Chapter 1 #2
The mother’s expression slammed shut. “There it is. I knew there was a catch.”
“There’s no catch—”
“You want to recruit us.” The father stepped between Cass and his family. “We’ve heard the stories. We know what happens to people who accept your kind of help.”
“That’s not—I would never—”
“Get away from my family. Now.”
Cass scrambled backward, his vision blurring. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
The father took a step toward him, and Cass turned and fled.
He made it three blocks before he had to stop, pressing himself into a narrow alley, hands shaking as he covered his face. This happened more often now—the overwhelming waves of failure and shame that left him gasping in hidden corners.
You’re fine, he told himself fiercely. Get up. Keep going.
The third attempt was the one that drew blood.
Cass spotted them sitting alone at the edge of the market, their posture radiating a kind of furious misery that he recognized. They were around his age, maybe twenty-four, with close-cropped hair and the stillness of someone who had stopped expecting anything good.
“Hi,” he said, settling onto the far end of their bench. “I’m Cass. Do you mind if I sit here?”
The person looked at him with flat, exhausted eyes. “Let me guess. Spiritual enlightenment and community harmony and how my life could be so much better if I just opened my heart to whatever you’re selling.”
“I’m not selling anything. I just thought you looked like you could use some company.”
“Company.” The person laughed without humor. “And this company comes with a recruitment pitch, doesn’t it? Find someone vulnerable, offer friendship, work in the propaganda.”
Cass flinched. Why did everyone think Elysian was something it wasn’t?
They weren’t like Gensyn, or the scary people that came from SVI territories.
They were a harmonious collective and Cass had never even seen money before his mission trip; they were nothing like the corporations that ran the government of the Incorporated States of New America.
“I just want to help, because I care about people,” he said quietly. “And the people here seem so alone—”
“You want to know what caring looks like?” The person’s voice went hard. “Caring looks like leaving people alone when they don’t want your help.”
“I’m sorry. I can go if—”
“My sister believed people like you.” The words came out sharp and sudden. “She thought someone like you actually cared about her.”
Cass’s stomach clenched. “I’ve never met your sister—”
“No. But someone like you did.” The person stood, and something in their posture made Cass’s instincts scream. “She came back wrong, you know. Whatever your people did to her, she came back wrong. She smiles all the time now and talks about how grateful she is.”
“I’m sure the community was just trying to help her—”
The knife caught the late afternoon sun, and for a second Cass thought it looked so pretty, like this was the one possession this person took really good care of.
Pain burst across Cass’s forearm, sharp and immediate, followed by the warm rush of blood.
“That’s for my sister. That’s for who she used to be.” The person’s voice was shaking. “Stay away from people like me. Every time one of you approaches someone with your healing and your community, another person ends up like her—smiling and empty and grateful.”
They disappeared into the crowd, and Cass stood there bleeding, tears streaming down his face.
She came back wrong.
The words kept echoing, bumping against things he didn’t want to examine. His own struggles. The treatments that were supposed to help him. The people who came back from additional support were calmer and more settled and blinked at the wrong times.
It’s not the same, he told himself as he bit back a sob. I just need more help. I can’t get the words right. I can’t get any of it right.
The strawberries and cream smell found him an hour later, when he was already so lost he’d stopped caring.
Getting lost in the Neutral Zone wasn’t unusual; the streets weren’t laid out in any logical pattern, and one crumbling building next to a modified shipping container looked like all the others when his eyes were blurred with tears.
This time felt different. The streets kept getting narrower, the buildings more decrepit, and the people looked meaner.
His arm throbbed with every heartbeat, and he was so tired of trying, tired of failing, tired of being the person everyone looked at with contempt.
Maybe I should just stop, he thought, and the thought was terrifying because it felt right in his bones.
That’s when he smelled it.
Strawberries and cream.
It didn’t make sense. Nothing in the Neutral Zone smelled like strawberries and cream, but the scent was unmistakable, cutting through the ambient griminess like the memory of something good.
Cass followed it without thinking. He was too tired to question why the scent felt like safety, and after months of nothing feeling safe, he would have followed it anywhere.
It led him around a corner, past abandoned machinery, and directly into what felt like a wall of solid muscle.
