16

Iwas in the solar fields before I sensed Roman at my back. Seemed nothing could make me be completely unaware of him, no matter how deeply I dived into self-preservation. He didn't catch up to me, though. He kept a few strides behind, as if he was as attuned to my desperate need to be alone as I was attuned to his presence.

If I had it in me, I might have marveled at walking out of a walled city in broad daylight and across a field. If I had it in me, I might have felt a twinge of regret at leaving The Smoke behind forever. Those were some of the thoughts and feels that slammed up against my shield.

The sky was gray and miserable. The air was crisp and biting. The landscape of solar panels looked like a science experiment gone wrong all over nature's ass.

My skin grew clammy beneath my winter coat. Maybe it was the fast pace I was setting. Make it was the bleak, cruel world seeping in.

My bag banged against my hip with each step and I pinched the strap at my shoulder to shorten it. That's when I realized Roman wasn't as far behind as he'd been.

He plucked at the strap. "Let me carry this for you."

His voice was a gentle rumble, strong and kind.

I didn't look at him, and I didn't slow my steps, but I did let him slide the bag off my shoulder. We had a grueling three hour hike ahead and he had more muscle, training and stamina than me. "Thanks."

We entered the opening of the tunnel and before us, the dim light slowly faded and narrowed into pitch blackness. Since I was determinedly striding up in front, Roman handed me a flashlight.

"We have plenty of time before the afternoon train," he commented. "There's no rush."

I increased the length of my stride. It wasn't the afternoon train I was trying to beat. There was a dark, bottomless chasm chasing at my heels, reaching its tendrils all the way from The Smoke, and suddenly it felt like I might just stand a chance at outrunning it before I drowned in the hollowness.

I walked faster and faster, until I was practically jogging, the flashlight bouncing its beam across the narrow walkway and the tracks.

"Georga."

I heard Roman call my name. I wasn't that far gone. But I didn't slow. I broke into a full-on jog, my feet pounding the packed dirt.

"Georga!" he called again.

I ran harder.

Faster.

The air inside the tunnel was stuffy, but the pressure on my chest lightened and my lungs opened up.

Harder.

Faster.

Sweat gathered at the nape of my neck and trickled down my back. I slowed to a jog again, only for as long as it took to strip off my coat and toss it against the curved wall, then I was sprinting, racing against time, outrunning the past, present and future.

If Roman still called for me, I no longer heard him. Adrenaline spiked my blood until it rushed between my ears with a roar that obliterated every thought I refused to hold onto, every feeling I didn't dare feel, obliterated every lie and betrayal and hurt.

A cramp finally stabbed at my side, but I ran straight through it. I was losing my breath, but who needed to breathe?

A hard body crashed into me from the side, an arm caught around my waist to pull me over and on top for a soft landing as we tumbled to the ground, as I tumbled into Roman's arms. I hit out with my elbows, reared and strained within his embrace, but he held on firmly, scrabbling his way up against the wall and bringing me with him.

I shoved and jerked, whipping about like a frenetic snake.

He spread his legs, easily pulling me in closer between them and wrapping his arms around me.

The welcome roar in my head faded.

"It's okay." His voice was a breath against my ear. "It's okay. I've got you."

It wasn't okay. That sweet, sweet, mindless rush of adrenaline leaked away and took every ounce of numbing cold with it. All those thoughts I didn't want, all those feelings I couldn't bear to feel, swarmed me and I was utterly defenseless.

"It's okay," he murmured, so quietly, so fiercely, as if he could will it into being. "I'm here."

The hollowness caught up to me, swallowed me, and spit me out.

Sobs racked through my body, loss and grief ripped from the core of my being. Heaving dry throbs scratched my soul like sandpaper, and then the tears came pouring out of me.

Roman held me, kept whispering, "It's okay," and "I've got you," while I sobbed until there were no tears left in me, until there was nothing left in me, and still his quietly murmured words kept coming—I'm here. It's okay. I've got you—and slowly filled the nothing.

I don't know how long I sat there, cradled within his warmth and his gruffly spoken mantra, and there was still a loss inside me that could never be replaced, but that utterly desolate emptiness slowly and steadily became more bearable.

"Our ovaries are not rotten." My voice was low and scratchy, as if my vocal chords were as bruised and battered as my soul. "At least, not at first."

"It varies," he said, still speaking softly near my ear, his breath warm on my skin. "Some girls only have a couple of months, others remain healthy until around the age of fourteen or a little beyond."

