Sidney
I ran.
For all the praise that had been heaped on me during my time in the militia, I couldn’t feel more like a coward. Tessoul loved me with an unflinching, unfailing love. He never questioned me the way that I did him. All he ever did was try to protect me, and I ran.
I stormed the gates of the trailer park and heaved breaths; my lungs were feeling black and airless as I’d been running for hours.
Baxley. He betrayed me in the biggest way possible.
I broke his heart, but he broke us. Our whole team. He destroyed our opportunity to form an alliance and have a real shot at really living.
I snuck into my trailer, careful not to get spotted by any of Baxley’s closest allies, and began stuffing clothes and my stolen weapons into a large knapsack.
This was it for me, I thought; I was getting out. Just like Tessoul told me to.
I heard my front screen door creak open and spun around; goosebumps were shocking up on my skin from the fear. It was Evelyn. She hesitated at the door, her wispy blonde hair tucked under a hood, and then forced her way in. Rebecca followed quickly behind her, snapping the door shut.
We exchanged eye contact, all three of us, and I knew I was safe.
“Baxley’s on the warpath, Sid. You need to get out of here,” Rebecca said, wasting no time in helping me gather supplies.
“What do you think I’m doing?” I snorted and grabbed a hold of a med kit. I swallowed and felt a hard lump of emotion ball in my throat. “Did he set me up?”
“You gotta go,” Rebecca insisted, harsher this time.
Then I knew that he really did.
“Why the hell would he do that? Why would he do that to us?” I snapped, water forming in my eyes.
Evelyn gave a brief look around the room and a deep crease formed in her forehead as she asked, “Where's Tessoul?”
“He's in the…” My hands began to shake wildly until I whipped my bag down in frustration. “He's in the cave; he's dead; I don't know! We need to get out of here.”
My door snapped open again, and Lele walked in, her tan skin aglow. “I will accompany you, ma'am,” she said, clicking the door shut and watching through the windows with her gun cocked.
“The Vithohn have been in and out of our camp all day. They took four more,” Rebecca added.
I licked my lips and took one last moment to do nothing: to look around my trailer and remember what it was like when I was happy here. The brief years when we weren’t running.
“Sidney!” Evelyn shouted, tossing my bag at me. “What are you doing?”
I shook my head, snapping out of it and grabbed the bag from her. “I'm packing up, and I'm gone. I'm going to the Vithohn camp. Tell Baxley... tell him I died in the raid! I don’t care.”
Rebecca leaned against the bed, pressing her calves against the pressboard wooden base and asked, “You think he'll fall for that bullshit?”
I shrugged. “Probably not.”
Rebecca twirled her fingers and said, “Then either we kill him or give him something more important to worry about than an escaped traitor.”
“I'm not killing Baxley, and I can't think of anything else more important for him to worry about if siding with the Vithohn or this war doesn’t faze him.”
Faith and Rebecca exchanged a look that I couldn’t read; excitement and resignation were melding into one glance. Then Evelyn said, “Then I'm coming with you.”
“Me too,” Rebecca added with a nod. “And we have five more who want to leave.”
“This isn't a game Rebecca,” I snapped. “Tessoul was... He's honest, and he's trouble's, but—”
“Bad boy scores again,” Evelyn snorted.
Thinking of Tessoul made my heart sink once more: a darkness rising in me that made me spin around and exclaim, “It's not a game!”
“I guess that's why this bullshit has no finish line, huh?” Rebecca said, her drawl coming out. “Sidney, we're not stupid. I've watched. I've been out there, with you, in fact. I'm ready.”
I shrugged. “It's not going to feel like love.”
“It is with Tessoul,” Evelyn corrected.
“He's genuine, with feelings, and if you go into this thinking you're going to manipulate them… You can’t come with me if you’re thinking like that. This has to be an alliance, completely,” I instructed.
“I mean, that was the plan, wasn't it?” Evelyn asked, her eyes blinking nervously now. “To use them?”
Lele flinched from the window and turned her profile to us. “That was Baxley's plan.”
“I don't care,” Evelyn reaffirmed, turning her back to me and revealing her backpack, already full and ready to go. “Whatever it takes. I'm team human race, baby.”
“You guys... Tessoul is gone. I'm a fugitive in my own camp. Why are you doing this?” I said with a crack in my voice.
“We want to start over,” Rebecca said.
What an amazing concept, I thought. To just start over, not only as a group, but as a race. As two races. We and the Vithohn could start over completely, get on better footing, and do what was best for both of us. We could share this world and right every wrong that’d been done to us both.
Except I would have to do it without Tessoul. The thought sent me into a full-blown panic; tears were swimming from my eyes as I erupted into a tortured sob.
“I don't want to start over,” I cried. “I want Tessoul.”
