Chapter 31 Rosabelle
Rosabelle
There’s a sudden clamor as a trio of bodies separates from the dense crowd and head in our direction.
Chairs scrape against the floor as everyone but me pushes out of their seats to greet the new arrivals. I sense no imminent
threat, nor anyone I recognize, so I look away as they exchange heys and hugs and how’ve you beens.
In fact, the moment James rises from his chair and retreats a few feet, I fall back inside myself.
Almost at once, my heart ceases its panic.
My pulse begins to slow.
In his absence the diner dims, sounds muting into something manageable. I sink more freely into the soft contours of my own
mind, then force another two bites into my mouth, chewing and swallowing. The effort gets a little easier each time, but it’s
a struggle not to take breaks between bites.
A cold calm soon settles over me.
It’s harder to find my center when James is coming and going around me, but now, in this steady reprieve, it’s almost a gift to pull on this old skin, hermetically sealing my head inside my head.
In order to survive, I can never allow myself to truly live—and it would be a lethal mistake to forget that.
This is not the time for erratic emotion. Now is the time to sort out my plans.
I will go back to the Ark tonight.
First, I will convince these people to let me go home.
I didn’t know what would happen to me after failing to take off at the airfield. I assumed I was out of chances; I assumed
they’d do the obvious thing and imprison me for the rest of my life, torturing me to the point of death and holding me there,
in purgatory, never healing me more than necessary in order to keep me too weak to escape. I thought they’d hack me slowly
to pieces in the pursuit of information and retaliation.
It’s what The Reestablishment would’ve done.
Instead, I’m sitting here in a warm, borrowed jacket, eating waffles in relative peace.
I once thought these people were stupid.
I’m beginning to realize I’ve been neatly tricked. My shields were slowly stolen when I wasn’t looking. My mind softened with
my own permission. I gave up information without coercion.
I never anticipated James.
A plan is coming together in my mind, the shape of it influenced by the rebels’ subtle maneuvers.
I once feared the idea of allying with them, of shackling myself to a new master; but I’ve been so accustomed to the cruel practices of The Reestablishment that it never occurred to me a compromise could be peaceful.
It never occurred to me I might ask for something without being forced to pay for it in blood.
I’m seeing now that I might not need to pledge my allegiance to anyone in order to achieve my aims.
Perhaps I might try the path of least resistance.
I chew thoughtfully.
If the rebels are willing to listen, there’s no reason to withhold information about Klaus or the Ark, especially not if I
intend to destroy it all. I’ll leverage intelligence in exchange for a jet and their promise to stay out of my way. I’ll convince
them to give me back the vial.
And then I’ll go home to die.
The tremble in my arm has begun, slowly, to abate, though I’m beginning to worry I’m eating too quickly; I’ve already made
my way through half the stack of waffles. The trouble is, I don’t have much time to refuel, but I have to be careful not to
make myself sick.
I drink most of my water.
No one can know that my plan necessitates sacrificing my life in the process; I don’t want opinions or interference. So I’ll
need some other way to convey to the rebels that it’s in their best interests for me to go back—and go back alone.
This is the trickiest part.
I’m worried they might insist on participating; and that would be a true disaster.
The vial of earth is nothing on its own; it activates into a deadly weapon only when fully ingested by a human body.
Klaus had intended for me to launch an attack against the civilians of The New Republic, but my plan is to drink it before launching myself into his cradle.
Once submerged in the synthetic waters of his mind, I’ll have detonated the cataclysmic explosion necessary to kill Klaus—to dismantle the Ark.
But before I can do any of that, I’ll need to slip back into my old life on the island, which will require evading capital
punishment.
I was supposed to die on the mainland. I was supposed to submit to Klaus’s directive. If I manage to return home I’ll be sentenced
to death upon arrival for failing my mission. I’ve already decided that my only shot at a stay of execution will require appealing
to Sebastian’s distorted sense of devotion.
He has far greater power.
I force another bite of waffle into my mouth, chewing slowly.
If I finally, enthusiastically consent to marrying Sebastian, he might petition to delay my sentencing. He was the one who
managed to convince the council to uphold the terms of our betrothal despite the sanctions against me. He might be able to
convince them to let me live. I don’t need forever. Just long enough to realize my plan.
The rebels, of course, will never understand this.
James won’t understand this.
No one from the mainland will be able to grasp the nuanced strategy and sacrifice necessary to dismantle the establishment
from within. No one from the mainland will be able to anticipate the complexities of Ark surveillance. There is no question
that I must return by myself. These loud, unrestrained people are woefully ill-equipped to brave the many hells of the Ark.
They’ll sabotage everything.
I take another bite of waffle. There’s a plate of eggs and sausages in front of me, too. I realize I need protein, but the
sight of it makes me a little nauseous. I’ll have to slowly work my way up to eggs.
I drain the rest of my water glass.
I, too, need to prepare to reenter the terrifying surveillance state. I need to remember who I am and where I’m from. I’ve
been on the mainland for too long; I’ve grown almost accustomed to the idea of privacy. I don’t search for cameras as often
as I should. I don’t police my thoughts enough anymore. I’m beginning to think and feel things without fear of retribution.
I need to reestablish my shields.
The only way to do that is to convince James to stay away from me.
I reach for a blueberry, rolling its small, firm shape between my fingers. When I push it between my lips I feel like I’ve
done something illegal.
The tart, sweet taste explodes in my mouth.
“—mean Rosabelle?”
I look up, the sound of James’s voice shattering the bell jar around my head. The din of the diner comes rushing back, footfalls
thudding and chairs pushing and cups slamming. The jangle of forks and knives, the clatter of plates stacking, bursts of laughter—
“Rosabelle?” someone says. “Wait, isn’t that the—”
A gasp of breath.
