Ignite Me (12 page)

“You can’t believe what?”

“You’re giving up.” I hear the accusation in my voice and I do nothing to hide it. “You’re just giving up.”

“What choice do I have?” he asks, his eyes hurt, angry. “I’m not trying to be a martyr,” he says. “We gave it a shot. We tried to fight back, and it came to shit. Everyone we know is dead, and that battered group of people you saw out there is all that’s left of our resistance. How are the nine of us supposed to fight the world?” he demands. “It’s not a fair fight, Juliette.”

I’m nodding. Staring into my hands. Trying and failing to hide my shock.

“I’m not a coward,” he says to me, struggling to moderate his voice. “I just want to protect my family. I don’t want James to have to worry that I’m going to show up dead every day. He needs me to be rational.”

“But living like this,” I say to him. “As fugitives? Stealing to survive and hiding from the world? How is that any better? You’ll be worried every single day, constantly looking over your shoulder, terrified of ever leaving James alone. You’ll be miserable.”

“But I’ll be alive.”

“That’s not being alive,” I say to him. “That’s not living—”

“How would you know?” he snaps. His mood shifts so suddenly I’m stunned into silence. “What do you know about being alive?” he demands. “You wouldn’t say a word when I first found you. You were afraid of your own shadow. You were so consumed by grief and guilt that you’d gone almost completely insane—living so far inside your own head that you had no idea what happened to the world while you were gone.”

I flinch, stung by the venom in his voice. I’ve never seen Adam so bitter or cruel. This isn’t the Adam I know. I want him to stop. Rewind. Apologize. Erase the things he’s just said.

But he doesn’t.

“You think you’ve had it hard,” he’s saying to me. “Living
in psych wards and being thrown in jail—you think that was difficult. But what you don’t realize is that you’ve always had a roof over your head, and food delivered to you on a regular basis.” His hands are clenching, unclenching. “And that’s more than most people will ever have. You have no idea what it’s really like to live out here—no idea what it’s like to starve and watch your family die in front of you. You have no idea,” he says to me, “what it means to truly suffer. Sometimes I think you live in some fantasy land where everyone survives on optimism—but it doesn’t work that way out here. In this world you’re either alive, about to die, or dead. There’s no romance in it. No illusion. So don’t try to pretend you have any idea what it means to be alive today.
Right now
. Because you don’t.”

Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures.

No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.

I swallow, hard

one

two

three

and steady myself to respond quietly. Carefully.

He’s just upset, I’m telling myself. He’s just scared and worried and stressed out and he doesn’t mean any of it, not really, I keep telling myself.

He’s just upset.

He doesn’t mean it.

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to live. Maybe I’m still not human enough to know more than what’s right in front of me.” I stare straight into his eyes. “But I do know what it’s like to hide from the world. I know what it’s like to live as though I don’t exist, caged away and isolated from society. And I won’t do it again,” I say. “I can’t. I’ve finally gotten to a point in my life where I’m not afraid to speak. Where my shadow no longer haunts me. And I don’t want to lose that freedom—not again. I can’t go backward. I’d rather be shot dead screaming for justice than die alone in a prison of my own making.”

Adam looks toward the wall, laughs, looks back at me.

“Are you even hearing yourself right now?” he asks. “You’re telling me you want to jump in front of a bunch of soldiers and tell them how much you hate The Reestablishment, just to prove a point? Just so they can kill you before your eighteenth birthday? That doesn’t make any sense,” he says. “It doesn’t serve anything. And this doesn’t sound like you,” he says, shaking his head. “I thought you wanted to live on your own. You never wanted to be caught up in war—you just wanted to be free of Warner and the asylum and your crazy parents. I thought you’d be happy to be done with all the fighting.”

“What are you talking about?” I say. “I’ve always said I wanted to fight back. I’ve said it from the beginning—from the moment I told you I wanted to escape when we were on
base. This
is
me,” I insist. “This is how I feel. It’s the same way I’ve always felt.”

