Chapter 12

I always forget about this, but I thought of it tonight, so here's another chapter! Sorry it's so slow coming. Here's Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 once again if you need to catch up. Much love.
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They took her back into the blinding light and into a white room. The walls reflected the bright light frighteningly well, sending daggers of perception into her squinting eyes. There were no windows. The only thing even remotely distinct about the room was a bed in the left corner directly in front of her. The guards released her and she went to sit down on it, grasping its metal railing for balance. The mattress was incredibly thin, and only one threadbare sheet clung to it like some sort of overgrown cobweb. So much for treating your prisoners well, she thought.
As if reading her mind, one of the guards took off his cap and held it to his heart, revealing blue eyes that were kinder than she had expected. “If you want another blanket, or anything, ma’am, you just let us know.” Puzzled, she nodded. He and his friend gave her weak smiles as they left the room, closing the door behind them.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were all padded with some sort of soft material. Patrick had said the place had been an airport; she would have just as easily believed it was an insane asylum. Of course, she had never seen an insane asylum—they had been done away with when she was only three years old. Coltrane Thornton had told her what they were like…
The unpleasant, unsettling thought entered her head. Who had killed Coltrane Thornton? Could it have been a man in this very building? She reflected on the boy who had once been her neighbor, the round-faced boy with tousled black hair and excited eyes. He had always loved life, even if the life he lived was mostly made up. He had been a trickster, a liar, a joker… but he didn’t deserve to die. Nana hadn’t deserved to die. Mom and Baylor hadn’t deserved to die. Nobody should have died in this ridiculous war. She imagined Coltrane lying on some battlefield, bleeding his life out onto the dirt beneath his body…
She pulled her knees up from the side of the bed and hugged them to her chest, tried to squeeze out the emotional nausea that had filled the pit of her stomach. She was both drained of happiness and filled with despair and contempt, both empty and full at the same time. She unfolded herself and laid her head on the thin pillow.
She found it horribly ironic that the only person in the world she wanted to talk to could very well have been Coltrane’s killer. She wondered if Patrick was okay, hoping she hadn’t gotten him into any trouble. He’d been through enough trouble for her already.
As she hugged her arms around herself, she felt her own cold hand on the bare skin of her shoulder. The entire sleeve of her shirt had ripped off completely by this time. Hadn’t the Sergeant mentioned something about a change of clothes? She got up slowly, crouching on her knees to peer under the bed. She felt like she was being punched in the gut as she took the Memorist uniform in her hands. What kind of sick joke was this, making a prisoner of war wear the enemy uniform? She wadded up the clothes and threw them angrily in a corner. Just as well, she thought. She was probably under surveillance anyway. She stood again and kicked the rubbery wall in frustration—the action almost caused her to lose her balance. She screamed a very exasperated scream, but she was sure it hadn’t reached anyone’s ears. She had gone from sadness to anger over the span of a few seconds. Maybe the walls were rubber because the POWs eventually went insane…
They might as well have killed her. At this point in Piper Conrad’s life, nothing, nothing at all, was worse than being completely alone.
She wasn’t sure what time it was, but she assumed it was time to go to sleep when the lights clicked off, plunging her from the brightness of the afternoon into midnight in an instant. For a moment she was afraid she had gone blind; she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face.
“Lincoln,” she said aloud. Without explanation the cat reentered her mind. He hadn’t even come into the base with them, had he? The poor thing was probably out in the cold all alone…
“Really, Piper? You’re in a Backwinder prison and you’re worried about a stupid cat?” She was talking to herself. Wasn’t that the first sign of madness? She’d only been in here a few hours, and she was already losing her mind.
She blinked, unable to differentiate the black of her closed eyes from the black of the room. She felt as though lead weights were tied to her eyelashes, weighing her lids down. Slowly but surely, sleep won the battle over confusion and emotion.
Piper was surrounded by fire. It was everywhere around her, above and beneath, as though she had been placed in a room made of it. She could see through the flames to the other side, where she heard her cat meowing mournfully at her. She could hear Mom screaming, but she couldn’t see her. Baylor, however, was straight in front of her, the firelight dancing across his face. Coltrane Thornton was holding his hand.
“Sissy!” he said, and both of them began running through the fire toward her. She tried to tell them no, she was screaming her lungs out at them, but they couldn’t hear her…
And Patrick was laughing, his brown eyes twisted and demented in the flame.
Coltrane and Baylor broke through the flames to her side, but they were only eerie skeletons, their flesh eaten alive by the fire.
Then the lights blared on, and she was safe in the white room again, alone with her sorrows and fears.
Just as her eyes sprung open, the door did as well. She jumped in shock as one of the guards, the one who had taken off his hat, walked in carrying a tray. On it was a bowl of fruit and a slightly burnt piece of toast. She couldn’t help thinking that this wasn’t too bad a deal: she had more of a bed than she’d had on the run with Patrick, and from the looks of it she was eating better too. If she could only keep this up, if she could see another human face three times a day, she could stay sane. She could survive this.
“There you are, ma’am,” he said, placing the tray carefully in her hands and turning toward the door. He talked with the same accent as Trey had.
“I’m not a ma’am,” she said, trying to persuade him to stay. She didn’t want to be alone so fast again. “I’m just Piper. You know, though, you’re the second person to call me that since I got here.”
He laughed. “This is the South, and we haven’t seen any girls for months. You’re a ma’am. But if it upsets you, I’ll quit it.”
“The South? What do you mean?”
“The Southern United States. Or at least it used to be. I don’t s’pose you ever heard of that, huh?” Piper shook her head eagerly. “Nah, I didn’t figure. Even some of our people haven’t. See, most of us left the cities to come here, but some of us hid out underground when the United States fell.”
“What’s the United States?”
“It was a big country, kinda like the Nation but not as strict. Little bit smaller too. But it was the most powerful country in the world. But it got nuked.”
Piper’s eyes widened in shock. One word she knew was “nuke.” She’d heard her dad talking about them in low voices to her mother. They could wipe out an entire civilization in an instant. The guard saw the look on her face and continued to explain.
“Yup. Outta nowhere, too. Only a few people survived. My great-great-grandfather’s family was one of ‘em. He was paranoid for years, built a built a bomb shelter three miles underground. Started when he was twenty-three and finished when he was almost eighty. But he died of old age, unlike just about everybody else. He and my great-great-grandma survived. So we just stayed where we were for generations, in case it happened again. As far as I knew, we were Americans, until the war started. Stuff started happening. We came up again. But we remember better than anybody. We could see where the Nation was going, even if we were watching from a distance. You haven’t ever heard of Hitler, have you?”
She shook her head.
“Mussolini? Stalin?”
She shook her head again. “No.” What odd names.
“Didn’t suppose so. Is it true they don’t even teach you history at your schools?”
She nodded. “The past behind, the future before.” Another National motto.
“The Diviner wouldn’t let them teach you about Hitler and all them even if you did learn history. It’d be too risky. People would start to notice the similarities.”
“Between what?”
“Between him and some of the worst dictators of all time.”
“Dictators? What do those have to do with this?”
He looked puzzled for a minute, then rolled his eyes in exasperation. “No, no, no, not those things you write with. Dictators. People who take complete control of their governments. Power-hungry monsters, more like it. Hitler killed millions of people just because they got in the way of his vision of a perfect world.” He noticed the perked look on her face. “Yeah, I said vision. Sound familiar to you?”
It wasn’t the same. It couldn’t possibly be the same. This Hitler man probably didn’t even exist.
“Don’t you think it’s even a little strange that you weren’t allowed to leave? And your man, he’s going even further than controlling people. He’s moved to the forces of nature. Is it true they don’t even have weather there?”
She nodded. A smile swept across her face unexpectedly—the reference made her think of Patrick. The guard shook his head in one swift motion, clearly indignant. “See, that’s just not right. Man trying to take the place of God… but I bet he hasn’t told you about Him either, has he?”
She shook her head again. That seemed to deliver the dying blow for the guard, who closed his eyes, stood up, and started heading for the door. Once they opened again, Piper thought she could see tears welling against his clear blue irises, but she couldn’t be sure. Just when she thought he was gone for good, he turned around one more time.
“You haven’t ever seen a Bible, have you?”
She shook her head. He looked at her for a long time, then stared at his feet. “Have a nice morning, ma’am.” He walked out of the room, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

