Wildfire • Bellamy Blake [2]

12. Join or Die

THE ARK: ONE YEAR AGO

"Ha! I beat you!" I exclaimed, laughing as I knocked Sinclair's chess piece away.

"You cheated!" He declared.

"How did I cheat?"

"I don't know, you just did."

"God, you're such a sore loser."

"You're a sore winner."

"I'm competitive. Sue me."

"I just may."

"So, you said that if I beat you, I could go on a spacewalk."

"I said that when I thought that I was gonna win."

"Come on, please! Don't break my heart," I whined, pouting.

"If I say yes, you have to stop pulling those pranks on the engineers."

"You can't prove that those pranks were me!"

"I found a spray can bottle in your room when I came over last week. You can't hide anything from me."

"One day, I will."

"I also noticed something odd in your room. A small device. I don't know exactly what it is, but what's curious is the parts you got for it. Those are extremely hard to come by. How did you manage to get them?" He asked, raising a suspicious brow in my direction.

"I traded for them," I lied smoothly.

I wasn't going to tell Sinclair that I was illegally acquiring and stealing mechanical parts. That would get me sent to the Skybox. I'm not 18 yet, so I would only be locked up until my retrial. But my birthday was coming up in a few months which meant that I was gonna have to be much more careful in the future.

"You traded for them?"

"Mhm."

"Harley, I'm not accusing you of anything. But hypothetically, if you were doing anything illegal, I would suggest you stop before you get caught. I don't need to lose one of my best students."

"Is that all I am? One of your students?"

"You know you're much more than that," Sinclair said, putting his hand overtop of mine. "I will always be there to protect you Harley, but I can't help you if you end up in the Skybox."

"I'm not doing anything illegal."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"If I find out you're lying to me... it's going to break my heart."

My heart slammed against my chest as I thought about hurting Sinclair. He'd been so good to me since my parents died, and I didn't want to let him down. But I was lying to him, and I didn't want to do that. So I had two options: continue stealing and be more careful, or clean up my act.

And I knew which one I had to choose.

PRESENT DAY

"It's been an hour since we passed the airplane wreckage. Seeing as we're using a map without any distances, it could be days before we reach the village," Jasper said.

It had been a long journey so far. It was raining pretty hard out and unfortunately, Lincoln's map wasn't very helpful. I mean, we knew where to go, but the map wasn't as detailed as ours on the Ark were. There was no specification of distance, or anything that would help us know how far we're actually supposed to go.