Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) (3 page)

“
So you think you somehow
telepathically got a whiff of this thing’s feelings?”

Alessa could tell he was trying to be
supportive, but the expression on his face betrayed his skepticism.
It was frustrating, of course, but then again, what she was telling
him was pretty incredulous. After all, it’s one thing to have
paranormal experiences when you’re secretly trapped on a TV show
where the producers are subjecting you to whatever comes next in
their twisted storyline. It’s a whole other thing to experience it
in real life…

“
Are you sure you weren’t
just disoriented from the snow? Maybe having a mild panic attack?
We’re both hungry, it’s cold – it can happen,” he
soothed.

Alessa shook her head. It
was times like these she wished she had her sister to confide in.
Isaac tried, but he was still such a
guy
– he was always looking for the
logical explanation, for a practical solution. But sometimes she
just needed to talk to someone who would believe what she was
saying, no matter how crazy or irrational it sounded.

Alessa understood why Janie had hung
back on the drama and not blown her cover with the producers –
after all, the rebels had very few people left on the inside to
keep an eye on the Ruling Class, and it seemed Regina, the rebel
leader, was relying heavily on Janie’s assistance – but that didn’t
mean she didn’t feel Janie’s absence acutely. It was like a
constant pang in her side, and a situation like this only
intensified her longing.

“
I know it sounds crazy,
Isaac. But I know what I felt.”

Isaac held her hand tightly, an
apology in his eyes. “I just don’t understand, Alessa.”

She smiled softly.
“Neither do I. I thought the same thing as you at first – that
maybe I was just freaking out – but then when the knife connected,
I got a distinct surge of physical pain, even though nothing had
hurt me. And I felt confusion, and fear, and sadness… all
human
emotions. But
there was something primitive about them, too. Something…
off.”

Isaac nodded and brought her chilly
fingers to his lips before continuing. “I believe you, Less. I just
wish I could tell you what it was.”

“
I know,” she
whispered.

They lay beside each other in silence
for a few moments, draped in each other’s limbs as they turned the
day’s events over in their minds, the storm still raging outside.
Alessa concentrated on the rhythm of Isaac’s breathing and tried to
relax, taking comfort in the fact that whatever had been stalking
her was long gone.

Isaac turned toward Alessa. His blue
eyes shone in the light of the fire as he lay propped on his side,
his long lean body mirroring hers, a soft piece of tawny hair that
had dropped forward on his forehead casting flickering shadows on
his face. Alessa swept the strands from his eyes and trailed her
fingers down the side of his jaw. Bringing her mouth to his soft
warm lips, she closed her eyes and let the day’s tensions melt away
in the heat of his body.

He kissed her back with intensity,
sliding his hands down the small of her back and pulling her close,
the electricity buzzing between them. Alessa gasped at the feel of
his body against hers, releasing a soft moan as he traced the line
of her chin and then her neck with kisses. Her body shivered with
anticipation.

Holding his face in her hands, she
gazed deep into the sparkling oceans of his eyes, the ravages of
the storm outside utterly forgotten. “I missed you, Isaac Mason,”
she murmured.

Isaac rolled over suddenly, pinning
her beneath him as she pulled her legs tight around his waist. The
reflection of the flames danced in his eyes as if he were lit from
within. He grinned wickedly.

“
Oh, Less,” he growled. “I
haven’t even
begun
to remind you what you’ve been missing.”

The next morning Alessa woke feeling
contented and at ease. The warm press of sunlight caressed her
shuttered eyelids through the opening of the shelter, the delicious
aroma of roasting food mingling with the faint scent of wood smoke.
She breathed deeply and fluttered her eyes open to find Isaac
huddled over the fire.

“
Hungry? I’ve been boiling
these acorns for a half-hour and I think I finally got the
bitterness out.”

“
Acorns?
That’s
what smells so
good?” She sat up to take a closer look at a large can sitting on
the edge of the flames.

Isaac laughed. “No, those are the
onions you’re smelling – I found a whole patch of them yesterday.
They’re small, but very flavorful once you roast ’em up. Here,
try.”

Isaac used a smooth piece of bark to
scoop her up some food from the containers in front of him, which
she gratefully consumed in one ravenous bite. She never imagined
she’d be so happy to start the day with wild onions and acorns, but
Isaac’s cooking was certainly hitting the spot. “Mmmmm.”

He smiled brightly. “You
like?”

“
Very much so,” she
nodded.

“
Didn’t realize I was a
man of so many talents, did you?”

Thinking back to the night
before, she had to admit she agreed. She knew Isaac was kind and
smart and funny – and, as he’d proven last night, gifted in
other
ways as well – but
she didn’t know he could cook. It hadn’t even been a week yet since
they’d left Paragon, and thus far they’d been subsisting on the
cold rations that Regina had packed in their supply kits. But the
food was running out, which is why Isaac had gone off to scavenge
the previous afternoon while Alessa built their shelter from the
impending storm.

The frosty ground sparkled in the
sunlight as Alessa wolfed down her breakfast, then she packed up
their blankets and provisions while Isaac finished off the remains
of the meal.

Isaac moaned suggestively, drawing
Alessa’s attention. “Mmm, I forgot how good it feels to have a hot
meal.”

Alessa laughed. Food, of course – her
mother had always said that the way to a man’s heart was through
his stomach. Or had she? Sometimes it was difficult for Alessa to
distinguish her real memories of her mother from the ones the
producers had planted in her mind with the stitch, as part of the
backstory for her character on the drama. She wondered if Isaac had
the same problem after his role as a wealthy landowner from
1917.

“
You’re not planning on
running back to that farm on me, are you?” she teased.

