Genesis Lost - Books 1 - 6, page 6
I didn’t answer. Just sat there, too tired and too concerned to argue with the clansman. When he stepped through the door, the blood seemed to have been sucked from his skin. “Are you alright? Did something happen?”
I let out a scoff. “Of course I am. This isn’t Clan territory, Nix. Nothing bad happens to women inside the Districts.”
“Why are you sitting here all alone in this… mansion?”
“How did you find me?”
He shoved his hands inside his pockets and eyed me for a second. “Told you, it’s a habit of mine. There were only three yellow houses with blue shutters on this block, but this was the only one with tire-tracks-galore in the front.”
“But I never said anything about tracks.”
“Nope.” He sat down cross-legged in front of me, the color slowly returning to his face. “But the councilman Oliver mentioned something about your friend relocating.”
My brows arched at his words. “Good to know you like to listen in on conversations. You always paying that much attention to things that aren’t any of your business?”
“What can I say? Where I come from, playing close attention can make the difference between being killed and staying alive for another day.”
“Still that bad, huh?”
“What do you mean by still?”
I didn’t answer. What happened to my dad was long ago. Right now, all I wanted was to find Esther.
Nix took his hands out of his pockets and pulled his knees against his chest. “For some. But my dad is a chieftain, so we got guards and shit to discourage others from taking over.”
“Taking over?”
“We don’t exactly vote who’s gonna be chieftain.” His head bounced from one side to the other as if he considered if he should keep going. Then he continued, the specks of gray in his eyes now more dominant. “There are two ways to become a chieftain. You’re either born to the current one and take his place one day. Or you kill a chieftain and his heirs.”
“Please tell me you were born as one…”
He laughed, but it took less than a second to die down, leaving nothing behind but sorrow dragging on the corners of his mouth. “Kind of. My older brother, Blake, was supposed to become chieftain. But an accident paralyzed him from the waist down, and he can’t father an heir. He’s… unfit to be chieftain now.”
His gaze once more went out of focus, and he stared into the nothingness of the empty room. For a moment, I wondered how he had suffered. Oliver had mentioned it the day he arrived. Then I reminded myself that I didn’t care.
“And your sister?” I asked. “How old is she?”
“Seventeen. She’s a handful, but not nearly such a pain in the ass as you are.”
I got up and bit my lips, hiding that smile I didn’t want him to see. The idea of giving him a hard time somehow cheered me up. After all, it was the memory of his people that still haunted my dreams.
“When is your next meeting with the council?” I asked.
“On Thursday, and you’ll have to help me get prepared. There are things I need to understand, so I would appreciate if you explained them to me.”
Hard to believe, but Nix and I had something in common. He needed to understand my world. And I sat here, feeling clueless and small, wanting to understand his. Wanting to grasp what would cause a man to rob a child of her father, and the wife of her husband. But most of all, I wanted to prove Nix, and myself, that the Districts had the answer. The solution. The ward against heartbreak.
“Under one condition.” As soon as I had spoken the words, my palms went slick against my fingers. This was a ridiculous idea, but somehow, my mouth continued talking. “I need you to help me carry a few things tomorrow. You know… get them back to my place.”
“What things?”
“Ehh…”
For a moment I considered lying, but the way he eyed me warily… observed how my breathing turned faster. More rapid. No, a lie wasn’t an option. “Look, I thought about what you said in the waiting room. You were right.”
His brow arched. “I was?”
“Yeah, you said I couldn’t know if I can control myself without the water. Well… I decided that I will prove you wrong. Women aren’t the problem, and neither is our concept here in the Districts. It’s guys like —”
“Let me guess… it’s guys like me? Clansmen. My kind.” He pressed his eyes shut and rubbed his fingertips against his temples as if wearing off a headache. “If we are the problem, how come the council requires women to drink the water as well?”
Well, shit.
So much for being smart.
I had no answer, but I spared myself the embarrassment and gave him a dismissive wave. “Are you gonna help me or not?”
“No.”
“No?” His answer made me hesitate for a moment. “In that case, look for someone else to help you with the next council meeting.”
“But you are my mediator. Helping me is your job.”
“Maybe, but you can’t make me.” I walked out the door and tried hard to avoid the muddy tire tracks.
Two seconds later, a heavy hand landed on my shoulder and swung me around like a top. “What crazy idea is going through that pretty head of yours?”
“Soda,” I said straight and to the point.
“Soda?”
“Uh-huh. There’s an old church with a community center Esther told me about. And that old vending machine is still loaded with soda.”
“You mean Esther, that friend of yours who suddenly disappeared?”
Disappeared. I didn’t like that word. There had to be a reasonable explanation for all this.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
Nix pursed his lips and gazed around the property as if he wanted to make sure nobody listened from behind the hedges and shrubs. “Has anybody ever told you that we send scouts out regularly? To check what’s going on right outside the Districts?”
I shrugged. They checked on us. Big deal.
