Ignite Me

ONE

I am an hourglass.

My seventeen years have collapsed and buried me from the inside out. My legs feel full of sand and stapled together, my mind overflowing with grains of indecision, choices unmade and impatient as time runs out of my body. The small hand of a clock taps me at one and two, three and four, whispering hello, get up, stand up, it’s time to

wake up

wake up

Wake up, he whispers.

A sharp intake of breath and I’m awake but not up, surprised but not scared, somehow staring into the very desperately green eyes that seem to know too much, too well. Aaron Warner Anderson is bent over me, his worried eyes inspecting me, his hand caught in the air like he might’ve been about to touch me.

He jerks back.

He stares, unblinking, chest rising and falling.

Good morning, I assume. I’m unsure of my voice, of the hour and this day, of these words leaving my lips and this body that contains me.

I notice he’s wearing a white button-down, half untucked into his curiously unrumpled black slacks. His shirtsleeves are folded, pushed up past his elbows.

His smile looks like it hurts.

I pull myself into a seated position and Warner shifts to accommodate me. I have to close my eyes to steady the sudden dizziness, but I force myself to remain still until the feeling passes.

I’m tired and weak from hunger, but other than a few general aches, I seem to be fine. I’m alive. I’m breathing and blinking and feeling human and I know exactly why.

I meet his eyes. You saved my life.

I was shot in the chest.

Warner’s father put a bullet in my body and I can still feel the echoes of it. If I focus, I can relive the exact moment it happened; the pain: so intense, so excruciating; I’ll never be able to forget it.

I suck in a startled breath.

I’m finally aware of the familiar foreignness of this room and I’m quickly seized by a panic that screams I did not wake up where I fell asleep. My heart is racing and I’m inching away from him, hitting my back against the headboard, clutching at these sheets, trying not to stare at the chandelier I remember all too well—

It’s okay— Warner is saying. It’s all right—

What am I doing here? Panic, panic; terror clouds my consciousness. Why did you bring me here again—?

Juliette, please, I’m not going to hurt you—

Then why did you bring me here? My voice is starting to break and I’m struggling to keep it steady. "Why bring me back to this hellhole—"

I had to hide you. He exhales, looks up at the wall.

What? Why?

No one knows you’re alive. He turns to look at me. I had to get back to base. I needed to pretend everything was back to normal and I was running out of time.

I force myself to lock away the fear.

I study his face and analyze his patient, earnest tone. I remember him last night—it must’ve been last night—I remember his face, remember him lying next to me in the dark. He was tender and kind and gentle and he saved me, saved my life. Probably carried me into bed. Tucked me in beside him. It must’ve been him.

But when I glance down at my body I realize I’m wearing clean clothes, no blood or holes or anything anywhere and I wonder who washed me, wonder who changed me, and worry that might’ve been Warner, too.

Did you . . . I hesitate, touching the hem of the shirt I’m wearing. Did—I mean—my clothes—

He smiles. He stares until I’m blushing and I decide I hate him a little and then he shakes his head. Looks into his palms. No, he says. The girls took care of that. I just carried you to bed.

The girls, I whisper, dazed.

The girls.

Sonya and Sara. They were there too, the healer twins, they helped Warner. They helped him save me because he’s the only one who can touch me now, the only person in the world who’d have been able to transfer their healing power safely into my body.

My thoughts are on fire.

Where are the girls what happened to the girls and where is Anderson and the war and oh God what’s happened to Adam and Kenji and Castle and I have to get up I have to get up I have to get up and get out of bed and get going

but

I try to move and Warner catches me. I’m off-balance, unsteady; I still feel as though my legs are anchored to this bed and I’m suddenly unable to breathe, seeing spots and feeling faint. Need up. Need out.

Can’t.

Warner. My eyes are frantic on his face. What happened? What’s happening with the battle—?

Please, he says, gripping my shoulders. You need to start slowly; you should eat something—

"Tell me—"

Don’t you want to eat first? Or shower?

No, I hear myself say. I have to know now.

