Chapter 5 Gedeon
GEDEON
There were always those who held morals in higher regard than survival.
They died.
It was a conclusion I had reached many times over the years. It was also the primary law of Ilasall, even if it was not solidified with ink on paper.
Survival above all—the unofficial slogan of the three cities.
Their citizens were unaware of the actual history of the world, the collapse of human civilization.
Fed exclusively by their governments’ propaganda, they ate up the beautiful words and forged their own beliefs, the moralistic ideals about the honor of expanding the population by all means, no methods unacceptable.
The lies stuffed into their brains prevented the gray matter from functioning in order, the neurons from discovering the proper connections, the realizations about the bigger picture from dawning.
They considered mankind’s survival from one point of view only: the number of healthy births. And that was how they determined a person’s value—based on their ability to conceive children.
But the three compounds—mine, Damia’s, and Conall’s—existed as proof that other perspectives had to be taken into account to weigh the scales to one or the other side, to see whether the degradation of our humanity was worth the cost of survival.
Whether burdening half the population with a saddle of childbearing, and the other half with constant humiliation for their reproductive organs refusing to cooperate with the cities and their needs, was how we were supposed to live.
Whether having the opposition, the three smaller cities we called the compounds, raising their youths in preparation for war, honing their minds into ruthless killers and strategists who viewed people as means to an end, could be considered the right way of life.
Whether battle training from a small age was what we wanted for our children.
Leaning against a maple tree, I rested my forearm on my bent knee. Blades of grass poked the ankle of my stretched-out leg. The green blanket hadn’t yet fully awakened after its winter hibernation, the vegetation lacking the courage to reach for the sky.
The treeline hid my shape from the training rings on the other side of the field, but the sounds of metal clanging against metal, fists connecting with stomachs, the shouts to pause, applause, and further instructions on how to fix stances and moves rolled all the way over to me.
The square buzzed from the crowd of half-dressed people going through their daily drills. Adults, teenagers, seniors, all together were rehearsing the war to come.
Yet it was the head full of golden-brown hair that caught my attention. Zion slunk along the chalk-ring while his opposition—the woman who had killed me—secured the grip on her two knives.
The two of them might have taken the helm of leadership in my absence, but it was about to be challenged.
They didn’t know it yet, but Ilasall had sown treachery in their paths.
25 YEARS OLD
“You should get some rest.” The doc swiveled on the stool in our infirmary’s examination room. “It’s called sleep, Gedeon. You need it more than we need you distracting everyone here.” He gestured to his team as they checked their med supplies for the tenth time at their stations.
Pacing alongside the too-bright wall, I grunted out, “They should have returned by now.” Zion and Eli had never taken this long to meet with our contacts in Ilasall, including the drive to the city and back. “Something is wrong.”
“Gedeon,” the doc pleaded. “Sit down. Your migraine is approaching.”
My boots continued to work dents into the white-tiled floor. “It’s not.”
“Your symptoms are obvious. You’re squinting at the lights and twitch when you step under a ceiling lamp,” he said, rummaging in his desk drawers to pass me a bottle of pain relief pills. “Here. You should be running out by now anyway.”
“Thanks.” I stuffed the purplish bottle into my jeans pocket and resumed my journey from the med supply closet, past the open infirmary door, to the trembling apprentice pretending not to see me as he secured his blond locks in a hairnet.
Turning on my heel, I began the trek back to the doc taking inventory of his desk.
“You won’t stop pacing, will you?” He straightened a pile of papers. “You can’t change the outcome by—”
Yells swarmed the hallway all at once, and the doc rushed to the infirmary’s entrance right as Eli plodded inside, dragging Zion with him.
Together, the three of us heaved Zion onto the table, his white t-shirt soaked in crimson and sliced across the chest, his left eye swelled shut.
My mouth dried out. My pulse picked up. Voices mixed into a cacophony of indistinguishable commands as our med team elbowed me out of their way.
Wheezing, Eli collapsed against a wall. “A crew of soldiers ambushed us at the gates,” he strained to say, despite the gash spanning from the right corner of his lips to his jaw and underneath.
As he spoke, his teeth peeked through the laceration, scarlet coating his neck and soaking into his pale-blue shirt.
