New World Ashes (9 page)

I blinked trying to purge the images from my mind. I had been too quick to believe. Not in my right mind, I had not questioned what I saw. The bodies were so like my friends, but now I realized that their faces had been so brutally damaged to hide any potential flaws. They weren’t my loved ones, but they were
someone’s
loved ones. That innocent man and child had been unjustly killed simply to teach me a lesson. They were used merely as fodder in The Minister’s personal vendetta. Hate raged in my heart and my body shook with anger, but my heartbeat was steady. I meant my next words, committing to them wholly.

“I will kill Fandrin, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

MERCIFULLY, TRIVEN SEEMED
to feel the same way I did about being separated from one another and agreed to stay with me. He slipped out of the room for only a moment, allowing me to disrobe and get behind the white shower curtain before coming back in. Part of me wanted him to join me in the shower. To hold me close, our skin touching as he helped me wash away the real life nightmares that ate at my brain. But I couldn’t. As much as I needed him in the room with me now, I could not stand for him to be too close while I was in the shower. While I knew it was Triven standing on the other side of the white curtain, I was afraid if I peeked out it would not be his face I saw. Maddox was dead, but the dead have a funny way of haunting you. My skin rippled at the thought of those black eyes leering at me. I doubted I could ever stand being exposed in front of someone like that again.

So even though I felt horribly alone and exposed, I stayed hidden behind the curtain like a coward. Hiding from ghosts that weren’t there. Focusing on my breathing, I let Triven’s deeply velvet voice tether me to reality.
He was alive. I was free.
I reminded myself periodically as he spoke. His stories slowly distracted me from my own haunting memories. Soon, Maddox’s face disappeared back into my subconscious, leaving us alone again. As I washed away the grime of imprisonment from my colorless skin, Triven spoke, answering my questions both asked and unasked.

“Mouse and I managed to survive on our own for nearly two weeks. She was so amazing, Prea. You would have been really proud of her. We kept mostly to power systems beneath the city, but had to come up for food and water.” He paused, remembering his own imprisonment within The Wall. “There were a few close calls… but… well, we managed.”

I made a mental note to ask more about those “close calls” as I rinsed the soap from my hair.

“Part of the problem was we were a little
too
good at hiding. Ryker and the other rebels were looking for us the moment we crossed through The Wall, but they had to shut down the security cameras in the tunnels to keep us safe. That’s how we managed to get as far as we did, when we first came in. The rebels created rolling camera blackouts throughout the city. The Minister was blind, but unfortunately so were they. Mouse and I had no clue at the time. In our attempts to evade The Sanctuary guards we also successfully evaded the good guys.”

Good guys?
I froze mid-rinse, thinking of Ryker’s face.

Triven must have sensed my tension because he added quietly, “The rebels
are
the good guys, Prea. I promise.”

I stared at the grime built up beneath my jagged and broken nails. There was still blood caked underneath them. I dug my fingers into the soap bar. He sighed and I could hear his feet pacing the floor as he continued. “If I hadn’t gotten shot, I’m not sure they would have ever found us.”

I stuck my head out of curtain and stared at him. “You got shot?!”

Triven waved his hand, brushing the seriousness of it away. “It was nothing, I took a bullet to the leg trying to keep Mouse safe during a food run. It was stupid really, my fault. I let hunger cloud my judgment. We weren’t being as cautious as we should have been. I’m not
you
when it comes to surviving… To be honest, I’m not sure anyone could match your skills.”

He smiled lopsidedly at me and I pulled my head back inside the steam-filled shower, shaking my head in disagreement.

“I’m not as good as I used to be.” I murmured.

Either he didn’t hear me over the running water or he was choosing to ignore my last comment. “When I got shot, we had a hard time stopping the bleeding and couldn’t move very far. We were trying to break into a medical facility when the rebels found us. At first, I thought we were dead, but when Ryker stepped forward… Mouse ran to his open arms. To be honest I wasn’t sure if I should scream, shoot or give up. They all seemed like rational responses at the time.”

I snapped off the water. A towel was promptly thrust into the gap behind the shower curtain and the tiled wall. My fingers grazed Triven’s skin as I took the stiffly bleached towel. We both pulled our hands away as if an electrical current had passed between us. I quickly wrapped the towel around my body, suddenly feeling shy. Triven continued to talk as I dried myself.

“The rebels took us in, fed us, and healed me. It was strange. There were faces I knew—people I remembered from my childhood. They seemed like ghosts of my past. My mother thought all of the rebels died when we entered Tartarus, but some of them were still here, biding their time. There are so many more of them than I thought possible and yet so few when you think of the entirety of the population here.”

I wrapped the towel tightly around myself and reached for the curtain. When I pulled it back Triven was still speaking, but he trailed off when he looked at me. I stepped out of the shower and his brow furrowed in pain as his warm eyes fell over my body. He moved forward, wrapping his hands around my upper arms. His fingers seemed longer than I remembered.

“I swear to you, I have been doing nothing but trying to get you back since that day. I’m so sorry, Prea… I failed you. So much has happened to you and I wasn’t fast enough. It’s my fault.” His eyes dropped to the floor in shame, tears visible under his dark lashes. It was the first time I had seen him so vulnerable.

I turned my head to look in the small mirror and was horrified by the face that stared back. I hadn’t looked at myself when I first came in and in fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I
had
seen myself. The girl staring back at me was shocking.

