JAMES
Click. Click. Click.
Comforting pastel splashed against the walls instead of blood-stained flames. The more he watched the cheesy rom-com, the less he thought of the cracking tree. It never left in full, but if he focused on another, golden filled voice, he could drown out the white noise.
Sleep proved a different story.
His dreams painted gruesome details of the what ifs, the hows. His imagination proved his worst enemy against time's wicked wiles. He sat in darkness and his grip on life faltered with painful, smoke-inhaled breath.
No more promise. No more goals.
He picked up his datacam and no longer experienced the joy of a captured moment. He wrote words and experienced flatlining beats. His heart no longer thrummed with possibility.
In a bed not his own, he wasted to nothing.
He sighed when the next rom-com ended and he flicked to the next one on the list. Unsure of how many he had watched and repeated — better than slipping into Starcross matches; better than mulling over the past he couldn't return to no matter how much he longed for it.
Another tear slipped down his cheek as he forced himself against the pillows. Why hasn't she come up with my Medis? Time unpredicted, his heart hammered at worsening possibilities, and shots of ember panic jolted him to his feet at the oddity to the daily occurrences. Out of bed, weakness swirled in his knees, right into his lungs when he opened the door.
He put an ear against the walls. Voices downstairs stirred him into action. One hand to steady himself, he crept for the stairway. Back against his failing support, he waited and listened for information. He dared not hope for a different truth.
Fire scalded his skin.
"We searched the entire area around Roxton after the Eastpoint attack," a robotic voice said, and James tilted around the corner, where Mrs. Falae and a masked Elite stood in the foyer, arms crossed. "We couldn't find Rayan Falae."
James sank to his knees and stifled a groan at autumn's endless disappearance. An autumn he should've stayed in. An urge to punch the floor swallowed his knuckles, but he listened.
"Is there anything else?" Mrs. Falae asked, unfazed by anything the universe threw at her. "What of the reports of Insurgent smuggling operations?"
"There is," the Elite said. "I found something on the road between Eastpoint and Roxton." Crimson eyes unfeeling, frozen in calm time, a shot of envy coursed through him when he held out a small bag. James pursed his lips when Mrs. Falae searched through the bag, unable to listen to much else except the conversation on the first floor. "About that intel, the First Insurgency was using nearby routes to Kalto. Do you wish for us to send in a buster squad?"
Mrs. Falae's lack of an answer tugged him around the corner, where a broken tracker sat in her palm. The Elite waited with no sign of impatience or inconvenience. Nothing more than a statue, unaffected by the world around them. Mrs. Falae brought out her datapad with another glance at the shattered tracker.
"No," she said. "I'll do it myself after I've done basic training with the new Elite intake. What I want you and your team to do is keep eyes out between Roxton and Kalto." Her fingers wrapped around the broken tracker while steel filled her expression with nary a crack. "... my son is alive, Maror, and I want him found, but I don't want to spook him on the off chance the First Insurgency has him. Find him."
Rayan's... alive?
It swelled through his heart and brought the flaming pain to crush his chest.
Why didn't she?
Thoughts and memories attacked him. A missing hoverbike — an empty mansion. Relief, confusion, and then superheated rage clutched his throat and it took all his strength to not choke on the newfound pain. She was safe with Rayan. She had to have been. He no longer doubted the truth in Mrs. Falae's words. Why is he alive, and she's not? He would've followed her, wouldn't he? Wouldn't he have come home?
Come here, to me?
Too many questions and no answers but the simple truth.
Ava was dead.
Rayan got out alive.
Abandoned to his wilted autumn, stuck in darkness, bile rose into his throat when he tucked his knees against his chest. He struggled against the wave for a few more moments to listen closely.
He needed answers.
I need them to live.
"I understand," Maror said with a respectful bow. "I'll relay the orders to the field team. There were no sightings of someone matching his description, but there were some rumours of a hoverbike similar riding into Kalto a few weeks ago."
Contrasting his hot anger, hope filled Mrs. Falae's smile he found himself unable to touch. "That is all I need, Maror," she whispered a mother's relief. "It confirms what I suspected. Rayan must've ripped out the tracker on his escape from Eastpoint. You can return to your duties. I'll be in touch with further orders."
