Page 57 of The Brightness Between Us

“Stop!” the intruder yells, speaking Dimokratía in a posh Fédération accent. “I just want to talk to you!” I leap over a bramble, scrambling on all fours up the slope toward my hut, where my weapons are waiting.

He’s running after me. I get to my feet and cut to the side, picking a direction at random to keep him off track. Sheep bleats somewhere far off in the woods, and I instinctively alter my course toward her.

The intruder’s body blurs as I race, but I can still tell he’s cupped his hands around his mouth. Making a word that I don’t recognize at first, but I then realize is my name in that posh accent. Kodiak.

He knows my name?

There’s no time for questions now. I switch directions and barrel toward him, the mass of my shoulder striking him in the kidney. He goes down, his smaller body folding at the waist as I roll with him. We come to a rest, my wet hair whipping around my face as I stand and heft hisstruggling body over my shoulder. I lug him up the slope; he’s struggling all the while, fists battering my back.

Then his hands are at his waist. Getting out a weapon?

I panic and drop him, then sprint toward the cabin. With shaking hand, I yank my hunting knife out of the chopping stump and whirl in time to see the intruder surge into motion, escaping into the tree line. I brandish the knife. “Come out,” I yell in Dimokratía and then Fédération.

I turn in a wide circle, looking for the enemy combatant. No sign of him.

Then there’s sudden motion in the trees. He emerges beside the stream. I can see him in the full light now, this stranger with the skinprints. He’s surprisingly beautiful. I think I recognize him. Why should I recognize him? Some of the tension relaxes from my system. He doesn’t seem like much of a fighter.

The intruder brandishes his bolt caster. The small device, no bigger than a finger, can shoot out an arc of ten-thousand-volt electricity, auto-aiming it at the nearest human-sized object in a cone-shaped zone. He wastes no time firing it at me, shouting triumphantly as he does.

He must not know about the EMP dust. Or if he did, he’s somehow forgotten.

I’m not the only one making mistakes today.

We’re both frozen, but only for a split second. I take advantage of his error to close our distance, dashing threehuge strides and then lunging toward him, knife outstretched. His eyes go wide with surprise, then he just has time to get his hands up defensively before I’m upon him. At the last moment, I let the knife drop from my hand. It would be all too easy to puncture his abdomen, which would be fatal in an area with no medical care.

Knife clatters. Person grunts. Sheep bleats.

We roll, his wiry body resisting mine. An elbow clocks my chin, but then I’ve got him onto his belly, face pressed into the mud. He chokes and splutters as I wrench one arm and then the other behind him. He manages to turn his head. His hood has fallen back in the struggle, and I see his cheek is smeared with mud—and some blood, too. It might be mine. I think he busted my lip open. “I’m here to talk to you,” he says in Dimokratía.

“Enough,” I say, wrenching his arms behind him harder. “Say another word and I break these.”

I look around for something that I could use to restrain him. Nothing within reach. “I mean it. Don’t move,” I say as I reluctantly release his wrists, press my knee into his back, and peel off my tunic. He lowers his arms to his sides, but doesn’t do anything to resist. I whip the shirt in a circular motion, so the wet fabric wraps around itself, forming a sort of rope. I wrench this stranger’s hands together and make a rough cuff around the wrists, tying it sharply enough that he gasps.

I turn him over, see brown skin, freckles like poppy seeds, frightened eyes. I straddle his waist, my palms pushing his shoulder blades into the mud.

“I’m not resisting you,” he says in Dimokratía. “Do you notice that?”

That posh accent. Is he another of the Heartspeak Boys? Is that where I’ve seen him—a celebrity reel glimpsed somewhere during an academy break? “Stop speaking,” I say in Fédération.

He goes still, looking up at me. Taking in details.

There’s something... hungry in his gaze, as if he’s trying to see as much of me as he can, as if looking at me is important to him. At first I think he’s studying me as an enemy. This is how cosmology academy rivals would look at me before they attacked, trying to absorb as much information about their opponent as fast as possible. Then his expression looks like desire, like we’re the last two cadets in the changing room with nowhere to be until dinner. Then that doesn’t feel like what this is, either, and it’s something bigger and stranger. LikeI’mthe celebrity. He knew my name.

I sit back, moving my weight from his ribs to his hips. “You would have electrocuted me just now if you could have.”

He rapidly closes and opens one eye, a sarcastic Fédération mannerism. “I knew it was pretty futile, since mybracelet stopped working as soon as my cruiser passed over Glasgow. And my arc thrower is set to a wimpy level.”

He groans as I lean over to pick up my hunting knife, the awkward movement pushing my groin hard into his belly. “I have a knife in my hands,” I say.

“I can see that,” he says, the white of his visible eye stark as he strains to watch me.

“I’m going to get up. Do not move when I do.”

“I wouldn’t dare, Kodiak Celius.”

He wants to remind me that he knows my full name, that he’s sought me out specifically. I’d like to know how he knows who I am. But I will not allow him to decide the course of our communication.

I get up, standing over him with my knife at the ready. He remains still.

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