Dweet, weeet, dwit, dwit, dwit, dwit.
A bird singing outside the tent wakes me. I am familiar with its song, the call of a cardinal, and I open my eyes to the light-filled tent. Blinking, I silently thank God that my eyes opened. Silently, because Laura is asleep on my chest.
I slide out from under her, gently lowering her head to the cot. My limbs are sore but working and I scoot off the cot to test them out. My feet hit the floor and my legs obey my commands. A few experimental steps and I stretch my arms above my head. The IV line attached to my arm slaps against the pole. I roll the wheel to pinch off the line and carefully remove the catheter. This time, I find a tissue and put pressure on the resulting puncture.
Aside from the pain of overworked muscles, my body seems to be responding normally. Perhaps Laura was right and I suffered from human exhaustion.
My mother is the only one in the tent. I consider waking her but then decide against it. She still has blood on her uniform. After being on the front lines of a world at war, the telltale bruises of early electroscurvy cover her arms. She needs her rest. With Charlie gone, I wonder if she has enough serum.
My stomach growls, and I place both hands over my abdomen to muffle the sound. I set out to find Korwin and breakfast. I am still wearing a Green Republic uniform, and I’m covered in blood. The camp is quiet but I manage to find a wash tent and get cleaned up. There’s a pile of freshly laundered uniforms on a table outside the showers. I find one that fits and pull my hair through the navy blue cap.
A few more minutes of searching and I give in to the hunger. I follow a small group of soldiers into the mess hall.
“Have you seen Korwin?” I ask the cook, an old woman by the name of Judy who I’ve met only in passing. She shakes her head.
“He hasn’t been in this morning. Glad to see you two are still with us. I’d heard you were injured.”
“I’m okay,” I say. “But thank you.”
As she loads my tray, the hunger is almost unbearable. I start eating even before I sit down. By the time I’m done, I’ve consumed two bowls of oatmeal, three meat patties, a cup of fruit substitute, and a slice of bread. I stop, not because I’m full, but because I’m embarrassed about the sheer quantity of food I’ve consumed.
Once I’ve scraped my tray and left it for the cleaning crew, I wander the camp again looking for Korwin. Most of the soldiers are sleeping off the events of yesterday. I ask the few on duty but no one has seen him. A young woman sends me to a tent she thinks is his, but when I poke my head inside, it’s occupied by a gray-haired soldier.
Only when I see three motorcycles parked on the edge of camp do I remember what Korwin said the night before. He planned to go to Hemlock Hollow to make sure everyone was okay and to retrieve SC-13.
Hemlock Hollow… my father, Jeremiah, Trinity… my heart aches to know if they’re okay. Surely, Korwin is already there. I climb on the bike and smile when my fingerprint unlocks the dash. These must be general use. The fuel cell is half full, plenty to make it to the wall from here. I start the engine in silent mode and advance toward Hemlock Hollow.
I’m not prepared for the feelings I experience when I reach what used to be the wall. It’s been reduced to a pile of rubble and Hemlock Hollow’s cemetery is visible on the other side. There’s no way I can get over the remains on wheels; driving through it or over it is not an option. I could round the wall to where the gate used to be, but the rubble goes on as far as I can see. It’s possible the gate has been destroyed too. If it is, I will have wasted the drive and still have to scale the pieces and walk a greater distance. I park the motorcycle and walk toward what used to be the wall.
With more effort than it should take, I climb on a chunk of concrete and jump from section to section. I’m tired and my legs ache by the time I reach the other side. I can’t rest. If I stop moving, I might not be able to start again, and I have a long way to go.
I have a choice to make. I can either go right—the shortest way to my father’s house, where Korwin will likely be—or go straight to my tree. I asked Jeremiah to hide SC-13 there in its hollow heart. It’s the place I’ve always kept my secrets. Did he do as I asked? Or did he press on for home with the war at his back, planning to make good on the promise later? Did he look in the bag? Did he know he was carrying my child if he did?
SC-13 has been unplugged for more than twenty-four hours. His pod has a battery, but I have no idea how long it will last. It is very possible he’ll be dead by the time I reach him. Not to mention, without my spark, I won’t be able to charge his pod if the battery is low.
Time is my enemy. I must find SC-13. I decide to head for the tree.