The girls look at each other sadly, unmoving. Finally, Lele walked over to me and set her hand on my back. Her perfectly shaped lips parted and I thought she might impart some comfort to me, but instead, she spouted, “Chances of success is sixty percent if you leave immediately. Statistics of survival outside of the camp unaccompanied are much worse.
“Like it or not, we're coming. Nine strong,” Rebecca said and slipped my backpack over my arms.
I sniffed and took a few steadying breaths, trying to get it together. “They are?”
“Tessoul made a heck of a case for himself when he was in our camp,” Evelyn said with a shrug.
“What about Baxley?”
Rebecca shrugged and walked to the door. She set her hand on the knob and turned back to me. “Let him have the… what… eight people left? They do things their way, and we take our own path.”
“Here,” Evelyn said shyly, scooping Ed from her backpack. “Use this. He'll lead you to the Vithohn like a beacon.”
I scooped Ed into my arms, and he looked up at me apologetically. I didn’t know whether to embrace him or get rid of him, though I couldn’t bring myself to kill him, I wondered what connection he really had to the Kilari. If they looked as they did in the spawning cave, why was he just a little blob? If they hatched from eggs, why was he sprung early? I swallowed and held him close.
Maybe I would keep him, for now. At least until he could lead us to the beacon.
Ed looked delighted to be in my company again, and I wonder what would have happened if he ended up in the spawning cave. Would he have transformed into one of the beasts or would he have tried to find a way to protect us?
I wished I had thought ahead and brought him in the first place. I felt his warm squishy texture in my arms and gave him a sweet pet, wondering why I didn’t believe Tessoul when he first told me about the war. About the Kilari.
I spent so much time thinking Tessoul was lying to me. It turned out I was the liar.
We wandered out of the camp, nine strong, and wandered into the wilderness. It took many days to find the way back to the Vithohn space station, but I was too numb to be terrified. We traveled easily through the forests; it was the same canopy where we had planted so many traps—where we had hidden supplies in case we were ever driven from our camp.
Now we were going back. Back to the Vithohn camp. We were greeted by Karen, who finally seemed the girl I once knew. Open and friendly, willing to help us. She brought us to the barracks and began grabbing supplies and tech from Jareth and the other reborn Vithohn.
Then she looked at me.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said with a wide smile.
“Yep, that’s me, the hero,” I said coolly, dropping my backpack to the ground with a hollow ‘thump.’
“I can’t believe out of everyone, it was you who believed me, Sid.”
I shrugged, not feeling very proud of myself or the things that I’d done for my people. All I had done, up to this point, was separate us from our camp, our commodore, and our safe homes.
That’s what it felt like anyway.
“I’m proud of you,” she said, as though she were reading my mind. “We’re going to make this work.”
“I know we will,” I said evenly and then relented to a small smile before running up and hugging her, crying into her shoulder like I would have done to my father when he was alive.
“Sidney,” she said with a small laugh. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back so I could show you something.”
I cocked a brow, and she led me down the corridors of the space station and down to the barracks. I wondered if she was going to give me hell for stealing from Jareth’s weapon armory, but instead, she led me down a familiar hall until we reached Tessoul’s door.
I looked at her with pained eyes, guilty for my part in the fall of the Vithohn. But my heart raced as she gave two brief knocks on his door before stepping in.
My feet were right behind her, watching as she opened the way to Tessoul’s bedroom to reveal him there, alive.
“Tessoul!” I yelled without thinking, running to him and falling onto his bed where he lay in a heap of sobs.
I tried to speak, but my tears were too powerful; the blanket of emotion was making it too difficult to think.
“Hey, you,” he said, wincing as I brushed against his wounds.
“Araxis found him,” Karen said quickly. “Sensed him: the pull. He’s a little beat up but, these guys are pretty strong.”
“The Kilari,” I managed to squeak out.
“We already know,” Karen said with a sweet laugh. “We’ll talk all about that, but for now, go be with your man.”
With that, Karen excused herself from us, and I set my hands on either side of Tessoul’s face. I couldn’t believe he was here.
His tan skin was a mess of cuts and bandages, but I traced my hand along the familiar green line that came down his forehead with familiarity.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried, my lip shaking and trembling even as he set his thumb against it.
“For what?” he laughed, wiping my tears away and drawing me into a beautiful kiss. “You did what you were told, for once,” he teased.
“I thought you were dead,” I bellowed.
“But I’m not,” he said and brushed his hand through my hair, pulling me down onto his chest. I embraced the warmth of him and knew from this moment on, I would never doubt him again.
“Thank goodness because… we have a lot to do,” I said with a bashful laugh. “Right?”
He nodded. “You got it.”
“I love you,” I said, breathing slower now. Happy to be back in the presence of the only real safety I had ever known.
A wry smirk tickled its way up his lips and with a wink in his tone he said, “It’s about time.