Part One
Stranger
I'm confident
but I can't pretend I wasn't terrified to meet you
I knew you could see right through me
I saw my life flash right before my very eyes
and I knew just what we'd turn into
I was hoping that you could see
take a look at me so you can see
- Secondhand Serenade
Chapter 1
Fear.
It can make people do crazy things, to themselves and to others around them. People place fear in others so that they can have…
Control.
It’s what the Directrix had over all of us now. Well, the ones of us that are left. But the one thing that the Directrix didn’t know was that there would be…
Resistance.
Those of us that are left are tired of the Directrix still trying to put fear in us. Few of us have even actually tried to bring them down. But with limited resources, nothing was able to even put a scratch in the Directrix’s defenses.
No one had tried to do any damage to the Directrix for a while. Probably because everyone knew that they would give us harsher consequences.
Chicago hadn’t seen any major consequences in a couple of months. The Directrix would try and cause trouble just so they could come and ‘straighten out’ the problem. That’s how they worked if there hadn’t been any commotion in a few months.
But the one thing that they couldn’t really get to physically was my dreams, yet somehow my dreams couldn’t stray away from certain images that the Directrix had planted in my head.
I shot up in bed, covered in sweat, the image of gold, green, and blue swirling in my head. I’d had the dream again, the one that had haunted my memory for so long now. No matter what, it always seemed to come at me when I least expected it to, making me feel awful.
I turned over slowly, careful not to wake Lyric. She was six now, and still as tiny as ever. She looked a lot like me, with the bright blue eyes and dark, curly brown hair. We’d inherited that from our father, who’d inherited it from his mother, Grandma Cora.
She and Lyric were the only people I had left now, thanks to the Directrix. It was the power that took over seven years ago after the national government was destroyed. No one knew how it came to be, but they all knew one thing: The Directrix was capable of doing anything they wanted.
Over six hundred million people died when they took over, so there weren’t many of us left. And those who did survive were scattered out now. We had tried to build everything from the ground up, but then the Directrix would just tear it down again.
I’d lost some of the most important people to me during the rise of the Directrix. My father was lost in one of the bombings in downtown Chicago where he worked. They had the place completely leveled in fifteen seconds. No one was found alive. My mother had died a couple months after he did, giving birth to Lyric. After that, I was nine with a baby to take care of. I didn’t know what I would have been able to do if my grandma wasn’t there to take care of us.
She’d lived in Atlanta, before it was destroyed. That’s where we used to live, but we’d moved to Chicago when I was four for my dad’s job.
Then there was…
No, I couldn’t think about him. Not if I wanted it to come back and haunt me later.
I got up from the mattress slowly, trying not to wake Lyric. I found my leather jacket slung over the back of one of the old broken chairs and put it on over my tank top, covering up my curves that I knew I had, just didn’t wish to show everyone else. Next were my boots, which were sitting next to the chair. Then I went over to the dresser with the broken mirror to get my most prized possessions: my knives and my blue sapphire necklace.
My father had given me knives for my eighth birthday. He was in expert in fighting and taught me everything he knew. I taught myself other things after he died, though. I had to or I wouldn’t have been here today. I had three of them. Two went on either of my boots and the last went on my waist.
The last thing was my necklace. It was a sapphire stone that hung on a silver chain. It belonged to my great-grandma, who passed it on to my grandma. Grandma Cora didn’t have a daughter, so when my mom and dad got married, she gave it to my mom. I’d gotten it for my eighth birthday and I hadn’t taken it off since.
“There,” my mother had said when she’d given it to me. “You look so pretty and grown up with it on. It matches the color of your eyes perfectly. They’re the same pretty blue that your great-grandfather had and the same as your grandma’s also. And your dad’s.” She looked at me in the eyes. “You need to take care of this. It needs to stay in the family, especially with you. You’re going to need it when you’re older.”
I looked in the cracked mirror and gazed at the dark pink scar going down the left side of my face. It started right above my eye and trailed down to about a centimeter away from my lips. It’d been there for seven years now, so I didn’t mind seeing it every day. In fact, people knew me by my scar. Well, and that I was probably capable of killing them if they messed with me also. They’d seen me in action multiple times.
“Rayney?” I heard from behind me. Lyric’s eyes were open slightly and she was staring at me.
“It’s okay, Lyric,” I said, walking toward her and tucking the covers around her more. “You can go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” she yawned, turning over and falling asleep again.
I made my way out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. I could smell potatoes on the wood-burning stove. And when I got into the kitchen, Grandma was just setting the plate of them down on the table. I sat down and took a bite.
“Good morning,” she said. “Or can you not say that anymore either?”
I swallowed. “Yes, I can say that, just not …” I looked away from her and back at the potatoes.
“Rayney,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Honey, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. You were only nine.”
