New World Order (34 page)

She sniffed
and pulled back enough to look at me. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

Silently, I wiped her tear-stained cheek with my thumb, not ready for her to ask me that question. Her image had been the only thing that kept me sane throughout my imprisonment, and I had worked really hard to keep that image pure, untainted by all the sadistic events I had been forced to live through. I wasn’t ready yet
to cross that imaginary line and start sharing with her.

I pulled her back against me and hid my face in the crook of her neck in case she saw the lie in my eyes. “I’m fine.”

Ted stepped out of the cockpit. I kissed Sunny’s forehead. “I’m going to say hi to Ted.”

Sunny took a step away so I could move toward Ted. I slapped him on the shoulder. “That was the coolest thing I ever saw, brother.
How long have you been flying her?”

Ted was smiling from ear to ear. “Including today?” he asked and laughed. “You had us all a little worried, Jack.” He hugged me and slapped me on the back. “I’m glad to see you in one piece.”

“You don’t know how close I came to not being in one piece,” I said.

My hands balled into fists as I thought about it. Ryder had been about to disembowel me in front
of his entire flock. He was going to put Teegan, a tiny little girl, in a hole to sleep for the night. He’d put my friends in a hole in the ground. And as I thought about it, all of the atrocities came crashing back in on me, and my chest tightened with the kind of revenge I hadn’t allowed myself to hope for during my captivity.

“What kind of weapons is this bird kitted out with? Bombs? Missiles?
Rockets?”

Ted looked confused. “No weapons. You should know that.”

Sunny put a hand on my arm, her face a mix of concern and bewilderment. “We agreed our exploration of the continent would be peaceful, remember?”

“That was before I met Ryder. That man needs to
die
,” I said and turned my focus on Ted. “There’s a big house in the center of the compound where that coward is hiding. I say we
fly over and give it everything we have with semiautomatics.”

Sunny glowered at me. “Are you sure it’s only Ryder you’re going to kill?”

I looked away from the intensity of her gaze. No, it wasn’t only Ryder I would end up killing.

I glanced over my shoulder at Teegan, who was sitting next to Jin-Sook and eyeballing Reyes and Summer with curious horror. For one so young, she had been through
a lot. My memory of the recruiters raiding their settlement was still raw, and I hadn’t even been there to witness it. It was their screams that haunted me; yet Teegan was both an eyewitness and a victim. I didn’t know where her parents were, or even if they were still alive, but her sister had been with us when we first arrived at the compound, and I’m pretty sure I saw her a few times in
Ryder’s house. She was most likely his newest wife.

I put my hand over Sunny’s where it rested on my arm and let my fingertips brush the material of her exoskeleton. One day in the very near future, I was coming back to this compound, dressed in my own suit, and I was going to put a bullet right between Ryder’s eyes.

“You’re right,” I said, nodding. “Too many innocent people would die.”

“Innocent people are already dying,” Ted said. “We have problems back home, and we’ll need every bit of our ammo.”

That had Sunny’s attention. “Is it bad?”

Ted looked at her in surprise. “You know?”

“I didn’t know before I left, Ted. I swear,” she said.

My eyes shifted from Sunny to Ted. “What the hell is going on?”

Ted pointed out the window, drawing our attention to the archers gathering
along the top of the fence. “The natives are getting restless. Let’s get out of here and set down somewhere else, and we’ll talk about it. By the way, I put together a bag for you. I figured you were going to need a change of clothes,” he said as he pulled a backpack from a shelf over the seats. He set it down beside me and returned to the cockpit.

I looked at Sunny, my mind flashing back to
that moment in the compound when she looked at me with remorse and said that we would talk about it later.

“I want to know what’s going on,” I said.

But as the motor started up, Teegan leaped from her seat, ran to me, and threw her arms around my leg, demanding my attention.

Sunny

I looked down at the little girl clutching my husband’s leg, big fat
tears rolling down her feverish face. Her cheek was so red with infection it looked like it was on fire.

“Let’s take care of her, and then we’ll talk. I promise.” I had to yell over the roar of rotors.

“There should be a medical kit onboard,” Jack said. He bent down and scooped her into his arms.

