“Did Ellis send you?” I ask. What if this is just a trap she set up to get to me?
Cal hesitates. Shakes his head. “She doesn’t know I’m here. I shouldn’t be. It’s too risky now that there’s war.” He looks at me, expression caught somewhere between misery and desperation. “But I had to see you. And help you out if I could. This is the last chance I’ll get.”
His intensity makes me hesitate. Is this really a trick? Were we actually close? I’d thought about former friends in a vague, offhand way before, but I guess I never thought that I had to have had them and that they must’ve been worried when I disappeared.
Something in my chest twists. Damn it all.
I flick one of the thicker wind chimes. A low, dull sound rings out. “You’ll really answer my questions?”
“As best I can.”
My shoulders tense. I can ask anything I want. About the people who were important to me, what I was doing with the rebels, what I’d been doing before all that. I can’t trust whatever he says. But I can’t stop my heart from pounding with excitement, either.
I open my mouth to ask how and why I joined the rebels, but the words that come out are, “Do I have any family?”
No, wait. I didn’t want to ask that—it wasn’t even something I’d known I was thinking about. And it makes me sound weak in front of this rebel.
The lines around Cal’s eyes soften. I wish I could take the words back. “I don’t really know the details—you never wanted to talk about it—but I know you and your parents didn’t … get along,” he says. “You had a younger brother, but you told me he’s dead. You never mentioned how or when.”
“Oh.” The single exhalation is a betrayal. Don’t show anything. Definitely don’t show anything that could be taken for weakness. Maybe the real reason he’s here is to find something to hold over me by feeding me fake answers. I can’t trust him. I have to treat everything he says as a lie until I have actual proof.
But my heart still hits the bottom of my stomach.
I try to get rid of whatever expression is on my face. The vendor rushes over from another stall, apologizing for not noticing us sooner, and we have to fake casual small talk. I imagine hurling the chimes to the ground, the awful noise they’d make as they hit the concrete, the streamers flecked with dirt. I just want to ask my next question already.
When we’re finally able to move on without looking suspicious, I say, “How’d I end up with the rebels? What was I trying to do with them?”
A frown turns the corners of Cal’s mouth. “I don’t know. You and Sara founded our group, but you never told me how you guys met or decided to start it. I know you hated the Etioles, though.”
Ellis had said something like that at the ambush, too, but the thought that I helped form the rebels still makes me sick. “Yeah? And why’d I hate the Etioles?”
“You never told me the reason, but it was pretty obvious you did. You never showed them any mercy. You couldn’t wait to see the day we’d killed them all.”
My stomach turns, but I keep my face neutral. What could’ve made me that hateful? Maybe it’s a good thing I never told Cal the reason. I don’t think I want to know.
When Cal looks like he’s about to stop at another stall, I grab his shoulder and keep him walking down the street. He glances at me but doesn’t say anything.
“You don’t actually seem to have a whole lot of answers, you know.” I drop my hand from him.
“It’s not my fault you never talked about yourself,” Cal says. “I said I’d answer your questions the best I could. If you want someone to blame for the lack of answers, blame your past self for being so closed off.” He crosses his arms, lifts his chin. The display of backbone ups my respect for him a little.
“Fine,” I say. “Then my time with the rebels.” But I hesitate. Do I really want to know about that? It’s bad enough knowing I really did want to wipe out all the Etioles for some reason. Supposedly. What worse things could I find out?
No. Don’t forget that I can’t trust him or anything he says. I don’t know what he’s playing at yet.
“You said we were friends,” I say. “How’d we meet?”
Cal ducks his head, but I still catch the edge of his smile. Is he … happy I asked about him? “You saved me,” he says. “I was being attacked by a group of Etioles in Sector Eight. If you hadn’t stepped in, they probably would’ve killed me. You even treated my injuries.”
Now that doesn’t sound like me. My policy has always been to keep my head down. Subtly saving someone with my gift and not having to take responsibility for it is one thing. But actually showing myself? No way. Just how different was I before? Then again, that’s one thing about my past self that might’ve been better than the me now.
Cal’s eyes fall to the ground. The murmured conversation of vendors, friends, and families hums around us as we keep walking. “You invited me to come with you, Sara, and Joan. I didn’t have anything else, so I said yes. We did everything together after that. Well—mostly. You made a lot of solo infiltration trips into Sector Eight. But other than that, anywhere one of us went, the other went, too.”
“Except for when I disappeared?” I ask dryly.
He looks miserable when he says, “It was just a routine raid. We’d done dozens before—that time shouldn’t have been any different. But the military knew we were coming. They were ready when our team came.”
Now that sparks my interest. “What do you mean?”
“The military ambushed us. They separated our team and hit hard with more soldiers than the five of us could handle. There was no choice but to run and try to regroup after. I thought—I thought for sure that you out of all of us had made it out, that you’d already retreated—if I’d known you hadn’t—that you’d—”
Cal’s ragged voice cuts off as his breath hitches. Something inside me I don’t recognize wants to hug him.
“Hey,” I say. “It wasn’t your fault. At a time like that, you have to protect yourself, right? Even if you’d stayed, I might’ve still ended up here and you would’ve gotten yourself killed for nothing.” My voice is softer than I expected. Why am I trying to comfort a rebel—and one who just tried to kill me last week? But there’s something nagging at me in the back of my head, something that says, I don’t want to see this person upset.
I don’t want to listen to it. Whatever kind of relationship we had before, he’s a stranger now. And an enemy. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable, so before Cal can reply, I say, “But then wouldn’t the military have known I was a rebel? They said they found me injured Outside. They couldn’t not have known I was an enemy. Why would they take me in?”
“Erik, no matter what, you can’t trust the military. I don’t know why they took you or what they had planned, but they knew exactly who you were. They were only using you.” Cal’s eyes are hard, his guilt and grief from a few seconds ago totally gone. The coldness in them chills my lungs. But no matter how much he looks and acts like a normal kid, he’s a high-ranking rebel. There has to be a reason for it. I can’t forget that.