by Ward, Tamryn
“Easy, Eva.” Mattie stumbles back one step, thrown off balance when I fling myself at her. She laughs and hugs me back, and for a moment the joy and relief are so overwhelming, I forget about all the bad things that have happened. It isn’t until I smell the smoke in her hair that it all comes rushing back to me. “Did you go—“
“Jay, we’ve confirmed all targets have been hit,” Mattie says, directing her dialog to Jay, and confusing the fuck out of me.
Targets hit? “What targets?” I ask them both as I pick up my gun and shove it into the waist of my pants.
Two sets of eyes flick to each other then to me. Mattie’s eyes get bigger. Her face pales. Her lips form an O.
“Um…” Mattie says.
Jay lifts his hand. “It’s okay,” he tells her.
What the fuck? There’s a whole lot of something going on between these two, communication with eyes.
“What’s going on?” I demand, suddenly feeling like I’ve been hiding under a rock for days (which isn’t far from the truth) and have no idea what’s happening.
Jay gives Mattie one last pointed look then stands and motions with a tip of his head. “Come with me.”
My insides start to twist into knots. My heart thumps. I don’t have a clue what he’s about to tell me, but I sense it’s going to be bad. Very bad.
We step away from Henry and Mattie.
Jay clears his throat. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Eva. And I’m not sure where to start.”
I give him an I-don’t-give-a-damn-where-you-start look.
He clears his throat again. His gaze starts flitting around like a skittish butterfly, hopping here and there. “There’s a reason why I wanted you to leave the agency before training was over. I…knew…about the attack on the compound. I’m a…” His face turns a very dark purple-red color. “I had everything figured out…until I met you. I knew what I was doing, and I knew it was good. And I knew I wouldn’t regret anything…but then I met you, and you showed me there’s more to life than hatred and vengeance.”
My head is spinning. I hear his words, but I don’t understand what he’s trying to say. I showed him there’s more to life than the bad? Is that such a terrible thing? What does it have to do with all that’s happened?
“I don’t understand, Jay.”
“Maybe this will help.” He lifts his shirt, displaying a chiseled abdomen. Ridges cut between thick slabs of toned muscle. It’s utter perfection. I’ve never seen anything like it. My gaze locks on and won’t let go. It’s only after he clears his throat that I manage to tear my eyes away from his stomach. Up, my gaze travels, following the line cutting through the center of his torso to his chest. It’s covered in black ink. A picture, with swirly letters is printed on his skin. I can’t make out what they say.
I’ve seen images like this in books, but I forgot what it was called. I’d thought the art form had been lost, like so many other wonderful sciences, arts and technologies, during the Great Decimation.
“This tattoo signifies my allegiance to a group called PAOSS.” He points out the letters in his tattoo as he says them. “Our goal is to ensure the survival of organic species in our world, including human. According to the NDA, we would be classified as terrorists.”
Terrorists? Jay is one of them, one of the men we have been training to kill?
I am stunned. Speechless. I feel my mouth gaping but damned if I can close it. I manage to blink but that’s all. The silence grows heavy as Jay waits for me to digest what he’s just told me.
I am aware of the gun, heavy and cold, pressed against my skin. My training tells me I need to shoot him. He is the enemy. He is the target.
But I can’t.
I can’t. Because I am falling in love with Jay. With a terrorist.
I am a failure.
Shaking out of my daze, I stagger backward and turn. Mattie is behind me, watching. She’s one of them too, I realize. My friend. My best friend. She was reporting to Jay.
They did this. They killed all those people in that building. They’re dead. All of them.
I don’t know what to do. Where do I go? What do I do? There’s no one to help me. No NDA. No Henry. No Alice. No George.
I climb up, going back the way Jay and I came. I’m grateful it’s a challenging climb. Loose stones shift, forcing me to concentrate. It occupies my mind and gives me a handful of confusion-free minutes. But once I make it to the top, and the risk of falling is gone, it all comes surging back. The anger. The fear.
What the hell?
What. The. Hell?
I cup my hands over my mouth and cry out. The sound is muffled but it still echoes across the wide chasm. Below I see Jay and Mattie. They’re looking up at me. Beyond them, at the bottom of the ravine is a narrow stream, snaking through the wilderness. As far as I can see it is green and peaceful and quiet. Spring time in the forest. And yet I am exploding apart, one cell at a time. I am being torn into tiny splinters.
I sink to my knees and cover my face.
All along I’ve said to myself this wasn’t what I had expected. All along I’d questioned this process and what it was doing to me and the other trainees. But now…now those questions, those concerns, pale in comparison to what I’m facing. What has happened, what I’ve learned about the people I trusted most, has completely obliterated my soul. I see now, clearly, that I came into this a wide-eyed, innocent, clueless little girl. Quick to question some things (such as the existence of the Elect and George’s training methods) but also blindly trusting of Jay and Mattie.
All along I’d trusted the wrong people. And why was that? Because they were nice to me. Because they were nice and because, in Jay’s case, he made me feel something I’d never felt before.
What a fucking fool I’ve been.
Angry now, I stand.
