Disclaimer: I do not own any part of this series and am writing solely for pleasure, not profit.
Summary:This was not by choice, this never-settling, this never-safe. The Atrians were fighting for survival. The humans were on the brink of genocide. And I was a traitor...The world had ended with a bang after all. Maybe there was some whimpering involved, at least from humans knocked out in the suvek's blast. But mostly, it was with a bang.
Author's Note: Minor details may differ from established canon content for the sake of the story. I've done my best with Sondiv, using established terminology and making up more as necessary. I've also tweaked probability and characterization in favor of the resolution that would not release me until I wrote it.
Title from "The Sound of Silence" cover by Disturbed.
:: :: ::
restless dreams (split the night)
:: :: ::
September
:: ::
My eyes burned.
A dried-out drained one, not the itchiness of swamp-fire smoke or a wind searing though eyelashes. I'd shed too many tears if I still felt the ache under my eyelids all these hours later.
Not that anyone would know: no witnesses, no one to see my hands cup cold water from the bucket and splash up into my grimy face. The salvaged mirror shard angled over a makeshift sink only reflected half of one cheek and a single brown eye at a time. In the gloom, my dyed hair further dulled my skin. Pulling it into a ponytail exposed a faint scar on the right side of my neck.
I turned to the door and pulled my hood over my head. Just in case. There was a half-nailed board partially covering the window.
On the lopsided table near the door was a small note, crumpled and carefully re-flattened and folded neatly in half again to keep hidden and safe. My fingers twitched as I picked it up, one finger carefully tracing the graceful lines.
E me r Y
The letters were slightly hesitant in placement and just a little bit off in size. Beautiful but odd.
I never saw his writing in school. Tablets were so common that paper was rare—not as a precious commodity, but as a relic of the past, outdated. Of course, the Sector is allowed to have paper.
And of course, our alphabets are strikingly different.
Slipping the note back into my pocket, I shifted my shoulders against the slight weight of my bag and resettled it. I could dwell for days if I let myself sink. There was no time, not anymore. No time for any of it. I had to leave my falling-apart shelter and move on to the next place. This was not by choice, this never-settling, this never-safe.
The Atrians were fighting for survival. The humans were on the brink of genocide.
And I was a traitor.
::
The world had ended with a bang after all. Maybe there was some whimpering involved, at least from humans knocked out in the suvek's blast. But mostly, it was with a bang.
Waking up was hard. Not physically: I woke up, as the unconscious do, on my own time. With my parents there to explain that I was okay, that they were okay, that no one had died… that I had been found street-side, along with my friends.
My human friends.
Just before the light took my breath away, he'd been near. So he—they—must have woken first from whatever the suvek did, and removed us from the scene. Protected us.
The Sector went on total lockdown, integration over, no access for any but the highest of human officials accompanied by heavily-armed military. My friends, my Roman, were imprisoned, and certainly in more danger than ever.
That wasn't the worst of it.
Because once I was able to go back to school, I noticed that I was being followed. At first I thought federal agents were making sure I was not going to be targeted—or contacted, if they suspected there were ways out of the Sector—and I accepted their concern with bitter compliance.
If they were investigating my relationship with Roman, made public due to Castor's machinations, they would still only know a fraction of the truth. And no one—that I knew of—was aware of our single passionate encounter in the shed. I couldn't bring myself to pull Julie or Taylor aside to talk about it away from prying ears. And there had also never even been time to breathe a word of his near-death to our friends. Only Teri knew that he'd been outside the Sector at all.
If they thought he would try to contact me, or I would try to reach him… To hurt each other like that was unthinkable. Being forced apart was painful enough, but to make each other's situations more difficult would have made the strain of our separation worse.
We must have agreed on that: only one note made its way to me via my own father. But that was After.
There was an After because I had already said enough in public in support of the Atrians. Done enough in sight of too many people. My friendships had never been hidden. So maybe it was because of Roman, but most likely it was just because of who I was, that they were not content with watching.
I didn't like thinking about it.
::
Twigs snapped under my boots. I tried for a lighter tread, but that was nearly impossible when I was so tired. My newly bulging backpack weighed on weary shoulders. Soon, I reminded myself as I slipped around the tree and continued on my own path, unconnected to any trail. Not too far left to go.
