THE SHORES OF THE ISLAND seem to be made from broken tiles and crumbling stone. There’s a heli lying on its back like a dead fly just outside the doorway from which we emerge. Luokai eyes the aircraft as we pick our way around it, our pace much slower than I’d like. Unfortunately, I’m the one who’s slow. Luokai found me a sling, so moving I can handle, but everything still hurts. At least the bite has healed over. Luokai called in a medic to cut out the stitches outlining gore teeth in my shoulder, leaving nothing but scabs and ugly red lines to remember.
“There are still Reds in the settlements rounding people up.” Luokai’s voice is soft as he leads me down the steep switchbacks toward a long white bridge that spans the distance between the island and the beach. “We haven’t had any on the island itself in about a week—”
“A week? How long was I out?”
Luokai licks his lips. “You weren’t… out exactly. ‘Subdued’ is more like it.”
“That’s right. You said they drugged me.”
“For your safety. Your wounds broke open while you were trying to help Sev find Gao Shun.”
“You sure it wasn’t because I had to fight off a compulsing Seph?” I give Luokai a pointed look.
Which he misses completely because he’s watching his footing. Still, he nods in acknowledgment as if fighting him off that night was an unfortunate given. “The medics worried you’d break them again if you woke up confined.”
“How long have I been subdued, then?”
“Twenty-three days.”
“Twenty…” The number won’t even come out of my mouth, stuck inside me. The whole world could have burned in twenty-three days. Everyone I know could have gone out in one violent flash. Twenty-three days is a lifetime that I’ve just lost.
“Keep your eyes open out there.” Luokai is still talking, as if he can’t see what the medics—no, what he has done to me. “You’ll be an asset to Reifa’s team.”
He’s so calm. Ruining lives, condemning civilizations as if the ground under him is solid enough he’ll never fall. Shaking my head, I try to concentrate on what he’s saying. Reifa. The one leading the group of Islanders I’m supposed to catch up with. “What am I supposed to say to her again?”
“I think you will find your connections to the Mountain and knowledge of Red camps will be a good start.”
I try to quicken my pace as we negotiate a set of stairs, but still have to take them one at a time like an old man. “How’s Sole doing?” I ask, eyeing the pocket where Luokai stowed the link after telling me the cure we sent her was bad.
“I don’t know. She thinks I’m you, and I don’t know how to ask questions the way you would.”
“You haven’t told her who you are?” The words come out sharp as knives, and I have to bite the rest back. Losing my temper won’t help anything. Just think of the last time.…
But then I do think of the last time. Sev all curled in on herself, her eyes wide and scared as if she was waiting for my head to split in two, for the gore she was sure lived inside my skin to come out. I swallow the thought back, continuing down the stairs.
When we get to the wide bridge that links the island to where the settlements lie empty up the shore, Luokai stops, handing over the rucksack he’s been carrying. I can only carry it on one shoulder because of my wounds, so I’ll be sore by the end of the day, but if it comes down to a choice between a sore back and an empty stomach, I’ll always choose food.
“There’s some medicine in the front pocket to fight the bacteria from the gore bite. Not the same kind they were giving you in quarantine. I couldn’t take that without anyone noticing.” Luokai points at the battered bag. “It’s stronger, I think. Take the pills twice a day. We can’t have you relapse out there.”
My hand absently touches the pocket he indicated as I look out at the bridge, the stone bright white and exposed in the sunlight. Anyone on the other side will be able to see me as I cross. When I was with Tai-ge, Sev, and June in the heli, it took us, what, ten hours to fly here? So, at the roughly fifty-five-knot speed Tai-ge had us gliding at, the old farm from where we took off has got to be at least six hundred miles away. Which means walking back there will take approximately the rest of my life.
My foot catches on the ground, and I stumble forward. A month of walking, maybe. If I find this Islander group and we make good time. Manage to find food along the way and don’t get completely lost. Six hundred miles in a heli could be twice as long on the ground, accounting for mountains and rivers. Gorges and cliffs. Soldiers and gores.
Sev’s a prisoner somewhere. I need to be there now.
Hefting the rucksack, I look back at Luokai. “There’s a lot riding on me finding her and the cure.”
“Yes.”
“Not just your sanity. Not just June’s. If Dr. Yang has the cure, he’s going to come root out the last person hiding here. He’ll take control of everything.”
Luokai nods. “I wish it were not so.”