They’ve played me. Why? For their amusement? Or for some other reason?
I have questions. Lots of them. But do I bother asking Jay and Mattie? What are the chances they’ll answer truthfully?
I swivel, looking down.
Mattie and Jay are on their way up, climbing the same path I’d taken. Jay’s gaze meets mine. I narrow my eyes, telling him I despise him. I’m not that silly little girl who will blindly follow him into the dark anymore. He won’t ever play me for a fool again.
As they reach the top, I pull out the gun Henry gave me and aim it at Jay’s head. I hook my finger over the trigger.
One squeeze would end everything. Just one. Small. Squeeze.
Jay lifts his hands. So does Mattie. Jay doesn’t look scared. He fucking should be. He should be pissing his pants.
“You want to shoot me,” he states.
My finger muscles tense. “I do.”
“If you’re NDA, you should,” he says, nodding.
I glance at Mattie. She’s behind him, looking slightly nervous, her gaze hopping back and forth between me and Jay.
“What do you mean if?” I snap. “Of course I’m NDA. You trained me.” I thump my chest with my hand. “I am NDA. I have the bruises to prove it. I’ve suffered and bled for the NDA.”
“Have you? You’ve bled for them? Or for your family?” Jay asks. What is he trying to do now? Is he trying to talk his way out of the death sentence he deserves? The one I should hand out but don’t know if I can? “All along you’ve said you’re doing this for your family. For the money and what that would do for them.”
Shame and guilt tug at my nerves. I did say that. But I hadn’t meant that was the only reason I’d joined the NDA. “That first day I chose the NDA over the other agencies. Any of those agencies would have paid me. And I know they wouldn’t have been this difficult,” I say. “I chose the NDA because I felt I could do the most good here. I could support the work the other agencies are doing, so that maybe, someday, everyone could live like the people do in Middleton. My parents. My children, if I have any. Their children.”
“And that’s our goal too.” He slowly lowers his hands. So
does Mattie, though she doesn’t move closer to me. She doesn’t trust me as much as Jay does. Smart girl. “When you learned how the other trainees had been living all this time, while you, your family, and everyone you know in Riverview struggled, didn’t you feel you’d been robbed of something you deserved too?”
I did. I had felt jealous.
But now I’m angry, so angry there is no way I can admit anything to Jay. I’m afraid he’s trying to manipulate me. So instead of responding, I shrug.
“Eva, we aren’t the enemy,” he tells me, his voice gentle, soothing.
The image of the compound burning, dead bodies strewn everywhere flashes in my mind. “Not the enemy? You killed all those people.”
“People who are fighting to keep humanity repressed, compliant,” He says. “How dare we want more, right? How dare we want real prosperity for all, not the useless promise of it. How dare we want peace for all, not just for the people who do what the Amiga dictates. How dare we want safety and security and freedom.”
My head was spinning. I hear his words. They make sense. And yet, so did everything I’d been told in school, about the Amiga, and about America before the Great Decimation. That world had been wonderful, in a great many ways, but in history class I’d been taught it had also been horrific. There’d been wars, death, disease, civil unrest. My parents were barely old enough to remember those times, but they remembered some things. The good. The cars. The movies. The music. I lowered the gun. “But you’d killed them, Jay. You killed them all.”
“We only killed the ones we had to. At the end of training all NDA recruits are implanted with a chip. That chip changes them, infects them, like a virus. They can no longer think like a human. They can no longer rebel. They are drones.”
“But you—“
“I was able to avoid injection.”
Computer chips. Drones. Rebellions. Death. It’s all too much. I wish I could go back in time, to the day before the Exam. When I’d been blissfully unaware of all of this. When I knew my future and was content with it. Now I’m not content with anything. I know nothing. I understand nothing. “I don’t know what to do…”
“Eva, I know you’re confused. I was too, when I first learned of the PAOSS. The truth is we’ve all been brainwashed by the Amiga. We’ve all been told it’s better, safer, for them to make the decisions for us, to dictate to us how we live. Because they only think; they don’t feel. They make choices based upon logic, not emotion. But it’s not always better. Sometimes our leaders need to feel. And the Amiga cannot ever do that. We shouldn’t be slaves to a bunch of cold, heartless machines. It should be the other way around. We should be free to fuck up, to make mistakes, to live our imperfect, human lives. To make choices.”
I slowly sink to the ground.
What do I believe?
I cradle my head in my hands. As I inhale, the scent of life fills my nose. Grass, trees, damp earth. To me it is the most beautiful smell in the world. It’s the smell of new life, of springtime and the promise of renewal and hope. It’s the smell of imperfection and death too. Of plants and animals dying, turning to dirt.
Life.
Choices.
I look up, into Jay’s eyes. I see a stranger. But I also see the boy I fell in love with, the one who lay next to me on that deck and told me his secrets as we stared at the stars. This is the boy who led me through the dark.
But he brought me into the light.
He extends a hand, palm up. “Trust me, Eva. Come with us.”
I gaze at his hand. Those are the fingers that made me feel alive for the first time in my life. They made me shiver and shudder and quake. They also taught me how to protect myself.
