David and I lay beside each other in the cramped trunk of a car that smells as though in a previous life, it'd ferried hockey gear to and from frosty ice rinks. My outburst back at Izzer's must have gotten to David because he hasn't bothered to reach for my hand, even though our knuckles have grazed against each other a few times.
Some part of me wishes I could have slammed my eyeballs back into my skull when I learned of David's role in Elysium production, or maybe I could have bitten down on my cheek, made myself spit blood instead of those words for David and Della to overhear.
The car takes a pothole too fast and the back end dips before jumping in the air. My body goes with it, the tip of my nose banking off the trunk lid. When I reach up to feel the damage through the cloth bag, I freeze because there's another finger probing my nostril.
"Ow," I say, though it's doubtful David's overheard. Every breath that slips out of me is muffled by the bag and I imagine my pain is a little different.
"You okay?" he says, his finger runs from my cheek to my chin. There's a light pressure from where his skin presses into mine, which is a huge contrast from the immense pressure I feel ballooning in my chest. How can David be so hard one moment and so tender the next?
I nod, and silly me, I think he can see the gesture. "I'm fine." I crane my neck, just the slightest, so I can feel more of him against me. He doesn't seem to notice, or if he does, thankfully, I can't tell. "What about you?"
I think he chuckles, either that or he inhaled a little too much of the bag. "I'm not the one who smacked their face of the trunk lid."
"But I'm not the one who was blamed for two peoples' deaths." His finger stops dead in its tracks, before receding. David's warmth goes with it, and the chill it leaves in its wake, settles in my core.
At the sound of rustling fabric, nausea explodes in my stomach. He's shifting, turning away from me. Maybe I've gone and caught Sam's brash directness.
"We should get some sleep," he says, his voice more distant than a few seconds ago. "We'll have things to do --"
I grab on to a handful of fabric nearest my arm. If I've been infected by some of Sam's less-than-stellar tendencies, I might as well embrace them. I twist the fabric, ball it around my fist until I can feel David's body weight.
"I don't--" There's more shifting, though not much what with my talons' dug into David's shirt. He can't move without ripping free, and hopefully, he doesn't want to escape from me that badly. I gulp and take a deep breath, pulling the fabric of the bag toward my nostrils, then exhale. "I don't know you that well," I begin. "And I thought I did because I was around you, but really, maybe what I know amounts to a whole anthill of jack shit."
If Sam had been in the trunk with us, he would have laughed, called me old-fashioned, and remarked how I was talking like a true Codas.
David doesn't say anything, doesn't move. I can't even hear him breathe.
"But whatever trivial things I do know about you, have to be more than that prick Izzer knows. Or Della. I know your blood type and I know how your freckles blister-like tomatoes across your cheeks when you spend a second over thirty minutes under the lamps in the Yard. Your most recent search on the Network was for birds, the North American Wood Thrush, specifically." Nervous energy runs unrestrained through my veins. "I know you make Elysium, but I also know that Snitch's death affected you and that you always ask me how I am even when I think you're hurting more than anyone else and-"
"Ten," he says, stopping me dead. I swallow hard in the silence he affords this moment. "Are you confessing your love for me?"
"No-no!" I release his shirt and slam my hand into his back.
He chuckles. "It sure sounds like you are."
There's more rustling of fabric, and then, before I know it, David's warmth engulfs my body. Two strong arms embrace me, hands tracing the small of my back. I can't see his face but I can hear the sucking in of air, the bag fluttering under each inhale, exhale.
"I bet you're blushing."
"I bet your freckles are blushing."
He chuckles again, and it's that sound, that lighter-than-air tone, that drives away all that heaviness I had started to collect inside. "So if that wasn't a confession, which," he says, and I can hear the annoying smile in his words, "I steadfastly cling to as the truth, what was it?"
Between David's hug and the confined trunk, I've got no room to wretch myself free, although if I were honest with myself, I'd know I didn't want to be free.
I shake my head and ignore the pressure I feel constrict around my back and sides. I'll just forget about our situation, and how, if the bags were removed, our breaths would be intermingling as much as our bodies. "Sheesh," I say. "You're being Marava-levels of difficult."
