I am beyond words excited to say that I have finished with Autonomy. I have also decided that I will release it on the first... I am excited/nervous about this one. It has been such a huge part of my life for the last four months. This also means that I will post a third teaser. YAY... Here you go!
Autonomy teaser #3
I wake a few hours later to see Ryker lying next to me
smiling. I sigh as I know that we have to get ready to leave. We have to leave
this place that I have come to think of as a safe haven. I nudge him with my
elbow and see him stir beginning to wake. I wonder slightly how he manages to
make it through a day on such a short amount of sleep. I sit straight up as I
begin to hear an alarm system blare through the building that surrounds us.
Ryker shoots up at my side and pulls me by the arm.
“Ryk, where are we going?” I try to scream over the alarms
that are sounding in the building and then as he pulls me into the street the
noise dies and I can no longer hear it.
“Shh” he hushes in my direction as he suddenly stops at an
alley and looks down it I can only guess to make sure that no one is coming up
it to look for us. He pulls me done the alley behind me and I wonder for a
moment where we are going. We run across several blocks before he pulls inside
an old destroyed church,
“Ryker, what are we doing here?” and he looks to me with a
look that I can only imagine he is trying to tell me to be quiet. “Tell me” I
whisper just loud enough for him to hear me.
“We are hiding.”
“Hiding, in this building,” I say throwing my arms up to
explain all around me, “can hardly contain someone without being seen.” he
rolls his eyes in my direction and walks to the other side of the room and
flinging open a trap door that lays within the floor.
“Get in” he yells at me and I look to the ground clearly
being wrong. He slides in after me and I try to make as much room as possible
for him as we lay down on the ground. I look up and notice that there are tiny
holes punched out in the flooring that we are able to breathe through.
“What about Lierah?” I ask him.
“She’ll be fine we have practiced this drill a million times,
she knows exactly where she needs to go,” he pauses and almost as if he is
trying to take my mine off of things he begins to talk “Before the Civil War,
this used to be a part of the Underground Railroad.”
“The what?” I ask him uncertain of exactly what he is talking
about. He laughs a little and then looks back to me.
“The Underground Railroad was a system for slaves to escape
from the south,” he whispers to me, “They would hide out in here until it was
safe for them to run to their next destination. Did you ever learn anything
about that?” he asks me.
“No, we never learned anything like that in…,” I am
interrupted by sounds of people outside of the building and Ryker clamps his
hand over my mouth. I look at him with wide eyes and he places one finger up
over his mouth trying to tell me that I need to be quiet, and to not say a
word, and he lets his hand slide off of my mouth and he brings down his hand to
mine and holds it. I hear the floorboards above us squeak and then dirt
sprinkles in from off of their shoes. I try to not let it bother me as I hear
the men above us begin to talk.
“I don’t see anyone in this part of town,” I hear a man say,
“Maybe you boys are just trying to get us to leave you alone, saying that there
is someone from our city here so that
you can get exemption. So you can go on your way with your merry little
lives.”
“No… No,” the Nomad pauses “Steel, believe me, she was here.
She just escaped our compound and they were here.” Steel, I know who that is,
he is the leader of the Autonomy, but why would he come himself to come and
find me, I do not understand.
“Well is it possible that they left? That they went somewhere
else so that you and your men wouldn’t take them as carnage.”
“No, they have been here for years; it’s a small group of
people maybe about twenty.”
“Believe me, if there was a group of twenty or more anywhere
this close to my city, I personally, would know about it.” I hear Steel say, so
they didn’t know about us being here. “You’re trying to pull one over on me
aren’t you; give us information on someone you don’t even know where she is.”
“No, she was here.” The Nomad’s voice begins to rise.
“Well then, where is she now?” Steel shouts at him.
“I-I don’t know” the Nomad stutters.
“So, you wasted all of our precious time bringing us down
here for a girl that you have no idea where she is” Steel shouts louder. The
Nomad is quiet, “What is it then.”
“I-I don’t know where she is,” and I hear Steel laugh. It’s
an evil sounding laugh. I hear the gun fire and I feel Ryker’s hand leave my
hand and cover my mouth once again. I feel the blood drip onto my face and it
falls through the holes in the floor, and I force myself not to scream, but I
cannot control the tremors that my body is current having. And just as they
entered I hear Steel leave the building and make his way outside. I suppress my
urge to cry as Ryker lifts the floor up and we make our way out into the street
again.
“Come on, we have to meet up with the remainder of the
group.” He tells me pulling me into the Brewing Company. We walk into the door
and everyone’s mouths falls open when they see us.
“Oh god,” I hear Lierah screech, “What happened to you guys?”
As she comes running up over to us, and I feel as though I’m about to break
down and cry.
I don’t sleep through the night but just toss and turn
thinking of the man’s blood that splashed onto my face. Thinking of how the
Autonomy is so quick to pull the trigger thinking about how that was only feet
away from being me. I feel a shiver go down my spine as I push myself closer
toward Ryker’s body. Only minutes before it is daylight, he beings to stir and
then when his eyelids open he looks up to me smiling.
.
“I could definitely get used to this.” He says to me pulling
me down for a kiss, and I try my hardest to forget the scene that has been
playing on repeat since I went to sleep. We pull ourselves off of the bed and
he grabs the bag that he had packed two nights before off of the floor slinging
it onto his shoulder. We climb the stairs to his building and out into the
town.
“Why did you pick someplace so far away from everyone else?”
“Cole, you don’t understand… everyone is scattered around the
city. We are not all on the main strip.”
“Why am I then?”
“Because, you let my sister talk you into that building…
although I would like to thank you because she was always in my room with me.
She hated to be alone.” He pauses turning to me and asking, “Is it a bad idea
to let her come along with us?”
“No, I think that she will be able to take care of herself,
if you ever give her the chance.”
“I will give her the chance,” he tells me.
“No, you won’t. You wouldn’t let me take care of myself if
you weren’t one hundred percent sure that I knew how to.” He stands silently
for a moment as if contemplating my comment and then sighs;
“I only hoped that I would be able to take care of her without
her having to see all the awful things that I have, but I’m starting to realize
that it isn’t going to be that way. Will you help me teach her to fight?’ he
asks me.
“Whenever you want,” I tell him then smile, “I can teach you
a few things if you want me to as well.” He laughs at me and then pulls me by
the hand heading back to the main area of camp. It’s still dark out when we
head down into the basement; Ryker walks over and reaches under the couch and
pulls out duffle bag handing it to me and telling me to pack up everything I
need. I stand there with the empty bag in hand and look to him “Ry, I didn’t
have anything here yet…,” he stares at me and laughs as I realize how long it
had been since I have changed clothes. I look down and notice that the shirt I
am wearing still has the blood on it from being shot at the prison and from the
previous day.
Ryker pushes Leer and she sits up quickly, “What the hell Ry.”
“We’ve got to go,” he tells her. She pulls herself out of the
bed. For the first time I can tell that she is 16. She glares at him as he is
running around grabbing things out of the room to toss into the bag. “Why do we
have to leave so early?” she whines. I wonder how difficult it is going to be
with her coming with us. “Here,” she says tossing a shirt to me and I pull it
over my head quickly, and then snatch a long sleeve button down shirt to put on
over top. Rolling the sleeves up past my elbow I follow both of them up the
stairs and to the street where the rest are waiting for us. I look up to see
Skipper standing in front and I want to tell him to stay but I know that it is
not my decision.