Chapter 11

Yay for blog posts that take absolutely no time on my part at present. Hehe. I have up to Chapter 14 written right now... I just gotta pace myself with the posting. But as I have nothing else to post today, here ya go. :)
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“That’s impossible,” she said, looking up at the Sergeant with wide, unbelieving eyes.
“I wish it were,” he replied. “I truly wish it were.” He sat down once again, folding his hands in front of him. He didn’t appear nearly so threatening as he had before.
“Your grandmother was discovered. National agents knew she had the Journal, and they’d go to any lengths to either confiscate it or destroy it completely. Even bomb their own city.”
“The Diviner would never—“
“Your Diviner is a sad, psychotic man who likes nothing better than complete power,” he said. Before she could reply, he held up a hand, motioning for her to let him finish. “But we’re not here to talk about the Diviner, Miss Conrad.”
She wanted to reply with everything she knew about the Diviner, to defend his honor and therefore her country’s, but she was too curious. She wanted to know what had really happened to Nana.
“Sadie knew her time was running short three days ago, when you came to her house. She knew the book had no chance of remaining safe if it stayed with her, so she gave it to you, if my records are correct.”
“No, she…” Piper trailed off. But she realized in an instant that she had. She hadn’t even offered it outright… Piper had seen it in the attic, taken it back to the house with her. The journal. Piper had fallen asleep reading an Apocalypse Journal.
He looked at her in a cross between sadness and disappointment. “And as you don’t seem to have it with you, it doesn’t appear that the Journal made it out of the fires.”
She shook her head slowly, still ingesting the wonder of it all. An Apocalypse journal had been in her hands, and she’d left it on the bedside table as she rushed out of her burning house.
“Why didn’t they just take Nana?” she asked after a few minutes. “If it really was the Nationals, if they were just going for Nana, why…”
“Your grandmother was an eccentric person in the eyes of the community, to say the least, but she was also well liked, a prominent member of society. Her arrest or execution might have caused a public outrage, especially considering her age. It was easier on the government to simply sacrifice the whole city. After all, there are millions of others just like it. They saw Iretum as expendable, and they knew your grandmother couldn’t leave because of the forcefields. And, what with the war going on, it was an effective way to incite the people against us even more. They, of course, publicized the bombing as a Memorist attack.”
Piper hated how much sense it made. It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t. Somehow he had to be lying…
But she knew deep down that he wasn’t.
“Why didn’t she tell us? We could have tried to get out.”
“You’d have been killed instantly by the forcefield if you’d attempted an escape. There was no way out. She knew if anyone would survive to carry the Journal, it would be you. Your brother wasn’t old enough, and your mother was too loyal to the Nation to try to flee.”
There was a long pause.
“So she is gone?” she finally said. The Sergeant nodded speechlessly. She wiped tears out of her eyes with two of her fingers. “I knew she was, I knew as soon as I left that she’d be gone, but part of me hoped…”
He shook his head again. “We lost all contact with her about an hour before the attack. We sent scouts to look through the rubble for any sign of her, but none was found. As far as we know there were no survivors at all, except for you.”
“Even in the station?”
“The unfortunate thing about copper is that it melts,” he said. He didn’t need to say anymore. She remembered the dripping metal of the building and the thoughts she’d had… she’d just hoped they’d been wrong.
“So,” she said after a long pause, “what does this mean for me?”
“It means we’re not going to kill you.”
She had a sneaking suspicion that Patrick had known about Nana all along.
“Does that mean you can trust me?”
“That means we don’t distrust you. Patrick obviously trusts you, but he’s a young man. And you’re a very pretty girl.”
She blushed, too embarrassed to form a reply. Luckily for her, the Sergeant continued, sparing her the trouble of responding.
“Your grandmother trusted you as well, but you are her granddaughter. It’s natural. However, the fact that you never tried to harm Patrick in any way and haven’t made any effort to escape tells us you could be on our side.”
“I’m on nobody’s side,” she mused.
He sighed. “We’re going to have to incarcerate you, Miss Conrad.”
“What?” She stood up. “No, you can’t do that, I have to try to find Branson and make sure—“
“I went over this with you, Miss Conrad. We have as many reasons not to trust you as we do to trust you. I don’t think you can fully realize what an unusual case you are, what a strange predicament you’ve put us in. We can’t allow you to leave, Miss Conrad. We have to keep an eye on you at all times.”
“No!” She ran to the closed door and wrenched her wrist around the handle. It didn’t move. The door was locked.
“We don’t mistreat our prisoners. You’ll be given three full meals a day and even a change of clothes, if you so desire.”
She could feel tears welling in her eyes, but she shoved them back into her tear ducts and swallowed deeply. “I have to go. You don’t understand. I swear, if you just let me go I won’t tell anybody anything about you or your base or even that I met Patrick. I’ll pretend none of it ever happened if you just let me go.”
“I can’t do that, Miss Conrad. You have to consider your own safety as well. If you’ve even been seen with Private Blue, the Nation has your face in its databases. You are likely in far more danger out in the world than you are here. Here you are perfectly safe, and perhaps a little bored. That is all.”
“My dad’s a general, they wouldn’t hurt me!” She tugged on the door handle again, as if she thought it would do any good.
“Sadie’s son was the same general, if you’ll remember. Your government seemed to have no qualms about killing her for treason, did they?” His voice grew bitter and even a little annoyed.
“Stop, just stop it!” She clamped her hands over her ears in a panic. She had to get out, she just had to…
The Sergeant pressed a blue button on his desk and held it down as he spoke. “Guards, please show Miss Conrad her room.”
The once locked door swung open as two burly men rushed in to grab her arms.
“Hey!” she heard Patrick’s deep voice exclaim. “Hey, what d’you think you’re doing?”
“Step aside, Blue,” the Sergeant said calmly. Patrick, however, was in a panic, and didn’t show any intention of following orders.
“You said she’d be fine! You said you weren’t going to hurt her!”
Piper tugged against the grip of the guards, but to no avail. She didn’t move an inch beneath their stony grasp.
“She’s going to be fine, Blue. Step aside.” The Sergeant gave him a harsh, piercing look that would have terrified Piper had it been directed straight at her.
“Where are you taking her? What’re you going to do to her? What—“
“Private Blue, if you don’t step aside, so help me—“
“Just leave it, Patrick.” She looked him straight in the eye and tried to give him the reassurance she couldn’t give herself. She could feel her voice quieting and softening as she spoke, until it almost felt like cotton in her throat. “It’s going to be fine. It’s not worth this, okay?”
He met her gaze and softened, slowly backing up and stepping out of the guards’ way. She rolled her eyes in a mixture between relief and exasperation. The boy was ridiculous. She began to wonder if she had anything to do with his behavior at all; perhaps he just harbored a penchant for putting himself in life-threatening situations. She watched him walk stiffly over to the Sergeant and give him their odd salute. The commander nodded and directed the boy toward his office. He looked back at her in caution, and she merely gave him a nod, trying to be braver than she had in the past. He walked into the office and the door closed with a clang. She wondered if it had locked behind him.

Chapter 10

Hello dear sweet forsaken NaNo novel. I've missed you.
Ok, so it hasn't been completely forsaken. But I'm not just rippin' through it like I was in November. Oh well. Regardless, here's the next part. Sorry it's been forever.
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“Sit down, Miss Conrad,” the gruff voice behind the lights said. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust for her to even find a chair. As the blinding white slowly funneled out of her eyes, she found the man in front of her incredibly intimidating. He wore the same uniform as Patrick, but filled it with much more bulk and muscle. That being said, he wasn’t an extremely young man; she estimated him to be about fifty, if no older than fifty-five. The lines of his face, especially his jaw, were sharp and jagged, as though he’d been carved out of a rock by a particularly poor sculptor. Cold gray eyes, holding none of the warmth of Patrick’s or even Trey’s, peered out at her from beneath the brim of his hat. He was everything she had expected a Memorist sergeant to be, and he terrified her beyond even her own expectations.
She sat down immediately, more out of fear than compliance. The man was sitting at a primitive looking desk made of wood. On the desktop was a name plate that read: “Sergeant Bernard Collins” in official capitol letters. Next to it sat a cup full of pencils, and even pens. A piece of paper lay on the desk directly in front of the Sergeant, and there was no Dictator machine in sight. Of course, she herself had even wanted to write a letter to Branson, but why would anyone in a setting such as this prefer to record a conversation by hand? Dictators had the capacity to print an entire sentence within a millisecond of its oral completion through laser printers. She supposed the Sergeant preferred to make the same statement as Patrick and his Memorists: live in the past, and reject progress.
Her train of thought was broken by the calm, controlled voice of the commanding officer.
“You put me in a predicament, Miss Collins,” he said again. His voice wasn’t loud or boisterous; in fact, it was the only part of her drill sergeant description that this man didn’t match perfectly. However, the quiet, accusatory tone of his speech almost frightened her more than if he had been yelling at the top of his lungs. “I cannot keep you here, but now that you’ve seen this place I can’t afford to let you leave.”
“I didn’t see the passcode, I wouldn’t know how to get in anyway,” she protested.
“Ah, but therein lies the problem, Miss Conrad. The only thing I have to prove that is your word. Private Blue has told me your story. I don’t appreciate the affect you’ve had on him.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Are you not aware, Miss Conrad, that he ran away from his commission in an effort to keep you safe?”
Her eyes widened as she shook her head in shock.
“A loyal move, no doubt, but loyalty to the enemy is worth nothing to me. A complete waste of my time and manpower.”
Suddenly it all clicked in her head: his not knowing where they were going, his reluctance to leave behind his walkie-talkie. He hadn’t been planning to desert. He deserted for her. She found herself more confused than ever. He hadn’t even know her then. What welled up inside Patrick, what ridiculous amounts of compassion, that he would be willing to risk his position and even his life for an enemy stranger? The things that boy did for her…
“I also have a serious concern as to your motives, Miss Conrad. You are looking for your National brother and father, your father being Nigel Conrad, am I correct?”
She nodded. She had never told Patrick her father’s name, as far as she could recall. As though reading her mind, the Sergeant continued, “We make it our business to know every aspect of the enemy’s army. Your father is a prominent general in the National forces. I myself am shocked at Private Blue’s total stupidity in harboring the child of one of our greatest nemeses.”
She had expected execution. Insult was almost as bad.
“Yet, I find another predicament, Miss Conrad, in the case of your grandmother.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said earnestly. What did Nana have to do with any of this?
“You are probably unaware that your grandmother, Sadie Conrad, has acted as a Safeguard for the Memorist army for the last eight years of her life.”
Most of the sentence flew over Piper’s head, but she understood three words with inescapable clarity: “Sadie Conrad” and “Memorist.”
“A Safeguard, Miss Conrad, is the term we use for one who looks over top secret government documents; in this case, an Apocalypse Journal.”
Piper’s hand flew to her heart in an effort to keep it from escaping her chest. Nana couldn’t have had an Apocalypse Journal, even in her attic… Nana wasn’t a traitor…
“She expressed a wish to pass the Journal on to you at some point before her passing, so you can see my problem. She obviously trusted you, but I have no way to know for sure if I can.”
“Her passing?” She bypassed the rest of the sentence completely, shoving the chair back as she stood up in outrage. “You killed her! Your bombs attacked my city, you KILLED my mother!” She was shocked at the strength of her own voice. She felt bigger and stronger looking down at the Sergeant, who was still sitting calmly in his chair. “My brother was five. Five years old with blue eyes and a little heart that only knew that his mother was inside the house burning to death.”
“Miss Conrad, I sympathize with your loss. I truly do.”
“How can you? You have no heart, none of you! You don’t understand that there are people in our cities, civilians! Five year olds! You may have wiped out an important city but you also snuffed out thousands of people who lived ordinary lives. How do you live with yourselves?” By this time hot tears were rolling down her face, not just from sadness, but also from anger and indignation.
“If you would listen to the entire story—“
“I don’t have to listen, you’re all the same. All over a stupid book! And you’d even kill your own spy to accomplish your ends. If I know anything about my grandmother, I know she was loyal, loyal to me, and probably loyal to you if you’re telling me the truth. And that’s how you repay her loyalty? With death and destruction?”
“If you would let me finish, Miss Conrad,” he tried to say. She cut him off before he could continue.
“I hope you die. I hope you all go up in a ball of fire, just like my family, all in the name of your delusions. I hope you die a miserable death and you think of my little brother running back into a burning building, you think of my mother screaming and crying, you think of—“
“MISS CONRAD!”
She sat down hurriedly just as the Sergeant stood up, towering over her like a capitol building. His raised voice terrified her even more than his calm.
“There is one crucial fact you have to understand, Miss Conrad,” he said, lowering his voice once again. Maybe it was the light, but she thought she saw tears welling in his eyes as well. The illusion almost gave them a sort of warmth and vulnerability.
“Memorists did not bomb your city. Nationals did.”

