Ignite Me

  “He’s not a psych—,” I try to say, but the room erupts into a cacophony of voices, all vying for a chance to be heard.

  “What does this even mean—”

  “—dangerous?”

  “So Sonya and Sara are still alive—”

  “—actually saw Anderson? What did he look like?”

  “But why would he even—”

  “—okay, but that’s not—”

  “WAIT,” Adam cuts everyone off. “Where the hell is he now?” He turns to look me in the eye. “You said Warner brought you out here to show you what happened to Omega Point, but then the minute Kenji shows up, he just disappears.” A pause. “Right?”

  I nod.

  “So—what?” he says. “He’s done? He’s just walking away?” Adam spins around, looks at everyone. “Guys, he knows that at least one of us is still alive! He’s probably gone to get backup, to find a way to take the rest of us out—” He stops, shakes his head, hard. “Shit,” he says under his breath. “SHIT.”

  Everyone freezes at the same time. Horrified.

  “No,” I say quickly, holding up both hands. “No—he’s not going to do that—”

  Eight pairs of eyes turn on me.

  “He doesn’t care about killing you guys. He doesn’t even like The Reestablishment. And he hates his father—”

  “What are you talking about?” Adam cuts me off, alarmed. “Warner is an animal—”

  I take a steadying breath. I need to remember how little they know Warner, how little they’ve heard from his point of view; I have to remind myself what I used to think of him just a few days ago.

  Warner’s revelations are still so recent. I don’t know how to properly defend him or how to reconcile these polarizing impressions of him, and for a moment it makes me furious with him and his stupid pretenses, for ever having put me in this position. If only he didn’t come across as a sick, twisted psycho, I wouldn’t have to stand up for him right now.

  “He wants to take down The Reestablishment,” I try to explain. “And he wants to kill Anderson, too—”

  The room explodes into more arguments. Shouts and epithets that all boil down to no one believing me, everyone thinking I’m insane and that Warner’s brainwashed me; they think he’s a proven murderer who locked me up and tried to use me to torture people.

  And they’re not wrong. Except that they are.

  I want so desperately to tell them they don’t understand.

  None of them know the truth, and they’re not giving me a chance to explain. But just as I’m about to say something else in my own defense, I catch a glimpse of Ian out of the corner of my eye.

  He’s laughing at me.

  Out loud, slapping his knee, head thrown back, howling with glee at what he thinks is my stupidity, and for a moment I seriously begin to doubt myself and everything Warner said to me.

  I squeeze my eyes shut.

  How will I ever really know if I can trust him? How do I know he wasn’t lying to me like he always did, like he claims he has been from the beginning?

  I’m so sick of this uncertainty. So sick and tired of it.

  But I blink and I’m being pulled out of the crowd, tugged toward James’s bedroom door; to the storage closet that used to be his room. Adam pulls me inside and shuts the door on the insanity behind us. He’s holding my arms, looking into my eyes with a strange, burning intensity that startles me.

  I’m trapped.

  “What’s going on?” he asks. “Why are you defending Warner? After everything he did to you, you should hate him—you should be furious—”

  “I can’t, Adam, I—”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I just—it’s not that easy anymore.” I shake my head, try to explain the unexplainable. “I don’t know what to think of him now. There are so many things I misunderstood. Things I couldn’t comprehend.” I drop my eyes. “He’s really . . .” I hesitate, conflicted.

  I don’t know how to tell the truth without sounding like a liar.

  “I don’t know,” I finally say, staring into my hands. “I don’t know. He’s just . . . he’s not as bad as I thought.”

  “Wow.” Adam exhales, shocked. “He’s not as bad as you thought. He’s not as bad as you thought? How on earth could he be any better than you thought—?”

  “Adam—”

  “What the hell are you thinking, Juliette?”

  I look up. He can’t hide the disgust in his eyes.

  I panic.

  I need to find a way to explain, to present an irrefutable example—proof that Warner is not who I thought he was—but I can already tell that Adam has lost confidence in me, that he doesn’t trust me or believe me anymore, and I flounder.

  He opens his mouth to speak.

  I beat him to it. “Do you remember that day you found me crying in the shower? After Warner forced me to torture that toddler?”

  Adam hesitates before nodding slowly, reluctantly.

  “That was one of the reasons I hated him so much. I thought he’d actually put a child in that room—that he’d stolen someone’s kid and wanted to watch me torture it. It was just so despicable,” I say. “So disgusting, so horrifying. I thought he was inhuman. Completely evil. But . . . it wasn’t real,” I whisper.

  Adam looks confused.

  “It was just a simulation,” I try to explain. “Warner told me it was a simulation chamber, not a torture room. He said it all happened in my imagination.”

  “Juliette,” Adam says. Sighs. He looks away, looks back at me. “What are you talking about? Of course it was a simulation.”

  “What?”

  Adam laughs a small, confused sort of laugh.

  “You knew it wasn’t real . . . ?” I ask.

  He stares at me.

