Oculus (Oculus #1) (16 page)

“Stop, please. I need to find my friends.” I slow then stop, setting her down on her feet. She tests the ground with her feet, never letting go of my arm. Her hand on my arm trembles. “We’re outside the wall! Oh, no…” Her breathing increases as she starts to panic. “Take me back! Please, take me back!”

Her eyes are wide and I have the sudden, sickening realization that something is off. The girl of my dreams, the one I had just run away with, is blind.

I
N MY DREAMS, HE HAS
always remained silent, until the last dream I had. I heard him for the first time and it was jarring. He became so much more…
more
for me simply for having heard his voice, and even that doesn’t compare to what I’m feeling now.

An awkward silence settles over us, the sounds of our panting the only thing registering. I can sense him looking at me and I feel bared from tip to toe.

“That’s not fair.”

“What?”

“You’re staring.”

“Yes, I am.”

Four words. Four words and they have me thinking that his voice is like the soft warmth of my favorite quilt. The one I use only on the coldest of nights because that’s when I need it most. Rations are rations, and power and gas must be used sparingly in the winter months. It’s a Fenra mandate that no one likes much, but no one complains about it, at least not openly. My quilt isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s been mended by me, a blind person, on multiple occasions, but somehow I value it more for enduring years of intermittent use. I value it for having been there in the first place.

“Say something,” I whisper, too afraid that talking too loudly would scare off this phantom of mine.
He’s not here. He’s not real. He can’t be!

“You’re blind.” The way he says it, so matter-of-fact, forces me to recoil from him. I take a step back and tuck my chin towards my chest.

“Guilty,” I mutter, feeling shameful of my impairment for the first time in a very long time.

“You’re real. You’re here. What’s your name?” He moves along quickly, eagerly.

“Iris Tierney. Who are you?”

“I’m Sic.”

“What’s wrong?” I’d be lying if I said that hearing him say he’s sick doesn’t have
me
feeling a little sick, too. He doesn’t seem ill. Not the way he moved with me up against him, fast and deft and powerful…

“No. My name is Sicarius. People call me Sic.”

“Sic,” I try on the feel of his name rolling off my tongue and it feels good. It feels like validation. Validation that somehow, someway, I’ve dreamed of a real person. He’s no phantom at all. He’s muscle, and sweat-slicked skin, and pounding heart and I
know
him and I don’t. Not truly. “How—why—when—do you have… um…”

“Dreams? Yes.”

“How?” I whisper to myself.

“You need to listen to me closely. You have to come with me. You can’t be here. If they find out who you are. Maybe they already know. Hurry. We’re leaving.” He rattles off quietly, leaving me to scramble aimlessly in his confusing wake.

“Wait. What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere! Are you insane?”

“You have to come with me. You are supposed to be with me. I can explain.”

“You can’t honestly expect me to just walk off into the woods with someone who shouldn’t even be real! I have a life in there. A new job that I shouldn’t even have been able to get. My father! I’d never leave him behind.”

“Iris, we were designed to stay together. You have to trust me. Let’s go.”

“Okay, you need to take me back. I have to go back. Take me back.” I begin to panic, and turn away from him not knowing how in the hell I’m supposed to get back into the compound without being caught. Or maybe that’s what Ingram wanted, for me to get caught.

The reality of what just played out settles over me and with it comes uninhibited rage. I don’t understand what I did wrong. Why did he dispatch security? I told him I was going to the stupid meeting. I told him I’d give him a full report tomorrow. I told him I’d sleep with him, too, a truth that, in Sic’s presence makes me feel dirty and shameful. I have to get out of here.

Sic sighs deeply and shifts his stance so quietly that even I have to focus to hear his movements, and it’s no secret that my hearing is as sharp as blade. “Fine. I’ll take you back but you have to listen to me. You have to believe me. You
will
believe me.”

“I have to go back. They’ll be looking for me.”

“Who?”

“Ingram, my superior. The Chief of Fenra Security. If I don’t show up…” I trail off not wanting to even entertain the thought of what would happen.

“Stay away from him,” Sic growls in an intimidating tone that I haven’t heard from him.

“I can’t. I work with—for him.”

He grunts in response to my explanation then pulls me firmly forward. His breath skates across my skin, forcing thoughts of my last dream to the forefront of my mind.