Chapter 9

Yeah, here it is. Sorry for taking so long. I promise I will finish... In fact, I'll finish by New Years. Deal? (I have up to Chapter 14 written... I just have issues finding time to post.) It isn't terribly interesting, but it's words!
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Patrick pried his fingers under the knot and pulled it open to reveal some kind of key pad.
“Synthetic tree? I’m surprised at you. Isn’t that a little progressive for you?”
“I don’t know, it was convenient! You can take it up with the Sergeant when we talk to him. I’m just a cadet.”
The Sergeant. She remembered the static-ridden voice that had proceeded from the walkie-talkie just hours before, and a shiver ran down her spine.
Before she was even quite sure what was happening, Patrick had punched a few numbers into the keypad and yet another panel of the knot had opened, revealing a wider hole in the tree. It ran down into the depths of the tree in an almost frightening manner, giving her the same feeling as the black holes she’d watched clips of in Current Events.
“You care to go first, or shall I?”
She gave him a terrified look. Surely he didn’t slide into the tree’s mouth, to descend into the belly of the beast?
“It’s perfectly safe. I’ve done it hundreds of times. If it makes you feel better I’ll go first, though.”
Speechless, she merely nodded.
“It’s not far down, I promise,” he added as he slid into the tube and disappeared into the darkness.
She peered down the pipe after him for a good minute, unwilling to follow him into this unknown menace. Slowly, gripping the top edge of the tube with all the strength her fingers could muster, she slid into the tube. Lincoln, with a mischievous look in his yellow eyes, pranced up on his back legs and placed his paws on her back, as if to tell her to get on with it.
“Oh, fine,” she muttered. “Stupid cat.” Releasing all her fear, she let go, allowing her body to slide down into the dark. Within seconds her feet met hard, solid ground. Bright lights nearly blinded her eyes. She wasn’t sure she was in the right place until she saw Patrick’s face, and suddenly felt safer.
“Who’s the girl, Blue?” She tensed and whirled around, reminded sharply of the soldier on the road just a night before. She turned to see a lanky, but handsome Memorist soldier with brown hair and grey eyes that looked almost like Nana’s.
“A friend,” Patrick replied, not looking worried. She felt a sigh of relief leaving her lungs; if Patrick could trust him not to hurt her, she probably could too.
“Oh,” the other soldier said, holding out his hand. “Trey Putnam at your service.” She noticed an accent in his speech that wasn’t present in Patrick’s, a sort of twang in his words.
She took it, and he cranked it up and down firmly. “Piper Conrad.”
He stopped shaking her hand abruptly. “Did you say Conrad?”
She nodded. He and Patrick exchanged a pointed look, and the latter merely shook his head.
“What?” she asked, confused.
“Nothing,” they both said at the same time. She opened her mouth to give them a piece of her mind when they heard marching coming from the corridor. She made her instinctive move to hide behind Patrick, but he pulled Trey in front of her. “Listen, I need you to hide her for a minute, okay? Just don’t let anybody see her. I’ll be back in a minute. And if anything happens to her… I blame you.”
Trey raised a cupped hand to his forehead and swept it out toward the air in some sort of Backwinder salute. Before Piper could object or even ask what was going on, Patrick was gone, and Trey was hurrying her into a corner of the room. Lockers covered most of her from sight, and Trey, tall as he was, kept the passing soldiers from noticing her presence.
“So whatcha hear for, ma’am?”
“I’m not a ma’am just yet, you can call me Piper. And…” She stretched for something to say. “I guess I kind of got lost.”
“Aw man, that happened to me once. My first day on patrol, I got separated from the rest of the troops and had to sleep in a tree. Scariest night of my life. Saw a bar.”
“A bar?”
“You know, the things with the fur and the teeth. Big as three men and brown all over. She was scratchin’ at the tree stump”—he made scratching motions with his hands—“and growlin’ at me, and I just knew I was gonna die right then and there. So I threw my canteen out over her head, ya know, to distract her, and then I scrambled outta that tree faster than I ever moved before in my life. Got back to camp in less’n ten minutes, and it was three miles away.” He held up three fingers to prove his point. She had just started to laugh when Patrick came back.
“What’re you thinking, making her laugh? Someone could have heard you, or seen her, or…” He trailed off and rubbed his hand across his face in his usual nervous habit.
“Relax, Patrick, I’m fine,” she said. “And I thought you said it would be fine for me to be here.”
“It is, but I had to make sure with the Sergeant. He wants to see you in his office alone.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah, he says it’s procedure.”
“I’m not going to do it, I won’t, he’ll kill me on sight—“
“No, he won’t. That’s ridiculous. You’re going to be just fine, and I’ll be right outside the door the entire time, alright? It’ll be fine. I promise.”
His chocolate brown eyes were screaming at her to trust him again, and she couldn’t deny them.
“What’s wrong with her?” Trey whispered loudly.
“Nothing, Putnam, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Is she in trouble?”
“No.”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Well, what then?”
“She just needs help, alright? Give her some air.”
Trey backed off with a reserved expression on his face, and Patrick moved towards her, putting a hand on her shoulder and guiding her down the hallway. The harsh concrete walls, lined with green lockers, made her feel as if she was in prison rather than an army camp. The lights, still blinding, reminded her vaguely of the dentist’s office. She’d never liked the dentist.
They came to a gigantic metal door that slid open to give them admittance. The room seemed pitch black at first, but as Piper’s eyes adjusted from the bright light, she found herself in a room bearing a striking resemblance to the Lex car station in Iretum. Green posts settled themselves over more metal doors, with windows that seemed to open into an underground tunnel. Suddenly a loud feminine voice blasted through the speaker above Piper’s head, startling her. The voice very calmly announced, “Now approaching Concourse B. Concourse B.” Lights flashed from down the tunnel, and she could hear an ominous rattling coming their way.
“What’s a concourse?” she asked Patrick.
“This used to be an airport back when traveling was commercial.”
“Airport?”
“Like the helicopter pads in the cities, but anybody could fly. Go on vacations and stuff.”
Piper nodded calmly until a frightening thought entered her mind, causing her to grip his arm in a panic. “We’re not flying, are we?”
He laughed. “No. We’re hundreds of feet underground now. But the train to get the passengers to their planes still worked when we found this place, so we decided to keep using it. No sense wasting the time and money trying to get a new one. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
In a blur of white and gray some sort of vehicle pulled into the station. The doors in front of them slid open, revealing a well-lit cabin. Metal poles, not quite thin enough for her to wrap one hand around, rose from the floor to the ceiling.
“Might want to grab one of those,” Patrick said. Eyeing the boy suspiciously, she took one of the poles between both hands, almost unwilling to comply with his unusual suggestion.
“Next stop: Concourse C. Concourse C.”
The rickety train jerked forward suddenly, jolting Piper backward. Her hands caught her just in the nick of time, and she moved forward as fast as she could, hugging the pole for dear life. This thing, whatever it was, was nothing like the Lex cars she remembered from home. Lex cars were levitated by static electricity high about a foot above its track, but the sharp jerks and turns of this vehicle betrayed its primitive nature. Even though the cars moved much faster than this train, the same static kept the passengers standing upright through the friction between their shoes and the floor, with no need for these silly poles. This had to be ancient. She felt like she was going to be sick.
“You alright?” Patrick asked calmly, as though he had been through this process a thousand times. He probably had. He had even dared to let go of his pole, and was standing up right as though he was strolling through the park on a holiday.
“Fine,” she said, more loudly than was probably necessary. She hated showing weakness in front of him. He had helped her enough. However, she could hear him chuckling quietly over her shoulder, and she knew he saw right through her. He nevertheless had the tact to keep his mouth shut, and both of them remained silent for the rest of the ride.
“Now approaching Concourse C. Concourse C,” the cool feminine voice announced. The vehicle began to rattle noisily to a stop. Just as Piper thought it was safe to let go, the train’s brakes sent her flying forward toward the pole again. She could hear Patrick laughing aloud at her.
“Hey!” she said in genuine annoyance. “I’m trying, okay? Just because you’re good at everything around here doesn’t mean—“
He rested a hand firmly on her shoulder and looked her dead in the eye. “Piper. Relax. We’re friends, remember?”
“Says the guy carting me off to my doom,” she retorted.
“How many times do I have to tell you? You’re going to be fine.”
“At least one more time. As always.”
The doors slid open and she found herself in a spacious room with white concrete walls much like the hallway they’d come from. Smack in front of her was a dull metal door with a window at eye level. It reminded her of a prison cell.
“That’s it,” Patrick said, tightening his grip on her shoulder and pushing her forward.
“You’re going to be right here?”
“Right here. You just have to scream.” His voice sounded tired and exasperated.
“Alright, then.” Her every limb was trembling as she took a step forward, then another, then another. The door might as well have been miles away at the pace she was going, but Patrick did nothing to speed her up or scold her. At last she reached the entryway and wrapped her fingers around the cold handle. She took one final look at Patrick, who was sending her a thumbs up sign. Nodding in affirmation, she turned the handle, and again was blinded by the lights.

