James 27
James
The weights release with a resounding clank, the aftershocks of juddering steel reverberating around the room, battering my nerves.
I look up at Liam like I might kill him.
“Do that one more time,” I say. “One more fucking time—”
“What?” Liam scowls, the bar of the lat pull-down still swinging above his head. He whips the towel off his shoulder. “What the hell is your problem?”
A bead of sweat rolls down my neck, breaking against my collarbone.
I’m overheated. My head is pounding. I take a pull from my water bottle before setting it aside.
“I’ve got a lot of problems right now,” I say to him, and cross the room.
I grab another forty-five-pound plate from the rack. “You just put your name on the list.”
Liam’s pale face flushes red to his hairline. He looks at Kian, who’s stepping under a bar at the squat rack.
Kian shakes his head, his eyes averted. “Nope,” he says. “I’m minding my own business.”
Liam points his dry towel at me. “You know,” he says, “all these years, I never realized you were such a dick. I don’t think I like you anymore.”
Kian stifles a laugh, his eyes trained on the ceiling.
Liam looks at him again. “What?”
Kian laughs a little harder, then drops the weight onto the spotter arms. “Don’t make me talk when I’m under the bar, man.”
“Why are you laughing?” Liam says, stunned. “When did you both turn into assholes?”
“What are you even doing here?” I ask Liam, pushing plates onto the barbell. I wipe my face with my shirt. I forgot to bring a towel. “I never see you in the gym. This place is usually deserted.”
“What, I’m not allowed to use this gym?” he says defensively. “Last time I checked, we all had access to these facilities. I didn’t realize it was family-only.”
Kian aims a stunned look at Liam.
I shake my head. “Not today,” I say, my voice serrated with the warning. I take my seat at the bench press. “Don’t fuck with me today. I am not in the mood.”
“Yeah? Well just because you’re my commanding officer again doesn’t mean you get to talk to me like I’m beneath you.”
“That’s exactly what it means.” I flash him a glare, then duck under the bar, lying back on the bench. “And you can call me Captain.”
“Jackass,” he says, but he looks uncertain. “We’re off duty right now.”
“We’re never off duty,” Kian mutters.
“Whatever,” Liam says to him. Then, turning back to me: “You’ve been in this mood since the moment you showed up today.
I thought you’d be happy to have your job back, but I don’t even know who you are right now.
It’s not my fault people found out you’ve been to the Ark.
It’s not my fault you’re fighting with your brother.
It’s not my fault everything is going to shit—”
“No,” I say sharply. I lift my head, my hands still wrapped around the bar. “But it’s your job to listen to orders.”
Liam rocks back a step.
By the time I showed up at HQ—twenty minutes later than Kenji told me to be there—he was gone.
I did my best to arrive on time, but I couldn’t get back into The Waffle fast enough.
I didn’t even make it home; I shoved all the pink shopping bags in my gym locker and changed into the spare clothes I’d stashed underground.
I was still late.
I’d been hoping to talk to Kenji about all these fucking rumors. I wanted to know what the hell was going on and where he’d been all day, but now he’s MIA again. No idea where he went.
At least I had my directive.
We’d gotten a lead on suspicious activity by the docks, and I led a small incursion into the crumbling depot that turned out to be a front for a more sophisticated underground repository. A hideout for Ark agents and mercenaries.
It was surreal.
Shelves lined with materials for explosives. 3D printers; half-built weapons. Stores of ammo. Toxic chemicals. Stacks of crates still unopened. An unfinished sandwich and an open bag of chips.
A rat.
“I told you to bring him in,” I say to Liam. “I warned you the guy would try to kill himself—”
“I tried,” he says, his voice rising. “He moved too fast!”
I shake my head at Liam. I don’t want to talk about this.
I know it isn’t technically Liam’s fault.
I’m just furious about everything: all the betrayals; all the uncertainty; every shitty minute of the last several weeks.
Things keep spiraling out of control. I’m not sure I can even leave The Waffle anymore; it was a nightmare trying to get out of the city and back on campus.
But being forced into this weird spotlight is the least of my problems. It’s not such a bad thing that people are waking up to the truth—or some version of it.
Maybe it’s time they understood.
The Reestablishment is coming for us, and our hard-won world is beginning to come apart. This horrible reality becomes clearer every day. When we were in that depot, I kept thinking of Rosabelle.
Fuck, I’m always thinking about Rosabelle.
In this case, specifically, I was thinking about how she tried to warn me.
Your world is dangerously vulnerable, she’d said to me. The Reestablishment has been pushing pieces carefully into place for years. They have every intention of taking back their power—and you shouldn’t trust anyone.
“I just need to be able to trust you to do your job,” I say to Liam. “That’s all.”
“Trust me?” Liam echoes, taking a step closer. He laughs; it sounds stark. “This isn’t even about me, is it?” This is about Allie.”
I close my eyes.
Spies and agents have infiltrated nearly every corner of your society.
Allie, who I’d known for years. Allie, who used to stress-knit, constantly.
I’ll never forget that night at the warehouse, the paralyzing shock I felt after tearing that mask off her face.
She once knit me a pair of socks for my birthday.
She used to collect donations to feed stray cats.
Last week, she tried to kill me. She’d been working for the enemy this whole time, living inside of us like a cancer, figuring out how to murder us from the inside.
“All right, that’s enough,” Kian says to Liam. “Let it go, man.”
Liam does not let it go.
“You think you’re the only one messed up over this shit?” he says. “You think you’re the only one with trust issues? Allie was like a sister to me. She was with me when my mom died!”
We spent three hours taking apart that covert storehouse, and the entire time we were moving materials I was wondering how many other people I knew had helped put the whole thing together.
You’re not actually that naive, Rosabelle had said to me. Your biggest problem is you’re too optimistic.
Optimism is no longer my biggest problem.
“We’re all trying to process these betrayals,” Liam is saying, his face still high with color. “And what happened today wasn’t my fault. I’m doing everything I can right now. We’re all doing everything we can. We’re all exhausted. We’re all hurting.”
“Trust me,” I say, lying back down on the bench. “I know.”
I lift the bar off its pegs on a careful exhale, regulating my breathing as I stare up at the weight above me, the oppressive pressure radiating down my arms, across my shoulders.
I bring the bar to my chest in a controlled, steady movement, muscles straining as I move through each rep.
It’s hard to explain why it feels so good to push this much weight off my body.
Why it’s a relief to conquer these small battles against myself.
My arms are nearly shaking as I finish the set with a soft cry, blood pumping violently through my veins.
I rack the weight with a clatter.
I drop my head back against the bench and breathe, eyes closing, my pulse pounding under my skin.
I’ve been here for well over an hour.
Fatigue is starting to set in, and I’m grateful for it. Lately, every day has been worse than the one before. Sometimes pushing myself this hard is the only way to process all this unresolved anger. Sometimes it’s the only way I ever manage to fall asleep.
My nightmares keep changing.
“Hey,” says a voice I wasn’t expecting.