Surrender (22 page)

“Jag! Jag, I’m so sorry.”

He sat up slowly, and I brushed the sand off his face and back.

“I don’t know why I keep comin’ back for more,” he said, his voice thick and slow. “You’re gonna kill me one day.”

I laughed. It came out shaky and much louder than necessary.

“That wasn’t a joke.”

“You shouldn’t sneak up on people in the dark,” I said, my attitude resurfacing.

“I thought you’d sense me.”

“I did, but I didn’t know it was you, I swear.”

“I thought we had, well . . .” He trailed off and stood up.

“We had what?”

He wouldn’t look at me, not that I could have seen his expression in the dark. “Nothing.” He threw the word over his shoulder as he stalked away.

I expected him to be mad. I didn’t know it wouldn’t be about getting tased.

As I followed him back to the fire, I came to the conclusion that boys are impossible to figure out. It seemed like everything I said or did was wrong.

Which reminded me of my mother. Nothing I did was ever good enough for her either.

Jag stood in front of Baldie, taking in the scene around the fire. “You did this? By yourself?” He looked at me and cocked one eyebrow.

I shrugged and rummaged through a backpack. I found a length of orange rope. When I turned, Jag was rifling through their food and supplies. I moved to tie up the fallen Greenies.

“Leave them,” Jag said. “We’re not staying.”

“What?” I asked, looking behind him where he’d put Baldie to sleep.

“Night is the best time to travel,” he said, dumping the contents of a backpack onto the ground. He threw two teleporter rings into the fire before gathering the rest of the tech and protein packets.

“Hey, those are teleporter rings,” I said. I still had Baldie’s in my pocket.

He looked up. “We’re walking. Seaside doesn’t allow unauthorized teleportation, and we don’t have time to contact the right people. Hell, I don’t even know who the right people are.” He straightened and shouldered his bag.

“You said we could sleep,” I complained, annoyed that I sounded like a three-year-old who wanted a sweet.

“We can,” he said, not bothering to look at me. “Later. It’ll take several days to get to Seaside on foot. We’ll have plenty of time to sleep.”

I wanted to scream, tell him how unfair he was. I wanted to tell him I hated him, but my voice wouldn’t allow the words to be spoken.

“You wouldn’t mean it anyway, Vi.” He spoke in his
tell-me-everything
voice and stepped toward me slowly, his eyes trained on mine.

Refusing to let him see me cry, I picked up my backpack and left.

Using the GPS on the phone, I found west and walked along the bank of the stream. I heard him behind me, but I didn’t wait because I didn’t care.

Jag caught up and fell into step beside me. He walked close enough to hold hands and far enough away that words could never repair the damage we’d done to each other.

We came to the edge of the ravine, and Jag said, “After you.”

Yeah, thanks,
I thought, eyeing the barely there land bridge with only darkness underneath. We’d have to go one at a time. Across the gorge lay the jagged landscape of the demilitarized zone.

My legs felt waterlogged as I shuffled along the narrow path, and when I reached the other side, I hurried behind an outcropping of rock.
Let’s see how Jag likes it when he’s left behind.

Rage simmered in my veins as I chose random paths that seemed like they’d take me farther west. I couldn’t trust anything that came out of his mouth. He’d said he’d help me, but
he hadn’t. He blamed me for the sticker and the tag and who knows what else. When he told me he loved me, he’d probably been lying about that too.

That hurt. A lot. Because, yeah, I’m a liar too, but about that, I hadn’t. I really loved that stupid Jag Barque.

But what about my dad, with all his aliases—did I still love him? I didn’t know. Blood was thicker than water, right? But was blood thicker than love? Than choice? Than freedom?

I reran my dad’s speech at the facility through my head. Maybe he was right. Maybe people do need someone to keep them in line.

The images from primary school repeated in my head. Elderly people living in the streets.

The bones of children practically popping through their skin because they didn’t have enough to eat.

The hollow, worn-out faces of those who had no one to take care of them.

The Association of Directors had fixed all that. Would it be so horrible to use my control to make sure our society didn’t lapse back into poverty, ruin, and starvation?

It seemed like an easy choice. It wasn’t.

