Chapter 4
SULLHA
The oppressive heat was easing, and the shadows on the concrete doubled in length.
One of the human guards was leaning against the gate, half asleep on his feet, and the children who had gotten tired of the climbing frame were now sitting on the ground and listening to Roshav telling them a scary story.
As if anyone needed to invent things to be scared of in this place.
Something brushed against the back of her neck, a movement of air that wasn't caused by the breeze because there was none, and fear seized Sullha with such power that it chased the air from her lungs.
It took a couple of seconds for her to realize that it must be Yaaf, using his mind tricks to conceal his presence.
She sucked in a breath and whipped her head around, finding him standing behind her, looking completely relaxed, and watching her with a smile curling just one corner of his mouth.
She put her hand over her heart. "You scared me half to death."
"I thought you'd know it's me by now."
"I didn't hear anything. I just felt something. The air behind me was displaced."
His smile widened. "That's impressive. I don't make any sound when I want to be stealthy, but you still felt me."
She turned around on the bench and looked up at him. "Are you thralling everyone again to ignore us? Or rather not see us?"
He nodded. "They can see both of us if they look this way, but I thralled them not to. This bench doesn't exist for them right now. "
She glanced toward Asira and Pol, who were still focused on each other, and neither of them had turned, so they couldn't hear her and Yaaf talking either. Pol was still staring at a point above Asira's shoulder, and her pencil was moving in short, quick strokes.
"This is so strange," Sullha murmured.
"I know. Thralling is a very powerful tool."
The smile was still there, the corner-of-the-mouth smile that was not a soldier's and not a stranger's, and that took her back six years to a boy who had made faces at her just to make her laugh.
It was the same mouth.
"That's Asira," she said, nodding toward the bench across the way. "I've been trying to get to know her like you asked. She came over just now to draw my portrait, but my son reassigned her to drawing his friend."
"Pol."
"You know him?"
"No, but I've been standing here for a while before you felt me. I heard Tomek introduce his friend to Asira."
She was not sure how she felt about that. It was one thing to be part of his secret bubble where other people couldn't see them, and it was another thing to be outside his bubble and be watched by him without knowing that he was there.
It felt intrusive.
"Don't do that."
"Don't do what?" He joined her on the bench.
"Don't watch without letting me know that you are doing it."
He tilted his head. "But it's so much fun watching you when you are unaware of being watched. You make all those funny faces that broadcast whatever you're thinking."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Don't you dare peek into my head and read my thoughts."
He put his hand over his chest. "I promise not to do that, but I can't promise not to watch you. It's just too much fun."
"Fun," she repeated. "That's not a word one hears often in this place."
His smile vanished. "No. I guess not." He glanced at the children sitting in a circle on the ground. "They still know what fun is."
She nodded. "And it's fun to watch them, so there is that."
The smile was back, and the tightness in her chest eased.
Yaaf smiling was a different person than Yaaf without a smile.
One was her old friend, the other was an intimidating force that made her feel threatened even though she knew logically that he would never harm her.
It was just the immense destructive potential stored in that big body.
She felt like she was sitting next to an explosive charge or a live wire.
Both could be completely inert and yet extremely dangerous to be near.
"What's your assessment of Asira?" she asked, just to fill the air between them with words, so her mind would not go places it shouldn't.
"You're the one with the assessment."
She arched a brow. "You're the invisible spy that can watch people without them knowing that they are being watched. You might have seen things I didn't notice."
"I'm not a spy. Not here anyway." He looked past her at Asira. "She looks like her brother."
Yaaf had told her that Asira was the sister of one of his friends, and she assumed it was one of the eight who had been enhanced. He hadn't told her anything about the guy, though.
"What's his name?"
Yaaf's brows drew together. He looked confused.
"We call him Number Four."
"Yes, but what's his name?"
"I…" He stopped. "I don't remember."
She stared at him.
"You don't remember his name?"
"We haven't used the names we were given by our mothers in a long time."
"He trained with you. Lived beside you. How long have you known him?"
"Six years. Or maybe it was five. Or four. The time before the enhancement is a little blurry. I don't remember much."
"But you remember me. My name. How can you not remember the names of your teammates?"
He took in a long breath. "I don't know. For a long time, everything from before was blurry. But we remember more about our lives from before we were taken to the training camp, when life still felt good. The camp was so brutal that everything is just blurred."
She swallowed. "Still, these men are your teammates. You interact with them daily. How could you have forgotten their names?"
He looked down at his boots.
"It stopped being relevant. Once we started being called by numbers, the names became useless, and they faded."
"Does Number Four remember his own name?"
"I don't know," he said. "I could ask him."
"Please do. When it's time to tell Asira about the escape plan, I will need a name, not a number."
He nodded.
"Does that happen to all of you when you leave here?" she asked after a moment. "You stop being someone with a name and become a number?"
He was quiet for longer than the question deserved.
"No. It's just the Eight of us."
"So, Asira's brother is one of the Eight. Number Four of them."
"Yes."
It suddenly occurred to her that Yaaf had a number too.
"What's your number?" she asked.
"I'm Number One."
Her mouth curved into a grin before she could help it. She knew it was foolish. Numbers were not ranks, and even if they were, ranking was not a thing to be pleased about in this place. But she was pleased anyway.
Yaaf had always been first at everything.
"Does that mean you're the leader of your team?" she asked.
"No."
"No?"
"I'm the spokesman. The one who speaks for the others. That's all."
That didn't sound right. "Why can't they speak for themselves?"
"They can, but they prefer for me to do it."
Perhaps he was more eloquent than the others, or less shy.
"So who is the leader?"
"We don't have one. We make decisions together."
"Do you vote on them?"
He tilted his head as if the question didn't make any sense. "We don't need to vote. We are all in all of the time. We are one."
She could understand camaraderie, but that sounded like much more than that. It was strange.
"How does that work?"
He opened his mouth and closed it again.
"It just works," he said. "It's hard to explain."
Sullha watched his face.
She had always been able to read him, even when he was trying to hide things. He hadn't been able to lie to her to save his life. His ears used to turn red when he tried.
His ears were not red now.
His training had seen to that. But there was something in the set of his jaw that was the same, the pull at the corner of his mouth that appeared when he was holding something back.
"You're hiding things from me," she said.
"I'm telling you what I can for now."
She nodded even though it hurt. He could trust her, he had to know that.
"You'll tell me later?"
"I will."
He went quiet, and it told her that whatever was on the other side of what he was not saying was a big deal. Something he thought she wasn't ready for.
Her first reaction was a flare of anger. She was nineteen years old. She had given birth at fourteen. She had survived the breeding building and her mother's silence, and there was not much left that she was not ready for.
She pushed the anger aside.
He'd come to her, and he'd kept coming. He'd just walked through a yard full of women and children and thralled all of them into not seeing him, so he could sit with her and talk to her like they were the only people in the world.
Whatever he was holding back, he was not doing it out of a lack of trust. She had a feeling that he was keeping it back because he thought she couldn't handle it, that it would hurt her, and he wasn't ready to do that because they had just reunited, and he didn't know how strong she was.
"All right," she said.
"All right?"
"You'll tell me when you are ready. I'll wait."
He looked into her eyes. "You're the only person in the world who would answer me that way."
"I'm also the only person in the world that you're talking to other than your seven teammates. So that's not much of a sample."
She didn't know what prompted her to say that or why she believed it to be true; it was just a hunch. There was a lonely quality to Yaaf, a sense of isolation, and she recognized it for what it was because she felt the same.