Cold Falling White

by G. S. Prendergast

  “What is that?”

  A low rhythmic thumping mixes in with the noise of the engines.

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  I lean out of the hatch again and look up. Above us a dark shape descends, silhouetted against the bright blue sky.

  The hatch suddenly fills with light and sounds as the electrical systems restart. Nova shoves the throttle forward and we rise, engines still coughing, water pouring out of the chassis and hull. We’re badly crippled, and whatever that is above us can see it now.

  When I lean out again, a bullet pings off my shoulder.

  “Is someone shooting at us now?”

  I don’t have a sign for “helicopter,” but my impression seems to get the picture across when I duck back inside.

  “Ah shit!”

  Nova manages to veer us up and away until we are level with the helicopter, now about a hundred yards off the open hatch.

  “Maybe if they see we’re humans—” Mandy steps into view before I can stop her. The force of gunfire sends her flying back into the hold.

  “Mandy!”

  She lies slumped against the far wall, her chest and neck streaked in silvery blood. “I’m okay,” she says, rolling over. “Fuck, that hurt.” Aurora drags her back into the cockpit.

  The helicopter swerves toward us. Nova struggles with the controls, trying to get the sickly engines to respond. We sway and shake, every system fighting gravity and the inundation of its critical parts.

  “Wait,” Xander says. “I know that helicopter!”

  But I push him back as more gunfire peppers the hull. I smack the emergency lock panel again but nothing happens—only a spray of sparks shooting in my face.

  “Nova!” Raven yells. “We can’t get the hatch closed! Can you turn us!?”

  I flick my eyes back to the helicopter, now slightly above us, because something is not right. There’s a flash of light and a crack and a dark blur hurtles toward us. I reach out without thinking, and when I look down, I’m holding it, my hand burning inside my glove.

  It’s a… I don’t know the word. It’s a human word.

  There’s another flash and I’m plunged into darkness and Sixth is above me, blurred from the blood in my eyes.

  You scared me, Eighth, she signs. And the pain. The pain is so…

  “Xander!”

  I blink back, fighting against the vision, pushing on it until it cracks and shatters like a window.

  One of the twins dives onto Xander, flattening them both against the floor. The other twin leaps at me, flying across the hold and wrenching the thing out of my hand. His feet hit the edge of the hatch, and then he’s sailing out into the sky and water spray, arcing up as though lifted by invisible wings until he slams into the helicopter gunner, tumbling him backward and out of sight.

  A second passes that seems to stretch out forever, and then the helicopter explodes, flames erupting, the air shaking and blurring as though it’s about to break open. All I can do is stand there, dumb and immovable, as the shock wave buffets us and we’re showered in fire. And metal.

  And blood.

  PART FIVE BLOOD

  “Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live.”

  —MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN

  RAVEN

  My brain spins at a million miles an hour, desperately trying to file away what I just saw, what I know to be true.

  Tucker.

  That was Tucker. I’m covered in particles of Tucker’s blood. The air is full of Tucker’s life, his spirit, his body, as though all that’s left of him is a wisp of acrid smoke, and screaming. The sound of his brother screaming.

  August kneels hunched over by the open hatch, clutching his head with both hands, hissing and choking. He falls forward to rest his elbows on the steel floor. I drop to my knees beside him.

  “Are you injured? August?! Are you injured?!”

  He shakes his head finally, curling away from me. Topher’s formless screaming seems to leave bright flashing lights in my vision that mix with the afterimage of the explosion. I saw everything. My supersonic brain processed every frame like a high-resolution film. Tucker’s body flew back and then… just seemed to fragment, as though he was being broken down to his component parts, his molecules and atoms. The disembodied voice on the Nahx mother ship comes back to me.

  Explosive disintegration is terminal…

  Tucker has been disintegrated. Disembodied.

  He’s dead. This time he’s really dead.

