Apocalypse Before Finals - Julie Steimle (bts book recommendations .TXT) 📗

"The classless?" Alea Salvar growled. "Those ignorant - "

"No government has the right to strip its citizens of their voice," Jafarr quoted once more. His eyes narrowed. "Zeldar Tarrn."

Alea Salvar went even more rigid.

"My ancestor," Jafarr said. Then he looked to Zormna. "And hers."

Silence permeated the room.

"Now, let's go plan a way to rescue your father," Jafarr said.

The young redheaded soldier looked at Jafarr like he had never seen him before. Or rather, like he had never rightly seen him. He looked once more to Zormna, thought a bit, then finally nodded. "All right then."

Alea Salvar motioned to the other soldiers in the room to follow him. "If you come this way, we can plan in a map room."

Jafarr nodded, glancing once back at Zormna who seemed immensely pleased and was gazing at him with increased respect. After all, he had handled Alea Salvar well. She started to follow them. But Jafarr stopped, looked at her sharply, and turned back around. "I thought you were going to bed."

Zormna lurched to a halt, glowering at him. "Curse your good memory."

Alea Salvar had also stopped, staring back. He had forgotten.

"I'm fine," She looked pleadingly at Alea Salvar. "I want to come."

Alea Salvar shook his head though, glancing at Jafarr. "Sorry, Zormna, I also think you should go rest." Then he stepped closer to her and said, "It may be the only thing he and I will agree upon tonight."

Shooting him a look, Jafarr smirked yet he nodded.

Giving up, Zormna stepped back. "Ok, fine. I'll call back after I'm rested - if that will make you both happy."

Jafarr and Alea Salvar nodded, though Jafarr seemed more amused by the way she said it than Salvar did. Jafarr had been smirking with raised eyebrows, practically sending Zormna a mental message that they would most likely be spending the evening bickering. Jafarr didn't really want her to hear the words he wanted to call her 'best friend'. And thinking about it, she didn't want to hear them either. The tension between the two boys was palpable, and worse she felt her presence exacerbated the situation.

She nodded again and turned toward a different hall, looking back once.

Her friend, Alea Salvar, fixed a bitter glare on Jafarr, speaking in a lower voice. "Alright, rebel boy, if you follow me we'll make a plan - which, by the way, we will do properly because this is my father we are talking about, and I will not handle this like some haphazard thrown-together rebel operation."

Jafarr snorted, marching after him like he would have when on an errand to deal with the FBI. "Properly.... I can do things properly if I want. But may I remind you that the PMs won't be playing by any rules. And I will do whatever it takes get what we need, one way or the other, properly or not."

Alea Salvar huffed, but continued to direct Jafarr down the hall. "You know, if I didn't need your help, I'd have you thrown to the PMs for your attitude."

She heard Jafarr say distantly as the turned another corner, watching him shove his hands into his jacket pockets, "It's a good thing you do need my help then, isn't it?"

Zormna smiled. Despite Alea Salvar's jealousy, she knew Jafarr would be able to handle things. Her confidence in Jafarr's gift in reading people was strengthened in his talent for quick thinking. And as much as she was fond of Alea Salvar, she knew Jafarr was way more clever.  

She turned and walked down the halls that she had once governed over. Old and familiar, taking paths that her feet once knew perfectly, she made her way back to her old room like she had not been gone long at all. Zormna pressed on the door button, punching in her code, hoping it still worked.

Immediately the door slid open.

The floor lights lit up. She looked about the room with a tired sigh. Her quarters were exactly as she had left them, and refreshingly dust free. Only one thing as new. A digital image of her headshot from the main Surface Patrol files sat on the desk, the digital pad rimmed with curly decorations and paper scrolls stuck to the frame it was resting in. It was a death picture, something of a tradition for beloved people who had passed on. It was probably put up the day that fake Clendar medallion had been found, a couple days old.

Zormna smirked at it and pulled the notes off the picture frame, reading them silently. Few were sentimental. The majority were verses from old scripture, meant for the dead. She turned the screen off. It wasn't a good likeness, one taken when she had been promoted to Alea. She looked too formal, too stiff. But in that thought, Zormna laughed, picking the pad up again and turned it on once more. Staring at it, she chuckled. It was true. She had changed. She was no longer the severe soldier in the photograph. And as she gazed at it, Zormna wondered how funny she must have looked to the people in Pennington, all rigid. She was now so much more relaxed, so much more like Jafarr. But then, she recalled, that he too had changed due to American living.  He had not been so relaxed before he had come to the Pennington. Earth had changed them both.

Sighing, Zormna turned the picture off and walked over to her bed. Lying down, Zormna let her thoughts drift, sinking into the comfort of her old bunk. She was home. Her mind drifted aimlessly as she swept off to sleep. Her last thought was a tiny wonder at what Jennifer was doing at that moment.