“Kenya,” the tone of his voice dropped into something deep and husky. “The council is burning hundreds of books right outside the Districts. When you spoke to the councilman, you asked him if her relocation had anything to do with the theology books, remember? Do you think it’s a smart idea to go to a church? And one she had been to on top of that?”
“What are you saying?” The soil pulled out from underneath me, turning my thoughts upside down. “Do you think something bad happened to Esther?”
Nix let out a scoff so sarcastic, it whipped my cheeks and left me breathless. “That’s impossible. Remember? You said nothing bad ever happens to women inside the Districts.”
Chapter 8
Nix
I gave the arched wooden door a bump with my shoulder and held it open until Kenya stepped inside the church. “I don’t like this.”
“Yeah, you mentioned it about ten times on our way here.” She let her hands glide over the polished wood of the floor-mounted benches, her eyes wandering across the colorful pictures in the windows. “Are you always this scared?”
“You pronounced that word funny. Back home, we say careful.”
We continued along the center aisle, Kenya’s steps hasty, mine carefully placed. Given the things I knew, the church should have been dust-covered and in disrepair. It was neither, which resulted in glances over my shoulder at every other step.
The scent of incense pushed into my nostrils, mixing with the must of the worn-out, purple cushions along the benches. Wind whistled and whispered from one of the small rooms behind the altar, and I could have sworn it told me to turn the fuck around.
Not because I understood the council was cracking down on religion. But because Kenya had no idea what she was up against with that foolish plan of hers.
“This is the door that leads across to the community home,” she said, her hand darting for the handle.
“Wait!” I ran up the ramp and shoved her aside. “Let me make sure it’s clear.”
I pressed my back against the wall, worked the handle down underneath a creak too loud for my liking, and gazed carefully into the red-carpeted hallway behind. “Clear.”
“This is ridiculous.” She squeezed her tiny body between frame and chest, following the hallway with her head high and her spirits even higher. “I said I need you to help me carry, and I don’t remember mentioning a battle drill or something. How about you tell me what you know about that book business, while I find the basement room?”
“What I told you yesterday,” I said and followed closely behind, along tiled corridors, around corners and down some flights of stairs. “Our scouts reported how they burned books. They checked the burn pits after nightfall and found singed spines of religious books. That’s all I got, but it’s more than enough to put a twist in my guts.”
“I’m not religious, you know.”
“Neither am I. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel sorry for those who are, and have their lives stripped of what they believe in. Just so the council can further their political agenda.”
She scoffed. “There is no agenda other than keeping everyone safe and rebuilding society.”
“Yeah, to their ideologies…”
Kenya peeked into one of the rooms on the lowest level of this building and shook her head. “No, it’s not here. Anyway, what’s so wrong about their ideology? It’s still better than what you have at the Clans with all the…”
She let her voice trail off and shot me a glance, apologetic but still with a smidge of superiority clinging to the corners. That was her go-to reaction now instead of screaming rape and assault at the top of her lungs, ever since I put her between a hard wall and a hard chest back at the museum.
Granted, it wasn’t my proudest moment. Neither was the way I had slammed my hand into the wall that first night I got here. But this place was more unwelcoming than a dry pussy, and Kenya was just one huge bitch and pain in my ass. Though she had toned it down a little since I found her at her friend’s home… I had to give her that.
“This is it,” she shrieked, her entire body vibrating with excitement. “Look how many soda cans this thing still has. It’s perfect!”
Her feet carried her over to the wall across with lightning speed, where she knocked against the glass front and pushed buttons. At least in the beginning. Thirty seconds later, she went from pushing the buttons to stabbing them. In the end, she punched them. “Why isn’t anything happening?”
“I can tell you didn’t scavenge a lot in your life, huh?” I walked up to her and tapped the glass, pointing across the room with my other hand. “Go stand all the way over there please.”
“Why?”
Nothing about this woman was ever a simple yes. She questioned. Every. Fucking. Thing. For a moment, I couldn’t fight off a smile, which I quickly hid against my shoulder.
Kenya might have been a pain in the ass, but for the last three days, she had been my pain in the ass. Where I came from, that was an achievement.
The thought that she would continue to be just that for the next two months made me think of an unfamiliar familiarity. I’d get to interact with her more than I ever had with any of the women in my life. Funny how the idea exhausted and excited me at the same time.
I gave a stab toward the other side of the room. “Fucking move, woman.”
And then, I watched how fire ignited behind her brown eyes as she swung her hands in front of her chest underneath an angry puff. But she did move aside. Yeah, this woman carried a generous amount of sass inside her, and it amused and aroused me in ways I didn’t appreciate.
I grabbed one of the stacked chairs from beside the vending machine and crashed it into the glass. At first, it only cracked in a million places, but at the second swing, ear-shattering clinks and clanks echoed through the room, and the shards poured themselves onto the ground.
The moment Kenya walked up to me, I stopped her with my outstretched palm. “Don’t! This is tempered glass, and the shards are sharp as fuck. Tell me which ones you want, and I’ll get them for you.”
