Anne Winchell - The Last War

Even in the dream Raven luxuriated in the feeling of safety, wishing the dream would end before the feeling was shattered. But the dream always shifted to another scene.

I am asleep, thumb in my mouth, feet dangling out of the covers. A loud burst of sound like a tree snapping in freezing rain. I open my eyes and look around. There is talking in the hall, my mother’s voice only it is pleading and desperate like I’ve never heard. Another burst and her voice stops. Other people talk. Strangers. They are looking for other people in my home. They go downstairs and I run to my parents’ room.

My mother is on the floor. Her body is there in a white and gold paisley nightgown that I helped my father pick out for her birthday last year. It has red streaks on it. My father is on the bed. I hear gasping, suckling sounds and his chest goes up and down. The sounds stop and I wait for him to stand up and hold me close to his chest and wrap his arms all the way around me. His arms are so long I sometimes think he could wrap me up twice if he tried. But he doesn’t get up.

I am angry, in a way I have never been before. I hear footsteps approaching and a voice calling my name. “Where are you, Bryce?” I don’t care how he knows my name. I have a gun in my hand now and I want nothing more than to do to this man what he did to my parents. I walk into the hallway and confront him. I am smiling and hating him as I pull the trigger and it is ecstasy because I have won.

Raven knew the dream wasn’t entirely true. Over the years, the ending had shifted. Raven suspected it was because of his job working for the government. He had killed the intruder, he knew, but he didn’t remember the details, like how he had gotten a gun. He thought that his parents might have kept one for protection. It wasn’t illegal at that time. And he had been a child, far too young for the pure hatred and pleasure he felt at the end of the dream.

But the dream that had haunted him his entire life terrified him for more reasons than just the emotional trauma. It marked him as a killer. He had been a killer at the age of six, and because he lived in Portland, because the police found him with a gun in his hands, he was sentenced to death. Only the actions of a kind police officer who smuggled him to the Eastern World had saved his life. Raven had never been back to the Western World because he knew that if he did, he could be brought up on charges of murder and killed. He had confessed to the crime, after all, and even though it seemed insane that a court system would accept the confession of a child only hours after he witnessed his parents’ deaths, it was damning evidence against him. When he began working for Medane, Raven was always careful to leave no trace of his presence. People suspected he was involved, but there was no evidence linking him to any murders in the Eastern World. Just the West.

In the middle of the night, alone in the dark like this, Raven could admit that the most frightening part of the dream was the feeling of pleasure when he pulled the trigger. Every single time Raven was sent on a mission to kill, he knew that there was a chance that this feeling would envelop him in real life. He only accepted jobs where he would have a chance to eliminate a criminal or murderer. Usually they had been sanctioned by the government, but overstepped their limits. He had killed six people in the Lower African state once, all militia members, because they had slaughtered two rural villages and covered it up by claiming a plague had hit. Raven hadn’t meant to kill any of them, but he was visiting the state and overheard their plans for another ‘plague’ to strike. The joy in their voices when they thought of killing helpless humans was too much.

He killed because he hated to kill, because he regretted it and honored the people he killed. It was the only thing that separated him from the people he despised and every time he took a life, he begged fate not to turn him into his nightmare. Every time was terrifying. He had killed twenty-seven men and women in his life, including his parents’ killer. Not including the people who had died as a result of his decisions. That number was far greater.

Raven wondered whether the world would be better off without him. He tried so hard to help people and protect them. He wanted to be a hero. But no matter what he did, it seemed like the people he loved were the ones hurt. Nalia’s mother was killed because of what he believed. Kaela’s life was at risk because he decided to destroy the moon records. Even Scott, his dearest friend in the world, had been forced to give up so many opportunities in order to help Raven.

A soft knock at the door brought Raven instantly to his feet. He had hardwired his door with a code to prevent intruders, but intruders wouldn’t knock. Raven adjusted his loose pants and opened the door, expecting to see Klaus or another member of the resistance. It was Nalia.

“Can I come in?”

He gestured and she walked in, leaving him bewildered at the door. Habit led him to close the door and reset the code, but he didn’t know what to do next. Nalia was in a thin tank top and shorts, both vivid pink. Her skin looked pale and shadowed in comparison, though nothing could really diminish her beauty. She circled his room before sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

He took a few steps closer but didn’t sit next to her. She was gorgeous. The moon was shining through the small window; the only light in the room. She tucked her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, cocking her head at him.

“Sit down?”

He sat near her, but far enough away that they weren’t touching. His heart was beating loudly and he couldn’t stop thinking about the dream, and his fears. How would he end up hurting Nalia? She was so precious to him, like a star that hadn’t fallen from the sky yet, a single flake of snow before it landed and dissolved into a billion flakes just like it. In Nalia he saw everything he wanted to be, everything he could have been if he had just been more careful and less selfish. He wanted nothing more than to protect her.

“How are you?” she asked, stretching a hand out to take his.

He started at the touch. Her hand was surprisingly cool for the hot weather and soft against his bare skin. He suddenly realized that he was only wearing an undershirt, not the full-sleeved shirts he was used to having people see him in. She didn’t seem to mind, though.

“You’re being awfully quiet. Is everything okay?”

He blinked and felt his cheeks warm. She sounded worried. About him. It was strange having someone show so much tenderness toward him. She moved her hand up to his arm, to his shoulder, and across his back, leaning her body until it rested against his, her head tucked under his. The way he used to tuck his head under his mother’s, he thought with a shudder.

“Sorry,” he said when she straightened.

She must have thought he was shuddering at her. He wrapped his arms around her and wondered if this was what his parents felt when they held him. He wanted to protect her so much. Nothing could be allowed to happen to her.

Raven’s computer flashed red from where it sat on the floor near the door. He removed himself from Nalia to check. His heart skipped. Intruders, real intruders, hacking through the code on his door. It looked like they would be successful, too. They must have been waiting for night to get to him. Unless they were after Nalia, he thought in panic. No. That would not happen.

“Nalia, people are about to break in,” he whispered. “You are going to hide. Here.”

He pulled open a hatch under the bed. Like almost all of the rooms in this building, it had a secret door into the hidden corridors that led down to the underground bunker. The first thing he had done upon entering this room was locate that entrance in case of emergency. Nalia didn’t look surprised by the hatch, so she obviously knew about the building’s history, but she did look angry.