I took my regular seat in class, two rows from the front and one away from the center. Close enough that I could pay attention easily and not so close that I looked like I wanted the teacher’s attention. Even though I did. I wanted to savor Keith’s praise like the flavor of the one bit of chocolate I’d been given as a child. I wanted to never forget his words like I’d never forgotten the sweetness of that dark bar of heaven.
Tia had two brothers and a father to watch out for her. In my imagination, I had Keith Endover.
He was everything a Warrior was supposed to be: strong, smart, and courageous. He’d come to the Genesis habitat from Scotland two years after I’d started in Warrior training. I’d never heard his accent in real life before. Sometimes we got old television programs or movies broadcast over the network on Friday nights. There was an actor named Sean Connery who made these movies about a character called James Bond. When I first heard Keith speak, all I could think was of that fictional hero.
He’d been recruited to come years after my father left the Warriors, so he’d never served with any member of my family. He’d risked life and limb to get to us from overseas, and the Icahn family had handled the transportation themselves to get him here. I wasn’t sure how old he was but I had a feeling he looked a lot younger than he actually was. The stories he told—they seemed like the tales of a person who had seen a lot of action. There was no way he was still in his twenties; he had to be thirty at least.
A lot of the girls thought he was dreamy.
To me, he’d been a lifesaver.
“What is this?” He held up a stake and the students who had been standing up and chatting rushed to their seats.
“Um…a stake.”
The answer came from the Thomas, the guy who always sat next to me. He and I shared a common problem, both of us being outsiders. Me, because my father had quit his position and moved us away, and Thomas because neither of his parents were Warriors, and yet he tested positive for the gene when he’d been born. That was almost unheard of in our particular habitat. Some of the other places, we heard in gossip that travelled the wire from time to time, had more frequent occurrences of the gene showing up in non-Warrior families.
In our group of twelve students, all of us falling between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, Thomas was the only one who hadn’t had at least one parent with the abilities. His family tried to petition the Icahns to keep him from having to be a Warrior.
I hated to admit it and wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Tia, but I was jealous. To have parents who risked becoming outcasts to keep their child out of harm’s way showed total devotion and love. I slid down in my chair. My one parent didn’t even care enough to remain sober. I could die tonight…would likely die…and he hadn’t even said happy birthday.
I wanted to know why it wasn’t possible for two Warrior people to make a baby with no Warrior genes. That’s what I would have preferred. But then again I always wished for things I couldn’t have. I’m just pathetic like that.
These days Thomas worked harder than any of us. I didn’t talk to him very much. Instead of bonding together as outsiders we both agreed, without ever discussing it, not to bring to much attention to ourselves. He and I hanging out would be way too much attention.
“That’s right,” Keith’s voice boomed in our small classroom, and I sat back in my seat. “It’s a stake.” He held up the wooden device again so we could all look at it. “What do we do with it?”
This was very basic stuff. The kind of information they taught children. Even non-Warrior children knew how to handle a stake.
Tia, who sat on my other side, raised her hand and waited to be called on. “We kill Vampires.”
“That’s right.” Keith’s shaggy strawberry blond hair jostled as he nodded his head. “Why do we kill Vampires? In fact, let’s take this a step further. Why do we kill Werewolves? Why do we kill monsters?”
The room was silent. We all knew the answer to his questions. The history of what had happened to humanity had been drilled into our heads since birth. Why was he doing this now? I shifted slightly in my seat, ran my hands through my hair, drummed my fingers on the table, anything to distract myself. None of it worked. I could not get over the feeling that while he spoke to the class, his questions were specifically for me.
It was my first night. He had to know I had a one-quarter chance of not being seen ever again. But, he’d sent hundreds of students out to the upper world and I couldn’t recall this kind of demonstration before anyone else’s debut. Granted, most people didn’t come in on their “big” day. But he’d never done this the day before either. What was so special about me?
Did he think I was going to die?
“Rachel, do you want to tell us? Why do we fight the monsters?”
“Because they try to kill us.”
Keith shook his head as he sighed loudly. “Yes, they try to kill us. You sound so blasÈ.”
How could he think that? I shook my head, fisting my hands at my side. This was so unfair. I wanted encouragement, not needling. “No, there is nothing blasÈ about it at all.”
He slammed his hand down on the desk. “It’s not just us they’re trying to kill. Forty-six years ago they killed everyone. That was a year before I was born.” My eyes got wide. Keith was forty-five years old?
