Chapter 6 Can I Join the Club?
Can I Join the Club?
I took one step forward, and the door chimed closed behind me.
My eyes narrowed, and I held out my palm as I demanded through clenched teeth, “Give it to me.”
Zade shook his head. His voice softened like his eyes.
“First, you tell me what this is all about, Belles.” He rubbed his thumb against the note, crinkling it in his grip.
I felt anything but soft.
My body was a battleground, with ligaments and tendons fighting to keep me in place rather than tear across the room and kick him in the balls.
“First,” I mocked his gentle tone, but then mine turned dry, “It’s none of your business.”
“Eliana,” he lowered his voice along with his hand and began to stroll toward me.
About halfway, he turned toward Barrister and Yu Ting, who was now at the entrance of the range to listen in on the Mommy-Daddy smackdown as she often liked to dub our arguments.
He didn’t say a word, but they immediately scurried off into the bowels of the range.
He only continued speaking once he was close enough to barely top a whisper.
“Where did this come from?”
I stepped back. The doors opened again with a whoosh. My hands balled into fists at my sides. My gums pinched from how hard I was grinding my teeth.
“The Chronopost,” I gritted out.
Zade’s right eye twitched, but he kept the rest of his features at bay. I didn’t miss how one foot slid a half-step forward.
“You aren’t thinking of going there, are you? To that inn?”
“You have no right to read my mail!” I shouted.
Unlike him, my facial features were nowhere close to the metaphorical bay. They were drawn out at sea with cannons loaded.
My rage had a history of pulling out Zade’s mostly dormant temper.
“Are you going?!” he snapped.
This time, he took a definite step forward.
The doors chimed shut again.
I met his step and raised him two, stomping toward him until all he had to do was hold out the letter for me to snatch it from him, but he held it crumpled up tight in his fist.
“Why do you care, Zade? What is it to you?” I heaved, feeling every burst of hot air billowing up my windpipe and flaring through my nostrils.
It didn’t matter that Yu Ting and Barrister weren’t in the lobby, because they could surely hear our every word.
“These people are terrorists!” Zade bellowed.
“The Way? They are all over TNN, Belles. I know you want revenge for what you think has been a horrid life, but I really can’t believe you would turn to them for help when I’ve told you I’ll do anything for you.
Anything! How could you trust strangers over me? ”
The end of his tirade was choked off with emotion filling his eyes and a tell-tale red mark flushing the skin between his brows.
My jaw fell slack, dropping open. I’m pretty sure I could hear the gears turning in my head.
Click.
We will help you find The Way.
That’s what the note said.
They were an organization that wanted to bring down the Administration. Azazel was a big part of that Administration. The fact that Zade had connected those dots before me infuriated me, but with those blaring lines now drawing out the answer, my brain colored in the rest of the picture.
My pulse steadied out, and my breathing slowed. I knew the human thing to do would have been to react to his genuine display of affection, but I was a mutt.
No one expected me to do the right thing because I was born wrong.
I wasn’t human in the sense that everyone else was.
My next breath eased out low and long as I arranged my mouth into a sympathetic frown.
“I know,” I said quietly and bowed my head.
But the action didn’t match the tapping that my toe had started inside my sneaker and the plan now taking shape behind the lies my soft eyes were feeding him.
I cleared my throat and took one last step forward to put a hand on his forearm. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, Zade. I already have my plan.”
None of that’s a lie.
I backed away again, my defiance clear in my posture. “I just read it this morning. I don’t even care about the note.” It wasn’t hard to twist up my mouth and grumble the following line, “I just really don’t like people going through my things.”
His shoulders sank, and he nodded. He even held out the note to me.
“I just want to keep you safe, Belles. You mean the world to me.”
Warmth spread under my skin.
I shouldn’t. Please don’t put me in that place. I’ll fail you.
Zade may have been the biggest player in the 200K block, but I knew he meant what he said.
He was probably the only person still alive who felt that way about me—who cared about my safety.
The only person alive who would even consider making me their world.
Not that Lillemore ever had, but my grandmother had been a saint and my own personal guardian angel.
The corners of my mouth perked, but my tongue lay heavy inside under the weight of what I was about to do to the only family I had left. I waved off his offer to pass the note back.
