OTHERBORN: IN THE WASTELANDS ALONE

CHAPTER 3

JAYDEN

Maddie pulls me up off my butt, and I trip a little while ascending, still disoriented from my travels. If only she knew the things I had to do to get to where I am now. Flashbacks of the caves bombard my mind, but I push them down into hidden chambers of "things I ignore".

I found my high school friend and that is what matters today. I can tune out the rest.

Walking with her group, we reminisce with caution, something I haven't done in years. I've been fixated on the present for so long. The summers have been brutal, their heat rivaling that of the volcanoes bubbling along the coasts far north. Winter is near, but I wonder if even that will make a difference in this lifeless climate. I haven't seen a scorpion in months even.

Fin trots beside me, and as I turn my face from him he leans forward to keep his eyes locked on mine.

"You look sad," he mumbles. "Do you miss Eugene?"

"Fin," Maddie warns him.

"It's all right." I give her a dismissive wave. "The kid means well." Then I tell him: "I do miss Eugene. Very much."

An ancient railroad track winds through the desert. We wander along this remnant of an age when trains whooshed through here, carrying people or goods.

Nowadays, the only goods, truly, are people.

"Do you remember when the Mag took down Granite High?" I venture.

Maddie slows her pace so Fin and I can keep up with her. "You were with me, Jayden." She massages her sunburned arm. "I thought you'd died in the quakes, and if not that then the lava, the . . ."

". . . the chaos," I add, then leap onto a rusty, warped steel rail and wobble as I balance, walking steadily along it. "Yeah, I thought you died too."

Fin moves as if he'll join me on the rail, but Maddie whispers his name and he abandons his effort to be "like the big kid," as we pirates say of new recruits.

Maddie can't know I'm a pirate.

She can't know what I've done.

If only she could.

But she can't.

Fin pouts. "Just wanted to see what it was like."

Maddie takes his hand. "You're too small to balance on the rail like Jayden, and if you fell you'd get more hurt than he would."

Her little brother nods, seeming to still appreciate his sister's counsel, and this makes me want to leave these pure, wholesome siblings alone and not corrupt them with my influence.

I hop off the rail. My duty remains as assigned to me by my superior, and I cannot fail the lads back home. Our prosperity depends on this mission. As do our resources, our leverage, and everything we hold dear in this, our treacherous life.

But I will not betray Maddie.

That much I promise.

I'll find a way to keep her and her brother out of harm's way.

As for the rest of her group, I am not so sure I can extend the same privileges to everyone because I only have so much left in me, and saving people drains us like nothing else can.

Eugene knew that better than anyone.

"After I was separated from you," I tell Maddie, "I got how quickly everything in society can go straight to shit." I glance at Fin. "Er, can go to crap. I survived, but it was hard. I migrated from tent to shelter among odd clans of boys and girls who remained, and those didn't hold us together long, so I had to find government assistance. That became my next goal, to link up with something bigger than me."