The impact knocked him backward, and his wounded arm hit the ground first. The pain was bright enough that for a moment, he couldn’t see anything else. By the time his vision cleared, someone was looming over him—enormous, blood-spattered, backlit by the fading sun.
Cass’s brain noticed the details in disconnected fragments: tall, so tall, maybe the tallest person he’d ever seen.
Broad shoulders straining against a white undershirt that was more red than white, a flannel jacket hanging off one arm like he’d been in the middle of taking it off—or having it torn off.
Pale skin under all that blood. Freckles.
Freckles?
Cass blinked, and the image resolved into something even more confusing.
The man’s face didn’t match his body at all.
It was almost boyish—a scattering of freckles across his nose and cheekbones, a mess of copper-red waves that caught the dying light like fire, with features that belonged on a farmboy or a friendly neighbor.
Not someone who was probably six feet and eight inches of blood-soaked muscle looming over Cass in a dirty alley.
Then Cass met his eyes, and the farmboy illusion shattered.
They were a bright, vivid green with flecks of gold that seemed to reflect light from somewhere, almost glowing in the shadows.
But there was something wrong with them.
Something flat and watchful, predator-still, like whatever lived behind those pretty eyes had learned a long time ago that the world was something to be survived rather than enjoyed.
And beneath the strawberries, cutting through the sweetness: cordite.
Oh heavens. He’s a Berserker.
“I’m sorry,” Cass gasped, scrambling backward. His wounded arm left smears of blood on the concrete. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you, please don’t—”
“Stop.” The Berserker’s voice was rough, but he wasn’t advancing. He was standing very still, his bloody hands held slightly away from his body. “You’re making yourself bleed more.”
“You’re going to kill me.” Cass’s back hit a wall. “Please, I know what you are—”
“And what exactly do you think I am?”
“A Berserker. You smell like cordite. The training materials said—” Cass’s voice cracked. “Please. I’ve already had such a terrible day. I got hurt and I got lost and I don’t want to die before I can prove I’m not broken.”
The Berserker stared at him. This close, Cass could see the blood on his split knuckles, the cut on his lip still seeping red, the way his chest heaved slightly like he’d been running.
“You got hurt,” he repeated flatly.
“Not by you. Earlier. Someone was upset about their sister.” Cass gestured weakly at his bloody arm. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“And now you think I’m going to kill you?”
“Aren’t you?” Cass’s voice came out very small. “That’s what Berserkers do. I’m an Omega. Berserkers hurt Omegas, that’s what the pamphlets say—”
“I’m not—” The Berserker stopped. His jaw tightened. “I’m not going to kill you.”
Cass wanted to believe him, but the man was covered in blood, and his knuckles were torn, and everything about him screamed danger except for those silly freckles and that coppery hair and the way he smelled like something sweet underneath all the violence.
“Your hands,” Cass heard himself say.
The Berserker blinked. “What?”
“Your hands are hurt.” Cass’s eyes had fixed on the split knuckles, the raw skin. “You’re bleeding.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.” Silence stretched between them. The Berserker was staring at Cass with an expression he couldn’t read.
“I’m going to reach for my bag now,” Cass said, his voice steadier than it had any right to be. “I have medical supplies. I want to help.”
“You want to—” The Berserker made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Kid, I could snap your neck without breaking a sweat, and you want to play nurse?”
“I know. But you’re hurt.” Cass’s hands were shaking as he reached for his bag, but he didn’t stop. “I can’t just not help. It’s not how I work.”
“That’s either the bravest thing I’ve ever heard or the stupidest.”
“Probably stupid,” Cass admitted, pulling out antiseptic and bandages. “Everyone says I don’t think about consequences properly.”
He pushed himself up on unsteady legs, and the Berserker went very still—that predator-stillness, like he was deciding whether Cass was a threat or prey or something else entirely. Cass took a step toward him, then another, his heart pounding.
Up close, the Berserker was even more overwhelming. Cass barely came up to his chest, which meant he had to tilt his head back to meet those unsettling green eyes. The strawberries and cream scent was stronger here, almost dizzying.
“I’m going to touch you now,” Cass whispered. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Christ.” The Berserker’s voice was rough, but he didn’t move away. “Fine. Do whatever you’re going to do.”