UNBREATHABLE (6 page)

“But Julian?” I ask. I hold my breath.

He shakes his head sadly. No. I really am alone.

“Then, what am I?” I ask softly.

“Would you believe me?” He counters as we pass another row of houses. We’re almost there. I can see the Tower door. He sighs when I don’t answer. In truth, I don’t know how to answer.

“You’re half-human, half-Jute. The only hybrid on Jutaire.”

I stop walking. Half-Jute. Half-Human. Half, not whole. I am nothing.

I wrap my arms around myself and think of Father,
Gage
, who said nothing. Who didn’t think I was worth being truthful to. Julian catches up to us and Slate keeps his distance, watching me with his hands fisted by his sides. My limbs weaken at the possibility of him actually being my father. With the possibility of hope. Of not being alone.

“Tell me,” I whisper.

The day of my birth was supposedly the night of my death. My skin was tinged a sickly blue and my eyes were swollen shut. For as long as they watched, I didn't take a single breath. This was why there were no other hybrids. They all came to this world like I did, blue and unbreathing. They were buried before they had a chance to live.

Slate set out with Gage to lay me to rest. There was no funeral—I came to this world dead, who was there to mourn me?

Slate left me there in his grief. He couldn’t bear to look at his dead child any longer. Gage stayed behind. He knew more than anyone on Jutaire and when he checked for my pulse, he felt it. When he rested his ear on my chest, he knew the heart inside was beating, even if barely.

But Gage never told Slate. When Gage couldn't keep Slate away from his house, Slate saw me. Gage said he had an affair and that I was the result. Though Slate didn’t think such a thing was possible, he believed him. How could he think his daughter was alive when he saw her still body?

“I never knew until I took him in that day,” he whispers. There are tears running down his cheeks, glistening with the rays of the midday sun. Our shadows waver.

“Why did you leave me there?” I ask. I'm afraid my voice will break, but it’s smooth and even. Encouraging.

He closes his eyes. And when he opens them again, he isn't here. He's elsewhere, seventeen years ago. “You were dead. Everyone said you were dead and I…I saw it too. I was young, barely seventeen. I trusted my older brother more than anyone, more than myself, because he was so learned.”

Julian places a hand on Slate’s shoulder and Slate smiles sadly. I almost forgot Julian was here.

“He didn’t want to hang,” he says, looking at me. I push away the pain making its way to my heart. If I let it stay, it will grow, spread. Consume me. And there is no turning away from such grief. “He begged me. He wanted me to give him a bloody death.”

My breath hitches, snatched away by his words.

“So I did.”

The confession is whispered. So soft, so inaudible. But in my ears, they boom, they echo and they pound.

“But why? Death is death,” I force the words from my mouth. Julian glances at Slate and I get the sense that he knows why.

Slate shakes his head and continues walking, as if moving forward will rid us of our pasts. “It’s not. You have to understand, there are some things worse than death.”

I stare at him, but he continues staring ahead as if he doesn’t notice me.

“Then my mother, who is she?” I ask.

He bristles, but doesn’t stop walking. His hand is on the Tower door when he finally answers me. “She’s gone.”

I can tell he’s lying. And if I can tell he is lying now, whatever he said before was true.

Maybe he really
is
my father.

Maybe I’m not truly alone.

The inside of the Tower is nothing like the outside. Everything is blinding white, from the floors to the walls, and surprisingly empty. I expected to see soldiers roaming the halls, to hear doors slamming and voices echoing.

The same shimmering ten-pointed star emblazoned on the Chamber’s wall is here too, ingrained in the white floor. It’s white too, and hard to see unless you really look. I wonder what it means, but I don’t feel like asking. There are more important things to worry about.

Like my father being alive, and me being the only one of my kind.

Slate leads me to a room with nothing but a shaggy brown rug thrown in its center. My fingers itch to straighten it, to align the edges with those of the room’s, but I clasp my hands together when he turns to me.

“I’ll be back soon. This is pretty much the only room where you’ll be left alone,” he says with an apologetic smile and closes the door behind him.

I sink to the ground. The shag of the carpet brushes against the skin of my ankles that peek from beneath my pants.

I’m in the Tower, the last place I ever expected to be. Julian is alive. The man who I thought was my father could be my uncle. The soldier who killed the man I lived with for seventeen years could be my father. A shuddering breath escapes my lips.

I peel the mask off my face and rub at the spot where it itched against my skin, inhaling the sweet air. Oxygen doesn’t fuel the Tower.

The air is a reminder: I’m half-human, half-Jute. Translation: not human, not Jute.

I am nothing. I belong nowhere. My lips part in a silent cry. My eyes burn.

The door opens and I quickly wipe my eyes and press the mask back on. But it isn’t Slate with his sympathetic gray eyes. It’s Julian. The only three buttons at the top of his shirt are unbuttoned, his chin shadowing a v-shaped portion of his neck. He sits down and doesn’t speak.

“Are you like me? Half-human, half-Jute?” I break the silence first. He isn’t wearing a mask. I know Slate said otherwise, but I want to hear the answer from him.

“Yes and no.” He sounds distant, like he’d rather talk about anything but this.

“There can’t be a yes and no,” I pause and my brow furrows, “we must be the same.

He sighs and clenches his jaw.

“We're similar, but not the same. Jute women are stronger than men. Their genetics are different. Your mother is Jute, mine was human.”