He pointed at me, the hot dagger of his demand inserting itself into my body. As looked up at the class, he spoke. “Most of your parents weren’t born but her…”—he turned his gaze back to mine—”father was four years old.” He shook his head. “I have to be crazy to do this. They’re going to throw me out. Get up, Rachel.”
I swallowed, fear replacing my anger and threatening to tear up my insides so that I wanted to shriek. I would rather take on five Vampires all by myself, well I thought I would—I’ve never actually done so—than get up in front of this class and do whatever it was Keith wanted at the moment.
Still, I stood up. The teacher had told me to. Keith was the only teacher in the school who didn’t want to be called sir and insisted we used his first name. We learned more with him than anyone else, which was why he got to instruct our final years.
“Come here.” He pointed at the floor in front of him.
I obeyed on feet that weighed twice what they normally did. No one in the class moved an inch. It was unnaturally silent. No one so much as shifted in their seats. This was a different Keith. I had wanted to come today because of the send-off I’d seen him give to the kids who came for their last day of school. It was an easy smile and a nod as he told them to go kick the monsters so hard they became nothing but horror stories again.
This was something else entirely, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Pick up the stake.” His gaze refused to release mine. It wasn’t a stare, where I noticed the gold flicks in the green, but the kind where your soul battled for independence. Without thought, I reached for the stake. My gaze stilled locked with his. He grabbed it instead. “I’m faster than you are.” I would have sworn he snarled at me.
“It’s not hard to be.” The snarky remark came from the back of the room. Glen Devrees. No one could stand him, and I shouldn’t have cared what he thought considering what today was, but still, the skin on my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
Keith’s head turned in the direction of Glen’s voice. “Don’t be snide. You couldn’t have beaten me either.” Keith held out the stake to me and after hesitating for a second to see if I could pick out any games he might be playing, I took it from his hand.
My fingers clasped the wooden weapon with the practice drilled into me thousands of times by multiple instructions. The weight in my hands felt familiar, and the roughness of the wood made me hold the device tighter. It was deceptively simple, and if I wasn’t careful I could end up poking myself, even though I hadn’t done so in years. The point side faced outwards. It was a plunge and pull weapon. If I wanted to kill a Vampire, I took a step forward, pushed the stake through the monster’s chest and pulled back.
I had to keep my hand tight around the stake the whole time. It wouldn’t do to drop my weapons or lose them unless I wanted to spend every day with a knife and a slab of wood carving more. Keith’s particular weapon was smooth and polished. It had been a gift from his wife, Tiffani, who was also one of our teachers. She took care of the young Warriors just starting their training. She was, of course, roll-your-eyes gorgeous. Together they should have been put on the cover of a book to show perfect human specimens.
Keith didn’t fight anymore, and neither did Tiffani. I guess they’d earned the right not to. It kind of bothered me to think that if I wasn’t fighting or pregnant, than I’d have to be teaching someone how to fight. Was this the best the world had to offer me? I mean Keith had to travel, secretly, by a boat across the Atlantic Ocean to find an open teaching position for a Warrior. It wasn’t like these jobs were easy to come by. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I missed some kind of bloodthirsty mentality I should have developed by now.
“Stake me.”
I felt my eyes get huge. “What?”
“Have you gone deaf, Rachel? I said stake me.”
I looked at Tia, hoping she would be able to indicate to me what I should do. She shook her head, her eyes wide with alarm.
“Don’t look at Tia, she’s not going up there with you tonight. Even if she were, she couldn’t keep you alive.”
He’d said stake him. As I stepped forward, I turned in a sudden circle to duck behind him. I lunged forward and raised my arm. His strong hand shot out and grabbed me by the wrist. I screamed. What was he going to do to me? Fear of Keith became a real thing, an actual entity that lived and breathed inside of me. He had never manhandled any of us like this before. Why was he doing this to me?
Keith turned me around until I was face down on the desk. He used his body weight to pin me. I gasped as I struggled to be free of him. Away, my senses screamed. I needed to get away.
“You can’t. This was a test you couldn’t win.”
He let go of me. I shot backwards, tripping over my own feet and banging into the blackboard that was attached to the wall. I didn’t care about the physical pain it caused, not when the entire group had watched me take one humiliating move after another.
I was breathing hard and still not sure why he had felt the need to do that if it was “a test I couldn’t win.” I’d trusted him, but came to this class to find my feet and feel self-confident. He had just destroyed me. Tears burned the back of my eyes, and I blinked them away. My face was hot, my teeth chattering, and the brightness brought on by Micah’s understanding earlier completely fled the building. There was no question now. I was as good as dead when I went above ground in eleven and half hours. For some reason I couldn’t understand, Keith felt the need to demonstrate that fact in front of everyone.