I point to the bridge. “Is this the best you can do? Doesn’t this place have helis, soldiers, food reserves… You know the way to the mountains, but you’re sending me alone?”
Frowning a little, Luokai takes a step closer to me. “There’s not much I can do, Howl. I have to take care of June until you return.”
June. Her name on his lips makes my blood begin to simmer again, as if he weren’t the one who turned her Seph. I turn back to face the bridge, afraid if I look at Luokai anymore I’ll hit him. It’s been a long time since I’ve fought someone just to make myself feel better. Doesn’t seem smart at the moment, especially going after an infected person who a) won’t remember that aiming for a snapped collarbone is fighting dirty, and b) might eat the broken pieces if he wins.
So instead of hitting Luokai, I start walking. There’s wind skimming my ears, the crash of water below me, bits and pieces of broken stone that skid under my feet across the white of the bridge. A long shadow from the statue that stands at the bridge’s head stretches over me, Luokai’s hidden inside it, the two of them darkening my path across.
He doesn’t speak again, not enough left between us even for a good-bye. There’s a hole in my chest where I’ve kept my brother all these years, hoping he was out here. That one member of my family hadn’t melted away, unable to survive the heat of a life at war like the rest. But now I know the truth, and I don’t look back.
I find new tracks from the bridge easy enough, a small group that passed through within the last few hours, one with a shaved heel that sticks out like strawberries in winter. It gets more complicated as I creep through the structures lined up beyond the beach, their stone walls scorched and the ground saturated by many, many booted footprints. It’s not long before I have to take cover inside one of the little stone houses, a heli buzzing overhead. The bite in my shoulder throbs.
Sheltering under the eaves, I pull out the bottle of medicine Luokai left in the rucksack. Twice a day, he said, so I put one white pill in my mouth, hoping it kills pain and gore diseases. My collarbone isn’t grating painfully the way it was when I first woke up with Sev, but it still hurts.
Once the heli is gone, I manage to find prints from the shaved heel again and follow it into the trees. The tracks aren’t too hard to follow in the tall grass, and I’m beginning to wonder how helpful traveling with this group could be if they’re leaving such obvious trails for Reds to find, when a voice stops me cold.
“This way. Looks like there are five, maybe. Four?”
Creeping into the shelter of a tree trunk, I listen for a moment before I move closer. Not that it matters. The two men ahead of me are making so much noise themselves, there’s little chance they’d hear me even if I were kicking my way through the dead grass like a little kid. When I’m close enough to see the City’s falcon and beaker emblazoned across their backs, I let myself lag behind, listening for evidence of more soldiers. No other tracks mar the ground this way, so they must have been scouting and happened upon the same Islander tracks I’ve been following. The next time the two Reds pause, I get a good look at their guns, a nauseous revulsion swirling with an awful kind of longing inside me. If I had a weapon, all this would be so much easier.
A gun.
The little girl I killed skips across my thoughts, the memory of her cracked and torn at the edges from years of trying to repress it. I haven’t shot a gun since…
I jam a different image in front of that bloody little girl: Sev, tied up in Dr. Yang’s lab. If these two Reds are trying to shoot up the Islanders who are supposed to get me back to Sev, then I have to take this situation in hand. I made mistakes before, yes. But if I let my past dictate what I can and can’t do, Sev will be sitting right next to that little girl in the dark recesses of my mind, peering at me whenever I close my eyes. This is an emergency.
I crouch, touching the damp ground next to one of the Islander boot prints, trying to decide how fast they were moving and how long ago it was they passed. But, as I lean closer, everything in front of me blurs. My mind seems too heavy, sliding this way and that, threatening to tip me over onto the cold ground.
One of the Reds looks back, his hands idly touching the gun as he scans the trees around me. I dig my fingers into the grass, command every muscle of mine to freeze, to become a blade of grass, a bit of bark, but my lungs turn slick and wet, refusing air.
He takes a step in my direction, craning his neck as if his mind can sense something amiss, but his eyes can’t see it. I can’t spare a thought for shoddy training practices in the City, though. My body is trying to slip apart into bloody pieces right here, to do this man’s job for him.
Breathe. In. Out. But the air won’t come, and my eyes go gray, blocking out the trees, the grass, even the Red and his gun. What is happening to me? A voice inside me screams. Panic, every soldier’s most familiar enemy.
