Chapter 4
STRADDLING TWO WORLDS
“Storm. Storm. Come on, wake up. Fucking damn it.”
For a minute, I thought I’d gone to heaven. Nix has cussed me right back to hell. Coming to, I find soulful, golden brown irises gazing intently, his large form crouched beside me in the med bay. “You were meant to listen for my signal.”
“I think—” I look down at myself. “I think I fainted.”
He audibly exhales. “Yeah, no shit. Can you walk?”
I try to stand but fall back into the chair. “Sorry, I don’t think I can yet.”
“Motherfuckers,” he adds—for effect, I’m sure—eyes darting around the room. My own slowly come back into focus. The bright, incandescent lights are straining. Sitting on the cloud was not worth it.
He spots something and rushes away, then back to me, carrying a jug.
“Drink.” Opening the lid, Nix holds it to my mouth.
I’m caught off guard, and water splashes over the edges at his harsh handling, darkening my jumpsuit.
Strange, almost translucent cubes bob around on top.
I don’t have time to ponder what they may be as he pushes the jug to my lips.
I take small sips, the cubes hitting my mouth and stinging them with biting coldness, the sensation so unfamiliar I barely register the alarm on Nix’s face.
The fold between his brows is more pronounced than usual.
Ignoring whatever else is happening right now, I drink glorious gulp after gulp of water. It’s cooling me from the inside. Everything about this is so foreign that it takes harsh words from my brother to jolt me out of my fixation.
“We have to go now.” Discarding the jug on the table next to my chair, the rest of the contents spilling, he grabs my arm, hauling my water-drugged body into his side.
I spot a glimpse of purple in my periphery.
With Nix rushing, I don’t get a chance to look back.
He’s almost running as he jams us through a thin slit of a doorway.
My elbow knocks against the sharp edge, my nerve endings screaming.
“Ow, Nix,” I hiss. My mouth hangs open at his utter lack of regard. What’s the rush? And why did he waste all that water? Unheard of. His hand grips punishingly as he pulls me along.
Someone shouts behind us, “Stop! Keepers!”
Spinning my head, I see the damage for the first time. The med bay door wedged open with a crowbar. The nurse who took my solence screaming at the broken entrance’s threshold.
This is not good.
It’s infinitely bad. No one runs from the hollow. Not unless they are facing death.
Death. That singular word haunts my very nightmares each night as I sleep next to a wheezing Mam, but now, it’s nipping at my bare heels.
Nix bypasses everyone around us, his unevenly cut, dark brunette locks floating before me, locking into memory. Will I have to commit every part of him? Is this the last time I’ll get him like this?
My mind, hazy with regret, slows us down. The man in question turns to give me a look. A look of dread and sorrow. It expresses the words he doesn’t need to say. I’m fucking sorry. So damn sorry.
I haven’t been given many choices in this life.
Life has always been prescribed to me. But, if I had to choose him, I’d do it again and again and again.
And if that meant death, I’d choose it too.
He is the only good thing in my life. Him and Mam.
Everything else is background noise. I want none of it if I am without them.
With the market bustling, people slowly curl around us. My chin juts out, knowing this is probably the end of the road for us. Tears form. I can’t let them go.
His head tilts, and he propels me into a full-on run, hauling me through crates and market stall carts, the odd can falling in our wake, weaving around fellow farmers, and tugging me into a secluded hallway.
One I’ve never paid much notice to. An area off-limits to us.
Not with ropes, but of the mind. A commotion follows, and we make it to an unmarked door.
Not giving me a moment to breathe, Nix unceremoniously shoves me through to the other side.
Inside are our forgotten sacks and a big black truck, the roller door to the back lifted and waiting. Why aren’t there keepers at these doors?
“Storm, look at me.” Impatiently, Nix grabs my face.
Brown meets blue. I really look at him, wanting to commit him to the pictures of my mind in intricate detail.
The white scar on his left cheek from when he fell down a rod at twelve years old.
The dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep doing double the work—for me, for Mam.
The cleft of his chin. My hand naturally travels to trace it.
My body locks up as I touch his heated skin. Melancholy follows, and I find it hard to look away. “You’re going to hide on that truck, and you’re going to forget this place exists.”