Jennifer McLenna, Zormna's first friend in Pennington Heights, was suffering from horror as a classmate in their Biology class piped up to the People's Military officer, "Jennifer McLenna. She's her lab partner!" Jennifer recognized Melinda Blake's voice, a senior in their class who had always been rankled with jealousy at Zormna for one reason or another. And Melinda finked with no remorse now. "And Zormna used to live with her family."

Jennifer's face burned red. But she felt mostly sick. When the soldiers had come around, she had kept quiet, hoping and praying that they would not notice her. But when word spread that they were looking for Jafarr Zeldar, she shrank within herself, hoping nobody would add it up. Then the call came for people who knew Zormna, as apparently news traveled quickly that neither individual was at school.

The soldier marched over to Jennifer and ordered her to stand, which Jennifer didn't dare refuse. Ever since the People's Military of Arras had invaded that morning, Jennifer had heard nothing but screams and cries coming from the hall. Some students had chosen to fight. She had seen through the open door those soldiers drag away three boys who were later executed. The PMs had beaten several in their class with these sticks that burned on impact. And one boy, a junior on the debate team, had attempted to climb out the window. They were only on the second floor, and he could have gotten away, but they shot him. His arm was now wrapped in his tee shirt, protecting the most violent burn anyone had ever seen. He moaned in the corner of the room, keeping out of the way.

"Come with me," the soldier said to Jennifer, directing her with his gun point.

Jennifer stood up and followed the soldier, too afraid to run and too afraid not to go - yet she shot Melinda a dirty look as she walked by. "Fink."

The soldier pushed Jennifer out of the room to keep her moving. But when they got to the doorway, the soldier did a startling thing. He pulled on Jennifer's right sleeve and immediately jerked it up. It was bare, of course. And Jennifer knew what he was looking for, though she pretended she didn't. But then he moved to her left shoulder.

Of course he would find nothing there either. Her parents had left behind the old culture without any regrets. They had wanted Jennifer to have an American life, which in general was peaceful.

When the soldiers had seen that her other shoulder was bare, they gazed at her, blinking in disappointment. One muttered, "You look so much like an Arrassian."

The effect of those words said in front of her classmates was worse than rapid gunfire. They all gaped at her in horror, their eyes comparing her with their captors.

"I'm Irish," Jennifer said through her teeth.

But the soldier shook his head. "Doubtful, that. It is too much of a coincidence, you befriending Zormna Clendar."

"You could be a Lenna," the other one said, looking her up and down. "That's a privileged family, girl."

Jennifer recoiled from him, not caring what he said. She just wanted to get away.

The soldier that had come for friends of Zormna dragged Jennifer out by her arm, calling in solid Arrassian to a soldier patrolling the corridor. That soldier marched up and grabbed Jennifer's face, pushing her chin around to look at it. He nodded, saying something. Then a third was invited in to critique Jennifer's physique. That one nodded and said in English for Jennifer's benefit, "Take her to Dural Korad."

The name Dural Korad rang in Jennifer's ears as they dragged her down the hall. She had heard the name before from Zormna's lips, and once from Jeff. Zormna and Jeff had called him their 'mutual friend'. But she was sure they meant the opposite. The name made them both tense up, like an awful memory.

The soldiers took her to the third floor, stopping once to inquire where Dural Korad was in their lingo. However, hearing the answer, they halted, watching the soldier pointed downward, uttering in Arrassian something in the negative. The soldier holding her sighed. He then looked at her, watching how she trembled.

"It seems that the Dural is gone. I will take you instead to Kural Kelz. He'll know what to do with you."

This was just as bad. Her worst nightmare since the first say she had met Zormna had come true. The people who had been hunting for the alien girl had found her instead. And there was no super ninja to save her. Jennifer also highly doubted the FBI were in the shadows waiting to rescue them all. In fact, Jennifer was sure some of those who had been killed were undercover agents who had remained on duty to keep up appearances.

Taken back downstairs and walked to the administration wing of the building, Jennifer stared at the sky. The air was warm. Almost mockingly so. As they took the most direct route to the administration doors, Jennifer looked up toward the red top and across the senior lawn. The soldiers were tacking something over the gym entrance which hung heavily then rolled down from a long stroll. The writing was in gold, first in English, and next to that, the same vertical writing she had seen Zormna use on occasion. In English it said: Serve Order. Save Energy. Give All For The Reunification.

A collection of soldiers were dragging bodies out of the school buildings, dead students and adults, heaping them in the center of the quad. Her PE coach was one among them. And then she saw Stacey Price - that raunchy mouthed girl from History class, Michelle's friend - shot in the center of her forehead.

Jennifer choked on a sob, unable to walk any further. The soldiers grabbed her, forcing her onward.

Her chest clenched as they marched her across the school grounds and up the front steps of the administration building. But Stacey filled her mind. Of all annoying people...why her? Had she merely said the wrong thing? Were these PMs so arbitrary? Or had Stacey said something pro Jeff or pro Zormna and that got her killed? Stacey had just liked to tease Zormna after all. She wasn't as malicious as Michelle. And would she also be killed for