For such a terrifying sob, his voice was small and high. And just like that, he was a kid, again. Thea’s head began to pound—a cry shook her memory, a pleading for life, and she pushed it away.
Thea couldn’t.
She turned.
Blair’s impassive expression watched with narrowed eyes as Thea wiped away her own tear and handed the last needle back to her mom.
“You do it,” she said.
She tugged her robe around her body, tightening the belt, and walked right off the boat, off the dock, and straight into the red velvet room where she’d wait for her punishment for not following orders.
Chapter Nineteen
Outside The Colony
The Grand Tetons
LARKSPUR
“You can fly?” Lark asked and she bit her lip until it hurt. The young runaway nodded.
“I’ve been trained—”
“I can’t. I won’t,” Lark said and she took a step back. She was too afraid. “I’d never…”
“Flying was always the plan,” Octavia offered. “My dad and I found the plane. Fixed it up.”
“How?” Lark wanted to know. “Flying is forbidden…are you sure you know?”
“I learned,” the runaway said again. “We were trained…”
“This doesn’t feel right to me,” Lark said.
“We don’t have a lot of time…”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Me neither,” Octavia replied with a nod.
“Stick with me, kid, we’ll not die together,” the runaway said to them.
Lark blanched at the idea of the runaway calling her a kid—the girl was the kid. Tiny and fairy-faced, she wondered if she could even reach the pedals of a plane. If planes had pedals. Lark didn’t know—she’d never ridden anything other than a small scooter someone gave her as a gift, and she’d only read about planes in books.
Planes equaled death, the enemy, and a world of unknown hurts. But as her heart pounded no, no, no, she also knew she didn’t have a choice.
“Where are we going?” Lark asked.
“The Bayou,” Octavia answered. “This soldier will return to Ethan and deliver him the messages from your parents.”
The runaway didn’t say anything. She led them to a small clearing, closer to Jackson Lake than they wished—Lark could smell the world on fire. The air took on an oppressive heaviness and her eyes burned and itched.
With quick swiftness, the runaway pulled on the camouflage covers and exposed a small Cessna plane. She ushered them onside and turned the key and flipped the gauges, and Lark curled up into a ball in the back and stared at a small dot in front of her. It wasn’t a dot, but a hole and she fixated on the small circular tear as the plane sprang and rumbled, vibrating to life, shaking her teeth.
“Wait,” Octavia said and she put her hand out.
The small girl shot her passenger an annoyed glance.
“Don’t leave until I’m done asking God for protection. I’m going to pray,” Octavia announced over the roar of the engine. “Dear Fathers. Protect us. Allow us safe passage. Lead us to your will.”
“Amen,” the girl said without much emotion.
With that short prayer, Octavia mumbled again. She fixated on the expanse of field before them, the plane ready to lift and fly off into the smoke. After a few hesitant bounces, the metal shook and Lark screamed wildly and when Octavia put her hand back to comfort her, she slapped it away from pure fear.
She’d never been out of the Colony.
But now she was tumbling toward the sky.
Lark wanted to pray, too.
“Save me, save me, save me,” she mumbled and she felt the roll of her stomach and a fit of quick nausea. When she looked up, she saw both Octavia and the stranger looking out the window. So, she sat up and pushed her nose against the glass as well.
“Here. See better,” the runaway said and dipped the prop plane to the left, exposing a landscape of orange and red. The attackers had torn a line of damage straight through Jackson Lake. And without the ability to fight the fire, it would ravage the Colony and the Children of the Lake, and anyone left in that small section of her world.
Even if her parents escaped, there’d be nothing left of their home.
She thought of her shed and all her things—everything she’d saved for the day when she’d leave…and it was all behind them, burning.
“I feel sick,” Lark said. Before anyone could answer she threw up.
The mess fell down her shirt and she sighed, staring down at the roaring fire, and trying not to imagine her parents down there. She wanted to puke again.