“I don’t need it.” I took a step back with a deep breath. “I gotta go or I’m gonna be late to meet Astrid at the mall.”
I didn’t wait for his response and crossed my metaphorical fingers that my tone had come off nonchalant enough to convince him I was just being my usual ice-queen self and not plotting and scheming.
However, instead of heading toward the mall once I was through the doors, I burst into the alley off Tongde 203 with adrenaline pouring into every cell.
I slung my backpack on my back and deliberated every step to keep from jumping the gun.
I headed left first to exit the lane, but as soon as I was around the corner and out of the lone security camera’s view, I sprinted around the block to loop back toward the right side of the archery range, where Zade parked his HovMo.
I’m a horrible friend.
But that thought only had me laughing aloud to myself as I breathlessly swung a leg over the cushioned seat of the motorcycle.
“Please be as stupid as I think you are,” I muttered aloud and pressed my thumb on the lock sensor.
The HovMo whirred to life. The navigation panel lit up, and the motor purred under me.
“Hah!” I cheered too loudly for someone committing grand theft auto.
I yanked the safety band from the dash compartment and fastened it around my neck before gripping both handles tight. Navigation appeared in my Visex because Zade left my ID on his HovMo permissions from when I borrowed it last month.
Ground Floor. Hearth Haven Inn.
Rerouting to Ground Floor MotoHov Parking. Hovs are prohibited for general use on the Ground Floor.
Uh, sure, confirm.
“Eliana Glory Kai Xin Chap—“
Zade didn’t even get to use my whole name against me before the zrrr of his souped-up engine cut him off.
The wind swallowed up my cackle as the HovMo maneuvered through traffic on autopilot. My hair whipped around my face. Colors blurred past. Every breath was hard to catch with speed and thrill ripping down my throat.
I was never someone who claimed to be a good person, so even that tiny nugget of guilt that had bloomed at the start of my theft gave way in the chase. I smiled like a psycho, attracting no more attention than I usually did. At least I wasn’t thinking about Thaddeus Tsai anymore.
Welp, there you go thinking about him once more. Spoke too soon.
The price for HovMo L-lifts stung more than the pedestrian pass I usually paid for. As I scanned my Visex, I winced at the two credits deducted from my account.
And down I went.
One by one, passengers drove out as we reached each destination. A few new passengers drove on, but I was the only one left for the last hundred floors.
In the quiet of the lift, the adrenaline drained, and my skin weighed down on my bones. I leaned forward against the handles and let my head hang. The vibration of the HovMo should have been barely noticeable, but my skin buzzed in response.
Zade was gonna be pissed this time. Stealing the bike wasn’t the problem.
It wasn’t unexpected considering my track record.
Pursuing a terrorist organization to ask for their help in murdering the President of The Tower, however, would certainly earn me one of those I’m-not-angry-just-disappointed lectures.
My fingers drummed out a beat. I rolled my shoulders and cranked my neck back before rolling my head side to side. What was I even going to say when I got there?
Hey, got the invite. Can I join the club? But only if I get to be the one to kill the President? Then I’mma bounce.
Fingers froze mid-solo.
What if there was no I’mma bounce? What if once I was in, that was it?
That’s typically how cults work, right?
What the hell am I doing?
“Welcome to the Ground Floor,” a polite voice announced as I rolled out of the lift. “Please park any Hov devices in the Hov Parking Bay and use only Ground Transport to move about.”
My big girl voice screamed at me to stay on the lift and ride it back up, but the voice that refused to acknowledge I could ever allow myself regrets and didn’t want to have to face Zade quite yet whispered,
You’ve come this far.
I rocked forward until the HovMo lurched and glided out of the lift and down the ramp.
Directly to my right was a large red and white sign that read:
HOV PARKING BAY
In small blue lettering, it included a very crucial detail:
Parking Fee - 20 Credits / 1 hour
I choked on my gasp. Legit sputtered. Probably could have puked if I’d eaten that morning.
Thankfully, not a soul was around to see my moment of weakness.
The parking bay was nearly empty. Most likely because the fee cost more than a month’s worth of groceries. I didn’t have that much in my account.