Kaden

Chapter Six

My eyes flutter open, and it takes me a few seconds to register what I'm seeing. Home. This is the place Anivia and I lived in for a few years, off and on. Sometimes someone else would move in, and we would be forced out. But they always ended up moving to another building, along with the food carts. There are very few people here who can afford to pay for food from those. It's much cheaper on the black market.

"I don't know why I saved you, after you basically shot my girlfriend," Max's voice comes. It takes me a while to figure out the direction from which it is coming. He's standing a few feet away from me, looking at me with both hatred and a slight dosage of pity. Not the respect I'm used to him giving me. "She's probably rotting in prison, or in a grave. You should be there instead of her, but you had to throw her in front of you to shield yourself."

I didn't shoot her. I didn't mean for her to get hurt. I didn't realize I was getting followed. Somehow these thoughts play on loop in my head, but I never speak them. "Where's Willow?" I ask. I go into a coughing fit.

"Oh, right, you're used to waking up next to someone who you haven't betrayed yet." I stare into his eyes until he rolls his. "She, Moana, and Souris went out on a food hunt."

"How long was I out?" I groan.

"Three days."

I take a second to process it. "What happened?"

"To you? Well, you got reinfected. But I don't see why you would care. We're at war."

"I meant with the war," I protest, but I see that this will help nothing.

"Of course you did." He smirks at me, but when he sees the sadness in my eyes, he shakes his head and looks away. "They declared war on this weird place across the sea that nobody knew about, called Lincoln. They've sent troops over already. They're drafting poor neighborhoods city by city. They're using us like pawns in a game of chess. They even sent a bunch of people on a suicide mission just as part of a distraction."

I wince at how much this sounds like the Nation. I wonder if war could really be that bad. If we were taken over, would they help fix our systems, or would they just install a second corrupt system?

"What do we know about Lincoln?" I ask. He sits down next to me.

"They're far more advanced than us. I suspect that Lincoln isn't the end of it."

I try to clear the fog from my head and the pain from my leg as I try to find the words to ask a question. I try to use an old pain-coping strategy. You focus on a part of your body that doesn't hurt, and it makes the pain seem to almost go away. The problem is, I can't find a single part of myself that doesn't hurt. I'm covered in scratches and bruises, my head is pounding, I have blisters all over my feet, I'm covered in crud, and I have three bullet wounds in my left thigh.

"Isn't... isn't..." I gulp and focus on him. I focus on his eyes. Depending on the lighting, they can appear blue, green, or brown. "Isn't the end... end of what?" He tries to ignore the struggle and pain in my voice, and decides to act as if I'm perfectly normal and hateful. I see a flash of pity, soon replaced by pure hatred. He must have remembered that Iris is gone.

"Isn't the end of the world, Kaden." It takes me a second to register what he means. "There are tons of places surrounding us... everywhere. I've heard that Lincoln is only a part of a giant landmass. Lincoln itself is five times our territory. This super continent... it must be twenty times."

I've always thought of the Nation as giant and powerful. I always thought that their oversized military was impossible to beat. But if this... place... has twenty times our area, then we're... we're completely doomed.