One moment. Two and three.

Warner takes a deep breath. A million more. Right hand over left, spinning the jade ring on his pinkie finger over and over and over and over It’s over, he says.

What?

I say the word but my lips make no sound. I’m numb, somehow. Blinking and seeing nothing.

It’s over, he says again.

No.

I exhale the word, exhale the impossibility.

He nods. He’s disagreeing with me.

No.

Juliette.

No, I say. No. No. Don’t be stupid, I say to him. Don’t be ridiculous, I say to him. "Don’t lie to me goddamn you, but now my voice is high and broken and shaking and No, I gasp, no, no, no—"

I actually stand up this time. My eyes are filling fast with tears and I blink and blink but the world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can’t bear to see it.

The ground is hard.

I know this to be an actual fact because it’s suddenly pressed against my face and Warner is trying to touch me but I think I scream and slap his hands away because I already know the answer. I must already know the answer because I can feel the revulsion bubbling up and unsettling my insides but I ask anyway. I’m horizontal and somehow still tipping over and the holes in my head are tearing open and I’m staring at a spot on the carpet not ten feet away and I’m not sure I’m even alive but I have to hear him say it.

Why? I ask.

It’s just a word, stupid and simple.

Why is the battle over? I ask. I’m not breathing anymore, not really speaking at all; just expelling letters through my lips.

Warner is not looking at me.

He’s looking at the wall and at the floor and at the bedsheets and at the way his knuckles look when he clenches his fists but no not at me he won’t look at me and his next words are so, so soft.

Because they’re dead, love. They’re all dead.

TWO

My body locks.

My bones, my blood, my brain freeze in place, seizing in some kind of sudden, uncontrollable paralysis that spreads through me so quickly I can’t seem to breathe. I’m wheezing in deep, strained inhalations, and the walls won’t stop swaying in front of me.

Warner pulls me into his arms.

Let go of me, I scream, but, oh, only in my imagination because my lips are finished working and my heart has just expired and my mind has gone to hell for the day and my eyes my eyes I think they’re bleeding. Warner is whispering words of comfort I can’t hear and his arms are wrapped entirely around me, trying to keep me together through sheer physical force but it’s no use.

I feel nothing.

Warner is shushing me, rocking me back and forth, and it’s only then that I realize I’m making the most excruciating, earsplitting sound, agony ripping through me. I want to speak, to protest, to accuse Warner, to blame him, to call him a liar, but I can say nothing, can form nothing but sounds so pitiful I’m almost ashamed of myself. I break free of his arms, gasping and doubling over, clutching my stomach.

Adam. I choke on his name.

Juliette, please—

Kenji. I’m hyperventilating into the carpet now.

Please, love, let me help you—

What about James? I hear myself say. He was left at Omega Point—he wasn’t a-allowed to c-come—

It’s all been destroyed, Warner says slowly, quietly. Everything. They tortured some of your members into giving away the exact location of Omega Point. Then they bombed the entire thing.

"Oh, God." I cover my mouth with one hand and stare, unblinking, at the ceiling.

I’m so sorry, he says. You have no idea how sorry I am.

Liar, I whisper, venom in my voice. I’m angry and mean and I can’t be bothered to care. You’re not sorry at all.

I glance at Warner just long enough to see the hurt flash in and out of his eyes. He clears his throat.

I am sorry, he says again, quiet but firm. He picks up his jacket from where it was hanging on a nearby rack; shrugs it on without a word.

Where are you going? I ask, guilty in an instant.

You need time to process this and you clearly have no use for my company. I will attend to a few tasks until you’re ready to talk.

Please tell me you’re wrong. My voice breaks. My breath catches. Tell me there’s a chance you could be wrong—

Warner stares at me for what feels like a long time. If there were even the slightest chance I could spare you this pain, he finally says, I would’ve taken it. You must know I wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t absolutely true.

And it’s this—his sincerity—that finally snaps me in half.

Because the truth is so unbearable I wish he’d spare me a lie.

I don’t remember when Warner left.