“No,” he says. “No, we didn’t leave base to start a war. We left to get the hell away from The Reestablishment, to resist in our own way, but most of all to find a life together. But then Kenji showed up and took us to Omega Point and everything changed, and we decided to fight back. Because it seemed like it might actually work—because it seemed like we might actually have a chance. But now”—he looks around the room, at the closed door—“what do we have left? We’re all half dead,” he says. “We are eight poorly armed men and women and one ten-year-old boy trying to fight entire armies. It’s just not
feasible
,” he says. “And if I’m going to die, I don’t want it to be for a stupid reason. If I go to war—if I risk my life—it’s going to be because the odds are in my favor. Not otherwise.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid to fight for
humanity
—”

“You have no idea what you’re saying,” he snaps, his jaw tensing. “There’s nothing we can do now.”

“There’s always something, Adam. There has to be. Because I won’t live like this anymore. Not ever again.”

“Juliette, please,” he says, his words desperate all of a sudden, anguished. “I don’t want you to get killed—I don’t want to lose you again—”

“This isn’t about you, Adam.” I feel terrible saying it, but he has to understand. “You’re so important to me. You’ve loved me and you were there for me when no one else was. I never want you to think I don’t care about you, because
I do,” I tell him. “But this decision has nothing to do with you. It’s about
me
,” I tell him. “And this life”—I point to the door—“the life on the other side of that wall? That’s not what I want.”

My words only seem to upset him more.

“Then you’d rather be dead?” he asks, angry again. “Is that what you’re saying? You’d rather be dead than try to build a life with me here?”

“I would rather be dead,” I say to him, inching away from his outstretched hand, “than go back to being silent and suffocated.”

And Adam is just about to respond—he’s parting his lips to speak—when the sounds of chaos reach us from the other side of the wall. We share one panicked look before yanking the bedroom door open and rushing into the living room.

My heart stops. Starts. Stops again.

Warner is here.

TWENTY

He’s standing at the front door, hands shoved casually in his pockets, no fewer than six different guns pointed at his face. My mind is racing as it tries to process what to do next, how best to proceed. But Warner’s face changes seasons as I enter the room: the cold line of his mouth blossoms into a bright smile. His eyes shine as he grins at me, not seeming to mind or even notice the many lethal weapons aimed in his direction.

I can’t help but wonder how he found me.

I begin to move forward but Adam grabs my arm. I turn around, wondering at my sudden irritation with him. I’m almost irritated with myself for being irritated with him. This is not how I imagined it would be to see Adam again. I don’t want it to be this way. I want to start over.

“What are you doing?” Adam says to me. “Don’t go near him.”

I stare at his hand on my arm. Look up to meet his gaze.

Adam doesn’t budge.

“Let go of me,” I say to him.

His face clears all of a sudden, like he’s startled, somehow. He looks down at his hand; releases me without a word.

I put as much space between us as I can, the whole time scanning the room for Kenji. His sharp black eyes meet mine immediately and he raises one eyebrow; his head is cocked to the side, the twitch of his lips telling me the next move is mine and I’d better make it count. I part my way through my friends until I’m standing in front of Warner, facing my friends and their guns and hoping they won’t fire at me instead.

I make an effort to sound calm. “Please,” I say. “Don’t shoot him.”

“And why the hell not?” Ian demands, his grip tightening around his gun.

“Juliette, love,” Warner says, leaning into my ear. His voice is still loud enough for everyone to hear. “I do appreciate you defending me, but really, I’m quite able to handle the situation.”

“It’s eight against one,” I say to him, forgetting my fear in the temptation to roll my eyes. “They’ve all got guns pointed at your face. I’m pretty sure you need my interference.”

I hear him laugh behind me, just once, just before every gun in the room is yanked out of every hand and thrown up against the ceiling. I spin around in shock, catching a glimpse of the astonishment on every face behind me.

“Why do you always hesitate?” Warner asks, shaking his head as he glances around the room. “Shoot if you want to shoot. Don’t waste my time with theatrics.”

“How the hell did you do that?” Ian demands.

Warner says nothing. He tugs off his gloves carefully,
pulling at each finger before slipping them off his hands.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “They already know.”

Warner looks up. Raises an eyebrow at me. Smiles a little. “Do they really?”

