Dead and Buryd: A Dystopian Action Adventure Novel (Out of Orbit Book 1) (31 page)

She jumped almost a foot into the air, covering her mouth with both hands as a scream threatened to spill from her lips.

“George?”

Georgianna took a step backward, then another as the man remained in shadows, a dark silhouette framed by brick. The voice was so familiar, yet impossible. She’d not spoken to Landon in a long time, but he was almost a decade younger than the man she had heard. There was no way they could sound exactly the same.

Another step and she would be at the door. She reached out, grasping through the gloom for the handle. They could see her, but they remained hidden in shadows. It was a trick, it had to be. Her fingertips hit the handle and she grabbed it, wrenching the door open. She turned away, foot already outside before he stepped towards her.

“Georgie, wait!”

“Don’t call me Georgie.”

The words came before she had to think about them, ingrained into her through years of mockery. He refused to stop using the name, even though he knew how much she hated it. Sometimes she’d wondered if he only did it to annoy her. Other times, she didn’t even have to wonder.

She didn’t dare move. She couldn’t even look at him. The lump in her throat exploded in a desperate breath of air. She wanted to scream, to run away or crumple into a ball, because there was no way in this world or the next that the man stepping towards her, staring right at her, could be Alec Cartwright.

“Lec?”

“Hi George.”

His hand settled on her, his thumb making a small, gentle circle against her shoulder blade. Her entire body trembled as a sob fought to break free, and she finally turned her head.

He was older. Seams of worry and work that had never been there before lined his face. His hair was longer, dishevelled and uneven. Either his clothes were too big, or he’d lost weight. Both his sleeves were rolled up past the elbows and across his tanned skin she could see the numerous marks of abuse in different stages of healing, many more than she had ever seen on one person, including Jacob Stone.

Still, his eyes were the same beautiful, bright, heat-sky blue they always had been. His lips curved in the same lopsided smile.

Georgianna took a hurried step backward, breaking the contact between them. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. They had never found his body, but after months of looking for him, months of asking questions of the right people, the Belsa had pronounced him dead. There was no way someone could vanish so completely.

“Alec,” Georgianna breathed, her hand still pressed to her lips, fingers trembling against her skin. “You’re… You were…”

“George…” he urged.

Georgianna took another hurried step back away from the ghost of the man before her.

“You were dead!”

It came out in a hailstorm of confusion and emotion. Alec frowned, and Georgianna wanted to hit him for not being surprised by the news that everyone believed him dead, or at least not showing it if he was. How could he not have found anyone to tell them? How could he not have let them know? In two years, nobody had known he was alive. Georgianna wanted to scream at him that the Belsa had held a fucking funeral.

“I’m not.”

Georgianna wanted to punch him even more.

“I… I thought it was Landon. I heard Cartwright, I assumed…”

Alec stared down at her, a tightening in his lip, but he didn’t say anything.

“Ho… How did you even get there?”

“It was fast, George,” he explained, stopping a few feet from her. “One minute, I’m on a scout, the next…”

“Ashoke?”

“Dead,” Alec answered immediately. “And yes, he is, I saw it.”

“You were never in the compound! I know. I looked for you! So how?”

“I was sold privately. I was in the compound for all of an hour before I was marched out again, this collar already around my neck. Ash’ killed our owner’s brother. This was… payback.”

He stepped forward again, but this time, she did not back away. He reached out, his fingers drifting down her arm in a cautious comfort. Georgianna let out a sob, and stepping forward, in a way she had not done in almost two and a half years, flung herself at him. She dropped her bag and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, every breath leaving her chest with a moaning sob of relief.

“Suns, Lec,” she gasped into his shoulder. “I… I…”

Alec’s arm wrapped tightly around her waist, holding her body up against his. Her toes only just reached the floor as she buried her face into the crook of his shoulder. His other hand came up, fingers lost in her hair as he held the back of her neck protectively.

“It’s okay. George, it’s alright,” he murmured.