I baulk. “What are you talking about? I’m not leaving you or Mam. Are you crazy?”
I would rather die.
“Hell, Storm.” Fingers dig into my neck as he holds my jaw. I cherish the pain, hoping they will leave marks of him. “I told Mam she should’ve told you.” My heart leaps from my chest at the strange statement.
“Listen to me, because I’m only saying this once.” Hearing on high alert, I can’t take my eyes from the clashing golds and deep browns of his being. I don’t want him to say the rest, but he speaks regardless. “You hold 50 percent Halo solence.” His whisper is hoarse.
A fucking hollow. I can’t be one of them.
No.
Never.
I can’t.
I won’t—
Acid churns in my stomach, that feeling you get after eating spoilt fruit.
My head wants to shake back and forth. Frustratingly, Nix holds me in place.
This is worse than death.
I’m one of them.
The scum of the earth. That makes me scum. That means they will take me.
I’m finally getting my wish.
I’m finally getting what I wanted.
Laughter bubbles up in my throat, but it is instantly squashed by the rising bile.
I want to crumble at Nix’s feet, but he continues to hold me up, and I don’t understand why he still wants to touch a damn hollow. The cuffs at my wrists burn.
My lower lids are wells of unshed tears. Always trying to be strong. Always holding everything in. Trying to find joy. What an absolute farce.
“But when I was six, Mam pricked my finger and—” I sputter, hoping for a way out of this.
“And instead of reading your solence, the fairy read Mam’s,” he answers regretfully.
Treason. The blue fairy who was chained and made to test our solence could be killed for less. He is probably already dead.
Denial—the only enforceable, rational tool I have left.
I’m not Halo. I’m not half anything. I’m human.
We all are. Including the hollows, even if they want to think themselves superior.
They hold no magic. Only the creatures of the Fairy Lands do, and they exploit it, like they exploit us farmers.
“My eyes aren’t grey. They’re blue.” Ragged nails dig into his roughened grimy jumpsuit.
I plead, willing him to look harder, as if that will somehow help our predicament.
However, in the right light, through the thicket of blue lies a string of webbed silver.
It’s never been enough to give others pause.
It’s been enough for Nix to linger on my eyes more than once, an undercurrent of knowledge I didn’t understand before. Now I do.
“They don’t take coloured eyes.”
“They do now.” Grip loosening, I sink to the cold cement floor. “Shit.” He goes with me, shoving me towards his chest. “They have seronds in Halo. It’s not unheard of.”
“And what, I’m going to continue to be a serond, but surrounded by them?” I spit. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want their foul solence in me. 1 percent is enough—50 percent is soul-destroying.
50 percent is enough to claw my skin off. Boil me alive and call me well done. I’ll take it to be rid of them.
“I asked around, and the new rule is specifically targeting women. They need more women of breeding age. The full-solence hollows are experiencing decreasing fertility.” There it is, the catch. What my life has always been boiled down to; a womb to breed.
At the idea of Halo using my body as a vessel for breeding, I rage, pushing at my brother. “I don’t fucking think so.”
Nix’s eyes light up as a rhythmic tap sounds on the metal door. “There she is.” His smile is back with a vengeance, similar to how he looked when I would beat the shit out of him in our “play” fights. “I won’t let them have you. You belong to Mam and me. They can’t have this.”
He rests his forehead against mine. Together, we pool our strength, the fight returning to my system. They can’t have me. I belong to him and Mam. For nineteen years, Mam and Nix raised me. They’re my family.
I am not a hollow.
I AM STORM.
The tapping comes again, and he pulls me up and towards the truck. “They’re coming. You need to hide.” He gives my forehead a quick kiss and guides me into the large truck bed.
“I—But Nix, what about you?” I move into the shadows of the back of the vehicle, my voice echoing in the empty space. It’s dark and clammy, my mind only focused on him.
“Fight. That’s all you need to remember, Storm. Me and Mam, we need you to fight.”
“But, where—” I whisper, and suddenly, he’s gone from view.
We should be fighting together. Not apart. I can’t leave Mam.
Silence fills the air around me. He can’t be gone. Not like that.