  “God, help me…” It comes out as a whimper. I don’t even believe in God, but I need help. I can’t process it. It’s too much. I’m in danger of being disembodied myself. I feel as though I might fly apart or dissolve like a cloud or be caught by a gust of wind and scattered.

  Like a dandelion.

  Only when I feel August’s fingers curl around my ankle do I come back, and my thoughts coalesce into something at least partially stable. I put my hand on his head, to steady myself, before turning to take stock of our condition.

  Topher is a screaming mess collapsed against the wall, writhing as Xander desperately tries to contain the immensity of his grief and rage. He presses their faces together as Topher claws at him and wails loud enough to wake every sleeping creature under the frozen earth. Mandy is slumped in the cockpit, her silver-bloodied hands clamped over a wound in her belly. But her eyes are bright and alert as she yells back at me.

  “I’m okay!”

  Aurora is bent over into the cockpit console, pulling wires apart, lights flashing around her, while Nova struggles with the throttle and controls. August is at my feet. I’m in one piece.

  At last the clamoring of the engines settles into a healthy roar of steady power and we rise up, away from the ice and water, away from the carnage of the disintegrated helicopter and its dead occupants. Nova steers the transport along the river, skirting around the mountain to avoid the need for more altitude. Even with those precautions, the damaged engines crap out at the edge of the desolate town where we started this mission.

  It’s not a crash landing, exactly, but when we finally skid to a stop after smashing through the trees for a hundred feet, we’re rattled but all still breathing. August leaps through the open hatch without turning back. I half expect him to run off into the forest and never be seen again, but instead he strides down toward the river, and following him, marching to the rhythm of Topher’s endless, wrenching sobs, we arrive at the hidden clearing where we left our original transport.

  Blue confronts us before we reach it, just as they were instructed, and their buzzing excitement is soon explained when we follow them into the hold and find Ash standing there. He looks regal and proud and a bit damp, but very much alive. He slings his rifles back and signs to us.

  What happened?

  I find even with my relief about his survival, I can’t get my mouth to work. Aurora ushers him on board, signing discreetly. Nova carries Mandy, whose strength is returning slowly. By the time Xander gets Topher aboard and sits him safely in the corner by the weapons racks, Ash has obviously been told about the loss of his two Offsides. He stands just outside the cockpit, staring at the floor, both of his hands on his head. His one visible eye is streaming with silver tears. Between his grief and Topher’s anguish, and Xander’s distress and Mandy’s pain, I don’t know what to do or how to help any of them.

  Surprisingly, it is August who seems able to console Ash. He faces him, resting his left hand on Ash’s right shoulder. After a moment, Ash mirrors his posture and they lean into each other until the tops of their heads are touching. It is somehow so much more intimate than a proper hug that even their breathing is synchronized. They stay like this as Nova lifts us off, and remain there, in silence and stillness, as we journey back to the Rogue settlement.

  For my part, I crouch in a dark corner of the hold, trying to let my brain suck away what I saw. But it does
n’t work. Tucker’s obliteration replays over and over until I feel like my sanity might just drip out of my ears. I press my fists into my eyes, which makes colored lights flash behind my eyelids, but all that accomplishes is to make Tucker’s death seem like part of a fireworks display. I didn’t realize until right this moment how much I was hanging on him still being alive. Somehow, his life made everything that has happened seem worth it; it made what’s going to happen seem bearable. Now that’s gone, and the only thing left is Topher’s endless, crushing grief, now amplified by a few glorious days of having his twin back only to lose him again, permanently this time.

  And it’s my fault. Everything is my fault again.

  When I open my eyes, Blue is floating in front of my face.

  “Oh.” My throat is so dry, I croak it out. “How was your day?”

  They just flicker colorfully and drift down to perch on the tip of my nose. I put out my hand and nudge them into my palm.

