Steel Lily ARC (33 page)

Jaxon had a flashlight.

“You waited until
now
to use a flashlight?”

Jaxon slid down a nearby wall and put the light between his knees. He closed his eyes, and I realized how badly injured he was. Gashes lined his right cheekbone and flesh hung awkwardly from his left shoulder, the blood staining his shirt as it pulsed out of his body and into the fabric. “We were running for our lives, but I apologize for withholding information. I’ll be sure to give you a detailed inventory of everything on my person the next time we’re thrust into a life and death situation.”

He was sarcastic even on his deathbed.

I crawled next to him and pulled off what was left of my tattered jacket to make a tourniquet. There was a reverberating crash and then the room trembled, cement raining down from above.

“The top floor is collapsing,” Jaxon breathed. “We’ve got to get into the tunnel.”

I worked quickly to try to stop the bleeding. Jaxon winced when I pressed the sleeve to the gouge in his shoulder, and I gagged a little when I felt the squelching of marred flesh under my fingertips.

I asked questions to distract myself from the task at hand. “What tunnel? And how do you know what’s going on?”

He pointed weakly with the flashlight across the room, the beam bouncing in his unsteady hand. The light glanced off a small hole that looked like it had been dug out with bare hands. It would be a tight fit for us.

The idea of crawling into such a small hole made me claustrophobic. “You want me to go in there?”

“The tunnel’s only small for a short while, then it opens up. I promise.” He coughed and spit out a tooth. “The other option is that we stay here and get crushed by rebar and concrete. Take your pick.”

It wasn’t much of a choice. I helped him to his feet and we made it across the room as fast as our mangled bodies would allow. Jaxon fell to his feet and crawled in first, dragging his right foot. It might have been broken, but I wouldn’t be able to tell until we had more light.

I followed the meager light and listened to Jaxon shuffle ahead as I heard booms, crashes, and explosions on the ground above us. I wondered how long we had until everything collapsed on top of us, but it never did. After descending farther, the tunnel gave way to a wide room that was simple concrete, as Jaxon promised.

When we emerged into the more spacious room, Jaxon collapsed to the ground. I propped him up in the corner, and he laughed.

I shook him gently. “I have no idea what could be funny in this situation.”

“I never imagined I’d finally meet someone I cared about, only to die with them not three hours after I admitted it,” he said, his voice uneven and raspy. “It seems ironic, don’t you think?”

He pointed to the thick center beam with the flashlight. “There’s a gas lamp there. It’ll give us light for a while.”

I crouched and walked to the beam under the weak direction of Jaxon’s flickering flashlight. The lamp was there as he’d said it would be, and I fumbled to get it going. After a few moments, flames burst to life.

I brought the lamp back to Jaxon’s corner, sat it down next to us and curled into his good arm. He sighed.

“We’ll be okay,” he muttered weakly. “This tunnel leads to Xander’s office. We need to rest and wait out the rest of the onslaught.”

“What else is coming?”

“Loads worse,” Jaxon said as he winced from repositioning. “I didn’t put it together until everything started coming down on us, but Riggs said that the dome was protected from intruders. He talked about all the precautions in place, and I know that the alarm, fire rain, and tornado were some of them. He never told me exactly what else there was, but he made it clear the closer the attackers got to the Academy, the worse the attack would become. Sari programmed the onslaught.” He leaned his head against the cold wall, closed his eyes and let out a hollow sigh. “I think we’re okay down here. We just need to hunker down. I need to sleep.”

“Jax, I don’t think you’re supposed to sleep after a concussion—”

A smile lit his face for a moment before it was replaced by pain. “You called me Jax.”

“I don’t think it really matters at the moment—”

He wrapped his arm around me with a little more force, but it was still weak. “But you called me Jax. That means I’m your friend.”

I leaned my head carefully against his shoulder, afraid to hurt him. “Of course I’m your friend,” I laughed, trying to make light of the situation we were in. “Do you think I go around kissing complete strangers?”

“Girl like you? I’d believe it. You must be made of steel to survive on your own all these years. Doesn’t seem like kissing guys would be that hard for you if you can control the elements.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“I’ve been through a major trauma, Avery. Give me some slack. I don’t have to make sense.”

