Jump Zone: Cleo Falls Read online

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Shield Tribe, Wolverine Clan.”

  “You’re the tough bunch. They were talking about you at the Post.”

  “I’m sure our reputations have been greatly exaggerated.”

  “Or you’re just being modest. I’ve heard some stories. Wolverine Clan… You guys are practically legendary.”

  “Rubbish. We’re a gentle people, as are all the Taiga tribes. We’re an agricultural-based community that exists to survive, like everyone else on this ravaged planet, so whatever overblown myths you’ve heard are nonsense, I assure you.”

  “What I heard is…” He vaulted to his feet with the agility of a cougar. He took a moment to brush dirt from his butt before looking down, directly into her face. “You don’t fuck with the Shield Tribe.”

  He turned and strode off, missing the shiver that crawled up her spine and made her body quiver. Was he teasing her, mocking the tribes, or did he seriously believe it?

  “If we’re so terrible, why do you people keep sending recruiters?” she called to his retreating back. Just the thought of those smarmy leeches that hung around the Cut Road, looking for young people to lure to Gomeda made her angry.

  He turned and extended his arms, palms up. “Hey, I don’t know anything about that. I just live a peaceful existence and mind my own business.”

  “What is your business?”

  Libra picked up his sleep sack, shook it out, and laid it next to her. He squatted next to her and scooped her up as if she were weightless. “You mean besides saving damsels in distress?”

  Cleo was about to protest, but his mouth tilted up in one corner and the glint of mischief returned to his pale eyes. Face to face, his lips inches from her own, she was afraid to speak, afraid her voice would crack and betray her vulnerability. Afraid that if she opened her mouth, butterflies would escape.

  She caught her breath and, with it, his sun-kissed flesh, the citrus scent of his hair. For the love of horny bunnies, she wanted to reach up and wrap her arms around that thick column of neck. She wanted to nuzzle him, run her tongue along the underside of his jaw.

  It went completely against her nature to be handled this way, but for the first time in forever, she didn’t mind playing the helpless female, didn’t mind being attended to, and didn’t mind having this strapping example of virility set her down on the cushiony softness of the sleepsack. She found her voice as he released her, but it came out wispy, breathy. “Yes, besides that.”

  “I’m a pencil pusher, an office drone,” he said, gathering his canteen from the ground beside the fire. “No cliffs to fall from, no menacing alphacats wandering the corridors. All very boring.”

  Cleo felt everything inside of her soften. If he dipped his head to kiss her, she wouldn’t fight him, wouldn’t push him away.

  He’s an outsider, not to be trusted.

  And charming. He exuded charisma with that half-smile of his.

  He’s a liar.

  His body, with long, rangy muscles, broad back and chest, shoulders she wanted to grab and hang on to…didn’t develop from sitting behind any desk all day. His skin, healthy from sunshine and fresh air, didn’t come from sitting under artificial lighting all day long. Physically, he looked more like a Taigan than a Gomedan.

  Before she could wheedle more details about his pretend boring job, he continued, “And now, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look exhausted. Lie down, relax, take a nap.” He emptied the last few drops of water from his canteen. “After I refill this, I’ll take care of our guest before he starts to stink up the place.”

  She lay back but didn’t relax. Her gaze remained on Libra’s side until he was out of sight, thinking what a shame for such a gorgeous male specimen to house a deceptive soul. Cleo had no doubt that he was not what he said he was.

  Who are you, Libra from Gomeda? For the love of skunks, she hoped he wasn’t a recruiter, hoped they weren’t becoming emboldened after years of skulking around the Cut, hoped, for their own sakes, that they knew better than to mess with the clans of the Shield Tribe or her father would take them on a long, slow tour of the Arctic in the dead of winter.

  Recruiters, sent by the Restoration Movement, had been coming north since before Cleo was born. They lured the restless, disenchanted youth from their tribal communities with promises of riches and an easy life in the urban zone. She didn’t know if that was true or not—that life could be anything but a fight to survive from season to season—but once they left, they never came back.

  Her tribe had been untouched due largely in part to the reputation of her father, but for other parts of the Taiga, the Prairie and Acadian Tribes especially, it had become a hellish problem.

  Cleo opened her palms and examined the small calluses at the base of each finger. Taiga life was hard, but staying alive was a tough business. The original inhabitants, the survivalists who fled the dying and violent cities, settled in the vast emptiness of Old Canada. The wastelands, left desecrated and scarred after decades of war, offered very little in terms of comfort, so they were left alone with their rocks and emptiness and peace. Only when the forests grew back, when the animal life returned in abundance, and when everyone who was left on the planet decided they deserved a piece of it, then, and only then, were the Taiga people forced to become warriors.

  They did what needed to be done to survive—it was imprinted in their DNA. Her ancestors on both maternal and paternal sides were leaders back then, instrumental in gathering the scattered settlers, setting up a governmental structure. As the value of the Taiga lands became apparent, they brought their charter to the United World Council and demanded protected status.