Georgianna pulled back and looked up at him, her eyes wet with tears. He was worried, that much was obvious, but he was smiling. Shaking her head, Georgianna let out a low laugh. She brushed the heel of her hand across her eyes, forcing herself to calm down. As the tears were brushed away from her lashes, she caught sight of his neck. There were scars that wove like spiderwebs across his skin, but no cinystalq collar.

“I thought… I was…”

Her gaze swept across his exposed skin, looking for fresh marks. There was a tan line where the collar had blocked the sun from reaching his skin, there were older scars, but nothing that could have been less than a few days old. However Wrench did it, he was good at removing a cinystalq collar without any damage to the wearer.

“You panicked!” he answered knowingly.

Georgianna nodded.

“You knew I was involved?”

“Nyah,” he nodded. “By the time she told me, it was too late to stop you.”

Finally glancing away from him, Georgianna’s smile fell, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. Why had nobody else come out? Alec had confirmed that it was her, so why were they all still hiding? She turned herself full circle, peering at every corner in the hopes of seeing another of her friends hiding in the shadows. All too quickly, her gaze landed back on Alec, the only one with her in the small, dark building.

“Where are the others?” she asked, looking at Alec curiously.

Alec narrowed his eyes a little, his nostrils flaring as he looked down at her. It was almost as if he was surprised that she’d asked where the others were, like he hadn’t known that they were supposed to be here.

“Keiran and I left to check that the path was clear while Wrench moved on to Nyah’s collar,” he answered slowly. “He told me to come here and check that there were no Adveni about.”

All the relief Georgianna had felt at the sight of Alec was slowly slipping away. The warmth of excitement dripping from her body through her fingers and toes, leaving her body cold. While Alec was safe, the others weren’t. While they stood here hugging, the others could be in the middle of being dragged off to the compound.

Georgianna pulled away, wrapping her arms around her stomach as she rushed forward through the small building to look out of the grimy window. Not even bothering to cover her hand with her sleeve, Georgianna smeared her hand through the dirt, clearing off a small space to peer through into the alley. Apart from the distant activity on the main street, it was deserted.

“George, what’s going on?” he asked. “I thought this was the plan?”

“No,” Georgianna muttered, not turning back from the window. “No, I was meant to meet all of you here.”

Sighing, Georgianna closed her eyes, taking a breath before she turned back to Alec. He stared back at her, his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed into a thin line. Creases lined themselves between his brow as he stood resolutely still. Georgianna stepped away from the window, leaving a small beam of light shining through the patch she had cleaned away.

“The Adveni know about the escape,” she brushed the dirt from her hands. “I heard people talking at the compound. They knew too much to be guesses.”

Even through the darkness, Georgianna could see Alec’s eyes widen. Before Georgianna could even move, Alec had turned and was heading for the door. Georgianna leapt across the space towards him, reaching the door as his hand settled on the handle.

“Alec…”

“No, George, we have to go back!” he said sternly. “We…”

“And get yourself thrown back into Lyndbury?” she demanded, a vicious force to her voice that she hadn’t meant to be there. “If I’m right, every Adveni in Adlai could know who you are, ‘Lec!”

He glared down at her, and for a moment she could only think of the last time they’d spoken before his capture. They’d been angry at each other back then too, saying things they didn’t mean, or maybe did mean, but hadn’t intended to sound as bad as they had in the heat of the moment.

She watched as he took a slow breath.

“We have to go back for them,” he repeated. “Nyah has information.”

“We’ll get them, but we have to…”

He released the handle, grabbing Georgianna’s shoulders and turning her to face him. This was the part where he’d order her down, just like he’d done before, where he’d called her stupid and immature. She knew that face, she’d seen it too many times. Not just on Alec, but on her brother too.

“You don’t get it!” he said slowly. “Nyah has information I need. Maarqyn helped build the pillars, George. I’ve spent two years getting that information and Nyah has some of it!”

Georgianna’s mouth fell open, her eyes widening in surprise. With those words, she knew why Alec had never fought to be freed, why Beck had kept the secret that he was alive. Alec was gathering information for them, he had chosen this.