So, he knew.

Of course he knew. Jenna had only been in The Smoke for a couple of months, and she knew. Everyone outside the walls of Capra knew.

"That's one of the reasons you're required to marry young in Capra," he added. "There hasn't been a case of anyone reaching fifteen with healthy eggs, but they're hoping as the population heals, that age limit will creep higher."

The first couple.

The first married couple in Capra to conceive naturally.

I'd always silently mocked the notion as a myth, the elusive holy grail—at least, in my lifetime—but it was less myth now, less holy grail, although I still couldn't imagine it happening in my lifetime.

"The girls in The Smoke have the option of harvesting their eggs." The Protectorate rewarded them with credits, Jenna had told me, a similar system as they did for every child born. But the weekly credits weren't the main prize.

"The first three cycles of harvesting is for the Protectorate." For Capra and the trading post. "After that, all their eggs are frozen, and stored, for them to use one day, when they're ready…to be—" my voice cracked "—a mother."

"I'm sorry," Roman said.

"All that bullshit about a precious, limited supply of frozen eggs—" I broke off on a bitter, slightly psychotic laugh.

"Not all bullshit. That was the promise that the Eastern Coalition was founded on, but the original supply dried up long ago, Georga. The supply from the girls in The Smoke is still limited, and will always be precious."

Was he trying to make me feel better?

I wriggled out of his arms, turning about to face him on my knees. The flashlight had gone skittering when he'd tackled me, and lay somewhere beyond us, lifting the peripherals of blackness into shadowy echoes of vision.

It was enough to see the grim set of his jaw.

It was enough to see him pull a hand through his hair, and to feel his gaze on me.

"Why would they do this to us?" I demanded. "Why did they keep this from us? Why couldn't we have had our eggs frozen?"

Why couldn't I be a mother one day? A biological mother with babies that truly came from my own flesh and blood?

I couldn't.

Capra made that decision for me years ago.

And yes, I know that theoretical baby hadn't yet been born—and now, never would be—but still, it felt like he or she had been torn from me, ripped straight out of my womb.

Capra may not have literally murdered my unborn babe, but they had murdered the one choice that really, truly mattered.

It was dead.

Gone.

There was nothing I could ever do, no fight I could ever win, no rebellion or uprising or anything, that could ever restore that choice to me.

"Why?" I demanded again into his silence. The answer wasn't his to give, and I didn't expect one. But I needed an answer. For once in my tiny, irrelevant life, I needed the universe to give me one damn answer.

Roman answered, his voice grave. "I don't know why Capra does half the things they do, but I can guess. The harvesting process is invasive—"

"I don't care."

"It requires weeks of hormone treatments."

"I. Don't. Care."

"It probably places unnecessary, unnatural stress on the body," he said.

Of course! They couldn't do anything unnecessary, unnatural, to their lab rats. Not physically, anyway. They were quite happy to go wild with mental and emotional experiments and torture.

I glared at Roman. "You knew all this time, and you never told me."

He looked me in the eye. "I knew."

"Were you ever going to tell me?"

"No," he said calmly. "To be honest, I wish you'd never learned it. You may think otherwise, but I do believe that some truths are better left unknown."

Roman had kept many truths from me, lies by omission, but I'd started to accept that was because of our circumstances, not because of his fundamental beliefs. "You sound like a Puritan now, with their story of Eve eating that apple from the tree of knowledge and the original sin."

He shook his head, his gaze still locked with mine. "Knowledge isn't good or bad, it's just knowledge. What you do with it, however, that has the potential to lead to sin."

"Or what you don't do with it," I snapped.

"I never said I was pure, or good, or any damn thing." It wasn't a growl, but it was low and intense. "All I've ever done is go with my gut, and it was already too late for you, Georga. By the time we met, you were eighteen, years beyond the age of fertility and viable eggs. This truth would only give you pain, and I wasn't going to be the one to give it to you."

That soccer-punched the wind from my judgment. I didn't agree with him. I'd rather take all the pain than the not knowing. But this truth did hurt, and I understood what Roman was saying. This truth hurt more than anything had ever hurt in my life. And the reason it hurt so very much, was that I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't wind back time. I couldn't fix Capra and demand they return this choice—this fundamental right—to me…or to any of the women of Capra.

Not all the women, I realized.

