Ignite Me (2 page)

“Please tell me you’re wrong.” My voice breaks. My breath catches. “Tell me there’s a chance you could be wrong—”

Warner stares at me for what feels like a long time. “If
there were even the slightest chance I could spare you this pain,” he finally says, “I would’ve taken it. You must know I wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t absolutely true.”

And it’s
this
—his sincerity—that finally snaps me in half.

Because the truth is so unbearable I wish he’d spare me a lie.

I don’t remember when Warner left.

I don’t remember how he left or what he said. All I know is that I’ve been lying here curled up on the floor long enough. Long enough for the tears to turn to salt, long enough for my throat to dry up and my lips to chap and my head to pound as hard as my heart.

I sit up slowly, feel my brain twist somewhere in my skull. I manage to climb onto the bed and sit there, still numb but less so, and pull my knees to my chest.

Life without Adam.

Life without Kenji, without James and Castle and Sonya and Sara and Brendan and Winston and all of Omega Point. My friends, all destroyed with the flick of a switch.

Life without Adam
.

I hold on tight, pray the pain will pass.

It doesn’t.

Adam is gone
.

My first love. My first friend. My only friend when I had none and now he’s gone and I don’t know how I feel. Strange, mostly. Delirious, too. I feel empty and broken and cheated and guilty and angry and desperately, desperately sad.

We’d been growing apart since escaping to Omega Point, but that was my fault. He wanted more from me, but I wanted him to live a long life. I wanted to protect him from the pain I would cause him. I tried to forget him, to move on without him, to prepare myself for a future separate and apart from him.

I thought staying away would keep him alive.

Stupid girl.

The tears are fresh and falling fast now, traveling quietly down my cheeks and into my open, gasping mouth. My shoulders won’t stop shaking and my fists keep clenching and my body is cramping and my knees are knocking and old habits are crawling out of my skin and I’m counting cracks and colors and sounds and shudders and rocking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I have to let him go I have to let him go I have to I have to

I close my eyes

and
breathe
.

Harsh, hard, rasping breaths.

In.

Out.

Count them.

I’ve been here before, I tell myself. I’ve been lonelier than this, more hopeless than this, more desperate than this. I’ve been here before and I survived. I can get through this.

But never have I been so thoroughly robbed. Love and possibility, friendships and futures: gone. I have to start over now; face the world alone again. I have to make one
final choice: give up or go on.

So I get to my feet.

My head is spinning, thoughts knocking into one another, but I swallow back the tears. I clench my fists and try not to scream and I tuck my friends in my heart and

revenge

I think

has never looked so sweet.

THREE

Hang tight

Hold on

Look up

Stay strong

Hang on

Hold tight

Look strong

Stay up

One day I might break

One day I might

b r e a k

free

Warner can’t hide his surprise when he walks back into the room.

I look up, close the notebook in my hands. “I’m taking this back,” I say to him.

He blinks at me. “You’re feeling better.”

I nod over my shoulder. “My notebook was just sitting here, on the bedside table.”

“Yes,” he says slowly. Carefully.

“I’m taking it back.”

“I understand.” He’s still standing by the door, still frozen in place, still staring. “Are you”—he shakes his head—“I’m sorry, are you going somewhere?”

It’s only then that I realize I’m already halfway to the door. “I need to get out of here.”

Warner says nothing. He takes a few careful steps into the room, slips off his jacket, drapes it over a chair. He pulls three guns out of the holster strapped to his back and takes his time placing them on the table where my notebook used to be. When he finally looks up he has a slight smile on his face.

Hands in his pockets. His smile a little bigger. “Where are you going, love?”

“I have some things I need to take care of.”

“Is that right?” He leans one shoulder against the wall, crosses his arms against his chest. He can’t stop smiling.

“Yes.” I’m getting irritated now.

Warner waits. Stares. Nods once, as if to say,
Go on
.

“Your father—”

“Is not here.”

“Oh.”

I try to hide my shock, but now I don’t know why I was so certain Anderson would still be here. This complicates things.

“You really thought you could just walk out of this room,” Warner says to me, “knock on my father’s door, and do away with him?”

Yes. “No.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Warner says softly.

I glare at him.

“My father is gone,” Warner says. “He’s gone back to the capital, and he’s taken Sonya and Sara with him.”

I gasp, horrified. “No.”

Warner isn’t smiling anymore.

“Are they . . . alive?” I ask.

“I don’t know.” A simple shrug. “I imagine they must be, as they’re of no use to my father in any other condition.”

“They’re
alive
?” My heart picks up so quickly I might be having a heart attack. “I have to get them back—I have to find them, I—”

“You what?” Warner is looking at me closely. “How will you get to my father? How will you fight him?”

“I don’t know!” I’m pacing across the room now. “But I have to find them. They might be my only friends left in this world and—”

I stop.

I spin around suddenly, heart in my throat.

“What if there are others?” I whisper, too afraid to hope.

I meet Warner across the room.

“What if there are other survivors?” I ask, louder now. “What if they’re hiding somewhere?”

“That seems unlikely.”

“But there’s a chance, isn’t there?” I’m desperate. “If there’s even the slightest chance—”

Warner sighs. Runs a hand through the hair at the back of his head. “If you’d seen the devastation the way that I did, you wouldn’t be saying such things. Hope will break
your heart all over again.”

My knees have begun to buckle.

I cling to the bed frame, breathing fast, hands shaking. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t actually know what’s happened to Omega Point. I don’t know where the capital is or how I’d get there. I don’t know if I’d even be able to get to Sonya and Sara in time. But I can’t shake this sudden, stupid hope that more of my friends have somehow survived.

Because they’re stronger than this—smarter.

