Marked
Chapter 21

She found it difficult to fall asleep underground.

It had less to do with knowing she was underground and everything to do with the hum of electricity that vibrated in the walls and ceiling.

Back at the compound, it was Jed’s soft snoring and the rush of the river that had lulled her to sleep most nights. But here, those familiar sounds were nothing but the ghost of a memory of a life long ago.

Swinging her legs over the bed, she stood and swiped her finger across the glass panel that served as a door to her newly acquired room.

Peering outside, she noticed that every door was set to black for privacy, all except hers.

She couldn’t help but wonder if it stemmed from a place of fear.

Maybe despite all the reassurances, she still felt the need to see whoever was coming for her because surely someone still had to be coming for her.

The capital’s power, after all, was encompassing.

She drew in a deep, steadying breath, casting thoughts of the capital out of her mind.

Instead, she studied her new home with its sterile, bland walls and brightly lit corridors. It was like staring into the sun on a cloud-filled day, a glimmer of hope among black skies. But to a realist, like herself, maybe it was only the calm before a storm.

Perfect square rooms, like prison cells, lined each end of the room, all stretched out towards infinity.

She made her way until she found the elevator and swiped at it to activate it, feeling her stomach drop with the movement. It was irritating that everything she did was recorded with her fingertip but it was a small price to pay for having a roof over her head, she supposed.

The elevator descended into the lower level.

With a creek, the door opened and deposited her onto what Debra had referred to as the rec room.

In reality, it was a room with glass walls, with a giant couch that wrapped the perimeter of it, with Televisions suspended from several cables on the ceiling.

She dimmed the lights and then sat down on one of the squishy seats.

Footsteps came and went. To get to the kitchenette, you had to cut past the rec room but no one bothered her as the hours went by.

For a long time, all she could think about was the compound.

How much she missed it. How despite the luxuries and technology, this place could never compare to its warmth.

And her chest throbbed at the memory of the compound children, wondering if they too were being hurt like the children in her simulation.

Not to mention that there was so much to turn over in her mind regarding what Abby had told her. Because if it was true, if the country had closed its borders and communication had ceased with the outside world, who knew what lay beyond these shores?

She had always held hope that there was more out there than this suffering land but she wasn’t any closer now than she was then, to reaching that dream

“Can’t sleep either, huh?” A voice said behind her. Rachel glanced over her shoulder and found Hector standing in the doorway, shoulder against the wall, ankles crossed, with both arms over his chest, the easy-going stance she’d come to associate with him.

“You too?” She asked.

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Nearly impossible to sleep knowing my sisters are still out there. Plus, these noises.”

“Tell me about it.” She said, making a sour face.

In a few strides, Hector reached her, pulling a water bottle from his pant pocket before sitting down.

“Want some? It’s cherry. Or some ridiculous flavor like that.”

She quirked a smile and shook her head.

“You’re right.” He admitted. “Nothing like fresh river water.”

“Are we the idiots here, Hector?” She blurted.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, is it possible that Juan and Simone are right? We suddenly have all these things we’ve only ever dreamed of and all we can do is make faces at them.”

“Well, you’re making faces. I just brood in silence.” He said with a lopsided grin.

“You are the king of brooding.” She teased. “But seriously.”

“To answer your question, no, I don’t think we’re wrong. I think we just have better self-preservation instincts. Better than my brother’s at least.”

“I’m trying to enjoy it, really...”

“It’s just hard when we remember all we’ve had to lose to get here.”

“Right.” She whispered. “But you know, I did make the soldier ranks so at least there’s that.”

“I never doubted you could. Congratulations.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask as many as you want.”

“You said you never doubted it but how could you be sure? I wasn’t even sure myself.”

“Well, I may have been drugged but I do remember the last night at the cabin. You didn’t abandon us even though you could have. You stayed and you fought.” His eyes met hers while he twirled the bottle of water between his hands. “I guess I knew then you were a fighter.”

A slow warmth crept up her cheeks again, but she too remembered that night.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I left you all behind. We’re in this together now. Which is why I want to help you get your sisters back.”

“That’s very noble of you, Rachel. Thank you.”

“It might already be too late for my brother but not for them. Hector, I promise I will do everything I can to help you get them back. Everything.”

His eyes travelled to her face, the kind of eyes that could look into your soul, a smile lifting the corners of his lips, one of which (the top one) had a tiny white scar on the corner of it.

“Come on, I want to show you something I think you might like.”

Reaching for her hand, he pulled her onto her feet. They lingered this way until they reached the elevator when Hector had to pull his hand away to swipe at the doors.

As soon as his palm was gone from hers, she found herself, inexplicably, yearning to hold it again.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

The elevator ascended and jerked to a stop.

A few minutes later they were standing at the entrance of a vast room with a domed ceiling.

Abandoning her for a moment, he went to one of the walls and punched something into it which made a white drawer pop out.

Turning around, she saw what he had pulled out of the drawer—two pairs of contacts.

Rachel grimaced.

“Trust me?”

With my life, she thought. Though she didn’t say this out loud, she’d grown to realize that it was true. Hector was one of the most honest people she’d ever met and in a life or death situation she couldn’t think of anyone better to have in her corner.

