Those Who Lived: Fallen World Stories by Megan Crewe

said. “I’m going to help you remember how much you don’t want it.”
    He pressed the blade in an arc from one corner of my jaw down across my throat to the other corner, splitting my skin in a thin, stinging line. A dribble of blood, not a gush. My hands leapt to cover it as he stepped aside.
    “Remember,” he said again, and stalked out.
     
    I grabbed my least favorite T-shirt to stop the bleeding, sat down on the cot, and stared at the wall. The stinging deepened into an ache that radiated through my body. My hand holding the shirt was quivering.
    If this was a test, I was almost definitely failing it.
    Had I controlled that situation at all? Maybe I’d managed to blurt out the right thing to diffuse Nathan’s anger. Or maybe he’d only ever intended to give a warning. Maybe he’d never even believed I’d spoken against him, just seen it as a convenient excuse to mess with my head.
    There were several words I’d have had for Michael right now, even with that damned revolver on his desk. He hadn’t wanted to deal with Nathan, so he’d handed the problem off to me. Well, it was still going to be Michael’s problem if I ended up with my throat slit and Nate brought the whole Toronto operation crashing down.
    Then what? Michael would take it as definite proof that ingenuity and evenhandedness couldn’t work?
    That was too much responsibility for anyone.
    The thought reminded me of Zack’s comment, the night before I left. With great power... God, did I wish he was here, ribbing me and quoting his comic books. Reminding me with his solid presence that I wasn’t the only person left with a sense of morality. That at least one person would care if I died.
    I bowed my head. A few speckles of my blood dappled the floor. My door was still ajar. Anyone walking by could have seen our altercation. I stretched out my leg to kick it shut.
    I didn’t really wish Zack was in the middle of this, his life on the line as much as mine was. But knowing that didn’t quench the longing that had risen up. There was no one I could talk to here. My probing conversations yesterday had revealed that. I wanted Zack. I wanted my family. Mom, with that calm but firm tone that said her pacifism didn’t make her a pushover. Dad, who despite how much we’d argued, would have sat down and helped me analyze the facts.
    I’d never had a chance to ask Kaelyn how he’d died.
    I knew what she would say. I could remember clearly the tenor of her voice amid the crackle of radio static when she’d asked how I could have joined Michael. What the hell are you doing? The look on her face when she’d accused me of choosing the Wardens over her, because I’d stayed back rather than run with her to the CDC.
    Then, I’d been so sure the ends justified the means. I could compromise a few morals if it allowed me to stay alive and to protect her too. My skill with electronics had kept me off the streets. Kept me from having to threaten and steal and kill with my own hands, like most of the Wardens did. Which didn’t make my hands exactly clean, but it was a stain I’d been able to live with. Even hearing about the girl who’d been shot during Kaelyn’s escape, a girl whose name I’d never gotten, I’d told myself I was doing all I could. That I didn’t really have a choice, any more than Zack had.
    But that wasn’t true. As Michael had said, there was always a choice. I looked at my jacket hanging on the wall, the lump of the pistol in its pocket. What the hell was I doing? Michael had given me the means and his permission to destroy Nathan. Every day Nate was out there antagonizing everyone he spoke to, I was allowing that to happen. Because the other choice would make me an outright murderer.
    I’d thought I was so freaking smart, joining the Wardens, creating change from the inside. Forgetting that I’d never actually worked from the inside before. I had no practice at playing things this way. All my experience was from the outside,