I lift my hand.
Should I go with him?
Or should I run?
I’m faced with an impossible choice.
I stare at him.
A choice. Choices.
And then I realize…I had been deceived all this time, told I had choices. Who I would marry. How we would live. But in reality those weren’t real choices. I’d been born in Riverview. I would have never left if I hadn’t been chosen for the Elect. I would have worked on a farm. Every day. Until I was too weak, too tired, too old to continue, and then I would have died.
And all of that would have been their plan.
Except it wasn’t.
The Amiga selected me for some reason. Then they gave me an illusion of a choice, allowing me to decide between three options. Only three. All of them served their purpose, not mine. Not ours. Not humanity’s, but our masters’.
I thought I had a choice to succeed or fail, that I had chosen to stay and fight for my family, for the money I could give them and the freedom that would buy, but in reality, I had no choice. The NDA would decide my future for me. Amiga would decide my future just as it had my parents’.
But that wasn’t good enough anymore.
I’ve learned something since joining the NDA. I’ve grown. Because of the tests and challenges, the terror and the joy, I am no longer a blind little girl. I am a woman. And I can see beyond the wall.
This choice I will make for myself, for my future. It is mine alone. And it is real, not an illusion.
I place my hand in his and nod.
The End
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*****
Please turn the page for a special sneak preview of Tamryn’s best selling novel, HOPELESSLY BROKEN.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
High school drop-out, full time novelist, and now mother--and father--to her younger brother, Jenn Reynolds doesn't have time for anything anymore but work, work, work. Not school. And definitely not a social life. Dating? Yeah, right. No matter how hard she tries to put her life back together, it keeps crumbling apart. The first blow--the sudden death of her parents--started the destruction. Now, her life is spinning out of control, and she has no one to turn to. She is about to lose the only thing that matters anymore—her brother.
But there's one option--one incredibly risky, terrifying solution. If Jenn can find someone she can trust he just might be able to help her stem the devastation.
Maybe.
But who would it be? Aeron, the totally mysterious, totally dangerous stranger she has just met? Or Bobby, the devastatingly gorgeous guy who has already broken her heart once?
Depending upon what their secrets are, they both might make things worse. Much, much worse.
Genre: New Adult/Young Adult Romance (contains minor paranormal elements)
SAMPLE:
Her door swung open and banged against the wall, blam.
Jenn, standing next to her dresser whirled around. “Aeron?”
“Dammit, Jenn.” His eyes were wild, dark, feral. Tension pulled at his features, his mouth, his jaw.
She couldn’t move. She was frozen in place. Like a doe caught in the scope of a hunter’s rifle. “What’s wrong, Aeron?”
He charged at her like a furious bull, shoving a chair out of the way. He halted inches from her, nose flared, breathing swift.
Her heart rate spiked. She searched his eyes, trying to push through the dark shadows. “What is it? Are you angry at me?”
“No.” His hand jerked up, cupped her cheek. And her skin sizzled under his touch. A little jolt of electricity charged through her system, locking her muscles, freezing her in place. She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to move. Her gaze drifted down, to his mouth. That perfect mouth. His lips looked soft yet strong. Would she ever know how they tasted? “I…I’m trying.”
“Trying to do what?” she whispered.
“To stay away.”
“From who?” she asked
, though she already knew the answer. All day she’d found herself flirting with him, stealing glances, smiling at him as he played with Logan. And he flirted back for a moment. Everything was wonderful. She felt alive and beautiful and happy.
But then he suddenly jerked away, his tone chilly, his eyes like dark river ice. Over and over that cycle repeated until at last he grumbled, “Excuse me,” stomped upstairs and locked himself in his room.
It was strange and confusing. Why was he acting so hot and cold?
“You.” His thumb grazed her lip, and a shudder of need quaked through her. She curled her fingers around his wrist, holding onto it to steady herself. Her breath caught in her throat. Need pulsed through her system, firing her nerves like little white-hot firecrackers.
It was just like her book, exactly like it. She’d never dreamed it could be so wonderfully painful, such longing, such wanting.
“Why?” she heard herself say. “Why stay away?”
“Because I have to. Because all I can do is hurt you.” Despite what he was saying, his head tipped, inching closer.
Was he going to kiss her?
She let her eyelids drift down and held onto his wrist with an iron-tight grip. Kiss me, every bone in her body demanded. Kiss me now. “I don’t believe you.”
“You have to.”
His breath was sweet. Intoxicating. Warm and gentle. The hand flattened against her cheek pulled her forward, easing her toward his waiting lips. Closer. He was coming closer yet. Almost there. His breath was fanning over her mouth.
But no kiss.
Seconds throbbed by.
“Aeron?”
“Tell me to stop,” he murmured. “Tell me now.”
“Kiss me, Aeron.” Using the hand gripping his wrist, she pulled until his mouth found hers. The instant her lips made contact with his, it felt as if the world was spinning, whirling, dipping. Brilliant lights exploded behind her closed eyelids. Blasts of heat raced through her body. She threw her other arm up, looping it around his neck, and pressed her body against his.