His breath quickened.
He had to move, to act, but his body complained, whined, gave in to despair. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he forced himself to his feet and swallowed the bile back where it belonged. Back into the safety of his room, the moment the door clicked closed he sank to his knees in front of Rayan's jacket, taking it into his hands to feel a different warmth.
Pastel formed into harsh, gold neon, and his world spun.
Rayan's alive. Ava isn't.
He made it out of Eastpoint.
She didn't get the chance.
He left her.
He left me.
Anxious, angered thoughts lit the embers in his mind, but he longed for ice with a single goal. James dug his fingers into the jacket and forced himself back to his feet though his body begged him to stay. He would never stay again.
He needed an answer to the truth.
Frozen possibilities molded his anger into something more and tore through the captured autumn.
James breathed deep with his muddled thoughts. He headed back to the bed to put the jacket on the edge, wanting nothing more than to sink into the embrace of blankets — so sink into sleep and never awaken.
But I can't, I have to know. I have to know why Rayan left Ava to die.
Blood coursed through his ears while he remained in silent darkness. He focused on the Elite's cold, calculating, faceless gaze. Of quick action and motion. A dragon-headed figure lifted trees from the ground. One branch of the Strike Forces, the Elite Corps held the reputation for being specialised soldiers, never touched by fire and ice.
One more breath.
James returned to his datacam, then popped out the edevic bracer where Rayan's message remained. He tugged it out and heard his voice. Rage overtook his fingers, but he refused to rip apart the painful reminder.
Why, Rayan?
He placed it back into the bracer for safe-keeping.
He wouldn't need it anymore.
Neither his datacam or notepad would take him to Rayan.
But... I know what will.
He headed out of his room and straight to Mrs. Falae's closed office door. He stomped his way through his weakness to open it, where she sat at the desk, fingers crossed while she studied the holographic map the Elite gave her. Surprise rustled through her weary features. "James?" she asked and stood up. "It's not quite time for your Medis. Is something wrong?"
James stood on the other end of the desk and kept his back straight, refusing to let the universe steal one more choice away from him. "I can't sit here anymore," he said, and flinched at his own raspy voice. "I need to go out there."
"I can take you for a drive around the city—"
"No, that's not what I mean, Mrs Falae," James said. "I want to do something."
Mrs. Falae tipped her head. "What do you want to do?"
James clenched his fists. "Earlier this week, you mentioned a new Elite intake for the Strike Forces," he explained. "I want to go into the Elite Corps, Mrs. Falae."
Silence reigned in the void.
Her eyes widened and she dropped her hands to her desk. For a single moment, the biggest, heartbroken crack creased her brow in wrinkles. "James, no, you don't," she said with insistence. "You're confused. I know you've struggled long, but you—"
James came closer. "I have to do something. If I lay in that stupid bed anymore then I might as well die. I can't stay in this manor waiting for something I know I'll never get back."
"James—"
He debated on revealing his knowledge, but he kept it in his heart. "I don't want to be stuck here, haunted by my lack of control—"
"Being an Elite won't change that," she argued.
"Let me make that choice for myself," he said, the flames of anger returning his strength. "Let me decide what to do with my life. It was already destroyed. Pirates took my sister, my family away." He bumped his knees against the desk. "I'm useless like this. I might as well be dead."
"You're not dead, James," Mrs. Falae whispered. "You're not thinking straight. What brought this on?"
"I'm tired of sitting in bed wasting away," he said. "I might as well waste away doing something."
"I could suggest plenty of other routes for that."
He never had a choice.
Not whether to live or die.
Not whether to stay or leave.
The choice he had he gave to Ava, and she was gone.
"Please," he pleaded.
Mrs. Falae's gaze hardened into ice picks. "I suggest something else."
"Why? I'm old enough for the Strike Forces basic training."
"You are nowhere near my preferred age for Elite intake, and even if I entertained the idea—" Mrs. Falae prodded him in the chest and swirled soreness crept through his lungs. "There are plenty of physical and mental aptitude tests to undergo, of which, in your state, James Ranier, you would not get through."
