Mordecai and Legion come out, each wearing a small pack. Mordecai comes straight to me and puts a hand on my arm.
“I’m sorry. I want to tell you everything, but I just don’t want you to hear part of it. The story sounds insane.”
I stare up at him. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do? We could leave. With Jarek and Cadel, just the four of us. You don’t have to do this,” I whisper, almost pleading. “This is how we get killed.”
“What about everyone else?” Mordecai asks softly. “Could you leave everyone else to die? I think we can change things; no, I believe we can change the world. Try to imagine it, Kaida, where you can be free to be your beautiful self.”
I open my mouth to tell him that I could leave them, but I think we all know I’d struggle with it now. I imagine walking out and trying to live a happy life knowing all these people I’ve met died here.
“I’ll wait and listen. I can’t give you anything more than that because this is an unprecedented time, and I don’t know what everyone’s motives are.” My trust is a brittle, fragile creature. I cast a pointed look at Legion, who rocks back on his heels and looks up at the sky, whistling.
“No offense taken,” he says with a wink.
I ignore him, but Mordecai has got me facing an uncomfortable question I don’t want to think about.
Why do they have such a pull on me?
“Shall we?” Jarek says, “Or we can continue to psychoanalyze each other and then braid each other’s hair and create flower crowns for the people who are coming to murder us.” His mask is gone, and the lethal alpha we met is back, his gaze sharp, taking in everything. All of his movements are calculated and appear deadly.
Cadel glides past us, heading towards the hole in the fence.
I have so many questions, and I don’t like that he’s holding it back. If things are going to affect me, I want to know about them.
Jarek walks by my side, close enough that on every third or fourth swing of our arms, our skin touches.
“Do you want to stay with someone else?” I murmur to him suddenly.
Jarek looks up at me with a puzzled frown. “Huh?”
“The Resistance. If you’d like to leave, I’d like to hear what you think we should do.”
Jarek smiles, but it’s rueful. “I want nothing more than to say fuck them, but they are organised and have a safe place. At the moment, I think it’s the best place for us.”
He’s got freckles on his cheeks. They are faint and would only be noticeable up close, but they are there. It’s such an odd and normal thing, and yet, I find it unbearably beautiful.
We get to the fence, and I slip through, refusing to give myself a chance to chicken out.
The city is just as ominous as we left it. In fact, even more so. On the road in front of us, there is a trail of blood like someone was dragged up the street.
“Why are we not hearing much from the Path?” I ask quietly.
Legion looks up the street and back the other way, his expression grim. “Because they have a section that is their home away from home, and they’ve been setting up camp. They will come for us in the next couple of days. What we’ve seen so far has been scouting parties.”
I close my eyes, trying to get myself ready to face this.
“We’re going to be moving fast. Legion, you lead since you know the city,” Mordecai says, staring into shadows with a deadly aura cloaking him.
“How do you know the city?” I ask.
They both ignore me.
Cadel stays behind me as we start off at a jog. We’re going in a direction that is not the one we came from. The city turns from low buildings made out of old brick to two and three-story buildings that are almost on top of each other. An entire section is still smoke and soot-scarred and burnt down to rubble.
A lizard explodes up into the air, its flat form changing from the brown-grey of the dirt to a vivid pink. It hisses and blinks twelve eyes before it lands and takes off, whipping its tail hard enough to break stone.
“Careful, they are toxic,” I murmur.
Mordecai gives me a side-eye. “How do you know that?”