Just as I forced one foot in front of the other, I forced the disturbing thoughts out of my head, fumbling for one good memory.

I remembered my tenth birthday, when Ty made me a pink birthday cake with purple frosting. My mother was angry because Ty used her last ration of cherries to tint the cake batter.

But Ty didn’t get punished. My mother adored her, and Ty showed her how the cake had risen perfectly. My mother smiled and got out the replicator to take the only picture I had of any of my birthdays. And I wasn’t even in it.

When the sun started to rise, I looked behind me for Jag. Most of me wanted to see him, following me to make sure I was okay—or at least headed in the right direction. But a tiny part didn’t want to find him. That part needed more than a night to reason through the confusing mess of good and bad and free and safe and betrayal and love.

He emerged like a dark shadow from the awakening sky. “You hungry?” he asked, spitting out the words like it was my fault hunger existed.

My stomach roared. “No,” I lied, barely forming the word in my dry throat.

“Come on, Vi—”

“I don’t need your help.”

“I have protein packets.”

Ignoring him—and the protests of my belly—I found a cave amidst the rocky landscape big enough to lie down in.

I did not need Jag Barque to survive.

I couldn’t sleep with all the growling in my gut. Just when I’d drift off, my insides ached as if they were about to collapse.

I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I sat up, feeling weak. I had to eat. Across from me, Jag slept. I slipped over the rocky surface, cringing when the grating sounds of my movement echoed off the cave walls.

Jag’s backpack unzipped easily, quietly. The silver protein packets glinted underneath the orange rope. I reached for them, cursing silently when they slid further into the pack.

I had just managed to trap a packet between my fingers when Jag muttered in his sleep. I jumped and backpedaled away. The lines on his face smoothed as he settled back into
his dream. I wondered which one it was this time. Part of me longed to be asleep so I could experience his memories with him. Another part hated that I could enter his mind at all. And still another part wanted nothing more than to eat. Now.

Tucking the lone protein packet in my back pocket, I pulled on my backpack and stumbled in the direction of the river. I twisted through the canyon down to the water’s edge. My head felt detached and everything was turning white.

I drank greedily, not caring that the water needed to be purified. A few brush trees and scraggly bushes grew nearby, but nothing like the bulbs I’d eaten in the Badlands. I dumped out the contents of my first aid kit so I could mix the protein packet. Nothing had ever tasted so good as that putrid drink.

But I was still starving. One packet wasn’t going to sustain me for very long.

I dug through the clothes and tech supplies, laying them on the ground to see them better. The three tech-phones were incapable of making food. That seemed like a good feature to have. The stupid phone could do everything else.

I had a dozen bio-cylinders. Two round platters lay next to them. After picking one up, I felt the tech twitch inside the sliver of metal. My fingers shook at the same time.

The now-familiar insignia of the two square knots snaking around each other adorned the back. Maybe this was another
weapon. Maybe you could throw it and it would grow nasty edges and cut enemies down. Who knew?

Jag, probably.

I pushed the plates away along with the annoying thought of Jag. I turned my attention to the two cubes of pure silver. They didn’t bear the double square knot. I picked one up and the techtricity infiltrated my mind, almost whispering instructions. I pressed with my thumb on one side and my forefinger on the other.

The cube shook and started to unfold. I dropped it and watched as it flopped into a square big enough to stand on. I didn’t think it was a teleporter pad, though it looked like one.

The tray looked familiar . . . like the one my hot chocolate had arrived on at the tech facility.

“Pink birthday cake with purple frosting,” I said. It appeared on the square. I smiled, picked it up, and stuffed it in my mouth.

“Happy Birthday to me,” I sang softly to myself. “Scalloped potatoes.” A large plate of potatoes and onions with cheese sauce appeared. I ate it in about two minutes even though it burned my mouth.

“Milk,” I said next, but the square remained empty. “Fine. Whole milk.” With the clarification, a large glass of creamy white milk appeared. Nothing had ever tasted so good as that milk.

I sighed happily and wiped my mouth. A flicker of light beamed in my mind, a signal that someone with power was drawing near. I started stuffing everything back into the pack.