“Yes. I told them.”

Warner’s smile changes into something almost self-mocking as he turns away, his eyes laughing as he contemplates the ceiling. Finally he nods at Castle, who’s staring at the commotion with a vaguely displeased expression. “I borrowed,” Warner says to Ian, “from present company.”

“Hot damn,” Ian breathes.

“What do you want?” Lily asks, fists clenched, standing in a far corner of the room.

“Nothing from you,” Warner says to her. “I’m here to pick up Juliette. I have no wish to disturb your . . . slumber party,” he says, looking around at the pillows and blankets piled on the living room floor.

Adam goes rigid with alarm. “What are you talking about? She’s not going anywhere with you.”

Warner scratches the back of his head. “Do you never get exhausted being so wholly unbearable? You have as much charisma as the rotting innards of unidentified roadkill.”

I hear an abrupt wheezing noise and turn toward the sound.

Kenji has a hand pressed to his mouth, desperately trying to suppress a smile. He’s shaking his head, holding up a hand in apology. And then he breaks, laughing out loud, snorting as he tries to muffle the sound. “I’m sorry,” he says,
pressing his lips together, shaking his head again. “This is not a funny moment. It’s not. I’m not laughing.”

Adam looks like he might punch Kenji in the face.

“So you don’t want to kill us?” Winston says. “Because if you’re not going to kill us, you should probably get the hell out of here before we kill you first.”

“No,” Warner says calmly. “I am not going to kill you. And though I wouldn’t mind disposing of these two”—he nods at Adam and Kenji—“the idea is little more than exhausting to me now. I am no longer interested in your sad, pathetic lives. I am only here to accompany and transport Juliette safely home. She and I have urgent matters to attend to.”

“No,” I hear James say suddenly. He clambers to his feet, stares Warner straight in the eye. “
This
is her home now. You can’t take her away. I don’t want anyone to hurt her.”

Warner’s eyebrows fly up in surprise. He seems genuinely startled, as though he’s only now noticing the ten-year-old. Warner and James have never actually met before; neither one of them knows they’re brothers.

I look at Kenji. He looks back.

This is a big moment.

Warner studies James’s face with rapt fascination. He bends down on one knee, meets James at eye level. “And who are you?” he asks.

Everyone in the room is silent, watching.

James blinks steadily and doesn’t answer right away. He finally shoves his hands into his pockets and stares at the
floor. “I’m James. Adam’s brother. Who are you?”

Warner tilts his head a little. “No one of consequence,” he says. He tries to smile. “But it’s very nice to meet you, James. I’m pleased to see your concern for Juliette’s safety. You should know, however, that I have no intention of hurting her. It’s just that she’s made me a promise, and I intend to see it through.”

“What kind of promise?” James asks.

“Yeah, what kind of promise?” Kenji cuts in, his voice loud—and angry—all of sudden.

I look up, look around. Everyone is staring at me, waiting for me to answer. Adam’s eyes are wide with horror and disbelief.

I meet Warner’s gaze. “I’m not leaving,” I tell him. “I never promised I would stay on base with you.”

He frowns. “You’d rather stay
here
?” he asks. “Why?”

“I need my friends,” I tell him. “And they need me. Besides, we’re all going to have to work together, so we may as well get started now. And I don’t want to have to be smuggled in and out of base,” I add. “You can just meet me here.”

“Whoa—wait—what do you mean we can all work together?” Ian interrupts. “And why are you inviting him to come back here? What the hell are you guys talking about?”

“What kind of promise did you make him, Juliette?” Adam’s voice is loud and accusing.

I turn toward the group of them. Me, standing beside Warner, facing Adam’s angry eyes along with the confused,
soon-to-be-angry faces of my friends.

Oh how strange all of this has become in such a short period of time.

I take a tight, bracing breath.

“I’m ready to fight,” I say, addressing the entire group. “I know some of you might feel defeated; some of you might think there’s no hope left, especially not after what happened to Omega Point. But Sonya and Sara are still out there, and they need our help. So does the rest of the world. And I haven’t come this far just to turn back now. I’m ready to take action and Warner has offered to help me.”