Jump Zone: Cleo Falls (17 page)

Twenty-Five

C
leo awoke to no lingering grogginess, no hazy vision, no sense of time having passed. Her eyes opened as if she’d merely blinked, her nerves still humming with adrenaline, fully aware that she was in danger.

But how much?

She was alive, all systems go, no identifiable pain anywhere in her body. The last thing she remembered was looking down the barrel of a gun. Why wasn’t there any blood, or pain, other than the dull throb in the back of her head?

She was still somewhere in the Taiga, bound and alone.

Oh God, Libra… She couldn’t let her thoughts go there, couldn’t let her imagination run away with the possibility that he might be hurt. Or dead.

She squirmed, tugged, and twisted, but her position—hands tied behind her back and joined to her ankles—left her helpless, unable to roll anywhere but onto her tummy. Libra’s thin shirt did nothing to protect her skin from the uneven, rocky ground beneath her, so any movement was hard on the ribs. Determined to escape, desperate to find Libra, she persisted until sweat stung her eyes and her heart felt as if it would bang right out of her chest.

Fear and frustration gnawed her. She needed to get the hell out of there before those men came back, but the squirming only made the knots tighter.

You’re a trained warrior. Tap your skills.

Slowly inhaling, ten counts in, three counts out, Cleo decelerated her heart rate. Best she could, she blocked out the pain in her arms and legs and visualized the blood in her veins as it coursed through her, feeding her cells. She focused on the air around her, the smell, the taste, the pressure and movement. She listened. She felt. Within minutes, her body was fully relaxed, her mind opened to incoming stimuli.

It was after mid-day—the sun was already well past its apex. She counted four species of common forest birds within her immediate vicinity, but no animals—no rodents, snakes, nothing—which indicated that there had been a significant amount of human movement in the area recently. But the birds had returned, which told her it had been quiet for at least ten, fifteen minutes. Maybe longer.

She could smell water. If it was a river, it was either very big or very slow because she couldn’t hear any rippling, running, or splashing. Last evening, she’d estimated that they were twelve to fifteen foot miles from the Trading Post. Now she had to figure out how far the Guards could have taken them, considering they had one, possibly
two
unconscious, bodies.

She had to know if Libra was all right.

If those goons had some kind of transportation, they could already be near the St. Mary, just miles away from the Trading Post. Or they could have gone west over the north shore of Superior. If that were the case, they could be close to the Dead Zone, which meant there was little hope of escape. There would be no forest to hide in, nothing she could use to fight back, to survive.

The wind shifted and carried snippets of conversation. The voices weren’t loud, but they were certainly intense. She focused, filtered out nature’s symphony to extract only that which she needed to hear.

Libra! He was alive. And he sounded angry.

“…told you I could handle it! Zhang-hell!” Cleo strained to hear what he was saying, but she only picked up the odd word or phrase. “… coming willingly. You think she’ll cooperate after this? What the hell kind of moronic—”

“No,
you
put this mission at jeopardy when you fucked her.
Not acceptable!
There are reasons we do not engage these savages—”

“She’s not…” Libra’s voice, unlike the other man’s, was being swept into the wind. Perhaps he’d turned his back. A few seconds passed before Cleo picked up the conversation again.

“She is our prisoner and our instructions are clear.” It was the other man’s voice. “Now, get out of my sight and finish the job.”

“I’m not… alone with you.”

“But I don’t
take
orders from you. You
will
go. You
will
be accompanied by Frith and Hinton. You
will
follow orders and do as you’re told or I’ll tell Cade you’re a tribe-lover like your savage-lover of a father…
Put your goddamn fist down, son, before you…”

Something hummed to life, drowning out the voice.

Cleo’s head thunked to the ground as she tried to make sense of what she’d heard. No matter how badly she wanted to deny it, it became as obvious as a punch to the gut—Libra was with them. He was
with
them.

Drowning was an agony she wouldn’t wish on her mortal enemy, but this hurt ten times worse. His betrayal cut at her insides, deep and gouging. She tried to curl her knees into her tummy but the rope pulled taut, leaving her writhing in the dirt against the physical pain.

She had trusted him. She let him into her mind.
She let him into her body.

