I blink when Carter flicks the lights on. He’s sweating. Still in pain I imagine, but he’s smiling at me too. “Thank you,” he says simply; throws his shirt back on. I scan the stark white tiles frantically for signs of blood, but there aren’t any, and finally let out the breath I’d been holding.
“Now what?” I look at his face, barely recognizing the bully I took him for. There is something open in the way he looks back at me, the sort of thing I’d imagine a friend doing, had I ever had any.
“Now we need to find yours, but we’re out of time for the night. The others are due back in a few minutes.”
I strip as quickly as I can and slap the switch, plunging us into darkness again. I turn around slowly, my arms out to the sides. I keep my eyes closed, but I can feel Carter watching me, scanning my skin for a sign of something that doesn’t belong, a dot of pulsating light.
I hear him swallow behind me and face him. I can see just an outline of his face and the shine reflecting off the whites of his eyes, but I feel tense, exposed. “I don’t know how it’s possible, E, but you don’t have one,” he says.
I hear a door bang shut and dress quickly, flick the light back on and flee the room. I school my face into calm lines, lower my heart rate to an acceptable sixty two. It feels like a habit, but I’d never questioned it before now. It’s always felt necessary, like breathing, but now it worries me. Now I want to know, need to know, if Carter does that, if he has to. If the rest of these boys whose names I’d not learned yet have to. I have a feeling they don’t. That whatever I had taken out of Carter didn’t have anything to do with how I am, with his being a Reb.
My shift is six hours of standing still, my hand on a taser, eyes on the chrome door at the end of the narrow hallway. By the time I’m relieved, my back is stiff and I’m starving. I have to force myself to move slowly to the mess hall. I see Rita’s slim form as I round the last curve and she sees me. She eyes me, openly, curiously. I have to slow my breathing again. I feel my hands sweating and I shove them into the scratchy pockets of my uniform. “You alright, Eton?” she asks, with just a little edge to her voice. I must not look as calm as I’m trying then. I nod, quickly. “Just hungry.”
“It’s pretty awful tonight, but better than nothing.” She lets me pass and I’m relieved to be away from her. I scan the long metal tables, looking for Carter, but I don’t see him among the few cadets still eating. The food is terrible, as it almost always is. Over-ripe veggies swimming in some broth that smells of rotting fish. I eat it anyway, quickly, not bothering to chew much of it. A memory comes to me, unbidden: I’m four or five and Mother is teaching me to peel an orange. It’s the first one I’d seen, and I am afraid to touch it for how rare it is. I scrape the slightest sliver of the skin with my fingernail and the smell hits me–sweet and tart and so different from anything I’d ever smelled before. I don’t remember the taste of it anymore, but that smell stayed with me. I remember refusing to wash my hands that day and the day after that, and Mother telling me there’d be more of these for us, soon, just as soon as Father comes back from that new assignment they’d sent him to. But we never did get any more of those. And we never got Father back.
I realize my bowl is empty and stand, the legs of my chair scraping the tiles, making me want to grit my teeth, but I force my muscles to slacken. Nobody looks at me, not really, not in a way where they’d see the effort, but I can’t help it. I think again of how I'd never noticed it before, these small things, my choosing not to smile or frown or grit my teeth. The perpetual stillness of my face. Until her…. That brief brush of her hand over mine, warmth to warmth, a tingle, static-like, blood rushing to my head, heating my cheeks, not anything I could hide from her. From anyone.
I rush out of the room, not caring if anyone still eating finds it odd or uncool, or whatever else they think of me. I find him, finally, in the greenhouse and it surprises me. Carter is bent over a young plant I don’t know, just a skinny stalk with needle-like leaves, though they look soft to the touch on closer look. He doesn’t see me at first and I watch him for a silent moment as he peers down at this new life, a strange wistfulness on his face. He looks like a little kid who wants to touch something but is afraid to hurt it.
“Eton,” he says, without turning, stands up straight.
I take a step closer to him, but he still doesn’t turn. “We need to talk.” There is tension in the way he holds himself, and somehow I know, feel it that he, too, had figured it out, or maybe had known all along and lied to me.
“I know,” he whispers, and faces me, eyes on mine. “Not here.” He moves past me and I follow him in silence, fighting the anger I feel at what he’d done. What he had me do. Anger at myself, too, for believing him, because I’d been so desperate to have somebody to talk to, somebody to trust….
Carter takes me to the lowest level. There are tubes and wires and pipes running along the low ceiling and the walls, water dripping onto the dingy stained concrete under our feet. We don’t patrol this part of the Citadel, so I’d never had any reason to be here before.
“No cameras,” Carter says, answering a question I’d not gotten to ask yet. He stops and leans against a door and holds his hands out to me, palms up. “I didn’t know it was a tracer when I asked you to cut it out, E, I swear I didn’t. I wouldn’t have lied to you like that.” He takes a loud breath, shakes his head. “I thought I had it all figured out, you know…. I really did. I’m sorry,” he says, looks me in the eye.
“You’re not a reb,” I ask, but it’s not really a question in my mind. He just wanted his tracer gone and I was easy enough, stupid enough to do it.
“I don’t know, E. I think I might be, but I didn’t go through what you went through with the procedures or anything. I’d always been here, for as long as I remember anyway.” He swallows, lowers his head. “I knew how you were when you first came, saw it on you, the control it took for you not to lash out, not to let anger show on your face when I hit you or when Trent shoved you into the wall that first night.” He stops and looks at me again, waiting, but I don’t have words. I feel exposed and scared and mad as hell. My hands ball into fists and I uncurl them, shove them in my pockets.
“It’s alright, E. I already know. You can let it out. Nobody’s watching, not now that my tracer is gone,” Carter says slowly, deliberately, then puts his hands behind his back, as if he wants me to hit him. As if he thinks I would. And suddenly, I want to. I feel the adrenaline in my blood and I can’t slow my heartbeat and breathing like I normally can, and it feels strangely fantastic that I can’t. But I can’t hit him either. I step back and shake my head, not saying a word. And it hits me then. Carter is feeling guilty. Carter is feeling….
You can find Part 1 Here
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