It’s late in the year and the wheat has already been threshed. I traverse the stubble of the former field, remembering the way the feathery crop once tickled my fingers and tugged at my skirt so long ago. Once the growth stops, there’s nothing left to do but cull the plants and start over. Everything changes. It has to change to make room for something new.
By the time I’m a stone’s throw from my tree, I’m exhausted. Each step is a monumental effort. I grip and lift my leg at the knee, trying to help my weakening stride. Eventually, I give up and crawl the rest of the way.
She’s beautiful, my tree. Her dead side reaches its twisted branches against the bright blue beyond, while her living half remains green and strong, even though other trees around her have changed color for the season. She’s even taller than I remember.
I dig my fingers into her bark and pull myself up to the large hollow where I’ve hidden a secret stash of Englisher contraband since I was small. When I reach inside, my fingers immediately bump leather.
“Thank you, Jeremiah,” I breathe. I pull the satchel from the hole and collapse to the ground with SC-13 in my lap. Propping my back against the tree’s trunk, I hold my breath as I unbuckle the straps and remove the artificial womb. Please, Lord, let him be alive.
The glass is still foggy and the side button glows green. I press it. Blink. Blink. Blink
SC-13’s heart beats, slowly but evenly. One hundred sixty-five beats per minute. I smile, and then a great laugh of joy bubbles up through my throat. I laugh until I’m distracted with SC-13. He’s moving, tumbling inside his protective fluid. Can he hear me laughing? Is he reacting to me?
“I love you, little one,” I whisper, and press the button to fog the glass again. I hug the pod to my chest. A flood of warmth fills me. How can I love someone I’ve never even met? Is it the potential of SC-13 I love? The idea that someday he could be ours, Korwin’s and mine? No. I love him now. I want to protect him now, for what he is, not what he will be. And it doesn’t even matter if he lives only one more day. I will always love him, no matter what. I can’t explain why. It just is.
Exhausted, I lie on my side at the root of the tree and curl around the pod. A nap and I will find Korwin, check on my father, and make sure the Green mercenaries from the Deadzone didn’t reach Hemlock Hollow. I’m useless like this anyway. A nap will make things better.
I rest my head on one arm, the other curled around SC-13, and I sleep.
I wake ravenously hungry and blink at the blue sky above me. The sun is west. It’s past noon. I’ve been asleep for hours, but I’m stronger. I rise easily and tuck the baby back into the satchel. Loading him onto my back, I set out for my father’s house.
It takes me a good forty-five minutes to reach the white farmhouse, longer than it used to even before I became a Spark. I’m still weak. I’m relieved when I arrive at the edge of our farm.
Something is wrong. The black door hangs open on its hinges. I run, taking the porch steps in one leap.
There’s blood on the doorjamb.
“Lydia, run!” Jeremiah yells from within. There’s a smack of flesh against flesh.
I step inside to a scene out of my worst nightmare. My father is unconscious and tied to the kitchen table. Jeremiah is bound to a chair in the family room, pronounced dark circles under his eyes and a cheek stinging red. Trinity is on the couch, head bleeding and eyes closed. Korwin is unconscious, handcuffed to the stove with draining cuffs. And the man standing in front of the fire, staring at me, looks hardly human. Dr. Konrad.
He is a series of yellow parts stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster. The hair on half his head is missing, and thick black stitches run the course from temple to ear. Another row of black marks his nose and down his cheek. One of his arms hangs shorter than the other within his tattered shirt. It’s the eyes I recognize. Those cold, gray eyes. And the smell. Blood and sulfur.
“Why, Lydia. I thought you’d never join us,” he says through thin, tight lips.
“Dr. Konrad,” I say.
“You remember me.”
“How? You should be dead.”
“When you pulled that little trick in the Deadzone, I was trapped in the rubble for hours. Brilliant, using my own bomb against me. I underestimated your will to become a martyr.” He rolls his eyes. “I might have given up. I was badly injured.” He paces to the fire and leans his forearm against the mantle. “Of course, I couldn’t move at all, buried alive as I was, but then I heard voices. Your friend Sting and a small army of his closest friends dug me out. It seems my condition produces a slight glow. He thought I might be a scamper like you. He was hoping my life would be worth something. Slip addicts have deplorable incomes, you realize. In exchange for a few units, he connected me to the help I needed to survive. Seems he shares a hatred for you that rivals mine.”