“I could have,” I said, looking up at her. “I…”
“Rayney, no. You couldn’t have. You need to get over it. It’s been over seven years now.”
I stabbed one of the potatoes with my fork. “Is it wrong that I still blame myself?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “There was nothing you could have done about it. Just…try to get over it. You need to.”
It was silent for a moment. “I’m having the dream again,” I said.
“Still?” she asked, sitting down beside me.
“I don’t know why,” I said. “It’s been happening for the last couple of days.”
“Is it the same, or different?” she asked.
“It’s the same. It’s like I can hear his voice calling me, wanting me to come with him.”
“You haven’t seen anything, have you? Like a dark figure or something?”
I looked at her strangely. “What do you mean?” I asked.
She shook her head and mumbled to herself about it being the right time. She got up and walked back toward the stove.
“Right time for what?” I asked.
“What?” she asked, turning back toward her.
“You said it was the right time for something. What is it?”
“It’s not time for anything just yet it seems. When it is, I’ll show you,” she said.
I was about to ask her what, but then Lyric was at the foot of the stairs. She was rubbing her eyes and yawning, walking toward me.
“I thought you went back to sleep?” I asked.
“I couldn’t stay asleep after you woke me up,” she said in her little voice as she crawled into my lap.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Here, you can eat some of these.”
I handed her my fork and she stabbed the biggest potato she could. But right before she stuck it in her mouth, I grabbed the fork out of her hand and cut them up for her. After I gave her back the fork, she began to eat again.
“I’m going to go out and pick some of the vegetables really quick, and then I’m going into town,” Grandma said.
“We’ll go with you,” I said. “I need to go somewhere.”
“Yes, you do. I’m glad you want to go somewhere other than that clearing of yours,” she said.
“I don’t go there all the time,” I said, stealing one of the potatoes Lyric was about to stab with her fork. She narrowed her eyes at me, but it was just too cute to take her seriously. I smiled.
“You go at least three times a day,” she argued.
“That’s because you only go into town once a week,” I said. “And I don’t even know why you call it ‘town’. It’s called rubble.”
“People still live in that ‘rubble’,” she said. “I was going to bring some of the vegetables that I picked to Lysander. You remember him.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, even though I did.
“Yes, you do,” Grandma said. “I know you do. You saved him from that Guard.”
“Okay, yeah, I remember,” I said. “But most people don’t remember the good deeds that I do. They only remember the other things. I scare people.”
“You shouldn’t act the way you do toward them then,” she said.
“They shouldn’t get in my way,” I said. “Then they wouldn’t piss me off.”
“Rayney, watch it,” she said, angrily. Her eyes cut to Lyric, who had just finished her last potato. “Honey, go get dressed now so we can get going.”
“Okay,” she said, happily, oblivious to what happened.
Once she was gone, Grandma turned back toward me. “Just try and act civil toward people, please?”
“I’ll act civil once they have one of my knives in their throat and they’re dead,” I said. I stood up. “I’m going to help Lyric.”
She was shaking her head when I turned around to go up the stairs.
Lyric was trying to put on her boots when I got into our room. She had them both on the wrong foot, so I walked over and sat on the floor in front of her.
“I thought I did a good job,” she complained as I pulled them off her feet.
“If they were on the right feet, you’d be good,” I said.
While I put her boots on right, she grabbed a piece of scrap paper and a pencil. She started drawing little stars all over it.
“Rayney, why do I use this hand to write and you use your other?” she asked.
“Because I’m left handed and you’re right handed,” I said. “I don’t know why, but that’s how I am.”
“And you can throw your knives with your left hand,” she said, pointing to the one at my waist.
“I can actually throw with both,” I said. “And fight.”
“That’s awesome!” she said, her eyes bright. “I wish you could teach me.”
“You’re too young,” I said.
“I’m six and a half!” she complained. “That’s old enough.”
“Maybe we’ll start sometime soon,” I said.
“Yay!” she squealed. “I can’t wait! I want to be just like you.”
“Lyric, no, you don’t,” I said, giving her a serious look.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “You’re strong and tough and pretty.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m mean. That’s why everyone turns away from me when I come anywhere close. You’ll see when we go into town.”
“They do not,” she said. “I don’t.”
“That’s because you’ve seen a nicer side of me. Plus, you haven’t been around any other person than me and Grandma since you were born. Not many anyway.”
She looked down. “I do want to be like you, though,” she whispered. “You’re my big sister. And you’re good. I know you’re good.”
“You don’t know everything, Lyric,” I said, and picked her up. She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. I walked down the stairs with her and back into the kitchen.
“Where’s Grandma?” she asked, looking around.
“I think she’s out in the garden,” I said, setting her down. “Go out and see if she needs any help.”