Cleo squeezed her thighs together, the flesh still tender, still throbbing from his invasion.

He’d befriended her, made love to her, and handed her over to the Guard, Achan’s Elite. The same men that murdered her mother.

Don’t trust outsiders
.

Her father had drilled that into their heads. By the time she and Jaegar were teens, they’d roll their eyes and mouth the words behind him. They mocked Lewin Rush, but in the end, he was right. And Cleo was proven the fool. Again. Was there no end to her stupidity?

All the training, all the competitions, all the winning, yet nothing prepared her for Libra’s kisses, for the way his hands moved over her body so reverently. The depth of emotion in his eyes when he entered her, filled her. God, she was so naïve, so stupid to think that she meant something to him, that their act of sex was lovemaking, not just…screwing.

Her tummy lurched, bringing bile to her throat.

Libra was a tool for Achan Cade, the man who destroyed her family.

For pity’s sake, why did it have to hurt so much?

She lifted her head a few inches from the ground and let it drop, then lifted it again and let it drop, over and over until the ache spread from inside her chest to her skull, a small punishment for her imprudent behaviour.

How could he, her knight in shining armor, be associated with a massive creep like Achan Cade? He wasn’t army, clearly didn’t have much in the way of training for survival in the wilderness. For the love of all things scaly, the man couldn’t even fish! Most importantly, Libra had spent too long in the Taiga and would have been caught if he were a soldier. She wasn’t sure how her people tracked soldiers who came past the Cut—something to do with their communications network, she believed, but she’d overheard Lewin and Jag discussing their c-net tracking. She regretted not paying closer attention. But Libra wasn’t tracked, so he couldn’t be like Trevayne. If the inter-tribal alarms had been triggered, every available warrior within a thousand square miles would have been all over them.

So no, Libra couldn’t work for the Guard. But assuming as much didn’t compensate for the fact that he handed her over like a trapped muskrat.

Cleo’s head pounded from the hard ground, lack of water, lack of sleep, and abject humiliation. To think he was doing those
things
to her because he had to. Oh God, he must have been cringing inside, laughing at her. Did he even grow up with a single mom, or was it all an elaborate cover story so they’d have something in common? So she’d stupidly opened her heart to him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Naïve and stupid and stubborn and…
The shame was unbearable.

At least she could cling to the fact that those suspicions she’d had when they’d met weren’t totally off. Her instincts hadn’t flared up for nothing. And looking back, she ignored some pretty obvious clues. The K-Bar knife—definitely Guard issue. Not too many sightseers could afford a fine piece like that. And that damn black disc—the red flags were flapping in her face, and she had ignored them. Basic warrior training: trust your instincts.

So back to the original question, the one she should have pursued from the beginning but had been too afraid to ask because she hadn’t wanted the answer.
Who is Libra?

Cleo lost track of time as she lay on the hard ground and vacillated between anger and hurt. If she spent less time on revenge plots and more time figuring out how to get out of her current bind, she might not still be stuck like a rabbit in a snare when she heard the whirring noise.

Something or someone was coming at her through the bush. She took a deep breath, ready to scream her fool-head off if Libra appeared. Over the top of the shrubs and long grasses, the head and shoulders of a man appeared. Not Libra. It was the one who’d shot her. His movements were smooth, as if he were flying toward her.

Solar board. He sailed a few feet above the ground on a sleek black board, slowing as he approached. The low-profile wheels weren’t engaged, but he hovered high enough for her to see the bottom of the rims sticking out from below.

Determined to show a brave face, she clamped her jaw and hoped he couldn’t see her chest pounding against the flimsy shirt.

“Ah, Petal. You’re awake!” A thousand bugs crawled over her skin at the sound of his voice. She squirmed, pulling against her restraints as he pulled up on the t-bar handle, hovering directly above her. The heat from the solar cells around the board’s perimeter made the air shimmer, so when he looked down at her, lips pulled back in a twisted grimace, his face looked wavy, contorted. “Time for a cozy little chat, just the two of us.”