“All of them.”
I turned around and stared at her, my eyes so wide I could feel my eyeballs protruding. “You serious?”
“Of course, how else am I going to replace the enhanced water?”
“Wait a minute…” I swung both hands up in an appeasing manner and took a deep breath. “Are you telling me that you’re gonna replace your entire daily water intake with… soda?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You wanna get yourself diabetes? Because that’s how you get diabetes.”
“Well, what do you suggest? I don’t have access to regular water, and if I drink a bit less, then this should be enough for a week or so. That’s enough time for me to prove that I could control myself.”
I walked over to her and pointed at one of the plastic folding tables. “Sit down.”
“Stop telling me what to do.”
“Fine. Suit yourself.” I sat on the table, hoping the metal rods wouldn’t snap underneath my weight. “We made a deal. I help you. You help me. But I gotta tell you this is stupid, and maybe even dangerous.”
“How could this be dangerous?”
How sweet and innocent her question sounded. But only because she had no fucking clue of the imminent temptation.
Without the water, she would be exposed, stripped naked, and put in front of a mirror, facing desire. Lust.
Meh. I gave a mental shrug. Who knew… perhaps she would even develop certain itches for me. Was it awful of me to hope she would? Can’t say it wasn’t on my mind. Like, continuously for the last twenty-four hours. Not that I could have told her that.
So I chose a lie instead. “Think about it! You’ve been drinking this enhanced water since… like…”
“Since I was eight. It’s the law.”
“Okay, and now you just want to go cold turkey? And with soda? What if you suffer a hormonal collapse?”
“What on earth is a hormonal collapse?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Something along the lines of your body breaking down because of the hormonal changes. Does it matter? You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
“Maybe I don’t,” she said, but quickly lowered the empty backpack from her shoulders. “But I want to understand. And perhaps I want to prove it to myself.”
“Prove what to yourself?”
“I don’t know.” For a moment, her face turned rigid, and her eyes seemed to get lost in the depth of the room. “That this is the better way. Or that we are better? Can you just… please help me like you promised?” And just like that, she set into motion with the backpack dragging on the ground behind her.
I jumped up and pulled it from her hands. “I asked you to stay back because of the shards.”
She didn’t struggle against me, which was a new one for her, and I walked over to the vending machine. The glass crunched underneath me as I carefully retrieved the cans, putting them inside her pack one after another in a neatly arranged stack.
I closed the zipper and swung the straps onto my shoulders, the thin metal clinking against each other and dragging my posture down with their weight.
“Let’s get out of here before —”
A moan sounded through the room.
Not the human kind.
It came from old beams and rigid joists. Plaster dust puffed from the ceiling, and concrete crumbled from cracks in the walls.
“Shit!” I shouted, then wrapped myself around Kenya and thrust our entangled bodies underneath the table.
Thump.
Thump.
The table legs trembled. Kenya shouted something but her words had disappeared into the background of my senses. I cradled her head inside my palm and pressed her against my body, tensing every inch of my muscles to protect her from whatever the plastic table wouldn’t hold.
A minute later, the room calmed once more, and Kenya punched her fist against my ribs. “You’re squishing me.”
“Sorry.” I climbed out and screened the room, making sure the ceiling was still there and the exit intact. “Are you okay? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”
“You mean other than almost being suffocated by that huge body of yours?”
She brushed the dust out of her hair and smoothed those short strands with a wipe of her palm. After I was sure no after-quake would follow, I adjusted the shoulder straps and gestured for her to grab my hand. “So you got them too, huh? The quakes.”
To my surprise, she let our fingers intertwine. “Yeah. This was the second one this week. Nobody knows where they’re coming from, but I noticed they’re more frequent now.”
“Yellowstone,” I said and led her around chunks of the ceiling, the dust caking up my throat. “There’s a volcano out west. Too far to concern us, but I guess that thing is massive enough to shake the entire continent.”
“That’s news to me.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Seems to me you guys are pretty clueless when it comes to what’s happening outside the Districts.”
We climbed the stairs in silence, both of us clearing our throats at every other step. All the while, I held on to her hand. So small. So soft. Electric impulses shot along each of my fingers.
Then it happened.
A tug. A pull.
The very next moment, her hand slipped from mine, and she let out a scream that disabled the beat of my heart. It skipped. Next came the familiar adrenaline, swooshing through my veins.
I swung around only to find Kenya on the ground, one leg angled by her side, the other fused with the linoleum floor.
“It’s stuck,” she said, her strong voice doing little to mask the panic audible for everyone who knew how to listen. “My foot is stuck. The floor just caved in underneath me.”
“Sh,” I said, drawing it out in a long, soothing way. “Take your hands off and let me see.”
I let my fingers explore the area around her ankle, my gaze flicking for the hairline-cracked ceiling. “We gotta get out of here. Close your eyes and take a deep breath.”
“Why?”
“Argh… stop asking why all the time, just do it.”