Chapter 8

Hey there. :)
So I decided a couple days ago that rather than kill myself trying to write 19,000 words in 4 days, I would just PROMISE myself that I would indeed finish and just do it at my own pace. This is already a huge accomplishment for me (the longest thing I've written previously was only 16,000 words or so... as of right now this is over 31,000), so I'm proud regardless, especially considering I started six days late. So yeah. Happy reading.
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Piper looked up at the tree to see Patrick’s brown eyes staring down at her, a look of pain on his face. Her mouth slammed shut, as if on hinges. She looked down in embarrassment, stroking the kitten’s fur to hide her blush. “Sorry,” she said, her voice bubbly from trying to stifle a laugh. “Did I wake you up? Or is my singing just that bad?
He wasn’t wearing his hat. His hair was redder than she thought. His face expressionless, he replied, “Your singing is just that bad.”
She let the laugh go and threw a twig in his direction. She missed. His face broke into a grin. “Nah, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Just brought back fond memories.”
She wanted to ask what fond memories, but she could tell from the way his face reverted back to seriousness that he didn’t much care to talk about it.
“So, what’s for breakfast?” she asked. “I would have tried to get something, but I didn’t even know where to begin.”
“The cat,” he groaned, burrowing back into his sleeping bag. The cat hissed at him. Piper threw another twig at him.
“Hey now. That’s my cat. Get your own cat and you can eat him.” She looked down at the little ball of fur, who was still hissing and spitting ferociously. “Cool it, kid,” she said to the cat. It turned to look at her, his screwed up eyes becoming wide and docile.
“Easy for you to say, he likes you,” Patrick said.
“Maybe that’s because I didn’t try to leave him out in the cold to starve.” She ran a hand down the cat’s long gray back. “Isn’t that right, Whiskers?”
“Whiskers? You can’t seriously be naming the cat Whiskers.”
“And why not?” She stood up and put her hands on her hips in an exasperated habit. “He’s my cat, I can name him whatever I want.”
“But Whiskers?”
“What’s wrong with Whiskers?”
“One: EVERY cat is named Whiskers. Two: how’s a guy supposed to feel manly with a name like Whiskers?”
Piper laughed. “Well, what do you suggest, Mr. Hypercritical?”
“I don’t know. Something like Jefferson or Lincoln or Washington. Good strong name.”
They sounded like Backwinder names, but as she looked down at the cat’s squashed face and his sharp yellow eyes, he kind of looked like a Lincoln. “All right,” she sighed in defeat. “Lincoln it is.” The cat, as though aware that the matter had been settled and being satisfied with the outcome, went back to pouncing at a grasshopper on the ground.
“Blue!”
The scratchy voice came out of nowhere. Patrick jumped with a start at the sound of his last name, nearly falling out of the tree as he scrambled down its trunk and toward his backpack.
“BLUE! Answer your commanding officer!” The voice was overshadowed in static, making it even more frightening to Piper than it would have been clearly. It was a Backwinder commander, possibly the man responsible for her mother and brother’s deaths. She shuddered.
So he wasn’t a deserter. Any deserter would know to leave his walkie-talkie behind, especially knowing it could contain a tracking device in it. She opened her mouth to scream at him, realizing he was a spy, that he had been setting her up all along, but his actions stayed her words. She thought Patrick had rushed to answer the walkie-talkie hidden in his pack, but instead he was standing in front of the pack in a pathetic effort to conceal the voice within.
“I can hear it, Patrick, okay? Just answer it.”
“I’m not going to if it’s going to make you—“
“Don’t be stupid, Patrick. They’ll come looking for you if you don’t.”
He stared her straight in the eyes, and she tried her best to keep up a unified front. She couldn’t show any weakness or let on how scared she was…
She got the sense he knew exactly what was going through her mind, but he clicked the button on the receiver anyway. She held her breath, not wanting to betray any superfluous sign of life. If they didn’t know she existed, maybe there wouldn’t be a problem.
“Yes, sir.”
“You were due back at camp two days ago. Report.”
“A distraction, sir.”
“Specify.”
There was a long pause.
“Sympathy for another living thing, sir.”
“This is the army, Blue. We’re fighting a war. If you’re not back to camp by nightfall there will be serious repercussions.”
“Yes, sir.”
The other line clicked off abruptly, leaving nothing but static in its wake. He just looked at her, and she stared back in sheer terror.
“You have to leave me behind, don’t you?”
He said nothing for a long time, finally shifting his gaze from her face to the ground. At last he spoke. “No. That’s not an option. We’ll figure something out.”
“What is there to figure out? I’m a National girl, I can’t just waltz into a camp full of Backwinder—I mean Memorist—men! Even if I was a Memorist I wouldn’t be allowed in there.”
“There’s a women’s regiment not too far away.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t fight for your side!”
The stark differences between them slapped her in the face. Her feeling hadn’t gone away, but at the moment it was eating away at her insides, leaving her in agony. She couldn’t explain the attachment to this boy that had formed inside her in the last few days, but she knew she didn’t want it broken. Not yet.
“Look, the Sergeant’s not as bad as he sounds. I’m sure if we just explained to him—“
“He’d have me shot on the spot. No one’s going to trust me there, Patrick! They’d be idiots if they did. I could easily be a spy.” He shot her a guarded, pointed look, and she hurried to clarify herself. “I’m not, you know that, but they don’t know that.”
“Do I really know that?”
“Don’t you think they’d at least arm a spy? I have nothing. No armor, no nothing. If I was of any value to the National army you’d be able to tell.”
“What if that’s what you want me to think?”
She grabbed his arm in exasperation. “Look at me, Patrick.” She looked him dead in the face, focusing every ounce of energy into her eyes, trying to convey her sincerity with all the strength she could muster. “I’m not lying. You know I’m not.”
He relaxed under her grasp, and she could tell he believed her. She let go.
“What do you want to do, Green Eyes? You must have some kind of plan if you’re objecting to mine so much.”
She wanted to shoot back with a surefire idea, but she had none. Unwilling to admit defeat aloud, she merely looked at her feet.
“Alright, then I guess my plan is our best bet. We’ll go to camp, see the Sergeant, and try to work something out. And if they try to lay a finger on you, I’ll shoot ‘em before they can say National. Deal?”
She laughed. “Yeah, right. They’d shoot you in a second.”
“I know that.” She looked for the smile on her face, but there wasn’t one. He was dead serious. And it scared her. Why was he willing to go to such great lengths to keep her safe?
Gauging his expression, she warily took his hand and shook it. “Deal.”
“We better get a move on if we’re going to get there before the sun sets.”
Piper nodded wordlessly. “How far away is it?”
“Closer than the ocean, but we slept late today.” He looked her in the eye again. “I am sorry, Piper. I didn’t expect this to happen.”
“What did you expect, then?” she said, finding an unexpected harshness in her voice. “If you weren’t a deserter—“
“I was a deserter. It’s a long story.”
“How long can it be? You’re smart enough to know that unless you left your intercom somewhere they’d be able to get in touch with you. Just what exactly were you planning on happening?”
He looked away for the first time since they’d started speaking. She moved to try to catch his gaze, but he avoided her as though she had knives where her eyes should have been. She wasn’t willing to give this up so easily as some of his other secrets. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve heard that one before. For real this time.”
“I wasn’t lying when I told you I didn’t know where we were going, and I’m not lying now. I don’t know. Leaving was an idiotic idea.”
“You’re right, it probably was. And I’m probably going to get myself killed because of you.”
She didn’t like the pained look that filled his eyes. She wanted him to shoot back a harsh word, to retaliate, anything, just to prove her theories. But he did no such thing. He merely looked at her with that look in his eyes that told her she was picking a nonexistent fight. It filled her with such a great sense of guilt that she could not bring herself to keep going.
“But I’d have died if you just left me there, so I guess in the end it can’t really be your fault,” she finally conceded, alleviating some of the hurt from his expression.
“Look, I’m not going to get you killed, okay? Can’t you trust me enough to believe that?” His face broke into a sheepish smile. “Plus, we don’t kill our prisoners. At the very worst you’ll just be imprisoned for the rest of your life.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that helps so much.” But his smile was contagious, and she couldn’t resist when she felt it sweeping across her face as well.
“So do you trust me?”
It was a difficult question. Everybody she’d ever trusted had disappeared from her life in a puff of smoke. How could she trust someone to keep her safe when she wasn’t even sure if she could keep herself safe?
But he’d saved her life once. That gave her some confidence that he could do it again if need be. And he’d trusted her, only moments ago, even without any good reason to do so. At this point, she owed it to him.
“Yeah, I trust you.”
“Do we have to shake on it again or can I believe you this time?”
She smiled slightly, embarrassed at her own inconsistency. “No, we’re good.”
“Alright. That settles it then. I’ll pack up the tent and we’ll go.”
They finally got on the road at what Piper assumed was about ten o’clock in the morning. Once again she tried to pick up the cat, but he refused her arms. An independent little thing, he preferred to assert his independence by keeping a slight distance at all times, but he never let the pair of them out of his sight. She watched the kitten plod along happily, his feet bouncing on the gravel path, and envied his lack of want or worry. As far as he knew he wasn’t heading to his death… Piper couldn’t be so sure.
She found the strange world that surrounded her much more unfamiliar on the way to base. She wondered why her beautiful orange and red leaves had begun to fall from the trees; she was sure some unseen evil, held captive by the cool breeze, was frightening them right off of their branches. She hugged her arms across her chest in an effort to keep warm. She needed to find new clothes somewhere—the wind played with the hole in the shoulder of her shirt, chilling her to the bone.
They didn’t speak for most of the way, whether out of apprehension or exhaustion. The quiet made her uneasy; she had grown so used to conversation. She had always been so quiet in the past, but something about Patrick brought her out of her shell and made her want to talk about anything and everything. She hugged herself a little tighter, trying to fill in the hollowness, but she found that external motions could do nothing for internal problems. Finally he said something, and she felt a few of the empty spaces filling themselves in.
“Tell me something about yourself.”
She laughed. “Quite the conversationalist, aren’t you? Hmm… I can’t sing.”
“So I noticed.”
“Hey now, I doubt you can sing any better.” At this he shrugged his shoulders in defeat. “Your turn.”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Well don’t look at me! Tell me a secret.”
“Don’t have any.”
She gave him a wayside look. “That, my friend, is a lie.”
“What did you just say?”
“That’s a lie.”
“No, the other part.”
She was confused until she realized it herself. She’d called him her friend. “Are we friends, then?” He gave her an interested look.
“I suppose so. Allies, at the very least.”
“I don’t like that. Allies sounds like we’re at war.”
She laughed at the incredulous statement. “Welcome to the twenty-second century, kid. We’ve been at war for the last twelve years.”
“But still. Allies makes it feel like it’s a friendship of necessity.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think so. Do you think we’d be friends without the war?”
“Well, if it weren’t for the war—“
“I know you wouldn’t know me, but let’s say you did. We’d be friends, wouldn’t we?”
She thought about how easy it was to talk to him, how much she had told him about herself that she’d never told anybody else. And she nodded.
“Then I think we’re friends now. Allies isn’t strong enough a word.”
She couldn’t help but smile a little bit. She’d never been good at making friends, so this felt like an accomplishment.
Before she could get another word out, Patrick stopped beside a gigantic tree. It was almost as big as some of the buildings in Piper’s city, and as thick of ten of her. A gnarled knot stood at the base, looking like the door to some kind of fairy tree. Patrick kicked the knot, and a clang rang through the surrounding trees, nearly startling her out of her skin.
“This is it,” said Patrick.

Chapter 7

I kinda love this chapter. It is lame. It is cheesy. Guys probably don't actually think like this. But I love the bit about the singing. That will make the final cut regardless of what all else does.
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Patrick didn’t know what to make of this strange, naïve girl that had fallen into his lap. She was reckless to the point of stupidity, and completely ignorant of most of the world around her. But he thought of the curiosity that filled her eyes at the sight of the orange trees, at her first rain, at the view of the sunset and the ocean, and he knew that there was more to her than met the eye. A spring of wonder welled up inside her, bursting to get out. No matter how much she tried to resist, no matter how much she pretended not to care about the world around her, her green eyes said it all. She was curious, and found herself in awe. There was so much she didn’t know, and he was eager to tell her everything he knew about the world, about life, to see that look of wonder in her eyes again and again…
He lay awake in the tree, staring up at the stars through the baring branches. He doubted she’d ever seen the stars amid the bright, blinding lights of the cities. He could spot a city from miles away; they were like burning stars, bound to the earth by invisible ropes, having been lured into some kind of trap by a giant or a magnetic field. Their immense powerhouses could make midnight as bright as noon, but what good was man’s light when it blocked out the stars?
He didn’t like the feeling that was filling up the empty spaces in his heart. It went against every rational thought in his mind, and he knew it. He didn’t like the wonder in her eyes or the look on her face when she saw his bloody lip. He didn’t like the way her hand had felt on his face. They scared him, took away his security and certainty, and made him more vulnerable than he’d ever been before. Patrick wasn’t one to show signs of vulnerability. However she made him feel, though, he felt deeper and more painful the look of terror on her face just hours before. He hated that look, that fear, the man who had frightened her, and tried to do worse… he hated that much worse than any uncertainty she could create in him.
But she was a National. He was a Memorist. She was a temporary influence on his life, the hole in the clouds on a gray day. She’d be gone the minute she found her brother, or anyplace better to be. She had no reason to stay otherwise, and he had no reason to expect her to. He had no reason to will her to stay.
But he did.
It was the companionship, he was sure. He hadn’t seen a girl since he left for the battlefield over a year ago. She probably wasn’t quite as pretty as she seemed to him. Surely it was just the excitement of seeing a feminine face that stirred his emotions. She probably wasn’t all that unique where she came from, either. Any number of Nationals would be ignorant as to the normal processes of the earth… but would they all be so amazed as her? The adults, the real Nationals, had chosen their paths. They’d decided not to give the past a chance, to leave the natural workings of the world behind in the interest of extreme progress, but where was Piper’s choice? What would she choose had she been given the initial choice?
Did she have a choice now?
That was a hope for Patrick, the light of reality shining at the end of his doomed fantasy. She had a choice. She was slowly beginning to see all that the world, this world, the world outside the cities, had to offer her. She’d seen the changing colors in the leaves. Who would trade that for synthetic trees with copper trunks? She’d seen stars. Who would trade those for blazing white lampposts? As to her own city, it was gone, lost in a raid. He’d gathered that much from talking to her. What was left for her?
Her father and brother. That’s what was left for her. And they’d probably kill him on sight just for wearing his uniform.
He wanted to wish she’d never find them, that she’d wander forever looking for them, but he couldn’t imagine the painful expression that would scar her face if she discovered that they were gone. No, she’d have to find them. He sighed aloud in exasperation. Part of him just wanted her to disappear. It would have been easier to let the soldier carry her off…
No, that wouldn’t have been easier. He never would have forgiven himself.
It was stupid to feel this way, stupid to allow her to get under his skin and affect him this way. These things didn’t happen in a period of forty-eight hours. It took a lifetime to learn to trust someone. He had never told anyone else about his mother, not a single man in his regiment. He had even shied away from the subject, and yet this strange, green-eyed girl, a National, no less, had broken his defense without even trying. All she had to do was ask a simple question, and the answers came spilling out. He wondered if his father had felt this way when he and Patrick’s mother had met. Did he know before they even started that she would leave? Or did it sneak up on him? Had he believed she would stay? Patrick had believed she would stay. Patrick hadn’t seen anything coming.
He’d woken up on a Saturday morning, gone downstairs like usual. He had cornflakes that morning. At first he didn’t notice anything was wrong, but before long he began to realize the eerie silence that had crept over the house. Mom wasn’t singing.
For as long as he could remember, Mom had sung in the mornings. She could never hit the notes right, but that didn’t stop her. She sang everything from show tunes to little songs she made up around the house, striking the notes with stunning inaccuracy. It always bothered him until that day. Then he realized that the singing was assurance, security. He knew Mom was there when she was singing, however bad it sounded. And he realized he would give anything, anything in the world, to hear her off kilter notes rising into the rafters one more time. All at once his memories of Mom singing were transformed from bothersome to the most beautiful sounds he’d ever heard.
He knew, without anybody telling him, without another moment’s thought, that he’d never hear that awful, beautiful sound again. She’d left, and she wouldn’t be back.
And ever since that day, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t make the same mistakes as his dad. He wouldn’t trust somebody to stay. He’d trusted his mom, and she’d let him down. That was enough to ruin his faith. Why should he believe in a National girl with no reasonable commitment? He didn’t have anything to offer her, didn’t even know how she felt about him. He knew better than to let himself feel anything for her, because she’d leave. Just like his mom. Worse yet, she’d be taken like his dad. Either way, he had no way to keep her, so he had to make sure he didn’t care.
Somewhere amidst his thinking and battering emotions, exhaustion won over, and he drifted into a deeper sleep than he’d had since she came. He woke to the blinding sun in his eyes and an unusual noise. He was sure the stupid cat was dying, being strangled by some wild animal…
Until he looked down from the tree and saw her with the cat in her arms, singing to it. Singing in the morning. Just like his mom.
He had sworn ever since the last time he’d heard that noise that he’d never fall victim to this.
He had sworn to himself that he’d never fall in love.