  “But when you found me—you said it wasn’t my fault—you told me you’d heard about what happened, and that it wasn’t my fault—”

  Adam runs a hand through the hair at the back of his neck. “I thought you were upset about breaking down that wall,” he says. “I mean, I knew the simulation would probably be scary as hell, but I thought Warner would’ve told you what it was beforehand. I had no idea you’d walked into something like that thinking it was going to be real.” He presses his eyes shut for a second. “I thought you were upset about learning you had this whole new crazy ability. And about the soldiers who were injured in the aftermath.”

  I’m blinking at him, stunned.

  All this time, a small part of me was still holding on to doubt—believing that maybe the torture chamber was real and that Warner was just lying to me. Again.

  But now, to have confirmation from Adam himself.

  I’m floored.

  Adam is shaking his head. “That bastard,” he’s saying. “I can’t believe he did that to you.”

  I lower my eyes. “Warner’s done a lot of crazy things,” I say, “but he really thought he was helping me.”

  “But he wasn’t helping you,” Adam says, angry again. “He was torturing you—”

  “No. That’s not true.” I focus my eyes on a crack in the wall. “In some strange way . . . he did help me.” I hesitate before meeting Adam’s gaze. “That moment in the simulation chamber was the first time I ever allowed myself to be angry. I never knew how much more I could do—that I could be so physically strong—until that moment.”

  I look away.

  Clasp and unclasp my hands.

  “Warner puts up this facade,” I’m saying. “He acts like he’s a sick, heartless monster, but he’s . . . I don’t know . . .” I trail off, my eyes trained on something I can’t quite see. A memory, maybe. Of Warner smiling. His gentle hands wiping away my tears. It’s okay, you’re okay, he’d said to me. “He’s really—”

  “I don’t, um—” Adam breaks away, blows out a strange, shaky breath. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to understand this,” he says, looking unsteady. “You—what? You like him now? You’re friends with him? The sa
me guy who tried to kill me?” He’s barely able to conceal the pain in his voice. “He had me hung from a conveyor belt in a slaughterhouse, Juliette. Or have you already forgotten that?”

  I flinch. Drop my head in shame.

  I had forgotten about that.

  I’d forgotten that Warner almost killed Adam, that he’d shot Adam right in front of my face. He saw Adam as a traitor, as a soldier who held a gun to the back of his head; defied him and stole me away.

  It makes me sick.

  “I’m just . . . I’m so confused,” I finally manage to say. “I want to hate him but I just don’t know how anymore—”

  Adam is staring at me like he has no idea who I am.

  I need to talk about something else.

  “What’s going on with Castle?” I ask. “Is he sick?”

  Adam hesitates before answering, realizing I’m trying to change the subject. Finally, he relents. Sighs. “It’s bad,” he says to me. “He’s been hit worse than the rest of us. And Castle taking it all so hard has really affected Kenji.”

  I study Adam’s face as he speaks, unable to stop myself from searching for similarities to Anderson and Warner.

  “He doesn’t really leave that chair,” Adam is saying. “He sits there all day until he collapses from exhaustion, and even then, he just falls asleep sitting in the same spot. Then he wakes up the next morning and does the same thing again, all day. He only eats when we force him to, and only moves to go to the bathroom.” Adam shakes his head. “We’re all hoping he’ll snap out of it pretty soon, but it’s been really weird to just lose a leader like that. Castle was in charge of everything. And now he doesn’t seem to care about anything.”

  “He’s probably still in shock,” I say, remembering it’s only been three days since the battle. “Hopefully, with time,” I tell him, “he’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah,” Adam says. Nods. Studies his hands. “But we really need to figure out what we’re going to do. I don’t know how much longer we can live like this. We’re going to run out of food in a few weeks at the most,” he says. “We’ve got ten people to feed now. Plus, Brendan and Winston are still hurting; I’ve done what I can for them using the limited supplies I have here, but they need actual medical attention and pain medication, if we can swing it.” A pause. “I don’t know what Kenji’s told you, but they were seriously messed up when we brought them in here. Winston’s swelling has only just gone down. We really can’t stay here for much longer,” he says. “We need a plan.”

  “Yes.” I’m so relieved to hear he’s ready to be proactive. “Yes. Yes. We need a plan. What are you thinking? Do you already have something in mind?”

  Adam shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Maybe we can keep breaking into the storage units like we used to—steal supplies every once in a while—and lie low in a bigger space on unregulated ground. But we’ll never be able to set foot on the compounds,” he says. “There’s too much risk. They’ll shoot us dead on sight if we’re caught. So . . . I don’t know,” he says. He looks sheepish as he laughs. “I’m kind of hoping I’m not the only one with ideas.”

  “But . . .” I hesitate, confused. “That’s it? You’re not thinking of fighting back anymore? You think we should just find a way to live—like this?” I gesture to the door, to what lies beyond it.

  Adam looks at me, surprised by my reaction.

  “It’s not like I want this,” he says. “But I can’t see how we could possibly fight back without getting ourselves killed. I’m trying to be practical.” He runs an agitated hand through his hair. “I took a chance,” he says, lowering his voice. “I tried to fight back, and it got us all massacred. I shouldn’t even be alive right now. But for some crazy reason, I am, and so is James, and God, Juliette, so are you.