My face had become too thin, the cheekbones protruding grotesquely through sallow skin. The eyes staring back looked hollow, sunken into dark rings surrounding them. My once slight frame now looked outright emaciated. I might as well have been a skeleton. Adorning my skin were a smattering of yellowing bruises and freshly healed pink scars. The healing-serum had not completely fixed everything.

“How long?” I said staring at the mirror. He needed no elaboration to understand what I meant.

“You were held captive for thirty-four days.” His body shuddered with a silent sob.

Thirty-four days…
It had been over a month.

Not wanting to look at the sickly girl anymore, I turned back to him and placed my hand under his chin. It took a moment for his eyes to meet mine again. My stomach sank when they did. Not only had The Minister managed to break me, but in doing so, he had also managed to hurt Triven.

“You and I have been through hell and back—probably twice—but despite it all, we are still standing here, together. And the truth is, I would go through it all again if it meant yours and Mouse’s safety. I do not regret my decision to sacrifice myself for you both and I
forbid
you to take the weight of my choice onto yourself. It was your face that got me through many long nights and it was the knowledge that you were still out there that helped me survive. I am not the same person I was before I went in there—I know that—but I was also not the same person after I met you. You made me a better person, Triven.”

He swept down with a practiced movement, his fingers winding in my hair as he pulled my body tightly against his. As it had so many times before, his mouth stopped just before it reached mine, waiting. I barely had to move forward and his lips claimed mine for the first time since our reunion. A part of my broken heart healed a little. For six years I hadn’t needed anyone. I would never admit it out loud, but right now, I needed him. And from the urgency in his lips, he needed me too.

THE WATER RUNNING
in the shower behind me nearly drowned out our low voices. But that was the idea. Triven had pulled a grey silken robe from beneath the sink. I felt naked wearing it, its light fabric strange against my skin. Its sleeves were much too long. I was perched on the edge of the tub, shivering occasionally, but not cold. Triven sat stoically across from me on the floor, his knees bent in front of him as he watched me. He looked smaller somehow than I remembered.

We had been locked in the bathroom for nearly an hour. For the most part, I had retold what had happened to me. The torture I endured, what I was forced to do to those children. I had to stop several times to remind myself it was over—that I wasn’t there any more. Still, if I closed my eyes I could see their faces, smell the salty blood on the mats, and hear their screams. There were always screams in my head now.

Out of a selfish need for preservation, I had toned down the parts when I feared I had become insane—mainly for two reasons. Irrationally, I thought Triven might not ever look at me the same if he knew. Being damaged was one thing, but being clinically insane… that would change things. And then there was the terrifyingly rational side—I had lost my mind in that cell. Even now as we spoke calmly, I would get residual flashes of rage and fear for no reason. They would come on like tidal waves enveloping my entire body, swallowing me whole until I couldn’t breathe, until I couldn’t feel anything else, all rational thought was gone. The girl I once was had become consumed, eradicated by the overpowering fear flooding my mind.

Then it was gone.

It was a struggle to keep my breathing regular.

After a particularly bad flashback, I had to drop my head between my knees, my long wet hair hung dripping on my toes as I tried to open my lungs. I clutched my head, pressing so hard it throbbed. Triven sat helplessly against the door, his fists curled. I asked him not to touch me, unsure if I might accidentally lash out.

“I hurt those kids… I told myself everyday that I was trying to save them from a worse fate, but I still hurt them. I can’t even remember all of their faces or names. After a while I tried to forget, to block it out. Remembering only made it worse. It didn’t really matter who they were, because to me every one of them was Mouse.” I gagged.

“I can’t even begin to imagine.” Triven’s voice ached with sympathy.

Something prickled at the back of my mind.

“You’re a good fighter?” I looked up to find him staring at me. His forehead was pinched with stress.

“I suppose so…”

“But you were never recruited.” It was a statement not a question. He had gone to school, he had told me about being in classes with other students. There had never been any stories about children soldiers. Unless he had lied to me by omission.

Triven looked uncharacteristically ashamed.

“I went to school here to become an electronics communications engineer, like my father.” He bit his lip. “I was supposed to be a soldier. I should have been fighting in the same sparring matches you did as a child. I passed the assessment test to be a soldier with flying colors. Placing fifth behind you.”

Words failed to form in my mind. Kind, intellectual, compassionate Triven a mindless soldier? It was hard to imagine. It was strange to think how close our lives had come to colliding years ago. I stared at Triven wondering how different it would have been. Would I have loved him at all? Would he have loved me? It seemed both of our pasts held secrets.

“I didn’t know.” He chewed on his thumb staring at the floor. “I don’t think Arstid even knew about it. My father had altered my scores once the results were in. He didn’t want me to be a soldier. He hacked the system and gave me a whole new life. But even the best hackers leave a trace. The rebels found out about it. Ryker showed me the test scores.”

“What did your mother do when she was here?” It was a question I had never asked. Arstid was such a pillar in the structure of the Subversive it was hard to envision her as anything else.

Triven laughed dryly. “She was a school teacher. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

We stared at each other. I could see Triven questioning himself the same way I had these past few weeks. All of our lives could have been so different. His father had given him a new life, just as my damaged memories had done for me. But who would we have been without those life-altering moments?

We came here seeking answers, but finding them was starting to feel like a curse. Like I was tainted now. I thought of Arstid—leader, bitter shrew, teacher and Triven’s mother all rolled up in one. I had once considered her vile, revolted by her domineering nature. But now that I knew where
I
came from… she seemed like a saint.