  When I started high school, and the “clever little black girl” image started to morph into a little girl who was too clever for her own good, I went to the first of many perplexed therapists. This one hardly said a word. She just sat there and waited until I got bored enough to open my mouth and spew out random, confused thoughts and feelings. And she listened. And though sometimes the silence seemed like judgment, I remember feeling relaxed after those sessions. Refreshed, almost cleansed. There were things said there that I would never say to Mom or Jack or any of my friends.

  “Sometimes I feel like there’s a monster inside me,” I whisper into my palm. Blue flickers softly but doesn’t move. “Or a curse,” I continue. “Everything around me gets twisted up. People end up dead.”

  It’s ridiculous to blame myself. I see that now. The only mistake I ever made was letting Tucker and his dreamy eyes get to me.

  “I wanted to protect them. But all I did was lead them into shit.”

  I’m actually relieved, I realize. The first time Tucker “died” he was still attached to me, still anchoring me to this peculiar, mistaken impression of myself. This time, the tether is broken. He’s gone. The menace of his misbehavior was never really part of me. He was cursed, not me.

  “Sometimes I wish I’d never been born.”

  I don’t know why I’m saying the opposite of what I’m thinking. It’s as though the two sides of my brain are ignoring each other. Or my new brain is letting my old brain have a few last illogical words before shutting up forever.

  “You’re a good listener, Blue.”

  They flicker again, vibrating gently against my skin, as though recognizing that I’ve finally spoken some truth.

  “This thing that has happened to my mind,” I whisper. “It’s just, like… an amplification of what was already there, right? I never could think less than three thoughts at once. It used to drive me up the wall. Now it’s like thinking a hundred thoughts at once, but they’re lined up like soldiers. Is that by design?”

  Blue bobs up and down once. Yes.

  “Do you think I’ll ever get the answers to what is really happening here?”

  Their light dims for a second until they almost disappear before flaring back. Then they bob up and down again.

  Yes. Yes.

  “Oh. Well, good, I guess.”

  The transport rumbles and dips, and through the open hatch I can see that we are descending into the mountains. The sky has turned a soft, moody lavender, which gives the sleeping trees a purple tinge and makes the deep snow look like cake frosting. As we bank down to the landing plateau, about a dozen Rogues emerge from the surrounding cliffs, somewhat spoiling the impressionistic effect.

  August and Ash join them as soon as we land, jumping out the hatch without lowering the ramp. Half the group disappears back into the trees before I’ve even stood up.

  We’ll take the human boys to the cabin, Aurora says.

  That seems wisest. It’s bitterly cold, and Topher and Xander are both showing signs of physical exhaustion on top of their fragile emotional state. They need rest and warmth. Blue and I follow with Mandy, who has recovered enough to walk. She shows me the healing bullet holes in her abdomen and shoulder.

  “Does it still hurt?” I ask. I have some experience with the healing process, after all.

  “Like Christ,” Mandy says. “Burning, cramping pain. Does that go away?”

  “Eventually, yes.”

  Xander puts Topher to bed, bundling him with blankets as Aurora builds a fire in the stove. Topher still hasn’t spoken. He probably won’t sleep, and as I watch from the doorway while Xander goes in search of food, he turns his back to me. In Topher’s mind, the worst thing I ever did was separate him from his twin, first by taking up space as Tucker’s girlfriend, then by causing his “death.” This time there will be no forgiveness. It’s not fair. It’s not logical.

  Once I thought I might die in front of him to get to the bottom of his emotional repertoire, but I guess that was wrong. It was Tucker who had to die. And now it’s clear that we’ve hit rock bottom. It’s over.

  When Mandy limps over to join my vigil, I just shake my head at her and walk away, Blue drifting behind me.

  “I still can’t get used to that,” Xander says when I find him in the kitchen, pointing to Blue. He empties canned soup into a pot while I hop up to sit on the table.

  “It’s kind of rude to talk about someone as ‘that.’ ”

  Xander pauses over the soup, and I can tell from looking at him that he has a million possible things to say. I decide to rescue him.

