Chapter 57 Zion
ZION
“Isn’t the house for the auction participants there?” Kali asked, striding around us, the crunch of gravel under her boots practically drowned out by the rising commotion not far from us.
Gedeon caught her. “You do not walk headfirst into danger. Not if you want to stay alive.”
Scoffing, she crossed her arms over my leather jacket loosely hanging on her tall figure. “Why do you think I started training?”
“Started. That’s the point.” He surveyed the two streets adjoining the training rings. “Whatever has broken out, it seems to be contained in one location,” he said, gesturing to the road winding along the outskirts of the compound.
“We’ll go see what’s happening, but you—”
Shouts and yells rising in volume cut me off.
We sprinted down the increasingly more crowded streets in the direction of the noise, halting at the corner of the fourth road.
Soldiers dressed in black cargo pants and dark green, skintight shirts with knife sheaths strapped to their chests poured out of the matte black trucks.
Ilasall’s military.
They had invaded our home.
Red veiling my vision, I launched forward. Rivulets of crimson ran down the paths Kali’s nails had left on my abdomen as I plucked my knife out of the neck of the closest soldier. Gurgling, he fruitlessly tried to contain the blood pouring out of his useless throat.
My body moved separately from me as my blade swished under the soldiers’ chins, opening their tracheae and arteries, soaking me in their blood spurting from the deep gashes.
The pounding of my pulse in my ears swelled with each pair of eyes dulling to glass, identical to the dead gazes I’d witnessed and caused twelve years ago.
The same trucks, the same uniforms, the same evil taking our residents away, our families, our siblings.
My sister.
“Zion!” a female voice screamed, right as rough hands shoved me into a wall. Pain bloomed at the back of my head, and I blinked to push the throbbing away. A stony jaw came into focus with a crown of dark hair beside it. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Wake up!” Gedeon slapped my cheek hard enough for the fog to dissipate.
The heated sting sobered me enough to take in my surroundings.
“We have to stop them. Protect her,” he instructed, then disappeared into the mass of our people shaking off their sleep and swarming Ilasall’s troops despite being unarmed.
Nobody dared to turn on the lights in the apartments to illuminate the fight on the road, lest the military would know what and who was inside.
Both parties packed the street to the brim, and the sounds of metal clashing, gunshots ringing, crunches of bones breaking, dull thumps of fists landing into guts and jaws grew overwhelming, evoking the haze of scarlet to creep up on my peripherals.
Kali touched my upper back. “What do we do?”
Gradually, the roar of my pulse subsided enough to discern shouts of battle and cries for help.
Hiding behind the corner, I rattled off to her, “Stay here. Don’t move. We’ll take care of this,” and rushed straight into the mayhem before she could answer.
Taking cover from bullets zapping the air and snapping the necks of soldiers I could reach, I paid no attention to the faraway pain tickling my bare torso and attempting to convince my muscles to give out.
Blood pulsed out of the wounds I’d sustained, but they were survivable, and I slashed my way toward the house assigned to those we had brought from the last auction in Ilasall.
More military trucks had gathered around the five-story building, unmarked, the color of concrete like half the ones lining this neighborhood.
Soldiers armed with riot shields pushed the locals to the sides as their military comrades dragged the shouting inhabitants through the exit, cuffed them, and shoved them into the trucks despite their protests and wails, a dozen in each, before shutting the back doors and locking them from the outside, sealing them inside, taking away any chance of escape.
Moments flashed of my sister standing in the back of a twin military truck, her plunging a knife under her ribs, and roaring, and I dashed into the first floor of the closest building.
I leaped out of the window and onto a soldier clad in riot gear, tackling us both to the ground and opening a gap in their ranks for our people to flow through.
Only we knew the Matching participants lived here, on the fringes of the compound, where serenity persevered, away from the hustle of schools, training fields, and the bustle of the center.
It was easier to adapt to a new home, life, to freedom, if you were surrounded by familiar faces and undisturbed by the curious gazes of others.
But Ilasall’s military targeted their living quarters specifically. Someone had leaked the necessary information.
I stabbed my fury into the soldier I’d tackled until he ceased resisting, and his abdomen turned muddy brown from his blood soaking through his uniform shirt and becoming one with the asphalt.
Crouching down to not raise attention to myself, I observed the intensifying fight further down the street, most of the compound awake by this point. A low rumble vibrated the ground, and my neck nerves shrieked as I twisted toward the roar of the engines.
The military trucks.
I raced to the matte black trucks flocked by our fighters, them powerless against the soldiers shooting strings and strings of bullets toward us and repelling any counterattacks.
Most of us weren’t armed. We hadn’t expected this to befall us tonight.
Meeting Ava’s and Eli’s eyes in the throng, I shouted, “Slash their tires!”
Their curt nods were enough for me to trust that they would get the job done despite Ava limping, her arm thrown over Eli’s shoulders, and half of his face covered in red splotches.
I relayed the same order to the others, and then lunged for the military trucks with their backs still open. Soldiers were already grabbing random women from the crowd and throwing them inside.
They were stealing our people. Again.
“Get off!”
My head whipped toward the yell. A short, blonde teenage girl wrestled a faceless soldier trying to lock her in a chokehold. She elbowed him in his stomach and twisted out of his grasp, kicking him in the balls the moment she was free.
