2

I did not belong here. I was dangerous to those who cared for me.

Standing on the massive south tower’s overlook, I let the thrum from the enormous rotors whip my hair against my face. In the week since Lilah and Mara found me floating in a holding tank like some bizarre experiment, I was still no closer to knowing what had happened to me while in captivity. The only clues I had were the loss of time and the strange devices now fused with my body. Removing the ones at my temples had nearly killed me, and I struggled to make peace with them as permanent evidence of what I had endured. If only I could remember what that was.

The Order had ripped precious years away from me, and the injustice of it burned in my core. To me, the passage of time had been mere hours at first, yet as the drugs Arecibo pumped into my veins to keep me immobilized in the liquid tank wore away, flashes of my imprisonment seared behind my eyes or came to me in nightmares. Still unable to snag any coherent memories, I lived in a twilight of unknown anguish and loss that I felt but did not understand.

Pain and fear. Anger and power.

A wrenching wave of sorrow crashed over me and I gritted my teeth, refusing to let The Order rent any more tears from me.

The railing beneath my palms creaked with the force of my grip. A minute tinge of pain shot from the mechanica fused to the backs of my hands, and a soft whir shifted the tendons of my fingers with tiny bursts of corrective shocks. I reacted immediately, releasing my hold and staring at the dents I left behind. The flat metal rods that bored into bone emerged from my skin in five points just below my knuckles and met in the center of my wrist at a hardened glass and steel disc. A flash of silver chemical flared within the circle and my muscles eased, numbing.

Where I expected the violent quakes of my affliction, the bone breaking spasms of the Trembling Sickness to overtake me, I found stillness and a frigid power winding through my veins instead. The urge to lash out, to move, the ramping up of my pulse, all put me on high alert.

It had happened before, I think. During my transportation up to Outer City. Drug hazed, I fought to control the need to run. Lilah, though a gifted physician, had not known if these physical manifestations were from the implanted hardware or my reaction to the obvious torture I underwent. I wondered if I would ever know, and if I even wanted to.

Taking a breath, I peered down at the vast drop to the Atlantic from Outer City’s Port Hayden. Massive dirigibles lumbered into the harbor’s loading docks, their bulbous air bladders glistening in the afternoon sun like giant June bugs. Outer City had grown since I’d last been up here in the sky territory. The merchants and customers swarming along the swaying plank walkways and lighter-than-air shop stalls had tripled in number. Many displaced by the Reaper invasion took to the air to escape the ruin of the city-states and found themselves among the ports and outposts of the sky settlers.

A far-off craft listed in the growing winds and I squinted, tugging on an inner muscle out of instinct. The ocular lens within my left eye adjusted and the ship snapped into focus, many times larger. I jerked, unprepared for the new ability and noted the dizzying effect of each eye having a different magnification of the same ship.

Out of nowhere, the wisp of a memory floated to me; the view of a building from an air ship at night. I tracked it as we’d soared lower, shouting out information to someone behind me. Heaviness in my hand, my fingers wrapped around cold metal. And then the surge of strength from the implant at the top of my spine moments before I leapt from a dirigible to the flaming rooftop.

I blinked rapidly, and my vision evened out again. Something about the incoming vessel ticked at my brain, but a change in the vibrations of the platform pulled my gaze.

Riley stepped onto the rotor tower from a maintenance blimp, tied the vessel to the nearest support beam, and strode toward me. His dark auburn hair ruffled in the shifting winds when he pulled off his wide brimmed hat and partially hid the deep green gaze he fixed me with.

My breath caught, and I fought to speak through the lump in my throat. “Riley,” I rasped.

“Charlotte,” his voice broke. “You…I can’t believe it’s really you.” He paused, his expression unsure as he took in the devices at my hands and temples.

I guessed Lilah had not told him about me after all. I shifted and the chainmail on my bodice rattled. Long ocean-blue skirts whipped about my boots as I strode to meet him. “I’m still me, just a little more…magnetic.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he drawled and let out a nervous chuckle. The scar at his hairline and along his jaw were white against the tan of his face, but he was just as handsome as I remembered, and I flashed back to an image of his lips on mine. A stolen moment as the world whirled and burned around us. Sheriff Sebastian Riley was still as wild as the settlers he protected and led up here in the clouds.

Riley pulled me into a hug and enveloped me in his strong arms and, for a moment, he held me close until his palm swept the device at the base of my neck. Then he froze again.

I pulled away, disappointment pooling in my chest.

Riley met my gaze, a mix of confusion and concern playing across his features.