Chapter 6

Cross your fingers for me Wrimos... I have 9 days to write 27000 words. Ooh boy. This chapter is either lame or great. I can't decide which.
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“Do you know where we are?” Piper finally asked after hours of walking.
“Of course I do. How many times have I been through here?” Piper’s guess was maybe once or twice.
“I told you this was the wrong way, there weren’t enough trees this way. I have a photographic memory, you’re wrong.”
“No, I’m not. Trust me,” he said. She looked up at the sky, noting its purple and orange hues. They’d never get home before dark. She sighed in exasperation. Backwinder men were just as stubborn as Nationals. The same thing had happened back in the city, the first time she and Branson had been out by themselves… and the city had street signs.
Sure enough, the sky faded to black, and stars began to peak out from behind their black blanket. They were far more visible here, amongst the trees, than they had ever been in the city. There were thousands more of them than she’d realized.
“So… I’m not really too worried about the patrols, but what kind of wild animals were you talking about earlier?” She’d heard legends about the beasts that haunted the world outside the city, and none of them sounded too pleasant.
“Wolves, mostly. Few bears. You’d hope there were some deer around, they make for good food for a week if you can hunt ‘em.”
“Wolves? Are those the ones with the teeth?” Coltrane Thornton had told her about the wolf-beast who could live both on water and on land, and had three rows of poisonous fangs.
“Yeah, they’ve got teeth. Do they have dogs in the city? It’s a big wild dog, just not tamed. Not too pleasant.”
This creature didn’t sound nearly as fearsome as the stories she’d heard. Piper made a mental note to henceforth disregard everything Coltrane Thornton had ever said to her. She was about to ask what a bear was when they heard a rustle from one of the bushes by the side of the road.
“What was that?” She instinctively grabbed his shoulders and pulled herself behind him, not wanting to be in the way of the horrible creature that might soon present itself.
“I don’t know.” He pulled his gun from the strap on his back and pointed it at the bush. A low rumbling growl came in response. Piper cowered even more. Patrick cocked the gun.
“Rrrrr…. rrrrREOW!”
A cat jumped out of the bushes, hissing and spitting at the pair of them as though they’d ruined his every chance at happiness. He was a kitten, not even as big as Patrick’s backpack. Piper laughed.
“Oh, how cute!” She rushed toward the kitten, and it skittered away, back into the bushes.
“No, Piper.” Patrick just shook his head at her, a slightly amused expression on his face. “Another human mouth to feed I can handle, but I’m not giving any of my food to a lousy tomcat.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, he’s adorable.”
Glowing yellow eyes peeped out of the underbrush at them, looking scared.
“Ah, see, he even knows we’re talking about him. Just look at him, Patrick!”
He rolled his eyes at her.
“I’ll give him some of my food or something. He’ll die out here all on his own! We have to keep him, it’s a matter of life and death! Come on, Patrick, show some love for a fellow living thing.”
As though he could understand their words, the cat sauntered slowly out into plain view, looking pleadingly up at Patrick. He looked from Piper to the kitten in total and complete exasperation. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Piper put her hands on her hips and cocked one eyebrow, shaking her head. “You want to. Somewhere deep inside your soul you want to keep him, I know you do.” She grinned at him. He just shook his head.
“You know, he looks just like you. Maybe you should keep him.”
She took one look at the kitten. As adorable as he was, his face was rather squashed, as though he had been hit face first by a Lex car. She punched him in the arm. “That’s it, he’s staying whether you like it or not.”
Just then, they could hear footsteps marching methodically in the distance. Without a word, as though she was being pulled by some cosmic string, Piper felt herself being yanked into the bushes.
“Is it a patrol?”
Patrick said nothing, only stared stoically toward the road.
“Listen to me! Is it a patrol?”
“Shut up, Piper, you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“It could be Branson, I have to—“
“NO, Piper.” He tightened his grip on her arm. All at once she hated him again. And she wanted to prove it. With a spurt of strength, she extracted her arm from his grasp, and entered the road just as the army passed by.
It was a patrol, all right. She saw the familiar uniform and felt a burst of National pride. These men were a thousand Bransons, a thousand Dads, marching toward victory at the will of the Diviner. There was a chance, a small chance, one of them had to know about Branson…
“Excuse me—“
None of the soldiers even looked at her. Finally she got the attention of one, but he brushed her off as if she was some sort of pestering insect. Not until the end of the procession did she finally begin to gather looks. One soldier made eye contact with her and smiled.
“Well, well, well, what’s a pretty little thing like you doing way out here?” He grinned at her.
“Long story, not important. I need to know if you know my brother. Branson Conrad?”
“I don’t know him, but I’d sure like to know you, Green Eyes. What d’you say we ditch this overblown parade and go find us someplace nice to—“
She began to back away. “Stop right there, I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Shoot, I don’t care what kind of girl you are. You sure are pretty.” He ran a finger down her face and onto her shoulder, toying with the hole in the shoulder of her T-shirt. She froze in fright. The rest of the regiment had already disappeared down the road.
“Get your hands off of me or I’ll scream,” she said through gritted teeth.
“What’s a matter, honey? Hasn’t anybody ever loved you right…” He gripped her other arm hard, still running his finger along the bare skin of her shoulder. His face bowed, getting closer and closer to her…
“You don’t understand, I’m a National, I’m not—“
“Haven’t you heard me, honey?” he moaned, his voice now just above a whisper. “You can be whatever you like, just so long as you don’t fight back.” He grabbed the hole in her shirt forcefully and pulled, making it bigger. She screamed, not caring if there was no one there to hear her…
The butt of Patrick’s rifle hit the man in the head.
He was shocked enough that he loosened his grip and she was able to slip away to freedom. “You dirty—“
Patrick had him at gunpoint. His face was like a rock. He cocked his head, motioning for Piper to get behind him. She couldn’t be more happy to obey.
“If you touch her again, I swear, you’ll be dead before you know what hit you.”
“Couldn’t you get yourself someone your own breed, traitor?” he spat at Patrick, looking at Piper’s hand at his shoulder. “And you, you disgusting waste of space. You’re even more of a traitor then he is. Running around with the likes of him. Thanks for sayin’ something, Backwinder. I’d never be able to scrub off her filth.”
Patrick began to lower his gun, and as if taking it as his golden opportunity, the soldier punched him square in the jaw. Before either of them could retaliate, he had disappeared down the road.
His jaw was bleeding, and Piper was crying. Her thoughts were so blurry that she could hardly force out a complete sentence.
“How could I have… I was so stupid… I’m so so sorry.” That came out the most— I’m sorry. She said it over and over again until the words began to sound like nonsense.
“It’s nothing, don’t—“
She cupped his jaw in her hand and looked at his mouth. “Are you kidding, what do you mean it’s nothing? He got you pretty good. Do any of your teeth feel loose?”
She looked up to meet his eyes and found herself frozen. Again she was reminded of dark chocolate, bitter and sweet at the same time. A strange feeling welled up inside her, as though electricity was crackling around in her stomach, electrocuting her from head to toe. She felt like she’d just been defibrillated; her heart was beating unnaturally fast. Something was wrong with her, there had to be. This wasn’t a normal feeling. Slowly she lowered her hand and broke eye contact, hoping the feeling would go away. It didn’t.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. When she finally looked up again, he was still looking at her.
“You can keep the cat, if you want. We’ll figure out how to feed him.” She hadn’t noticed the kitten, who was playfully pouncing at her heels. On an impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and started to cry again.
“Thank you,” she said quietly through her tears. He stiffened under her embrace, as though not quite sure how to respond; but soon he tightened his arms around her. She felt safe, safer than she had since the bombings had stolen her life away from her.
“You’re welcome,” he replied. She hoped he knew she wasn’t talking about the cat. Finally he let her go, and she felt the cold air of the world around her again. She didn’t like it. She wrapped one arm across herself insecurely, for the first time not sure exactly what to say.
“I think camp is that way,” he said, pointing down a fork in the road behind them. “If we double back on that, we’re bound to get back soon.”
She simply nodded, running a hand across her eye in an effort to wipe away the tears. She tried to pick up the cat, but he hissed at her, as if to say “Don’t touch me.” However, when they began to walk, he pranced along at their heels, trying to be their friend and yet maintain some independence.
Patrick stayed a few steps ahead of her the entire way home. She wondered if she’d somehow offended him. He rubbed his jaw, and she felt another pang of guilt. She hated herself for doing this to him… if she had only listened…
And the odd feeling in the pit of her stomach still hadn’t gone away. Maybe it was the fear of the soldier still lingering about her… No, that couldn’t be it. There was an element of fear in the feeling, but that wasn’t all. There was a warmth to it, mixed with sadness and excitement. She couldn’t decide if it was a pleasant feeling or not. She supposed there was a good chance being in the wilderness for so long had made her ill. Yes, that was it. She just needed some sleep.
They finally reached the campsite around what Piper guessed was midnight.
“’Night, Green Eyes,” he said as he pulled herself into the tree.
“’Night,” she said with a quiet smile as she disappeared into her tent. She didn’t know what she thought, didn’t know what she felt, didn’t know what was going to happen, but one thing she knew for certain: she wouldn’t sleep well tonight.