“Oh,” is all I say, because I don’t understand why that makes us different. His eyes soften at my voice.

“You’re supposed to come with me.”

“Where?” I ask, standing. A part of me just wants to hear his voice, the softness of it, the stillness. I trust him, I realize. He’s saved me twice, and I have to believe that means he will never hurt me.

“You'll see.”

I follow him down the hall. His shirt clings to his shoulders and he walks almost soundlessly, despite the boots hidden beneath his dark pants. When he opens a door, a smell hits me, tangy and acidic. Like blood.

But when the light flickers on, I don’t see blood. I see metal. Weapons of every shape, size and lethality line the walls. I step inside and turn a full circle. Weapons to my right and left. Targets straight ahead. Carpet across the floor.

“Metal isn’t scarce, is it?” I say dryly.

He shakes his head, but doesn’t say anymore. Why was
he
in the Chamber last night?

I run my hand along the weapons lining the walls. There are daggers in various sizes. Some with the most intricately carved handles. Staves tipped with blades and jet-black bows with metal arrows. I’ve never seen so many weapons. Weapons are for killing. For protecting.

What do they need protection from?

“Why did you want to show me this?” I ask slowly.

He stills and turns back to me, a knife in either hand. “This room. It's where you'll spend the majority of the next month or so. In training.” He sounds confused.

I stare at him. “Training? I don't need to train for anything. And I’m not staying here.” I’m going home, I don’t say.

He sets the knives down and steps closer, eyes narrowed. “But—how about Slate? I thought, now that you know he's your father—”

“Being my father has nothing to do with training. Or living here. Biological or not, he will never be Galileo.”

Julian's eyes flash. “No, he won't. Because he isn't.” There’s a dangerous edge to his voice that makes me ignore the logic of his words.

“I've gone seventeen years without him. I have no need, no reason-” I can’t say the words I want to say. I don’t know what to say.

Because really, I'm afraid. Afraid to trust another person the way I trusted… Gage. And I’m afraid—what if he
isn’t
my father?

We hear it at the same time. The shift. The sharp inhale. I jerk my head to the door as Slate takes a step back, face contorted in a sorrow and pain.

And worse, understanding.

“Wait!” I rush after him. “That isn't what I meant.”

“No, you're right.” Slate turns and smiles sadly at me. His lips tremble, a testament to how much I mean to him, the daughter he didn’t know he had for seventeen years. He reaches for me, but his hand freezes midair. “I will never be Gage.”

His body shudders when turns and sulks slowly down the hall. When the pain edging into my chest becomes too much to bear, I turn too. Guilt and regret heat my face.

And I run.

I ignore Julian's frantic calls as my feet echo down the hall. I shove past a surprised soldier and throw open the door before hurrying down the steps.

I have no reason to train. I never had to worry about being safe. But I never should have said what I said.

“Don't you want to know who's after you?”

I jump. Julian stands right behind me, eyes ablaze. My heart races. It relishes every moment when I am alone with him. My heart feels too many things at the wrong times.

“No.” I surprise myself with the force of my voice.

He stares at me before clenching his jaw. And finally, finally, he turns away without a word.

Rejection. That’s what I feel like a heavy weight in my chest. And guilt.

I walk, weariness underscoring my every step. Despite the pang I feel when I realize I probably won’t see Julian or Slate again, I have no intention of returning again. Ever.

Far to my right, somewhere unseen, is Jute territory. Was my mother as cruel as the Jute are supposed to be? Or was that another lie Father—Gage—told me?

Maybe the Jute are like us. Maybe my mother cried for my blue corpse, as Slate did.

He cares for me – I can see it in his eyes, in his tears, in the pain burning on his face. Somehow, I know he isn’t bluffing, just as I know he lied about my mother being gone. I never saw so much emotion in Father. Slate is what Father was not. I stop walking.

Slate is my father.

And isn't that what he told me, on the threshold of death? 
You are not my daughter.

Like a shock blast, it hits me. My father is alive. Slate, a gray-eyed, chestnut-haired soldier barely over thirty, is my father.

I try to make sense of it all. Half-Jute, half-human. Father—no,
Gage
—keeping me away from my own father, his own brother. Julian insisting I should train.

A soft, animal sound shatters my thoughts.

I stop walking when I hear it again. Something
breathing
.

Shadows fall over me. I look up slowly, as my pulse quickens.

Five creatures surround me. Translucent, sickly, white. Mutants. Creatures that only existed in the stories Gage would tell me at night. They’re like the breathtaking horses of Earth, only uglier,
because the Jute needed ugliness in their beautiful lives
, he had said. The creatures stare at me with blood-red eyes and wheeze, a guttural sound nothing like the whiny of a horse I've read so much about.

I shudder in disgust and take a step back. And slowly, holding my breath, I raise my gaze. Atop each mutant is a man. Their faces are unmasked, their beauty is striking—perfectly smooth skin, profound features. Like Julian, like Earth. I know what they are.

Jute.

I struggle to breathe and take another step back. My hands shake. One of them laughs.

I will never be strong enough to stand up for myself. So I do the only thing I can.

Turn and run.

The mutants are fast. They surround me in a flurry before I have a chance to make it a few feet. I glance helplessly down the nearest row of houses as three women hurry into a house, one of them carrying a toddler against her hip. They whisper and throw nervous glances my way before the door slams shut. I’ll find no help here.