  Meanwhile, they trained, arming themselves and fighting against those who sought to once more rape the lands of the north for her resources, just as the Restoration Movement fought for their ideals: to return to the mighty civilizations of the past, to build mega cities that nurtured greatness.

  Cleo didn’t generally enjoy schooling, but the history module kept her endlessly fascinated, and though she couldn’t admit it to anyone for the shame it would bring, she found herself excited by the mega-cities of the past—the art, the architecture, the bizarre customs and dress. She’d fight to the death with anybody who threatened her precious Taiga, but lying alone in bed each night, she dreamt of travelling back to the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries to paddle the canals of Amsterdam, to walk the lamp-lit streets of Paris, to see the bright skyline of New York.

  But they were gone. Nothing left but dust, rubble, and in some cases, oceans.

  The Polar Wars, instigated by President Zhang, ended it all. Neighboring nations fought for every last drop of fuel. Allies became enemies. Death, annihilation, bombs: none of it mattered when a new fuel source was needed.

  Polar melt and refreeze times were manipulated to keep the rigs and shipping channels operable all year around, while governments of the day promised their people that the end of the crises was imminent. But their manipulations backfired as they passed the tipping point. Melting continued, unstoppable, eating away the sea ice then, finally, the land ice. Coastal cities flooded, low-lying lands, entire countries, disappeared. Survivors, what few there were, fled inland, filling the interior cities that were already stretched to capacity. Eventually, they cut down every tree and ravaged the countryside of every natural resource she had, never anticipating the dire outcome.

  Until it was gone.

  Those who weren’t claimed by death either walled themselves into small communities—literally hoarding everything from seeds to animals, killing those who threatened, dispatching those who didn’t fit in—or they disbanded, wandered the devastation in isolated units looking for a new place to settle, to rebuild, or to die.

  The last of old North America’s corporate and political elite joined toget
her to form the Restoration Movement. They knew about economics, understood that wealth begat wealth, that in order to have power, you had to have a population. They lured people with promises of rebuilding a new city just like things used to be—bright lights and big dreams, unreachable ideals.

  Gomeda rose like a beacon of hope.

  Lachlan Cade began the Restoration Movement. When he died, his son—and eventually his grandson, the formidable Achan Cade—took over. They made good on some promises and certainly brought those sad souls who made it through the ransacking of their country to a better place, but Gomeda remained plagued with problems.

  At least, that’s what she learned in her Taiga school from her Taiga teachers. None of them had ever seen it, so she wondered whether to believe them. None of them had hands as smooth as Libra.

  But the stuff she’d overheard at Elder Council and the gossip whispered at potlach, scared her more than the records.

  Gomedans couldn’t have babies, they said. That’s why the recruiters came north, for healthy, strapping young men and solid female breeding machines. The Ministry of Opportunity lured them so they could populate their great city.

  The recruiters, who set up camps south of the Cut Road, were good at their jobs, offering a new, easier way of life, enticing them with gifts, showing them the glory of civilization and promising them leadership positions in the Restoration Movement—without having to win a competition!

  The Elder Councils accused the Ministry of dosing their recruits with neuro-pharm, but the UWC dismissed their complaints and then the Elders got strangely quiet about it. She asked her father once, about why they didn’t fight harder to make the UWC investigate, but he gave her an angry look and walked away. Whatever method they used, she just hoped that Jaegar wasn’t too far gone by the time she got to him.

  If she could find him. She didn’t know what to do beyond get there. Knock on the door of the Ministry of Opportunity and ask for him? For someone deemed wise by the Elder Council, she sure had her stupid moments. The second she’d learned her brother had been spotted at the recruitment camp, she’d done nothing but make hasty, brainless decisions.

  Cleo’s eyes drifted shut, but that didn’t bring sleep. How could she nap when she needed solutions, needed to figure out how to get back on track since her original plan was scattered at the bottom of the river? All the supplies that she’d carefully packed into the storage hatch of her kayak were gone.

  There wasn’t room for error, no time for mistakes, and, for the love of her people, she had to restore Jag to his rightful place in the tribe. Despite what it meant for her, she must transfer leadership to him or die trying. But how the hell was she supposed to do all this in her current state—no weapons, no transportation, no food, no shelter, not even a change of clothes? She was trained to use her surroundings to survive, to take advantage of what was close at hand, what nature offered. But would nature offer her anything useful enough to take to Gomeda?

  She opened her lids a crack and spied Libra returning, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. Wide shoulders tapered to a lean, narrow waist, the picture of health and capability. She smiled to herself.

  Nature did indeed deliver, in the form of a six-foot-something package of sinew with blond hair and an urban address. Cleo just needed to figure out how to use him to her advantage.

  Eight

  She stood near the edge of their small clearing, the thrum of falling water practically imperceptible now that the autumn wind had shifted. Using the trunk of a maple tree for balance, Cleo carefully applied more of her body weight to her injured leg, gauging the amount of pressure it would take. The tobacco-leaf poultice had done an admirable job. Aside from a bit of tightness from the swelling, it didn’t feel bad at all. Certainly not as painful as it looked, ringed in an angry, purple-blue welt. And if she kept it bound and free of infection, she wouldn’t have to alter her plans to tail the outsider. A little flesh wound wasn’t going to stop her from using what the fates so kindly provided—a guide to the urban zone.