"And you're having Marava-levels of googly eyes for me."
I slap his chest, playfully, yet with enough force to elicit a groan from his lips. "One: we've both been saddled with bags over our heads so neither of us can see anything, And two: Marava makes googly eyes at Jonathan, and you're definitely not him."
He slides closer to me, a feat I didn't think possible. "And if I was Jonathan, would your heartbeat as fast?"
When I push him away this time, there's no playfulness in the palm I plant against his chest. Mustering my remaining strength, I break free of his grasp. "I just meant, I would like to know you," I say.
David sighs and before I can squirm in protest slinks his arm around my waist and brings me into him again. My head rests on his chest, my ear pressed into him, so I can hear the war being waged between his heart and his rib cage. It just might be beating faster than my own. I can't stop the thudding in my chest, or the way I've seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
"I'd like to get to know you better, too." His fingers fall away from me, but the warmth they'd coaxed to the surface burns.
For a moment, the silence is filled by movement outside - shuffling and exasperated snorts, something locking in place. David says, "I never feel like I'm hurting more than anyone else, I just always tried to do a better job of concealing it. Guess I suck as much as everybody else."
David rolls over, his fingers scraping the back of my arm. He gives me a playful little pinch. My heart responds, pounding furiously against my insides. Who needed grenades when David's touch was enough to make me explode, consuming all rational thought in an unending blaze of fire?
...
"Up and adam!"
Keran's chipper voice cuts in. Hot, sweaty flesh grabs onto my arm and hefts me to sit. The bag's ripped away and through a curtain of curls, I spy it - concrete and brick buildings, rotating h-comms, neon signs hovering, some low enough to reach up and run my fingers through, while others soar overhead, half-disappearing into the massive metallic umbrella that separates this level from the others.
Sirens blare in the distance. Horns honk furiously when one of the neon signs blinks green. There's a whoosh from my right, and a silver blur rushes through a clear tunnel, hefted on massive steel legs, like a monstrous centipede. Keran's face splits into a grin over me, her entire body bathed in the myriad of color coming from the Brights.
"Welcome to Sect Seven. The base of operations for the Collective and your new home."
She outstretches her hand and I blink back my surprise. I don't make it to take it. Keran huffs and stomps her foot. "Try to do something nice and you act like it's the weirdest thing ever." She slides a hand through her hair.
"It is the weirdest thing ever," I say, but I reach for her, put my hand in hers and allow myself to be pulled up. She commands another Codas near her to help David.
Looking around, there's a liveliness to the city that I'd never experienced before in the Facility. Maybe, just maybe, this place didn't have to be another prison.
I gulp and notice that Rima wobbles on her feet before crumpling to the ground like a dirty rag. Marava steadies herself on Jonathan, who's steadying himself on the bumper of the car. Sin stands as if he'd just had the best sleep of his life in the backseat of a limo and not a smelly ride in a cramped trunk while Sam stands in awe, mouth gaping as his gaze flits from one sign to the next, from one whirling h-comm to the next, to the people on the ground wearing visors over their eyes, and chatting seemingly to themselves. He looks as if he might drown in the newfound chaos.
"If there's one thing I learned, it's that people will go to great lengths to survive and even greater lengths to protect those they care about."
Keran's eyebrows raise.
"There are six people I care about standing over there." I chuckle to myself at having included Marava
Smiling, I slam the trunk closed. "I'll do whatever it takes to make sure they survive." I step forward, despite the way my muscles scream in protest. "Kill whoever threatens their safety."
Keran snarls. "It's easier to say you'll kill someone than to actually pull the trigger."
I shrug. "Guess we won't know if I mean it or if I'm all smoke and mirrors until the time comes."
Keran snarls. "Guess not." She clamps down on my shoulder. "I bet you'll shit your pants."
I smile. "You wouldn't have much time to find out, what with you leaking blood out a half-dozen bullet holes."
"Ruthless," she says, releasing me. "Like a true Councilman."
She wasn't wrong and somehow her words provided me comfort. The Law was infallible, untouchable, gods of the most powerful nation in the world, and I'd been training for more than half my life to take a place among them.