“Zion lost consciousness about half-halfway b-b-back,” he stammered before passing out.
More blood trickled down his chin.
So much red.
Enough to drown someone.
“Gedeon, you have to leave,” the doc called out to me. When I didn’t move, he roared, “OUT,” and shoved me out of the infirmary.
The door slammed in my face, the solid surface painted in a milky shade, the swirls in the wood resembling the minutes stretching, and stretching, and stretching, one after another, longer and longer. Endless.
I staggered back, and my back crashed into a wall. But my screaming shoulder blades couldn’t distract me from the sight of unconscious Zion forever etched into my memory.
He had been as still as the dead.
He and Eli had gotten injured on a routine operation.
I slumped to the floor. The rush of noise had been cut off, the infirmary walls thick enough to protect those inside, harboring them from the outside world, as if the harm inflicted upon the patients could not be counteracted otherwise.
Dozens of feet milled back and forth along the hallway, blurry shapes crouched close to me, their murmurs muted, their reassurances as useless as the steaming cups they placed next to me. A blue one. Then green. Red. Yellow.
But when the steam of the last one dissipated, the door clicked, and the same short, out-of-place apprentice appeared in the doorway. Spotting me on the floor, he startled, hesitating before clearing his throat. “Doc told me to find you. You can come in now.”
My joints creaked like shattering icicles as I stalked after the blond man and into the disarray ruling in the examination room. Our med team rushed to stuff the torn clothing and shreds of gauze into trash bags and scrub the steel table, the suds carrying a trace of pink.
“Right through there.” The trainee motioned toward the adjacent rooms.
He guided us through the maze of beds and curtains in the main space, and then past the multitude of single-occupancy rooms until we came inside the last one.
Oblivious to his surroundings, Zion lay on the white bed, an equally white pillow supporting his head, and an even more glaringly white sheet covering him up to his waist. A large fabric bandage covered both his pectorals, the discoloration on his sides already intensifying.
Entering the room, the doc explained, “He’ll sleep it off throughout the night. He has a laceration on his chest, three broken ribs on his right side, a dislocated left wrist,” he gestured to the sling keeping Zion’s hand elevated, “and a concussion. Not to mention the multiple bruises.”
“Will”—I swallowed the dryness gluing my tongue to the roof of my mouth—“he be okay?”
“We’ll observe him overnight, but he’s stable. He should pull through. The concussion might bring some nasty symptoms, but other than that, I think he’ll be whining about the restrictions on his activities soon enough.”
“And Eli?” I hadn’t noticed him on our way to Zion.
“He fainted from exhaustion, has a deep cut on his face, but it’s nothing life-threatening.
He’s been out cold since we stitched him up.
” The doc gave me a once-over. “Sit.” He pointed to the plastic chair in the corner.
“I’ll get someone to bring you some water,” he said, then disappeared back into the depths of the infirmary.
Plopping down, my elbows pressing into my spread thighs, I buried my face in my hands.
I should have convinced Zion to bring others for protection. I should have gone myself instead of sending him and Eli alone. I should have had someone monitor Ilasall’s gates while they had gone to meet our contacts. I should have…
I fucking should have.
The round wall clock marked the time passing, one tilt of an hour hand at a time.
Three ticks later, the night slithered inside the room, releasing the leash on darkness and swallowing the bed and a knocked-out Zion.
Shadows wreathed up my legs, up and up, until their tendrils crawled inside my ears and nostrils and pulled me under.
A loud clink—
I leaped out of the chair. Bright light assaulted my senses, and I blinked at the apprentice placing a tray on the bedside table.
“I brought breakfast.” He handed a bowl of oatmeal to Zion, who sat propped up against two pillows, and then turned to me.
“Do you want anything? We usually don’t cater to family members, or, uhm, I don’t know, uh, you, I guess.
” He rubbed his nape. “But I can have someone run to the common kitchen and get something for you to eat.”
Pushing through the bleariness, I rolled the stiffness out of my neck. “I’ll be fine.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Shout if he gets nauseous,” the blond said, and marched out to care for other patients.
Zion pushed away the green bowl with white dots. “Got a good night’s sleep?”
My silence made his smile falter.
