The Energy Crusades (25 page)

"We could leave now, Ajax. We could walk away," I told him.

"Maybe we could," he shrugged nonchalantly. "And maybe it would be just like it is now, only with their rules."

Yes, maybe it would; I hadn
'
t considered that possibility while I let my emotions fuel my fantasy. Certainly they had a leader too, and a society with some kind of order and rules. And just as quickly as Ajax brought me back to my life, a piece of me screamed the question, but how can we know which life is better?

"Would you walk away if you could?" My eyes searched his in a plea, begging him to tell me it was possible to live life differently. "If you could walk away from all of this — being an Unviable, the rules, the Reformation— would you leave with me?"

"No," he answered softly, without any hesitation.

I would have felt crushed, if not for the image of his family, especially his mother, that he let fill my mind. Through him, I could feel Astrid
'
s grief again, the grief of losing a child, of losing children. How could I be so selfish and stupid to ask that of him? Ajax would never do such a thing to his family. He wouldn
'
t disappear and leave them to wonder what had happened to him, to mourn him. I felt ashamed for my desire to leave my life behind when I had privileges some had never known. I thought about my family, the love and devotion of my parents, my brother, the fact that we never experienced the grief of the plague the same way so many others had when burying their children. The people who counted on me flashed through my mind: my family, Derek Bussey, the sick or childless whom I donated energy to regularly — what would it do to their lives if I were to vanish?

I looked at Ajax as the moonlight reflected off his hair. His eyes had filled with gray clouds and in that exact moment, I knew I loved him more than I loved anyone else in the whole world. He was a good and selfless human being, better than I was in every way. He cared deeply about those he loved and would sacrifice any happiness he could have for himself rather than bring his family any more pain. He vowed to remain alone and childless, so as not to risk more grief for his already grieving family.

The shame in me burned like a flame, and my heart broke into a million pieces knowing that the right thing to do for the boy in front of me was to leave him alone, to not expect anything of him other than friendship. I made my own vow then, to work on closing my heart to him as anything other than a friend. He deserved better than me anyway. I was a horrible girl, a freak, and had actually considered walking away from a life full of friends and family who loved me and needed me.

"Are you okay?" Ajax looked at me curiously.

"Yeah. I just feel—" I stopped short, struggling to express my feelings verbally, something I wasn
'
t used to doing. "I shouldn
'
t have thought about leaving and I definitely shouldn
'
t have asked you to leave with me. I
'
m ashamed. I
'
m going to be a better friend to you from now on. I promise you."

"Kaia," he sighed, running a hand through his jet black hair. "You
'
re the best friend I have." He picked up my cuff and squeezed it tenderly before jumping back on his transporter and flying off again.

I followed him closely and kept my eyes away from the cave dwellers. I tried sending them out a message:
I
'
m
not
the
one.

I hoped they would hear my message and believe it, but when we reached the building, they were waiting there too, all around the caves beneath it. We approached the building as we had during our exercise, following the same road and finding it in a much better state of repair. Also, there was no block wall guarding the path and no Virtual Guards either. The building was dark, or at least no lights shown from the windows. Even so, I felt there was life there. It wasn
'
t too late at night and I was sure there were people inside.

We landed at the base of the caves, the spot where Ajax and I had crashed onto the rocks. Once again, the cave dwellers filled the mouth of the cave. They weren
'
t climbing this time; they were simply standing there, as if waiting for us. We hopped off our transporters and left them hovering while we walked toward the caves.

"Why don
'
t you come in?" One of them asked as we approached. It was the same one I thought of as the leader the last time we met, the one who threw me the bag.

"I don
'
t want to," I told him
,
my body going numb both from the cold and the effort of dulling my emotions.

"What is this place?" Ajax demanded.

"It
'
s a school," the cave dweller answered mildly, as if he had nothing to hide.

"A school for whom?" I asked. My emotions bubbled in my stomach but I kept a hold of them.

"For children," he looked at me with his colorless eyes, strangely beautiful under the stars.

"What kind of children?" I whispered. I could feel my blood rush through my veins. I wanted the answers, but I didn
'
t want the answers either.

"Regular children," he continued to stare at me. When Ajax spoke, he turned toward him slowly.

"What are
'
regular
'
children?" It was faint, but I could hear the anger creep into Ajax
'
s voice.

"Children who are free," the cave dweller answered.

My blood roared in my ears. "Can we go inside?
”
I asked, my voice somewhat steadier.

"You can," he answered cautiously. "But he
'
s in there. If you go in, they might not let you out. I
'
d prefer it if you stayed because you wanted to."

I looked at Ajax. His jaw clenched tightly at the mention of the
'
he
'
.