Placing the contacts in her eyes made water run down the sides of her cheeks.

Towering over her, at least a good foot taller, Hector took a step that brought him closer to her.

Their eyes met and she swallowed.

With a small smile, his thumb gently stroked away the make-shift tears.

Where he touched her, it scorched her skin but in a way that travelled down to her toes.

“Lay down here” He said in a low voice, breaking eye contact and gesturing to the blue mats sprawled on the floor.

Rachel complied, settling into the foam texture of the mats, her hands firmly clasped over her stomach.

Glancing down, she saw her white knuckled grip, realizing it was all she could do not to reach out to him and take his hand again.

But then again, she’d never been that bold.

“Now close your eyes.”

“Hector—”

“Trust me, Rachel, you’re going to want to see this.”

She closed her eyes and waited.

Hector, who had settled in beside her and was now lying close enough that their elbows brushed, nudged her in the side.

“You can open your eyes now.”

A star filled sky swirled above her, dotted with a few wisps of clouds.

The hard ground beneath her had turned to dewy grass that seeped through her thin t-shirt with a cool familiarity.

She sat up with a gasp, fingernails digging into soft dirt, lungs expanding with fresh mountain air.

Surveying their surroundings, she found herself sitting on a hill that overlooked the compound. Trees and mountains, boulders and animals alike had all been bleached by the light of the moon.

“Hector,” she breathed. “It’s—it’s—”

“Home.” He finished for her.

“Yes, home. How did—how is this, you know, possible?”

“It’s only a simulation but it was Debra who showed it to us. She said we could always come here when we’re missing home. It’s what she does when she starts to miss where she came from.”

“Do you? Miss home, I mean.”

She looked sideways at him.

A slight breeze blew strands of curly hair onto his face and he removed one arm from where it rested on his knees to swipe away at his face.

“I do miss the compound but I didn’t always live on the mountain. I don’t know if you knew that.” He said.

“You arrived after us. I remember there were a lot of you.”

“That’s right,” His lips pulled up into a crooked grin. “I remember you too. You were kind of hard to miss with the flaming red hair.”

Rachel touched her hair self-consciously.

Hector fingered a strand that had escaped her pony tail and laughed. “It’s not a bad thing, Rachel, don’t be embarrassed. Your hair’s beautiful. It reminds me of fire.”

Don’t blush, don’t blush.

But like a traitor, she felt the warmth spread up her neck and onto her cheeks. The fact that he studied her reddening cheeks with soft brown eyes only fueled her embarrassment.

“So where did you live before coming to the compound, then?”

“On a farm.” He replied and there was a fondness in his voice that Rachel liked. “The kind with horses and cows and goats. But the horses were always my favorite.”

He continued to twirl her strand of hair as he spoke and she tried not to be distracted by it.

“My parents moved there after my dad retired and my siblings and I grew up there. When talk of the Mark came around, because we were so secluded, it was hard to believe it was real.”

“Is that...where you learned to hunt?” She asked.

“Yeah. Pops was a cop so he taught us as much as he could about survival even before the mark began but especially after.”

“He sounds like a great man.”

“He was.” Hector sighed, letting her hair fall from his fingertips.

“You must miss him so much.”

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him.”

Rachel pressed her lips together and fiddled with the blades of grass between them, picking a few off while she debated if she should hug him.

“Don’t you want to know what happened to him?” Hector asked quietly.

“Not if telling me about it will hurt you.” She whispered back.

“I don’t think it will ever stop hurting.” He admitted with a small, wistful smile. Among the blades of grass, his hand found hers, almost a subconscious gesture.

His long fingers wrapped around hers, warm and masculine.

“His stubbornness is what I remember the most. Especially that last night. After a long day in the fields, Juan and I saw a car on the horizon. We immediately went to the house and told pop about it, because whoever they were, they weren't anyone familiar. You should’ve seen him, Rachel. The way he acted so fast to get us out of the house and onto horses.”

“He pulled out an automatic weapon he’d been saving just for this day and told me to take the rest of the family to the edge of the forest. If things got bad, he wanted me to lead them to safety.”

Rachel squeezed his hand. Hector closed his eyes and it hurt her to imagine what he was seeing behind them.

“I didn’t want to leave him but he said it was time for me to be a man and a man always protects his family. No matter what.”

When he opened his eyes again, she thought she detected the glint of moisture in his eye but no tears fell.

“Sure enough, we waited at the edge of the forest while poachers raided our house. Mi Viejo*, he was so brave until the last moment. But it was just him, you know? I should have been right there beside him but he made me swear I wouldn’t come back no matter what I heard. Familia primero. Family first.”

He swallowed hard. “So when they dragged him down to the front of the farm next to the broken picket fence and tied him to a post to shoot him like a dog, do you know what I did?”

His eyes were alight with fire now and he looked away. Rachel remained silent but while he talked had drawn closer to him, resting her head against his shoulder.

She could feel him vibrating with emotion and she wished there was more she could do.