“Okay,” she said, and headed out the back door, leaving me alone.
I went to the stove and got another plate of potatoes since Lyric ate all of the ones Grandma had given us. I sat down at the table and ate, not tasting anything. My dream was still replaying in my head, over and over again. It was like it wouldn’t leave me alone. I could still hear everything crashing around us…
No. I really needed to stop blaming myself, just like Grandma said. But how could I, when I knew I shouldn’t have let go of his hand? Then, maybe…
“Rayney, look at this carrot!” Lyric shouted as she came through the back door. I was still staring down at my plate. Somehow, through all the what-ifs, I’d finished all of my food. Her voice brought me back.
“Let me see,” I said, turning toward her.
She held up a carrot that had to be about a foot long. She smiled as she crawled up into my lap and put it in my face. “It’s the biggest one we’ve ever grown! I wonder how it got so big.”
“Just like you’re going to,” I said. “By getting strong and eating everything that it was supposed to.”
“Why don’t you go wash your hands since you got them all dirty, Lyric?” Grandma said as she walked through the back door with the bag of vegetables from the garden. “We’ll leave once I get all of these in the bag.”
She ran into the washroom and we could hear her splashing the water around.
“Lyric told me you were going to teach her how to fight with those knives of yours,” Grandma said disapprovingly. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“She needs to learn how to take care of herself if anything were to happen,” I said. “I was a little older than her when Dad started teaching me. And now that he’s not here to teach her, I need to. I probably won’t start with her anytime soon.”
“I think your father shouldn’t have taught you when he did,” she said. “You were too young.”
“Who knew only two years later I would have to use what he taught me. If you didn’t want him teaching me, you shouldn’t have let him learn. He was your son. You had a say.”
“He was twenty when he started learning,” she said. “And I encouraged him to do it.”
My eyes narrowed. “Then why do you think I shouldn’t have learned everything?” I asked.
“Because, again, you were too young, just like Lyric,” she said. “Maybe if you were a little older…”
“But then he wouldn’t have been there to teach me enough. Then where would that leave us then?” I asked.
“You probably wouldn’t be like you are right now,” she said. “Angry with everything and everyone.”
“I have a right to be angry,” I said through my teeth.
“A right?” she laughed. “There are no rights anymore. No one has them.”
“Fine then,” I said, standing up. “I can do whatever I want.”
She sighed. “It’s not like I’d be able to control you, would I?”
I sighed, too, and went to hug her. “I’m sorry I am the way I am. I just…”
“You’re a special young woman,” she said, pulling back to look at me with her blue eyes like mine. She ran one finger over my scar.
“I hate that thing,” I said.
“It shows how strong you are, where you’ve been,” she said.
“What I’ve done,” I continued.
“Again,” she said. “You were only nine.”
“I still should have tried something,” I said.
“I’m all clean!” Lyric announced as she came back into the kitchen.
“Are we ready to go then?” Grandma asked.
“No,” I said, but walked toward Lyric, taking her hand in mine.
“Let’s go, Rayney!” Lyric said, dragging me toward the front door.
Grandma laughed. “At least she’s more enthusiastic than you are,” she said.
“She always will be,” I said, rolling my eyes.
It wasn’t that long of a walk toward the edge of town. I could smell the smell of smoke before I could see anyone. Then the low sound of voices filled the air as we turned the corner of the first building.
Everything didn’t look as bad as it had been a few years before. The houses had been fixed up to look almost halfway decent. You could still see some of the damage of them bombing everything – the splinted wood, the burn marks. But you couldn’t tell in the spirit of the people.
The three of us walked toward one of the old houses that had actually made it through everything. There, sitting in a rocking chair outside the front door, was Lysander. He smiled when he saw us coming toward him. Lyric let go of my hand and ran toward him.
“Mr. Lysander!” she laughed as she ran in front of him and crawled into his lap.
Lysander smiled down at her with his dark brown eyes, his silver hair disheveled. “Why, Miss Lyric, you’re in a happy mood today,” he said.
“Lyric’s always in a happy mood no matter what,” I said as Grandma and I stopped in front of them. Grandma sat down in the rocking chair next to him and I sprawled out on the ground in front of them.
“She makes up for the enthusiasm Rayney doesn’t have,” Grandma said, looking down at me. I could tell she was still thinking about our previous conversation.
“Why are you this way, Rayney?” Lysander asked. “When you were little, you used to be just like Lyric.”
“Well, Lyric hasn’t had to go through everything I have, has she? She was born after the bombings,” I said, shielding the sun with my hand.
“It seems like no one has gone through what you’ve gone through. That’s what you think,” Lysander said. “Everyone has gone on with their lives and so do…”
I sighed angrily and stood up. “I’m tired of having everyone telling me how to deal with all of this,” I said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
I could feel their eyes on me as I walked away and further into town. But once I was in everyone’s view, I could feel all of their eyes on me. As I walked by, everyone moved further back from me. They could probably see the pissed off look on my face.