Isaac raised his eyebrows. “Please – I
almost went stir-crazy. Though we did have some excellent
breakfasts…”

Alessa thought back to all the meals
she’d shared with Janie in the cafeteria at Eastern State
University, the fake early 21st century college that her character
on the drama had attended, back when she’d thought that Janie was
just her best friend, and the fact that the year was actually 2114
had somehow slipped her mind. She shook her head.

“
It’s still just so
unbelievable to me that they were able to mess with our heads so
much and us not even realize it,” she mused. “How could I not
recognize my own sister?”

Isaac shrugged. “How could I let them
replace my older brother with a little girl and not notice? I
wonder what’s become of that poor kid,” he sighed. He shook his
head in disgust. “Whatever technology they’re using to do this is
dangerous, Alessa. That’s why we’re fighting, right? They need to
be stopped.”

Alessa was still a little wary about
the fighting part, but she agreed wholeheartedly that they needed
to be stopped – she’d lost a year of her life to the machinations
of the Ruling Class, and she still didn’t fully understand what
they were up to. And neither, she suspected, did the people of
Paragon, most of whom didn’t even know about the Ruling Class’s
existence.

“
I think the harder part,”
she explained, “is going to be getting all the citizens on board
once we
do
have a
plan to stop them. Remember that their food is still being poisoned
daily with those drugs, so between their work schedules and the
nightly dramas, they generally don’t have any will left to look
deeper at their lives. That’s kind of the point, I guess – to keep
everyone in a mild state of pleasant distraction so no one notices
they’re being played.”

Alessa liked to think she
was sharper than most people, and it’d even taken
her
years to notice that
anything was amiss. Like most of Paragon’s citizens, she’d just
been happy to have escaped the scourge of the viral outbreak that
had ravaged the planet, claiming everyone she knew except
Janie.

“
Yeah, but as soon as you
realized what was going on, once you saw what they did to Joe
–”

Alessa shook off the painful memory of
her friend and old flame – and Isaac’s brother – being brutally
murdered at the hands of Paragon’s secret guards, for the minor
infraction of stealing food, no less.

“–
you took a stand. I’m
sure everyone else will do the same once we get them off the drugs
long enough for their minds to clear.”

“
I don’t know. Even once I
found out about the Ruling Class, it took me a while to come to
terms with what was going on, remember?” And, if she was being
honest, she was
still
struggling to maintain the courage to take on their faceless
enemies – she certainly didn’t want to end up back in Paragon’s
nightmarish prison, or on another drama for that matter. “Before
Joe died, I stood on the sidelines watching him – and you – fight
back for half a year almost. I was in denial. I kept thinking that
the rebels must have it wrong, that we
needed
someone to figure out how to
run our society so we didn’t make the same mistakes that got us
here, and if the Ruling Class was doing that for us, maybe we
should just let them.”

“
But you didn’t realize
then how bad it was – how corrupt they’d become. Or how many
atrocities they’d committed along the way.”

“
That’s true. Once I
started training with you and saw it firsthand, I couldn’t deny it
any longer. I guess we’ll just need to make sure we have proof, to
convince everyone that
we’re
the good guys here, the ones that are trying to
protect them.”

“
Definitely,” Isaac
agreed. “But first things first – we can’t do any of this while
hiding in Paragon’s shadow. We need our own base – somewhere
outside
of Paragon’s
control – where Regina and the rebel leaders can come up with a
plan to confront the Ruling Class head on. And we’re gonna find
them one, right?” He took Alessa’s hand, pairing his firm squeeze
with a comforting grin.

Alessa returned his sentiment then
turned back to gathering their things. When Isaac wasn’t paying
attention, she let out a long sigh. Yes, they’d find a site for the
command center and report back to Regina, as long as the cold or
the hunger or the virus – or whatever was following her – didn’t
get them first.

After hours of hiking, the sun
lingered over the horizon, the sky rapidly darkening from blue to
graphite in its wake. Isaac fished the compass out of his bag and
took note of the direction they’d come from, making sure to point
their path directly away from Paragon.

“
We’ll probably need to
settle in soon – in a few minutes it’ll be too dark to navigate
securely.”

“
No complaints here,”
Alessa replied, stretching her calves. “We must have walked, what,
twenty miles today?”

“
Yeah, great progress.
Just wish I knew what we were looking for – nothing out here but
trees.”

Alessa did her best to reassure him.
“I’m sure we’ll find something once we get a little closer to the
city.”

“
You think we’re headed
the right way – towards the city, I mean? I was only a teenager
when we came to Paragon, back when it was a government quarantine
zone. I don’t really remember how we got there,” he shrugged. “I
think I spent most of the trip in shock over my parents – Joe
handled the actual getting there part.”

Alessa nodded in understanding – Isaac
had only been 16 when he’d watched his parents succumb to the
horrific virus. She’d been 18 when her family arrived at the
quarantine zone a few weeks after Isaac and Joe, but her parents
had navigated the journey. She hadn’t paid much attention to their
route because she hadn’t foreseen a future in which they wouldn’t
be around to guide her. She’d been too preoccupied at the time
trying to keep up Janie’s spirits and comfort her little brother,
who had fallen ill in their travels. The thought of him – and her
parents – being wrenched from her and Janie at the gates stabbed at
her heart. It’d been eight years since she lost them, but it still
felt like yesterday.

Blinking back tears, Alessa pressed
on, Isaac guiding her from behind as she picked her way through the
gloom. After a few moments, Isaac spoke up again, an unexpected
note of hope in his voice.

“
I know this hasn’t been
easy on either of us, but I do really feel like every step we’re
taking is heading in the right direction. I never really believed
in fate, you know? But it’s starting to feel like everything that
happened with my parents, with Joe, was for a reason – to bring me
here, so I can finally do something to help.”