Just through the trees to my left, I caught a glimpse of the silent water. The bayou was a lesser danger for me. Besides, wild animals only approached people when they were hungry. Humans snapped if they didn't like how someone else looked.
My path brought me between a small cabin and the water's edge. Surrounded on all sides by tall trees and overgrown vines, the weather-worn wood boards could easily blend in if one didn't look closely. I could see the railing of a small porch on the far side as I slowed and crouched. My body shuffled through the bushes at a near-crawl, striving to blend into the vegetation.
A floorboard squeaked.
I froze. The water was directly behind me, I could dunk myself and hide in the weeds and overgrowth at the edge, let myself up just enough to breathe through the murky detritus. Backtrack, and hide myself up a tree or in a particularly thorny patch, give myself an extra edge of protection in case they followed. Or refuse to let them take me by forcing—
"Emery?" A whisper on a hopeful breath.
My clenched fists uncoiled.
I scooted forward again, peering through the slats and up at a skittish face searching through the underbrush, her manicured hands clenched on the withered, broken railing. "Taylor."
Her bright eyes, lined and shadowed to precision, alighted on me. She glowed her relief, her hands reaching toward me even as we both made for the porch steps. Taylor appeared entirely unsuited for a bayou hike: curls, heels, and all the jewelry. Next to her, my unkempt body felt every stitch of the jeans and t-shirt kept on my skin for nearly a week.
She hugged me as if her life depended on it, even when the truth was entirely the reverse.
::
After, my parents were under house arrest. After, I was told I might be able to join them if I displayed good behavior. After.
The only parts I can think about are concrete walls and a tray of food sliding under the door twice a day.
The rest I carried un-thought with me, through the door unlocked with a computer chip provided by a clever friend, through the sewer as I stumbled to an open manhole, through an open window on the second story of a high-school beauty queen's bedroom window. I did not speak of it when she dressed me in old nondescript clothes, packed as much food as she could fit into a backpack, gave me a paper note my father passed along, and sent me on my way to one of the safest people to help. I did not mention the rest when I showed up at the house of a hate-group's founders and their son gave me pilfered cash and a list of locations.
I memorized those instead of letting my brain linger. I survived.
That first night I curled up in a room I had never seen before, barricading the door with a chair and my back. I held an open switchblade in my hand and the shadows lengthened to monstrous proportions and still, half of my thoughts were spared for what horrors the Sector must have contained. Worrying about them meant I wasn't thinking about me-in-the-after. I could pretend to be me-of-before.
My fingers trembled around a paper note with my name written unevenly. I couldn't bring myself to open it. But I did press it close to my heart.
In the darkest part of the night, whatever swirling churn of emotion I had been suppressing began to slip away. Like there was a sieve in my head and heart, skimming away the worst of it. And once that sensation had settled, I felt a calm—with an underlying bone-deep sadness, and a gritty layer of determination. I'd sought something other than gnawing emptiness for so long that I let my eyes close so as to sink into those mystery emotions.
In the morning, I attributed it to being truly alone for once.
::
"I used the bathroom," Taylor said, her hands fluttering between plates and pre-packaged meal wrappings. "That's where I had talked one of the new waitresses into lending me a gross top and this ugly hat." A floppy hat flapped frantically in my direction. "She thinks I'm meeting a boy-toy on the sly, and got a new micro-blend top she'd been dying to own in the bargain for her silence. So I have until the curfew."
"When did they officially start it?" I paused, recalling the last time I'd met with one of my friends. "Lukas is okay, right?"
She nodded. "Yeah, he says that they don't keep as much of an eye on him anymore. And technically, curfew still doesn't exist. But almost everyone feels the pressure when there are camo fatigues marching to and from the Sector at night." Her shoulders tightened as she carefully tipped lumps of cold rice onto a plate. "Like they think a jailbreak is just bound to happen."
In the clench of her jaw, I could see that we shared a wish about just that possibility. Neither of us voiced it.
My eyes darted down to her flat stomach. Taylor had not said it outright during my brief habitation in her attic during my escape, but had hinted enough with her watery eyes. "What about you? I didn't ask, before, but…your tears, they weren't blue anymore."
Her eyes stayed on the fried chicken she was forking onto our plates. "It was the car crash. When the suvek went off, remember?"