  Libra still hadn’t moved from his sleep sack, hadn’t made a sound to indicate he was even awake, but Cleo could feel his eyes on her back, feel the heat of his stare in every cell of her body. She knew he’d watched her half the night, but what he didn’t know was that she had watched him the other half.

  She had used the dark hours to search the night sky for signs of what she’d seen before. And she had formulated a plan. By morning, she’d had it worked out. Before she and Libra parted ways, she’d rustle up a few supplies like berries and some edible weeds, then she’d strip and sharpen a few good spikes of wood with his knife to use as weapons, and after he’d had a solid head start, she track him all the way to Gomeda. He’d never even know she was there.

  She didn’t doubt that she’d eventually find her way to the city on her own, but why bother with uncertainty if she could simply play follow the leader, surreptitiously?

  She’d thought about simply asking him to take her, but her gut was telling her not to trust him, not to spend any more time with him than she absolutely had to.

  This whole situation—him showing up when he did, his lame backstory—struck her as off. As a child, she loved the spot-the-hidden-picture books her grandmother used to give her. At first glance, it appeared to be a simple drawing of a village, but when examined closely, you’d see that the knot in the bark was really the outline of a polar grizzly, or that the branches of a tree formed a mother and child. It reminded her of Libra; benign at a glance, but Cleo knew if she looked hard enough, she’d eventually find the hidden images.

  He seemed fairly capable, though ignorantly comfortable, like he didn’t fully understand the dangers of the Taiga. His open and casual body language was at odds with his guarded nature. Perhaps it was natural for urbanites. She had to admit, his actions were not overtly suspicious, but her intuition about people was seldom wrong.

  And her instincts were wreaking havoc.

  Perhaps it was the way he studied her, sometimes with such intensity that she felt like a spot-the-hidden-picture. But when he spoke in that rumbly bass, his words came smoothly, unrushed, almost…flirty.

  Men of the Taiga did not treat her as an object of desire. A few feared her, most respected her as a member of her tribe—a warrior and leader, so says the council—but those qualities didn’t win her dates. In fact, Jag had told her on more than a hundred occasions that if she wanted a husband, she’d have to tone down her testosterone.

  Whatever that meant.

  It didn’t help that Cleo avoided socializing with other people her age. Unlike Jag, she avoided gatherings whenever she could, or at least stuck to the fringe. She didn’t feel comfortable in groups, making conversation and pretending to care about who was walking with whom or who made the best moose sausage.

  Cleo preferred the forest—the solitude, the beauty, the challenges. She loved to hunt, to follow the maintenance crews as they surveyed the rock channels, though they always shooed her away. Happiest when she could spend days on end discovering new plant life, she simply couldn’t care less about her social status within the tribe.

  Which was why it was critical to find Jaegar before he was indoctrinated into urban life. She was stunned when she’d learned he was headed to the recruitment station over the Cut. First they lost Simon, now her brother. Idiots!

  But it didn’t change that fact that Jag was the true leader, not her. He was the people person, not her. So why did she have to prove herself by winning the competition? What streak of sheer foolishness made her enter the leadership race in the first place? Had she really convinced herself she wanted it? Did she hate Jaegar so much that her sole purpose for the past two years was to best him?

  Yes and no.

  She adored her big brother, and she certainly hadn’t meant to humiliate him. Not really. But it seemed th
e only way to show them that she was worthy. She never gave a thought to what would happen after winning, or what would happen to her brother if he lost.

  Cleo swallowed against the lump that formed in her throat, rubbed her chest to ease the tightness that formed beneath her skin. She pictured her heart forming into a piece of tough gristle.

  The need to get moving, get to Jag, fired her into action.

  In spite of a restless night, she felt back to her old strength, ready for action. The fact that she’d napped on and off for most of the previous day probably had a great deal to do with her restored vigor.

  “You’d better head out, Libra. Soon, if you want a full day of hiking.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Just concerned about your deadline,” she replied.

  Cleo turned to see him crawl from his bed wearing only a pair of form-hugging shorts. He groaned as he stretched, muscles twitching and rippling as they lengthened. For the love of ducks, the urbanite was a fine sight.

  She grabbed her lower lip between her teeth to keep her jaw from disengaging.

  His leg muscles were larger, longer, and a good bit more defined than she’d expected for an urbanite. She wondered how simulated protein products could possibly put that much definition on a man’s thigh, not to mention his gluteal assets.

  She bit down harder to keep her from licking her lips salaciously, to stop a sigh building in her lungs.

  He stopped mid-stretch. “You alright? You look in pain. You oughtn’t be moving around.”

  “Circulation is important for healing,” Cleo replied, forcing her gaze away. She rotated her ankle first one way, then another.

  Satisfied that her leg would take the weight, she turned her back to him and headed toward the river. She had to get out of the clearing, away from him. Away from his silvery-blue stare and away from his half-naked body before she did something she’d regret, like blush.