Chapter Fourteen
Kodyn
We took off from Red Ridge. I couldn’t stand to be there another second. The group of us, the Vithohn and our mates, had stolen their mechs and taken off into the dusk and didn’t stop until we’d reached an abandoned gas station miles away.
I hopped out of the mech, sick to my stomach. I
“You’re just going to leave her back there?” Rebecca shouted, coming up behind me, as invigorated as ever.
“Not now,” I said furiously and waved her off. I was in no mood for her.
My mind was a tangle of memories that I couldn’t keep straight. Fiona shooting me with a tranquilizer, green eyes, a sandstorm by the mountains, looking up at the Pleiades, Elise naked in the pool, love. It was all a blur that I couldn’t piece together.
“Rebecca,” Daxarus lectured, pulling her toward him.
She jerked away from him and stormed in front of me, splaying her hands in front of her to try and make me stop walking.
“It wasn’t her fault!” Rebecca swore at me.
“But she chose her side,” I said, more hurt than she could ever know. “She stayed.”
“No, she went to go talk to Liam Broderick to get him to stop and then you left her!” she argued back.
I set my jaw and snarled, “I can’t look at her.”
“Rebecca,” Daxarus said calmly, setting a hand on her shoulder. “Give us a minute.”
“Daxarus!” she protested.
“She made her bed,” I insisted, looking between the two. My heart was shattered.
“She didn’t have anything to do with the attack on you, Kodyn,” Rebecca argued, softer now. “Stop being so stubborn. We have to go back for her! Why is everything so black and white with you, Kodyn? She loves you.”
I recoiled as though her words were made of barbed wire and Daxarus gave her another warning look.
“Rebecca,” he said patiently.
“She ran away for you,” she jabbed me. “Remember that.”
We both watched as the auburn-haired pain in my ass spun on her boot and walked back over to the mech: the group of Vithohn we’d escaped with.
“What do you want to do?” Daxarus asked with a swift breath, shaking his head at his lover.
“I want them all dead,” I spewed out my poison.
Daxarus stared into the distance, lost in the scenery for a moment before he nodded and said, “Alright.”
“Alright, as in you’ll back me?” I asked, genuinely perplexed, “Or ‘alright, you’re on your own?’”
He let out a small ‘humph’ noise and then rolled his shoulder. “I know better than to talk you out of anything,” he said.
“And yet I’m sensing that might be happening right now,” I said with exhaustion.
“You believed in the alliance once,” he paused. “Didn’t you?”
I kicked the sand beneath my feet, feeling a roaring beast welling up inside me. “Yes,” I admitted. “Once.”
“You lost your passion for revenge and put it toward a new cause. That doesn’t have to change,” he offered.
“Hm,” I huffed and turned away from him.
The air was so hot on my skin that I felt like I might burst. Everything was so wrong, and I felt powerless to stop the hurdles ahead of me.
“Elise was taken prisoner by her camp,” he said crisply, and I wasn’t sure if he was saying it just to test me.
I turned to him and narrowed my eyes in his direction. “Why?”
“The camp is tearing itself apart,” he explained. “Human against human, for once. Half are fighting for Bossman, and the other half are fighting for a lie.”
“Fighting Bossma—” I shook my head with annoyance and corrected, “Liam? Why?”
“They want the alliance,” he said quickly. “They don’t want to follow him: don’t want to attack the Vithohn. They saw what he did with the women, and they took up arms against him.”
My stomach rolled at the thought.
“Why take Elise?” I demanded.
“For you,” he said with a helpless shrug, his eyes flicking back and forth from mine. “One can assume. Any idea why they want you so badly?”
“Yeah,” I said. They wanted my ability to scan for enemies.
He nodded, and to my surprise, he said, “Same.”
I made my way from the group, stocking off into the nearby mountains just south of the gas station. I punched the hard rock at the base of a red mountain, hitting it until my hands went blue and bloody. I closed my eyes and dug my feet into the ground below.
That night I slept alone, not fearing anything. I thought about what Daxarus said to me and wondered who I could really trust.
“Welcome back,” he said sternly as I reentered the fray in the morning.
I looked at the ground, feeling unsure how to say my next words.
“What would you do?” I asked quietly.
“I already know what I’m doing,” Daxarus laughed, loading a laser pistol with a pink cartridge.
I stared down at the gun unenthusiastically. “Enlighten me,” I said.
“I’m going back for my people,” he said simply.
I began, “The Vitho—” but he interrupted me. “No,” Daxarus said quickly. “Rebecca’s militia. They were good people; there are good Vithohn warriors with us. All we have ever wanted is to seek out the pull we feel: that rage that flows through our veins. Rachel is what I was looking for, and I am not letting her go. I believe that's why we sought Earth in the first place.”
“Then we did a terrible job expressing our desires,” I mocked.
He laughed. “And then some.”
“So now what?” I asked, confused and willing him to give me an order I could follow.
“Now you decide if she’s worth it. Do you fight to get your revenge or do you fight for her? For this alliance?”