Not all the girls who had yet to reach puberty. A flame flickered to life in my rebellious heart, but I didn't chase it, because twelve—twelve, twelve—that number knocked at my brain, rap-rap-rap, and the disturbing realization finally hit me.

"Amelia," I gasped. "You said she'd just turned twelve when she was sold. You said twelve year old girls are a high commodity. She was sold for her healthy eggs." As horrific as that was, there was more. There had to be. "But why? The Outerlanders trade for frozen eggs at Sector Five."

"For the barons, it's a symbol of power and greatness to conceive naturally." He looked at me, his jaw working, his expression darkening even darker than the grim shadows cast about inside the tunnel. "They will give a fortune for a young, fertile girl."

I had to process that for a moment to digest the full scale of what he meant. Amelia wasn't just sold so she could grow up in the wilds and balance out their gender numbers. She wasn't just sold for her healthy eggs. She'd been sold as a…as some kind of sex slave? At the age of twelve, because no one knew how long she'd remain fertile for.

Disgust twisted and cramped in my stomach.

In Capra, we were forced into marriages if we wanted to graduate. But there was always a choice. There were the balls and the opportunities to find someone you were attracted to, someone you could grow fond of, someone you didn't absolutely despise. There was the choice Jenna had taken. You could decide to not graduate.

The choices weren't great, and I'd once thought they were as much a deception as everything else, an illusion of choice rather than an actual choice.

But what had happened to Amelia? And other girls like her? That was something different. Unimaginable. The Smoke was every bit the vile, horrific thing of nightmares that I'd ever imagined.

That didn't right the wrongs of Capra.

It just made this whole world exactly as Roman had put it. Fucked up.

And I knew there was more. Because in this world of ours, whenever you hit rock bottom, it just opened up another hole and dropped you deeper. Because Roman's answer still hadn't answered the question I'd asked.

I wet my lips. Swallowed down a gritty lump. "Why will the barons pay a fortune for a young, fertile girl? They trade for eggs. I saw children out there in their camp across the bridge. They raise their own girls."

"Why do you think?" Roman barked.

I jerked back, startled at the rare ferocity in his voice.

"Sorry." He pulled in a deep breath as he reached for me, placing a hand on my upper arm. "They don't have the medical equipment or expertise for sperm sorting in the wilds. There are too few girls. There are always too few girls, and that doesn't stop the barons from killing them. The girls are too young. Their bodies aren't prepared. Many die during childbirth. They don't stand a fucking chance."

He sounded as ravaged as I felt. Violated. On Amelia's behalf. On behalf of every girl who'd been sold to these savages, and every girl who'd been born outside the Eastern Coalition.

Silence hung between us, and it wasn't calm or silent. It was a churning, turbulent roar. A violent, raging storm.

Tears pricked my eyes all over again. A different kind of sadness that started on the outside and bled its way inside.

I wiped the wetness away.

Roman saw the distress he'd caused in me and he closed his eyes for a long, long moment. He scrubbed his jaw, then he ran that hand through his hair, and then he opened his eyes and looked at me, and it was a look that swept into the thick of the storm raging between us and blew it away.

"Georga, I am so sorry."

"Don't apologize," I said hoarsely. "Don't you ever apologize to me again. You have nothing to be sorry for. You've done nothing wrong. You are not to blame."

Not for what happened to Amelia. Not for being unable to save her. Not for anything that had ever happened in my own crappy life. Not for his secrets or his omissions. Not for anything he'd done, thought or felt or believed, or for anything yet to come.

I was done blaming Roman for any part of anything. Done blaming him for being a part of anything. Roman's shoulders were broad, but they weren't broad enough to carry the generations of cruelty of this world.

I released a tired, defeated sigh and rose up from knees.

My own, personal loss and grief was still buried in the pit of my stomach. I doubted it would ever go away. But it no longer festered, untold and unheard. It no longer chilled and numbed like a diseased, cold-blooded snake slithering along my veins and poisoning me with its last, dying breaths.

Some of the poison had leaked out with the tears.

Some of it was shared with Roman, and his grief, and the tragedy of Amelia.

Some of it may have been the initial shock that hit me like a bucket of ice water, and that was slowly draining off.

Roman pushed to his feet with me. "Are you okay?"

"I will be." I looked around for the flashlight, and found my coat crumpled on the ground. Roman must have snatched it up before he'd chased after me.

I didn't feel the cold, but I pulled it on anyway.

Roman retrieved the flashlight and we set off alongside the tracks, this time side-by-side.