“I’m taking you back,” he declares, his grip on me contradicting his words. “…but I won’t leave you there. You’ll come with me and in the meantime you’ll stay away from Ingram.”

“I told you, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can and you will or I’ll fix this problem myself,” he pulls me closer. My breasts brush so lightly against him that I wonder if I’m imagining things.

“And how will you do that?”

“I’ll kill him. Let’s go.”

Speechless and confused and shocked and turned on by the revelation that he’s a real person, I stick close to his side. The short excursion back to the compound goes by in a wordless haze. I’m normally so attuned to everything I can feel, hear, smell, and taste but right now shock has cloaked my brain under a fierce monopoly.

“My friends are probably in custody. The agents, it sounded like there were a hundred of them.” Sic drags me along with ease, ushering me back to the safety of the compound.

“They could execute me for this. They probably will,” I mumble numbly.

“I would never let that happen,” he says as he comes to a stop. He grasps me by both shoulders and speaks with such finality and confidence I don’t doubt him for one second. “Not ever. Do you believe me?”

“I do,” I confess without thought because for me, it’s true. I do believe him.

“Sorry about this,” he says as he grabs at my shirt and rips a hole in my sleeve. Leaves and dirt at my feet rustle and then his hand is on my forehead, my cheek…
Oh
.

“Find the first person you can and tell them that you got lost, disoriented and ended up outside the wall. Alone. You never saw me.”

“That part is true.”

He grunts what sounds like his version of a laugh, causing me to smile despite tonight’s madness and whatever repercussions await me.

“Go,” he whispers against my ear, clearing the haze and making every one of my senses burst back to life. His breath against my skin, the masculine smell of sweat, the deep and smooth pitch of his voice. His chocolate hair intermingling with mine just before he nudges me forward then disappears without a sound. Just like the phantom in my dreams.

The moment he’s gone, the moment I can
feel
he’s gone, that familiar hurt washes over me.
He’s real. He’s here. He was here. Where is he going? Will he come back? Do I want him to come back?

Bones and muscles I hadn’t been aware of even having, begin to tremble. I’m not certain how long I’ve been standing here. I don’t even know where I am. I can hear the nocturnal sounds of the compound around me but I have no mental map to reference so I begin walking in the direction Sic pointed me in.

“Stop! Fenra Security!” A man barks at me. I instantly raise my hands, my Fenra Corp cuff slipping up my wrist as my hands rise in surrender. Judging by the crunch of his boots on the ground, he’s a large man. A handheld scanner announces my identity to the agent in front of me. “Miss Tierney what are you doing?”

“I got lost. I don’t know where I am. I just need to get back to my house.”

I can feel his eyes on me, evaluating the smudges of earth on my cheek and forehead. He picks at the hole in my sleeve.

“I’ll dispatch a railcar,” he says, resigned to believe the blind woman with evidence of her impairment all over her face and clothing.
Lucky me
.

“Thank you,” I say aloud thinking of Sic, not the agent in front of me.

“You shouldn’t be alone and wandering around the compound. Someone might think you’re up to no good,” he admonishes which spurs my agitation further.

“I’m blind and not even good at it.” I clip. “Sorry. I’m not up to anything. Just lost.”

“Get home. Curfew is in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay.”

The agent’s pudgy hand grabs my arm and guides me forward 1, 2, 8,10, 27, 36, 41 steps. The rail. The electric buzzing of an approaching railcar grows louder and then dulls to a quiet hum.

“Fenra. Security. Rail. Car. Please. Enter. Your. Destination,” the bitch in the box drones and right now with frayed nerves I want nothing more than to torch all automation boxes in this entire compound. Every stationary retinal scanner. Every railcar. Every handheld retinal scanner. Every domestic scanner. Every automated ration dispensary. All of it! Maybe the woods have a certain charm to them after all!

Without any further conversation, the agent deposits me into the car and punches in my address, which he has obviously seen in my Fenra Corp profile on his handy dandy scanner. There in his stupid, thick hand is the summary of my life—or the life I know.
How convenient.

Iris Tierney.

21 years old

DOB- 08-28-2042

Sector 24 Unit 13

Visually impaired

Dependant

Father- Dr. Patrick Tierney

Mother- Deceased

“Get home,” he warns and then the door on the car shuts with a subdued
sloof!

Holding my head upright is too great a task right now. It falls back to rest against the top of the seat with a thud as the railcar gains speed taking me home, taking me further away from Sic.