I leaped over the lifeless bodies scattered on the road and, using the seconds the soldier teetered, clutching his smashed-in groin, struck his ankle with the heel of my boot.
The bone gave way for his leg to bend in an unnatural position, but no screams had time to leave his throat as I sliced it open and he half-choked on his own blood, half-bled out, slumping on the asphalt.
“Go!” I told the girl, and she darted away, pausing twenty feet from me and kicking the ankles of a smaller stature soldier from behind, the move terrifyingly similar to mine.
A slightly older, also light-haired woman, probably her sister, gripped the soldier’s helmet and his nose connected with her knee right before her foot flew to his crotch.
“Maira, run!” She grabbed the teenage girl’s hand, and their figures faded into an alleyway leading deeper into the compound.
Focusing back on the disorder around me, I jumped back into action, and we quickly took care of the rest of the soldiers gathered around the closest truck.
Their corpses littering the ground soon became mangled as our residents poured out of the back of the vehicle and trampled the bodies of troops who’d detained them.
When directed to run and hide or fight, all but one woman picked the latter option, and we split into teams.
Eli and Ava had managed to stop two more military trucks from leaving, but three managed to drive away, their headlights off. The last sign of them getting away with their cargo was the tiny glint of metal as they turned a corner and vanished.
More trucks followed, with who knew how many of the city’s citizens we’d smuggled out inside them, not counting the women they had snatched right from under our noses, re-employing their old tactic, likely abducting them for fertility testing, and no matter the result, a fucking awful life, ten times worse than you could possibly imagine.
Hearing about it for years, witnessing my sister make her choice and listening to Kali share her experiences had done its work on me. I heaved in lungfuls of crisp winter air, but the gusts of wind did nothing to cool down my frantic search for the two people I had to make sure were alive.
No, not just alive, but unhurt. Safe and sound.
Yet none of them appeared in my line of sight and the yells, cries, grunts, thuds of heavy-duty boots, and the clatter of bullets blended into a singular loud buzz, climbing, surging, bloating until the cloud of it popped and blurred my vision.
My palm hit a concrete building wall as images spun of Kali shoved into one of the trucks with bars on their windows and Gedeon’s bleeding body waiting to be found just around the street corner from where I was.
They were gone.
Dead.
Taken from me.
Erased by Ilasall.
Returned to dust.
Firm but gentle hands landed on my waist, and I jerked, leaping back and clutching my knife securely as it drew an arch in the air toward his throat.
Gedeon’s forearm blocked my wrist. He lowered it to my side, locking it there while his free hand drifted to my face, his fingers hovering a few inches away from my jawline. “It’s me.” His knuckles tentatively brushed my cheekbone. “Are you okay?”
With my chest rising and falling rapidly, I swallowed the dryness in my throat.
Slowly, the screeching tires, shrieks, and shouts quietened, and I scanned the bruises and scratches covering Gedeon’s exposed arms, the first signs of swelling under his right eye, the discoloration from blood pooling already appearing.
But from his stance, no deep wounds or broken bones seemed to bother him.
“I cannot lose you again, Zion. I will not.” His hands glided to my lower back, and he stepped up closer, pressing his forehead against mine. “Come back to me.”
Skin-to-skin contact always grounded me. It didn’t matter if it was a person’s palm in my lap or their face close to mine. It was their body heat signaling their life hadn’t been snuffed out.
I exhaled. This wasn’t twelve years ago. I hadn’t watched my family be tortured, killed, kidnapped, and forced to commit suicide to avoid their fate.
This was now.
“Are you okay?” Gedeon repeated.
Feeling his warmth seep into me was enough for me to answer him honestly, not hiding under humor or lust. “I don’t know.”
My fists curled at my sides, not daring to touch him. Not daring to see if he was actually real, standing in front of me, holding me close, his breath raining on my nose and jaw.
Not daring to see if history hadn’t repeated itself.
When his lips brushed against mine, I responded, relishing the scent of iron wafting off him. My shoulders and fists relaxed, and his smirk gradually spread. Nothing could deflate his smugness. Only his tight grip on me contradicted his nonchalance.
But if he was here… “Where is Kali?”
“I thought she was with you,” he said.
“I told her to wait a few streets over.” Savoring the sensation of his arms around me, I searched for Kali’s familiar figure between our people dealing with the last soldiers the city had left behind or the unlucky ones from the military trucks we’d seized.
“I wasn’t leaving you alone in this mess. ”
Lights came up in the windows and yellow streaks spilled on the road, illuminating the mutilated bodies, puddles of drying blood, and the sidewalks covered in crimson footprints.
The stench of raw flesh permeated the air so strongly that some gagged and retched, not used to the odor of death.
But it didn’t bother me. Its cloying aroma was familiar, something I enjoyed, not feared.
“Malaya!” Kali’s hair wild, her fair skin shining silver, she jumped over a teenage boy sprawled out on the curb of the sidewalk, his young face slack and his yellow jumper marred with dark crimson splotches.
She dashed to the other end of the street, toward the heavily pregnant girl she’d rescued months ago, now in the grasp of a soldier hauling her away.