A mouthful of air finally slides into my lungs, and the world around me snaps back into focus. The Red has already turned away and is following his partner into the trees.
What was that? I creep up from the ground, gauging my balance, my body, and what it is or isn’t capable of at the moment. Take a step. I can walk, but fuzziness still lurks at the edges of my vision. Whatever it was, I don’t have the luxury of time to be sick right now. I need to find these Islanders now. Before the Reds do.
Legs shaking, I follow the Islander trail a little farther, looking for a good spot to break away so I can get around the Reds, when my eyes find another broken path through the grass. A gore trail.
It crosses the line of broken grass stems left by the Islanders, then continues into the trees in a different direction, but there’s something funny about it, some of the grass bent in places a gore wouldn’t have touched.…
A slow smile pulls at my mouth. I switch to following the gore track, nose almost to the ground until I find it. A footprint, the heel worn on one side. I start moving faster, and the fuzziness swirling at the edges of my vision turns to darkness. Overtaxed, I tell myself. First time up in weeks; it’s no wonder I’m a little shaky. I take off down the trail, dull panic unfolding inside me as every step gets harder.
By the time I find the Islander camp, twilight makes it hard to see—at least I think it’s twilight blurring the two tents ahead into one brownish smudge. Based on the way my legs are shaking, I’ve maybe got an hour before I go from impaired to unconscious. I prop myself against a rock shielded by a bush and blink until my eyes clear enough to case the campsite. I don’t recognize any markings on either tent. No numbers, no City mark, no hammocks.
Also, no lookouts.
I scrub my good hand through my hair. This is the group Luokai seemed to think will get me to the mountains safely? They might have done a good misdirect back there, hiding their trail in the gore track, but whatever advantage it would have given them has been destroyed by this campsite. There’s a fire. With smoke.
Making a mistake like that in the mountains would be asking for a knife between your ribs. Here with Reds prowling, looking for people to take away in their helis? I shake my head, wishing it would stop spinning. I can’t risk my life, Sev’s, June, the cure, on the chance that no one else has noticed these idiots are here. I can, however, take any supplies they have to offer. Namely food, water purifiers, a hammock. Maps, maybe.
A weapon.
Two men emerge from one of the tents, the first with many years of good food evident on all parts of him. He stops at the edge of the fire to prod at the steaming packets nestled at the base. The second man is closer to my age, his eyes scanning the darkness beyond the camp. His eyes stop on the bush blocking me, but he turns away, not experienced enough to know that when you have a gut feeling you’re being watched, you either find the person watching you or run. Two others come out, but I don’t stop to watch them. There were tracks for four. That means no one is in the tents.
I slide my weight from behind the cover of brush, circling around until the Islanders are hidden by canvas walls. Out of sight, I crawl to the back side of the tent they’ve just emptied.
Stay out of the tent. Maybe if I wish it hard enough, some god of nature will hear me and keep them distracted. Keep poking at that fire and planning for whatever it is you’re doing out here.
If you stay out, I won’t have to kill any of you.
The tent base doesn’t connect to the walls, so sneaking in is easier than boiling noodles over a fire. Packs sit just inside, a long knife that looks as if it has seen a century of wear sitting on the ground next to them, but the edge is sharp.
A glance inside the first pack gives me a little more hope, familiar shapes of dried fruits and vegetables as well as something that looks like protein rations packed together inside. Just as I persuade my shaking fingers to clench around one of the straps, footsteps swish through the grass outside toward the tent door.
Sweat from my hand slips between my fingers as I grip the knife.
The flap opens, light streaming directly into my eyes. The shape in the doorway could only belong to the wary young man, the moment of shock at finding a stranger where a stranger shouldn’t be, freezing him in place. It’s the breath between finding the world is much more dangerous than you thought and a scream. An old friend of mine.
I drop the pack and dart toward the young man, but every movement oozes as if I’m stuck in mud, squelching through every moment in slow motion. The long knife feels like confidence in my hand as it catches on something, tearing like material instead of flesh. But I can’t see—I can’t see?—anything but what’s directly in front of me.
And what is directly in front of me? Nothing. My knees are in the dirt when I should be on my feet. Time seems to have skipped over me, because the young man is already outside, calling for help.
The ground feels too dusty and dry when it hits my cheek, though I can’t remember the time between kneeling and falling. My brain doesn’t blank out, though, letting me feel every moment as four people crowd around me, the knife I’d held coming to rest on my neck.