Chapter 5

Sorry I haven't posted this in a few days. I'm about 7000 words behind... AAH! This chapter is currently more than half my word count. Oh wow.
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“Rise and shine, Green Eyes.” She snapped awake. At first she couldn’t remember where she was, or whose voice she heard through the thin walls of the tent. She pulled the blanket farther over her shoulders and groaned. He chuckled. “Come on. The ocean’s calling. If you don’t get up now we’ll never get there before one, and we want to be able to get back before sunset.”
She rolled over onto her back and opened her eyes. The sun was making leafy patterns on her brown tarp roof. “Fine,” she moaned, crawling toward the door of the tent. She peaked her head out first.
“Not a morning person?”
“Not even close,” she replied, ruffling her hair between her fingers. It was greasy and tangled. What she wouldn’t give for a bath…
He laughed again. “Me either. Or at least I wasn’t until I joined the army. Gets drummed out of you pretty quick when you have to be up at the crack of dawn for drill every morning.”
She walked sleepily to the fire pit, where Patrick handed her a piece of meat. Real, hot meat. She took an eager bite. It was a little gamey, but the flavor was delicious. “What is this?”
“Rabbit. Shot it while you were still asleep.”
She almost choked. “Rabbit? As in bunny rabbit?”
“Yeah, what’s the problem?”
“People eat bunny rabbits?”
“Probably not where you come from, no, but when it’s shoot the bunny or starve your best bet is to shoot the bunny.”
He had a point. She took another bite. It was good enough to overcome her initial disgust.
“So how far away is this ocean thing?”
“Quite a ways. It’ll take us a good five hours, but it’s worth it. Trust me. And we walked a lot further than that yesterday. You can take it.”
She nodded as she finished up her rabbit. He was getting his backpack ready.
“Shall we go?” She licked her lips and nodded.
For the first two hours or so they walked in silence. She almost enjoyed the comfortable quiet. It was non-threatening. However, when he finally spoke, that didn’t bother her either.
“Tell me something about yourself.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “Like what?”
“Anything. We just might as well get to know each other.”
She took time to think, then said, “I love coffee. Nearly nobody else in the city drank it, but my grandmother did. She got me started on it.”
He raised his eyebrows in approval. “So you’re a little old fashioned too, are you? Nice.”
“Your turn.”
“I’m kind of a neat freak.”
Piper thought of the clutter in her room at home and laughed. “And that’s where the similarities end.”
He smiled. The scar under his eye wasn’t nearly as visible when he smiled. “Your turn.”
“I get cold really easily. Even when the sun’s out.”
“Aren’t you glad I made you take the tent, then?”
“Yeah, I guess I am. I’ve got a question. Don’t be offended or anything, but how did you get your scar?”
He looked down and she wondered if she’d touched a nerve. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I understand.”
“No, it’s fine. I got it the day my dad died. Bullet ricocheted off the wall and just skimmed my face. I’m lucky it didn’t go through my head. By all accounts I should be dead.”
She nodded. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—“
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
There was a long silence, the first awkward one she had experienced around him. At last he broke it. “Your turn.”
She smiled. “I’m deaf in one ear because I fell out of a tree. Granted it was a synthetic one, but still. It was a long way down. I should be dead too. We should start a club.” She realized what she’d said and gasped. “Not that yours is the same as falling out of a tree, I didn’t mean that.”
He smiled slightly. “No worries, I knew you didn’t. It’s fine.”
Another pause hung in the air. She laughed.
“Your turn.”
“When I was a really little kid, I was obsessed with Peter Pan. I had the hat and everything.”
“Who’s Peter Pan?”
He looked at her in disbelief. “Oh, I forgot. In your world Peter Pan doesn’t exist. Good grief, no old school Disney movies.”
Piper wasn’t sure what a Disney or a movie was, but she liked the sound of it.
The conversation went on for hours, stretching to cover everything from family situations to little quirks. Piper confided everything to him, talked about Branson, talked about Nana, talked about her life before the bombing. She almost questioned her incessant trust; she wasn’t used to opening up to people so much. However, other than Patrick, she was completely alone in the world. Who else did she have to confide in?
She could hardly believe her eyes when she looked up to find the sun hovering in the zenith of the sky. It was noon or later; they had to be getting close. The trees began to scatter and fade into the distance, and the ground became softer and softer.
“Close your eyes,” he said suddenly. “You have to get the full effect.” She smiled in amusement and followed his order. “Keep coming,” he said. She stumbled over a rock, but he caught her arm before she lost her balance. “This way.” He let go of her arm. “Alright… open.”
There was blue. Shifting, turbulent blue for as far as her eyes could see. The ground beneath her feet was thin and powdery. She leaned over and clutched some in her hand, and it slipped through her fingers. The sun played happily the water, creating twinkling daylight stars in the reflection. Piper only had one word:
“Wow.”
He grinned at her over his shoulder. “Yeah. Worth it?”
“Definitely.” She returned the smile. He started to walk toward the waterline, and she followed eagerly, in case he had something else to show her. When he crouched by the surface, she copied him. He extended a finger toward the water.
“Now if you look real close there…”
She hunched over the water eagerly, but jumped back as the cold water hit her face. He laughed as she brushed the water off her face.
“Oh, sure, right now you’re laughing,” she said, not at all pleased. Without warning she seized his shoulders and pushed him backwards into the chilly foam, cackling like a maniac. Her mirth, however, was shortlived, as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the water after him.
She was terrified. The water swirled over her head, twisting and distorting the graying sky overhead. It burned in her nostrils, and she could taste the salt drying and chapping her lips on contact. Finally, in a moment of panic, her head found the surface, and her lungs the air.
“Ha,” he said once she had overcome her disorientation. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”
“Are you crazy? I’m scared of water!”
“Well you should have thought of that before you pushed me in, now shouldn’t you?”
She tried to be mad at him, to hate him like she had so easily just twenty-four hours ago, but she couldn’t force herself to do it. Something inside her had shifted in the past day. Patrick was still wrong about a lot of things, no doubt, but something about him held an irresistible fascination for her. He made her think more than anybody else she had ever met in her life, except perhaps for Nana. So she didn’t retaliate, didn’t accuse him of trying to kill her, didn’t storm out of the water in a fit. She merely swept her hand across the cool surface of the water, shooting a gleeful wave into his face. She laughed. Hard. For the first time in the last day, for the first time in her new life, she was truly happy.
CRASH.
The noise didn’t sound like any other bomb she had ever heard, but it frightened her nonetheless. She jumped in fright and involuntarily grabbed Patrick’s shoulder.
“Afraid of thunder?”
“What’s thunder?”
“Man, they must just keep the weather out all together, huh? Thunder is, well… to tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure what it is. It’s a sound that comes with lightning.”
“What’s lightning?” He rubbed his hand over his face again. It seemed to be a habit of his when he was particularly exasperated.
“You have to know about electricity, right? Nationals obsess over it.”
She nodded. She knew everything there was to know about electricity. Since more than half the population of her city became electricians, an entire class on the subject was required to graduate secondary school.
“Lightning is electricity, but it comes out of the clouds. And it usually only comes with…”
Before he could get the word out, she saw it: a brilliant flash of light across the now cloudy sky. It only lasted about a second, disappearing as quickly as it came. Almost instantaneously, a drop hit Piper’s nose.
“Rain.”
Another drop of water fell. Then another. Then another. A cascade of water was falling from nowhere, and it didn’t seem to be phasing Patrick at all.
“We oughta get out of the water,” he said. “Don’t want to get electrocuted.”
“Is this another season thing?” she shouted over the sound of the drops hitting the larger body of water. Patrick nodded. “Well, it’s not just fall. It can come in just about any season except winter around here. But it is a weather thing.” He stopped and stared at her for a minute. “Unbelievable. You’ve never seen rain before.”
She shook her head, crossing her arms in an attempt to keep warm.
“You want my jacket?”
She shook her head. “You’ll freeze.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well I do. Keep it. Really, I’m fine,” she refused.
“Is this just another knock on chivalry?”
“No, I just don’t want you to get pneumonia and die. You’re my only way to get food.” She laughed and scuffed the sand with her foot.
“Brat,” he said, but he was smiling too. “You know what pneumonia is, but you’ve never seen rain. Unbelievable.”
“Is this where the ocean comes from?”
“What, rain?”
She nodded, and he just laughed.
“What? There’s no stupid questions, right?”
“Nah, it’s not that, there’s just… so much you don’t know. Don’t think that’s your fault, but it’s kind of incredible. I guess in a weird way the ocean does come from the rain, but not the way you’re thinking. There’s this thing called the water cycle… it’s hard to explain. But when it gets hot some of the water goes back into the clouds and falls as rain so it can go back up into the clouds again. If that makes any sense. I’m no science teacher.”
She didn’t really get it, but she pretended she did.
“They don’t even teach you the water in your schools? You’d think with their obsession with progress they’d focus as much on science as they could.” He paused for a minute thoughtfully, then kept going. “I think I get it, though. They only teach you about the things it’s easy to harness and use for yourselves. There’s not much they can do about rain… so they pretend it doesn’t exist. Like the past.”
“I want to see the book,” she said abruptly.
“What?”
“The book, the Apocalypse Journals, whatever it is you prefer to call them. I want to see it for myself.”
He raised his eyebrows, looking almost impressed. “Wow. I didn’t think we’d made that much progress. Unfortunately, I don’t have the Journals.”
“Who does?”
“Base.”
“And why can’t we go to base?”
He refrained from answering for what seemed like forever. “It’s a long story.”
She decided to let it go for now. He’d been so open with her today already that she felt she’d lose trust by asking for more.
“Maybe someday I’ll get to see them,” she said, and left it at that. She looked up into the clouds that were dumping their contents onto the earth below. On an impulse, she stuck out her tongue, attempting to catch the droplets on her tongue. Patrick started to laugh.
“See, that’s what all the normal kids do. You’re a natural.”
She giggled. “I like rain. It’s nice.” She flung her head back again, finally managing to catch a raindrop. It tasted salty, just like the water in the ocean had. The water cycle. He couldn’t be lying about that. Patrick hadn’t somehow fabricated the grandeur of the ocean before her, or made water fall from the sky by magic. Not only was he not crazy, he knew more about the world than anybody else she knew. Perhaps the Backwinders weren’t quite as backwards as she’d always assumed.
Branson would kill you if he knew you were thinking like that, she thought herself. Branson and Dad both. She didn’t like the thought, or the conflicting feeling it created in the depths of her mind. Branson and her father were fighting, risking their lives, trying to prevent the spread of the very ideas that were entering her mind at this moment. Dad would disown her if she knew she was traipsing all over the wilderness with a Backwinder boy.
It’s not traipsing, she justified. It’s survival. Big difference. This thought sat much better in Piper’s mind, so she welcomed it to stay. It pushed the conflict to the back of her head, and brought out Piper’s original point: she wasn’t a National or a Backwinder. Not anymore. She was a girl facing the world, and that’s all there was to it. If Patrick could help her do that, then so be it.
“What’re you thinking about?” The boy’s voice broke through her self reflection and brought her back to the present. He was eyeing her again, giving her that feeling that he already knew exactly what she was thinking. She didn’t find the feeling so repulsive as she had the day before.
“It’s a long story,” she replied.
“Fair enough.” The rain began to slow from a heavy downpour to a slight trickle. No longer assaulted by the water, Piper began to notice how truly soaked she was. Either he had the same thought, or he really could read her mind.
“I’m sorry, I should have thought to bring something to keep us dry.”
She rolled her eyes. “How quickly he forgets. Who pulled me all the way under the water?”
He raised his arms in upset. “Who pushed me in the first place?”
“Touché.”
“Ha.”
She gave him a wayside glance. “Fine, kid, you win this one.”
“We should get back to camp. I don’t know how long we’ve been here and we don’t want to be out after dark.”
“How come?”
“Wild animals, patrols, all kinds of things. It’s just not a good idea.”
“And the wild animals can’t get us inside the camp?” She stopped short. “Wait. What patrols?”
“National patrols. What other kind of patrol would I mean?”
“You mean they march right through here?”
“I’m not sure. They never have before, but they tell us to be ready for that during drill. If they were to come through I definitely wouldn’t want to be in their way. One look at my uniform and I’m history.”
“History?”
“It’s—“
“Never mind, you can tell me later. If they came through, what do you think the odds are they’d know where my brother and dad were?”
“I bet they have intense databases for that kind of thing, but you’re with me. You’d be in just as much danger. They’d take you for a spy in a second, especially since you don’t have a National uniform. They have no reason to believe you’re not a Memorist.”
“But there’s a chance, isn’t there?”
“Not a reasonable one. Don’t go looking for them, Piper. Please. Promise me you won’t go looking.” He’d called her Piper. Not Green Eyes. Piper.
“Fine. I promise,” she said after a lot of deliberation. “I don’t see why it really matters to you. I’m just another mouth to feed, remember?” She didn’t know why she felt like making him feel guilty, but she did.
“Come on, Green Eyes, you know that’s not what I think. I don’t drag myself all the way to the ocean for another mouth to feed.”
“Then what do you think?”
He looked her straight in the eye. It was a different look than she’d gotten before. It was neither angry nor tender, and she didn’t have a clue how to read it. “I don’t really know,” he said, with a little lilt in his voice. He began walking back toward the tree line.

