Keeper of the Lost Cities: Rebuild [COMPLETED]

Chapter Thirty-Six - LINH

Linh had told Wylie she didn't trust him.

Her voice reverberated through her head, and she didn't have the energy to stop it.

Only Purity members know where these meetings take place, and they only share that information with people they can trust.

She hadn't told him where the meeting was.

She'd told him she didn't trust him.

A sob slipped through her lips; tears welled in her eyes and dripped down her face like tiny streams of sorrow. She'd told Wylie she didn't trust him, and now he didn't trust her. He couldn't—why would he? She had done everything he hadn't wanted her to, and even though she knew she had to do what she wanted, leaving him on Solreef's steps was the hardest thing she'd ever done.

A wave of doubt soared above her, threatening to crash down and break her any second. Was Wylie right? Was she making a mistake? What would her friends think when they found out? What would Tam think?

It had been easier to swear the Purities' oath without thinking about Tam, and without him there she didn't have to think about him. But if she faced him now, would she see anger? Disappointment? Hurt?

The last thing Linh wanted to do was hurt her brother. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt anybody.

But she had hurt Wylie. She was the monster now. She wasn't a part of the "good guys" anymore.

Except she wasn't bad, either. So then what was she?

Finding my way. And sometimes in the pursuit of yourself, you couldn't be one or the other.

Flecks of color fashioned a setting of red wheat stalks bending in the wind, the sky orange with a sunrise. Linh's eyes squinted as she got used to the time change, and she saw a group of people in the distance, gathering in a large circle.

This was a Purity meeting—a real one. Her first one as a member.

I'm one of them, she reminded herself as she walked toward the group. They're not strangers. They wouldn't be by the end of the day, at least—and the thought gave Linh a thrill. She was really doing this.

The walk to reach the Purities was a blessed few minutes to calm herself, but then she was there and she had no idea what to do. Up close she could guess the amount of members gathered—about fifty. Some sat on the ground, others stood, some talked, some didn't. They all had one thing in common, though: the chokers they wore around their necks that blurred their features into something forgettable and unknown. Linh felt the absence of an addler like she did Wylie, but one she had to push out of her mind, and the other wasn't important. At some point she had taken off her makeshift mask, but it didn't matter that everyone could see her face; they all knew she was there, and if they didn't, they would soon.

"You're probably telling yourself 'everything's okay, I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm going to pretend I do, it's totally fine...,'" a voice next to Linh's ear said. She jumped, and the Purity who'd spoken—pale and freckled on the arms and red hair in a tightly woven braid that ended in the middle of her back—laughed. "Oh, so you're jumpy? Well, I won't take it personally. My name's Ginger—well, that's my alias, which was totally optional, by the way. I've been a member for about six months now, so I can tell when we've got a greenhorn on our hands."

"A what?"

"Aw, it's nothin'. Just a saying."

"You're into humans?" Linh asked. The phrase felt weird on her tongue, and what made it weirder was she had asked a Purity the question—a Purity who, until just an hour before, she had thought belonged to an anti-human rebel organization. Except their goal—their real goal—was to protect the humans.