The Pulse Series (Book 1): Pulse (27 page)

"First thing's first. We need to get back to our room before sunrise."

Sarah looked out the window. "It doesn't look like we have much time."

I nodded and the two of us made our way out of the room. We kept to the shadows and took it slow, but there was no-one out at this time of the morning. In no time at all we were opening the door to the barracks and making our way inside.

"Where have you two been."

I looked up and saw Jane standing in the middle of the common room. She was glaring at me, and her lip was twisted in confusion.

"Early morning training," I said with a shrug.

Jane looked down at my legs and smirked. "Looks like you need it."

I looked down to see a trail of blood leading from my knees to my socks. I hadn't even noticed they were bleeding. I ignored Jane and made my way toward our room. Sarah was right behind me. When we got inside she paused.

"Give me a minute," she said, before rushing out of the room.

I sighed and shrugged off my backpack, letting it fall to the floor. After a few seconds of standing I went over to sit to wait for her. I felt myself relax. For the first time in several hours I had more than a second to think. I felt tears come to my eyes as the weight of everything I had learned that night came crashing down on me. Everything I thought I had known about the military had been turned on its head.

Sarah came back in through the door holding a damp towel and some bandages. I winced as she cleaned up my knees, but once the blood was gone we could see it was just some grazing. I wouldn't need the bandages.

"What are we going to do?"

I frowned down at Sarah, who hadn't gotten up from her place on the floor. "I don't know, but I know I can't stay here anymore."

Sarah nodded and sighed. "Do you think the General knows what's going on?"

I frowned at the thought. "I don't know, but I doubt it. It doesn't seem like his style, and those two last night were trying pretty hard to keep it a secret."

Sarah nodded. "Yeah I guess you're right. Do you think… I don't know, should we tell him?"

I shrugged. "If he does know, we'd just be writing our own death sentence." I paused at that, realizing that I wasn't over exaggerating. Would would be put in the same place where we had just seen Justin. I shivered at the memory of his body slumped on the floor. I swallowed hard to prevent myself from breaking down. This wasn't the time for it.

A knock at the door startled me out of my thoughts. The sun was now coming through the window, so others must have been awake. I had no idea why anyone would want to see us this early in the morning though. I stepped up to open the door and found Bradley standing outside our room. His eyes scanned over me, and he frowned at my knees, but didn't say anything before looking back up at me.

"What's up, Bradley?" I asked.

He cleared his throat and stood to attention. "Alex, I've received orders. You're to report to General Walker immediately."

THIRTY-FOUR

The general was sitting behind his desk as usual, but he didn't look his usual self. His hair was a little ruffled, and his top button was undone, something I'd never seen of him before. His desk was also in an unusual state of disarray, with many papers covering it. I stood in the middle of his office at attention until he gestured for me to sit down.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" I said, taking my seat.

The general nodded. "Yes, yes. I must apologize for the mess. I was up late last night due to an incident."

I swallowed hard. "Incident, sir?"

The general looked up at me and blinked, as if seeing me for the first time. "Yes, sorry, but that has nothing to do with you. I received some news today from the outside world, and I thought it best to share it with you right away. I hope I've not troubled you at all."

Relief flooded through me, and that was soon replaced with confusion. "No trouble at all, sir. What has occurred?"

The general grimaced rubbed the back of his neck. "I suppose you're aware of the award ceremony later this week?"

I nodded. The ceremony was put in place to celebrate the graduation of the pulser who would be leaving training for deployment in the real world. They also celebrated the end of exams and their results results, something which I had no interest in celebrating this year.

"What you probably don't know is that we sometimes get family members of people to come for the events. They can't wander around the grounds of course, but they usually attend a small private meal with myself and some of the recruits. It's a way of helping people see that we don't want to break up their families, even though we've taken their children away."

I felt sick again as I thought of Justin. There would be a family wondering what happened to him. I doubted they would ever find out what. I realized I was frowning, and widened my eyes to make it look like I was confused—which wasn't much of a stretch.

"I understand, sir, but what does this have to do with me?"

General Walker looked up at me with a grim expression. "I sent out a request for your mother to join us."

I froze for a few seconds, before letting out a snort of laughter. This devolved into giggles, which soon spread to quiet laughter. "You mustn't know much about my relationship with her if you'd have thought she would've wanted to come here to see me."

"I did, actually, but that isn't the point. Your mother… she passed away, Alex. She's dead."

I stopped laughing. My mind went blank. I let it sink in.

My mother was dead. Is dead.

I wasn't sure what to think. For once my mind was empty. I didn't know what I should feel. On the one hand I had left her. She was nothing to me, and I had cut myself loose of her even before I was brought to the military. She was just another person in the grand scheme of things.

On the other hand she was my mother. She was the woman who had carried me, and birthed me, and—in her own way—raised me. The first few years of my life she did take care of me. Kept me out of harms way. Before the drugs took over, she did okay by me.

I wasn't sad. I didn't feel sad. So why was my vision blurry? I opened my mouth to say something to the general, but all that came out was a choked gasping noise. I felt my chest shudder and all of a sudden I was crying. I didn't understand why I was crying if I didn't feel anything, but all the same I couldn't make the tears stop.

At some point I realized I must have been making a fool of myself, and was about to apologize to the general, when I felt his arms wrap around me. I blinked and looked up into the eyes of this great man. They were filled with worry and sadness. I lost myself, and buried my face into his chest as I cried. I wasn't sure how long he stood there, holding me and letting me cry, but it felt like a long time. When I pulled back I saw a wet patch on his shirt where my face had just been.

I looked up at him as he released me from his grip. "I'm sorry."

He gave me a small smile. "No need to be sorry, child. You have every right to grieve—no matter the relationship you had with her."

I sighed and looked to the floor. "To be honest I'm not sure how I feel."

