“That’s ridiculous,” I stammer. “There is no resistance!” I feel myself returning to the night I carried Zorrah’s body through the door marked No Admittance. I see the sadness in Instructor Turon’s face the first time I denied the existence of a resistance.
I don’t know why I’m so upset, but I am. “Why would there be a resistance? Against what are they resisting?”
Neca looks incredulous. “The regime. The way they’ve treated the working class. Not everyone is happy with living in a cage.”
“They’d be more happy dying in the wilderness?”
“What wilderness? There is no wilderness.” Neca stands and gestures with open arms. “Just a bunch of forest and mountains and plains and hills and oceans. There’s a world out here, Calli.”
“One even uglier than our own.” I shake my head. “I’ll be the first to admit life in New Teo isn’t perfect. But the regime is doing the best they can. They’re protecting us. They’re making life possible.”
Neca turns away and continues in a hushed voice, “How can you think that? After everything we’ve seen together? After the Shadows? After the combat chamber? All the regime knows how to make is war and death.”
“Look, I understand why you would think that. You were practically raised by Centavo.”
“You don’t understand at all, Calli Bluehair. Something inside you won’t let you understand. Every opportunity you get, you choose to push the truth further away. And you do the same to anyone who tries to help.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand!” I shriek at the top of my voice.
Neca jumps.
“Everything I do is for the sake of others—for you, for Olin, for Zorrah!” I try to swallow the nervous rage, but I’m afraid I’ll gag on it. “Every day in the academy I live two separate lives for the sake of the ones I love—for the lives I’m responsible for. I lead, I serve, I protect. I do whatever it takes to improve our chances of survival. And through it all, I can’t let him know!”
I flop onto the floor of the cave. Curled into a ball, I tremble and sob. “The whole time, I have to hide everything from my own thoughts. Even when I know the truth, I can’t let myself feel it, or he’ll know.”
Neca’s closeness had turned the knob. The pressure building inside of me had done the rest. The dividers inside my own brain dissolve. At first, I attempt to scrape them together in exhausted panic. Then I realize the rest of the voices are gone. I feel my mind opening up again, and I’m the only resident.
“Calli,” Neca’s hand touches my shoulder.
I jolt and grab hold of him. I’m not sure of my own instincts. Wires cross, and I don’t know whether to throw him or embrace him. I do nothing.
“You have to talk to me.” Neca grips me beneath my arms and lifts my limp weight. He drapes me over him, despite his own injuries. He whispers into my ear. “Who is threatening you? I can help share the burden, but you have to trust me.”
“I’ve always trusted you, since the morning you carried Olin to meet Centavo.” I lack the strength to pull away from him. I lack the strength to keep anything back any longer. “You know I feel more than trust for you.” I close my eyes and rest my chin in the crook of his neck. I think of falling asleep.
“Calli.”
“I’m dangerous.”
“You’re special.”
“No. There’s someone in my head.” I gasp. Now that I’ve arrived at the brink, I can barely draw breath to continue. “He wants to hurt me by hurting the ones I love.”
“Like Zorrah.”
“Like Zorrah,” I nod.
“That’s why you changed.” Neca lowers me onto the crate, and we sit. He leans back and rests my head on his shoulder. “You blame yourself for Zorrah’s injury.”
In the dim blue light of the chemical stick, I watch Neca’s chest rise and fall. Smeared and encrusted with dirt, the gash across his chest has stopped bleeding. “He told me Zorrah was too dangerous for me to keep. He took her in order to test me.”
“Who took her, Calli? Who is it you’re hiding from?”
“I’m going crazy, aren’t I?”
“You were crazy to begin.”
“Jerk.” I smile briefly, then cry.
Neca uses his braid to wipe a tear from my cheek. “You’re not crazy, I promise. We’ve gone through so many changes, you more than the rest. Yetic and I started the process in Worker City. You entered the academy raw and with Olin.”
Braid in hand, he grips my shoulder and pulls me closer. “I know you don’t believe me, but you and Olin really are special. I’ve known it for years, since the first time you yelled at me.”
I pout, “I haven’t mistreated you for that long.”
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” My lids droop.
“The first time we met.”
I can’t imagine what he’s talking about.
“I’d only been working for Centavo for a week. Monitoring your brother’s status was my first assignment.”
I perk up at the mention of my brother. “Wait, the scrawny kid that never talked?”
“My parents had abandoned me in the underground a month earlier.”
“That was you?”
“Even then, you were so fierce, so beautiful. You intimidated me,” Neca whispers in my ear.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“All Centavo told me was that you and your brother were special, and that if anything happened to either of you, I was to bring you to him directly.”
I pull away enough to look him in the eyes. “So you had been following us the morning of the perimeter attack?”
He nods. “That morning like every morning. I knew everything about you—where you slept, what you ate, how much you loved your brother.”
“I was your assignment.” I squeeze my eyes tight, unsure of my own emotions.
“You were my angel. Protecting you gave me something to live for outside of myself and my own situation. Don’t be angry. I’ve wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you in your mother’s garden, before my last fight. But there was never the chance, so I, I kept on watching you.”
Neca rushes his words, “I know it sounds silly, and I’ve been more trouble than help. But—”
“Shhh,” I place a finger over his lips. “I get it. Really, I do. Both of us are idiots. Well, maybe me more than you. It would be funny if I could remember how to laugh.”
“How’s that?”
“You know, you’ve put yourself in danger to protect me. As a result I’ve put myself in danger to protect you. I think that makes us a dangerous couple.”
“Oh, so we’re a couple?”
“Keep dreaming, Nightmare.”
“Fine, but now that we know the truth of the matter, we should at least work together.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible.” I sit up, my sleepiness having passed. As I stare around our cave prison, reality sets in. Now that I’ve unburdened my heart I feel a fresh anxiety to find Olin and the others.
“Tell me who’s threatening you. Who hurt Zorrah? I can help.”
I stand and wipe the crusted tears from my eyes. “You can help by finding a way out of here.”
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