The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash (26 page)

She left us alone and we took a seat on either side of the little girl. I wasn't sure what to do. I watched her chest rise and fall for a few moments and carefully brushed a bang back from her forehead when I noticed a small piece of dirt sticking to the frayed ends of her hair. I couldn't believe how dirty she was. Her face, arms, and chest were covered in what seemed like a soft sut that blemished her skin. It made me wonder how far off it was to how I had looked.

Kyle had made it seem as if he had killed her because of me. It was obvious now that I had completely assumed the wrong outcome, though the idea of her death at the time had been one of the reasons I had wanted to come back to Arrino with Chris. Watching the subtle signs of life play out from her body now made me regret everything I had done with her in the past. It was entirely possible that she could have fared better if I had never even shown my face in the first place. Then I remembered Olivia had tried to convince me otherwise.

She was the first to break the silence with a hushed voice. “You're blaming yourself again.”

I glanced up at her and realized that I had been frowning, lost in thought. She had instantly read me better from the start than Chris had ever been able to. I wouldn't be able to hide anything from her for a single second. I backed off from Ellie and bit my tongue. I couldn't find the words and it made me frustrated. I felt like screaming until my lungs collapsed, but of course I couldn't do it there. Had Olivia planned that out ahead of time too? She must have. Better to learn to stay cool and collected than threatening to kill someone every time I brushed up against another panic attack.

“Tess?” She leaned forward a bit and raised an eyebrow at me.

“I don't know her.” The words came out calm and simple. I thought there might have been more to it, but there wasn't. It was the same feeling I had gotten when I had been stuck in Arrino. I cared about someone that I didn't even know. Why would anyone be stupid enough to entertain that? It didn't make any sense. It just made me more vulnerable.

Olivia only continued to take me in, as patient as can be, and I looked back down at Ellie. “I don't know who she is.” I had wanted to see her. I was glad she was still alive, but I didn't know the first thing about her. “I have no idea what the hell I'm doing here.” I lifted an open hand at the tent and the apparent city around us, taking it one step further. “Why the hell am I here?” I dug my chin into my hand and rested it against my leg, hunched over. I didn't belong in this new world filled with strangers. I belonged out in the open—alone.

It took a good minute before Olivia came up with an answer. I thought she was going to have me think about it all day before she reached across her back and took her swords off to put them to the side. “I don't think she cares.” I glanced up at her and saw that she was still looking down. “The point is you're here now. And you can still get to know her. It'll mean a lot to her just to know that you came to visit.”

Goddammit.

She was right. Why was she right all the time? She was like some sort of logic-ninja ever poised to prove me wrong. I didn't even want to think about it. I shifted my legs and I could feel the crumpled up piece of paper in my pocket, Elizabeth's stupid template. I changed the topic without even thinking about it. “You know Hayes is wrong, right?” I met Olivia's eyes again and finished the thought. “We should tell everyone about Chris.”

“I know.”

Seriously? Then what the hell?

I didn't understand. “Then why aren't you doing anything?”

“Because it's not my place.” She must have known that wasn't a good enough explanation for me, so she continued. “Hayes has to follow orders just like me, but out here, she's in charge. My job is to keep her safe. I can advise and I can fight, but I can't make the decisions for her. She has to do what she thinks is best, just like anyone else.”

I thought that was stupid. To hell with the honor system. She didn't even belong in charge. I had been awake in Tent City for less than a day and I could already sense it. Hell, it only took one conversation for me to realize that she was an incompetent leader. “You should be in charge.”

Olivia smiled at that and I didn't understand why it was so funny.

“Seriously.”

She held her grin. “That's flattering, Tess, but it's not the best idea you've ever had.”

“Why?”

She shifted in her seat. “You've known me for what, a few hours? And you're already willing to give me your endorsement?”

Yeah.

It was that simple. “I've known Hayes for a lot less than that and I know I wouldn't give it to her.”

She nodded at that. “Fair enough.”

But it wasn't fair. She still hadn't given me a straight answer. “I mean—come on, you're a Knight. Can't you pull rank or something? People would follow you.”

She smiled again. “You realize you're talking about starting a coup, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“You really don't wanna write that article, do you?”

Fuck. No.

I leaned back. “Not really.” I could have said a lot more, but the environment was starting to get to me. Olivia had made the right choice by bringing me someplace quiet.

She gazed at me over Ellie for a moment and sighed. “It's a good idea, Tess. You should do it.”

I started to question how loud I could get before 'quiet' wouldn't be redeemable anymore. Something was going on between everyone and it was obvious that Hayes wanted me to write a fake story that would put all the pieces back together. “It's garbage.”

Olivia nodded. “It's propaganda, yeah, but it could still do us some good.” She leaned forward, careful not to raise her voice and wake Ellie. “Everyone you saw on the way here has an agenda. They have family. They have people that they care about. They have problems. Whether or not they all volunteered to leave their homes doesn't even matter. They're here now and they feel lost. We need their trust now when it matters most, especially after what's been happening...” She faltered for a moment and I could feel a thread of our last conversation pick back up again. “Especially after we left them before.”

I wasn't sure what to say. I felt bad for blaming Olivia before as it was becoming increasingly apparent that she hadn't been at fault for the military's absence. If anything, she had probably tried her best to fight against it. I stared down at Ellie and her soft cheeks while her chest continued to rise and fall rhythmically with the air that passed through her lungs. Hopefully I would look as cute as her when I would be dead enough to finally stop moving—or whenever I would be asleep—whatever. Whichever came first.