  “And I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head, looking away. “I feel like I’ve been given a chance to live my life. I’ll need to think of new ways to find food and put a roof over my head. I have no money coming in, I’ll never be able to enlist in this sector again, and I’m not a registered citizen, so I’ll never be able to work. Right now all I’m focused on is how I’ll be able to feed my family and my friends in a few weeks.” His jaw tenses. “Maybe one day another group will be smarter—stronger—but I don’t think that’s us anymore. I don’t think we stand a chance.”

  I’m blinking at him, stunned. “I can’t believe this.”

  “You can’t believe what?”

  “You’re giving up.” I hear the accusation in my voice and I do nothing to hide it. “You’re just giving up.”

  “What choice do I have?” he asks, his eyes hurt, angry. “I’m not trying to be a martyr,” he says. “We gave it a shot. We tried to fight back, and it came to shit. Everyone we know is dead, and that battered group of people you saw out there is all that’s left of our resistance. How are the nine of us supposed to fight the world?” he demands. “It’s not a fair fight, Juliette.”

  I’m nodding. Staring into my hands. Trying and failing to hide my shock.

  “I’m not a coward,” he says to me, struggling to moderate his voice. “I just want to protect my family. I don’t want James to have to worry that I’m going to show up dead every day. He needs me to be rational.”

  “But living like this,” I say to him. “As fugitives? Stealing to survive and hiding from the world? How is that any better? You’ll be worried every single day, constantly looking over your shoulder, terrified of ever leaving James alone. You’ll be miserable.”

  “But I’ll be alive.”

  “That’s not being alive,” I say to him. “That’s not living—”

  “How would you know?” he snaps. His mood shifts so suddenly I’m stunned into silence. “What do you know about being alive?” he demands. “You wouldn’t say a word when I first found you. You were afraid of your own shadow. You were so consumed by grief and guilt that you’d gone almost completely insane—living so far inside your own head that you had no idea what happened to the world while you were gone.”

  I flinch, stung by the venom in his voice. I’ve never seen Adam so bitter or cruel. This isn’t the Adam I know. I want him to stop. Rewind. Apologize. Erase the things he’s just said.

  But he doesn’t.

  “You think you’ve had it hard,” he’s saying to me. “Living in psych wards and being thrown in jail—you think that was difficult. But what you don’t realize is that you’ve always had a roof over your head, and food delivered to you on a regular basis.” His hands are clenching, unclenching. “And that’s more than most people will ever have. You have no idea what it’s really like to live out here—no idea what it’s like to starve and watch your family die in front of you. You have no idea,” he says to me, “what it means to truly suffer. Sometimes I think you live in some fantasy land where everyone survives on optimism—but it doesn’t work that way out here. In this world you’re either alive, about to die, or dead. There’s no romance in it. No illusion. So don’t try to pretend you have any idea what it means to be alive today. Right now. Because you don’t.”

  Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures.

  No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.

  I swallow, hard

  one

  two

  three

  and steady myself to respond quietly. Carefully.

  He’s just upset, I’m telling myself. He’s just scared and worried and stressed out and he doesn’t mean any of it, not really, I keep telling myself.

  He’s just upset.

  He doesn’t mean it.

  “Maybe,” I say. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to live. Maybe I’m still not human enough to know more than what’s right in front of me.” I stare straight into his eyes
. “But I do know what it’s like to hide from the world. I know what it’s like to live as though I don’t exist, caged away and isolated from society. And I won’t do it again,” I say. “I can’t. I’ve finally gotten to a point in my life where I’m not afraid to speak. Where my shadow no longer haunts me. And I don’t want to lose that freedom—not again. I can’t go backward. I’d rather be shot dead screaming for justice than die alone in a prison of my own making.”

  Adam looks toward the wall, laughs, looks back at me.

  “Are you even hearing yourself right now?” he asks. “You’re telling me you want to jump in front of a bunch of soldiers and tell them how much you hate The Reestablishment, just to prove a point? Just so they can kill you before your eighteenth birthday? That doesn’t make any sense,” he says. “It doesn’t serve anything. And this doesn’t sound like you,” he says, shaking his head. “I thought you wanted to live on your own. You never wanted to be caught up in war—you just wanted to be free of Warner and the asylum and your crazy parents. I thought you’d be happy to be done with all the fighting.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say. “I’ve always said I wanted to fight back. I’ve said it from the beginning—from the moment I told you I wanted to escape when we were on base. This is me,” I insist. “This is how I feel. It’s the same way I’ve always felt.”

  “No,” he says. “No, we didn’t leave base to start a war. We left to get the hell away from The Reestablishment, to resist in our own way, but most of all to find a life together. But then Kenji showed up and took us to Omega Point and everything changed, and we decided to fight back. Because it seemed like it might actually work—because it seemed like we might actually have a chance. But now”—he looks around the room, at the closed door—“what do we have left? We’re all half dead,” he says. “We are eight poorly armed men and women and one ten-year-old boy trying to fight entire armies. It’s just not feasible,” he says. “And if I’m going to die, I don’t want it to be for a stupid reason. If I go to war—if I risk my life—it’s going to be because the odds are in my favor. Not otherwise.”