I don’t remember how he left or what he said. All I know is that I’ve been lying here curled up on the floor long enough. Long enough for the tears to turn to salt, long enough for my throat to dry up and my lips to chap and my head to pound as hard as my heart.

I sit up slowly, feel my brain twist somewhere in my skull. I manage to climb onto the bed and sit there, still numb but less so, and pull my knees to my chest.

Life without Adam.

Life without Kenji, without James and Castle and Sonya and Sara and Brendan and Winston and all of Omega Point. My friends, all destroyed with the flick of a switch.

Life without Adam.

I hold on tight, pray the pain will pass.

It doesn’t.

Adam is gone.

My first love. My first friend. My only friend when I had none and now he’s gone and I don’t know how I feel. Strange, mostly. Delirious, too. I feel empty and broken and cheated and guilty and angry and desperately, desperately sad.

We’d been growing apart since escaping to Omega Point, but that was my fault. He wanted more from me, but I wanted him to live a long life. I wanted to protect him from the pain I would cause him. I tried to forget him, to move on without him, to prepare myself for a future separate and apart from him.

I thought staying away would keep him alive.

Stupid girl.

The tears are fresh and falling fast now, traveling quietly down my cheeks and into my open, gasping mouth. My shoulders won’t stop shaking and my fists keep clenching and my body is cramping and my knees are knocking and old habits are crawling out of my skin and I’m counting cracks and colors and sounds and shudders and rocking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I have to let him go I have to let him go I have to I have to

I close my eyes

and breathe.

Harsh, hard, rasping breaths.

In.

Out.

Count them.

I’ve been here before, I tell myself. I’ve been lonelier than this, more hopeless than this, more desperate than this. I’ve been here before and I survived. I can get through this.

But never have I been so thoroughly robbed. Love and possibility, friendships and futures: gone. I have to start over now; face the world alone again. I have to make one final choice: give up or go on.

So I get to my feet.

My head is spinning, thoughts knocking into one another, but I swallow back the tears. I clench my fists and try not to scream and I tuck my friends in my heart and

revenge

I think

has never looked so sweet.

THREE

Hang tight

Hold on

Look up

Stay strong

Hang on

Hold tight

Look strong

Stay up

One day I might break

One day I might

b r e a k

free

Warner can’t hide his surprise when he walks back into the room.

I look up, close the notebook in my hands. I’m taking this back, I say to him.

He blinks at me. You’re feeling better.

I nod over my shoulder. My notebook was just sitting here, on the bedside table.

Yes, he says slowly. Carefully.

I’m taking it back.

I understand. He’s still standing by the door, still frozen in place, still staring. Are you—he shakes his head—I’m sorry, are you going somewhere?

It’s only then that I realize I’m already halfway to the door. I need to get out of here.

Warner says nothing. He takes a few careful steps into the room, slips off his jacket, drapes it over a chair. He pulls three guns out of the holster strapped to his back and takes his time placing them on the table where my notebook used to be. When he finally looks up he has a slight smile on his face.

Hands in his pockets. His smile a little bigger. Where are you going, love?

I have some things I need to take care of.

Is that right? He leans one shoulder against the wall, crosses his arms against his chest. He can’t stop smiling.

Yes. I’m getting irritated now.

Warner waits. Stares. Nods once, as if to say, Go on.

Your father—

Is not here.

Oh.

I try to hide my shock, but now I don’t know why I was so certain Anderson would still be here. This complicates things.

You really thought you could just walk out of this room, Warner says to me, knock on my father’s door, and do away with him?

Yes. No.

Liar, liar, pants on fire, Warner says softly.

I glare at him.

My father is gone, Warner says. He’s gone back to the capital, and he’s taken Sonya and Sara with him.

I gasp, horrified. No.

Warner isn’t smiling anymore.

Are they . . . alive? I ask.

I don’t know. A simple shrug. I imagine they must be, as they’re of no use to my father in any other condition.