The Osprey left the ground, rising straight up, and walking became a balancing act. I looked
out the small round window and watched Ryder’s city get smaller as we climbed higher in the air. My stomach somersaulted, and my palms became slick with sweat. I looked over at Summer. She was clenching her teeth, one hand gripping the edge of her seat and the other Reyes’ leg. He had his arm around her and his mouth close to her ear. Hayley was casting covert glances at them, Zach beside her.
Jin-Sook, Eli, Naoki, and Talon sat side by side on a bench seat that ran vertically against the hull, craning their necks to get a look out the small windows.

I walked toward the cockpit at the front of the aircraft and leaned in between the two pilots. “We need a medical kit, Ted.” The other pilot glanced at me, but I didn’t recognize him. His name badge read “Ayers.”

Ted thumbed behind
him. “In the locker behind my seat.”

“Thanks,” I said and started to leave.

“Sunny,” Ted said. I stopped and leaned back in. “Is everything good? You’re okay?”

I knew he was asking about the baby. “We’re fine, although I’m super thirsty. And I haven’t had a chance to tell Jack.”

He nodded. “There are bottles of water stored under the seats. What do you know about the fighting that’s happening
back home?”

I patted his shoulder, not really wanting to have this conversation over the noise of rotors. “Like you said, find a place to set down, and we’ll talk.”

I ducked out of the cockpit, found the locker behind Ted’s seat, and took out the medical kit. It was better equipped than our first aid kits and included an antibiotic ointment with topical pain relief. Teegan wouldn’t let anyone
but Jack touch her, and I wondered what had happened to lead Jack to develop a paternal relationship with the girl.

I left him to it and found the bottles of water. I passed them out to everyone and sat in the empty seat across from Jack and Teegan. As soon as I handed him the bottle, he practically ripped the top off and guzzled it. I got up and retrieved a couple more.

The ill-fitting,
loosely woven clothing he was dressed in—not entirely unlike something Grandfather in
Heidi
would wear—drew attention to the amount of weight he had lost since the last time I’d seen him. His beard had grown in, his hair was unruly, and he needed a shower. Yet aside from the clothes, this version of Jack was intimately familiar to me. This was the man who’d never left my side when we were in hiding
from General Powell. And now as I watched him rock the girl to sleep, my heart swelled even more for him. I rested a hand over my little guy and acknowledged that he was one lucky kid.

Teegan fell asleep just before we landed, whether a side effect of the pill Jack had given her or just exhaustion I wasn’t sure. He laid her on the bench seat and tucked a blanket around her as everyone shuffled
out of the aircraft.

Ted came out of the cockpit. “Are you two coming?” he asked, pointing to the door.

“Can you give us a few minutes?” I asked.

“Take as long as you need.”

Jack got up and sat beside me, taking one of my hands in his. I didn’t know how to begin. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to tell him he was going to be a father, but everyone but him knew I was pregnant and it was
just a matter of time before someone blurted it out. But I had absolutely no idea how he was going to react.

The ringing silence in the aircraft was almost deafening after the roar of the engines, and it stretched on as I wondered how to begin.

“You and I have been through a lot together, Sunny,” Jack said, breaking the silence. “There’s nothing this world can throw at us that we can’t tackle
together, right?”

“I know,” I said. I hoped he still felt that way when I told him about Alex, but first things first. Squeezing his hand, I raised it to my lips, kissed his palm, and then rested it against my tummy. A tiny, almost nonexistent baby bump had sprouted two days ago and felt hard as a rock, but Jack’s face didn’t register the subtle difference in my body. “I’m pregnant, Jack. We’re
going to have a baby.”

His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His crystal-blue eyes opened wider as he stared at me, and then they trailed down to look at the hand he held against my belly. His fingers started to move, exploring my tiny baby bump. A smile spread across his face. “A lot of things went through my mind when you said you needed to talk…” He stopped, took my face in his hands,
and kissed me.

For a few precious moments the rest of the world receded, and I allowed myself to be immersed in our shared intimacy. I let go of the anxiety about the fighting back home and suspended my regret over what had happened with Alex. We were going to be parents, and that was a big deal; regardless of the trouble the universe was throwing at us, we deserved our moment to celebrate
the life we had made together.

