Chapter 16 Rosabelle
Rosabelle
I don’t know how we get off the jet.
The experience is punctuated by pain so excruciating it provides its own anesthetic; I feel myself nearly lose consciousness
on several occasions, and I can’t help but wonder if James, whose arm remains tight around my waist with every difficult step,
isn’t giving me some kind of low-level relief.
The rain, at least, seems to have died down.
I welcome the evening chill on my feverish skin, feeling dislocated as I look around. Soldiers are assembled in shadow on
the tarmac below. The air is fresh, the world cleansed. Moonlight washes over everything, casting the night in a ghostly,
beautiful glow entirely at odds with the state of my mind.
“You okay?” James whispers.
Like a sledgehammer, these two words land an impact that craters my chest.
I risk a glance at him.
He’s soaked through; his face is streaked with blood; he’s wearing a sling fashioned from a torn length of cotton; his shoulder
is immobilized because of what I did to him.
He still hasn’t mentioned the injury.
He hasn’t betrayed a moment of anger with me; not a whisper of resentment. He let me shoot him and simply moved on. Accepted it. Maybe forgave me for it.
I never even asked him if he was okay.
The cracks in my heart are threatening to give way altogether. I’m suddenly terrified of what I might find under all that
ice.
“Yes,” I lie. “I’m okay.”
When we finally reach the bottom of the stairs, a welcoming party greets us by lifting their weapons in concert, aiming them
at my head.
I feel the tension rise in James’s body as we pass through the procession of soldiers. He holds me a little tighter, and I
nearly give in to the impulse to lean into him as I limp forward. His nearness is a gift; his touch is warm despite the chill;
his very presence is keeping me calm.
They’ll either kill me now or take me somewhere to die.
There can be no other option.
If they let me live, I’ll never stop running. If they heal me and throw me back in prison, I’ll never stop breaking out. Even
I know I’m a liability. I’d make the call to kill me, too.
I’ve accepted my fate.
I made my choice on that jet by making no choice. By not killing James, I sentenced my sister to certain death. I sentenced
myself to certain death.
This is what I deserve.
Still—
When I see him standing there at the end of the line, the hard planes of his face illuminated by starlight, my fear response
is immediate.
Aaron Warner Anderson.
James’s older brother is waiting for me. I steel myself as I read the cold fury in his eyes; the careful, violent control
in his body.
Everything about this man seems lethal.
I saw him only on special occasions while I was in prison; he’d chosen to begin interrogations by breaking my mind over breaking
my body—using my father to carefully fillet my soul—and I can’t say he was unsuccessful. The psychological damage from the
hours I spent locked up with my estranged father has yet to be determined. I was hoping to die before I was ever compelled
to examine those feelings.
This might be my chance.
Warner stands before me with deceptive composure, his golden hair glinting in a glare of light, his hands clasped in front
of him. He doesn’t appear to be armed, though I know better than to believe that.
His eyes follow our every move.
The physical similarities between him and James strike me anew, the evidence of their shared DNA never clearer than when they’re
standing close together. They’re both difficult to behold up close; both possessed of shocking, extraordinary beauty. They
have the same cheekbones, the same nose, the same broad shoulders and air of authority—electric and powerful.
The differences between them, however, feel vast.
We come to an uncertain stop. Crickets have begun to chirp in the distance. I feel the weight of the soldiers’ eyes; the moon looming above, bearing witness. It feels as if we’ve reached an executioner at the end of an altar.
“Let go of her,” Warner says quietly.
“She can’t stand on her own,” James argues.
“That’s her problem, not yours,” he says.
“Yeah, but she’s my problem. So her problems are my problems.”
“James.” He says the word quietly, lifting his head to level his brother a look so severe I feel the chill secondhand. “You
are overestimating my affection for you.”
James rolls his eyes in response.
I’m stunned.