Chapter 4

“We’re going to camp,” he finally admitted to her a few miles from the lake. She stopped dead in her tracks.
“Camp? As in the army camp? As in all your people?”
He shook his head. “You really aren’t in the military, are you? No. That would be base. We’re headed to my camp, the one I set up myself. I’m living there right now. It’s not much, but it’s relatively safe.”
“If you’re living there, then what were you doing way out here?”
“Hunting. Sometimes there’s a few ducks on the lake. Truth be told, I was just as surprised to see you as you were to see me. I heard you brushing around and figured you were a duck.”
Step. Step. Step. They walked in silence for a few minutes.
“So what’s your story, Green Eyes?” She hated him calling her that, giving her nicknames before he even knew the first thing about her. The nerve of him. It took her a while to consider her answer, but she finally replied, “There was nothing left for me there.”
He nodded in wordless understanding.
“That’s why I joined the army,” he said after a few moments. “It’s not mandatory for us, but it’s not like I had anything better to do.”
Another long pause hung in the chilly air. This time, it was Piper who broke it.
“You mentioned your father, but didn’t you have a mom? Or brothers and sisters?” It was none of her business, but curiosity had gotten the best of her.
“My mom left us a couple of years before my dad died.”
“Left?” Piper’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “But how could she? The state couldn’t possibly have allowed—“
“We don’t do things the way the Nation does. Memorists marry for love, not for progress.” He looked down at his shuffling feet. “Unfortunately, love involves a much greater risk factor.”
What a selfish idea, she thought. Picking your own partner in life, with complete and utter disregard to the good of society? Of course, most National couples grew rather fond of each other, and some even fell in love after marriage. She’d always thought her own parents were rather lucky to have come across their love nearly on accident. In the end, however, the Nation was more important than the self; the Diviner mentioned this fact in nearly every one of his addresses. An intelligent man could never be expected to marry an unintelligent woman. The children could hardly reach their full potential intellectually.
“If it was love… why didn’t she stay?”
He didn’t speak for a long time, and avoided her eyes, determined to face the ground for as long as possible. “The only problem with love is… it’s easy for people to convince themselves they’re in it. People like feeling like they mean something in the world, even if it’s only to one person. Sometimes people think they’re in love with someone who loves them… but in the end they’re only in love with love. And when the fluttery emotions disappear, so do they.”
She felt a pang of hurt for the boy, in spite of herself. “I am sorry. Truly.”
“Not your fault,” he said, his deep voice growing louder and sharper. She could tell that he didn’t like showing weakness either. “Life is life. Just got to deal with it.”
And silence overtook the pair once again. Piper had always spent most of her time in silence, even before the bombings, and this silence was not uncomfortable like the many that had filled in the holes in her past dealings with people. It was merely a thoughtful lull, a quiet recharge before the next topic of conversation.
“Hang on,” she asked suddenly. “What did you call yourself before?”
“What?”
“Before, you were talking about your people and how you do marriage different. What did you call them?”
“Memorists. We call ourselves the Memorists.”
“You mean you’re not Backwinders?”
“Not within our own circles. You call us Backwinders because you think we’re uselessly backwards. We prefer to think of ourselves as the ones who have retained the memories of what used to be, as the protectors of the past. The Memorists.”
“But the past you believe in never existed. It’s a figment of your imaginations.”
He stopped walking and looked up, making sure to catch her eye. She hated that feeling. She was sure every fault she had was written in her eyes, and he was reading them like they were books.
“Events can’t be erased by a single man’s insistence that they never happened.”
She could think of no witty remark, no comeback that could convince him. She simply knew he was wrong. It was as simple as that. The boy, however, wasn’t finished.
“We have more records beside the Apocalypse Journals. There are letters, books, memoirs, music. There’s a whole world in the past that the Diviner tells you never existed. A world before the Nation came on the scene.”
“But there wasn’t a world before the Nation. We were the first and only inhabitants of the planet.”
“It wasn’t the first, and it wasn’t the only. It isn’t the only.”
“Not anymore. Not after your people left.”
He shook his hand. “You don’t understand. There are whole other continents. Six more of them, actually.”
“Continents?”
“Land masses. Surrounded by oceans. I forgot, do they tell you about oceans?”
She shook her head eagerly. “What’s an ocean?”
He smiled silently.
“Come on, tell me!”
“I’ll tell you what. There’s one not too far from camp. There won’t be time tonight but tomorrow we’ll go to the ocean, all right? You can see for yourself.”
She stopped walking. “Is this a trap?”
He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face in exasperation. “Look, it’s worth nothing to me to trap you at this point. Sure, you’re part of the Nation, but you don’t know anything about its inner workings. You probably know even less than we do. You haven’t tried to kill me, so I don’t think you’re a threat. Everybody should see the ocean at least once. It’s just a fact of life.”
He looked her straight in the eyes. This gesture seemed to be reserved for moments when he was trying to get her trust. Finally curiosity got the best of her. “Alright. Tomorrow we’ll go to the ocean. Deal.” She held out her hand, and he looked at her in surprise. She didn’t usually offer him trust like this. After a moment of shock, he shook it.
“Deal.”
The following lull in conversation allowed Piper to focus on the scenery around her as they continued to walk. She had never seen anything like it before. There had been trees in the city, but she’d never seen anything like the ones that lined the road before her. Not only were they taller than the synthetic trees that grew in the city square, but they were… orange. Orange, red, and yellow garlands of color filled in the empty spaces between the brown branches, creating a kind of fantastical wonderland.
“Why are they that color?” She tapped Patrick’s arm and pointed at the trees.
He gave her a wayside glance. “You kidding?”
“No, do I look like it?” She grinned in anticipation. “They’re so beautiful.”
“It’s September. The leaves change color in the autumn.”
“Autumn?”
He actually stopped to look at her. “You’re killin’ me. The season? Don’t tell me they’ve gotten rid of seasons where you come from.”
“I’m not sure exactly what you’re talking about.”
He sighed heavily. “I can tell. Man. They got rid of seasons. They just never stop, do they?”
“Wait. Does it have to do with… snow? Is snow a season?”
He laughed for the first time since they met. “Snow is precipitation. Winter is the season when it snows.”
“And snow is white, right? And really cold?”
“Yes,” he nodded.
“I remember snow. It snowed in the city once when I was little.” She bit her lip and grinned. “It was like clouds froze and fell from the sky. It stuck to everything, backed up everything for a week… ice on the roads or something. The Diviner wasn’t happy about it, he promised later it wouldn’t ever happen again. It messed up the Lex cars, got in the way… I couldn’t see why it was a bad thing. It was so pretty. Me and Mom and Branson went outside and played until we froze.”
A lump formed in her throat. Mom.
He looked at his feet thoughtfully. “Glitch in their system. They probably have some kind of covering up to prevent the weather from getting through…” He looked up to meet her eye again. “And you don’t even know how much you’re missing, do you? You don’t know how much they’re not telling you.” He gestured toward the gorgeous orange leaves. “Will you take this as some proof that I’m not crazy? Your Diviner would tell you those trees don’t exist. Autumn is a myth. Your people, the people in charge, they just erase whatever they don’t like. There’s so much more out there than they’re telling you.”
She remained silent.
They arrived at Patrick’s camp just as the sun was setting. Ethereal brushstrokes swept across the sky, painting it lavender, crimson, and gold. The campsite itself set on the crest of a hill, with a perfect view of Piper’s newfound autumn trees lining the ground all the way to the horizon.
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “See what I mean? Never seen anything like that before, have you?”
She shook her head in speechless wonder. After a few minutes his voice pulled her away. “Come on, it’ll be there everyday. We gotta eat.” He pulled the pack of beef jerky out of his pack and threw it to her. “Sorry it’s not much. It was a terrible day for hunting. Hopefully we can get something good tomorrow.”
She snapped open the package greedily and tore a piece of the dried meat off with her teeth. She was starving— anything edible was good enough for her. It took some discipline to force herself to hand the bag back to him. He traded her for an apple. It was rich and juicy, bursting with flavor in her mouth.
“You can have the tent,” he said, gesturing to the shelter behind her. “I’ll take the tree.”
She looked up at the gigantic tree at the edge of the camp and shook her head. “You can’t sleep up there. You’ll fall out or something, I know it.”
“Did it the first night I was here. If I strap myself into the sleeping bag I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. You’re the lady. You take the tent.”
“Hey, I can handle whatever you can. Just because I’m a girl—“
“Another thing you’ve lost. Chivalry. Guess that gets in the way of progress, huh?”
She stood and placed her hands on her hips, trying to look as offended as possible.
“It’s not about you not being as good as me, as strong as me, whatever. It’s about you being better because you’re a girl. You deserve to be treated better, okay? And yes, it’s old-fashioned. And I don’t care. You’re sleeping in the tent.”
She could tell she wasn’t winning this battle, so she surrendered. “Fine.”
“You oughta go ahead and get some sleep, too. It’s been a long day.”
She cocked one eyebrow. “Is that chivalry too?”
“No, but I think it’s in your best interest if you want to see the ocean tomorrow. It’s a ways away and you want to be wide awake for this.”
He’d done it again, dangled a possibility in front of her that she couldn’t resist. That’s what he seemed to be best at. “Fine. I’ll go to sleep and we’ll go see the ocean tomorrow. You’ll have to wake me up in the morning.”
“I can do that.”
“Alright. Well, good night, Patrick.”
“ ‘Night, Green Eyes.”
To her surprise, the nickname didn’t fill her with resentment. Maybe it just took some getting used to. No one had ever given her a nickname but her brother.
“Hey, Patrick?”
He looked up from the fire he was trying to start. “Huh?”
“Thanks.” She disappeared into the tent.