He pulled away and smoothed my hair away from my face. “Why would you be afraid to tell me? Why did I see remorse in your eyes?”

Our moment was over too soon. On to the other, less happy news I had to tell him. Resting my forehead against his, I took a deep breath to gather my strength. I told him everything, from the recruiters shooting me, to finding out I
was pregnant, to Reyes coming with us, meeting up with Hayley and Alex, and my role in Alex’s death. Jack didn’t say anything. He just stared at me.

“I didn’t mean to kill Alex.” I couldn’t find it in my heart to cry over him. Even though his death was accidental, he was a threat to Jack’s safety. “Jack, say something. Anything.”

He hooked his arm around my waist and pulled me to him. I
breathed a sigh of relief and wrapped my arms around his neck. “You don’t hate me?”

“I love you way too much to ever hate you,” he said against my ear. “What happened to Alex isn’t your fault. He put you in a bad position, and you were just protecting Reyes.” He kissed my neck and then brought his face up to look at me. “I’m more upset about what’s going on back home. I thought we had made
a lot of progress toward peace between the Dome and the Pit.”

“Don’t blame everyone for the fault of a few. I hold Doc, West, Powell, and Leisel responsible. They’re the ones creating all the trouble.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy, Sunny. There are still
bourge
and
urchins
, and until we bridge that gap, there will never be peace.”

I put a hand over my baby bump. “A wise person told me that
our child is the first of a new generation and glorious proof that there is no such thing as bourge and urchins—only people.”

Jack laughed softly. It was the first time I’d seen him laugh since I had found him. A smile sprang to my own lips.

“Would this wise person be Dena?” he asked.

I nodded. “How’d you know?”

“Who else uses a word like
glorious,
” he said fondly. “Give me a minute to
get changed, and we’ll go out and talk to the others.”

He opened the bag Ted had packed for him and pulled out a set of army fatigues and boots. He shed the clothing he was wearing, letting it fall in a heap on the floor. The amount of weight he’d lost was a little distressing, but I did my best to keep it from registering on my face.

He raised his brows suggestively when he saw me looking
at him. “Don’t get any ideas, Mrs. Kenner. There’s a child present.”

I smiled. “I was just thinking that I’m going to have to make you a few good meals when we finally get home.”

He pulled his pants on, zipped them, and did the belt up an extra notch. “You know I love you, right?”

I nodded. He bent down and kissed me.

“I’m going to make a confession: you can’t cook,” he said with a smirk.
I opened my mouth in mock horror, and he smiled broadly. He sat down beside me to put on his boots. “I was thinking that maybe I can take over kitchen duties.”

“I’m okay with that. Of course, as long as I have tomatoes, I’m good. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed them.”

He shook his head ruefully. “Tomatoes,” he repeated, looking at my tummy. “How did I not clue in?”

The voices outside
the Osprey suddenly got a lot louder, alerting us to an argument in progress. Jack pulled his shirt over his head, and we both went to the door.

Ted had his hands on the copilot’s chest, restraining him. “
Back off, Ayers!
” he yelled in the man’s face.

Reyes was glaring at the copilot, poised and ready to spring at him.

“Reyes,” I said and hopped out of the plane. Wearing his suit, he could
snap Ayers in two. “Don’t you dare.”

“Dare
what?
” he retorted in disgust, never taking his eyes off Ayers. “To waste my energy on that idiot?”

Hayley moved to stand in front of Reyes, blocking his way to Ayers. “I told you before, it was a different world back then. He just doesn’t know better.”

Reyes dragged his eyes away from Ayers and looked at Hayley. “That’s no excuse.”

“
What
is going
on?” I asked and took a step forward.

Jack pulled me back. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Kenner. Pregnant ladies don’t break up fights.”

“They do when they’re wearing exoskeletons,” I said and pulled my arm away.

“Sunny.” Something in his tone made me stop and look at him. His eyes bore into mine, as if to say,
You’re carrying our child, and you should know better
. Yeah, that was a lot of information
to get out of one, short glare. But I knew Jack as well as I knew myself, and he knew me better. So the resulting guilt I experienced wasn’t entirely unexpected.