"They’re alive? My heart picks up so quickly I might be having a heart attack. I have to get them back—I have to find them, I—"

You what? Warner is looking at me closely. How will you get to my father? How will you fight him?

I don’t know! I’m pacing across the room now. But I have to find them. They might be my only friends left in this world and—

I stop.

I spin around suddenly, heart in my throat.

What if there are others? I whisper, too afraid to hope.

I meet Warner across the room.

What if there are other survivors? I ask, louder now. What if they’re hiding somewhere?

That seems unlikely.

But there’s a chance, isn’t there? I’m desperate. If there’s even the slightest chance—

Warner sighs. Runs a hand through the hair at the back of his head. If you’d seen the devastation the way that I did, you wouldn’t be saying such things. Hope will break your heart all over again.

My knees have begun to buckle.

I cling to the bed frame, breathing fast, hands shaking. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t actually know what’s happened to Omega Point. I don’t know where the capital is or how I’d get there. I don’t know if I’d even be able to get to Sonya and Sara in time. But I can’t shake this sudden, stupid hope that more of my friends have somehow survived.

Because they’re stronger than this—smarter.

They’ve been planning for war for such a long time, I hear myself say. They must have had some kind of a backup plan. A place to hide—

Juliette—

Dammit, Warner! I have to try. You have to let me look.

This is unhealthy. He won’t meet my eyes. It’s dangerous for you to think there’s a chance anyone might still be alive.

I stare at his strong, steady profile.

He studies his hands.

Please, I whisper.

He sighs.

I have to head to the compounds in the next day or so, just to better oversee the process of rebuilding the area. He tenses as he speaks. We lost many civilians, he says. Too many. The remaining citizens are understandably traumatized and subdued, as was my father’s intention. They’ve been stripped of any last hope they might’ve had for rebellion.

A tight breath.

And now everything must be quickly put back in order, he says. "The bodies are being cleared out and incinerated. The damaged housing units are being replaced. Civilians are being forced to go back to work, orphans are being moved, and the remaining children are required to attend their sector schools.

The Reestablishment, he says, does not allow time for people to grieve.

There’s a heavy silence between us.

While I’m overseeing the compounds, Warner says, I can find a way to take you back to Omega Point. I can show you what’s happened. And then, once you have proof, you will have to make your choice.

What choice?

You have to decide your next move. You can stay with me, he says, hesitating, or, if you prefer, I can arrange for you to live undetected, somewhere on unregulated grounds. But it will be a solitary existence, he says quietly. You can never be discovered.

Oh.

A pause.

Yes, he says.

Another pause.

"Or, I say to him, I leave, find your father, kill him, and deal with the consequences on my own."

Warner fights a smile and fails.

He glances down and laughs just a little before looking me right in the eye. He shakes his head.

What’s so funny?

My dear girl.

"What?"

I have been waiting for this moment for a long time now.

What do you mean?

You’re finally ready, he says. You’re finally ready to fight.

Shock courses through me. Of course I am.

In an instant I’m bombarded by memories of the battlefield, the terror of being shot to death. I have not forgotten my friends or my renewed conviction, my determination to do things differently. To make a difference. To really fight this time, with no hesitation. No matter what happens—and no matter what I discover—there’s no turning back for me anymore. There are no other alternatives.

I have not forgotten. I forge forward or die.

Warner laughs out loud. He looks like he might cry.

"I am going to kill your father, I say to him, and I’m going to destroy The Reestablishment."

He’s still smiling.

"I will."

I know, he says.

Then why are you laughing at me?

I’m not, he says softly. I’m only wondering, he says, if you would like my help.

FOUR

What? I blink fast, disbelieving.

I’ve always told you, Warner says to me, that we would make an excellent team. I’ve always said that I’ve been waiting for you to be ready—for you to recognize your anger, your own strength. I’ve been waiting since the day I met you.

But you wanted to use me for The Reestablishment—you wanted me to torture innocent people—

Not true.

"What? What are you talking about? You told me yourself—"

I lied. He shrugs.

My mouth has fallen open.