“I ran.” He whispered. “I steered our horses east and we rode until the horses couldn’t take it anymore. And we left our old man behind.”

“Oh, Hector,” Rachel whispered.

“Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still see the forest blurring around me. The way my mother’s sobs were so loud, with my sister slung in a shawl across her chest and the other clutched behind her. Juan and Jose, their tear-stained faces and sometimes...sometimes I can still hear the gunshot that kills my pop as we cowardly run away...”

“Hector, no.” Rachel breathed. “You’re not a coward. You did what your father asked you to do--you saved your family.”

“Did I?” He asked, swinging around to look at her. “Jose is dead, so is my mother and my sisters, in poacher hands.”

A few minutes of silence went by and it was obvious that he was working hard to control his breathing, his palms clasping the sides of his head.

In that moment, he looked like a small child.

Rachel’s heart bled for him.

“When Jose was killed, I didn’t even go back for him either. Didn’t give him a proper burial--nothing. What does that say about me as a person?” His tormented eyes bore into Rachel’s, waiting for her reaction.

“You’re human. You were only doing the best you could. If you had gone back for him you would have been killed too and probably the rest of your family. You were so brave, Hector, truly.”

Hector leaned back onto his elbows and gazed up at the sky. She studied him in silence, the way his chest rose and fell until he’d managed to steady his breathing, the way the moonlight made the tips of his hair lighter.

“I’m sorry,” He said after a few minutes.

“Don’t be.”

“I didn’t bring you here to upset you. If anything, I was hoping it would make you a little happy.”

“I am happy.” She smiled. “I thought I’d never see this place again and thanks to you I can get some closure. Say goodbye to this chapter. Turn the page.”

She made a sweeping gesture toward the forest.

“What I’ll miss most is how beautiful it is.” She said. “On the mountain, I never really went outside to see the sky. I was always afraid someone would see me, you know? But I see now that I was missing out.”

Hector seemed to relax, eyes crinkling when he smiled his lopsided smile.

“The sight sure is beautiful,” He replied, and his eyes—fixed on her face—softened.

“D-do you believe in God, Hector?” She stuttered under the force of his penetrating gaze, her cheeks blazing like flames.

When he didn’t reply for a few heartbeats, she continued.

“Because when I see things like these, nature, I can’t help but feel like there has to be something more out there, you know? Some greater power that created all of this. It couldn’t have just happened by accident.”

Hector looked thoughtful for a moment before he replied. “I used to,” He shrugged. “When I was a kid. But then I grew up and I saw the terrible things people will do to each other and I stopped believing.”

His eyes were big and earnest and as the wind blew strands of curly hair onto his face, and a part of them still looked slightly haunted.

“Oh, Hector.” Rachel whispered and placed her fingers over his arm, leaning in closer to catch his gaze. “No one is born evil. It’s their choices that make them that way.”

Some unknown force propelled her to reach out and touch his cheek with her palm.

His skin was warm, flushed with emotion.

His eyes cast down toward her hand, eyelashes gently brushing her skin, then back up to look her in the eye.

“You’re such a good person. I can see it. And as long as there are people like you in this world then there is still hope.”

Hector was quiet for a moments, studying her.

In fact, he was quiet so long she worried she’d said something wrong.

Her hand against his cheek began to burn with embarrassment but before she could pull it away, he gathered it in his own and brought it down towards his chest.

Surprising her, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his forehead coming to rest against hers in an intimate way yet it was the most familiar human contact she’d ever had.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t. All I did was remind you what you’ve forgotten.”

“All I want is to keep those I love safe, Rachel. But each day it becomes harder to do.” He sighed.

“So try. It’s not your fault this world is so messed up. All you can do, all any of us can really do is not give up.”

With a smile, he pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, his palm brushing her cheek.

Her breath caught in her throat, frozen, lost in the texture of his fingertips and it was in that moment that she became acutely aware of how close they’d gotten while talking.

Her lips ached to kiss him but fearing rejection, she held still, each nerve ending begging for him to move closer, to touch his lips to hers.

Seconds ticked by endlessly, with their breath intermingling and Rachel’s heart pumping out a beat so loud that she was sure he could hear it.

He studied her, his palm glued to her face, some internal battle raging in his eyes, before she made the choice for him and let her face move closer to his, lips seeking his.

But as if she had electrocuted him, he jerked away, drawing in a deep breath.

He cleared his throat and like that the moment was broken.

“We should be getting back. Drill’s a pain in the butt and we’re going to need the sleep.”

Feeling a little hurt, Rachel nodded and worked hard to wipe away the expression on her face.

It was too late.

He saw it and his eyes crinkled with concern but he said nothing.

Was it possible that she had imagined all that tension between them? Was she the only one yearning to kiss him?

Maybe all he saw her as was a friend, a convenient shoulder to cry on and now she’d gone and made it awkward.

She retrieved the contacts from her eyes and instantly they were back in the room with the domed ceiling.

“You’ll be alright on your own?” He asked.

She nodded.

He gave her hand a departing squeeze and walked away.

Sighing, she stood and made her way back to her room.

mi Viejo = my old man

A/N To ship or not to ship? Why do you think he turned away?

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