Jump Zone: Cleo Falls (6 page)

They did what needed to be done to survive—it was imprinted in their DNA. Her ancestors on both maternal and paternal sides were leaders back then, instrumental in gathering the scattered settlers, setting up a governmental structure. As the value of the Taiga lands became apparent, they brought their charter to the United World Council and demanded protected status.

Meanwhile, they trained, arming themselves and fighting against those who sought to once more rape the lands of the north for her resources, just as the Restoration Movement fought for their ideals: to return to the mighty civilizations of the past, to build mega cities that nurtured greatness.

Cleo didn’t generally enjoy schooling, but the history module kept her endlessly fascinated, and though she couldn’t admit it to anyone for the shame it would bring, she found herself excited by the mega-cities of the past—the art, the architecture, the bizarre customs and dress. She’d fight to the death with anybody who threatened her precious Taiga, but lying alone in bed each night, she dreamt of travelling back to the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries to paddle the canals of Amsterdam, to walk the lamp-lit streets of Paris, to see the bright skyline of New York.

But they were gone. Nothing left but dust, rubble, and in some cases, oceans.

The Polar Wars, instigated by President Zhang, ended it all. Neighboring nations fought for every last drop of fuel. Allies became enemies. Death, annihilation, bombs: none of it mattered when a new fuel source was needed.

Polar melt and refreeze times were manipulated to keep the rigs and shipping channels operable all year around, while governments of the day promised their people that the end of the crises was imminent. But their manipulations backfired as they passed the tipping point. Melting continued, unstoppable, eating away the sea ice then, finally, the land ice. Coastal cities flooded, low-lying lands, entire countries, disappeared. Survivors, what few there were, fled inland, filling the interior cities that were already stretched to capacity. Eventually, they cut down every tree and ravaged the countryside of every natural resource she had, never anticipating the dire outcome.

Until it was gone.

Those who weren’t claimed by death either walled themselves into small communities—literally hoarding everything from seeds to animals, killing those who threatened, dispatching those who didn’t fit in—or they disbanded, wandered the devastation in isolated units looking for a new place to settle, to rebuild, or to die.

The last of old North America’s corporate and political elite joined together to form the Restoration Movement. They knew about economics, understood that wealth begat wealth, that in order to have power, you had to have a population. They lured people with promises of rebuilding a new city just like things used to be—bright lights and big dreams, unreachable ideals.

Gomeda rose like a beacon of hope.

Lachlan Cade began the Restoration Movement. When he died, his son—and eventually his grandson, the formidable Achan Cade—took over. They made good on some promises and certainly brought those sad souls who made it through the ransacking of their country to a better place, but Gomeda remained plagued with problems.

At least, that’s what she learned in her Taiga school from her Taiga teachers. None of them had ever seen it, so she wondered whether to believe them. None of them had hands as smooth as Libra.

But the stuff she’d overheard at Elder Council and the gossip whispered at potlach, scared her more than the records.

Gomedans couldn’t have babies, they said. That’s why the recruiters came north, for healthy, strapping young men and solid female breeding machines. The Ministry of Opportunity lured them so they could populate their great city.

The recruiters, who set up camps south of the Cut Road, were good at their jobs, offering a new, easier way of life, enticing them with gifts, showing them the glory of civilization and promising them leadership positions in the Restoration Movement—without having to win a competition!

The Elder Councils accused the Ministry of dosing their recruits with neuro-pharm, but the UWC dismissed their complaints and then the Elders got strangely quiet about it. She asked her father once, about why they didn’t fight harder to make the UWC investigate, but he gave her an angry look and walked away. Whatever method they used, she just hoped that Jaegar wasn’t too far gone by the time she got to him.

If
she could find him. She didn’t know what to do beyond
get there
. Knock on the door of the Ministry of Opportunity and ask for him? For someone deemed wise by the Elder Council, she sure had her stupid moments. The second she’d learned her brother had been spotted at the recruitment camp, she’d done nothing but make hasty, brainless decisions.

Cleo’s eyes drifted shut, but that didn’t bring sleep. How could she nap when she needed solutions, needed to figure out how to get back on track since her original plan was scattered at the bottom of the river? All the supplies that she’d carefully packed into the storage hatch of her kayak were gone.