I didn’t fight him any more. Instead, I turned off the flashlight and let the flickering light of the gas lamp illuminate our tiny grotto.

So much for our big date. I’d never been on one, but I was confident that they didn’t usually include fire raining down, tornadoes, explosions, or any other malevolent force trying to sully the night.

Maybe I could get a rain check. If we survived, that was.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

I awoke to the sound of feet shuffling across the cement. Afraid to move, I cracked one eye to see if I could make out the shape in the blurred glow of the gas light.

“I know you’re awake, Avery,” Jaxon said, his voice tired. “You got still, and for the past hour you thrashed like a wild woman and talked in your sleep.”

I looked for the source of his voice. He was sitting at the center beam, his arms wrapped around his knees and head resting against his legs. He smiled weakly when I caught his gaze.

“There you are.”

“I talked in my sleep?”

“Yep. About me, of course. How stunning I was and that you wanted to kiss me forever if we survive this hellhole.”

“I think you were dreaming,” I said with a laugh, but then cut it off when the motion sent a stab of pain through my ribs. “How are you feeling?”

“Like the luckiest man alive. Who doesn’t want to feel like a bus ran them over, then put it in reverse to get in an extra swipe?”

“Will you ever take a day off of the sarcasm?”

“Probably when I’m dead, although I’m sure I’ll find a way to get in a comment or two beyond the grave.” He picked up the fading gas light and shook it a little. “We’re on our last leg with this thing.”

I moved over to him and stole a glance at him from the corner of my eye.

He was looking at me. “I suppose you deserve some answers on what just happened.”

I shrugged. “That’s your call. I’m all ears if you have them.”

He nodded pensively, and licked his dry lips. We needed water; we were exhausted and hadn’t eaten since—how long had it been?—it was impossible to know while underground. Even the scent of the damp earth and cement made me thirsty.

He pushed his dreadlocks out of his face, and even in this low light, I could see the sheen of sweat on his brow. “Riggs is my father. You know that,” he said quietly, “but what you don’t know is that he wasn’t always this weirdo he is now. He was normal. Even now, I see glimpses of it once in a while, but it always gets squashed.”

Jaxon looked down at the ground and studied the flickering shadows cast by his hand as he turned it over in front of the flame.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Jax.”

He smiled. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Call me Jaxon. I like the way it sounds when you say it.”

“Does that mean we’re not friends?”

“No,” the kindness in his voice suited him much better than the bitterness he so often hid behind. “It means we’re more than friends. No one calls me Jaxon, but when you say it…” he trailed off. “Well, it makes me feel better.”

I considered his words. “Jaxon.” I said it with new reverence.

He smiled as he put his hand on mine. “Xander has kind of taken care of me. After every test, Xander was the one who consoled me. He hated having to administer the tests, but he said my father was insistent that it be me. That it would build my character if nothing else. Xander sat beside me at night while I had nightmares, and he was the one that would wake me up when they became too much to bear. You asked why my last name was Pierce. My mother and father were happy together when I was little, but my older brother—the one you met in the medical ward—was their breaking point. When he went missing in the war, my mom lost it. She left Riggs, blaming him for pushing my brother to join the cause. They searched endlessly for him to no avail, and one day my mom had enough. She left. I haven’t seen her since. I don’t even know if she’s alive. That was when Riggs went off the deep end. It was like a light switch was flipped. He said there was nothing to gain from fighting against the Resistance, and that we were fools to think so.”

I sucked in a breath. Jaxon had seen so much, endured so much, that I could understand why his bitterness lingered like a persistent raincloud. I squeezed his hand and he began again.

“Pierce was my mother’s maiden name. When she left him, I didn’t want to have any connection to Riggs. I took it as my own and Riggs didn’t fight me. And then I met your parents.” he said with a deep sigh. “Riggs brought them in, and I didn’t know there was a correlation between you and them until I was told to pick you up. They talked about you, but they never said your name, only that they had a little girl before being captured. Your mother was positive that you were alive. Your father…well, he wasn’t as optimistic. Still, your parents put pictures of you in their small room, keeping you close to their hearts. They told me about their lives in Dome Four and then I saw what your mother could do.”

