Honored (Book 2 of the In Search of Honor series)

My sleep was fitful; my mind enraptured by memories of the outside world, but I wasn’t even getting to leave with everyone. I wasn’t going to see the blue sky today, yet the thoughts still invaded my mind. I was leaving this blasted city today. Freedom! Even if freedom was just the Wall again, I wanted out.

Dan and I made our way down the road toward the main thruway. The crowd was visible from a distance. Shaved heads dotting the crowd in plain grayish undyed shirts and pants. Many of the crowd in more colorful clothing with backpacks. Adults holding the hands of children. Some children clung to a back or a leg. And then a fairly large space on either side maintained by guards spaced evenly apart fencing in the crowd. Beyond the guards people lined the streets, many with tears in their eyes and trying to reach past the guards to say goodbye to people in the crowd.

We quietly joined in the milling crowd. A few people near the back of the crowd saw my wheelchair and quietly pointed in my direction whispering to each other. I touched my check remembering my first Exile which was just Kevin and I on horses we had no idea on how to actually ride. This time there were far too many people and too few horses to mount all of them on horseback.

Dan’s hand gently rested on my shoulder. His eyes were focused on the giant gate into the Wall at the far end of the street. Was he looking forward to going back into the Wall? Was he looking forward to something beyond me becoming a cyborg as well?

It felt like an ending. Like there was nothing after it. Were Dan and I just to become emotionless beings living and working within the Wall doing, well, something? Would we even care? “Are you looking forward to going back to the Wall?” I asked.

He looked down at me, and then shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think it’s going into the Wall that is making me feel -” He paused and stared back at the gate. “I’m struggling to put a name toward what I feel. I do not feel the way I felt before becoming a cyberperson, but I think I would call this apprehension, or maybe excitement. It might be both. It feels like leaving this City and heading into the Wall is the beginning of a future. Being in this City has felt like stasis.”

His lips twitched into a very slight smile as looked down at me, “I think there is a future for both of us. A future not contained by this Wall.”

“Do you know something about the Walls plans for us?”

His eyebrows narrowed, and he seemed deep in thought. “No. I don’t know. Nothing concrete. I just, I don’t think we will be staying in the Wall.”

A future. He was staring back at the gate. I liked the thought of a future beyond the Wall. I couldn’t see myself being content to wander the dark halls of the Wall for centuries the way Lok seemed to.

Everyone in this crowd was hoping for a future beyond the City. One of those shaved heads, an older woman looked familiar. Was it Rachel? “I think I see a person I once knew when I was Dishonored,” I told Dan.

“Do you want to go talk to them?” he asked.

Did I? Yes, but did she want to talk to me? I hadn’t seen her since the day I’d been dragged off the depths of the Dishonored prison. My stomach felt a little off. Maybe it was better not to talk to her. And what if it wasn’t her? I’d last seen her somewhere between three and four years ago.

She looked around the crowd as if looking for someone. I was certain it was Rachel. She didn’t look that different.

“Yes, I want to at least say hi.” I started to wheel forward to attempt to make my way through the crowd and she noticed me.

A smile lit up her face as she pushed her way toward me. “Liv! I heard rumors it was you, but it really is you! You survived!”

Her infectious smile chased away my leftover fears, “Rachel! I’m so glad to see you. You decided to leave the City?”

She laughed, “We see each other for the first time in years, and that’s your first question?”

Should I have not questioned her motive to leave?

Her bright smile was the largest smile I’d ever seen her have, “That is probably the question on everyone’s minds today. After you - well - left, I felt lost. I’d always lived on quietly working at the Konjack estate, but with new masters and you being dead on top of everyone else I cared about just nothing felt worth trudging through each day.”

A teenage boy with a shaved head and gray eyes peeked out from behind her. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to him.

“Hi Liv. Is my brother alive out there?” He asked in a voice much deeper than when I last knew him.

“Felise?” It had to be him. He looked so different though. Guant, tall, gangly, and not at all like the proud twelve year old of the Konjack estate.

He nodded.

“Yes, Kevin was doing well when I left. He has a family out there.”

Felise nodded again and looked down at the ground.

She turned her slight gentle smile toward Felise, “It’s been rough. I took him and his father into my cell when I realized the old master wouldn’t live very long, and he didn’t. Mercifully, he died in his sleep, and since then I’ve been taking care of Felise. He wanted to find his brother, so I didn’t see any purpose in staying in the City.”

Felise lifted his eyes just slightly to meet mine before looking back at the ground, “Is it nice out there?”

I smiled at both of them, “I think you will both like the world beyond the Wall. It’s open and beautiful with a brilliantly blue sky that just feels right. It’s a hard life and some people might choose to come back, but I found it to be wonderful. I’ve missed it since I came back to the City.”

His mouth twitched into a bitter smile, “I’m used to hard labor now.”

His words were like a dagger. He was Dishonored because of his brother and I. “I’m sorry for my part in that. No amount of apologizing can make what happened better though.” The head bowed to hide the anger. The twitching hand. I had forgotten that barely contained hate for myself, but it was so clear in him as he lifted his eyes to meet mine.

“No, You’re right. No apology can fix anything. You ruined our lives. You killed my father.” His voice was soft and calm. Detached in the practiced form of a Dishonored.

Rachel gently gripped his shoulder and he sighed; his eyes settling back toward the ground, “But I don’t really blame you. I’d have done anything to be free of those prison walls. I heard the gunshots beyond them, and I prayed every day that the rebel guards would free us and hand us weapons. I wanted to shoot every dang guard that whipped my poor father who was so lost to his lunacy that he didn’t even understand that he was Dishonored.” His eyes glanced back up, “But I think I do blame you. Every lash, every bite of stale bread I cursed my brother’s name. I wished for both of your deaths, but if you had died, I wouldn’t be free now.”

“Why do you want to find your brother then?” This poor boy was so eloquent, and yet clearly struggling with his own emotions.

He shrugged, his eyes glancing at the crowd around us. “I want to punch him. I want to hug him and thank him for being alive so I can punch him again. I - He’s - I don-t know. He’s my only family.” He rubbed his eyes.

Rachel looked back at me, “Speaking of family, your stepfather and siblings are here. You’re mother -” She paused.

“I heard.” I interrupted. She didn’t need to say more.

She nodded, and her eyes looked at Dan standing next to me. “Is this the outsider I’ve heard rumors of? Do all outsiders have metal hands like that?”

“No. I am not like most outsiders anymore,” Dan replied. “I was saved by the Wall during the fighting. I lost my arms, so the Wall gave me these.”

Felise looked up just slightly to stare at Dan’s arms and whispered, “Wall tech?”

“Entirely Wall tech. I am now more Wall tech than an outsider.” Dan stated in his detached cyborg voice.

Another person was moving toward us, and this one I recognized quite well even though he’d grown to be taller than me. I would recognize my little brother Duran no matter how tall he grew.

“Liv!” He called out. His hands were dragging my two youngest siblings with him, and following in his wake was Jordan.