There wasn’t room for error, no time for mistakes, and, for the love of her people, she had to restore Jag to his rightful place in the tribe. Despite what it meant for her, she must transfer leadership to him or die trying. But how the hell was she supposed to do all this in her current state—no weapons, no transportation, no food, no shelter, not even a change of clothes? She was trained to use her surroundings to survive, to take advantage of what was close at hand, what nature offered. But would nature offer her anything useful enough to take to Gomeda?

She opened her lids a crack and spied Libra returning, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. Wide shoulders tapered to a lean, narrow waist, the picture of health and capability. She smiled to herself.

Nature did indeed deliver, in the form of a six-foot-something package of sinew with blond hair and an urban address. Cleo just needed to figure out how to use him to her advantage.

Eight

S
he stood near the edge of their small clearing, the thrum of falling water practically imperceptible now that the autumn wind had shifted. Using the trunk of a maple tree for balance, Cleo carefully applied more of her body weight to her injured leg, gauging the amount of pressure it would take. The tobacco-leaf poultice had done an admirable job. Aside from a bit of tightness from the swelling, it didn’t feel bad at all. Certainly not as painful as it looked, ringed in an angry, purple-blue welt. And if she kept it bound and free of infection, she wouldn’t have to alter her plans to tail the outsider. A little flesh wound wasn’t going to stop her from using what the fates so kindly provided—a guide to the urban zone.

Libra still hadn’t moved from his sleep sack, hadn’t made a sound to indicate he was even awake, but Cleo could feel his eyes on her back, feel the heat of his stare in every cell of her body. She knew he’d watched her half the night, but what he didn’t know was that she had watched him the other half.

She had used the dark hours to search the night sky for signs of what she’d seen before. And she had formulated a plan. By morning, she’d had it worked out. Before she and Libra parted ways, she’d rustle up a few supplies like berries and some edible weeds, then she’d strip and sharpen a few good spikes of wood with his knife to use as weapons, and after he’d had a solid head start, she track him all the way to Gomeda. He’d never even know she was there.

She didn’t doubt that she’d eventually find her way to the city on her own, but why bother with uncertainty if she could simply play follow the leader, surreptitiously?

She’d thought about simply asking him to take her, but her gut was telling her not to trust him, not to spend any more time with him than she absolutely had to.

This whole situation—him showing up when he did, his lame backstory—struck her as off.  As a child, she loved the spot-the-hidden-picture books her grandmother used to give her. At first glance, it appeared to be a simple drawing of a village, but when examined closely, you’d see that the knot in the bark was really the outline of a polar grizzly, or that the branches of a tree formed a mother and child.  It reminded her of Libra; benign at a glance, but Cleo knew if she looked hard enough, she’d eventually find the hidden images.

He seemed fairly capable, though ignorantly comfortable, like he didn’t fully understand the dangers of the Taiga. His open and casual body language was at odds with his guarded nature. Perhaps it was natural for urbanites. She had to admit, his actions were not overtly suspicious, but her intuition about people was seldom wrong.

And her instincts were wreaking havoc.

Perhaps it was the way he studied her, sometimes with such intensity that
she
felt like a spot-the-hidden-picture. But when he spoke in that rumbly bass, his words came smoothly, unrushed, almost…flirty.

Men of the Taiga did not treat her as an object of desire. A few feared her, most respected her as a member of her tribe—a warrior and leader,
so says the council
—but those qualities didn’t win her dates. In fact, Jag had told her on more than a hundred occasions that if she wanted a husband, she’d have to tone down her testosterone.

Whatever that meant.

It didn’t help that Cleo avoided socializing with other people her age. Unlike Jag, she avoided gatherings whenever she could, or at least stuck to the fringe. She didn’t feel comfortable in groups, making conversation and pretending to care about who was walking with whom or who made the best moose sausage.

Cleo preferred the forest—the solitude, the beauty, the challenges. She loved to hunt, to follow the maintenance crews as they surveyed the rock channels, though they always shooed her away. Happiest when she could spend days on end discovering new plant life, she simply couldn’t care less about her social status within the tribe.

Which was why it was critical to find Jaegar
before
he was indoctrinated into urban life. She was stunned when she’d learned he was headed to the recruitment station over the Cut. First they lost Simon, now her brother. Idiots!