I glanced behind me to the path through the canyon—the only way out. Pulling on my pack, I ran parallel to the river, toward the safety of a small cluster of rocks. Just as I crouched behind them, Jag emerged from the canyon and crossed to the water. He bent down and drank from the stream.

Then he moved toward me slowly, his eyes trained on the ground. He stopped in the exact spot I’d been eating my solitary birthday meal. Today was his birthday too. I wondered if he felt as alone as I did, if he also longed to have a party with his sister—the way it should have been.

“I don’t have a sister,” he whispered. I hadn’t seen him approach. Hadn’t heard him, he was just suddenly there. “I only want you.”

The stupid tears pricked the back of my throat. When had I become such a baby? Anyway, now I knew why I hadn’t seen him: everything swam in my vision, including his perfect smile and caring eyes. But he wouldn’t trick me again.

“Liar.” I pushed past him and retraced my steps to the cave. Jag followed me, and I knew him, felt him, almost became one with him. Not in a physical way, but emotional.

Our connection.
This was what he thought I should have sensed last night before tasing him.

“Vi, wait,” he called.

I paused just outside the cave, the swirl of emotions threatening to engulf me.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Whatever.”

“Why are you so mad?”

“Why am I so mad?
Why am I—?
Look, if you don’t know, I’m not going to fill you in.”

“Because I said we couldn’t sleep?”

“Because of everything! You act like it’s no big deal to raid my thoughts. You think I’m something special, but you don’t tell me anything. You say you love me, but you don’t trust me.” I paused, not wanting to get too carried away and spill everything I’d been hiding from him.

His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. There’s so much I want to tell you, but I need you to make your own decisions.”

I put one hand on my hip. “Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night, Barque.” I turned toward the cave.

He touched my shoulder. “I don’t want to influence you with my voice.”

Damn him. He always
always
knew the perfect thing to say. I adjusted my backpack and lay down. He climbed into
the cavity with me, and I was crying (yeah, again) before his strong arms encircled me and his velvety voice whispered in my ear.

“Shh, I love you. Happy birthday, babe.” He could influence me with that voice any day. “And I can’t hear your thoughts. Just what you feel. I didn’t know what your plan was, just that it felt good, it felt like it—whatever it was—would work.”

“What plan?”

Jag chuckled, and the tension between us disappeared. I lay in his arms, finally feeling safe. I shivered and he pulled me closer, only for me to push him away a few minutes later when I got too hot.

Finally, when I’d kept us both awake for an hour, he got up and retrieved the ointment from his first aid kit.

“Take off that shirt,” he said. “I mean, if you want my help.”

“Shut up. I won’t die from a sunburn.” At least I thought I wouldn’t. I’d always been told there was nothing worse than a sunburn, but now that I’d seen so many Baddies, I wasn’t so sure.

“Okay, then.” He lay back down, stretching his hands behind his head and studying the ceiling of the cave like it held the secret to living an uncontrolled life.

“But I—want your help.”

He grinned as he sat up. “Take off your shirt.”

I peeled off the prison shirt. Because of the tee I still wore, only my arms glowed pink. But, damn, they hurt.

“No wonder you can’t sleep.” He gently rubbed the cream into my arms, neck, and face.

I flinched. “Cold,” I murmured.

When he finished, he helped me put the long-sleeved shirt back on. “You’ll have to get it wet to take it off, okay? Don’t rip it. It’ll hurt.”

I nodded, so tired I couldn’t speak. I simply curled into his embrace again, wishing sleep would take me so I wouldn’t have to think anymore.

“Vi?”

“Hmm?”

“Will your dad give up?”

I didn’t answer right away, even though I knew. Surely Jag knew too. He’d obviously had more experience with my dad—with Thane—than I had. Just as I was about to answer, Jag said, “I’ll protect you. I promise.”

Yeah, he knew. And I did too.

My dad was not the giving-up type.

I settle into my desk chair and cross my legs. I can’t decide if I want to hear what he has to say. I sigh. “Bring him in.”

Zenn comes through the door, shrugging off the hands of his escorts. “Get off me.” He strides forward, his eyes locked on mine. “Jag, man, come on. What’s with the royal treatment?”