“Do they hurt you?” Riley asked as he stepped back a bit, rubbed a hand across his chin stubble, and sighed. “I know that you were hurt, but do these…things…do they hurt you still?”

Shaking my head, I ran my thumb across the smooth glass convex circle covering the metal works beneath.

He startled at the whir that emanated from within my hand.

“No,” I said as his gaze flitted to the smaller glass discs at my temples. “No pain.” I nodded to my fingertips. “No more blue either.”

“Except for your eyes, they went back to pale blue.” He reached up and brushed a lock of hair from my forehead.

I had not expected that. Not after what I’d witnessed before with Jack and Lilah. Confusion whirled in my mind at his intimate touch. It was akin to guilt, and something much, much more destructive to my own heart. Hope. “Yes, I noticed that,” I said, “I do not understand it. The Trembling Sickness made them pitch black, but now…”

“How?” Riley shook his head, his gaze intense as relief mingled with uncertainty behind his eyes. “How have you not turned completely like the others?”

“I do not know. I cannot remember. But that is probably for the best, correct?” I tried to shrug nonchalantly but the quiver in my lip gave me away. I was lost. In time. In my own mind. Lost.

Riley shifted from foot to foot, his gaze downcast. “Charlotte, I promise you that we tracked down every rumor, every bit of information about where they might have been hiding you. I wish…”

“I know.”

The clearing of his throat, the tension in his shoulders, all spoke of shame at failing me somehow.

“Riley, I do not blame—”

“They just kept moving you. We almost had you once, a year ago. We thought you were in Europe, but by the time I got there…” He met my gaze, his eyes lined with regret. “I was too late.”

“You never gave up. I knew you would never stop looking.”

“But two years, Charlotte,” his voice cracked. “I am so sorry.”

“Riley, it was my choice, remember?”

“Your life for a ship full of innocents was a forced hand, Charlotte. You had no choice, really.”

“Well, I am here now—”

A far-off horn sounded, and I crouched defensively, my hand instinctually crossing my body, reaching for a weapon no longer at my side. The direction of the wind, the angle of trajectory to the vessel, an escape route, all flitted through my mind in an instant. The devices on my skin vibrated, delivering a jolt of icy numbness that enveloped me. My breaths slowed, and my focus narrowed to the ship. A passenger craft, it represented no danger. I knew this, and yet the alarm blaring through my mind was hard to let go.

“Charlotte, hey, now.” Riley reached out, his hand touching my shoulder gingerly.

The contact pulled me, soothed my frantic thoughts. I took in a shaking breath and stood, letting the tension leave my limbs. “I—I am sorry. I do not know what happened.” I cleared my throat.

“You are safe,” Riley said. He tried to smile, but the worry in his eyes was obvious. “No one can hurt you anymore.”

I nodded and took in a deep breath, hoping he didn’t notice that I wasn’t afraid at all, as he thought. My being hurt had not crossed my mind. The fact that I barely stopped myself from taking his side arm, however, worried me. Brows furrowed, I met Riley’s gaze. “I have a feeling that I was not always in that tank.”

He watched me, his face an unreadable mask. Palm on his holster, he protected his weapon, subconsciously angling away from me. On some level, wariness crept into Riley’s stance. “It will get better. You are just feeling shock. A reaction to what you went through.” He motioned for the plank pathway behind him. “Let’s get you inside. Dr. Bartlet wants you to rest.”

I hesitated, not wanting to leave my perch.

“That is all she wants me to do. For the past few days, the only thing I have done is eat and sleep and try to figure out who I am.”

Riley’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean, ‘who you are’?”

“I don’t know, I…” My voice quavered, and I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I—I feel like a stranger in my own skin.”

“Charlotte, you survived unspeakable horrors. I don’t doubt you feel strange, confused even.”

“It is more than what I feel.” I shook my head, tapping on the glass of the device at my hand and blinking away the sting in my eyes.

“What are those things, anyway?” Riley squinted at my temple. “Is there something inside? I mean other than the mech?”

“This silver chemical, Lilah thinks it might be what you and I found in the warehouse the other day—” I caught the pained look in his eyes as I realized my mistake. “I mean, a c-couple of years ago…when we were trying to…” I took in a ragged breath, unable to continue.

The loss of Tesla. Ashton’s betrayal. All of it cut deep as if it had just happened days ago. I swallowed against the ache in my throat, my voice a rasp. “What did Arecibo do with me that whole time? T-to my mind? I am so angry and so numb inside at the same time. How is that possible? And why didn’t The Order just kill me?”