I sucked in a breath, entranced by the story he told. “Is she powerful? She’s only taught me simple things this past week.”

Jaxon nodded. “She’s an incredible force. More than that, she became a source of comfort for me, and I trust her implicitly. When they lost rations for insubordination, I scavenged the supermarkets for food for them. Got me in trouble, but I didn’t care.”

“You have supermarkets here?” I asked in wonder. “It didn’t seem like there was anything out in the rest of the dome.”

“There’s no
people
in the rest of the dome,” Jaxon corrected. “There’s plenty of stuff left behind. Computers, non-perishable food, clothes.”

“You said my parents were insubordinate?”

“They refused to help Riggs in his experiments. He wanted your mother to help him find a way to make everyone like you two, and she fought him as hard as possible. Your father is a Traditional, so there isn’t much use for him in Riggs’s eyes, but he also knows if he ever did anything to your father, your mother would never help again. She’s made that clear.”

I shuddered at the thought.

Jaxon wrapped his arms around me and breathed deeply. “If I had known it was you that I was bringing here, I’d have refused. You should have the opportunity to get to know your parents, but the cost of being here is too great. We’ll get them out and you can have the family you deserve.”

“You deserve that, too.”

He sighed. “I’m happy knowing that you know me, and I have Xander.”

“Why don’t we bring him with us?”

“I’ve asked him that before,” Jaxon said thoughtfully, “but he’s got a tracker. He wouldn’t risk us that way.”

“Then how are we going to get Alice out?”

Jaxon pulled back so I could see him clearly. His face was grim. “We’re going to have to cut it out of her.”

I swallowed the bile in my throat and clenched Jaxon’s hand. “That’s going to hurt, isn’t it? Why couldn’t we cut Xander’s out, too?”

“It’ll hurt like hell. I cut my own out when they tried to track me. That’s when Riggs gave me a longer leash. It took thirty stitches to bind the wound. As for Xander, his isn’t in the crook of his arm like the rest of us. It’s in his heart. If we tried to cut it out, we’d kill him. He’s stuck here.”

I grimaced, but Jaxon put a hand on the side of my face. “I didn’t say this would be easy, just that it would be worth it. Can you have your things ready to go quick? I have a feeling that our welcoming party isn’t going to be a pleasant one, and you may have to plan the escape on your own.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll say I took you. Blame it on me, and get yourself as prepared as possible. If you can, get the word to Sari to get Alice and your parents ready. Maybe Kloey will help, but I wouldn’t count on it since her boy toy is in Rigg’s palm.”

I struggled to remember who was who from breakfast. It seemed so long ago. “Which one was Kloey dating? Asher?”

“No, Evan.”

“And they’re twins, right? How am I supposed to know which one is Evan?”

He shook his head. “You know what? Forget it. Just get our group ready. You, your parents, Sari, Alice, Gimpalicious. If I can round up the others, I will. If not…we’ll figure something else out. We don’t have time to waste,” Jaxon said as though he were talking to himself. “Our numbers aren’t great, but we can pull it off. Plus I have an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“I know of a tunnel that runs out of here and into other domes.”

I gasped. “Then why haven’t we used it?”

“Because the oxygen level can be controlled. It makes the dome impossible to leave without permission, except for me. We’d have to make sure that everyone had masks.”

He stood as best he could and pulled me up. “We’re going to be heading to the slaughter no matter what plan of escape we use. You need to know that. Our chances aren’t good, but there has to be another way to live than this. If there’s not, well, it’s not a world I want to live in anyway.”

Jaxon pointed to the tunnel that led back to the academy. “You going to be okay?”

“Yes,” I said confidently as I grabbed Jaxon’s hand. I clenched my free hand into a fist and focused completely on fire. When I opened my palm, a small flame danced there, but didn’t burn. Instead, it felt like the fluttering of a feather against my skin. “I’ll follow you into the dark and we’ll make our own light.”