn’t thought he’d shared many stories of his past, but apparently Garrett had paid attention to those he had shared. Shame washed through him for being a part of propagating the negative feelings about those living in the colonies. He hadn’t even flinched when Garrett called them lazy troublemakers, though he believed much of what happened in the Coop was a matter of survival. Or had he, at some level, bought into the idea that they were inferior?

  “But that alone wasn’t enough.” El Cerebro picked up his story. “They experimented on the inhabitants of Colony 6, and when it didn’t give the results they wanted, they began quietly exterminating thousands of our brothers and sisters.” El Cerebro leaned forward on his chair, his broad shoulders rippling with muscles under his black shirt. “Unchecked, this oppression will only get worse.”

  “Can’t get any worse than Breakdown,” Jaxon said.

  El Cerebro sat back. “History teaches otherwise—and I’m not talking about history as the CORE has rewritten it.”

  “We know about the colonies and the murders,” Reese said. “But they tried to abduct us, not kill us.”

  “The rumor is that some of the abilities may be useful,” El Cerebro said. “We guess that any survivors with abilities from the experiment at Colony 6 will be pawns in whatever struggle will play out among the CORE Elite as they fight each other for control—and between them and those who join the Underground.”

  The information wasn’t enough for Jaxon. “What do you want from us?”

  “I want you to work with me to change what is wrong in the CORE Territories, to make it better,” El Cerebro answered. “More freedom, more rights. Especially for those in the colonies.”

  “No way in Breakdown,” Garrett retorted, and while Jaxon had said something similar only an hour earlier, now he wasn’t so sure.

  “And if we say no?” Jaxon asked.

  El Cerebro’s tongue wet his lips, making him seem human beneath that mask. “I won’t lie to you. You four”—he pointed to Reese, Eagle, Lyssa, and Jaxon—“have abilities that could help me bring freedom to all people, even those in the colonies. But if you refuse, working against me, you could increase the CORE’s control. I’m . . . I’m hoping you won’t refuse.”

  “You mean you’ll kill us,” Eagle’s useless eyes weren’t looking in El Cerebro’s direction, but the question was clearly meant for him. “I don’t see, then, how you’re different from the pus bag who tried to take us at the factory.”

  “Pus bag?” El Cerebro asked. “Did you get an ID? We saw someone not dressed as an enforcer, but he ducked behind that white car too fast for identification. What did he look like?”

  Reese met Jaxon’s eyes briefly before ripping the page from her small pad and handing it to El Cerebro. “We only know his last name, Summers.”

  El Cerebro’s reaction to the sketch was instantaneous. “It’s Bensell Summers, retired now, but former assistant to the Administrator.” He gave a snort of a laugh. “See? In just a few days, you’ve already come farther than I have in five years. This is why I need you.”

  Thoughts careened in Jaxon’s mind. There were three positions in CORE government, overseen by a single Director: the Administrator, who was over all of the CORE’S finances and city management; the Controller, who was over all enforcer divisions and Special Forces; and the Regulator, who was over population and birth orders. If Summers had been the Administrator’s assistant, the order to kill affected residents of Colony 6 could have come from the highest echelons of the Elite, and that would mean everything El Cerebro—and Dani—suspected was true.

  Jaxon had never imagined aligning himself with the underground against the society he’d vowed to protect, but what if El Cerebro was the only man who could fix the CORE and save the colonies from perpetual slavery? Hammer was staring at Jaxon, the concern on his face apparent. Had his friend passed through the same dilemma?

  “There’s something more you ought to know about Colony 6 and your parents,” El Cerebro said. “And grandparents.”

  Something inside Jaxon shifted at the man’s tone. He’d never know
n his father or grandparents. Just his mother, who had either been working, sleeping, or entertaining male guests. He could only remember a handful of times when they’d gone somewhere together. He knew next to nothing about her or her family.

  “What isn’t in our history feeds is that the people sent to the colonies were tested for psionic abilities, however small. All of those who tested positive were sent to Colony 6.” El Cerebro paused, as if to let them digest the idea. “I know because my grandfather helped with the psi program that originated the Colony 6 experiment. From the beginning a plan was in place to experiment on those people. My family helped perpetuate this great wrong, and I want to make sure it’s stopped and remains that way.”

  Jaxon thought of Dani and the water filters she’d been installing in the Coop. Once again, her actions supported El Cerebro’s convictions, and the idea that the CORE was free to create more people with abilities—and destroy them without impunity—added to the rage building inside him.

  El Cerebro stood. “Before you give me an answer, I want to show you something.” He stood and motioned them to follow him.

  They filed in a double row out of the office, with guards flanking them. The outer room was no longer empty, but several dozen people were eating at the tables that made up the dining area. There were also a few teens lounging on the couches. One of them was Nova, who gave Jaxon a sassy wave and a wink. He was surprised to find himself grinning at the child. She wore jeans and a fitted blouse and no longer looked like a dirty orphan, except for her curly hair that was still on the wild side but pulled back now and possibly combed.

  “Lyra’s talking to Alex on her iTeev,” Lyssa said to him, drawing his attention from Nova. “She couldn’t find the captain, but his messages were forwarded to Alex. Is that normal?”

  “Well, all of us are here. Maybe he felt Alex was the next best person to field calls. But it’s not normal. It should have gone to an enforcer on duty.”

  “She said Alex told her he knows how to reach the captain. He’s calling now.”