Chapter 8 - Reid
We've barely taken a few steps outside the gate when one of the soldiers starts yelling at us to hold up.
We all come to a stop and turn back to see what new hell is about to hit us but the guy that jogs towards us doesn't look threatening at all.
Gage walks out to meet him, and they talk for a few minutes before the soldier turns and heads back through the gate.
"Foster says they're going to fill up the trucks with the first load of people and take them back into town and drop them off.
He says he'll give us and the people that came with us a ride to our neighborhood if we want.
We can also walk back if we want to, but I think we should get back on the trucks and get home as soon as possible.
What do you guys think?" he asks, frowning when he looks over Torrin and how rough the guy looks.
I want to get home as quick as we can. After being under these soldiers' thumbs for the last couple of days I also want to get as far away from them as possible, so I ask him, "Do we trust this guy?"
Gage frowns but slowly nods his head. "Yeah, I mean, Torrin commanded them not to hurt any of us and to let us go, so I don't think we have anything to fear from them at this point. Also, I think most of them are decent people who wouldn’t have done what they did if they weren’t being controlled."
Luna starts walking back towards the gate, calling over her shoulder, "Come on, guys, let's just get in the truck. I don't think Torrin is up for a long walk to get back to our house."
Kara rushes to walk beside her, tossing her golden curls over one shoulder and telling us, "As much as I did not enjoy their hospitality... one star, do not recommend... I'm more than happy to use them as an Uber to get back to your place, so let's go already."
I share a quick glance with Jules and he gives me a reassuring nod. We follow everyone else back through the gate and trail behind Luna and Kara as they head to one of the army trucks. When Luna gets to the tailgate she jumps back with a tiny squeal and we all rush up to see what has upset her.
Mars pushes past us and lifts his hands, saying, "I got this asshole.
" Dark shadowy ropes spread forward and wrap around a soldier who's thrashing around on the floor of the truck bed.
They yank him out until he falls onto the gravel at her feet with a grunt.
Jules and I share a surprised look at the magic, power, whatever it is that Mars just displayed.
We move back, pulling Luna up against us, while Gage hauls the shadow wrapped soldier to his feet.
He marches him over to a different group of soldiers and tosses him at their feet.
"So that's the power you got?" Jules asks Mars. "You can control darkness? Shocking, it matches the color of your fucking heart."
Mars doesn't rise to it. He just dusts off his hands and steps back with his jaw tight, and somehow that lack of a fight is more unsettling than any comeback would have been. The Mars we grew up with never once let Jules have the last word.
Loading up goes quickly after that. Foster drops the tailgate of the cleared truck and hands the girls up one at a time, a formality that earns him an approving pat on the cheek from Elenor.
The rest of us climb in and sort ourselves along the benches.
Luna ends up across from me with Torrin sagging on her shoulder and Gage bracketing her other side.
Jules drops down next to me close enough that our knees knock together.
Kara takes the spot on my other side, tucks her arm through mine, and rests her head against my shoulder.
For the first time in days the world holds every person I love inside one square of space I can see with a single look.
The engine growls and the town starts rolling past through the slats. Somebody's voice has to break the quiet first, and of course it's my twin.
"So does anyone want to explain the mind control situation to me?" Kara waves a finger at Torrin. He shrugs one shoulder and leans closer to Luna like she’s the magic he needs to recover. I think we all feel that way now.
Luna shakes her head when Tor doesn’t answer. "I was hoping somebody in this truck would have answers to all these new tricks we seem to have, because all I have is a growing list of questions."
"Join the club, Cin," Jules says. "I made the ocean part like Moses, and Kara here has been turning everything liquid she touches into a slushie."
"It's a gift and I intend to abuse it," Kara says primly. "No warm drink will ever be safe in my presence again."
"See, and all I got was control of air and water.
" Jules stretches his arms along the slats behind us with a wounded expression.
"Kara gets to freeze everything and Tor gets mind control. How’s that fair?
There's no drama in air and water. Nobody has ever gasped at a light breeze and a sprinkle of rain. "
"You knocked a grown man off his feet a few minutes ago," I remind him even though I know he’s trying to keep this light and teasing.
"And not one person clapped, Reid. Not a single one."
The laughter that moves around the truck is thin and exhausted, but it's real.
It loosens something in my shoulders that's been cranked tight since the soldiers first took us.
This is what we do. We've always done it, patched over the scary parts with jokes until we can breathe again.
If my own scary part is sitting quiet in my head where nobody can see it, well, that's a problem for later.
A crow keeps pace with the truck for a few seconds jabbering away in my head, and I hold my breath until it peels away without saying anything. Small mercies still count as mercies.
Elenor waits for the laughter to settle before she leans forward and puts her hand on Torrin's knee, and she speaks gentler to him than her usual brand of sass.
"I'm sorry about your father, sweet boy.
Not for him, mind you, because that man earned his ending twice over.
But I'm sorry you had to be the one to stand in front of him, and I'm sorry for the boy who deserved a better dad than the one he got. "
Torrin doesn't lift his head from Luna's shoulder. His eyes stay closed, and for a long moment I think the exhaustion has already pulled him under, but then he says, low and scraped raw,
"He stopped being my father a long time ago. I made my peace with that years back." A breath moves through him, slow and heavy. "What I'm sorry about is the men he used. Some of them have to live with a week of memories that were never their choice."
Luna turns her face and presses a kiss into his hair, and nobody in the truck says anything else about it. Some things don't need more words piled on top of them.
"Well, I know what my first order of business is." I aim for lighter ground on purpose. "I am going to sleep for two full days in my own bed, and no army on this planet is going to stop me."
"Your own bed still has that mountain of clean laundry on it you refused to fold before the trip," Luna teases me, and the ordinary domesticity of it, the sheer beautiful, boring normalness makes me smile. "You'll have to excavate first." She tells me.
"Then I’ll sleep on the laundry. It’ll just make the bed softer."
Across the truck, Mars's head comes up. His gaze moves from Luna to me and back again with a small crease forming between his brows, working on math he doesn't have the numbers for.
A mean little spark of satisfaction lights up in my chest. Figure it out yourself, buddy.
Two years is a lot of missed chapters, and nobody in this truck is going to catch you up.
Momentum pushes me towards the front of the truck as it comes to a stop at the mouth of our street and Foster comes around to drop the tailgate.
He shakes Gage's hand and quietly tells Torrin something that makes him nod.
The truck grumbles away with our few remaining neighbors aboard for their own drop-offs.
That leaves the eight of us standing at the end of the street in the late afternoon light.
The word home rolls through me with a feeling of bliss as we start walking.
Luna's house sits waiting halfway down the block with its wide porch and I know Penny is surely losing her mind behind the front window.
My steps get lighter with every crack in the sidewalk I've stepped over a thousand times.
Jules bumps my shoulder with his, reading me the way he always does.
I'm opening my mouth to say something about pancakes when the world ends for the second time in a week.
The boom arrives out of the south, and calling it a sound isn't right, because I don't hear it so much as get hit by it.
Pressure slams through my body, through my teeth and lungs, through the bones of my skull, and the sky itself seems to flex with the force of it.
Then the ground rears up underneath us and throws us all down.
Pavement bites into my palms and one knee.
Somewhere close, Kara screams, and glass starts shattering up and down the street in bursts.
House windows, car windshields, the big bay window of the Hendersons' place all let go at once.
I can't get my feet under me. The road won't stay a road, rolling and bucking in waves that my eyes refuse to accept.
Its roar swallows every other sound except the deep cracking noises coming from the houses around us, wood and concrete giving up somewhere inside their walls.