  “I suppose you won’t have to get used to it. Are you and Topher going to head out soon?”

  “Tomorrow, if we can. Aurora doesn’t think the Nahx will bother putting the web back up, but I don’t want to take the risk. And she says she saw trucks on the roads heading through the pass when we flew over it.”

  “Heading east? Rescue trucks?”

  He shrugs. “You’re not going to come with us, are you?”

  Blue does a large slow circle in the air, as if to say Wow, he’s pretty clueless.

  “No. Of course not. Mandy and I are going back north.”

  “To wherever the thing is going to happen?”

  I nod. Xander lights a can of Sterno and props the pot of soup above it on a metal stand. These refuge cabins are so well provisioned, it makes me laugh. It’s so Canadian. Like a country run by Boy Scouts.

  “You still don’t know what the thing is?”

  “Some kind of battle,” I say. “Sky seemed to know about it, but no details.”

  “August never told you about it?”

  “I don’t think he knew.”

  Satisfied that the soup is simmering, he turns back to me. The kitchen is lit only by faint blue twilight seeping in through the window and a row of candles set up on the sill. But even in the dim light I can see that Xander is barely pushing through a state of mental, if not physical, shock. He’s pale, his eyes are twitching back and forth, and his hand, as he sets down the spoon, shakes enough to rattle it against the counter.

  “I never thought I’d see him again,” he says.

  “Tucker?”

  “Topher.” He shakes his head, laughing a little. “I knew I wouldn’t see Tucker again. He was dead. Buried. You don’t see dead and buried people again.”

  “No. Do you know how I ended up handcuffed to him on the Athabasca Dunes?”

  “Last time I saw you… your body, I mean, or whatever. August left you in a hotel room in Jasper. That’s where…” He waves his hands at my jacket and dress.

  “He undressed me and put me in this?”

  “Mmm.”

  “And you were there for that? Watching him undress me?”

  “I averted my eyes.”

  I let that sit there for a few seconds.

  “Your clothes stank of death, Rave. I kept suggesting to August that we bury you, but he wouldn’t. And it got to the point that I thought he’d kill me if I suggested it again, so I just followed wh
at… he wanted to do.”

  “Which was leave me in a hotel?”

  “I thought he meant to come back for you. Didn’t he?”

  I shrug. “The parts between dying and waking up on the dunes are a bit murky.”

  “You haven’t talked to him about it? August?”

  It’s an obvious question, and one that doesn’t surprise me. I know he’s been avoiding me. And I’m pretty sure the reason was blown to smithereens a few hours ago. The guilt about that is difficult to catch and sort away. It keeps flaring up, like the unruly embers of a forest fire.

  When I look back at Xander, he’s stirring the soup and crying. Not like heaving sobs or anything—in fact, he’s quieter than he usually is, and I don’t know if it’s because he doesn’t want me to see or if he’s too exhausted for anything more or if this is just how it is. Sometimes quiet crying hurts the most, because it’s like everything is packed into a few little tears and it feels like you’re crying hydrochloric acid. I could go and put my arm around him, but something tells me not to. It’s not a sense of threat, exactly; it’s more like I can read Xander’s aversion to me, and I don’t want to cause him any more stress than I already have.

  And that’s when I realize that Xander is done with me too. I can tell just by looking at him that he’s popping with anxiety, PTSD, lack of sleep, lack of sunlight, lack of food, and all the stuff he started out with. Xander got sent to the principal’s office nearly as much as I did. He confessed to me once that he was failing everything but gym.

  He’s run out of bandwidth. How do you process that all your friends are either dead or have been turned into alien hybrid soldiers? At least he has Topher. If they can just keep each other from falling apart, maybe they’ll be okay.

  Xander turns back to me with a large mug of soup in each hand.

  “I should have told you this, but I guess I didn’t know how to say it.” He looks at me for a moment before setting his cups down and taking my hands. “Your parents are alive, Rave. They’re on Quadra Island.”