Tears I’d only moments earlier repressed threatened again, but I didn’t dare let them fall. That would be too humiliating. If you learned anything in Warrior school, it was to never let them see they’d caused you pain. I was a redhead. If I blushed, you saw it. I couldn’t control my complexion. But tears I could keep to myself.
“I’m forty-five years old and I’m taller, faster, and stronger than you are.” He looked directly at me. “I always will be.” As he turned his attention back to the class, he spoke again. “It begs the question, right? Why then do we send you up there? Why send women at all? Why send short men? Why send teenagers?”
He picked up the stake I had dropped in the struggle and ran his hand over it. “We do it because even though someone like Rachel Clancy will never take me in a fair fight, she can and will take down the Undead and Werewolves almost every time she encounters them.” He stalked over to Tia’s desk and banged on it making her jump. “Why is that?”
Tia stammered. “Um…our genes. We’re genetically predetermined to know how to fight them.”
“Wrong.” He shook his head and walked over to the blackboard. He spoke aloud the words as he wrote them. “Ability plus training equals knowhow.” He turned around. “You’ve all heard me say this a million times. Have you listened? If everyone who had the genes had survived Armageddon, more people would be Warriors now.” He shrugged. “They didn’t know how to win. A lot of people had the ability, but they didn’t have the technique.” He turned back to me. “Go get a nap in my office, Rachel. We need you to know your stuff tonight.”
I still felt stunned and my feet acted like they were glued to the floor. He wanted me to sleep after he’d knocked down any confidence I might have had in myself before coming to class? I should rest up for my upcoming death?
“I’m not tired.”
He narrowed his eyes. “If you don’t go and sleep, I’m going to make you swallow a sleeping pill.”
“That will make me groggy.” I was grasping at straws. I knew it. If I went to bed, the time would come too quickly. I needed these moments if they were going to be my last.
“If you’re groggy, then I’ll inject you with a stimulant to wake you up. Either way, you’re going to sleep now.”
I bit down on my lip as I walked from the room to his office down the hall. I couldn’t even look at Tia. I was humiliated. I was also terrified. I couldn’t deal with either of those things at the moment.
I closed the door behind me as I entered his office. I’d been inside of it a million times, but usually to talk about grades or to discuss the current status of my father’s mental health. Pictures of him and Tiffani lined his desk. They’d met about five seconds after he’d arrived at the Genesis habitat and been married maybe fifteen seconds later. One of the pictures showed Tiffani in a long black evening gown. I had no idea what occasion could warrant such a dress. We almost never had formal gatherings.
I looked over at the couch I knew I was supposed to lay on as the door behind me reopened. Like they’d stepped out of the pictures I was looking at, Keith and Tiffani stood before me side-by-side in the doorframe. Their expressions were blank.
I blinked and tried to figure out what to do. Tiffani covered her face with her hands and sobbed seconds before she grabbed me and pulled me into a tight embrace.
She shook as she held me. God, what was going on? I wanted to pull out of her hug. I didn’t do well with physical contact. Dad and I didn’t touch often, and I certainly didn’t like being held when I didn’t understand why it was happening.
Finally, I found my voice. “What’s going on?”
Keith plowed into the room. “I left them answering questions on monster physiology. I don’t have much time.” He shut the door behind him. “I’m so sorry I had to do that to you.”
Tiffani let me go and I stumbled backwards. “It’s okay.” I wiped at my face, ashamed to see some of the tears I’d held onto that must have let loose without my even knowing it. “I’m really bad at this. Tomorrow, I’ll be one of the dead numbers.”
“No.” He shook his head as Tiffani started sobbing louder. “Hell, Tiff, knock it off. You’re terrifying Rachel.”
She sniffed as she turned her back on us. “It’s the hormones, and I’d say you did a good enough job of that on your own.”
Hormones? “Are you pregnant?” I asked the question and then realized maybe it was rude to have done so. She had mentioned it first, but then maybe she meant she had pre-menstrual syndrome or something.
She laughed as she nodded. “I am. Don’t tell anyone yet, okay? I’m not ready to be banned from up above.”
Pregnant women were given a pass—a permanent one if they wanted it to be—from fighting. It was too bad the only thing that scared me more than Vampires and Werewolves was sex. I wasn’t getting pregnant. No way, no how.
“I won’t say a word.” What was going on here?
“Listen,” Keith turned me around by my shoulders so I looked at him. “I’m so sorry that I did that to you. Do you know how fast you were? You almost got me. Tiff, she almost got me. It’s next to impossible and you did that. I really thought I was going to end up with a stake through the heart.”