I look from him to his brother, alarms sounding in my head. I wouldn’t think it wise to call this man’s bluff. Warner was
born into the arms of the original movement; he became the chief commander and regent of what used to be Sector 45 at only
eighteen years old. His legacy is legendary and terrifying. I can only imagine the blood that forged him. He looks capable
of anything—
“Whatever,” James says. “I think you’re underestimating my influence in your life.”
Warner sharpens, his eyes flaring in anger, and fear arrows through my body.
“I can stand on my own,” I lie quickly. “I’ll be fine—”
“You were looking for her,” James says to his brother, cutting me off. “I found her. You’re welcome. Can we get out of here
now? I’m freezing.” He gestures to the soldiers behind us. “It’s been a long day. Everyone is exhausted.”
“Everyone is exhausted?” Warner echoes, his eyes widening a fraction. “You care whether everyone is exhausted? I didn’t realize you possessed the imagination necessary to conceptualize the needs and feelings of others.”
James sighs, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t do this. Not here. Not right now—”
“Then step away from her.”
“I can’t. She’ll literally fall over.”
“Is this some display of delayed adolescence?” says Warner. “Have you finally decided to rebel against authority?”
“Don’t be a dick,” James says.
One of the soldiers audibly gasps.
Warner studies James, a ghost of an angry smile on his face. “I won’t ask you again.”
“No.”
“James—” I say, panicking.
Warner animates with movement so fluid I don’t even see him reach for a gun before he shoots James in the leg.
I nearly scream.
James fights back a cry, reactively releasing me as he staggers, trying to catch himself with only one arm.
I land badly on my own injured leg, nearly biting through my tongue to contain a scream, with uneven results. Agony rushes
back into my body with a force so violent I nearly faint. I blink, beads of perspiration rising along my forehead, the nape
of my neck. I fight to stay in my skin, breathing rapidly as an altogether different ache fractures across my chest. This is why James refused to let me go.
He was managing my pain.
A few soldiers rush forward to catch him, and he tries to shake them off but he doesn’t have the leverage. He’s down one arm and one leg and they grapple with him, dragging him away from me, muttering apologies under their breaths. He doesn’t take this well.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he shouts at Warner, still struggling. “Juliette is going to kill you.”
Warner goes still, his face impassive, and yet I see it: a single moment of uncertainty, flashing in and out of his eyes.
A weakness, noted.
“Was it worth it?” James is saying. “She’s going to be so pissed at you when she finds out you shot me—”
“Shut up,” Warner says, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “You’ll be fine.”
“What are you going to do to her?” James says, still fighting the soldiers restraining him, and I realize he’s asking about
me.
I catch a glimpse of his eyes—wild and angry—just before Warner turns the heat of his gaze in my direction, bearing no markers
of his momentary uncertainty.
My heart is pounding badly in my chest.
“Warner, listen to me,” James is saying, sounding panicked. “I know you’re mad. I know I fucked up, okay? I’m sorry. I’m really,
really sorry. I did this all wrong—”
Warner takes a step toward me.
I have no idea how I’m still standing. Pain has consumed me so completely that I’m almost looking forward to death.
“—but you can’t kill her. We need her. She was trying to get home because there’s something bigger going on. She was sent here for a reason. She told me we only have seven weeks before it’s too late—”
Warner and I stiffen at the same time.
We both look up at James.
Warner’s eyes narrow with a new intensity. Not anger. It looks more like awareness.
My eyes, on the other hand, are bright with fear.
“You know I’m telling the truth,” James says to his brother. “You know I’d never lie about something like this. I want to
keep our world safe just as much as you do. Rosabelle’s been trying to fix things on her own, but if we work together—”
“No,” I gasp, the word leaving my lips before I’ve had a chance to consider it. “James—”
“What do you mean, no?” he says, turning to me. “Would you really rather die than work together?”
“I—I don’t—”
I can’t think.
Right now, I can’t process much beyond the pain devouring my body. I need time to gather my thoughts. To set down my head.