“George, we can destroy them!”

“You can’t!” Georgianna cried quickly. “They stop it… Without them…”

“Without them, the Adveni wouldn’t dare set off the Mykahnol. It’s their last defence! Even they can’t stop it if the pillars aren’t there.”

Georgianna didn’t know what to say. If Alec was right then destroying the pillars could make the Adveni too scared to even consider going through with their threat. They could build more, she assumed, but it would take time, time the Veniche could use to fight back.

“Information or not, Alec, you have that information too, you can’t be…”

Georgianna stopped, her jaw falling as she looked away from Alec, a thought that wouldn’t go away finally slotting into place.

“Si knew,” she said.

Alec looked quickly away from her, his mouth opening and closing but no words coming forth as he took a slow step back. Georgianna remembered that look, the way he would avoid eye contact when there was something he couldn’t say. Before his capture it had been things about his wife, details that he didn’t feel right sharing with someone he was sleeping with, like he was betraying her. Now, however, Georgianna glared back at him, knowing that he couldn’t tell her because someone had told him not to.

“Si knew about the pillars, didn’t he?” Georgianna demanded. “He was meeting with you, he kept talking about ‘taking them down’.”

Alec frowned, shaking his head quickly as if it didn’t matter. Right now, she supposed, it didn’t, but Georgianna still glared back at him, waiting for an answer. It all fit inside her head, it all made sense. Si hadn’t been able to tell Jaid where he was going because nobody knew that Alec was alive. Beck had wanted to know what Si had found out because it was information about the pillars and their destruction. Everything was fitting into place.

“I was meeting with Si,” Alec murmured finally. “Passing him the information I gathered from Maarqyn. The last time we met, Maarqyn had others in the house, they heard us. They chased him and I… I have no idea what happened.”

“Si was left out in the sun for three days,” Georgianna answered. “Jaid got him back to the tunnels, but he’s not the same.”

Alec groaned under his breath and reached up, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck. Georgianna gritted her teeth.

“So all this for some information?” she asked. “People knew you weren’t dead and they… your brother?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“He was captured!”

Alec had been a master at hiding his emotions, even when they were children, but nothing could hide the pain in his face now. His lips parted, as if he was about to speak, but there was nothing.

Stepping back, Georgianna looked down at her boots and the imprints they had made in the dust. Shaking her head, she wrapped her arms protectively around her stomach. Alec stared past her.

“And Beck said he wouldn’t help.”

“George, he has been helping!” he argued. “He sent Si to meet with me.”

“No,” she corrected. “He wouldn’t help us get you out. I asked him. It was before I knew about you, but I said Maarqyn’s name. So he knew there was a Belsa in that house. He said no.”

“He couldn’t, not if we wanted this information.”

Glancing up, Georgianna shook her head. This was ridiculous. They needed to make sure that the others were safe, not stand around discussing the lies of the Belsa commander.

“I’ll go!” she finally nodded.

Alec placed his hands on her shoulders.

“No! We both…”

“I’m less suspicious, Alec!” she argued sharply. “You’re an escaped drysta, not to mention a Belsa. I can go to see if they’re still there.”

Alec didn’t like it, she could see it in his face. Even after all this time, she could see that he was trying to think of a way to argue, to tell her something that she would have to accept. Though Alec should have known already that Georgianna was stubborn enough not to listen to him.

Finally, he released her shoulders and nodded.

“If you’re not back within the hour, I’m coming after you.”

Georgianna gave him a small smile as she returned his nod. She knew Alec would not stay put for long. He was too loyal, too caring. He wouldn’t be able to sit back and do nothing while other people got hurt. They were too similar to each other in the end.

Pressing her hand to Alec’s jaw, Georgianna pushed herself up onto her toes and planted a gentle kiss against his cheek. She would be back soon, she was sure she would. Alec had calmed her nerves, if only a little. The others would be fine. She stepped back, giving him a final smile before pulling open the door and stepping out into the sunshine.

 
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The Preceding Void