Cold Falling White

by G. S. Prendergast

  No one moves until they disappear back into the darkness.

  “Be seated,” the voice intones again.

  I slip down, chastened by the image of the boy’s ruined face flaring behind my eyes. Will he heal like that, mangled and deformed? I think back to my days on the sand dunes, my bones on fire inside me, dreaming of death. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

  The multilingual voice continues, oblivious to my distress.

  “You are superior to the organic humans. Do not concern yourselves with their petty disputes. Keep to your task, your mission.”

  The voice falls silent. A few of the humans near me look around, astonished.

  “Your directives are simple. Follow them Directive one: Take care of your body.”

  The humans around me start to shuffle nervously, some of them holding on to one another.

  “Decapitation is terminal. Explosive disintegration is terminal. Defend yourselves against violence. Do not kill humans unless absolutely necessary. Conflict with them does not serve your directives. They are irrelevant to your directives.”

  Even over the noise of the loudspeaker, I can hear the man behind me breathing, fast and scared.

  “Directive two: Remain at your station. You are the sentinels of your assigned fissure. You are not needed at other locations unless instructed.”

  The word “fissure” jars me. Is this what I saw in my visions and still see when I close my eyes, the dark rift that seems to pull apart my molecules? I become unnaturally aware of my heart pounding, making the blood rush in my ears. These are the answers I’ve been seeking, at least some of them. But I don’t want it to be true. We’ve been turned into some kind of army? An army against who? Something coming from this rift? This fissure? Each answer contains more questions.

  “Directive three: Obey commands. Those who disobey will be discarded and replaced.”

  Conveniently, we’ve just been shown a demonstration of this. I doubt any of us will forget it. As the voice speaks again I note its accent. It’s artificial, of that I’m almost sure, but it also almost sounds like someone who has learned very precise speech at a very posh school. “Formal” is the only way I can put my assessment into words.

  “Directive four: Destroy threats. Use any means. Use bodily force. Weapons will be adapted as needed. You will be deployed as needed.”

  The announcement continues in French and some other languages for a few seconds after the English is done. There’s a pause during which I’m convinced the disembodied voice will ask “Any questions? ” and then all hell will break loose. But the silence just goes on and on.

  The man behind me whispers to no one in particular. “Are we the weapons?”

  He might be on to something. I feel like a weapon. I don’t tire. I don’t seem to need food. I heal quickly from wounds and injuries that would kill a normal human. And I feel intensely focused, right now on gathering intel and making a plan to find Tucker and August, but I wonder if that might change. If the Nahx have some purpose for us, if they give us instructions or directives, will those become my focus?

  “Are we the weapons?” the man behind me asks again, and I’m struck by how insightful this question is for someone who doesn’t even know his own name. He looks at me as I turn back to him.

  “We’re the sentinels,” I say. I’ve always liked that word, and I certainly prefer it to “Snowflakes” with what that implies. Snowflakes, for all their uniqueness, melt in the slightest heat.

  Sentinel. The word slices a path through my consciousness, like a signature carved with a blade. And the churning chaos of my thoughts seems to organize itself around it, trillions of neurons and impulses lining up like soldiers who now know their purpose. We are sentinels. But of what? For what? And, most important, against what? What is coming through that hellish rift, the one I see in my dreams?

  I have a sudden urge to scream and scream, rage and helplessness threatening to bubble out as formless noise, a wordless plea to the multicolored sky to do something, maybe just fall down on us, envelop us in a blanket of darkness and swaths of light. The full horror of what we are is dawning on me: an immortal slave army. It’s like something out of an ancient myth.

  Miraculously I manage to contain my urge to scream and repurpose it as the determination to move. Curling my feet under me, I stand. The other sentinels around me glance up, alarmed, but no one voices any objection. The only sounds remain the eerie night, the crunching of the ice under my feet as I shift my weight from one foot to the other, and the whispering sky.

  When the noise takes the shape of my name, as though something in that distant sky is calling out to me, I’m sure I’m losing my mind at last.

  “Rave! Rave!”

  Wait.

  That’s not coming from the sky. A girl’s voice. I spin around, searching the crowd, and see that several other people have stood up. One of them hurtles toward me, a blur of khaki, leaping over people where they sit.

  “Raven!”

  A group of sentinels stands as though to stop her and she disappears in a tangle of bodies. I step out of my formation, moving down the open aisle, dodging the hands of people who can think only of stopping me. At last the girl-shaped blur emerges into the aisle, a hundred feet ahead of me, with the bright light of the globe glowing behind her, turning her short hair into a halo.

  “Raven! Holy shit!” she shouts as she runs for me, stopping a few feet away as we stare at each other. She’s taller than me, dressed in survival gear, khakis and boots and even a utility belt still strapped around her, though no weapon that I can see. Her face is ruddy with cold, and one of her eyes has a pearlized gray iris, like the eyes of so many others around us. Her other eye is solid silver—not just the iris, the whole eyeball, like a ball bearing lodged in her face. The skin around it is streaked with fine gray lines like a spiderweb.