“Oh, shit. That is her.”
My fork is paused halfway to my mouth.
I turn slowly to meet the gaze of the man staring at me, registering his astonishment before taking in the rest of him.
He’s immediately striking.
He has a head of thick inky waves and bronzed olive skin. His dark eyes are ringed by sooty lashes. His mouth is bracketed
on one side by a pair of beauty marks. There’s something almost feline about his looks, except that his eyes are pure steel.
Despite his civilian attire, it’s clear to me at once that he’s a soldier. The build of him, the way he stands, the piercing
way he looks at me—
I notice, a beat late, the pendant at his neck.
His top two buttons are undone, revealing a small swath of his throat and chest. There’s a simple chain glinting against his
skin that looks like it was half-tucked or poorly hidden, its puzzle-piece pendant winking in the glare of the overhead lights.
“Hi,” he says bluntly, blinking at me.
I set down my fork. I don’t know who he is. I only remember that I nearly killed him.
Tried really hard not to kill him.
He turns to the group. Then, politely, his stiff smile never reaching his eyes, he says, “So you guys just hang out with her
now?”
“It’s a need-to-know kind of situation,” says Nazeera.
He arches a dark brow. “Right.”
James sighs. “Rosabelle,” he says, “this is Kian. Kian, this is Rosabelle. You’ve already met.”
“Sure,” Kian says dryly. “We’ve met.”
James nods at the other two and says to me, “And you might remember Allie and Liam.”
I follow his gaze to the towering brunette and the buzzed redhead standing nearby. I remember seeing Allie at the airfield,
though I didn’t know her name then. She stands slightly apart from the guys, assessing me with a cold remove.
She doesn’t say a word.
“I remember you,” Liam says, the loathing in his voice a perfect match for the darkness in Allie’s eyes.
I turn toward him, taking him in.
Liam’s hair is so vivid it’s actually orange; his milky skin dotted all over with freckles. Standing so close together, he
and Kian present as complete visual opposites; it’s a little jarring to take them in side by side. I had no idea Liam was
a redhead; the airplane hangar had been so dark I hadn’t seen him properly. But Liam is unaltered in other essential ways:
he wasn’t happy to see me then, and he’s not happy to see me now. I still remember the way he’d pointed an accusing finger
in my direction—
She killed Kian.
I sit back in my seat.
“So she doesn’t talk?” says Kian.
“She talks,” says Adam.
“Hey, remember when she didn’t talk?” Winston says, his face brightening. “Those were good times, right? We didn’t know how
good we had it.”
Nazeera coughs through a laugh.
“She’s not talking now, though,” says Allie. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her,” says James. “She just doesn’t want to talk to you. Look, we should probably—”
“What are you, like, her interpreter?” asks Liam.
“Yeah.” James’s eyes flash. “And she told me to tell you you’ve pissed your pants.”
Winston barks out a laugh.
Liam looks down in alarm, his face going blotchy with color, only to realize the joke.
I smile at that, and James doesn’t miss it.
He locks eyes with me and I feel the impact in my chest, knocking me deeper into my body. My smile fades as I watch his throat
move. My skin seems to come alive. James is looking at me like he wants to come and get me.
It makes me feel winded.
“Whatever,” Liam mutters under his breath.
With a start, I realize then that Kian is staring at me. His steady gaze is guarded as he studies my face, then my coat, then
my face again. “She looks like a marshmallow,” he says.
A child screams and James flinches, a faint tremor seeming to move through him as he turns away, directing his eyes to a wall.
I track the room for the source: the mother of the distressed child picks a fallen toy off the floor, resolving the issue,
and the crying ceases as suddenly as it started. James exhales, the breath moving all the way through his body.
I don’t understand why no one seems to notice this.
“I guess that’s one way to hide her in plain sight,” Kian is saying. “Always in costume.” He meets my eyes again, a wry smile touching his lips. “What, no tail today?”
Mortification catches me off guard.
Heat floods my face at once.
“Wow,” says Kian, brows lifting as he stares at me. “Cute. She single?”
James looks up.
I can see the change in him from where I’m sitting: the tension in his face, the rise and fall of his chest. He looks at me,
then at Kian. Then looks at me again.
“Don’t worry,” says Allie. “He’s joking.”
“Obviously,” says Liam.
I watch Nazeera rest a hand on James’s arm, then send him an inscrutable look. This doesn’t seem to register. James has turned
to concrete.
Kian glances at the door, faking a smile as he turns to face everyone. “Well, this was weird,” he says. “And we should probably
get going.” He nods at me. “It was nice officially meeting you, Rosabelle. Thanks for the scars.”
“Sorry,” I say to him.
Everyone collectively tenses at the sound of my voice. Kian’s eyes widen in surprise.
“For almost killing you,” I clarify. “I’m sorry.”
Kian’s confusion is slowly displaced by a smile, his face warming with easy humor, and he looks like he’s about to say something
to me when Nazeera beats him to it.
“So you guys are heading out?” she says forcefully.
“Oh,” says Kian, hesitating as he looks away from me. “Yeah. I just got a call about some weird activity over by the docks. Malik is on leave for the week, and I’m taking over some of his shifts—”
Without warning shrill rings chorus throughout the diner, the pitch cutting through the din, deadening the clamor. A palpable
wave of dread moves slowly through the restaurant as at least a third of the occupants in plainclothes stiffen in tandem,
all lifting their pagers at the same time.
So many hidden soldiers in one place.
Only then does it occur to me that I have no idea where I am within the city. James, Nazeera, Kian, Liam, Allie—all but Adam
and Winston, I notice—receive the missive.
“What is it?” says Adam. “What’s going on?”
There’s a breath of stillness.
And then, all at once, a veritable stampede for the door.