Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
I’m not a mind reader, but I’m reading his right now.
The job is Collin Creed because Collin is a problem. A kink in a chain. A snag in the fabric of... well, something military, that’s obvious. And this Riggs guy here fully expects the problem to be resolved in three months.
Done as in… dead? My shivering starts again, and this time it’s nearly out of control. “Y-y-you’re going to k-k-kill him, aren’t you?”
Riggs turns over on his back and lets out a breath as he stares up at the ceiling. “Go to sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 10 - RIGGS
She doesn’t sleep. The shaking that started as we came up the stairs is nearly out of control now. She’s not cold—this shaking is the remnants of fear. She was resigned to being left in that dungeon of a basement and when I gave her another option, her mind started to relax but her body was still tense.
But this shaking has gone beyond shivering now. It’s more like the out-of-control gasping of hyperventilation, but in the muscles instead of the lungs. In fact, it’s so bad, the bed is shaking now too.
I reach for her. “Come here.”
Immediately, she’s recoiling away from me. “Don’t touch me.”
But this twin bed is way too small for her to put up any kind of real defense, so I slip one arm under her hip and the other around her waist and pull her up to my chest, hugging her tight.
“What are you d-d-doing? Let go of me.”
“You might be going into shock, Clover. You need to relax.”
“Well, trapping me in your arms isn’t going to help.”
“Just take deep breaths.”
“Just let me go.”
She struggles, but I don’t ease up. “You need to calm down. This is a fear response and if you go into actual shock, you could die.”
“Shut up. That’s stupid.”
“It’s true. This shaking you’re doing? It’s not the shivers like you’re cold. It’s because your body is shutting down. Look.” I grab her wrist and press my finger against it. “Your pulse is racing. You need to calm down. Take a few deep breaths.”
She’s stopped arguing with me, because obviously, I’m right. But the shivers continue.
“You’re OK. I’m not gonna kill you.”
She lets out a breath, but it’s not relief.
“You’re gonna live, Clover. This is no big deal. We’ve figured a way out and you can relax now.”
Her only response is a huff. But she does breathe. Not deep, not at first. But gradually, over the next few minutes, she gets a more even rhythm going. The shivering stops being a constant thing and instead becomes more intermittent.
A few more minutes after that, and she’s nearly better.
I could let go of her now and she would be OK. Alternatively, she could tell me to let go of her and I wouldn’t have a reason not to. But neither of us does these things.
She says nothing while I hold her.
Which gives me time to think about how long it’s been since I was even with a woman. Actually, how long it’s been since I even had the luxury of thinking about being with a woman.
Six years.
When I think about this—about the prison time I served—I usually have one of two reactions. The first is anger, of course. Over the injustice of it all. I mean, so what? I left. So what? I never asked to be born in the Colonies. I never agreed to that. As a kid, I accepted it because I didn’t know any better, but after going up top I knew that it was wrong to keep the world a secret.
And I’m not saying that the Colonies are terrible places. People generally seem to be happy. But that’s because they don’t think they have a choice. The adults know that there’s another world up top, but it’s not something they teach children. In school, when you’re little and your brain is impressionable, you learn the history of the Colonies. About how the people up top were out of control and destroyed everything.
Which, in certain lights, could be considered true. I mean, no place is perfect and the up-top certainly has its vices. There are plenty of terrible things going on up there.
But these history books of ours fail to mention that our little sub-society wasn’t made out of necessity, but choice.
Choices that were made generations ago now.
Choices we never got to make ourselves.
So why can’t I just… choose something else?
“You, Riggs,” my father told me when I asked him this, “are meant to lead. You have a role to play, a destiny to fulfill, and your petty, personal desires have nothing to do with anything.”
I had just been pulled out of the tunnels. I was still covered from head to toe in dried mud the color of blood, standing there, in his office, as it flaked off my feet and onto his floor.