His world crumbled and cracked. What's the point of living if I don't even get a chance? He needed it to move and think of something else. His pastel shield fluttered into sand and wouldn't stay, like Rayan hadn't. He resisted the urge to cry, and held his ground for the fight of his life.
"My breathing is better."
"I'm not referring to your breathing, James," she said with a slight bite. "You don't know what you're asking. Once you're an Elite—"
"I understand what it might mean if I join the Strike Forces—"
"No, you don't understand," she snapped, and he stepped back from the desk. "You wouldn't even mull over this idea if you did understand."
James bit on his tongue, but pushed on. "What kind of physical and mental aptitude tests?"
Mrs. Falae rubbed the bridge of her nose. "You need to pass several concurrent tests to even join basic training, and then if you show a certain aptitude you can attempt the testing for Elite B.T. But, James—" She rounded the desk to face him. "You won't pass, not like you are now. The training would break you on the first day."
James glared at her. "But what if I did pass?"
"I doubt it. You struggle to breath still. You don't move from the bed. An Elite needs to think on their toes and act much quicker. Besides, like I said, you're not my preferred age for Elite intakes," she said. "I only take those that are twenty-four upwards. You're still seventeen. You're hurt — physically and mentally. I cannot in good conscience let you make the attempt." She sat at her desk, as if it changed anything. "James, you feel you've lost everything. You've experienced loss very few in this galaxy undergo, but the first quality of a good Elite is rational thinking. You are not doing that. You don't know what you'd lose in joining the Elites."
"I don't care, I've already lost everything," he argued. "You don't understand. I want to do something. I can't sit here anymore."
Her expression cracked and revealed the horrified mother underneath the surface of the hardened general. "I repeat, you're not my preferred age requirement."
"Preferred, so it's not a rule?" he asked.
"If given time, I'd hope to make it so once this war finally ends," she said. "However, we are at war, and some people think we need to bend things a little."
"I have no more time." He shook. "I barely have enough reason to live. Let me try. Give me a chance."
Mrs. Falae sighed. "You're not going to listen, are you?"
"Let me make a choice for once," he said.
He balked at the heavy sadness which shattered the mask of the soldier as she lifted herself out of her seat. "You wouldn't pass the physical and mental tests. As you are now, the strain of training would break you like a twig, and the Elite training is worse." Her shadow swallowed him. "You have a lot of work ahead of you if you want that chance, so let's make a compromise."
James relaxed. "What compromise?"
"Show me you're willing to put in that work, no matter how difficult it is, to get better," she pointed out. "The next intake isn't for a while. You've got a few more months to get into shape. Talk to people. Don't shut yourself in your room. Eat healthy, take your medication as specified without me fighting you over it." Her scowl deepened. "You need more than a few months of healing, James, but..." She folded her arms. "If you show me by the time you turn eighteen that you're trying, I'll give you a chance. However, if I see any relapsing, I will take you out of basic training faster than you can blink."
"You'll... let me try?"
"If you can show me you want to get better," Mrs. Falae pointed out. "I am warning you, James. If you get to Elite basic training, you'll be given another choice. I highly recommend you don't take what the choice offers. I recommend using this training as a learning experience and nothing more."
James longed to become the calm, collected soldier, but he couldn't ignore the distress of a concerned mother, backed into the corner with no way of escape but a single compromise.
"I will," he said. "I'll show you that I can do this."
"I never doubted that you could," she whispered. "That isn't what bothers me. I don't want you to make this choice lightly."
"I have nothing left to lose," he repeated. "I will try. I want to have a choice again." He tried not to cry. "You didn't give me a choice back then. Let me make the choice on what to do with my life."
Mrs. Falae frowned. "I'll write a schedule I expect you to follow. You've a lot of work ahead of you, James — this isn't your physical elective class or Starcross. You need a sound mind and sound body to have a chance at Elite Basic." James moved for the door, but stopped when she called him back, "I'll be here if you need me," she echoed. "But, I suggest you do this on your own. Show me you'll put the work in. It's a slog, and I want you to be ready for it. I won't be holding your hand if you make it to Elite training."
He nodded, back in control of his life. He left the office.
He lost his frozen moments, but he controlled the focus of the moving ones.