“Lay down,” Octavia instructed. “Go to sleep. We have a few hours in the sky…”
“Hours,” the girl repeated to herself. “Yes. That’s about right. I know of a refueling station…abandoned but used for Land Teams. Solar lights still work to guide planes down. We head there first.” She reached her short arms forward and flipped on buttons and slid dials. The ride was not smooth.
“Then the Bayou,” Octavia said. “Deliver you back to Ethan…”
“I’m going back to Ethan willingly,” the girl said. “I don’t need delivering.”
“Everyone needs delivering,” Octavia answered.
Lark glanced into the seat in front of her to find Octavia watching their pilot with penetrating intensity. Her braids covered part of her face, her features strong and full, and even though she wasn’t piloting the plane, the Child of the Lake appeared calm inside the flying metal box.
Lark expected to die. She swallowed and forced herself to sit high in the seat, the vomit still wet on her clothes.
“If your next stop was the Bayou,” Lark asked, still clutching her stomach, but starting to breathe deeper, “why didn’t my parents just give you to Elijah?”
Octavia let out a high hum. The girl was still, calculating.
Everything outside the plane was dark—and Lark didn’t understand how the runaway could possibly know her way in the dark. Her heart seized with fear and she closed her eyes so she didn’t have to watch the clouds float past. She was in the air.
The stranger shifted in her seat and leaned back, looking at both Octavia and Lark in turn.
She dipped her head and started in on her sad tale. “I’ve never been to the Bayou. I was tried to escape from Bermuda and Ethan rescued me. He sent me to the Colony. On Bermuda, I was Sally 142. The different groups were isolated by names; Sallys, Janes, Johns, Jacks. So, Sally 142…”
The plane wobbled and she adjusted; Lark put a hand on her chest and closed her eyes. This wasn’t how she wanted to die. “Is that your name then? Sally?”
“If that’s easiest.”
Octavia didn’t hide her annoyance. “She does this. Defers. It’s your name. We shouldn’t get a say in that.”
“Sally, then,” Sally said with a shrug. The plane dipped, the wings tipping. Lark held her breath. “I know they taught you that everything outside the Colony was black and white. Monsters versus protectors. But the world outside your little hole is quite nuanced.”
Lark snorted. “I see. Only your life has nuance.”
“I didn’t say that,” Sally replied. “I was only trying to give context for my world…and help you understand where I came from…why everything fell apart.”
“Give context accurately,” Lark said with a snide glance. “I don’t know you. You don’t know why my parents made the choices they did.”
The comment struck Sally as funny. “Oh, but I do,” she answered, intensifying.
Octavia smiled and clapped her hands. “This is good entertainment. I like this. The two people who grew up in cages are trying to outshine each other’s experience?”
Lark clamped her mouth shut.
Sally leaned back, her hands on the wheel. “We have answers, some of them if you want. Do you want?” She turned and caught Lark’s eyes; Lark shrugged then nodded. “I was kidnapped when I was three or four. Raised on an island called B
ermuda by a secret military group from the Island Nations.”
“The Island Nations,” Lark repeated and she leaned forward. “I’ve been hearing about the Islands. Who are they?”
Sally’s mouth dropped open and she looked at Lark for a beat before shaking her head.
“She doesn’t know,” Octavia reminded Sally.
“Not even that they exist? Okay.” Sally blew out a pent up breath. “Okay, the group that is in charge of the restoration of the world…they built these islands…”
Nothing.
Lark blinked, feeling a blinding pressure behind her eye. Monsters. She was sixteen and she’d believed, simply, in monsters.
“…they are the Islands of Luxury off the East Coast…and in those fortresses, they’re holding all the world’s diversity, power, and science for when people get to move back to their land. That’s the restoration plan, a global reset button. The islands contain representations from nearly every country, race, or tribe…and in five-hundred years, for their familial sacrifices, everyone will leave their island home and rebuild their homes with an intention on sustainability and world peace.”
