Chapter 8 Kali
KALI
The fifty-foot-high concrete wall loomed half a mile from us. Sporadic sparks betrayed the faulty electrical wiring on top—part of the reason why Ilasall assigned guards to walk the wall.
Having reached the zenith, the sun hovered above, but its rays couldn’t defrost us as we trudged deeper into the forest. I tugged the sleeves of my leather jacket to cover my hands as much as possible.
“Here.” Zion offered me an arm to help me clamber over a fallen log—most likely a consequence of the storm that had ravaged the land recently.
I shot him a small smile. If not for Zion, I probably would’ve ended up like deadwood a long time ago.
Marching behind Ava, Eli secured his blond waves into a high ponytail. “Are you sure the tunnel will be open?”
“Remember what Malaya said?” Her story had made nausea crawl up my esophagus. “Whenever Ilasall organizes a Matching, boys and men come in cars, but they bring the girls through an underground tunnel. The passages have to be in a functional order for them to risk taking green-banded through them.”
I’d been born and raised in the city, yet the concept of Matchings went against everything I believed in. All three—Ilasall, Ardaton, and Coriattus—viewed women as living wombs and herded them like sheep into the Matching institute once the girls had turned sixteen.
The cities could inject as much indoctrination as they wanted into their citizens, but it couldn’t dissolve the truth: the so-called Matching ceremony was nothing more than an auction in reality.
The green-banded males were given free rein to choose the most appealing female partners, in hopes of increasing the odds of pregnancies.
Despicable.
As we neared our agreed-upon spot, far from any roads, harbored by a thicket of bushes, Eli said, “I know. But it still seems improbable for the tunnels to work here, outside the gates. Ilasall should’ve collapsed or at least blocked the exits.”
“Ezra said his contacts assured him the city keeps this one open for emergencies.” Studying our surroundings, Zion drummed a melody on the sheath strapped to his upper arm.
The black rubber handle of the knife his sister had taken her life with called out to him any time a topic related to the cities rose up. “In case of an evacuation.”
Ava tucked her strands back into the braid woven around her scalp like a crown. “Ezra knows…a lot. Are we sure his contacts are trustworthy?”
“Will we really question everyone now?” Eli fell in step beside Ava, leaving me in the middle with Zion at my front.
My eyelids twitched at the protective bubble they’d formed, no doubt at Zion’s request.
I could stand my ground. The endless hours I’d spent in the training rings, in rain, in snow, in freezing cold temperatures, in one-on-one combat lessons and in group formations, had all paid off.
Sure, my skills weren’t on the same level as theirs, but I could deal a blow or two.
Ava had drilled a simple rule into me: the inability to overpower your opponent physically didn’t mean the end of a fight.
All you had to do was engage your mind to spot their weaknesses, and you’d increase your chances of victory tenfold.
“We have no choice,” Ava stated. You had to leave it to her to refuse to be questioned.
“The traitor has to be someone from our inner circle, and going by the idea that these two,” she waved at me and Zion, “are off the list of suspects—unless you think they’d ask the city to send soldiers after themselves—that leaves Ezra, Ryder, Sadira, Eislyn, Jayla, Amari, and Tarri. ”
“Eislyn is not the rat,” Eli growled. The man had grown protective of my friend.
We had ruled him and Ava out from the list of suspects, gambling on the fact that they both had been born outside the cities’ walls and raised for war, like all the residents in the compounds.
“You’d say that, wouldn’t you, lover boy?” Ava’s snickering drowned in the crunching of twigs under our boots. “How’s life in your new bedroom? Has she roped you into the positions from her books yet?”
I snorted. “He’d run before he’d agree to try them out.” I was more than happy for them living together, but Eli had no clue what awaited him.
Ava caught up with me. “Speaking from experience?” She nudged my side, her eyebrows shooting upward in quick succession.
I halted at the memory of Gedeon manipulating my body. Bending my will to his. Burrowing so deep into my soul, I’d lose myself.
Cold palms cupped my face. “Kali?” Zion’s gaze bore into me, concern etched into his expression.
I covered his hands with my own. “I’m okay. I just…remembered.” How he and Gedeon had done things to me that would make the heroines in Eislyn’s books blush.
“I’m sorry.” Ava’s shoulders slumped. “I didn’t mean to…” she trailed off at Zion’s scowl.
If you met him for the first time, you’d think nothing of it, just a simple frown, but if you knew him, you were also aware of what usually followed.
Damp walls.
