Backs Against the Wall (Survival Series) by Tracey Ward Read Free Book Online Page A

The market is the only place I know of where you all come together.”
    “Really?” he asks, his eyebrows raised.
    “Oh man,” Ryan mutters. He runs his hand over his face quickly, looking annoyed. “Don’t.”
    “Are you talking about the fights?” I ask. “The Risen fights?”
    Trent nods solemnly. “There are more members, more high members, of The Hive at the Underground than you’ll ever find in the markets. If you go to the market, you’ll only get the run around and end up owing a favor to some ugly people who got you nowhere. You want Marlow or one of his inner circle, you have to go to the Underground.”
    “Can you take me there?”
    “Yes.”
    “No,” Ryan says firmly.
    “Why not?” I demand.
    “ Because this is stupid, Joss. This whole entire thing is crazy. What are you hoping to gain from talking to Marlow? His help? He won’t help you. They’re not a helpful bunch.”
    “I know that,” I say indignantly.
    “Then what are you thinking?”
    “I’m thinking I have to try!” I shout, losing myself. “I’m thinking I care for once and I want to help people. Vin and Nats, they’re like me, Ryan. They’ll die in a place like that. It will break them just like it would have broken me. And I care so that bothers me and it sucks but the switch has been flipped and you flipped it so you can’t tell me to undo what’s already been done.”
    Ryan stares at me in the falling light, his face looking strong and golden in the amber glow. He’s changed everything and he knows it. He can hate this plan all he wants, but he has to understand that if I’m going to care about him, I’m going to care about others as well. It may get me killed, just as I knew feeling anything for him could, but it doesn’t make it any less worth it. I can see it in his eyes, what Nats warned me about. It’s harder to live than it is to survive, but he’s worth it. Going to sleep knowing I tried for the others, even if I’m sleeping in the stables of The Hive, will be worth it.
    “I’ll take you there,” Ryan tells me quietly. Reluctantly. “Give me two weeks and I’ll take you.”
    “Two weeks? Why not tonight?”
    He snorts, shaking his head. “You can’t go with that splint on. They get off on weakness and you’ll have to at least be able to pretend your arm isn’t useless. Besides, I haven’t been there in a while. I can’t just show up one night with a girl no one’s ever seen before on my arm, asking to talk to the boss.”
    “You’ve been to the fights before?”
    “A time or two.”
    I turn to Trent. “You too?”
    He simply nods.
    “And they know you down there?”
    “Yeah,” Ryan says, smiling sadly. “They know me there.”
     

Chapter Five
     
     
     
    A week later, while Ryan and Trent show their faces in the Underground on the regular, I make a visit to Crenshaw. It’s a little scary going out with my arm in the splint and the Risen population still bloated from the fall of the Colony , a Colony I have now lived inside of, but I’m going stir crazy in my apartment. I have to get out and I have to face Crenshaw.
    When I go to my wall of weapons to pick something out, I nearly burst into tears. There, hanging in its home, is my ASP. It must have been here this entire time, I just never noticed it because I didn’t need to, but now that I see it I’m nearly crying with relief. After Trent saw me taken he must have told Ryan where it happened. Maybe Trent told him that I’d lost my weapon or maybe he found it on accident, who knows. The important thing is that it’s here, right where I need it.
    And I do need it. The Risen population is still high, still an ongoing problem reminding me of the old days. They shuffle and bumble down the streets, through alleyways and into everything. I stand in my doorway for a bit watching and remembering as they walk into each other. Into the remnants of cars. Into old sign posts. It’d be comical if it weren’t such a pain. If it didn’t