Hindered Hope

Chapter 11

Zane woke up sitting cross-legged in the Arms and Combat Training room.

He shook himself awake, and his first thought was that he was far away from where he had fallen asleep. His second thought was the absurdity of sleepwalking. And his third thought was that the color of his shirt had once again changed.

He slammed his fists into the mat below him, in the process lifting himself up. He clambered to his feet and fixed his gaze on the gray shirt thrown over his upper body. Gray. Just the color his deteriorating mind would choose. The color of New Vancouver. The color he hated to look at.

Again he saw Wawrzysnki's face, the bulging eyes, the broad grin. But this time, the face spoke, and it scared Zane. ""You belong to me," it said. "You can't escape your destiny."

Zane snarled and stomped away and out the room, fed up with his mind and the world.

He entered Dmitri's room to find a stack of Forthrite uniforms on the coffee table, complete with padding around the vital areas and a pistol hooked on a belt at the waist. Dmitri was sipping coffee nearby. "Where did you go?" he asked Zane.

Zane didn't feel like explaining himself. "Morning walk," he lied.

Dmitri narrowed his gaze, sensing the lie, but said nothing. "Suit up." He gestured to the pile of uniforms. "Before you say anything or object, this mission is going to be done according to me. The comms and suits are mandatory."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Zane protested.

"Good," the man said, smiling.

Mallory was nearby, an apple in her hand and the Forthrite uniform already donned. "It's the shit, dude," she said. "We're all decked out like spies."

It took Zane a moment to realize that Dominique, Mallory's street partner from when she was just a homeless kid in Rio, was also in the room, her arms crossed and her face expressionless. Her skin was a shade darker than Mallory's, which Zane had never noticed before, and she had redone her hair in one long braid down her back, reaching almost to her waist. "Except you're not spies," she said. "You're illegal robbers that don't legally exist."

Mallory took a bite out of her apple. "You always gotta crush my moment?" she demanded, opening her mouth and showing her friend half-chewed apple.

"Close your mouth, you freak," Dominique retorted. Zane was amazed at the girl's maturity, and he often had to remind himself that she wasn't much older than he was. She was older than Mallory by about a year and had recently turned nineteen. Dmitri was about four years older, so they made for an odd combination to be running an underground movement. But their orders were followed without question, despite the age gap between them and their soldiers.

Mallory tugged Zane away from Dominique and Dmitri, grabbing a uniform from the table. She shoved it into his arms with her free hand and shooed him toward the bedroom. "Go change. You're still early but these suits are sick, dude!" she ordered, and he hustled off.

He gratefully took off the gray shirt, not wanting to look at it any longer. He ruffled his hair a little bit, returning it back to how Joseph liked it from the way his sleepwalking self must have styled it. He pulled on the uniform pants, and they reminded him of the uniform he'd stolen to hijack the missions, just with more padding. He fastened the belt and pulled on the top half of the uniform. He admired the emblem of Forthrite, the broken chain, on his shoulder.

When he emerged from the bedroom, Marcus had joined Mallory and Daisy was lying on her back on a sofa, her legs over the back and her head falling toward the floor. Her uniform was on and it wrinkled unflatteringly in her weird position.