But it didn’t change that fact that Jag was the true leader, not her.
He
was the people person, not her. So why did she have to prove herself by winning the competition? What streak of sheer foolishness made her enter the leadership race in the first place? Had she really convinced herself she wanted it? Did she hate Jaegar so much that her sole purpose for the past two years was to best him?

Yes and no.

She adored her big brother, and she certainly hadn’t meant to humiliate him. Not really. But it seemed the only way to show them that she was worthy. She never gave a thought to what would happen after winning, or what would happen to her brother if he lost.

Cleo swallowed against the lump that formed in her throat, rubbed her chest to ease the tightness that formed beneath her skin. She pictured her heart forming into a piece of tough gristle.

The need to get moving, get to Jag, fired her into action.

In spite of a restless night, she felt back to her old strength, ready for action. The fact that she’d napped on and off for most of the previous day probably had a great deal to do with her restored vigor.  

“You’d better head out, Libra. Soon, if you want a full day of hiking.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Just concerned about your deadline,” she replied.

Cleo turned to see him crawl from his bed wearing only a pair of form-hugging shorts. He groaned as he stretched, muscles twitching and rippling as they lengthened. For the love of ducks, the urbanite was a fine sight.

She grabbed her lower lip between her teeth to keep her jaw from disengaging.

His leg muscles were larger, longer, and a good bit more defined than she’d expected for an urbanite. She wondered how simulated protein products could possibly put that much definition on a man’s thigh, not to mention his gluteal assets.

She bit down harder to keep her from licking her lips salaciously, to stop a sigh building in her lungs.

He stopped mid-stretch. “You alright? You look in pain. You oughtn’t be moving around.”

“Circulation is important for healing,” Cleo replied, forcing her gaze away. She rotated her ankle first one way, then another.

Satisfied that her leg would take the weight, she turned her back to him and headed toward the river. She had to get out of the clearing, away from him. Away from his silvery-blue stare and away from his half-naked body before she did something she’d regret, like blush.

“Wait up. I’ll help.”

He caught up, tugging a shirt over his head, and surprised her by snaking an arm around her middle. When his warm palm pressed against the flesh at her waist, she gasped.

“You okay, darlin’?”

“Mm-hm. I, uh, it’s the…pain.”

“Just as I thought,” he said, taking more of her body weight. She wanted to protest but couldn’t form words. His touch, his warmth, his strength left her breathless.

And annoyed.

She felt silly clinging to the fabric of his shirt, but it was her only choice. His muscles bunched and tensed under her touch, forcing heat into her cheeks.

She imagined trailing her fingers across his bare flesh, scraping her nails—

A rabbit bolted into the underbrush next to her, jarring her from her lascivious thoughts. Cleo stumbled, almost bringing them both down.

“Whoa. Steady now,” he said, gripping tighter.

And she let him. For the love of ducks, she even leaned into him for support, though it was entirely unnecessary. As her muscles warmed up, they were gaining agility. But she limped on for show.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“I don’t know about you,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper, “but I need to freshen up at the river.”

Libra stuck his nose in the air and sniffed around like an alphacat sensing wounded prey. He dipped his head closer, closer, until she felt his cheek against her hair.

“Yeah, I was wondering about that rank smell.” He squeezed her side as his words flowed dangerously close to her ear.

“It’s you, actually.” She tried to match his playful tone but her voice came out dry, breathy.

“Oh yeah? That intoxicating manly scent is me? You must be ready to swoon.”

“I’m practically drunk on it.”

Flirty banter?
She had never done flirty banter. This type of behavior usually made Cleo roll her eyes in disgust.

“Well, try not to fall in the river in your state of inebriation.”

Cleo giggled—spontaneous and careless, and maybe a wee bit silly. And it felt good. “Will you pull me out if I do?”

“Sorry, darlin’,” he chuckled. His breath fanned the hair at her temple, re-igniting the weird pulling feeling in her lower abdomen. “But you’ve spent your get-out-of-the-water-free card.”

“I only get one?”

“Just one. You’ll have to pick another life-threatening situation next time you want my help. But be original—volcano, quicksand, giant mutant snake.” He grunted like a caveman. “Something challenging. Give me a chance to show off my bad-ass manliness.”

“Other than your smell?”

He threw his head back and laughed, rich and low, sending a tingle through her that ended in a smile of girlish delight.

