The Wall

“Do we have to take the Pledge?” I know Cal said we had to but I needed someone saner to confirm it.

“It’s preferred.”

“Or what?”

“Or nothing—we’re not going to force you to do anything.”

I didn’t believe her.

Joseph looked up. Gwen seemed startled by his intense gaze and blushed. He smiled, trying to make her more at ease I suppose, or using his good looks for evil. I shifted uncomfortably on the vinyl seat. A shred of jealously peeked out from behind my eyes. Watching him, it occurred to me that if you knew how, you could brandish your looks like a weapon, but I doubted it would work for me.

“Where are we going?” he asked, fluttering his eyelashes slowly, sweeping his hair back and handing me Orry without breaking eye contact with Gwen. He was giving her a look that said, You’re the most important person in the world right now.

“To our settlement; it’s about a day’s ride from here,” she answered, her voice stripped of its earlier attitude, lower and softer than it had been minutes ago.

Joseph then launched into an absolute tirade of questions, but, as with everything, he handled it so well. His words poured from his mouth in a hard-to-keep up kind of way, sweetened like honey. She was like a fly caught in a trap. She answered everything as best she could, eager to please him. I wished I could be suave like that. Not just bust in and threaten people to answer me with my fists up and my eyes ablaze. Sometimes, well, most of the time, I didn’t really understand what he saw in me.

“Are you the only ones?” Joseph asked.

Gwen shook her head, not as an answer but in dismay. “Pretty much. We are the biggest group, at least. There used to be tiny pockets of people all over but your Superiors took care of most them. If there are any leftovers, we certainly haven’t heard from them in years.”

“How have you managed to stay hidden for so long?” Joseph said in a complimentary way.

Gwen smiled. “Your Superiors have become lazy of late. All they seem to worry about is their new projects and experiments,” she said, holding her fingers in mock air quotes. I cringed. I was one of those experiments. “We hid for a long time, never staying in one place for too long, but when we realized no one was coming for us, we built a settlement.”

I hated that she kept referring to them as ‘your Superiors.’ I didn’t want to be linked to them. I had enough blame hanging over my head without adding the Superiors atrocities to them.

“But I guess that’s changed now,” Gwen muttered sourly.

Joseph leaned down and touched her arm gently. Steam rose slowly from the top of my head and I tried to wave it away. “We’re sorry,” he said.

She looked up at all of us. “Don’t be,” she said plainly.

When asked what the settlement was like, she wouldn’t go into any detail, just gri

Deshi, who had been listening intently but not volunteering any questions of his own, suddenly spoke up, his voice tight. “What are you going to do with us?” Hessa, as if reacting, slammed his fist on the table like an angry father, like my angry stepfather.

She flipped her head up to look at him. “You? We want help deciphering some of these borrowed technologies we can’t work out.”

She pointed to Apella, whose pale face had barely shown a flicker of interest since Gwen started talking. “You? We need help with our infertility issues.” Apella looked away, her expression that familiar mask. She and my mother could compete for who could be the least outwardly emotional. I knew they would have a hard time convincing Apella to go down that road again, if at all.

She continued to point at each of us. Joseph, they thought would be useful in their surveillance group or maybe helping out in their hospital. Alexei was a wealth of information about the Superiors.

“And you?” Her finger hovered as it pointed at my face. “I don’t know what they want to ask of you.”

“Ask?” I said, confused.

“Yeah. Well, I mean, they’ll ask you to help with those things but if you don’t want to, that’s fine. But you have to contribute in some way,” she said, waggling her finger at us as if we were children.

In some ways, I suppose we were. We were fledgling Survivors who had been previously raised by an uncaring and ruthless society. Everything she said was so foreign it was hard not to be overwhelmed. But it sounded fair. And impossible. So different to what we were used to that it just didn’t seem plausible. Everyone looked nervous, playing with fingers, eyes darting around, looking for a way out. Choice was not something we were overly familiar with.

I leaned into Joseph’s shoulder, yawning. Hessa was playing with my fingers, looking under my flattened palm like he might find some hidden treasure there. Joseph laughed. “People will never believe you’re brothers,” he said, looking from one to the other.

Deshi stood and yanked Hessa away from me. He made Apella and Alexei shuffle out of their seats and quickly exited the carriage.

“What’s wrong with him?” Joseph asked, confused.

I thought I knew. “I’ll go check on him,” I said.

Joseph shrugged but there was a tautness to it. The muscles around his shoulders and neck were straining, like he was holding in something nasty he wanted to say. He was all edges and sharp bits. “I don’t get it. You and Deshi are close now? Apella looks like she’s been hit by a train and you’re not enjoying it? What’s going on?”

Gwen took this as an excuse to slip out. I didn’t blame her. That was enough questions for now.

I swept his hair back out of his face gently. He shook me off furiously. “Rosa, just tell me.” He held my free hand, warmth and fluttering closing out the bizarre surroundings for a second.

I wanted to cry, in truth, blubber and confess all the dark secrets. But this was not my story to tell. If Apella wanted to tell him, it was up to her. I looked at her and she shook her head. My body slumped as I exhaled. Think of a good lie. He put his hand to my face, begging me to look at him. I felt his lips brush the top of my head.

“Some things are just not worth hanging on to anymore,” I whispered. I looked at Apella, a big ‘thank you’ reflected in her face. It would kill him to know the sacrifice she had made for him. I slipped out of Joseph’s grasp like I was shimmying out of a dress, handed Orry to Apella, and went to find Deshi.

There weren’t many places for him to go. The tu

Deshi was pressed up against the wall with one foot up, holding Hessa, frowning deeply.

“What’s going on with you?” I asked.

“What do you care?” he snapped.

“You know, you sound like a child.” I came out here to be nice. So much for that.

His dark face looked older. Older and grumpier. I stared at him for a long time, trying to stir a reaction. He glared at me for a while and then did something so unexpected that I nearly erupted into laughter. His face screwed up tight and I thought he was going to say something rude like he always did but instead he burst into tears.

My eyes widened and I took a step back. I wondered if I should hug him or pat his arm but something told me this would not be received well. This was not our dynamic. I knew less how to comfort him then I knew how to tame a bear.

“What’s the matter with you, you big girl?” I said, apprehensively. My lips curled up only because I was forcing them to.