  “Mandy?” The last time I saw her she was dead on the floor of a drugstore, a Nahx dart in her eye. That was minutes before August saved my life and everything went in a direction no one could have anticipated. “Mandy.” I repeat her name, because maybe she’s a hallucination.

  She throws her arms around me.

  I let her hold me for a few seconds because I need a hug, even though from my perspective it’s been only about a week since August hugged me back at the base. The day I rescued him. Or he rescued me. And I died. Or not.

  I let Mandy hug me because it makes me feel less like I’m literally going to fall apart.

  “God, you’re the first person I’ve seen that I even recognize,” she says when she pulls back.

  “Same,” I say, though that’s not quite right. “But you do recognize me?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she says, putting her arm around me and leading me along the open aisle. “Most of these people don’t even know who they are. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I do either. And you do? You remember everything?”

  “I remember more than everything.” The moment I say it, I realize how true it is. Details have been pouring through my brain for the past few days that I can’t possibly remember as clearly as they appear. “I feel like if someone asked me to recite the entire Harry Potter series word for word, I could do it and not make a mistake.”

  “Me too,” Mandy says, nodding. “And that would be very entertaining, but we should talk.”

  As she leads me away from the crowd to the clear areas near the walls of the ship, I glance down into my pocket again, where Blue’s light is barely visible. Probably best if I keep them to myself for now, so I surreptitiously zip the pocket almost the whole way closed.

  Mandy and I go over the last few days in low tones as we walk. She’s not surprised to hear that Tucker is alive.

  “That’s the first thing I thought of when I woke up,” she says. “We buried him alive. God.”

  “Thankfully, he doesn’t remember it. Or anything.”

  Mandy stops. Turning me and taking me by the shoulders, she studies me with an intent look.

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nbsp; “I’m fine,” I say. I know what she’s thinking. “I mean, I’m freaked out, but I’m fine. I’m worried about Tucker.”

  “I’ve been looking for him too,” Mandy says. “And Felix and Lochie. Who else got darted after me?”

  “Sawyer. Britney, remember her?”

  “Not Liam?”

  “No. He died, the ordinary way. So did Emily.” I don’t offer any more details, and thankfully she doesn’t ask for them. How on earth can I explain August to her? “Kim’s dead too.”

  She blinks once and appears to process these calamities in an instant. “What about Topher and Xander?”

  “They were alive the last time I saw them. That was in spring. But I don’t know…”

  “It’s winter now,” Mandy says. “Around November, I think, and we’re in Northern Saskatchewan. Did you wake up on the dunes too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Athabasca Sand Dunes. Just south of Uranium City.”

  “How far is that from the base?” I ask. I’m still trying desperately to piece together how I got here.

  “About six hundred miles as the crow flies,” she says. “And you’d have to fly, as there’s no roads up here. Not in winter, anyway.”

  “They must have brought us in transports.”

  “I don’t remember that.” She shrugs. “Oddly, I do remember some other stuff. I remember lying in that store, with snow blowing through the open window. But…”

  “What?”

  “It’s so strange, like a weird dream. But it was almost like I was seeing without eyes. Like my skin could see.”

  “The same thing happened to me. I think our skin can see.”

  “And my eye,” she says, pointing to the silver orb where an ordinary gray eye used to be. “I haven’t managed to find a mirror yet. But there’s something weird about it, right?”

  I bite my lip. How do you tell someone they have a ball bearing for an eyeball? “It’s silver. Metallic.”

  “I thought so. I can see all kinds of things with it. Radio waves. Infrared. Ultraviolet. I feel like a bee.”

  We arrive at the edge of the wide arena, where the metal walls of the ship curve down, terminating in terraced levels, almost like bleachers, that connect the walls to the snowy surface of the lake. Mandy leads me up to the top level, where the wind has left a clear patch on the metal terrace.

  I lean back on the wall as I slide down next to her, and feel not only warmth but also vibration. Bizarrely, I recognize something about the vibration. The frequency? It’s like the vibrations I felt the time I examined August’s rifle. While this is the sort of thing that should be just a hunch, my brain insists that the vibrations are exactly the same, as though the weapons and even the darts are made of the same stuff as the wall. Maybe the Nahx armor is made of it too. I turn my head, pressing my nose into the wall, and sniff.

  “You smell it, huh?” Mandy says. “Smell your skin.”

  I pull back the sleeve of my jacket and sniff again. The scent is not strong but it’s there, the familiar smoky smell, almost like charcoal. Whatever this is, it’s part of the entire project—the ships, the Nahx, their armor, their weapons. Maybe even the toxin in the darts. And me now.

  “You know what else is weird?” Mandy asks.

  “What?”

  “I can pick out individual elements in the wall. When I first smelled it I thought it was just garbage words rolling around in my head. But I realize now it was like a chemical analysis, like my nasal cells know the words somehow.”

  “Yeah. Same. I could do it with the smell of the lake. I thought it was nonsense too. But it wasn’t.”

  “Carbon,” Mandy says.

  “And sulfur. Nitrogen.” A grade-ten chem lab comes back to haunt me, as clear as if the beakers and the periodic table were in front of me.

  I don’t say what I’m really thinking, which is that it smells familiar, from even before the invasion. My brain grabs that thought but can’t find anywhere to file it.