The conversation needed to change gears. I wanted to see the proposed article in Olivia's point of view, but it still felt wrong. Even if I only pulled from true experiences that I had gained while training with Chris, I would still end up neglecting all the negative consequences that I had gleamed while working with him. To cherry pick information, just like choosing not to tell anyone about his death, would be misleading. It wouldn't be right.

Maybe it would help to understand what had happened to cause the divide amongst the people of Tent City in the first place. I asked Olivia about the source of it all in the most simple way I could think of and she didn't seem sure of what to say.

“It's...
complicated
. And obnoxiously straightforward at the same time.”

Okay.
..

I matched her perplexed expression. “Should I pick one first or what?”

She took a breath, and it took me a moment to realize that I was witnessing a new part of Olivia that I had just seen for the first time; she was embarrassed, but she crossed her arms and eventually fought it through. “Someone threw an egg at the secretary.”

Holy shit.

And I thought my problems were bad.

Hard-boiled or raw?

I almost thought she couldn't have been serious. “Please tell me that's the straightforward reason everyone's pissed at each other...”

She gave me a face. “Yes. I mean, she was fine—obviously. She's not made of cake batter. Someone was pissed off enough to through food at her, but one of our own men brought up the idea that if they could get that close to her, then what would there be to stop them from attacking her with a knife? Or a gun? Hayes probably just took it one step further and gave herself a security detail. She's overreacting. People are gonna see her walking around with her own personal bodyguards and they're gonna think that she sees them as a threat. If nothing else changes, then it can only get worse. They're inevitably gonna fill the role because she's already given them the precedence to do so. She's literally setting up her own battles ahead of time.”

Hot damn.

And to think that one egg could be so powerful. “So then what's the complicated part?”

“The complicated part is that not everyone thinks that we should all be in this together. Hayes only got assigned to gather intel,
not
to help anyone or even make contact. The higher-ups probably only saw it as a liability. We're strictly a recon element and nothing else. We're not equipped for any of this.”

That one was at least news for me to hear. “So Hayes is letting everyone come along because she wants to...”

“Pretty much. She might not be able to think four or five steps ahead, but she wants to help people. Lately we've gotten taxed more than some think we can handle, and they're not wrong. It's hard enough to provide for each other when you're on the move, but it doesn't exactly scale up the way you'd like the more that join in. It was pretty unanimous between everyone to keep Arrino out of the loop when Ellie showed up. They decided they'd rather look out for themselves than to take the higher risk, but Hayes wouldn't go for it. She was the one to give the order for us to lead 'em here. To say it wasn't a very popular move among the rest of us would be kind of an understatement.”

Huh. Go figure.

So maybe Hayes wasn't the sharpest woman in the world, but at least her heart was set in the right place. It also just so happened to be that the long lasting consequences of her soul-filled actions could end up spelling conflict and maybe even death for hundreds—no biggie. But what about Olivia? “What would you have done?”

She gazed at Ellie for a moment. “I'm a Knight and a member of the Order. I've sworn to protect the innocent no matter how much it takes—even if it takes everything.” Her focus fell back onto me. “Hayes was somewhat sheltered thanks to her job. Most politicians don't know what it's like to experience the consequences of their actions first hand, but they know that someone
is
always
going to disagree with them no matter what they do. Part of being a leader is picking the best choice when you don't have any good options to choose from. Given what would have happened to the people of Arrino without us, I think she did the right thing.”

Interesting.

Giving credit to where it was due—that sounded like a real leader to me. I bent my legs and remembered I had more things in my pockets before pulling out Ellie's ring and playing with it against my fingers. It had been interesting to learn that even non-Paranormals could create artifacts. I made a mental note to ask Olivia how that worked later, as something else caught my attention. It had been somewhat widely known that Paranormals had varying degrees of strength, and I was betting that was why I had been able to see Emma's memories through her artifact so clearly, but it also made sense to me to think that the Knights had played a large role in those designations as well.

I rolled the piece of silver around a finger and tried to come up with the most acceptable way I could phrase my thoughts. “So, let’s say—hypothetically speaking—something happened to Hayes and she couldn't tell people what to do.” I looked back up at Olivia, curious as to how she would react. “Would you do it?”

“Would I lead?  She shrugged. “Sure, if the situation called for it. Knights are trained in a wide variety of aspects. If something happened to Hayes and nothing else changed, I would probably be in the best position to do so.”

Hmmm.

That seemed too easy. “What if she was giving bad orders and you had to fight against her and some of her soldiers? Could you do it then?”

She eyed me suspiciously for a few seconds and I thought I might have gone too far. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“Nothing.” I pretended to stare at Ellie again and hoped Olivia wouldn't delve any further. It would have been embarrassing to admit that I had been trying to indirectly gauge how strong of a Paranormal she really was. Instead, I thought I might have come across as questioning her loyalty, which didn't look very good either.

“How old are you, Tess?”

I had to think about it for a moment.

Twenty?

“Twenty-two.”

I think...

To be completely fair, knowing my age up until that point comprised of remembering a number for at least a few thousands days without a break in between
and
it changed after every consecutive three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth day, so there was that. Plus college—so, brain damage.

Olivia leaned back. “This might not seem as important to you now, but as an elected official, Hayes represents a lot of people. It's important that nobody interferes with that process.”