I take a deep breath and shove the gun into my other pocket, but the man holding a gun to my skull removes them immediately. He shoves me so suddenly that I fall, completely losing my balance. He is immediately on top of me, pinning my arms and legs to the ground. His eyes are an odd shade of green, like lime green, his hair is jet black, his clothes are torn and muscles bulge down the length of his arms. I look up to see that Lamar has been stripped of his weapons as well, four people hold him back as he struggles towards me.
"Well, Lamar, we meet again," Angelina's voice says. "I apologize for this, but I just couldn't let her kill my ex-husband."
"Actually," Nate says as he stands up. "We were never officially divorced."
"Not in my book," Angelina says. She turns back to Lamar. "We will be having a short discussion and then will proceed with what we discuss. Clear?"
"No," Lamar says. "We won't be discussing anything until she is released."
"I don't know who you're talking about," Angelina says. "I have not captured anybody. Only pinned a silly little girl to the ground. We will have our discussion, or she will be raped and killed."
I thrash at her words, struggling in the man's grip. I notice that Lamar has lunged towards me, he grabs the man by his shirt and lifts him off of me, tossing him to the ground a few feet away, kicking him until he is unconscious, and snakes an arm around my waist after I have stood up.
"And how necessary was that?" Angelina asks. "It's not like you deserve her, Lamar, all she has done is put you in danger and almost gotten you killed. You deserve someone—"
"Enough!" Lamar yells. "I'm tired of you telling me things that are only lies, I don't care what you think of her. You've tried to kill her more than once, I don't see why you are still the leader of the factionless when you are only a coward from the very faction the whole factionless group hates. Or did they not know that you're from Erudite? Have you been lying to them too? How did you get into Candor, Angelina? It seems as though it would be quite a story."
"Since when do you speak to either of your parents like that?" Nate snaps. "We had a roof over your head, food on the table for every meal, a warm bed for you to sleep in at night, for years. And this is what we get?"
"It isn't much of a roof over my head when a ten year old is afraid of coming home every night from school. Or when every dinner is followed by a beating every night. When the next morning at breakfast, it is almost as though nothing had happened. The warm bed part was always a relief, although, after being told lies about how my mother had died, how it had been my fault for stressing her out so much, or getting whisked away by a tornado, and having to deal with pulling shards of glass out of the small of my back every week, cleaning up the blood with towels and sheets, it's a bit unsettling. And when the only reason I was being beaten was because my father cared more about what others thought of him and his family, and attention, and pity when his wife ran away."
"That is not true!" Nate barks. "That is a pure lie. And you know it, devil child."
"If it's a pure lie," Lamar says. "Then why do I still have the scars on my back? Why are you denying it with so much passion? And why the hell did I live in five different houses after you left for Amity?"
"I only left for Amity because I thought you would follow me!"
"How was I supposed to know you had gone to Amity? Or that you were even still alive?"
"You were supposed to be smart! No blood stains, no weapons, no proof that I had died!"
"I was ten!"
Nate starts towards us, pulling his belt out of the loops. I force Lamar to stand behind me, he tries to get around me just before I push him back and as the belt wraps around my wrist. My skin stings from the impact, I yank the belt from Nate's grip, I hold the buckle in my hand, pull my arm back, but Lamar stops me. He takes the belt from me, seconds later, a red streak rushes over Nate's face. Nate lunges at Lamar only to be thrown back, off of his feet. Lamar kicks him, Nate cries out. A few men move towards them, only to step back out of fear as Lamar kicks Nate again. Nate screams, calling for Lamar to stop. Lamar kicks him one last time before returning to my side.
Angelina sends men to aid Nate as she starts towards us, a knife in her hand. Lamar grabs my arm and guides me behind him, I get around him, slipping my knife out of the waistband of my pants. Angelina stands only inches from Lamar, whispering words to him so I can't hear. I notice that the knife is gone, she grabs Lamar's hand, and pressing something to his palm, then closes his hand around it. She walks away and immediately, he slips the object into his pocket where the gun used to be.
"Your weapons will be returned," Angelina says. "But we will be joining your group. You will remain leader, although, I will become second in charge, and whoever else was in the line up."
"No," Lamar says. "You can join our group, but, because I will continue with my position as leader, I choose who is second and third in charge."
"Go ahead."
"Stella will remain second in charge," Lamar says. "And you will be third."
"No," Angelina says. "She can be third, I will be second."
"Either she is second, or the deal is off."
"You can't turn down this deal, we know where your going, if you don't do this, members of your group will be killed off."
He hesitates before turning his head to look down at me.
"You have no other choice," I whisper. "We have to take this."
He nods. "You're still second in charge." I smile. He turns back to the factionless. "Fine," he says. "You will join our group until we reach the gate. I will remain leader of both groups. Stella will not be treated like she's not there."
"What is the rest of your group doing at the moment?" Angelina asks.
"Resting."
"Why?" A voice that I have never heard asks.
"Are we leaving later or something?" Angelina says.
"No! We have to leave now!" The voice calls. "We need to get there while it's dark!"
"We are resting now, waiting until somewhere close to dusk, once we have eaten, slept a little, and are ready, we will head towards the gate again," Lamar says. This was my plan.
"That's not a bad idea," the voice says. "Great job, Polar!"
"It wasn't my idea," Lamar says. "It was her's." He nudges me with his elbow.
"Erm," the voice says. "What's her last name?"
"Thorn," another voice says.