"We aren
'
t afraid of Jason Paris," Ajax told him tightly.

"You shouldn
'
t be," he answered. His demeanor was serene, as if he had nothing to fear from us either. "But he might not think clearly when Kaia is around."

He said my name. He knew my name. What did it mean?

"What
'
s your name?" I asked, wanting to know as much about him as he knew about me.

"I thought you
'
d never ask." He took a step closer to me and bowed his head with great respect. "My name is Luce. Pleased to meet you."

I touched his shoulder automatically, and he raised his head again. His skin wasn
'
t cold like mine or Ajax
'
s, though he had on even less clothing than we did. He wore what looked like the same pair of shorts he had on before; all of them did. They had the same clothing on, the same monotony of looks. The other cave dwellers stayed silent in the cave behind him.

"Luce?" I questioned. "Like light?" he nodded slightly. "Why did you help me?"

"Because you asked me to."

"Are you an enemy of the Reformation?"

"They would think so, yes." A straightforward answer, I had to respect that.

"Let
'
s go, Kaia," Ajax was growing uneasy. Above us, on the cliffs, we could hear movement. Someone was coming. He took me by the arm and guided me back toward our transporters. We jumped on them and flew a bit higher to get a look at who was coming. Several people in hoods were climbing down the rocks. They stopped as they saw us hovering.

You
can
come
back, Luce said in my head.
I
'
ll
answer
your
questions.

We
'
re
enemies, I reminded him. It didn
'
t feel like he was my enemy though. On the rocks, Jason Paris took off his hood. He star
ed at us.

Don
'
t
say
anything! Ajax warned me sternly. I kept my mouth shut, unable to put my swirling thoughts into words.

Jason looked at me, his eyes traveled down my body and he smiled at me possessively.

"You look beautiful," he raised his voice over the roar of the ocean to span the distance between us. "Did Ajax tell you that? How beautiful you are?"

My cheeks flushed, my skin tingled, but I said nothing. He thought I was beautiful. He was beautiful. He looked like Ajax standing there; only his blonde hair gave him away. Well, his blonde hair and the fact that he called me beautiful. Ajax wouldn
'
t do that.

Open your heart to someone else, I reminded myself, knowing the someone else could not be Jason Paris. We were enemies, I had to remind myself. Ajax picked up my hand and squeezed my fingers between his. The people with Jason Paris started to unravel something between them. They had several ropes, and something that looked like a net. The site of it was alarming. Until then, I hadn
'
t truly believed they would try to capture me. I squeezed Ajax
'
s hand in return, startled by the resisters and their net.

"Let
'
s go," Ajax glanced down at me, a look of anguish on his face. I nodded but kept silent. He dropped my hand and gestured for me to take the lead. We flew back home through the night, keeping a safe distance from the caves, just in case.

Jason Paris

I couldn
'
t sleep, and this time it wasn
'
t because of the Commander. There were too many loose threads floating around my head and I couldn
'
t quite seem to tie them all together. One thing I kept returning to, kept turning over and over in my mind, was the image of Ajax and Jason Paris in the ruined city. I remembered the way their heads looked bent together, one dark, one light, after Ajax had thrown him to the ground and then reached to pull him up. One dark and one light. I
'
d seen the same image before. Where? It nagged at me, had nagged at me then, but I let the worry slip away when the Commander showed up.

"What is it, Kaia?" Ajax stirred in the bed next to mine. I tried to keep my distance from him a bit more. During our training, I paired off with Caden or Balor instead of with Ajax, and trained my mind to feel the same way for Ajax as I did for the two of them. We were all just friends, Crusaders on the same team. I had no romantic interest in Balor or Caden, and I needed to find a similar place in my heart for Ajax. I was trying at least. It wasn
'
t as easy to close my heart as I hoped it would be, nor was it easy to open it to someone else. There was no one else like Ajax, no one who knew me as he did, or shared a bond over our
'
freakishness
'
in quite the same way.

I lay on my side and looked at him in the dark. His posture mimicked mine as he stared back at me. I no longer tried to reach out and touch his necklace and I kept my cuff out of sight when possible. Our beds were much farther apart than they used to be. If I had real courage, I would have left his room all together and crawled back into my own bed next door, but I didn
'
t have the heart to do that.

"I have too much on my mind," I answered. "It won
'
t stop racing."

"What are you thinking about?"

Before I could answer, there was a soft knock on the door, barely audible. If we had been asleep, we probably wouldn
'
t have heard it. I glanced at my orb as Ajax sat up, a curious look on his face. My orb glowed softly, the color changing faintly from a benign soft white toward a hint of yellow. Whoever was out there, my orb did not find their energy dangerous, but it wasn
'
t completely sure they were peaceful either.

