Chapter 7 Chest Pain
Chest Pain
…however the forms of government may be changed, or the principles of it altered, violence is always despotism.
— THOMAS JEFFERSON, INAUGURAL ADDRESS
Back at headquarters, I sank into a corner of my bedroom and struggled to breathe for several minutes while panic tore through the fragile stability in my mind.
My meditation—the forest, the warm rain, the smell of cypress—none of it mitigated the alarm bells singing through my veins, shredding them open from the inside.
Memories crawled over me like a horde of spiders.
Aching with fever, staring into a pair of beautiful dark eyes. “I’m Zara Akbari. I’m going to take care of you.”
Unified News spreading the NAO’s recruitment efforts. “Freedom is earned, not given. Join the NSF!”
Nia Williams, standing at a podium. “They’re bigger than us. They have more weapons and better supplies. But that doesn’t mean we’re weak. We have the heart. The brains. We will stop this madness!”
Bodies hanging from a ceiling, the Brotherhood Cross carved into their backs.
A safe house in flames, innocents jumping from windows to escape, only to meet their end on the cement below.
Prisoners heaped over each other in Unity Square, the blood from their bodies staining the wall behind.
I tried to breathe, to excise the images from my mind, but they always attacked when I was at my weakest, my lowest. The only way out was through the quagmire.
Eventually, my head cleared. The tears dried. Drained and weak, I made my way to Theo’s office.
“Twenty-five men?” he asked after I told him the news of Wyatt’s daughter.
“Yes.”
He tapped his chin. “I wonder if there will be other women we’ll need to consider.”
“He didn’t mention it.”
Theo pursed his lips. He hummed, distracted, clicking his pen against his desk. Normally, I would let myself out, but something niggled at my thoughts.
When Theo looked up, his eyebrows lifted. “What’s wrong?”
I released a sigh. “He’s different from what I thought he’d be.”
Chandelier lights sparkled in his dark eyes, full of grim acceptance. “Even monsters can be complex creatures. Not everything is black and white, Soph. You know that.”
I pinched the cotton of my new sweatpants between two fingers, rubbing back and forth. The faint scent of frankincense wafted toward me.
“Are you…okay?” Theo asked, almost as if the words hurt to say.
My gaze shot up, and I wondered if now was the time he’d finally ask. What does he do to you?
And I could say, Nothing, but I don’t know why and I don’t know what he wants. He’s maddening.
But Theo said nothing, so I didn’t either. Instead, I swallowed my disappointment. “I’m okay. Did you know he’s the one in charge of sentencing the prisoners?”
Theo nodded.
“I don’t understand why he’s doing this,” I whispered. “None of it makes sense.”
“I know. We need to be on guard. I worry there’ll be a catch. He’ll trap us when we least expect it.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. Some part of me had wanted him to deny it, to tell me Lucas Scott would prove to be an asset, that he’d never hurt us. But of course he didn’t say that. It wasn’t true.
However, if Lucas could deliver Tekqua back to me, I’d suffer any amount of betrayal. I’d suffer his hands. His body. His brutality. Anything.
I wanted her back.
“I miss Tekqua,” I said.
His voice roughened. “I know.”
“Have you ever considered raiding the House of the Rising Sun, Theo? We could save them.”
He shook his head. “They guard the House as well as they guard their headquarters. I’ve looked into it.”
I swallowed to stifle the tears. She hadn’t been publicly executed, and her body hadn’t been recovered in the field, so she had to be a prisoner.
A slave.
She was at the House. I was certain.
His face softened. “It’s a scare tactic. They’re sowing uncertainty and panic through extreme cruelty, just like when they stopped using guns for their executions and started choosing their own weapons instead.”
The image slipped through the cracks in my memory vault of Colonel Jack Miller standing at the podium in Unity Square, where they performed all their public executions.
“To conserve ammunition for the Security Restoration Campaign in our northern territory, capital punishments will no longer be served by firing squad. Instead, executioners will choose how the sentence is carried out. In accordance with Executive Order 16389, in an effort to maintain unity and stop the corrosion of peace in our great nation, convicted traitors of the Unified States of America are sentenced to execution by the hand of the National Stability Force. Let this act serve as a reminder that unity prevails. All hail the Commander!”
That was the day we started calling them Blood Colonels.
It was a mockery. A humiliation. A deep wound to our pride. They wanted us to suffer in full view of the entire country. The entire world.
This is what happens when you defy us.
“But if they make us fear them, then they control us,” Theo said now.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. My fear definitely controlled me. It dictated my every action. It influenced each thought.
“Is there any more information?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“You can go then. I need to think.”
Standing to leave, I made it to the door before he murmured my name. When I glanced at his face, a rare mask of grief had settled over it. “I miss them, too.”
Right. Didn’t seem like it.
I wandered downstairs, trailing through rooms full of people without stopping to speak to any of them. After meandering aimlessly, I made my way to the café for a snack, choosing a seat alone at the back of the room to wallow in my darkness.
Devon spotted me and took the place across the table. “You doing okay, Soph?”
“Of course.” I faked a smile and lifted my dried apple slices. “Remember the beginning, when we had those food expeditions?”
He pulled a face as he sat, drumming his fingers on the table. “I hated slaughtering the cows.”
“Better than slaughtering humans,” I muttered.
Solutions to the food shortage had developed over time, primarily through vegetable gardens and hunting, but those early days of hunger still haunted us.
“Where’s Isaac?” I asked, referring to his boyfriend, one of our lieutenants.
“Upstairs. Asleep. Late night for him.”
Whatever I said next made him laugh, but my heart and thoughts floated far away.
Distant.
Distracted.
Scared.
When it grew late, I forced myself to my bed.
As usual, my mind wrapped itself in dark, anxious thoughts, my eyes wet with tears.
When I managed to sleep, I dreamt of my old squad, plagued by the belief that it should have been me.
None of them had deserved what had happened to them.
They’d been better and stronger than I ever was, and yet mine was the only heart that still beat.
How did it do it when it felt so utterly demolished?
The grief was like cancer, hidden, invisible amongst the valves and ventricles and arteries. It weaved through each muscle fiber, strangling them one by one. Slow and deliberate and cold.
My chest hurt.
The ache was constant, ebbing and flowing like waves on the shore. Sometimes the tide receded, and my thoughts cleared, but then a storm surge would drown me. It weighed on me, stealing my breath from my body.
My chest hurt.
Tekqua had always been my rock.
When the tears came, she chanted my mantra.
When I couldn’t sleep, she sang. When I needed distraction, she talked until I’d forgotten why I was hurting to begin with.
In the summer, we’d laze in the coolest parts of headquarters while she mocked my hair’s ever-expanding entropy.
When snow coated the overgrown gardens in a sparkly white blanket, Tekqua dragged me into the cold for snowball fights.
We would shiver and laugh until our stomachs ached, then trudge inside to drink cinnamon moonshine Adam had stolen from who-knew-where.
Without her, I was stumbling on unstable ground, and everything hurt—my heart, my skin, even my fingernails. My mind was a mess of hopelessness, my soul missing pieces shaped like the people I’d lost. In every spare moment, I wondered whether I’d ever be normal again.
But I already knew the answer.
No, there was no going back to normal after this.