The general nodded and sat back in the chair next to mine. "That happens sometimes. Sometimes it will hit you like a tonne of bricks, and you feel like you won't even be able to walk again, but other times it's like nothing at all. Like it's not real, or you're not sure how to feel. It's harder with people who you're meant to love."

I looked up at him. He knew. He knew exactly how it felt. I swallowed to clear my throat. "Who?"

"My father." The general looked past me and out his window over the grounds. He didn't seem to focus instead on anything in particular. "He would beat me as a child. I hated that man with every fib re of my being. The moment I hit seventeen I ran to join the military." He shook his head and sighed. "But the day I found out he died…"

The two of us sat in silence. We didn't need to talk. It was easier not to. I couldn't get the thick feeling out of my throat, no matter how much I swallowed.

"Does it ever get easier?"

He snorted a laugh. "Yes and no. The pain fades, bit by bit. The memories remain though." He looked up at me, his face serious. "Try to hold on to the good memories, no matter how small. You will spend your time focusing on the bad. Things you could've done differently, things you would have said to them. A few years of that and there will be none of the good left. Try to let that stuff go, and focus on the parts you want to remember. Those are the parts that deserve our memories."

I smiled up at him. I still wasn't sure how to feel about my mother, but I welcomed his advice all the same. "You've experienced a lot of death, haven't you?"

The moment I asked the question I knew how stupid it was, but he smiled and answered me anyway. "Death is part of what we are. It's part of what we need to do. We bring death to others, even if we don't mean to. We cheat death with all of our skills. The military is death." He turned to me, a fire in his eye. "But it is also life. It is life for those who cannot defend themselves. It is life for those of us who wish to make a difference."

I felt my smile slip. I wished I could believe him, but after the past twenty-four hours I didn't know if I could any more. The experiments underneath this facility aside, which I was sure now the general had no idea of, I didn't know if I could stomach what was being done to the people out there.

Could I?

This man could. He was the strongest person I had ever met, and he wouldn't let anything in his way stop him from achieving his goals. Perhaps my view was just narrower. I had dreams of freedom, and how the military was taking away that from people, but hadn't I experienced first hand what true freedom brought? It was chaos. Uncontrolled chaos. It was the depth of humanity. The general had years of experience that I didn't. He was around when the term 'superpower' had nothing to do with mystical abilities. Things I had only read about he had lived through. How could I challenge this man's choices?

It was at that moment I knew I was going to tell him everything. That I was the one who broke into the library the night before. I didn't care about the consequence. I cared about the truth, and making sure that this man could do something about it. He had the power. He would know what to do. I looked up to see him chuckling to himself.

"What?" I said.

The general smiled. "I'm just thinking of some of the ways I dealt with death to perhaps try to help you get through this. Some of them were… ill advised."

I never got to see him this candid, so I didn't want to interrupt. "Ill advised?"

"Well there was one bout of short leave down in Tijuana that I won't be telling you the full story of until you're old enough to hear it, but I did my fair share of stupid things on that trip that are worth mentioning. Got a tattoo, drunk enough alcohol to sink a ship, tipped over the bike of some Mexican biker gang. Lost three teeth in that fight. The worst though was when I got back from leave." He looked around as if to make sure that no-one was listening. "I punched my commanding officer."

My mouth dropped open, which must have been the reaction he was expecting, because he burst out laughing. He lifted his hands in mock surrender. "I know, I know. I did some dumb stuff."

I laughed with him and shook my head. It was good to see he was also human. I was about to ask him more about what happened, when a part of his story gave me pause.

"You have a tattoo?"

His smile took on a softer tone. "That's one of those that I don't regret as much. It's just a silly thing, but it helps me remember those times. I'll show you."

I smiled as he reached down to his left wrist and started to unbutton his sleeve. As he started folding his shirt sleeve up the smile started to melt off my face. No. Stop. I needed him to stop. This couldn't happen. This wasn't happening.

I watched as he pulled back his sleeve to reveal the small black band that encircled his upper arm. I felt myself start to shake, and gripped the chair I was sitting on to try to prevent it showing.

He was the monster.

It felt like I'd been hit in the stomach with a baseball bat, but somehow I managed to not let it show. It felt like someone else was controlling my body as a smile made it's way onto my face.

"What does it mean?" I felt myself ask.

"It's just a reminder of what I lost, and how much I've changed since." The general smiled down at me and pulled his sleeve back down. "It's a good way to keep things in perspective."

My smile stuck on my face, and I felt like it was starting to look more like a grimace. I coughed and looked away from him.

"With your permission, sir, could I head back to the barracks? I have a lot to think about."

"Of course, child."

I stood from my chair at the same time he did. The man towered over me, and it took all my control not to fall to the floor right there, but I managed to keep my legs. He saluted me, which my body reflected back to him, and then I turned to leave. I was reaching out of the door when I felt his hand on my shoulder, causing a jolt of fear to run through me. I froze on the spot.

"If you ever need anything, Alex, I'm here."

I nodded and, when his hand slipped off, opened the door and made my way out of his office. Bradley was waiting down the hall, and when he saw my face he rushed to me.

"What's wrong?"

I didn't know where to start. "Can you get me back to the barracks please?"

Bradley looked like he was about to argue, but something in my face stopped him short. He nodded and put his arm around my shoulder as we walked through the halls. We made it outside and back to the barracks where, to his objections, I left him at the door.

"I'll tell you everything. Just give me some time to process it all."

He wasn't happy, but he let me enter alone. I was halfway to my room when I spun on my heels and rushed into the nearest bathroom. I burst into one of the stalls and threw up hard into the toilet there. I kept heaving until my stomach was empty and all I was bringing up was bile. I spat to get the acidic taste out of my mouth, and shook my head as my wits started to return to me.