Sting. I see his face sneering at me from the shadows. “Was he among the Deadzoners you and Elias used to draw out the rebels?”
He shrugs. “Probably. His death was inevitable. But I digress. When he pulled me out of that pile of concrete, I still had this.” He reaches into his back pocket and retrieves a square of paper, unfolding it and turning it to face me. It’s Korwin’s sketch of me in the buggy, wearing my dress and kapp and drinking hot cocoa, the same one he showed me in the Kennel. “Your father was a genius to hide you here for all those years. The only place long forgotten by the Greens and underestimated by civilized culture.” He steps toward me. “When the Greens attacked, it provided the perfect opportunity. I was the one who brought the wall down. From there, it was all too easy to find your father’s house. I knew, if I waited long enough, you would come.”
“I’m here now. Take me and let my friends go.”
He snorts. “Give me SC-13. I need the gamma to fully heal.”
“You’ve come for nothing,” I say. “The baby died. You were right. I couldn’t keep him alive.”
Konrad laughs. “You’ve become such an accomplished liar since the first time I met you. Should you have survived, you might have made quite a politician. Too bad you have no idea what you are dealing with. Even if I couldn’t read your mind, I can feel him in this room. Every cell in my body is focused on the hum coming from the pack on your shoulders.” He beckons me with his yellow fingers and I notice dried blood caked under his fingernails. I have a morbid curiosity about whose it is. “Hand over SC-13.”
“No.”
“I will kill you. I will tear the skin from your flesh,” he seethes. A clatter from the kitchen sends me diving behind the sofa. A knife grazes my ear as I fall.
“You can’t hurt me without hurting the baby,” I warn, huddled behind the furniture.
“Then I’ll hurt your friends.”
Slowly, I rise, peeking over the back of the sofa. Konrad has the knife pressed against Jeremiah’s throat. My friend’s eyes are closed, but his lips twitch with the prayer I know he’s reciting in his head.
“Leave him alone.”
“Give me SC-13!”
I’m so angry, I can feel the emotion like a twenty-pound weight resting between my eyes. Slipping the satchel from my back, I think of the wheat and how it is Dr. Konrad’s day to be culled. He should have died long ago. Along with the Greens, it’s time for him to go, to make room for something new. I can’t allow him to kill Jeremiah, nor can I give him my son. I am paralyzed with fear and loathing as I stand and slip the satchel off my shoulders with shaking hands.
He narrows his eyes and lowers the knife. Konrad can’t resist the draw SC-13 has over him. Holding the knife between us, he rounds the sofa and approaches me, reaching his hand out for SC-13. I have no plan accept to engage, hand to hand.
A blast of lightning comes from behind me and plows into Konrad, who seizes as the blue works its way through his body. How? Who? I turn, pulling SC-13 back into my chest.
“David!” I gasp. Pale and sweating, David stands in the doorway, an open electroscurvy sore on his left cheek.
“Run, Lydia! Run!” he yells.
I do, barreling down the porch steps and throwing SC-13 over my shoulders. My human legs are slow and the satchel feels heavy on my back. I need to hide him. If I can hide SC-13, I might be able find a way to help my friends.
David’s muffled scream comes from the house and I choose the closest place of concealment, our barn. Slipping inside the doors, I close and latch them behind me. Our horse, whinnies when he sees me. He stomps his front hooves, obviously hungry. If Konrad has been here since last night, he hasn’t been fed.
“Shhhhh,” I plead, quickly tossing a clump of hay and a scoop of feed haphazardly into his stall. Thankfully, he quiets and lowers his head to feed.
I climb the ladder to the haymow and flatten myself behind the stack of hay.
“Lydia!” Konrad’s call filters through the walls from a distance. He’s searching for me. “Don’t make me kill the rest of your friends.”
I wince at his words. Is David dead?
“SC-13 is as good as mine. Give him up and we can go our separate ways.”
Desperately, I try to dig in the back of my brain for the hot ribbon of power that has protected me since becoming a Spark. It’s not there. Even in SC-13’s presence, I can’t muster it from the depths of my brain. Charlie’s voice comes back to me, stabilize, not cure. Temporary reversal. I can’t rely on my own power. I’ll have to rely on another.