“Stop,” Riley intoned. “Your mind is fine.” He reached out, and I stiffened. Hesitating, he took a lock of my hair and let it slide between his thumb and forefinger, his jaw working. “I can’t believe I’m not dreaming again. That you’re here.”

My gaze flitted to the row of buildings below, to the door of the doctor’s office.

Riley caught me and let his hand drop. He took a step backward. “We’ll figure out the rest.”

“I am missing something.” I shook my head.

“Charlotte, there are a lot of things that The Order did around the time you were taken that don’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?”

His lips pressed into a thin line, Riley studied my face for a moment before shaking his head. “Not now. Things are too overwhelming for you. There’s time. Come on.”

“I want to stay up here.” I rubbed my eyes, fighting the sob bubbling in my chest.

“Charlotte,” Riley’s voice soothed. “It’s a lot to take in. I understand that. You just need to get your bearings.”

“Rough?” I smiled grimly.

“Dr. Bartlet says you have nightmares. That you’re agitated.”

The thought that my trepidation was not based on a real threat, but on my own faulty state of emotions sent a trill of irritation through me. “I am fine.” A flicker in the distant sky snagged my gaze, but Riley moved, bending down to get my attention.

His brows wrinkled with worry. “She says you are suffering from a form of battle fatigue. That it will lessen, those feelings. She worked with soldiers from the States War that had the same symptoms.”

“No,” I argued, frustration with my own weakness burning in my stomach. They went through so much to find me. And yet, I wondered how much of the Charlotte he remembered—had risked his life to find—was left. “I wasn’t in a battle. I did not fight in a war.”

“You fought for your life.” Finger under my chin, Riley tilted my face up to meet his gaze. “And you won. You’re here.”

I nodded, knowing it was not that simple.

The rotors sparked, sending a deep rumble along the tower’s platform.

He looked around, his expression puzzled. “Dr. Bartlet says you spend all day up here.”

“I feel safe up here.” I glanced down to the bustling port town below.

“Truly?” He looked up at the powerful propeller that kept the city afloat. Instead of four giant towers, there were eight now, and they struggled to buoy the added population. Outer City could not take on many more people. I wondered if Riley knew this. If he did, I doubted it would change the “open shores” policy he fought so hard to preserve.

“I like it,” I said simply.

“It’s noisy and deserted. We’ve got armed men down there. A warm bed—”

“This spot is optimal to observe the arriving vessels for all of Port Hayden and parts of the other ports in the distance.”

He watched me.

I pointed across the way. “I can see the whole of the market to the east boundaries where an attack would most likely come.” Nodding out to sea, I continued, “I can see an ocean approach for miles.” Withdrawing a spyglass from my pocket, I handed it to him. “I do not understand why I need to know these things, but it makes me feel better that I do.”

“Vigilance is normal after what you’ve been through.” He smiled reassuringly, but his eyes were worried. “It will ease.”

A few moments passed with us staring down at the busy scene in silence, the gentle dip and sway of the sky port soothing.

Riley reached out, slid his hand over mine on the railing, and gave a soft squeeze.

“They will look for me.” A quiver of dread moved through me. “Arecibo will. The Peaceful Union offered a reward for my capture.”

Riley shook his head. “Of the city-states that survived the attack, most, if not all, are barely functioning. It is worse than after the States War. Almost as bad as the state of affairs after the Great Calamity. If the governors had any money to spare, they certainly wouldn’t waste it on a reward. As for the Order, well, we have over fifteen ports now and so many outposts we lost count. Outer City is vast. They won’t find you.”

“I stick out.” Pointing to the devices, I frowned. “There will be talk.”

“You arrived at port at night. Dr. Bartlet, Mara, and key deputies are the only ones aware of it. No one else knows you’re here, especially with you hiding up in the towers. We’ll keep it that way, all right?”

“All right.” I crossed my arms, smiling the best I could despite the worry gnawing at the edges of my mind.

I followed him along the planks to the waiting dirigible—a small, two-person vessel like the one we rode the last time we were together. Back when I had hope for a cure for this affliction. The slick black skin of the air balloon shone through the natural netting, holding it to the small gondola hanging underneath. I climbed aboard. Shiny brass rudders and polished instruments shone in the sunlight and I turned away, wincing at the pain the brightness speared through my head. In the distance, the vessel form loomed closer and I stopped, my attention rapt on the black smoke trailing in its wake.

“Oh, no.” I pulled on the tail of his duster, my pulse racing in my ears. “Riley, something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong with that ship.”