Chapter 3

I rather like this one. New characters make me happy. And give me words. :)
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Piper saw the sunlight on the horizon and thought it was fire. Before last night, she’d always thought her worst fear was drowning. Wrong. It was fire. The crackling noise still writhed and sizzled in her ears, mixed with her mother’s sobs and Baylor’s terrified screams…
She’d been walking for just over four hours, and was frankly surprised she hadn’t yet fallen over dead. Her legs felt like water… water… Water would be nice. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth like she’d just downed a particularly syrupy mug of drinking chocolate. What she wouldn’t give for some drinking chocolate right now…
The true stupidity of Piper’s plight hit her that moment. Where was she going? What did she plan to do? For all she knew she could be waltzing into enemy territory, just begging to get herself killed. The wisest plan would be to make for the next closest city to Iretum—if she only knew what that city was, or how to find it. She cursed her own ignorance of the world around her. Why hadn’t they mentioned this in Current Events class? What to do when a war breaks out in your hometown and you end up stranded in the wilderness. She couldn’t remember any lesson like that.
Distracted, Piper began to notice the ground grow softer and softer beneath her feet. She could scarcely bear to get her hopes up… could it be that the soil was growing darker, richer? Could it be Nitro dirt? Could she be lucky enough to come across a city so quickly ? She looked up, and the sight tore her hope to shreds. It was a pool of water surrounded by tall grass. She thought it was called a lake—there was an artificial one for swimming in the middle of town. Her shoes squelched in the now nearly liquid ground, trying to stick behind in the mud.
As she came to the edge, she cringed at her reflection in the water. Her once perfectly straight black hair hung in wild mats around her face, and dark circles lounged lazily under her tired green eyes. There was a cut on her cheek that she hadn’t even felt before; she was sure from the looks of it that it would leave a nasty scar. The shoulder of her navy blue blouse had been ripped clean away, leaving her entire right arm exposed to the elements.
Scooping some water from the lake, she brushed it over her face in an attempt to get clean. It felt so good that she considered slipping completely into the water and giving herself a full bath, but she was only a few hours into her journey. She wouldn’t yet sink so low as to bathe like a Backwinder. She cupped more of the water into her hands and took a sip, and her parched tongue thanked her profusely. It wasn’t water from the city, not even close. Flecks of dirt tinted it a light brown, but it tasted decent enough, and it would keep her going at least a little longer. Recharged, she stood up and stretched, feeling the tension in her limbs. She couldn’t remember ever being this tired before.
Yawning widely, she turned around to find herself at the end of a gun. She gasped.
“Where do you think you’re going, Green Eyes?” the boy asked.
He looked older than her, but not by much. His eyes hid beneath his cap, masking any emotion she could have deciphered. All she could make out was a clenched jaw and reddish hair, about the color of Branson’s, peaking out from under the hat. His uniform, however, said everything she needed to know. It was brown with brass buttons, and on the breast was a book encircled with laurel leaves.
He was a Backwinder. She cursed herself for letting him sneak up on her like that. If it weren’t for her stupid ear…
“Just let me go,” she said, trying to brush past. “Just let me go and I’ll pretend I never saw you.”
“And what good would that do me?” He held the gun steady. “What side are you on?”
“My own side,” she said bitterly. The point lowered from her heart to around her belly area.
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not really,” she replied in defiance. This boy didn’t plan to hurt her. She could feel it in the tone of his voice; in the way he carried himself. Somehow, someway, he was just as lost as she was, and nobody willingly gives up a kindred spirit.
He lifted the bill of his cap, so she could see his eyes. They were chocolate brown, and they looked sad. A large scar on his left cheek marred most of his face. “Fair enough,” he said. “Ask you no questions, you’ll tell me no lies.”
“That’s about right.” She shifted her feet. “Will you put that thing down? It’d be a lot easier to have a pleasant conversation without death staring me in the face every waking minute.”
He lowered the gun and strapped it back into the carrier on his back. “What’s your name, Green Eyes?”
“Does it really matter?”
“It’d make it a lot easier to have a pleasant conversation.”
She raised her eyebrows in amusement. “Piper. Piper Conrad.”
“Patrick Blue.” He extended a hand. She eyed it for a moment, not sure whether she trusted him or not.
“Where are the rest of your people?” she asked.
“My regiment?” She nodded soundlessly, never taking her eyes from his face. His eyes shifted, refusing to meet hers. “Not here. That’s all I can say.”
So he was a deserter. She glanced at the pack on his back. It probably contained food and water, and maybe even some kind of portable shelter or a compass. She couldn’t make it around her on her own, that much she knew. She needed an ally. His hand was still extended.
“I don’t bite,” he said.
She took his hand, and he shook it firmly. “Nice to meet you.”
“What’re you doing way out here?” She could feel his eyes staring into her, noticing her civilian clothes. “Whichever side you’re on, you’re old enough to be in the army, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I’m sixteen and I’m half deaf, okay?” She thought of the boy back at the station. Maybe this boy wanted to believe she was a deserter too. She refused to be thought of as a coward.
He could tell he had touched a nerve. “Alright, alright, I didn’t mean anything by it. Just trying to figure you out.”
“I thought you had decided not to kill me.”
“Yeah, but while I’m here I might as well decide whether or not it’s worth it to stick around.”
“Oh, thanks,” she said sarcastically.
“It would be pretty pointless for me, you have to admit,” he said. “You have no resources, not much stealth, and a very poor sense of your surroundings.”
How dare he come along and tell her all the things she was doing wrong? He must have seen the offended look on her face. “Come on, don’t take it personally. You have to admit you weren’t exactly being careful. I could have shot you before you even knew I was there.”
“Yeah, well, why didn’t you? Take pity on the poor little lost girl, put her out of her misery.”
“Are you determined to hate me or something?”
“Look, you don’t even know what I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours. I hate the world right now. I don’t expect you to understand.” And your uniform doesn’t help your cause, she thought.
He paused for a minute and looked at her thoughtfully.
“I watched my father die when I was twelve years old. Shot by National officials. Try me.”
He was lying. The Nation didn’t kill people unless they deserved it.
“Just go away,” she said.
“Look, Green Eyes—“
“Quit calling me that,” she said tersely.
“Whatever. Piper. Bottom line is you can’t make it on your own. We both know it. Even if you stayed here, with plenty of water, in three weeks you need food if you want to live.” He pulled a brown package out of his pack and opened it. The scent wafted over into Piper’s nostrils: beef jerky. The peppery scent made her mouth water. “Plus, I dare say you want to go somewhere, even if you don’t know where somewhere is. Come with me. I can help you. I’ll get you wherever you need to go and then I’ll leave you alone. You never have to see me again.”
Every cell of Piper’s brain told her not to trust the boy. Alliance with a Backwinder, even for the very best reasons, meant treason. In the end, though, it depended which she valued more: the Nation and the Diviner, or her own life.
And in the end, her life won out.
Maybe I can become a spy, she thought. Win the war for the Nation. Any justification she could find helped.
“Fine,” she said. The boy smiled, looking very unsoldier-like. He needed to be careful if he was going to keep up his image. He wasn’t nearly as frightening when he smiled. He began walking away from the lake.
“Wait!” she called, running after him. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” he replied with a wry smile on his face.
“What!?”
“I. Don’t. Know.” The twinkle in his eyes made him look like he was playing a very amusing joke on her. She hated him. With every fiber of her being she loathed this smug, arrogant, manipulative liar of a Backwinder who had lured her into this trap. She planted her feet in the cool mud.
“I’m not moving until you tell me where we’re going.” He turned around to look at her, his eyes boring into hers like bullets. They weren’t angry or unfriendly, by any means, but she had the strangest sensation that he was staring straight into the depths of her soul.
“You really don’t know how the world works, do you?” he asked with a slight edge to his tone. “I’m helping you out of the kindness of my heart. It’s no skin off my nose if you decide not to come. In fact, it would make things a lot easier for me. You’re not going to be any help and you’re just another mouth to feed. Stay here if you want. I really don’t care.”
“Then why did you offer to help me in the first place?” she retorted, more frustrated than ever. “You obviously don’t want to. Are you just going to take me straight to your Backwinder general? String me up as a spy or something? I can tell you, I don’t know anything. You’re not going to get anything out of me, so you might as well just save yourself the trouble. You could get demoted for going to all this trouble for no information.”
He paused for a moment. “So that’s what side you’re on.” Almost as a reflex, Piper clapped her hand over her mouth. She had probably just ruined any chance she’d had for survival. To her own surprise, tears welled up in her eyes. “My mother died last night. And my little brother. He was only five years old.”
His cold eyes softened. “I’m sorry.”
“YOU SHOULD BE!” she screamed at him, lashing out with every emotion left inside her fragile body. “Your people, it’s all their fault! You! This cause you’re fighting for is murdering five-year-old boys over a stupid BOOK!” She wanted to hit him, do something to retaliate, to avenge Baylor and her mother, to play the hero for just a moment, but she didn’t have the strength. Against her will, she fell to the ground, as if the full weight of the last few days had finally landed on her shoulders, and she didn’t have the strength to bear it.
He didn’t touch her. He simply spoke.
“War isn’t a pretty thing, is it? People seem to think it’s a romantic cause, ‘fighting for the Diviner, bringing honor to your country.’ Maybe those causes are legitimate, I don’t know. Maybe war is an essential part of life, maybe sometimes it has to happen. But any war that crosses that civilian line has gone too far. That’s when it stops being noble.”
She gritted her teeth and looked up at him, trying to regain a little dignity. She hated appearing this weak. “What are you, a politician?”
“Hey, it’s a free country. I have the right to express my opinions. Although being a National you wouldn’t exactly understand the whole free country thing.” He turned around and started walking away.
She let him go for a few minutes, sobbing into her knees and simply hearing the squelching of his feet in the mud. Soon it disappeared as his feet trod on drier and drier ground. She looked up. He was already several yards away. She hated herself for being upset, hated herself for wanting to trust him…
“Wait,” she said almost in a whisper, so low she knew he couldn’t hear her. “Hey, wait!” she called, much louder than before. She got to her feet and dashed after him, and found him standing still.
“You coming, or not? You better make up your mind right here. You can’t keep slowing me down like this.”
“I’m coming,” she said. “I don’t really have another choice, do I?”
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” He gave her another pointed look and turned around again, walking out toward the horizon.
And this time, she followed him.