by Kate MacLeod
But Scout wasn’t fooled. The storm was starting. The one so severe that no one in town had elected to stay and weather it out.
She couldn’t stay where she was, and she couldn’t get back up the mountain. There was only one place to go.
Scout picked up Shadow, squeezing his little paws in the palms of her warm mittens, then clicked her tongue for Gert to follow her back up the trench.
By the time they reached the fissure, the lazy flakes in the air were so thick she couldn’t see to the top of the stairs.
By the time she reached the top and stepped out onto the plateau, the wind had picked up as well. It still had no real strength to it, but it was filled with a blinding amount of snow and liked to blast it all right into Scout’s face.
She didn’t want to be blind here. Not here, on a field of snow strewn with enemies she knew were only temporarily paralyzed. They might recover at any moment. They wouldn’t even have to regain use of all of their limbs, they could just reach out with their arms to trip her up and bring her down to their level.
She didn’t like that image.
Scout hugged Shadow tighter, made sure Gert was still close at her heels, and pressed on. And tried really hard not to regret not getting on that tram. For all she knew, blowing the bottom tram station was only a last resort after she failed to show at the top. She might still have made the right choice, but she would never know for sure.
She couldn’t see the cabin in front of her, was not even sure she hadn’t veered too far in one direction or the other and was going to walk right past it. Worse, she was fairly certain she had forgotten the code to get inside. 7887? Or 7877? Would it give her a couple of tries or would it lock her out entirely when she guessed wrong?
Would the door-opening tool be as ineffective here as it had been in the village?
Suddenly a bright rectangle of light appeared ahead of her and a bit off to the right. She assumed it was a rectangle; the whirls of snow made the edges irregular, but she didn’t know what it could be besides the open door of the cabin.
She was being lured in again. But Shadow in her arms was trembling despite the warmth of his own vest and her mittens on his feet. She had to get him inside. She shifted him a bit to get a rock in her hand, but that was the only preparation she could make for a fight.
She doubted it would be enough. She didn’t dare hope the light was as inviting as it looked.
As she drew nearer, Scout could see the inside of the coat room, now bereft of coats, although a dropped scarf lay twisted across the floor like a snake in motion, as if it had tried to follow the departing family.
No sign of a gray coat. No sign of anyone inside. Had the house recognized her when she approached?
It was a nice thought, but she didn’t really believe it.
Scout waited for Gert to follow her into the coat room before shutting the door and putting Shadow down on the floor. It was warmer than outside, but not by much. Still, she pushed back her hood and goggles and lowered her scarf, then peeled off her mittens. Now with both hands free she could take out her slingshot before opening the inner door.
The kitchen was as they had left it, clean dishes now standing dry next to the sink, the honeypot still on the table. Scout stepped further into the room and looked the other way, towards the desk in its nook and the couch and chairs beyond.
Empty. Shadow sniffed the air, then Gert sniffed too. With the thick vests on, Scout couldn’t see if the hair on their backs was rising up, but neither dog was growling or barking. Maybe they really were alone.
Scout crossed the living area to the short hallway that led to the cabin’s two bedrooms. The boys’ room was a mess of discarded items from the hasty packing of bags.
Then Scout heard the soft thump of a drawer closing in the McGillicuddys’ room. She raised the slingshot, stone loaded and ready to fire before she stepped into the doorway.
The girl inside stood with her back to the door. Her goggles were dangling around her neck, and she had pushed back the tight-fitting hood of the jumpsuit. Her hair was darker than Scout remembered and cut so short it stood up on top of her head like a soft brush, nothing like the long blonde locks from before.
Scout took careful aim at the back of her head. She knew from bitter experience that she would only get one shot at this.
“Before you do that, I should tell you one thing,” the girl said without turning.
“What?” Scout demanded, not lowering her slingshot.
“I’m not Clementine.”
11
Slowly the girl turned around, hands raised in a nonthreatening gesture. The blue-gray eyes were the same, exactly the same. The times Clementine had leaned menacingly close to Scout’s face when Scout had been tied to a chair or pinned under Clementine’s unnaturally heavy body, there was no way she could ever forget those eyes.
And yet, the face wasn’t quite right. This one looked both older and yet softer, the cheeks rounder with more color, the arch of her brown eyebrows a friendlier curve.
A sister? It was the only thing that made sense. But it was no comfort to Scout. Clearly, this girl was as resourceful and potentially as dangerous as her sister, perhaps more so since Clementine must have been the younger of the two. This girl was closer to Scout’s age. A girl could learn a lot more ways to be deadly in four years.
What would she do if she knew what Scout had done to Clementine? Scout hadn’t wanted to kill anybody. Not even after she had watched the twelve-year-old Clementine stab the galactic marshal Gertrude Bauer, the woman Scout had come to know under the name Warrior. Even then Scout had only wanted to escape, but the ongoing solar storm had made that impossible.
And killing Clementine had been the only way to save her dog Gert. There had been no other choice.
But she doubted Clementine’s sister would see it that way.