I slip the satchel from my shoulders and cover it with hay. The cross Korwin gave me melted at CGEF, as did our rings, but my roots run deep, especially here where my faith began. I pray from the heart. Crawling, I put space between SC-13 and myself. I cower behind a hay bale, heart pounding.
The latch on the door lifts of its own accord, and the doors fly open. Dr. Konrad walks into our barn, smiling banefully.
“Lydia. Tsk, tsk, tsk. You don’t get it, do you? You can’t hide from me. I can feel him, and I can hear you. The stuff he is made of runs through my veins. It keeps me alive. SC-13 is mine, just as you are. I own you. You are my creation!”
The rush of my breath matches the pounding of my heart. With raw courage, I stand, revealing myself, and face him from above. “I’m not yours, Konrad, and neither is SC-13. I have one creator, God. I am His and always will be.”
Konrad narrows his eyes and my body flies off the haymow, yanked by the invisible force of his telekinesis. He drops me. My newly human legs aren’t strong enough to withstand the impact. I collapse onto the straw-covered floor, unable to catch my breath.
With a snort, Konrad moves for the ladder. “The difference between me and your God is I exist.” He steps onto the bottom rung and uses his normal arm to pull himself up. The other must not work because it remains limp at his side, slowing his progress up the ladder. He reaches for the next rung. Pull, step, step. His slow ascension gives me time to think.
I blink against the pain in my ankle and leg and manage a shallow breath. I have to get up. I have to do something. I drag myself through the straw to the base of the ladder just as Konrad clears the top rung. As best I can, I pull myself to standing, intending to follow him. But my eyes catch on the hay behind the ladder and I reconsider. I am too weak to fight him with my body. I must use my mind.
Konrad descends, the straps of the satchel visible on his shoulders as he lowers himself from rung to rung. Using one arm requires him to pause on the ladder at regular intervals. Foot, foot, arm. Foot, foot, arm. I position myself in the shadows and clear my mind. Closer… closer.
Foot, foot… With a howl, I dive from the hay and the shadows, driving the pitchfork between the rungs and into his chest. Blood sprays across my face. I thrust forward with all my strength and weight, feeling the iron hit ribs and then slide between them with the angled force of my thrust.
His body falls backward, taking the pitchfork with him. The handle catches on the ladder and it tears from his flesh. I gasp as he lands on SC-13, blood gushing from the wound. I wrestle the pitchfork from the rungs and use it as a cane to limp toward Konrad, who gurgles and coughs. He turns his head and narrows his eyes on me. Thinking fast, I scoop the hay near my feet and toss it between us. It intercepts his telekinesis, meant for me, and is thrown against the wall of the barn. The distraction is enough.
I hop forward on my good leg and stab the pitchfork through his neck, bending his body over SC-13’s pod. I drive the fork to the floor, careful to position myself so he cannot make eye contact with me. Hay whips around the barn, stinging my cheeks and hands. The doors open and close as Konrad’s power frantically claws at anything it can reach. The gate on the stall flies open and slams shut, sending our horse stomping to the rear of it. I lean my weight into the pitchfork, wailing at the feel of iron against bone, the pain in my leg, my fear for SC-13.
The cacophony of destruction ebbs. The hay snows to the ground. The doors creak to a stop. Blood pools below Konrad. I wait, clutching the handle of the pitchfork and crying until full minutes have passed without a hint of struggle from Konrad. I yank the prongs from his throat. He doesn’t move. Frantically, I pull off my military jacket and throw it over his face. There is no struggle.
Through vision blurred with tears, I work the strap to the satchel off Konrad’s short arm, then roll his body off SC-13 with a kick.
“The pods are strong,” I say to myself. “Charlie said the pods are strong.” I weep as I fall to the floor and pull the bloody satchel into my lap, on top of the lame leg whose pain is almost too much to bear. I slide the artificial womb from the leather and tap the side.
Blink. Blink. Blink. SC-13’s heart beats the tune of our victory. His pod is whole. He’s alive and well.
I lay back in the straw, hugging the artificial womb to my chest. Overwhelmed with pain, I close my eyes and repeat a prayer of thanks for the miracle in my arms.