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IMARA CLUTCHED HER STOMACH AS SHE trudged down the street. All she could see in her head was Safiya’s body. The guilt seized her muscles; everything felt like ice. Another person dead and she’d done nothing to stop it. No matter how she fought and tried, it was all for nothing. Her brain could barely process it.
Every few seconds, Mali would force Imara’s feet forward because she would forget to walk. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess of grief and panic. Safiya dead. Marco dead. Abe... maybe dead. That thought never stuck around long. She’d always force it back to the hidden recesses of her mind with the other things that were too painful to process.
The only other thing Imara was aware of was Naki’s panic. Charcoal balls bounced off Naki at regular intervals. She kept spewing words out as if that might help. Mali kept telling Naki to calm down, but it only made Naki talk faster and in a higher pitch.
When they finally arrived at the apartment, Siluk was more panicked than Naki. His hair hung disheveled and his eyes were rimmed with red. “All the planes are down in the entire world. Some of them crashed!” He began pacing across the floor while wringing his hands. “What if Abe’s jet went down while he and Darius were on their way back here? What if something happened to them?”
Without any warning at all, bile shot its way up Imara’s throat. She gagged and ran to the nearest trash can. The contents of her stomach lined the can as she gagged again. And again. At some point she noticed a blanket had been put around her shoulders.
It took several minutes before she could stand without throwing up. The moment she got to her feet, Siluk met her eyes. “Is Darius dead?” he asked.
She looked away. She had to. How could she look him in the eye while delivering such news? “I don’t know.”
Siluk grimaced, clearly wanting more of an answer than that. She wanted one too. He stayed calm for a moment, but then his face contorted, and tears seemed to well in his red rimmed eyes. He let out a cough and his calm returned, even if the emotions surrounding him didn’t. Cobalt blue drops of sadness pelting off his skin like knives. Mounds upon mounds of maroon frustration. Charcoal balls of panic bouncing so fast, they blurred. She was careful not to look at them too closely. Siluk knew her hila had been healed, but Mali didn’t, and Imara wanted to keep that advantage over everyone she could.
“What happened?” Siluk asked, his voice even huskier than before.
Imara grabbed her stomach, ready to lose more food. Tingles spread through her arms and legs, making her feet unsteady. Before she could lose her balance, Siluk put a hand on her shoulder, grounding her. He gave her a simple look of sympathy, which helped more than she expected. Considering his best friend had most likely died, he was handling things pretty well.
“Just tell me what happened,” he said. “I can take it.”
Naki flashed her teeth at him as she shoved him away. “Maybe you can, but she can’t. Darius wasn’t the only one in that jet, you know. And anyway, they probably survived. Don’t you think they survived, Imara?”
Imara chewed her bottom lip until she tasted blood on her tongue. She didn’t dare answer the question directly. Instead, she said, “Abe is a healer.”
Naki nodded emphatically. “Exactly. How do you know the jet went down? What did you see?”
“Santini showed me a video,” Imara said.
“Santini?” Naki asked as she clapped a hand over her mouth, her breathing even faster than before.
“She’s here?” Siluk asked. His voice remained steady, but the charcoal balls of panic blurred even faster around him. And his eyebrows started twitching.
Imara recounted the story with as few details as possible. It was hard enough to relive the moment herself, and with so many charcoal balls of panic in the room, she didn’t think Naki could handle all of the truth. So, Imara left out as much as she could, especially glossing over the number of times she’d been electrocuted.
When she got to the part about Abe’s jet crashing, her throat choked up. It was easier to replay the scene now that she was imagining a possible survival scenario, but it still wasn’t pleasant. “Santini showed me a video. Abe’s jet was flying through the air and everything looked fine. But then an orange ball of fire came toward it. As soon as it touched the jet, smoke and fire covered everything. The jet lost altitude. As soon as it touched the ground, it burst into flames.”
“But did you see any debris?” Naki asked.
Imara looked at her sister with the happiest face she could manage under the circumstances. “No, I only saw smoke and fire.”
Naki’s head bounced up and down, wearing a reassuring smile. “That’s what I thought. The jet probably had heat proof metal on the outside. Just because the jet lost altitude doesn’t mean anyone inside got hurt.”
“The flames were pretty high.” Her voice sounded so much tinier than usual. She’d been afraid to think it before, but with Naki reassuring her, the words were easier to say.
Naki laughed and waved a hand through the air. “Abe is a healer. Even if it got hot inside the jet, I’m sure he had some remedy for it. How long did the video last after the jet crashed? Did you ever see any movement, like the door opening?”
“No,” Imara said, a smidgeon of hope returning. “Santini stopped the video almost as soon as the jet hit the ground. They could have escaped the jet and I wouldn’t have known. I never saw anything but the crash.”
Naki nodded with that same reassuring smile. She wrapped her hands around Imara’s and said, “Exactly, I’m sure he’s alive. He has to be.”
Siluk grabbed Naki’s arm and glared at her. “Don’t give her false hope. The sooner we accept the truth, the sooner we can deal with it.”
Naki’s face went limp when she looked into Siluk’s eyes. After gulping, she said, “He can’t be dead.”
“He is. They both are. We have to accept that.” Somehow dark circles had appeared under Siluk’s eyes during the course of the conversation.