What was her sister doing on Schneeheim anyway? Why was she taking out other assassins for Scout’s benefit? It made no sense.
Scout was still standing in the doorway, slingshot raised but arms starting to tremble from the effort of keeping it drawn and ready to fire. Her dogs, finished with whatever they had been exploring in the kitchen, came up behind her to sniff at the bedrooms.
Shadow was distracted by the plethora of boy smells from the room across the hall, but Gert came right up beside Scout. The vest she wore made it impossible to see if her hackles were raised in that fearsome way that made her look so intimidating, but she was growling a low warning that was almost subsonic, and Scout knew that meant Gert was in full hellhound mode.
Scout lowered her weapon to quickly touch her palm to the top of Gert’s head, hoping to calm her.
She was afraid of what this girl might do if the dog attacked her.
Then a different sort of low roar grew louder than Gert’s growl. Scout frowned, not sure what she was hearing, but the girl’s face transitioned from a careful projection of her lack of harmful intent to high alert in one blink of her wide eyes.
“They’re coming,” she said. She brushed past Scout and Gert in the doorway without a second glance, only touching the back of her hand to Scout’s shoulder to move her to one side, but even that little gesture sent Scout stumbling into the doorframe.
“Hey,” Scout said as she regained her balance and followed the girl back to the living room. “We weren’t done talking.”
“No more time,” the girl said, touching the screen on the desk in its little nook. Scout didn’t know how she had done it, but the screen was filled with little boxes showing different angles of the storm outside. A few showed lights dancing in the distance.
“Your friends?” Scout asked.
“No more than yours,” the girl said, again moving Scout to one side so she could get at the couch in the far corner of the room. Two backpacks were waiting there, the exact same packs Scout had seen on the assassins. The girl thrust one into Scout’s arms, then pulled the other onto her own back.
“Where did you get this
?” Scout asked.
“From the fallen,” the girl said before settling her goggles over her eyes and wrapping her scarf around the rest of her face. “Hurry!” she said again, voice muffled but urgency clear.
“Where can we go in this storm?” Scout asked. “None of the other cabins will open up.” But even as she said it, she was pulling the pack onto her back. This girl seemed to have a plan, which was more than Scout had. And she knew they had to get out of here. Those lights must have been attached to vehicles.
There had been a lot of lights.
The girl charged out both of the cabin doors, out into the thickening swirl of falling snow. Scout pulled the doors shut after she and the dogs were both through. The outer door made a heavy clanking sound when she closed it, and something inside beeped a single warning beep.
Scout had to jog to catch up with the girl, stopping to pick up Shadow, who had quickly realized the snow was just as cold as ever. Gert stayed close to Scout, but she never stopped growling.
The girl led the way up to the higher cliff where the other cabin stood, but she shied away from it, finding another path that led them up to an even higher cliff that overlooked both of the other two plateaus.
She didn’t bother trying to hide, just walked straight up to the edge to look down. Scout stayed further back. She could see the lights converging on the McGillicuddy cabin. It wouldn’t take them long to realize she wasn’t there, to start looking around.
“Get down!” Scout hissed at the girl, who ignored her. The edges of her gray coat snapped in the air so loudly Scout was certain the assassins below would hear it just as soon as they cut off their engines.
Scout hugged Shadow tighter, squatting to put an arm around the still-growling Gert as well. Gert paused in her growl to nestle closer to Scout’s warmth, but her eyes never left the new girl.
“What are we waiting for?” Scout asked, but the girl didn’t answer, just watched as the others below circled the cabin, failed to break in through the front door, then gathered in a huddle to discuss what to do.
“We should go,” Scout said, and when the girl still didn’t answer, Scout rose to her feet to start hunting for another path to a higher cliff, perhaps one more out of the wind. But the girl, without turning around, extended a hand behind her in a sign that Scout and the dogs should stay where they were.
The assassins were circling around the cabin again. This time when they gathered in a huddle some distance away, it wasn’t to whisper together. There was a bright flash of light, a pillar of flash fire rising up into the sky before quickly dying out in the thin air.
When the smoke cleared, Scout saw the entire exterior of the cabin was blackened, bits around the door looking almost melted like wax.
If she had been inside, she would have survived that explosion just fine. And she doubted they had any bigger tricks in their bags to bust inside; she would have been safe.
But that door was impassable now. She had chosen to leave the cabin. Even after Emma had told her how safe it was. All because a girl with no name had told her to?
Scout resisted the urge to beat herself up too much. It wasn’t the time for it. But she needed to figure out how to keep moving forward on the path she had chosen.
“Let’s go,” the girl said, finally turning back to Scout and the dogs.
“No,” Scout said, setting Shadow down so she could straighten to her full height with her arms crossed. This girl had to see she meant business.
“What do you mean no? You’ve been hissing at me to get going since we got outside.”
“Not until you tell me who you are,” Scout said.
“You know who I am,” the girl said.
“I know you’re like them,” Scout said, jerking her head towards the plateau below where the assassins were still in a huddled meeting. “I know you’re one of them.”
“Never,” the girl said venomously.