"Great job, Thorn!" The first voice says. "She should be our second in charge!"
"Pipe down, Randal," Angelina says. "You're drawing too much attention to yourself."
I turn on my heel and leave, I can't stand being around her any longer. I walk back towards the group, they have all found one big tree for all of us to sleep under. Alice, Faith, and Grace are all asleep, Anthony and Adrian are having a quiet conversation, careful not to wake the others. I look over my shoulder to that Lamar followed me, and the factionless followed him. He turns to them to give them orders, they turn around and all sit down a few trees away. The fence is still clear in my vision, a few details jumping into my sight.
Lamar and I sit down with our friends and Anthony. Lamar takes me into his arms, I touch a hand to his chest as he brings his mouth down to my ear. "Sleep," he whispers. "I won't let anything hurt you." I smile.
"Are you going to sleep?" I ask.
"I don't know," he says. "Don't worry about me, just rest. And eat in the morning."
I laugh lightly and stare up at the darkening sky that slowly lights up with stars. I feel Lamar's breaths even, and his heartbeat slow. I close my eyes, staring into darkness for seemingly forever before I fall into a peaceful, dreamless sleep. The kind of sleep that I long for, and savor every moment of.
* * *
The sun has reached the treeline.
Lamar is still asleep, everyone else is awake. I know they all want to wake him so he can say what to do next, but Angelina and I have finally agreed on something, not to wake him.
The factionless and our little group gather around us, Angelina sits next to us, they all watch and wait for him to wake up. I'm afraid of what might happen when he does.
His eyes open, he looks at me, smiles, but then sees everyone else. He looks back to me, his smile gone. "What is this?" He asks.
"They got bored and decided to watch you until you woke up," I say, plainly.
An outburst of questions begins.
"What do we do next?"
"You really sleep that long?"
"How is he leader when he's the last one up?"
"SHUT UP!!!" Faith yells, immediately catching everyone's attention. "Let them eat and then we can discuss things, alright?"
Most of them mumble "fine," but several say other things under their breath.
I bury my face in Lamar's chest. "I can't believe you took that long to wake up."
"How long have you been up?" He asks.
"Only an hour . . ." I say, my voice slightly muffled by his shirt.
"You could've woken me," he says.
"No," I say. "Angelina and I had finally found something we agree on."
"Letting me sleep?" I nod. "That's it?"
"What did you expect?" I say.
"Something more than whether I should be woken or not," he says.
I sigh. "I'll go get my bag so we can eat." I do. I lie down next to him, only to be pulled back into his arms. I pull out an apple and bite into it, Lamar reaches around me, into the bag and pulls out another apple. As soon as I have eaten my apple to the core, he has too, I pull a plastic garbage bag that we all decided to use and open it, we toss the cores and lay together, hoping that nobody notices us.
"So," Angelina says, slowly walking towards us. Lamar tenses at the sound of her voice. "You two are done eating, are we leaving or not?"
I nod. "Yes," I say. "We're leaving."
Lamar and I stand as he calls for everyone's attention. He lets them know that it's time to start running and the order we will run in. Lamar and I in front, Grace behind us, Alice and Anthony behind her, Faith and Adrian behind them, and the factionless— and Nate— run behind them. No one questioned, they all knew it was because we don't trust them.
We start out jogging, Lamar and I occasionally glancing over our shoulders to see if anyone has disobeyed. Nobody has. Yet.
I feel a poke at my arm, I look over to see Lamar smiling at me, then he sprints away. I mumble under my breath about how ridiculous he is and sprint after him. I catch up to him in moments, we keep running and I look over my shoulder to see every still in line, they run just a bit faster to keep up with us.
After a short while, the fence is just yards away. I am gasping for air, failing to accurately fill my lungs, nevertheless, I force myself to keep running until I can reach my hand out and touch the metal bars that seem to never end in either direction besides downwards.
Lamar is immediately at my side, looking through the small spaces between the metal bars with me. It is hard to tell whether there are buildings back there, or I'm just looking at the fence. "Is that a building back there?" I ask him.
"It looks like it," he says. He turns to me, smiling. "There's something out there."
"We need to be careful then," I say. "Just like you wanted to."
He nods. "I know," he says. "We'll have to let them rest for a little while," It is getting pretty dark at this point, the moon is still hidden behind the leafs of the trees. "After that, I'll open the gate, we'll go through and make our way towards the middle of this place, if it's a city, the biggest building will be where we go."
I nod. "Okay," I say. I lean against the fence and watch as the details of each person come into my vision.
When they are just feet away, Grace asks," why'd you two run? I thought we weren't doing that."
"We got bored," I say as cover up. "And we decided that we wanted to check out the space between the fence before you."
"Why?" She asks breathily. "We can see just as well as the rest of you."
"We know that," Lamar says. "And why does it matter that we went ahead? Nothing happened to anybody, no one got hurt. There is no reason to complain."
Grace sighs. "Whatever."
Lamar starts explaining the plan, and how cautious we need to be. We're splitting into two groups to decrease our probability of getting seen. Everyone that we had with us originally is in our group with about 10 factionless. Making 17 of us. The rest are with Angelina, their group is a little bigger, but they said they would be okay.
Lamar snakes an arm around my waist and leads me towards a small black space on one pillar of the fence. He opens it to show 12 buttons and a screen. He types a series of 8 numbers into the box.
I notice Adrian behind us, muttering the numbers under his breath over and over again.
28040255