Truth be told, he smelled delicious, like a late-summer breeze mixed with pine, citrus, and a whiff of wood smoke. She wanted to bury her face in his chest, fill her nostrils until his scent was burned into her membranes.

Don’t trust outsiders.

Her father’s voice hummed in her head, though not as loud, not as urgent as before.

“How about an alphacat attack?” she suggested.

“That’s woman’s work.”

Cleo slapped him with an open-hand to the middle of his rock-hard abdomen and instantly regretted it. His skin was hot, too hot. He’d burned her palm, she was sure of it. She swallowed and cleared her throat. Her eyes flitted up to his profile. “So you’re up for a real challenge, something to get the adrenaline pumping?”

He glanced down. “Bring it on, darlin’,” he growled.

For the first time in her life, Cleo wished she’d brushed her hair. Damn, she didn’t know she was even capable of such nauseating girliness.

Way to crush on the enemy. Shake it off, damn it. Shake it off!

She didn’t want to.

She should run, fast, in the opposite direction. Instead, she looked up from underneath her lashes and beamed.

They’d made it to the edge of the riverbank, downstream from the falls. He released his hold, the playfulness gone from his eyes. “I was thinking… Maybe I’ll hang around here for one more day.”

Yes, yes, please do, but no, that would ruin everything! Oh, for the love of skunks
. She swallowed her impatience before answering, “Oh, really? Why?”

“I’d feel bad leaving you.” He glanced down at her leg. “Despite that thing with the cat, you’re still shaky. I just wouldn’t feel right.”

Way to undermine the plan, girly-girl.

“I’ll be fine,” she began, but when he reached up and swept a thumb across the top edge of her cheekbone, the rest of her argument lodged in her throat.

“This bruise here looks much better.” His voice, as tender as his touch, turned her knees to water. “Still a bit yellow around the edges, but the purple has faded into a lovely shade of green.”

She wanted to turn her face into his palm and nuzzle it. Their eyes met, and Cleo felt as if she were looking directly into his soul. She saw integrity and loyalty, but she also saw shadows and pain and…something else, something dark. She wanted to avert her eyes to get away from whatever blackness haunted him, but she couldn’t. He held her as if by spell.

His gaze shifted to the ragged pink line in the hollow of her cheek and his expression became shuttered. “What beast left this mark?”

She pushed his hand away and palmed the hideous scar. She pivoted toward the river. “Doesn’t matter. It’s old.” Limping, she made it to the water’s edge.

“It doesn’t matter… Doesn’t make you any less…beautiful.”

His voice dropped on the last word, as if he forced it out.

“Scars aren’t beautiful. They’re nothing but reminders of past hurts.”

The air felt thicker and she waited for a breeze to dry the moisture that beaded on her forehead.

“I’ll go downstream a bit, give you some privacy,” he said.

She listened to his steps crunch in the pebbles.

“Unless you need help?” he asked suggestively.

Her mouth softened and she cocked her head in his direction. “I’ll be fine. Give me fifteen.”

Cleo started mentally berating herself before he’d left her line of sight. He was getting to her with that charming
I care
act. And she was silly enough to be letting him.

But he called me beautiful.

With a series of frustrated tugs, she liberated herself from her leathers. In hindsight, playing up her limp was a spectacularly stupid move. Cleo couldn’t catch one bit of luck on this fool’s quest.

No use hesitating at the water’s edge; it would be frigid, and she knew it. Three quick steps, she figured, would take her knee-deep. But one step in, the water barely at her ankle, and a rush of panic, bone-deep clawing fear, struck her. Cleo had been a swimmer her entire life, a strong one at that, but suddenly the thought of submerging into the very substance that almost killed her had her paralyzed with fright.

For the love of ducks, it’s only water!

Hesitantly, she took another step. A gasp caught in her throat. Her chest felt squeezed, making it impossible to inhale. She focused on the smooth pebbles that surrounded her toes and tried to calm herself.

She counted to ten, then twenty, until her breathing returned to normal, until the phantom taste of river mud left her mouth, and took another step forward. The water sluiced around her calf, pulling at her. Her heart raced. She paused to wipe the dampness from her upper lip.

I can’t do it.

I
can
do it. I
can
do it, damn it. I
will
do it.

Cleo managed another step, bringing the water level to her knees. Again, she counted to ten, then twenty.

Come on! Don’t be a ninny.