A cement floor with a drain.
Blood dripping off a blade.
Heat pouring out of his plaything’s groin after their femoral artery had been severed.
“It’s fine.” I squeezed Zion’s wrists before bringing them down and tugging him to walk beside me, at a safe distance from Ava.
Not that I’d feared he’d do anything to her—he valued her too much—but his intense gaze alone could send shivers down your spine.
You could sense the visuals of how he’d play with you spinning in his mind.
Leaving it to Eli to free Ava from her internal chewing, I trekked forward with Zion, cursing at him for positioning himself to cover me. The trees had thinned out, exposing us to the midday sunshine filtering through the gaps between leafless boughs.
Ilasall had upped its security, scheduling more guards to march atop the wall and sending crews of soldiers to linger in the areas surrounding the city.
The changes had halted our efforts to restore our depleted reserves. You couldn’t resupply food, firearms, or meds if you couldn’t cross the gates undetected, even with a microchip implanted in your purlicue.
At least the winter had been merciful enough for us to pull through without rationing our meals. And with the spring finally here, new harvests were soon to be on our heels.
Never had I thought I’d be involved in the discussions of whether to sow more barley or wheat.
I wasn’t qualified to make the decisions by far.
Thank the gods nobody had left me in charge alone.
Whatever the responsible persons recommended, I agreed with it, nodding along with as-clueless-as-me Zion.
“This is it.” Eli gestured to a round block of concrete set in the forest floor. Mold crawled all over the stone-like mass, the metal handle so rusted I wondered how it hadn’t fully disintegrated yet. Snapped branches lay scattered on top of what resembled a sewer hole, but on a much larger scale.
The entrance to the tunnel.
Once nature bloomed, the vegetation would camouflage it, but now the access point looked out of place—the man-made object soiled the beauty of the wild.
“It looks abandoned,” Zion remarked. Squatting, he removed the fragments of withered greenery off the heavy lid. “I’m guessing it hasn’t been used for years from how the hinges are cracked. I’m not sure they’ll hold.”
Eli joined Zion in his inspection. “This doesn’t look even remotely safe.”
Ava patted his bicep. “Don’t worry, we’ll bring you home in one piece. Can’t risk Eislyn’s fury. She has spent too much time in Zion’s underground not to employ a trick or two on us if we don’t.”
“I’ll put it nicely.” Eli unzipped his navy parka for ease of movement. “I don’t like you today.”
“Aww. I understand why Eislyn stole you for herself now.” Standing beside me instead of offering help, Ava batted her eyelashes. “Can you boys pry that hefty-looking thing open? Or is it too much of a challenge?”
Her theatrics lured my lips to quirk, even if my mouth remained shut. I couldn’t bear taking part in their friendly games, not with Gedeon gone. He was the only worthy opponent.
With Zion, it was different. I didn’t wish to argue with him. Rolling around in his insanity had become my preference. He kept me sane, grounded, steadied these days.
He was the one who’d talked me through the process of lighting Gedeon’s funeral fire and then feeding the customary goodbye letter to the flames. Had withdrawn my hand in time so blisters didn’t strew my skin. Dabbed my tears with his shirtsleeve.
Although we couldn’t incinerate Gedeon’s body, I didn’t dare to ask Zion what he’d done with Gedeon’s remains. Nobody could see them anyway. The lies we’d planted drew a picture of Gedeon having been dragged to Ilasall’s prison cells, and nobody walked out of them.
Grunting, Eli and Zion hauled the block of concrete up in the air. Their curses weaved with the creaks and groans of the ancient hinges.
But then the lid slammed onto the forest floor, a cloud of dust marking the end of its journey.
I peered into the open hole. “What now?”
My question echoed, What now, —at now, —now, —ow, and goosebumps sprouted on my flesh from the creepiness.
“You climb down.”
I jumped at the voice reverberating back to me from the depths. Slipping on the rim of the pit, I tilted forward—
A strong grip on my waist dragged me back to solid ground. My back collided with a wall of muscle, but the familiar sensation relaxed me, and I expelled the near-death experience with my next exhale.
I covered Zion’s forearms secured over my stomach with my own. “Thank you.”
“Your balance is terrible,” he muttered into my neck, probably sniffing my hair again. I’d used that cherry shampoo earlier.
“It’s your fault,” I scoffed. “You’re the one who’s training me.”
“In that case.” He pulled me farther away from the hole in the ground. “We’ll go back to stability exercises once we return.”