I don’t understand what James is suggesting.
Ark officials would never forge a faithful alliance with a known adversary. The Reestablishment doesn’t offer second chances
to its enemies; this is not an avenue I’m familiar with. All spies who enter the island are immediately executed, or else
viciously tortured and manipulated for information and then, executed.
I would know. The executions were my job.
I glimpse Warner’s face, the look of concentrated interest in his eyes.
I don’t like it.
I don’t want a new master.
“C’mon, Rosabelle,” James says angrily. “If you die, you’re sentencing us all to death. Is that really what you want?”
I look up at him, my heart thudding against my ribs.
An honest answer to his question would cost me too much. I don’t want their world to suffer, but neither do I want to exchange
death for a life rotting in captivity, being endlessly tortured for information only to lose what matters to me anyway. They’d
siphon off my marrow, draining me for intel while I fester—for what?
A half-life of a half-life?
These people are not capable of comprehending my world. Even a theoretical understanding of the sophisticated surveillance
of the Ark wouldn’t be enough; if I were shackled to a team of their soldiers on a mission to take out Klaus, they’d get us
all killed in seconds. They’re too loud, too weak; too unfamiliar with the terrors of a true surveillance state. And they’d
never prioritize saving Clara. They wouldn’t care about Clara—
“Tell me something, Rosabelle Wolff.”
I draw breath at the sound of Warner’s voice, staring up into his disorienting eyes as a shaft of light cuts across his face.
It’s hard to believe this man is married.
It’s hard to believe he’d be interested in the institution; that he might’ve experienced enough delicate emotion to entertain the idea of a wife.
I can’t imagine him being gentle; he seems incapable of warmth.
It’s only his close relationship with James that gives me pause about his character.
The fact that he shot his own brother in the leg notwithstanding, James doesn’t seem afraid of him at all.
I can’t figure out what that means.
“You spent nearly ten days in prison,” Warner says, taking another step closer to me. “Ten days, and you never said a word.
You didn’t take one audible breath.”
Looking into his eyes feels a little like catching fire.
“Imagine my surprise to discover your complete refusal to speak—when for weeks prior to your incarceration you were engaged
in regular conversation with my brother.”
My heart beats harder.
“Tonight, I learn you’re once again capable of forming complete sentences.” He hesitates. Studies me. “What is it about James
that makes you so talkative?”
“Bro, this isn’t—” James tries to say.
Warner holds up a hand, his eyes on me. “Did you really decide to confide more in him during the bloodshed and chaos of the
past several hours than you might’ve shared with your own father in over a week?”
Your own father.
I keep my eyes on the ground.
Rosa, it’s not what you think—
I didn’t abandon you, they’d left me for dead— These people saved my life—
Rosa— Look at me—
No.
I stay where I am despite my every instinct to run; if I shift even an inch my legs will give out from under me.
“Did you really tell him,” Warner goes on, “that we have seven weeks before some new hell befalls our world?”
Rosa, is your mother still alive?
Rosa, does Clara remember me?
No—
NO.
“Rosabelle,” James says quietly. “Please.”
I turn my head as a first leaf might turn toward the sun, the tender shoot of life inside me responding instinctively to the
resonance of his voice, recognizing light.
James shakes his head at me, his eyes tired.
I take in his fresh wound, his bound arm, the myriad cuts and scrapes across his bare, blood-streaked skin. I stabbed him
in the torso, in the thigh. He just took a shot in the leg because of me.
This all began when I slit his throat.
Still, he’s staring at me with a kind of anguish, like I might, at any moment, break his heart.
My chest constricts in response.
“That will suffice as an answer.”
I look up, startled. Warner is studying me with a fascination that’s entirely new, his incisive look sending me into a fresh
panic.
“I’m going to take some time to make a decision,” Warner says, his eyes hardening. “That’s all for now.” He makes a motion
as if to dismiss me—
And I drop dead.