His eyelids flared in a micro expression, but then his face went flat again.
“No. I never have. I can’t. It would cause too many problems for me to have a mate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, for one thing, being leader of the Haven is a full-time job. I don’t have time to worry about taking care of a mate and everyone else as well.”
Elias turned and walked toward me, toweling off his neck and chest. He seemed completely unconscious of how he looked.
I, on the other hand, could not have been any more conscious of him.
Unaware of my reaction to him, he went on explaining.
“For another, the games might have created a sense of fairness, but the guys are still pretty envious of the winners. I can’t have them being jealous of me if I want them to respect and follow me. Some of them already gripe about me having a private platform and bathroom tent. It would be bad for the Haven as a whole if I also had a woman.”
“Besides,” he added with a shrug, “there’s never been a girl I wanted to compete for.”
He gave me an alert glance, “If you’re worried, don’t be. I’ll make sure you end up with a good guy.”
“How? If it’s all determined by who’s the strongest and fastest?”
He looked troubled but said, “Most of the guys here are good guys. And if one of the few bad apples happens to win, there are ways of disqualifying someone on a technicality. You’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”
“And they’ll listen to you?”
His face didn’t look entirely confident, but he said, “They always have so far.”
Feeling at least mildly reassured, I nodded.
“You really care about being a good leader, don’t you? You try to think about what’s best for everyone.”
“I do try.” He looked almost embarrassed. “It’s not easy.”
“You must be doing a somewhat decent job of it. I can tell the other guys respect you.”
“Most of them,” he said with a wry grin.
I thought about what he’d said about some of them grumbling. About Speck’s glare.
“Why do you have a private platform?” I asked. “If it bothers some of them, I mean. Is it important to keep some separation from the people you’re leading or something?”
Our eyes met and held, and he waited so long to answer I thought he wasn’t going to.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, barely above a whisper.
“No, it isn’t that. I would have loved to live on one of the lower levels, close to all my friends. It’s ‘lonely at the top,’ as they say.”
He paused again and swallowed, his Adam’s apple traveling the length of his throat.
“It’s the screams. I have some pretty bad nightmares. It isn’t fair to ruin everyone else’s sleep every night. It’s bad enough that I barely get any.”
I was confused. “But I haven’t heard you screaming once.”
He swallowed hard again. “I’ve slept well the past few nights… for whatever reason. The best I have since we escaped.”
Then he gave me a look so long and piercing my heart fluttered and skipped a beat.
Elias opened his mouth, and I thought he was going to say something else, but he took a breath, then turned and headed for the door.
“Back in a few minutes. I’m gonna check in with Derrick and make sure everything’s okay.”
While he was away, I poured fresh water into the basin and washed up myself, then I got into bed. Elias returned a few minutes later.
Familiar with the routine at this point, I rolled onto my side, and he slid in behind me as he’d done the past few nights.
He didn’t drape an arm over me as he usually did though.
We both lay there, silent, only the sounds of our breathing punctuating the forest’s nighttime noises. I didn’t feel the least bit sleepy.
In fact I felt hyper alert.
My mind buzzed with questions. The ones about him were louder than usual in my head.
“What happened when you escaped?” I asked, hoping it would be one of those rare moments he felt like confiding in me. “Why did you leave?”
He’d already told me about the nightmares. They had to have a cause—mine certainly did.
“It was two summers ago. I’d noticed some of my friends changing… going to the doctor and coming back acting different,” he said.
I nodded as he spoke, remembering the same phenomenon happening on my own base. Ketta had morphed from a free-spirited wild child into a goody goody overnight.
“It was always the bravest ones, the kids who tended to give attitude or break small rules,” he said. “I was one of the quiet ones. I kept my head down, did what I was told. They pretty much left me alone.”
He took a deep breath, and I felt the shuddering exhale against my back.
“My sister, Kristine—she’s my twin—was a little bolder. She would speak up when she didn’t like something, and she’d argue until the other person backed down. Even teachers.”
There was a smile in his voice.
“She was a badass. And then suddenly she wasn’t. Our ‘parents’ took her to see Dr. Rex. She came home acting like a stranger. I knew something was really, really wrong. But when I tried to talk to my parents about it, they acted like it was no big deal. They told me not to worry about it, that Kristine was just growing up and that it would happen to me too someday. That was it for me.”
It was amazing how similar his experience had been to my own. It was also nice to talk to someone who’d been there, who truly understood the things I’d gone through and the scars left behind.
His breath hitched a little.
“I missed her. The girl who was living in her room and wearing her clothes looked like my sister… but she wasn’t. I decided to figure out what had happened to her, what had happened to my friends who’d also turned into zombies. So I broke into the med clinic one night and set up some surveillance gear—electronics were kind of my thing. I invented all kinds of tech. Some of it the base special ops team was even interested in using.”
He went quiet, so I prodded. “What did you see?”
“I let it record for several days and watched the playback. I saw several students go in for appointments. Dr. Rex asked them questions, and then when he’d heard enough to determine they were ‘problems…’”
There was a sneer in Elias’ tone. “He pulled out his holo-tablet and went to work. He reprogrammed their nanobots, erased their memories and in many cases—like my sister’s—their entire personalities. I also overheard his conversations with the nurses and techs at the clinic. I heard a lot more than I bargained for, let’s put it that way.”
“That’s how you discovered we were Gebbies?” I asked.
He nodded, the motion moving the pillow beneath my cheek.