"Oh, Taylor. I'm so sorry."
Her brittle laugh echoed in the small cabin. "At least the doctors didn't realize it. They thought the bleeding was my period. Otherwise, I'd have been targeted just like you."
A part of me wanted to ask if she was sure it was the crash, and not an incompatibility between human and Atrian. But that was a selfish desire, a hopeless question, and would only hurt her more because that same question must have tormented her already. When she placed one of the plates on the floor in front of me, I reached out to grasp her hand.
Our eyes met. Hers were filled with grief, both unfamiliar and too-keenly shared. I did not know what it meant to mourn a child of my own. But I was the only other person in the world who felt the loss of her lover in the same way.
This was a conversation for whispers, too precious to take the slim chance that we were followed, watched, and overheard by the enemy. "Drake is strong. He's doing everything he can to make it out and make it back." To her.
"He's going to do something stupid, I just know it," she replied, equally soft.
"But he is a survivor."
"So is Roman," she countered. "He was born to lead, and he's already brought us all through so much. They have to listen to him sometime."
My eyes fell for a moment. "He would trade himself for his people. If he thought it would save them…" For them, wouldn't he compromise everything that he believed? Everything he felt?
Even give up me?
Shame rushed through me. He was the future iksen, if not already having taken up the title during this crisis with Castor dead. The role's responsibilities and demands were mostly unknown to me, but I had already known that our possibilities were limited by his sworn duty. I had already known that his duty to them may outweigh any desire to follow his heart.
I shook my head released Taylor. "He'll do everything he can to keep them safe. They survived the crash on Arrival Day. They'll make it through this."
"Emery." Taylor's touch was soft and fleeting. "They're not the only ones who are survivors."
When I glanced up, her hands were occupied with delicately lifting crispy skin from a chicken thigh. Despite myself, I smiled. "Or warriors, Miss Super-Strength."
The corners of her eyes crinkled slightly, just enough to be genuine. "I'm surprised that it stuck around, but at least I'm getting better at controlling it. I've only bent one fork this week! And no doors."
We laughed together. I slowly scooped rice up with my fingers, enjoying the company despite our omnipresent worries.
We were silent until Taylor finished her chicken and set the bone down with deliberate care. "Roman won't stop until he sees you again, too," she said.
Guilt rose in my stomach and I could not keep eating. "Taylor."
She tapped her fingers on the ground. "You know, I'd wondered if you would keep bouncing between the hot alien guy and the hot human guy. One of them had to be a high-school romance, one of those bad-teenager-choice flings. They couldn't both last. But, your response to flatly ending things with Grayson was way different from how you were after you hit pause on it with Roman."
Grayson. There was a name I didn't think about much. Not out of spite: so much of my gratitude was for him, for his help getting me to the first safe houses, for his friendship. But he was under ongoing surveillance to an extent different from the rest of our friends. Through them, I knew he was okay.
And that his parents were regularly hosting the increased military presence in our town.
He gave us an edge as long as everyone else thought he was fully back under the Red Hawk flag. All the information he gleaned from his parent's guests trickled through circuitous routes. That meant we couldn't be in contact much at all, so it was easier not to think of him. And the longer we were apart, the more I could feel it—that gentle hum of longing for contact.
However, Grayson's gentle hum was sharply different from the constant itch in the back of my mind that I had dared not name in the after. In the before I'd have called it cold spaghetti in my backyard shed and soul-piercing depth in a bright Atrian gaze. If I named it…
"And what do you think now?" I stalled.
"Roman was not a high-school fling at all. You're in love with him." Her eyes glistened as her lips curled up. "Don't argue, because you're looking in a mirror. Only thing missing is your d-dead baby."
Crude, but she cut down my denial before it was voiced. Mostly because I was too startled not to ask, "You love Drake?"
"How could I not?" she sighed. "Even if it was too fast. Even if we are too young. None of that seems to matter when you're seeing the world move so quickly towards a genocide. That makes all the little uncertainties matter so little, when their life's worth is being debated." We shuddered in unison. She paused, finally meeting my eyes, before she added, "You know what the worst part of loving him is."
I bit my tongue.