Twenty-Six

F
rick and Frack—Libra couldn’t remember what Trevayne called them, so he made up his own names—flanked him on both sides though the corridor was far too narrow to accommodate three vehicles abreast. He twisted the throttle and gave his board as much speed as possible so they didn’t have time to duck and swerve around low-hanging branches. It was very satisfying hear them curse as bows thwacked their faces. These assholes got physical with Cleo, and that sat all kinds of wrong with him.

The argument with Trevayne put him in an extra foul mood. The Colonel attempted to dump everything on Libra, but it was
he
who compromised the mission by coming past the Cut. If detected, they’d be standing before the United World Council courts for breach of security by the end of the week.

Asshole.

Libra squinted into wind. Not much farther, thankfully. He needed to turn around and get back to Cleo as soon as humanly possible.

He couldn’t figure out how Trevayne found him. He hadn’t activated his satcom, which was the only way the Colonel could have found his precise location…unless he accidently thumbed it when he had shoved his things in his pack, trying to hide the ampoule from Cleo. All it took for the biorhythm to register was a swipe. Zhang hell, he should have been more careful.

Cleo. His teeth ached thinking of her, unconscious and helpless. It gutted him to leave her behind, but Trevayne had him by the balls, and until he could figure out how to get Cleo out safely, he had to make nice and let Achan’s Elite think he was playing along. And as long as she remained in the nerve coma, Trevayne wouldn’t hurt her. Libra knew guys like the Colonel, power-hungry cretins who got off on bullying women and children, and they preferred prey that squirmed, prey that fought back, and Cleo wasn’t a challenge in her current state. She couldn’t feed his penultimate power—that could only be fueled by fear.

They pulled up to the Cut Road and let Libra go across alone with the shopping list. Technically, the Guard
could
enter the Trading Post, but Trevayne didn’t want anyone to know they were there, and those two buffoons were hard to miss.

The third member of their little extraction troop had been sent packing, tail between his legs, back to Gomeda after “the poncy flower let a little girl ruffle him,” as Trevayne put it. Libra fist-pumped when he learned that Cleo had broken the jerk’s ribs. His girl did some sweet damage. He really wanted to ask Frick about the painful-looking purple lump on his forehead but didn’t want to antagonize the situation.

When Trevayne activated her implant, Libra thought he was going to pop a blood vessel. Bastard had override controls, unbeknownst to him. How stupid to not have predicted their underhandedness. How could he have been so trusting? Fresh from a deprived life in the penal colony, he’d palmed the nifty little device and thought nothing beyond
cool toy… Wonder if I get to keep it when the mission’s done
instead of thinking with his brain, the one that would have told him to watch his zhang damn step around these assholes. He’d let his street-smarts slide, thinking he was playing for Team Good Guy.

Libra sighed and shifted the overstuffed duffle bag to his other shoulder. Trepidation stirred as he approached the main gates. Mentally, he was prepared for the worst, but it annoyed the hell out of him that the Colonel didn’t think it necessary to arm him with something to defend himself.  He spied a broken branch, four feet long, fairly straight and a good thickness. He locked down his wheels and leaned over to grab it, stripped off the leaves, and propped it next to his console—just in case.

The Trading Post was marked by a wooden-bar gate, held open with a loop of rope, in a line of thick, dense spruce trees. He followed the wide road as it turned a bend and came into a clearing that made him grind to a stop. The Trading Post wasn’t anything he’d envisioned.

Rather than a crumbled shed cluttered with a lot of junk and Bangers running around throwing axes at small children, Libra found himself in a village. He parked his board at the edge of a grassy square, grabbed his battle stick, and surveyed the encircling buildings. Sturdy structures, well-kept log buildings, flower gardens, white smoke puffing out of chimneys, and smells that made his nostrils flare and his mouth water.

Off to his left, a few old men stared at pieces on a board game under a vine-covered gazebo while two children tossed a ball to a domestic animal.

This was nothing,
nothing
, like the training videos. He wondered if Cleo lived like this. According to the intelligence reports he’d studied, the population of Wolverine Clan was around the eight hundred souls. But nowhere did it state anything about ball playing children and quaint community gardens. Where were the rock dwellings, grimy, malnourished faces, and bloody animal corpses?