As everyone backed away from me, I also could feel someone following me, too. I looked over my shoulder with my eyes narrowed.
A few dozen feet behind me, there was someone, walking in the same direction I was. He was tall with brood, muscular shoulders and huge arms. His dark hair was cropped short and I could tell his eyes were dark brown as he stared intently as he followed me. I turned back around and continued walking. Everyone was looking between me and the guy behind me with a mixture of worry, fright, and anticipation.
I walked a few more quick paces and looked behind me at the guy again. He wasn’t staring at me like he had been. Instead he was talking to one of the women that I wasn’t acquainted with. She was looking at me over his shoulder and talking to him. I gave her a look, and then ducked into one of the alleys.
As I walked down the alley, I kept checking over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t have the guy following me. But once I neared the end, I realized that that’s what it did. Just end. There was nowhere for me to go. Three of the houses made nowhere for me to run out in case the guy found me again.
I turned back around and started to slowly make my way out of the alley. Once I got to where I had good visual of everyone, I looked around for the guy. I did spot him. He was heading in the opposite direction, out toward the edge of the trees.
I spotted the woman that he had been talking to, staring at me from the same place she’d been. I walked toward her, hands balled into fists. I didn’t know the woman and she didn’t know me either. I didn’t like anyone to know my name. But they did know my face, which was all I wanted them to. When she realized that I was heading in her direction, fear came into her eyes and she backed away from me.
I stopped in front of her, my eyes blazing. “What did you tell that man?” I asked, my voice filled with venom.
“N-nothing,” she stammered. “He d-did ask w-where you l-lived.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked again, grabbing her by the arm. Everyone was watching our exchange with frightened looks on their faces.
“I t-told him,” she said. “T-then he l-left.”
“He didn’t ask for a name?”
“No, but I d-don’t e-even know it.”
“Good,” I said, and pushed her away from me. “If he comes back, tell him I’ll be watching.”
I turned and started back toward Lysander’s. No one would step away as I walked by. They just looked at me with expressions of fright.
“Move!” I yelled. “Get to something useful!”
They backed away then, and went on with whatever they had been doing before my exchange with the woman. They were still watching me closely, though. I felt like an animal in a cage, people’s faces pressing in on me to get a closer look. I pulled the knife from my waist and held it so the blade was running up along my forearm. Their eyes left me then.
When I made it back to Lysander’s, the three of them were still sitting in the front. Lyric was sitting on a little stool beside Grandma, though, drawing things in the dirt below her with a stick. When she saw me coming, she threw down the stick and ran to me.
“Where did you go?” she asked, an angry expression on her face. “You’ve been gone for forever. Grandma wanted us to do something for her, but you weren’t here!”
“Oh,” I said, taking her hand and walking toward Grandma and Lysander. I looked at Grandma. “What do you need?”
She pulled the bag of vegetables, which was now half empty, into her lap. “I need you to go find someone selling some bread. I don’t have any time to make any, so I thought we’d just trade for some until I find the time to make some.”
I sighed, taking the bag from her. “We’ll be back in a little while,” I said.
Lyric grabbed my hand as we walked further into town. She skipped beside me, oblivious to everyone’s eyes on us. I looked around for anyone willing to trade vegetables for bread…and the only person was the woman I threatened before. I sighed, tightening my hold on the bag and Lyric.
She saw us coming, the woman. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying, when she looked in our direction. She stood still when we stopped in front of her.
“Hi!” Lyric said, smiling up at her, before I could bring myself around to speak. “Can we trade you for some bread you’ve got?”
The woman’s eyes were locked on me, but then she looked down at Lyric. “Sure,” she said. She walked over and grabbed a bag that was much like ours and put five loafs of bread inside. She then handed it to me and I handed her our bag with the vegetables.
“Keep it all,” I said, putting the bag on my shoulder. I looked down at Lyric. “What do you say?”
“Thank you!” she said enthusiastically.
We turned and started walking back toward Lysander’s. I reached down and picked up Lyric, who wrapped her arms and legs around me. I felt her lift her hand and wave at everyone we passed, but I kept my eyes straight ahead.
I did look back once, but my eyes traveled beyond the woman. There were two guys walking in the opposite direction. I could tell that the one on the right was the same guy that had been following me. I could only see that the other guy was only an inch or two shorter than the other, just as muscular, and dark blond hair. There was something about him…but I just kept going.
***Yay!!!1 So what do you guys think?!? Rayney's so awesome, right?!? And Lyric is such a cutie!!!1
Comment, Vote, and Like!!!1***