Naki sniffed and turned away from them. “But I was just starting to like him again. I thought he was the world’s biggest jerk and he’d never do anything for Imara. But he actually came to Kenya. He’s been at her side and helping her. He was doing everything he should have been doing. And now he’s—”
“Dead,” Siluk finished.
Imara heard the word, but it didn’t feel so heavy anymore. Now that she’d been given the tiniest sliver of hope, her senses seemed to be returning. Her brain started working, clearing out the fog that had been inside her since the glass dome.
Heat seemed to blossom inside her heart and it quickly spread through her entire body. “I have his power signal. We allowed it the other day just in case. As long as he’s alive and wearing his ring, I’ll see a signal.”
Mali entered the room from the hallway with both of her eyebrows raised. “If we can’t have communication in or out of the city, what makes you think you’ll receive a power signal?”
“Power signals work on a different network than messages,” Imara said. “And were you in the bedroom just now?”
“I was checking the windows for security. One of them was unlocked, by the way. So, you’re welcome.”
“Oh,” Imara said, “Thank you. Anyway, I bet Santini didn’t think to block the power signal network since hardly anyone uses it, and it doesn’t give location or anything useful. It just tells you if the ring is attached to the user.”
She found the power app on her ring and held her breath as she tapped on it. She wanted to close her eyes as soon as she tapped. But before she could, she saw four signals blinking back at her, each signal labeled with a first name. Chalondra, Talib, Naki, and—her heart leapt inside her—Abraxas.
“There,” she said as a wave of excitement rushed through her.
Naki heaved a sigh of relief.
Siluk glared again. “Rings still have power for hours after a person dies. It takes twelve hours for the power to die completely, sometimes more depending on the person. As long as the ring didn’t get completely destroyed, which let’s admit, is basically impossible, his ring would still have power right now.”
Naki wilted like a dehydrated flower.
A weight seemed to crush Imara’s chest. But even as it crushed her, the hope inside her never stopped swirling. “You’re right. We won’t know for sure until tomorrow.” She admitted it unwillingly because somehow, she knew Abe wasn’t dead. She could feel it. He couldn’t have died without her feeling something. Didn’t he say they were soulmates? A soulmate would know if the other died.
Mali cleared her throat. “I’m sorry about your friends, or whoever they are, but unfortunately, we have bigger problems to deal with. Riots are popping up everywhere in the city. They’re all fighting against the tagged. People have already guessed that something happened to the police. There are other people running around that call themselves enforcers, but they’re provoking the riots. We have two major problems. We need to stop these riots and we need to stop Santini’s vote from going through.”
Imara scoffed. “Well, the second one should be easy. The glass dome isn’t even finished yet, so none of the council members are even in Nairobi.”
Mali hung her head in response. “They are here. The last one arrived this morning. We had them arrive early in case something like this happened, but apparently, Santini had more spies in our department than just Faraji and Rehema.”
“Oh dear,” Naki said. “This is bad. This is very, very bad, isn’t it?”
Imara ripped a few hairs from the back of her neck before she realized how hard she was tugging it. The sliver of hope she had a moment earlier seemed to be crushed by images of violence against the tagged.
“Imara can stop the riots.” Siluk said, lowering himself onto the couch. “She can do it just by talking to people. If she tells the people to calm down, they’ll calm down and stop hurting the tagged.”
Mali clenched her jaw. “The tags are inflammatory. They incite action. Just talking won’t stop the riots, no matter how persuasive anyone is.”
Naki bit the edge of her lip as she raised a finger as if to get attention. But then, she dropped her hand and looked away. Mali was already opening her mouth, but Imara saw amethyst rings dancing off Naki’s skin. She’d seen the emotion only once before, so it took a moment to place it.
Anticipation.
Before Mali could speak, Imara asked her sister, “What were you going to say?”
The amethyst rings danced around Naki, but they were soon joined by wine-colored fear spikes. When she spoke, it was in a tiny voice that didn’t seem brave enough for the words coming out. “Don’t you think it’s more important to stop the vote? I know the riots are bad, but they’re only a short-term problem. Shouldn’t we care more about the future of the world?”
Siluk laughed, which made Naki cower back. “How are we supposed to stop the vote when the city in chaos? If we can stop the riots, the council members are more likely to listen to us about the taggers anyway.”
“We have to help the tagged,” Imara said. “If we don’t, no one will.”
“We can’t waste time helping the tagged. We have to stop the vote,” Mali said.
“Refuge,” Imara said. The word came more easily to her than it had earlier. Probably because she wasn’t in shock now and her brain was moving at its usual speed.
Mali cocked an eyebrow up. “You said that earlier, and it still doesn’t make any sense.”
“We can find a place for the tagged to hide until all this blows over. Why don’t I worry about stopping the riots, and you worry about stopping the vote?”
“I’m going with Imara,” Siluk said while rubbing his eyes.
Naki shifted on her feet looking from Imara to Mali.
“Go with Mali,” Imara said. “She might need you.”
Naki looked like she wanted to respond, but Imara marched toward the door before anyone could say anything else. She didn’t want to talk anymore, maybe not ever. She needed a distraction. Anything to keep her from thinking about all the horrible things that had happened.
Things like a jet bursting into flames.
She shoved all her emotions down with a gulp. She had to find a refuge for the tagged. And she had to stay busy enough that she didn’t have time to think.