There are three things you should know about me, love. He steps forward. The first, he says, is that I hate my father more than you might ever be capable of understanding. He clears his throat. Second, is that I am an unapologetically selfish person, who, in almost every situation, makes decisions based entirely on self-interest. And third. A pause as he looks down. Laughs a little. I never had any intention of using you as a weapon.

Words have failed me.

I sit down.

Numb.

That was an elaborate scheme I designed entirely for my father’s benefit, Warner says. I had to convince him it would be a good idea to invest in someone like you, that we might utilize you for military gain. And to be quite, quite honest, I’m still not sure how I managed it. The idea is ludicrous. To spend all that time, money, and energy on reforming a supposedly psychotic girl just for the sake of torture? He shakes his head. I knew from the beginning it would be a fruitless endeavor; a complete waste of time. There are far more effective methods of extracting information from the unwilling.

Then why—why did you want me?

His eyes are jarring in their sincerity. I wanted to study you.

What? I gasp.

He turns his back to me. Did you know, he says, so quietly I have to strain to hear him, that my mother lives in that house? He looks to the closed door. The one my father brought you to? The one where he shot you? She was in her room. Just down the hall from where he was keeping you.

When I don’t respond, Warner turns to face me.

Yes, I whisper. Your father mentioned something about her.

Oh? Alarm flits in and out of his features. He quickly masks the emotion. And what, he says, making an effort to sound calm, did he say about her?

That she’s sick, I tell him, hating myself for the tremor that goes through his body. That he stores her there because she doesn’t do well in the compounds.

Warner leans back against the wall, looking as if he requires the support. He takes a hard breath. Yes, he finally says. It’s true. She’s sick. She became ill very suddenly. His eyes are focused on a distant point in another world. When I was a child, she seemed perfectly fine, he says, turning and turning the jade ring around his finger. But then one day she just . . . fell apart. For years I fought my father to seek treatment, to find a cure, but he never cared. I was on my own to find help for her, and no matter who I contacted, no doctor was able to treat her. No one, he says, hardly breathing now, knew what was wrong with her. She exists in a constant state of agony, he says, and I’ve always been too selfish to let her die.

He looks up.

And then I heard about you. I’d heard stories about you, rumors, he says. And it gave me hope for the very first time. I wanted access to you; I wanted to study you. I wanted to know and understand you firsthand. Because in all my research, you were the only person I’d ever heard of who might be able to offer me answers about my mother’s condition. I was desperate, he says. I was willing to try anything.

What do you mean? I ask. How could someone like me be able to help you with your mother?

His eyes find mine again, bright with anguish. Because, love. You cannot touch anyone. And she, he says, she cannot be touched.

FIVE

I’ve lost the ability to speak.

I finally understand her pain, Warner says. I finally understand what it must be like for her. Because of you. Because I saw what it did to you—what it does to you—to carry that kind of burden, to exist with that much power and to live among those who do not understand.

He tilts his head back against the wall, presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.

She, much like you, he says, must feel as though there is a monster inside of her. But unlike you, her only victim is herself. She cannot live in her own skin. She cannot be touched by anyone; not even by her own hands. Not to brush a hair from her forehead or to clench her fists. She’s afraid to speak, to move her legs, to stretch her arms, even to shift to a more comfortable position, simply because the sensation of her skin brushing against itself causes her an excruciating amount of pain.

He drops his hands.

It seems, he says, fighting to keep his voice steady, that something in the heat of human contact triggers this terrible, destructive power within her, and because she is both the originator and the recipient of the pain, she’s somehow incapable of killing herself. Instead, she exists as a prisoner in her own bones, unable to escape this self-inflicted torture.

My eyes are stinging hard. I blink fast.

For so many years I thought my life was difficult; I thought I understood what it meant to suffer. But this. This is something I can’t even begin to comprehend. I never stopped to consider that someone else might have it worse than I do.

It makes me feel ashamed for ever having felt sorry for myself.

For a long time, Warner continues, "I thought she was just . . . sick. I thought she’d developed some kind of illness