“You’re not Clementine, but you’re like Clementine,” Scout said.
“It’s complicated. Very complicated. We don’t have the time,” the girl said. There was an edge to her voice that wasn’t exactly panic, but her sense of urgency was overwhelming her attempts at being conciliatory.
“I’ve been led about more than once,” Scout said. “That crew has gotten me just where they want me. For all I know, being on this entire planet was all part of the plan. So how do I know you’re not just another more involved part of the same trap?”
“I saved you,” the girl said, gesturing at the snowy field below, still strewn with paralyzed kids. Some of the newer arrivals were digging them out of the snow, lifting them up onto the backs of the vehicles.
“That could have been part of the plan,” Scout said. “You dress like them. You behave like you’ve had the same training as them. You have the same equipment, and I don’t just mean the packs. You took those kids down with darts.”
“Nonlethal darts,” the girl said. “And an older model than they’re packing.”
“You left them to get buried in the snow outside an abandoned village,” Scout said, feeling her anger rising. “How is that nonlethal?”
“You know them!” the girl said, flinging her hands up in frustration. “You know how hard they are to kill! But what are you accusing me of? Killing them or being on their side?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Scout said. “I just know I can’t trust you.”
“You have to trust me,” the girl said.
They both had more to say, but Gert’s growling suddenly kicked up from that low menace to a teeth-baring snarl, and Scout realized with a start that the dog had left her side, had advanced so far that the girl no longer had a way to get off the jutting rock she had stepped out on to look below.
No way except through Gert, and Gert wasn’t going to back off.
“Don’t hurt her,” Scout said. “I can call her off. I think.”
The girl scoffed at Scout and Scout was afraid she was going to charge the dog, perhaps just to prove she could.
But she didn’t. She changed her posture, letting the anger melt out of her tense limbs and turning sideways, so her silhouette was smaller.
“Hey, girly-girl,” she said softly, not looking Gert straight in the eye. Gert’s snarl settled back into the warning growl, but her own posture was still tense.
Scout started to step forward, to make a grab for Gert’s collar, but the girl glared up at her and shook her head. Then she turned her attention back to the dog, advancing slowly, not directly towards her but off to one side.
“It’s okay, girly-girl,” she all but cooed, peeling off a glove to present one bare hand for the dog to sniff.
Gert held her ground, but when the hand drew close enough, she sniffed it, one quick sniff as if she were determined not to be impressed.
Then, to Scout’s surprise, she sat down in the snow, tail thumping as she looked up at the girl so like that other girl who not so many days ago had tried to kill her.
Scout guessed Gert didn’t hold a grudge. Or this girl smelled very different than her sister.
“Good girly-girl,” the girl said, scratching at the dog’s ears.
“Her name is Gert,” Scout said.
“I know,” the girl said. Then she pulled her glove back on and walked up to Scout. “I’m Daisy. And I know your trust is going to be harder to earn than Gert’s. I’m prepared for that. But if we don’t get higher up this mountain, I’m never going to get that chance. Let’s go.”
She didn’t wait for Scout to voice a decision, just started up a narrow trail Scout could barely even make out under the deep layers of snow. Shadow went trotting after her, Gert bounding to catch up.
Scout hoped her dogs’ instincts were right. But even if this Daisy were someone to be trusted, it would take a unique sort of person not to have pretty strong feelings about the person who killed her own sister.
If she had any other choice, she would take it, but she didn’t. Scout hoisted the pack higher up on her shoulde
rs and followed her dogs.
12
The path grew steeper the higher they climbed, and Scout doubted she would even know where to step if Daisy with her heavily augmented body weren’t blazing the trail. Gert was widening her bit of it enough for Shadow to follow delicately behind her, only occasionally getting buried under a loose drift that fell like a mini-landslide down the side of the rock face on either side of the trail.
At last, the path emerged from the fissure in the rock, ending on a much narrower cliff than the last one. Scout stayed close to the rock face that loomed ahead of them, but Daisy stepped out further to get a look below.
“What’s going on?” Scout asked, not wanting to venture out to look herself. She wasn’t afraid of heights, not after being tossed off a platform on Amatheon Orbiter 1 and surviving, but she wasn’t sure she knew enough about how snow behaved besides being cold, wet, and slippery.
She didn’t want to try combining the last of those qualities with the edge of a steep drop-off.
“They’re leaving the cabin,” Daisy said.
“Going back to town?” Scout asked.
“No, breaking into groups to follow us.”
“So they didn’t find our tracks?” Scout asked, but the quick shake of Daisy’s head killed her burgeoning hope.
“No, they did,” Daisy said. “They’re sending smaller groups out on other trails to see if they can cut us off, outflank us, find a good position for an ambush or long-range sniping—”
“I’ve got it,” Scout said. She didn’t need more stuff to worry about that she didn’t know how to defend against, although she guessed it was good that Daisy was listing it all inside her own head.
“Let’s press on,” Daisy said, stepping back from the cliff and looking around before choosing the next path further up.
“Press on to where?” Scout asked.
Daisy blinked. “I thought that was obvious. To the city.”