The Secret Tunnels

Chapter 4

I'm walking away from M, my head in my hands. He's told me something I can't think to process, something that uproots my safe-haven of victim memory from my victimized past life. Fortune may have been a monster, but at least she was mine. To think of her, not as some hazy darkness at the edge of my mind, but as one planted there by a corrupt government; it's exhausting.

I know I need to get back to my bunker, to sit alone in the quiet. And I need to think about how I can stop what I had always believed was my creation. But as I'm walking, heels dragging on the dusty earth, footsteps pound behind me.

"Lucky!" Anita emerges, reckless and tumbling along the path so fast she looks like she's flying. Her hair, grown long and thick, spread out behind her like wings. For a moment, with the setting sun turning her brown skin gold, I forget she's not an angel.

I forget she lived as darkness.

I forget I couldn't love her.

And then she's Anita again, tripping over a stone and crashing into me. My arms go instinctively up to keep her from falling before I realize I'm holding chaos, and I let her go. She lowers her eyes to the ground.

"You can't hate me forever." Her voice comes strong and brave, so sure of me. So sure I'm a good guy, not a disgusting mess. I'm tempted to quote a line from Julius Caesar. "Be not deceived. If I have veiled my look, I turn the trouble of my countenance merely upon myself."

"I don't hate you." I swallow, keeping my gaze in the forest behind her. I know if I were to see her face up close, and the smile that never truly went away, I'd never stop looking. But it's better for me, for her, for everyone, if I keep my eyes on the trees.

"You must be a pretty good liar, then." She spits. I don't look, but I know she's staring. I know she'll keep staring until one of us moves. Finally, I sigh and meet her eyes.

"I didn't deal with it well, and I'm sorry, but now isn't the time." I figure if I keep talking, she'll go away. She'll leave me alone to go back to solitude and self-destruction and millennia of punishing myself for hurting good people.

"That's a load of astrology." She glares at me. "You've been avoiding this conversation since I got here, really got here, and you can't back out again. I'm not delusional, and I don't believe that things will ever be the way they were, but I'm not an idiot either. I know that we work well together. If we thought on the same page, we could destroy BLI that many times faster. And even if you don't care at all about me, I know you care about getting revenge for Maria."

I wince when Anita says her name. I've heard it danced around for months and it's almost so shocking out loud that I jump. Other than Silver, Thomas, and M, no one speaks about her anymore. Not even Sej.

"So do I." Anita grabs my arm and I recoil. Hurt flashes in her eyes.

"We used to have something." She shakes her head. "Something good. And look what you've gone and done with it." She takes a step forward and laces her fingers through mine. I stop breathing but I don't pull away.

"Do you remember, when we both would have killed to do this? In daylight, most of all?"

"It's dusk." I point out weakly.

"It's the time of day when the light is dying. It's not dead yet." She points the index finger of her free hand at my chest. "And neither is this."

She reaches up on her tiptoes to kiss me softly, fiercely, and she pulls away. 

"I had to try." Her shoulders sink. "Come find me when Lucky returns." I stand speechless, mouth involuntarily open. The warm feeling of her lips still lingers on mine, and I can't help but think that this isn't the way I wanted my first kiss to go. This isn't the way I wanted to kiss Anita. Still, I can't deny that I wanted to kiss her.

The light fades against her back, the subtle swish of her boots on ground resting in my ears. She stops, tilts her head as if she wants to look back, and thinks better of it, walking faster to reach her bunker before nightfall. 

I stand in agonized silence, hating myself for every second I don't run after her, hating myself for every minute I spent avoiding her in the last three months, hating myself for the time it takes me to pick myself up and start the long walk back to camp.

By the time I reach my room, the stars are out, cold, disapproving light pooling in my palms and rolling down my cheeks. As the socks sing their nightly ballad, I think: If only I had told her I love.

I AM SO SORRY! I had, like, a writer breakdown. I was afraid if I picked up my computer then word vomit would spill through my fingers and I'd Virginia Woolf my way out of this. I don't know if I can regularly update, but I'll try. Again, so sorry.