“They’ve been planning for war for such a long time,” I hear myself say. “They must have had some kind of a backup plan. A place to hide—”

“Juliette—”

“Dammit, Warner! I have to try. You have to let me look.”

“This is unhealthy.” He won’t meet my eyes. “It’s dangerous for you to think there’s a chance anyone might still be alive.”

I stare at his strong, steady profile.

He studies his hands.

“Please,” I whisper.

He sighs.

“I have to head to the compounds in the next day or so, just to better oversee the process of rebuilding the area.” He tenses as he speaks. “We lost many civilians,” he says. “Too many. The remaining citizens are understandably traumatized and subdued, as was my father’s intention. They’ve been stripped of any last hope they might’ve had for rebellion.”

A tight breath.

“And now everything must be quickly put back in order,” he says. “The bodies are being cleared out and incinerated. The damaged housing units are being replaced. Civilians are being forced to go back to work, orphans are being moved, and the remaining children are required to attend their sector schools.

“The Reestablishment,” he says, “does not allow time for people to grieve.”

There’s a heavy silence between us.

“While I’m overseeing the compounds,” Warner says, “I can find a way to take you back to Omega Point. I can show you what’s happened. And then, once you have proof, you will have to make your choice.”

“What choice?”

“You have to decide your next move. You can stay with me,” he says, hesitating, “or, if you prefer, I can arrange for you to live undetected, somewhere on unregulated grounds. But it will be a solitary existence,” he says quietly. “You can never be discovered.”

“Oh.”

A pause.

“Yes,” he says.

Another pause.

“
Or
,” I say to him, “I leave, find your father, kill him, and deal with the consequences on my own.”

Warner fights a smile and fails.

He glances down and laughs just a little before looking me right in the eye. He shakes his head.

“What’s so funny?”

“My dear girl.”

“
What?
”

“I have been waiting for this moment for a long time now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re finally ready,” he says. “You’re finally ready to fight.”

Shock courses through me. “Of course I am.”

In an instant I’m bombarded by memories of the battlefield, the terror of being shot to death. I have not forgotten my friends or my renewed conviction, my determination to do things differently. To make a difference. To really fight this time, with no hesitation. No matter what happens—and no matter what I discover—there’s no turning back for me anymore. There are no other alternatives.

I have not forgotten. “I forge forward or die.”

Warner laughs out loud. He looks like he might cry.

“I
am
going to kill your father,” I say to him, “and I’m going to destroy The Reestablishment.”

He’s still smiling.

“I
will
.”

“I know,” he says.

“Then why are you laughing at me?”

“I’m not,” he says softly. “I’m only wondering,” he says, “if you would like my help.”

FOUR

“What?” I blink fast, disbelieving.

“I’ve always told you,” Warner says to me, “that we would make an excellent team. I’ve always said that I’ve been waiting for you to be ready—for you to recognize your anger, your own strength. I’ve been waiting since the day I met you.”

“But you wanted to use me for The Reestablishment—you wanted me to torture innocent people—”

“Not true.”

“What? What are you talking about? You told me
yourself
—”

“I lied.” He shrugs.

My mouth has fallen open.

“There are three things you should know about me, love.” He steps forward. “The first,” he says, “is that I hate my father more than you might ever be capable of understanding.” He clears his throat. “Second, is that I am an unapologetically selfish person, who, in almost every situation, makes decisions based entirely on self-interest. And third.” A pause as he looks down. Laughs a little. “I never had any intention of using you as a weapon.”

Words have failed me.

I sit down.

Numb.

“That was an elaborate scheme I designed entirely for my father’s benefit,” Warner says. “I had to convince him it would be a good idea to invest in someone like you, that we might utilize you for military gain. And to be quite, quite honest, I’m still not sure how I managed it. The idea is ludicrous. To spend all that time, money, and energy on reforming a supposedly psychotic girl just for the sake of torture?” He shakes his head. “I knew from the beginning it would be a fruitless endeavor; a complete waste of time. There are far more effective methods of extracting information from the unwilling.”

“Then why—why did you want me?”

His eyes are jarring in their sincerity. “I wanted to study you.”

“What?” I gasp.

He turns his back to me. “Did you know,” he says, so quietly I have to strain to hear him, “that my mother lives in that house?” He looks to the closed door. “The one my father brought you to? The one where he shot you? She was in her room. Just down the hall from where he was keeping you.”

When I don’t respond, Warner turns to face me.

“Yes,” I whisper. “Your father mentioned something about her.”

“Oh?” Alarm flits in and out of his features. He quickly masks the emotion. “And what,” he says, making an effort to sound calm, “did he say about her?”

“That she’s sick,” I tell him, hating myself for the tremor
that goes through his body. “That he stores her there because she doesn’t do well in the compounds.”

Warner leans back against the wall, looking as if he requires the support. He takes a hard breath. “Yes,” he finally says. “It’s true. She’s sick. She became ill very suddenly.” His eyes are focused on a distant point in another world. “When I was a child, she seemed perfectly fine,” he says, turning and turning the jade ring around his finger. “But then one day she just . . . fell apart. For years I fought my father to seek treatment, to find a cure, but he never cared. I was on my own to find help for her, and no matter who I contacted, no doctor was able to treat her. No one,” he says, hardly breathing now, “knew what was wrong with her. She exists in a constant state of agony,” he says, “and I’ve always been too selfish to let her die.”

He looks up.

“And then I heard about you. I’d heard stories about you, rumors,” he says. “And it gave me hope for the very first time. I wanted access to you; I wanted to study you. I wanted to know and understand you firsthand. Because in all my research, you were the only person I’d ever heard of who might be able to offer me answers about my mother’s condition. I was desperate,” he says. “I was willing to try anything.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “How could someone like me be able to help you with your mother?”