Lark swallowed a ball in her throat. It bopped there, unmoving. “There are people living in luxury…”
“Technologies you’ve only read about in books…”
“Everyone isn’t dead?”
“No, everyone is still quite dead,” Octavia answered and adjusted her position to see both Sally and Lark at the same time. “But a calculated population remains.”
Sally leaned closer to Octavia and said with an exaggerated whisper, “She doesn’t know about any of it…”
“No,” Lark answered for herself. “My mom was traumatized by what happened…Darla cared for her after my grandma died…” she stopped and took a breath, “I mean,” and exhaled, “whatever…left or…” she trailed off and her shoulders sank with defeat. “Darla and Jenna mothered her. Mothered me, too. When people talked about the past she…cried. She just cried.”
Lark knew that was why she took to spying—trying to hear beyond the whispers in her own house.
The plane hit a patch of turbulence and began to bounce, Lark didn’t want to shift back into her seat but the plane tossed her around and made her voice wobble.
“Why am I here?” Lark asked and she rubbed her temple, trying to steady herself. “Is this fun for you? Some game you’re playing with me? Tear me from everything I knew and tell me my life was a lie…while I don’t even know if I’ll see my mom and—” she stopped, too overwhelmed to continue.
Neither girl answered.
The plane hummed along, dipping and shaking. They were long past the smoke and Sally 142 traveled low, beneath or in the clouds, to avoid visual tracking. After a few prolonged dips, everything steadied and Lark straightened up, trying to slough off the weight of what she didn’t know.
“Fine,” Lark sighed. “Then tell me why you came to find my parents.”
“I was sent to warn the Colony about the Bermuda Project and help you escape.”
Sally’s words filtered through her memory and Lark sat up straighter, alert. No, that wasn’t right. She tried to recall her mom’s conversation with her out in the snow—she’d been so adamant that the girl told them they’d be okay if they stayed. They believed the girl living beneath their house—they’d trusted her—and Lark was positive her mother said they needed to stay.
“Maybe you’re the reason we were exposed,” Lark said. She mulled that over in her mind—it made sense. Maybe, she worried, she agreed with the Fathers. “If you stayed away…this never would’ve happened.”
“No. The Bermuda Project, which I worked for, was sending teams to slaughter in a grid…anything stationary was going to be wiped out. The Islands will not settle until all unaccounted for life is gone…you don’t factor into the long term plan.”
“My mom said you told them to stay…”
Octavia watched them volley like a sport.
“I told your parents to leave,” Sally answered and she spun a piece of hair around her finger.
“That’s not what my mom said—” Lark started again and she felt very trapped. The plane, traveling so fast and hurriedly into the abyss, and Lark didn’t know what was beneath her or above her, and her body shook. “How much time did we have before they found us? Ninety-minutes? How much did you speed up that demise by tromping all the way across the nation—”
“Tromping?”
“I heard the story from Elijah,” Lark spat. That morning. “A runaway looking for my parents. Asking people where Lucy and Grant were…wouldn’t my uncle know where we were? You weren’t discreet…you…you…” but she ran out of steam and her head still ached.
“You know,” Octavia said, stirring the pot, “piecing together a story while crouching behind a wall is dangerous.”
“If that’s all I’m offered, that’s not my fault,” Lark replied. She slid further down the seat. “I don’t care about what you think you know about me…I don’t believe you…”
Sally didn’t seem like Lark’s impertinence bothered her in the least. When she spoke, it was in a small voice, tender, remembering. Lark had no choice but to lean forward and strain to listen.
“You were a baby. Your parents were scared…and no one blames them. But everyone told them it was a bad idea to cocoon themselves...and soon they were beholden to the Fathers. But back in the Bayou…you have a whole family waiting. A whole family your parents kept you from…”
“You don’t know my parents,” Lark whispered. Her lip quivered and she pushed the smoke and fire out of her thoughts. She couldn’t imagine an ending without facts—it wouldn’t do anyone any good. “This is my family. My life. You don’t know my parents.”
