free?
Only Vi.
Her sacrifices weren’t lost on me. I knew them, felt them, every time I thought of her. That’s why it was so hard to put her in compromising situations. I couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
“I was stupid,” I said. “That’s how I got caught. Stupidity. Surely you can understand why I wouldn’t want to tell you all about it.”
Vi’s hand, refreshingly cool, wiped my tears. “You’re selfish,” she said. “I want to know everything about you, especially the stupid things you do. Then maybe I won’t feel so inadequate all the time.”
I opened my eyes and looked at her. “You are anything but inadequate.”
She seemed close to scoffing. “I’ve seen the way people look at you. The way they rush to obey everything you say. Between the two of us, you’re clearly more important.”
She rushed on when I opened my mouth to protest. “I’m okay with it; I am. I don’t need to be important. Except to you . . . I want to be . . . I mean, never mind.”
“Vi, you are the most important person to me. The very most.”
She looked down. “It doesn’t feel like it sometimes.”
“When?” I challenged.
“When you don’t talk to me, tell me what’s important to you, let me in.” She met my gaze, and I couldn’t argue. “When you shuttle me to the middle of the pack.”
“I don’t want to burden you with the horrors of my life,” I said. I was protecting her. No one should have to live through what I did. Most people wouldn’t still be alive.
“I want those burdens,” she argued, “if it means you don’t have to carry them alone. And we both know you already have a lot of other crap to deal with.”
I felt her sincere desire to help me. The authentic way she’d do anything to make my life easier. I loved her more, if that was even possible, because of it.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “This is very hard for me.”
She smiled, and my stomach flipped in a good way. “Start small. How did you get caught?”
Dread returned to my body. “I’d gone to Harvest. It was the end of January.” I flashed back to that day: cold, with the promise of icy rain.
“I’d been working in Northepointe, shoveling snow on the maintenance crew. But Javier Benes had been appointed Director in Harvest—and that was a huge win for the Resistance. He started out like Zenn, working both sides until he received his own city. He’s what we’d been grooming Zenn to become.”
Vi raised her eyebrows at this. “Interesting.”
“What does that mean?” I echoed what Zenn had asked Vi a few times when she’d said that to him.
“It means I’m not sure who Zenn plays for. Are you?”
I rubbed the last of the salty tears out of my eyes and off my face. I had to admit it. “No, I’m not sure about Zenn either. I wish I was, but yeah. He’s just like Thane. I trust him about as far as I can throw him.”
“That’s what Gunner said.”
I nodded, lost in a tangle of trust and truth. “Insiders are the hardest,” I conceded. “People like Zenn and Starr and River. People who seem to be on the side of whomever they’re talking to.”
“Right,” Vi said. “But people like you, you’re
“At least when someone talks to me, they know where I am,” I said. “I’ve always been Resistance, through and through.”
“It’s black-and-white for you,” she said. “It’s not like that for everyone.”
“I know.”
“Anyway, Benes Somebody was Director of Harvest?” she prompted.
I smiled again and took both her hands in mine. “Yeah. Director Benes was assigned Harvest, which was huge, because he was the first Insider to get that high in the Association. I mean, he was given command of his own city. He took the reins in October, but his inauguration wasn’t until late January. He was the first Director in an Association stronghold who was completely Resistance bred. I had to go.”
I remembered asking for leave from my job, which wasn’t all that stupid, but implied I’d come back. I knew I wouldn’t. I can’t stand that kind of restriction. I should’ve quit, but that might have led to the investigation anyway.
“So I went to Harvest for the ceremony. Everything went smoothly. It was one of my finest moments, seeing Benes don those robes and accept an entire city. Thousands upon thousands of people we could free.”
“Sounds like everything went well,” Vi prodded.
“Yeah. Afterward we met, and he confirmed that transmissions hadn’t been sent since he took over in October. I already knew, of course. Free people think and feel differently than the brainwashed. His city is filled with emotions people like me can feel.”
“So where’s the part where you were stupid?”
“I didn’t go back to my job in Northepointe.” I squeezed her hands. “You should know I’m just not that kind of guy. I can work, don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t think my place is on the maintenance crew.”
“Now you tell me,” she said, a wry smile gracing her beautiful face. Impulsively I leaned over and kissed her.
It still took me by surprise every time she let me do that. I’d have to try to do it more often.
“Continue,” she said, pulling away. Was that a blush? I ducked my head to hide my smile.
“I didn’t realize the crew chief in Northepointe would care when I didn’t report back. I should’ve known he’d care. I
I sighed. “Kingston figured out who I was. See, I’m sort of wanted everywhere. Not sure if you knew that.”
She nudged me with her shoulder. “You and me both, buddy.”
I lifted my arm to put it around her, ignoring the aching fire in my shoulder and down my left side. I seriously needed whatever Pace had in that needle.
“I’d left Harvest by then, but had just arrived in Rancho Port when all hell broke loose. Flight Cops were waiting for me at the border, as if they knew I was coming. It’s impossible . . . but maybe not.
“It’s so hot in the south, even in early February.” I stopped, lost in memory of the absolute heat of the Texan Region and how I clung to the frostiness of shoveling snow for the first part of my entombment.
Underground, I remembered the way my breath would freeze my lungs together, little barbs of ice catching each other until I thought the air couldn’t force the tissue apart. The sting of my fingers as they froze and then thawed. The way I used to think I’d rather endure a trial by fire instead of freezing to death.
In the capsule, it always came back to me thinking,
So much cracking heat.
“Jag?” Vi snuggled in closer to my side. “How’d you get caught?”
I forced myself to focus on the here and now; the pressure of Vi’s body against mine; the gentle rise and fall of her chest, the silky quality of her skin, the taste of her mouth.
“Jag?” She tilted her head to look at me.
I kissed her, desperate to ground myself. I knew my mouth was too hungry. I needed her the way I had needed air in the capsule. I knew what it was like to go without both.
The touch of her lips softened my insides. She calmed me in her usual Vi-fashion. When we broke apart, I was happy to see she was as breathless as me.
“Like I said,” I whispered, our faces inches apart. “They were waiting for me. Before I could do anything, I’d been silenced, tased, and cuffed. Blindfolded. Someone shoved a needle into my neck, and everything went quiet. Numb. Beneath me, the ground moved, but I couldn’t even so much as twitch my fingers.”
I drew a breath, as if I could summon strength into myself with such a simple action. “When the drugs wore off, they removed my blindfold and made me dig. I dug and dug and dug.”
“No,” Vi murmured.