This unpolluted, quiet, charming village was the antithesis of city life. Personally, he couldn’t live here for more than a few days, but it finally made sense why there was an underground of urbanites obsessed with this place, who discriminately dropped their eyes to the floor when the propaganda ads played on the holoboards. This tiny microcosm of Taiga life was hardly indicative of savagery and unhealthy living conditions.

Unless this was all for show?

A red ball came barrelling toward him, followed by the bounding domestic animal, its ears flopping and tongue hanging out the side of its mouth. Libra braced and held the stick out in front of him, across his body.

Both ball and dog came to a stop at his feet, and the latter thumped its tail and looked up expectedly.

“Throw it!” one of the kids yelled.

Libra lowered the walking stick and bent down, letting the duffel slip off his shoulder. He’d never seen a dog up close. It inched closer to him, the tail still swishing back and forth. Watery-brown, heart-melting eyes looked at him through a fringe of fur.

“Hey dog,” he said and the domestic woofed in reply, rocking a startled Libra back onto his heels. The dog barked again, dancing excitedly around the ball.

Libra reached out with his stick and rolled the ball toward the dog.

It nosed it back toward Libra.

“Not good enough, huh?”

The dog yipped as if he understood.

Libra plucked the red ball between two fingers and tossed it back in the direction of the children. The dog woofed, flipped around, and bounded after it, leaping every couple of steps.

Libra chuffed, letting a smile roll across his face. He wondered if Cleo had a domestic.

Cleo!

Shit, he had to get moving, get back to her. Get in, get out, get Cleo to safety and then return home to his freedom and his fortune. Never mind all this other stuff. These people, this village, were nothing but an illusion meant to convince the odd sightseer that they were something they’re not. Civilized.

Cleo might be different, but she was the exception. She had to be. All those films the Restoration Party has shown them at youth rallies, the holoboard warnings, the travel bans.
That
was real.

With purposeful steps, he strode past the saucy orange flowers, their black centers staring at him with accusing eyes, and into the biggest of the structures that bore a rustic sign identifying it as the General Store. He scoffed at the hand-scrawled
Welcome Visitors
sign in the window.

The interior was vast and bright, filled with natural light that streamed through a high row of opened windows that invited the autumn breeze, making the place feel like an outdoor market. And there was that smell again. Libra’s stomach rumbled, already resenting the Nutrishit dinner he’d have to share with Trevayne and his men.

“Help ya, sir?” A young lady, her eyes a sparkling blue, bounced up behind the counter in front of him. She wasn’t much of a savage, either. She couldn’t be any more than fifteen or sixteen, with apples in her cheeks and a pimple on her chin. No mud, no missing teeth, seemed to know how to articulate. Between Cleo and the people living at the post, where the hell did they find the freaks in the anti-Taiga literature?

“Your account name?” she prompted.

“I, uh… I don’t have an account. First time here.”

“Alrighty then, if you want to trade, we’ll have to create one for you. She glanced at his forearm. “I’ll need a scan.”

Zhang hell.
That’s why Trevayne sent him. He was being set up. If Cleo’s kidnapping prompted the tribers to file a report with the UWC, Libra, with his criminal history, would be back in the penal colony before sundown on Tuesday.

The data chip embedded in everyone’s arm, with all identifying information, certainly made everyday life easier, but right now, it was going to screw him over. He blew out a sigh and stuck his arm out for her scanner. He’d have to think this through later, when his mind was clear, when he’d had some sleep, when he wasn’t so anxious to get back to Cleo.

“Alrighty then,” the girl said, entering data into the hand-held reader. “Instead of cashpoints, we work on a barter system, so you’ll get credits for what you bring in to trade and you can use those to purchase from the floor, or for food from the canteen, which you passed when you came in, or for the bunk house if you care to be our guest for the night. Any unused balance gets recorded in the system and you can use it the next time you visit. Any questions?”

Libra shook his head, speechless and unable wrap his head around the fact that they were sophisticated enough to have a system of commerce. The combination of technology and snake-eating fried his circuits.

“What did you bring to trade?” she asked, eyeing the sack that weighed down his other shoulder.

Libra heaved the duffel on the counter and pushed it toward her. He had no idea what was inside but trusted Trevayne had stuffed enough in there to cover his laundry list of demands. What the hell the guy wanted with a dozen jars of blueberry jam, he couldn’t imagine.