  I smell my skin again. “So we’re part of it now?” I ask. “Whatever this is?”

  Mandy shrugs. “Why do you think we can remember who we are and everyone else can’t?”

  “I have a theory.”

  She turns to face me, sitting cross-legged.

  “Okay, so when I was in the detention cell, after Tucker and I made a run for it, one of the Nahx said something about how their soldiers weren’t supposed to dart people in the head. Have you seen any talking Nahx, ones without armor? This one seemed to be a leader. The other ones called him ‘First.’ ”

  She nods. “The ones with the clouds of light operating them? I’ve seen a few around. Why do you think they didn’t want us nailed in the head?”

  “I think if the dart injures you enough to”—I make air quotes—“ ‘die,’ the toxin preserves your brain as is or something, rather than erasing it. Because I was almost dead when I got darted, so maybe that’s why it didn’t work on me either.”

  “That’s a good theory. I’m assuming it’s some kind of nanotech. Maybe it was programmed to… attach to neurotransmitters or something. If your brain is dead, it has nothing to attach to, so it can’t do its job?”

  I nod. “Or it assumes your brain is already erased so it doesn’t bother?”

  “How did you get darted when you were nearly dead?”

  “Oh, it was just”—a desperate attempt to save my life by a Nahx who was in love with me is what I don’t say—“a fight, you know. An ambush. Very messy. I took an arrow in the gut.” Sounds plausible enough for now, and thankfully Mandy doesn’t ask for more details, though I show her the silver scar.

  “So there have to be more of us,” she says instead. “More who can think and remember and know that we’re human.”

  “There are, I’m sure. Remember that guy who got smashed in the face for refusing to sit down? Did you see that?”

  “Ah yeah. Damn. He was one.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes as I try to take in the enormity of the crowd spreading out in front of us. I can’t count them exactly, but things click into place to process the size and density of figures across the vast arena and come up with a number. Over two million. How will I ever find Tucker among millions?

  “What do you think we should do?” Mandy asks. Her voice has changed. Mandy is practical, a survivor. She’s been like that since I’ve known her. But every once in a while her demeanor changes and her voice gets small, as though she’s showing a little bit of the lost child inside. It’s almost comforting to know that hasn’t changed.

  “Escape, obviously.”

  She scoffs, gazing out at the endless crowd. I let a few seconds tick past, because it feels like it might take time to convince her.

  “Do you sleep?” I finally ask. “Have you slept?”

  The change in her body language is subtle, but my hyperobservant brain has no trouble processing it.

  “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” I ask. “The thing in the sky? The…”

  Mandy squeezes her eyes shut while I search for the word.

  “Rift. The fissure. The thing we’re supposed to guard or defend or whatever. You’ve seen it, right?”

  She nods. “I saw it before I woke up. And again after a couple of days. I tried to sleep, but…”

  “So what is coming through it? Must be something seriously bad to do all this.” I wave around the ship, the crowd. “Listen to me.” I take her hand, feeling how weirdly warm it is compared to the frigid night air. “I don’t care how strong we’ve been made, or how invincible. Whatever is coming through has a beef with the Nahx or the firefly things. Not us.”

  She goes quiet as I wonder if all the Snowflakes see the dark rift when they sleep. Maybe it’s just ones like us who still have brains that work.

  “How are we going to get out of here?” Mandy asks. “I’ve walked around the whole perimeter. The only exits are well guarded by Nahx. And they go inside the ship. We’d have to get over these walls somehow.”
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  As I look up at the wall disappearing into the dark sky hundreds of feet above us, I analyze our situation and come up with our only possible chance.

  “I have an idea.” I whisper it, though I doubt any of the nearby Nahx are listening. They mostly look like they are asleep on their feet. “Don’t freak out, okay?”

  “What do you think could possibly make me freak out at this point?”

  I unzip my breast pocket, and Blue drifts up.

  XANDER

  Two days after my first failure with the Nahx girl, Mobbs announces after breakfast that everyone is to proceed to the south road entrance to the mill. It’s hellishly cold, and nearly an hour’s quick march to our destination, so we pile on layers and cram whatever snacks we can find into our pockets. As Mobbs leads us up there, I note that he’s the only one armed, an assault rifle slung over his back.

  “What’s this about?” I ask Logan.

  “If I knew, would I tell you?”

  Logan’s mad at me for some reason. Sometimes I feel like I’m back in seventh grade with this crowd. So much rivalry, it’s a wonder any of us are still alive.

  When we arrive at the gate, Garvin is waiting in the cab of one of the trucks. He calmly climbs out as we fall into a loose formation around him. Mobbs and another boy flank him, armed and scowling.

  “We had a visitor late last night,” Garvin announces.

  The boys shuffle nervously.

  “Another Nahx?” someone says.

  Garvin smirks. “Not another Nahx, no,” he says, pausing for effect. “It was two fine members of the local ICDF.” He pauses again. In my next blink I picture Captain Chaudhry and her sergeant standing outside the gates of the refugee camp, literally selling me to Garvin and his band of demented lost boys. I wonder what they got in return.