She tilted her head to the side, and her gaze seemed to burn through me. "Being angry that he's not here," she whispered, the confession sparking the air between us with sorrow. "Awfully, guiltily, angry at him, because he can't help you. Because after what you went through he wasn't there to hold you. Because he couldn't pull you out of danger even when you were screaming his name."
"Needing him to be there," I choked out, "more than anyone else, and the guilt—because he just can't, and it's not his fault, and you hate your own people for making that happen, too, but—"
"But that doesn't stop it from hurting." Our hands twined together again. They blurred as my tears fell.
I finally blurted, "We don't have a future here and the world is in so much danger. And he must be in pain too. Where he is and what he's doing or being forced to do, I don't even know."
"It's terrifying not to know," she whispered. "That's the worst part. That's what they must feel, too."
"He could be hurt," I sobbed. Her arms came up and pulled me in. "And I can't help him. I didn't think it was possible to love too much—but that's what this is, Taylor." Clinging to her shirt, for the first time I admitted it. "I love him too much."
Through her own sniffling came, "Truly loving someone is always too much."
::
Emery of After has scars.
My years in the hospital did not leave my body marked the way a month incarcerated did. I survived my own body's betrayal when I was younger with only a transient dissociation from the world outside of a hospital to show it. In the end my mind was stronger for the experience: I had looked death in the eye and learned to keep going.
This served me well. In a way.
::
I splashed water on my face. It did not smell particularly pleasant, but felt good and was from the nearby river at the shack devoid of plumbing. Soothing my heated eyes, the water took away the last traces of my tears.
From behind me, Taylor said, "We have another ally."
The waters rippled from where my hands had dunked in. A part of me vaguely worried about diseases or insects: necessity made me ignore it. "Where did you meet them?"
"She found me," Taylor answered as I stood and turned. Her makeup had run and I knew she'd fix it once in her car, away from me and heading back home. A small gesture in deference to my much less put-together reality. "And I have to say, I was totally intimidated after I found out who she was, but you probably won't have quite the same reaction."
"Why? Who is it?"
"Long story short, her name is Saroya and she built the suvek—because," she added quickly, holding up one hand to stop any outburst. "She was blackmailed into it by the Trags."
"And you believe her?" I recalled Roman's warning, given not too far from here at a time that felt far too long ago. "How can you be sure?"
Taylor's arm drifted around her own waist, a telling gesture I only understood when she said, "Because Drake had already told me about her. By name. Because—Emery, it's his mom."
A quality character reference—if it could be checked. "Unless he could confirm that this woman is truly—"
"I asked him about her," Taylor interrupted. "Just to know a bit about who I thought would be a grandmother. And he told me her markings. We were—well, some patterns pass on to children."
Markings. Then she couldn't be one of the hidden Trags. "Where is she now?"
"She's been at my house for a week—not that my parents have any idea, they're on a business trip." Upon seeing my expression, Taylor rolled her eyes. "I'm not stupid. She's been around for two weeks now. We vetted her as best we could, but in the end, we just have to trust her."
Before-Emery would have said that, and I felt a tiny knot inside my heart ease when I realized that After-Emery was satisfied. I walked forward at last, toward the shack, and Taylor fell in step with me. "Does she know about me?"
"You've caught her interest, but she hasn't sought you out. Says she's hardly safe enough to risk trying to find another fugitive."
"We should meet. If she is our ally, I want to know her face, too." I glanced at Taylor, watching a faint frown-line ease from her forehead. "How is it, being around her?"
She grimaced, then let her lips curve up softly. "She's actually been great for a sort-of mother-in-law. She'd known, about the baby. Drake told her. So I—I haven't been alone in that." Almost too softly for me to hear, she added, "She's been a lifesaver."
I tucked my arm through hers and we trudged to the shack in silence. Around us, the bayou quietly simmered through an early summer afternoon.
::
E me r Y,
I –
No, I can't. Not yet.
Bonus Material: Story Playlist
"The Sound of Silence" by Disturbed
"Wonder" by Lauren Aquilina
"Worlds Collide" by Apocalyptica
"My Love [Piano Solo]" by The Captive Forest
"Please Forgive Me" by David Gray
"When I Grow Up" by Fever Ray
"Better Days" by The Goo Goo Dolls
"Stay With Me" by Kevin "K.O." Olusola