I stared off, looking at him but not really seeing his face: my mind elsewhere.
“It’s not a hard decision,” he said, and I snorted loudly. “I won’t stop you, brother, no matter what you decide.”
I thought about his resolve: his thoughts on the Earth. Did he really believe he was brought here just to meet Rebecca? I felt my body swirl with nervous anticipation, and I realized I had already made my mind up. My brain already knew that I was going to go back. That I needed Elise.
Maybe she was the one. Maybe this was really it: the reason I was brought here. Daxarus may have had a point after all.
We made our way back to the camp in the mechs as quickly as we could. It was easy to storm the camp and even easier to maneuver my way into the stronghold. I ran into the passageways underground, knocking out any guard I saw along the way and putting up a wide shield to protect myself from their pitiful bullets.
I knew I had to take out Liam Broderick: knew there was going to be a hell of a battle ahead of us. But I couldn’t do it without her. Not without Elise.
I found the room she was being kept in, told to me by Elizabeth, and quickly kicked down the door. I barged into the room, ready to take down any guards who might be watching her, but was surprised to see she was standing alone.
After throwing the door down onto the floor, I gestured for her to come with me. I started making my way back up the underground passage when I noticed she wasn’t following me.
I made my way back into the room and asked, “Aren’t you coming?”
“That’s it?” Elise said, as beautiful and as difficult as ever. “That’s all you have to say to me?”
I frowned, looking down at the door and then back up at her.
“Yeah, yeah, you ripped off a door,” she said wryly. “Very impressive.”
“You’re missing your fight,” I warned, gesturing topside with my eyes.
She swallowed hard and said, “I can hear that. And should I just take you down now or… just wait for the battlefield?”
She was trying to ask me if we were enemies, and for whatever reason, she looked so beautiful to me then.
"First of all," I said, pressing a gloved finger to her oversized lips, "you could never take me down."
She flicked a brow up wryly and went to speak against my finger.
I hushed her. "You had a giant robot to drop on me then. Don't let that lead you to believe you have an advantage over me."
"And second of all?"
I smiled: kissed her fiercely. “Get your ass up there.”
The fight raged on even after his machine fell, but not for long. I watched Elise and our army take down men and win back the camp, take back our home, and a new reverence for her grew in me. A new love.
The battle was already raging without us there: men and their mechs being taken down by the Vithohn. I fired off one energy beam after another, careful not to damage any of the structures in the camp. My only goal was to take out the enemy human who opposed us.
Liam Broderick was in the large camo mech, firing laser cannons at me: singling me out. We had been ready to battle one another since the moment we met.
He didn’t want to work with the Vithohn?
He wanted to ruin everything we had worked for in our alliance?
So be it.
I channeled all the energy I could into an oversized orb: my whole body shaking and trembling with heat and fear as it swirled around in my tentacle. When my body could no longer take the sensation, I released my shield and fired on him.
The beam hit hot, and I could hear the scream of the man behind all this misery. The mech came crashing down in a fiery mass that all at once evaporated under the pressure and heat of the energy beam.
Elise and I watched as the machine sparkled into energy fragments before it even hit the ground.
I felt satisfied then. Finally. Justice had been served.
The battlefield slowed to a crawl then: a familiar field of blood and bodies. I spun around, feeling safe for the first time in forever. This wasn’t a massacre, I thought. Not this time.
It was a protection. The first battle fought by Vithohn and humans as an allied force.
I swallowed hard at the thought. The alliance was real.
Turning, I spotted Elise, standing tall with a pistol at her side. She huffed and breathed out heavily, trying to regain her composure. She blew out warm air and wiped her forehead of the sweat and sand that had caked to it. Then she smiled at me, a toothy grin that sent sparks through my chest.
I dropped everything then: weapons, inhibitions, walls.
“Why did you come back?” she asked as I walked up to her, grabbing her by the waist.
“Why did you come back?” she asked with a silly grin.
“I forgot to say something,” I said, suddenly dire as I leaned into her beautiful face.
She cocked a sassy brow and set a hand on her hip as she mocked, “I hope it's 'I'm sorry.'”
I laughed, hard and loud. I nodded toward her, as sincere as I’d ever been. “I’m sorry,” I said.
She flushed and brought my hands back to her hips, standing on her tip-toes to get closer to my face. I could feel her sweet breath ghost over my lips as she teased, “And what else?
I leaned into her lips, kissing her softly and never needing her as much as I did right then and there. “I love you,” I said with a wide grin.
She leaned back into another kiss and then burst into a fit of giggles, wrapping her arms around me firmly and seeming like she would never let go. “I love you so much,” she gushed out. “And Kodyn... I want you to know that I had nothing to do with—”
I shook my head and set a playful finger over Elise’s mouth. I was done talking about Fiona: letting the memory of her take my future from me.
Elise was mine now. She was the girl my heart beat for: the one I was meant to find.
“That's the past,” I said slowly. “From now on, it's just you and me. Deal?”
She smiled. “Deal.”
The End