“I know facts and I know actions. I know stories. I know psychology and patterns. So, no, maybe I don’t know what your mom smells like or what song she sings when she puts you to bed at night, or all of the details behind her terrors, but I know who she is. And I know the decisions she made when you were a child and I know her secrets and—”
“Stop,” Lark said, but inside she thought, Impossible, only I know my mom’s secrets. “Stop, please.”
“I came to help bring you home,” Sally pushed on, despite Lark’s protests.
“My home is burning!” Lark seethed, exploding from the depths of her worry and her fears. “And I shouldn’t have come with you! I don’t know…”
“We didn’t give you a choice,” Octavia said. “Stop pretending like you had all these choices. When are we stopping for fuel?” she shifted the conversation to Sally.
Lark exhaled not sure if she liked losing the momentum. Sally cracked her neck.
“We’re not too far from the secret place I know.”
“Where is it?”
“Nebraska.”
Nebraska.
Octavia scrunched her nose, thinking, but when she spoke she asked, “And you know there’s fuel?”
“Yes.”
“And you know it’s safe?”
“Oh yes,” Sally nodded. “Kids in the Bermuda Project who train for flight school practiced on the runway there. But with the fuel shortage, they moved the flight school closer to the island. It’s totally abandoned, but I know where they store fuel cells and the solar lights on the runway are unmanned.”
“And there’s fuel?”
“Enough.”
“And what about satellite images?”
“We’ll be down and back in the air in twenty minutes.”
Lark watched as Octavia turned and stared at Sally, taking in the girl’s presence, her weathered uniform, her scars, the small hook of her nose. For several long seconds, Octavia soaked in the girl and remained still, assessing.
“Huh,” Octavia said in a ponderous tone.
“What?” Sally asked, knitting her brow. She seemed darkened and annoyed by her front seat passenger’s one-syllable comment out of thin air. “Huh, what?”
“Just, huh,” the braide
d beauty answered, unmoved. She waved all other questions away and rested her head against the window, pulling her backpack tightly into her lap. With her eyes closed, Lark couldn’t tell if the Child of the Lake was resting or sleeping, but she was fine with the silence. Octavia thrived inside of taciturnity.
Lark scratched at an itch at the base of her neck and looked at the floor of the plane. Stuck along the floor was a book and it bounced and moved with the plane’s subtle motions. Lark reached down and let her hand drift over the cover—Frankenstein. Its pages were yellowed and curled; the cover was absent its color, bleached by the sun. She flipped the book open. In the dark, she couldn’t see anything on the pages, but the feeling of paper was comfort enough. Without thinking anything of it, she picked up the book and tucked it into the front part of her shirt. Unlike Octavia, she was too worried about plummeting to certain death to sleep, but she rested her eyes and tried not to think about how far away she was from home.
Lark could tell the plane was landing.
Dawn started to creep above the horizon and the plane appeared to race toward the sun, but soon it dipped and dove near the earth. Octavia strapped herself in and motioned for Lark to do the same and she scrambled to learn how to use the belts hanging from the ceiling. Without an answer, she wrapped her wrist into the one by the window and tried to make herself as small as possible.
Out in the middle of the flat plains, a runway materialized and the plane rushed toward it with astonishing speed.
Bumpy and loud, the plane shook and the wings dove as Sally wrestled the metal beast to the ground. Lark knew the scream that echoed around the cabin was her own when the tail whipped one way and then the other before it skidded to a stop on the abandoned runway.
Sally hit the engine and went to open the door, moving with noticeable swiftness and intensity. The first thing she did was scan the sky—perhaps looking to establish if they had been followed, but the morning light was the only thing they could see. Octavia hopped down next and motioned for Lark who didn’t know why she had to get off the plane.
The Bedrock Page 24