I sat up as Ajax went to the door. He remained silent upon opening it, and I tried to crane my neck around him to see who was there.

"Aren
'
t you going to invite me in?" I heard Atticus before I actually saw him. Ajax stepped aside and Atticus sauntered into the room.

"I knew I wouldn
'
t be interrupting anything in here," he smirked, but his little jest fell away as I looked him over. Something was wrong.

"Where have you been?" I questioned him, but any anger I had felt about him being missing evaporated at the sight of him. "You look terrible."

His hair was a mess, longer than it usually was, and unkempt. He had dark circles under his eyes and it looked like he lost some weight when he didn
'
t have any to lose in the first place.

"Thank you, Kaia. It
'
s nice to see you again too. I came to ask you on a date. You know, pick up where we left off. Hold hands and go for a stroll maybe, down on the beach?"

Down on the beach? It was the middle of the night and he wanted to go for a walk down on the beach?

"Okay," I answered hesitantly, playing along.

"You can bring your bodyguard, of course," he met Ajax
'
s eyes and looked at him pleadingly. Ajax didn
'
t look upset about the late night visit; he looked as worried as I felt.

"I'll get dressed." I swung my legs off the bed and on to the floor. Ajax nodded at me.

"Not your energy suit," Atticus added quickly. He wasn
'
t wearing his either. Like Ajax and me, he wore his standard issue University pajamas — sweat shorts and t-shirt. His were black, like mine. I slipped into the bathroom and put my bra on under my shirt, then splashed some water on my face. We pulled on our tennis shoes and socks and followed Atticus out of the room.

As we made our way across the campus in the dark, there was tension in all three of our bodies.

"What
'
s wrong, Atticus?" I asked him quietly. I took his hand and held it in mine, hoping to ease the worry all around him. My stomach tensed with it, knotting in concern over his late-night visit. He squeezed my hand briefly and let it drop, glancing at Ajax who walked just slightly ahead of us.

"What makes you think anything is wrong?" his words were light, but his expression was quizzical. He glanced between Ajax and me. "I
'
ve just missed you is all."

He shoved his hands into his pockets and I got the feeling he did not want to hold my hand, despite his pretense of flirting with me. We walked the rest of the way in silence, stopping at the Virtual Guards. Three of them were hunched over, de-energized for the time being, perhaps due to a malfunction.

"Well, well," Atticus whispered. "What do we have here?" He gestured at us emphatically to cross quickly, before the guards were re-energized.

My trepidation grew. A breach in the line at the exact place we hoped to cross? Ajax gave him a long, hard look as we crossed, but kept his words to himself for the moment. I wondered what this unauthorized nighttime excursion was going to cost us if we got caught. With a sinking feeling, I suspected another ride in the Energy Field alongside Atticus was in my future.

Ajax found the sloping path that led down to the beach and we followed him to the sand. Once we got there, we stood near the water in sort of a circle, looking at one another.

"I don
'
t want them to be able to hear us," Atticus began, by way of explanation. It was a curious thing to say. "They
'
re watching you, I know they are. Maybe they
'
re watching all of us, who knows? But they are definitely watching you, Kaia." Atticus dropped the phony light heartedness. His demeanor was agitated and he leaned in closely to us as we spoke, more than a hint of desperation in his voice. "They can
'
t hear us down here, the ocean is too loud."

"Who
'
s watching me?" I asked, a growing sense of unease trickling through my veins.

"What did you do to the guards?" Ajax wanted to know. He watched Atticus closely.

"Them?" Atticus waved his hand dismissively. "I had a little help from the redhead. Frankly, I wasn
'
t sure if he could do it, so I owe him an apology."

He meant Caden, obviously. How many of us were going to be in trouble for this? And what had he said to convince Caden to help him?

"Who
'
s watching me?" I repeated.

"My team went into the ruined city, just like yours. We ran into the Resistance. They asked for a trade. They said they would turn over the information if we turned over the girl. Which girl? We all wondered. There are three girls on my team, 7 guys. It didn
'
t matter; we weren
'
t going to trade a thing. We chased them, you know? We chased them all over that city, but if we caught one of them, they
'
d transport away from us. Did you know that? Did you know they had personal transporters?"

We nodded at him; yes, we knew.

"Well I caught the blonde one — the jerk that dresses all in black — and he didn
'
t transport away from me at first. If I
'
m being honest, he probably he wanted me to catch him."

"What did he say?" Ajax demanded.

"He suggested I should help him turn over the Athlete, Kaia Robi. That if I didn
'
t, they would capture her anyway, but if I helped, it would be better for Kaia."

