Spoiler! :
The beautiful day almost seemed ironic. Mocking, even. There should've been gray-pooled skies, thunder, lightning...all the theatrics of a movie. Instead, it was somewhere around 9 A.M., the sun casting light on the clear blue sky. They weren’t the typical scorching rays of the dying days of summer; instead, it was comfortably warm, and a cool breeze caressed the escaping strands of hair from my face. My mom came up behind me and undid the braid in my hair, brushing it gently and without a word. I hated when she was like this. She always acted this way when I sank into myself, even though she never really understood what was eating me away inside.
And now I stared out the window at my next pursuit. He was about my age, with a short mess of auburn hair and a pair of amber eyes softer than a puppy's. I think my mom realized as I stiffened up that she was only making me feel worse, so she made up a feeble excuse to go into her bedroom. Leaving me alone to stare miserably at my future quarry, an innocent guy no older than me. I had to kill him, when all I knew was his name - Carter Slate.
I continued to lean out the open window with my arms resting on the wooden frame. Now and then I think he felt the press of my glance, because he looked up from the table in my direction. Pretending not to notice, I looked down at the little garden center beneath us. It wasn’t much in the way of aesthetics, just a few little trees and rose bushes and stuff. Definitely not a good coverup for my spying. Still, I plucked one of the pretty blue flowers from the Morning Glory that had climbed the brick wall all the way up to my second-story window, and twirled it through my fingers analytically. When I looked up again, Carter was at the window squarely aligned with mine. Our apartments were only twelve feet apart, and it was too close for my liking. After all, the next time I’d be so near I would have a knife clasped in my hands. And even though we’d lived so close together all of these years, I’d never talked to him. I don’t know why. Maybe because it had been so obvious that there was something about Carter my father didn’t like. Somewhere in the root of my mind, I wondered if my dad had known all along what was to come, somehow. If he did, I wanted to be furious with him. But it's hard to be mad at someone when you may never see them alive again. Besides, it wasn’t my dad who ordered him as my assignment, it was Alpha. Although, if he was here, would Dad do anything to fight it? Of course not. He’d be as indifferent as any of the other Alliances.
This had all run through my mind in a single instant, before Carter broke my chain of thought with a quiet, “Hi.”
The look on my face must’ve been startled, because he lowered his head, a little embarrassed. “S-sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out or anything. I’m Carter.”
“I know,” I said, trying to sound friendly. “I’m Liza.”
“Like, short for Elizabeth?”
“Like Eliza without the ‘e’,” I said. “What’re you doing?”
As usual, he had some kind of notebook in his hand. I saw him holding it a lot, both here and at school, but couldn’t really tell what it was. He held it up shyly, revealing a perfect painting of one of the Morning Glory flowers like the one in my hand. Sorry to say, but I’m not sure even the actual flower was as perfect. The painting captured every essence of morning and sunlight and sweetness, so much so that I almost thought that if he’d been a little closer I could’ve reached in and plucked it off, just like I had with the real one on the vine. And all I could say was, “Whoa.”
His face was kind of shadowed, but I could see it flush a little red. “I don’t usually draw flowers and stuff, though. Usually I just draw stuff people ask me to, to sell.”
“So, you’re sort of an artist?”
“Sort of,” he said with a humble laugh. “Pays the bills, I guess. I mean, I only sell one once in a blue moon, but when I do it’s always a boost. My mom doesn’t exactly rake in a lot of cash getting hungover.” His expression looked embarrassed again, as if he hadn’t meant for that to slip, and I realized how self-conscious he was. But I’d done my homework, and I already knew this bit of information. It didn’t make me feel any better about his awkwardness.
I decided to help to change the subject. “So, you have a sister too, right?” It was only after I said these words that I realized how much I regretted saying them. A small, crooked smile transformed his face, and it was infectious enough to make me smile too. Yet I didn‘t want to know about the little girl whose life I would virtually destroy. After all, her wreck of a mother and dead father weren't much help. She would probably end up in foster care without her brother to feed her and take care of her. “Yeah,” Carter said. “Annie. Her real name’s Allie, but we’ve been calling her Annie ever since her curly red hair grew in. Y’know, ‘cause she looked like Annie the orphan.”
Annie the orphan. Ugh. This wasn’t getting any easier. Why couldn’t he be heartless and mean? Or obnoxious? Anything to make driving a dagger through his neck a simpler process.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked.
“Oh.” I blinked. “Yeah, I have two twin brothers, Eli and Elliot. They’re at their terrible twos. And…” And Eden. Like me, he’d been part of the Alliance. My mother was unhappy enough with my dad being part of it, especially once he’d been deported, but she would’ve never in a million years have let Eden and I join. I won’t say that my dad doesn’t care about us, only that his true loyalty lies in the Alliance....so, naturally, he helped us to secretly join. When Eden was hand-picked at seventeen to join my father on the recent quest, we threw a charade together about him going off to Harvard. Realistic enough - he’d had the brains for it. We hadn’t expected him to never return. Lying about how he died was even worse. Acting like he'd fallen down a flight of stairs rather than in the field of battle. Of course, Carter was still standing there, so I tried to keep my cool. Yet a cold, hard stone was forming in my throat. “Um, and my brother Eden. He‘s eighteen.” Or would've been.
“Are you okay?”
Did I not look okay? “Yeah, fine. Why?”
“Nothing,” he said dismissively. “Just that you keep getting that look on your face. You look like you‘ve seen a ghost.”
No, I think bitterly, just a future one. I was ready for this conversation to end, because the it was starting to hit on some sensitive subjects, but at the same time, I wanted to keep talking to him. It was as if every word he spoke had to be preserved, now that they were numbered.
Then my cell phone rang, and I drew back into the darkness of the apartment, out of the warm sunlight and beyond earshot of the fated Carter. It was Beta 1. Before I could say anything, I heard the gruff voice of our second-in-command. They were the two words I’d been dreading: “It’s time.”
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