“I didn’t want to believe it. I was kind of in shock at first. But it made sense. It explained the abrupt change in Kristine and my friends. I heard them talking about our meds and realized that was what was keeping our nanos from being rejected. I stopped taking mine immediately. I talked a few of my friends, like Zee, into stopping theirs, too. Once we all had clear heads, we started making a plan to escape.”
“Weren’t you afraid?” I asked, remembering how scared I was to leave and lead my friends to escape as well.
“Terrified,” he admitted. “But I was more afraid to stay. And I realized there was nothing to stay for. I mean, not safety. We might have had plenty to eat and comfortable beds to sleep in, heating and air conditioning, but how safe is it when someone can take away all your memories anytime they want to and tell you what to think?”
Hearing Elias express the very things I felt so strongly made me want to reach out and take his hand or touch his arm, to complete the circuit of mental connection with a physical one.
But I didn’t of course. I just listened.
“It wasn’t like I was leaving behind a real family,” he said. “My parents were kind to us and met our needs, but they didn’t even care when Kristine—their daughter—became an entirely different person. And then I realized it was because she wasn’t really their daughter.”
He paused for a loud swallow. “And I wasn’t their son. After I understood that, it was easy to go. I got as many of my friends out as I could.”
His breathing sounded odd. I wanted to turn over and see him face to face, offer some commiseration and comfort. But I lay still.
“How many came with you?”
“Not enough. Once we got our group to safety, a few of us went back and freed more. After that they tightened security.”
“And your sister?”
The weird breathing was thicker now, bordering on a sob.
“Like I said, I couldn’t get everyone out. It’s been a long day. We should get some sleep.”
Okay then.
Obviously I’d struck a nerve. I guessed his sister had refused to stop taking her meds and leave the base with him. I’d never had the experience of a living sibling, so I could only imagine how hard it was to lose one.
Losing a twin seemed even more tragic.
Unable to resist any longer, I did roll over so the front of my body pressed into his left side. I wrapped my arm around his waist and squeezed.
“That must have been so hard.”
Resting my head on his chest, I smoothed my palm over it and his shoulder then stroked his stomach, seeking to soothe his obvious distress at the bad memories.
Elias grabbed my hand and removed it from his body, shifting away from me in an abrupt, almost violent motion that rocked the suspended bed. He settled again with his back to me.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked in a tentative voice.
“No. I’ve been off the red pills for a long time,” he grunted. “Go to sleep.”
And that was all he said.
I wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong, but it was obvious Elias wasn’t in the mood for more conversation. I lay there, not attempting to touch him again, simply enjoying the warmth that radiated from his large body.
It was amazing how quickly his nearness had gone from being distressing to being comforting.
Would I be sleeping in someone else’s bed soon?
The idea repulsed me. I squirmed a little closer to Elias and closed my eyes, listening to the now-familiar sound of his steady breathing and falling into a peaceful sleep.
————————
We must have unconsciously rolled toward one another during the night because when I woke the next morning, my head was back on Elias’ chest, and his arms were around me.
It was so comfortable and warm as I hovered there in that sweet state between sleep and wakefulness. After a few minutes, I opened my eyes.
I blinked against the brightness of the morning light filtering through the tent and yawned. Rolling back so my head rested on his bicep, I looked up at Elias’ face.
My breath quickened, and I came to full alertness. His eyes were open. He was looking at me, and he appeared to have been awake for a while.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Watching you sleep.”
His voice was rough and sounded a bit deeper than usual. “You were dreaming.”
Elias’ lips pursed in amusement then split into a smile. “I’ve never watched someone dream before.”
And I had never seen that look on someone’s face before. Tender and sweet, it transformed his face from merely handsome to literally breathtaking. I had to inhale deeply to replenish my lungs before I passed out.
“How long have you been awake?” I asked. Looking at me.
“For a bit. I generally get up much earlier, but someone kept me up jabbering like a blue jay last night.”
“Hey—I didn’t talk that much.” I laughed.
His laughter joined mine. “Not you. I was the one jabbering. Which is weird. I never talk about the past.”
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically.
“That’s okay. I appreciate you listening. It helped. I never talk about anything personal because I’m supposed to be a strong leader, you know? Impervious to weakness and worry and all that stuff. It was… nice.”
Returning his smile, I slid my arm over his abdomen to his side for a warm hug.
Elias abruptly rolled out of bed and stood, going to the flap of the tent and leaving. When he returned a few minutes later, his demeanor was cheery and light.
“Stay in bed and sleep some more if you like,” he said. “I’ll be gone all day and much of the night helping the arbiters prepare the games for the Trials. You’ll need to stay in the safety of my tent until the Trials are over and you have a champion. Hopefully you won’t be too bored.”
He gestured to the box in the corner. “You could read some more books. Derrick’s outside the tent. Just tell him whenever you get hungry, and he’ll have some food sent up—whatever you want to eat.”
“Sure, okay. Elias?”
“Yeah?” His sunny expression turned wary.
“Would it be okay for my friends to have some books to read, too? Would you mind if they borrowed them?”
The concern cleared from his face. “Oh yeah, no problem. Pick out the ones you want them to have, and I’ll have a runner take them to their tents.”
I beamed at him, sitting up in bed and stretching my arms over my head. “Thank you. I know they’re going to be so happy and surprised. Paper books are so much fun.”
My tone turned teasing. “I guess I was pretty lucky to get trapped in the tent of a fellow bookworm.”
At first Elias returned my smile, but it quickly dropped from his face.
“Yeah… lucky. Well, have a good day, Mireya. I’ll probably get in after you fall asleep… so have a good night as well.”