Eager hands slid the zipper across the top and dove in. The girl nodded to herself as she pulled out boxes of assorted screws, sheets of malleable plastic, various lengths of PVC piping, and a box of assorted medical supplies.

From the very bottom, she retrieved a package with the familiar DynaCade interlocking triangles logo. Retrieving a small blade from under the counter, she slit open the protective case and lifted the lid. A dozen brand-new, six-inch pocket-classroom plasma screens, lifetime batteries included, made her eyes bug out with glee.

“Oh.” She popped him a quick glance. “Oh! There’s going to be a fight over these! You have no idea how the schools are going to love, love, love these. ”

She ran her fingers over the lid where, neatly tucked into individual slots, were the operating capsules.

“Dad!” she called.

Dad? So they didn’t eat their young.

“Oh, oh, Dad, look at these titles… History of Amerada: Pre Polar War, The Rise and Fall of Zhang Bao Lin, Complete BioSciences: Basic to Advanced, Math Series one through six, and Languages of New Europa.”

Her eyes peeled from the box to meet Libra’s. “We get these sometimes, mostly used, but these are brand new! And the edu-chips… I’ve never even seen the languages one, and I don’t think there’s an advanced bioscience text in the entire Shield. How did you… I mean… Whoa!”

Dad peered over her shoulder and shot a squint-eyed look back to Libra. “These legitimate? We won’t touch stolen goods, son.”

“Family connections,” Libra grunted, hoping that this stolen goods bullshit wasn’t part of a sting.

The girl held digital device up to her father so he could see Libra’s personal information.

“Alrighty then,” Dad said, eyebrows touching his hairline. “That’s mighty fine. Mighty fine indeed, Mr. Cade.” The man slapped his shoulder and grinned. “Happy to do business with you.”

Libra fought the urge to laugh out loud. If these folks had any idea how much he really
had
stolen in his previous life, the trader would have turned to stone. Taurus, meanwhile, hauled a cache of contraband back and forth across the Cut a dozen times a year, but he doubted whether “Alrighty” Dad ever questioned him. Taurus had that blessedly honest appeal going for him.

“This your first time up?” Dad asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll tally this, honeybunches,” he said to his daughter. “Why don’t you help the Clarks.”

Honeybunches looked reluctant to go. “But Dad! How am I supposed to learn if—”

“Please,” he said with a quiet voice. The girl’s shoulders drooped as she shuffled towards the couple toward the end of the counter. She snuck a glance over her shoulder and zoomed in on Libra. Caught peeking, her cheeks turned bright pink. Feeling devilish, he winked and was rewarded with a wide-eyed smile.

“We usually give eighty-five creds for these, but I’ll give you a hundred for each since they’re new and come with the chips.” Dad said, closing the box of plas-screens. “These couldn’t come at a better time, considering classes are about to start.”

Libra had a feeling he could have haggled the price up significantly but decided he liked these Taiga people, despite the images pounded into his head. Considering how he felt about the head of DynaCade at the moment, he was tempted to give them away for free.

“Let me just check our book, see what these other bits will get you. It’ll take me a few minutes to tally everything, so you can look around. If you need any help, just holler,” Dad said.

“I’ve got a list.”

“Alrighty, then,” he said, handing over one of the wicker baskets that were stacked on the counter behind him.

There were no interior walls in the trading post, only two rows of rough wooden support columns that split the room into three distinct areas.

Libra made his way to the farthest section where wooden furniture, from bed posts to cabinets, lined the floor. With every intention to hurry his task, he couldn’t stop himself from touching everything—the knots on a carved wooden chest, the smooth grain of a table—and pushed a rocking chair to see if it rocked as smoothly as he suspected.

Didn’t see much wood in Gomeda, not since most of the trees in Lower Amerada had been burned for fuel during the dark times after the Polar Wars.

He moved through the center section of the building, navigated rows of shelves stocked with fresh and canned vegetables, dried meats, preserves, bundled herbs, and things he didn’t know how to describe. Everything he saw, he considered. So many options, but which gave Cleo the best chance?