Shifting, he winced, and the bowl tipped. Watery oatmeal sloshed to the edge—
I caught the ceramic dish. “Stop moving. You will only hurt yourself more.”
“Easy for you to say. I’ve been lying still while you were sleeping in the corner. My ass is now simultaneously numb and on fire.”
“Eat.” I positioned the bowl between his stomach and the sling. “I won’t let you starve yourself for two days,” I lied, hoping the nameless apprentice had forgotten to mention the treatment plan’s length.
Zion’s eyes bugged out. “I have to stay here?” His shoulders slumping, he stabbed the spoon into the porridge. “I hate this tasteless shit.”
“The doc said they need to monitor you for forty-eight hours,” I went on, more than aware of Zion’s aversion to certain meals. “But if you finish your breakfast, I will try to sway the doc into releasing you today.”
He had to eat, and I had to convince him to do so before he noticed the kiwi on the fruit plate sitting on the tray. He was going to outright refuse to eat anything kiwi might have touched.
He sniffed a spoonful, and his nose scrunched up.
I pressed, “Eat, Zion.”
“You should probably know that your tone has a totally different effect on me than you think,” he said, promptly stuffing his mouth full.
29 YEARS OLD
The golden bag—my golden bag—sparkled as Zion took it out of the kitchen cabinet of the two-story house our team had been assigned at Conall’s compound.
“Zion,” I growled.
For years, he had been stealing the coffee I would procure, often with the help of Conall, but finally, finally, I had caught him in the act.
He was not leaving this house unscathed.
With the coffee bag suspended midway out of the shelf, he grinned. “Gedeon.”
“Put. That. Back.” I took a step toward him, and he swiftly hid his treasure behind his back. “Or I will—”
“You will what? Catch me?” He bolted out of the kitchen. His sneakers squeaked across the living room, the door banging as he dashed outside.
I spared one second to collect myself before sprinting after him, weaving through the couches and the table Sadira and Ryder had usurped for their tech, past Eli climbing down the staircase, and into the busy street.
Zion blurred in the mass of Conall’s people roaming the road, and I raced through the crowd, running around those carrying wooden crates brimming with apples and pears to the market, parents herding their children, teenagers sneering at me as I elbowed through the middle of their group and flew toward Zion diving into a cream-colored building with blue doors.
Godsdamnit.
He had gone straight to our meeting location, where Conall and Damia awaited us to discuss the needs of their compounds and how we could assist. Chasing Zion instead of debating our options was a far cry from what today was supposed to entail.
The mid-summer sun pricked my nape, but I ignored the heat swirling between my toes, gluing them together, and darted into the dwelling.
Prowling through the foyer and into the dining room, I willed my pulse to settle. Zion had plopped his ass down at the head of the long table, as scuffed up as the matching chairs, all carved out ages ago.
“Weren’t we supposed to meet in, like, twenty minutes?” Conall sipped from a glass, probably the orange juice he had been drinking with every breakfast for as long as I could remember. “Damia is not here yet, and we’re not exactly ready either.” He motioned to the two women and a man flanking him.
Aanya gave me a shy wave, while the other two glanced between me and Zion, their postures exposing them as trained fighters.
They were probably the partners Conall had mentioned he wanted to introduce us to. The bastard had decided it was time for him to have a family, whatever that meant.
Paying no heed to Conall, I splayed my palms on the table. “Zion,” I barked a warning.
Hoisting his feet onto the table, he crossed them at the ankles. “Yes?” He stroked the golden pack resting on his crotch. “Something you want?”
I stalked around the table. “I want what is rightfully mine.”
He leaped out of the seat, taking off in the opposite direction. “And what would that be?”
Conall traced the rim of his glass while glaring at Zion. “What did you do?”
“He stole the coffee you got for me,” I gritted out, then launched onto the table, rolling over the unforgiving surface—
Zion scurried away, making a break for the other side of the room, laughing like a madman, the sound overfilling the space.
A smile challenged my attempt to give him a dirty look. “You will pay for this.”
He hopped onto the table and shoved the crinkling bag into the front of his dark blue sweatpants. Leaning back on his elbows, his legs dangling off the edge, he drawled, “Then come and get me.