"What did you say?" I wanted to know. Atticus turned to me.

"Well, I said a lot of things, Kaia, things I don
'
t want to repeat right now. I might have used some very colorful language if you know what I mean. I hate that guy."

"I know the feeling," Ajax interjected.

"I figured you might, so at least we have that in common."

"Did you get a good look at him?" I asked.

"No, he never took off his glasses. He hides in plain sight. Still, I did get in a few punches," he smiled. Even Ajax smiled.

"Did the rest of your team know they wanted Kaia?" Ajax asked.

"Not at first, but I wasn
'
t thinking clearly. I was angry. I couldn
'
t believe a resister would think I would turn over a fellow Athlete."

"What did you tell the Crusaders?" Ajax demanded, all tense again, but my mind wandered away from them. One of the loose ends had just come together in my head. I remembered where I
'
d seen the two heads before, one dark and one light. I tried to focus on Ajax and Atticus in front of me, but my pulse quickened. There was somewhere else I wanted to go.

"I told Trevor Burke. I don
'
t know who he told. Kaia, I
'
m sorry. I didn
'
t realize what I was doing. I thought it was sort of a joke, frankly, or just part of the mission, like a test or something."

"When did you decide it wasn
'
t a joke?" Ajax persisted, looking more troubled by the minute.

Atticus
'
s whole body stiffened. "The Commander—" He choked, bringing his hands up to his throat as if it hurt to say the words.

"He questioned you guys?" Ajax put his hands on Atticus
'
s shoulders and shook him.

"Yes. And I didn
'
t tell him. But I was the only one. The others, they all told Commander Renier the Resistance asked for a trade. And Trevor, he told them they asked for Kaia." Ajax dropped his hands and my stomach dropped to the floor.

"Where have you been, Atticus?" I asked again.

He looked at me, his eyes full of pain and sorrow. "He questioned me again. He brought me back in, and he questioned me for what felt like days. Kaia, forgive me. I wasn
'
t strong enough to hold out on him. He, he—" he stammered before letting his voice trail off completely. Then he composed himself again. "Now I
'
m not even sure who the good guys are anymore. Maybe I should turn you over to the Resistance. Maybe I should save you. That
'
s what the blonde one said, that he would save you."

"Is that why you brought us here?" Ajax grabbed his shoulder angrily. "You brought us down here to try and make a trade with her?"

"No! No," he insisted, and then he fell to his knees and took my hands. "I came here to say, whatever happens, I
'
ll follow you. I
'
ll be loyal to you." He bowed his head at me as he squeezed my hands. There was fear all around him — fear, sorrow, anxiety.

"Get up, Atticus," I told him gently. "I
'
m not going anywhere."

Atticus stood up.

"Actually," I continued, "I am going somewhere. I need to go see Professor Baal." I was already off campus, I was wide awake, and I wanted some answers.

"Right now?" Ajax looked at me in disbelief. "We can
'
t go see her now."

"I
'
m tired of this," I told him. "I
'
m tired of guessing, and of not knowing the truth. I
'
m going to see her, and I
'
m going alone."

Ajax stared at me; they both did. There
'
d been a lot of tension between Ajax and me again. He sensed that I was pulling away from him, and he resented it when I trained alongside Caden or Balor instead of him, but so far, he
'
d held his tongue. He didn
'
t fight for me, or demand to train next to me. He simply let me go, just as I knew he would tonight.

"Go then," he said bitterly.

"No! Kaia, no! You can
'
t go wander off alone in the dark. They
'
re out here. They want to get you alone."

"I can take care of myself," I insisted. Ajax had already turned away from me and headed back toward the path. Atticus stood still, unsure what to do.

"Ajax!" he called after him, "You
'
re just going to let her go?" Ajax didn
'
t even turn around to answer. "He
'
s letting you go?" Atticus was incredulous.

"I
'
ll see you around okay?" I told him, trying not to let my disappointment show. I left Atticus standing on the beach and found the path leading up to the grid. I didn
'
t look back; I assumed Atticus would follow Ajax. He needed to cross back to the University before the guards woke up. I would cross back when I was ready, and I would face whatever consequences I had to.

It wasn
'
t Professor Baal I ran into, however, when I reached the top of the path. Jason Paris stood there, watching my ascent. He didn
'
t have a hood on and he wasn
'
t wearing black. Instead, he wore blue jeans and a dark blue, long-sleeved t-shirt. His blonde hair fell across his forehead and his hands were shoved into his pockets. As far as I could see, he was alone, but I hesitated anyway, keeping my distance but not running from him. I left a few meters as a buffer between us.