Chapter 101

His fingers wrapped around her wrist. “Rain, sweetheart, we can say that all night. I know you feel like you’re giving up on him if you leave, but don’t look at it that way. He missed the time frame, but he can still catch up. We aren’t giving up on the mission, are we?”
She didn’t turn her head to look at him, only continued to stare at the darkening horizon. Seth could frame it however he wanted to, but they both knew, if she got up and left, she may as well be sealing Adam’s tomb. Leaving him behind was as much an admittance that she thought he had died out there as writing an obituary for him would’ve been.
The others didn’t understand because Adam hadn’t done what he’d done for them. He hadn’t taken the tracker and ridden off into the sunset with it to save Walt, Mist, Seth, or any of the people they’d left in Judea. Sure, that was a nice bonus, but they all knew--the only reason Adam volunteered to take on this dangerous mission was because of her. Because he wanted to save Rain. Because she was the one he cared about above all else.
And now… she was choosing to leave him behind.
With a single tear rolling down her cheek, she turned to face Seth. “Why don’t you guys go ahead, and I’ll stay here?”
His eyes widened for a moment as he thought about what she was saying. If he felt, in that moment, that she was choosing Adam over him, she couldn’t blame him. Because she was. But more than that, she was choosing for them to complete the mission without her. If Adam showed up, they might be able to head off on foot on their own, but the chances of them making it to Quebec weren’t good. They could stay in Louis City. She had friends now. She had a few of Mist’s gold coins. They could stay there until the rebellion began, assuming Mist and Walt were able to talk the leaders of Quebec into fighting, and then join back up with them.
But if Adam never showed up, she’d be in a potentially dangerous city by herself with only a few people she’d just met and the Mothers hunting for her.
Seth shook his head. “I can’t let you do that. It’s too dangerous. Besides, as much as you care about Adam, you care about the cause more, don’t you?”
Did she? She’d been away from Michaelanburg so long now, she could hardly remember what it was she was fleeing. Oppression. Lack of freedom. Men being used as slaves. Yes, all of that was awful. How much of that would change now that Spanish-America was aware of what was happening there? Would the Mothers be able to continue with their way of life now that the rest of the world could easily find out all of the rumors were true and then some?
The cause was an idea--an ideology. It was a picturesque utopia where the world would become a better place through her efforts if she did her best to fight for them. Adam wasn’t some thought in her head. He was real. His existence didn’t depend on the agreement of thousands of people or the brute force of those wishing to change the status quo. Why would she care more about something that might never be than a person that was? Someone who cared deeply about her?
“Rain,” Mist said, tugging on her shoulder. “I know how hard this is, but we need you. All those girls back home who don’t know what’s happening, how they’re being manipulated, the wrong that’s being indoctrinated into their heads, they need you. The men being forced to give their bodies away for free multiple times a day need you. The ones who are being taken to the Bridge, to death, because they are not flawless… they need you, too. I can tell the leaders in Quebec, but two of us will be more compelling. Come on.”
She turned and looked at Mist and saw a pleading look in her eyes she hadn’t ever seen before. What would Adam have her do? Would he want her to sit there and wait for him, essentially dropping out of the fight, or would he want her to get up off of her backside and move?
With a deep breath, Rain stilled herself. She didn’t have to think long at all to find the answer to that question. Adam would want her to go.
Swiping at that single tear, Rain got up off of the ground. With a numbness to the world, she moved with her friends toward the truck, wishing she could just freeze time and go out and search for him herself.
They were almost to the truck when she stopped walking. In the back of her mind, she thought she sensed something in the distance. Or maybe she heard it first. But she stopped, just ten or so paces from the truck. “Do you hear that?” she asked as the humming sound in the distance began to grow louder.
“Hear what?” Seth asked.
But Mist, who’d become accustomed to listening to the quietest purrs of engines while dodging drones, turned and looked at Rain. “I hear it. But it could be another truck in the distance or a different bike or….”
Rain held up a finger. The noise was getting louder, and it definitely sounded like the engine she’d heard the day Adam left, as she was half asleep in Esther’s bedroom.
“Rain…” Seth began, shaking his head. “We can’t just wait on every engine we hear to make sure it isn’t Adam.”
She wasn’t listening to him though. The engine was even louder now, drawing close by. She turned and watched where the road curved up from a rise in the ground that prevented her from seeing more than a few hundred yards away. Other vehicles came by slowly, but those weren’t the ones she was listening to. As Seth called her name again, the noise and the visual connected. There was a motorbike coming up the road, one towing a small cart, the male driver dirty and weary, but recognizable.
“Adam!” Rain screamed, getting the attention of everyone on the lawn near the Gate.
“I’ll be damned,” she heard Seth say, but that was background noise as she took off as fast as she could run toward the motorcycle. It would’ve made more sense to let him drive right up next to where the truck was parked since they’d have to load the bike, but she didn’t care. He’d stop.
He did stop, too, about a hundred yards away from the truck since that’s how far Rain got with her sprint. He turned the bike off, removed his helmet, clicked something with his foot to make it stand up and climbed from the seat, looking as if he was in a lot of pain from sitting so long and exhausted. That didn’t stop her from launching herself at him.
Adam opened his arms just in time as Rain lost contact with the ground and wrapped herself completely around him, arms around his neck; legs around his waist. “You’re here!” she said, her cheek pressed to his.
“I’m here,” he said quietly. “And so are you.”
“And so am I.”
Rain pulled back, and realizing how tired he had to be, she put her feet on the ground. She wanted to kiss him, to tell him that she loved him, that she never wanted to be away from him again, but there were so many questions in his blue eyes, so many stories he needed to unravel for her, she did none of those things, only stared into those azure orbs for the longest time before she had to look away. She put her head on his shoulder and held him tight, knowing the others wanted to say hello and then get on the road, but she couldn’t let go of him again. Not yet.