God, I was so confused. “You told me to…”
“I know I did. I knew you would lose. You had to.”
I swallowed. This was one of those adult conversations where they wanted me to understand what they were saying without really saying it. Tia and I sometimes had this kind of talk, but right now I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on. Keith had wanted me to fail. “Why?”
“Because now twelve of your peers have just watched you get taken down, badly. Tia is going to speak to her father when she gets out of class in ten minutes, and she’s going to tell him how badly it went. He’s going to tell the board all about it. Maybe it will stop them from doing what they’re going to do.”
“The board? They’re supposed to give me my first assignment in eleven hours.”
Keith let go of me and rubbed his forehead, which looked to be covered in sweat. “I’m not doing a good job of explaining this.”
“No,” Tiffani interjected, “you’re not.”
She walked forward until she faced me. “You know what your father did? You really understand?”
“He left his position. He refused to train any more Warriors after my mother was killed. He left everyone in a real lurch. They kicked him out of Warrior housing. I was a baby. He’s hardly worked since. They had to replace him, and after years of trying they couldn’t.” I looked at Keith. “That’s why the Icahns went and found you all the way in Scotland.”
To me, Scotland sounded like such a magical place. I knew that human beings were underground there the same way they were here. It probably looked exactly the same. I was told one habitat looked pretty much exactly like any other. But I couldn’t help think of it as rolling green hills and mystical towns that disappeared only to reappear once every century…
“That’s not exactly it.” Tiffani bit her nail. It was such strange thing to see her do. She was always so perfectly put together. “Your mother was killed when the Vampires broke through the Upper Peninsula and forced their way down into Genesis. I was nineteen at the time, and I was up above. It took the Warriors, including your Mom, who I loved by the way, hours to push them back up again. Those of us up there, where your Dad was leading us, had no idea what was happening down here. By the time we got to your Mom, she was dead, but we managed to save you.”
“I didn’t realize you were there.”
She exhaled loudly. “I was there. When your Dad came down and found out your Mom was dead, he went crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it. He tried to climb into the incinerator and grab her body…”
Keith interrupted. “She doesn’t need to hear about that. Needless to say, I can understand how a man might lose his mind over the death of the woman he loved.”
Funny thing was, I could almost see it in my mind’s eye. My Dad, young and strong before the booze made him heavy and slow, trying to get into the tube where they put bodies to turn them to ash. It was amazing Keith loved Tiffani like that. If I lived long enough, maybe someone would love me that way. Maybe.
“Keith’s right. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to think about your Mom’s body burning. I’m sorry.”
People often spoke of my dead mother like she was someone I knew, whose burned up body would make me feel sad. I didn’t know her any better than I know what the sun feels like on my skin or what a cool winter breeze would do to my face. But if I said this to them, they would think I was cold and unfeeling, so I looked down at my feet like I’d been affected.
“Go on.”
“Your Dad went back to work right away. Too soon, but no one wanted to tell one of the Warrior leaders how they should grieve. Tia’s mom started taking care of you. For a while, it seemed to work. Then—boom—he’s up above with a group of Ones and Twos when he suddenly decides he can’t do it anymore. He drops his stake and like a zombie walks back to Genesis, leaving them all alone and unprotected.”
I had never heard this part of the story. I swallowed before I spoke, because my throat felt clogged. “What happened to the Warriors he left?”
Tiffani didn’t speak. She turned her back again and sobbed. I almost didn’t need them to say the words. Almost. “Tell me.”
Keith spoke. “They all died. Every last one of them died. Including the only daughter of Dr. Isaac Icahn.”
I gasped and covered my mouth. Isaac Icahn. The man who had foreseen the coming of the monsters. Who had designed the habitats. Who had saved us all when humanity fell. Who invented the Warrior program and who still led us at eighty years old today. Isaac Icahn and his sons ruled humanity from the hidden hallway of Genesis, where they dictated policy to all humans hidden underground all over the world. We all owed our lives to Isaac Icahn.
“He’s been waiting, Rachel, to take away your father’s daughter—you—ever since. Tiffani heard the sons talking last night. They’re going to send you on a mission by yourself. You’ll have no protection. They’re sending you to die.”
I closed my eyes and sobbed. As I fell to my knees, I wasn’t even ashamed of the tears or the way my shoulders shook. I’d always known it. I’d always suspected I would have to pay. But to hear Keith say it, that was something else entirely.
Tiffani knelt down beside me, holding me as I lost it. This time the hug was okay.