It’s only August. He has his armor on but not his helmet, and he raises his hands, palms out, placating me.
I slam my hand over my mouth to stifle the moan I can’t contain as the terror and pain of the dream wear off. I burn and sting like I’ve been flayed from the inside out, and feel around my body to make sure all my limbs are still there. I even count my fingers. I wriggle my toes.
Sorry. Sorry, August says. You were… screaming. His eyes are wide, and what little color he had has drained out of his face.
It wasn’t real. I know that. But whatever Blue’s people put into my brain, whatever diabolic lines of code can make me feel like that, could surely kill me. Why else would they do it? They want me to return to my post. To my fissure.
August moves forward, standing as he tentatively reaches for me, and I go limp, letting him pick me up again. I cling to him, wrapping my arms and legs around his body and pressing my face into his neck.
“I have to go, August,” I whisper, my lips against his armor, which is now throbbing between ice-cold and burning hot.
He waits for a few seconds before shaking his head. I can feel him making the sign for please on my back.
No. Please.
“I have to. Whatever the Fireflies did to me, I’m worried it will kill me if I don’t go back. It’s getting worse.”
August sets me down on the bed, kneeling in front of me. I notice that his helmet is on the floor a few feet away; the tentacle-like breathing tubes twitch and writhe around languidly, as though searching for him. I look away, pretending I didn’t notice.
I will come with you, August says.
“No, you can’t.”
He growls harshly, baring his teeth. Yes! he signs sharply. I will protect you.
I take his face in my hands as his eyes fill with silvery tears.
“You can’t come, August. The elevation is too low. It will kill you.”
No. I’m strong.
“Not like this, you’re not. I saw hundreds of dead Nahx there. The Fireflies don’t care. You’re dispensable to them.”
Don’t worry about me.
“I am worried about you!”
He hangs his head and lets himself fall forward until he’s resting on my knees.
“I made a friend, up north where this battle is going to happen. He was a Nahx, a Tenth. He helped me a lot, helped me escape. But he spent too long at low altitudes, and even though we brought him back up to the mountains, he died.”
August turns his head to the side to rest his cheek on the satin of my dress. I see that his face is streaked with gray tears. He signs with one hand.
You can’t stop me.
August has hurt my feelings before, unintentionally sometimes or even intentionally. I’ve hurt him too. We’re just two angry people in a desperate and terrifying situation. Someone is bound to get hurt. But somehow his willfulness on this hurts more than anything else has, especially after what we just shared. My brain clicks into gear again, analyzing, cataloguing, and I realize what the pain really is. It’s just my own pride.
I don’t own him. I don’t control him. He has a whole other life outside mine. And he’s right. I can’t stop him. But the thought of losing him the way I did Tenth is like feeling Liam’s arrow go through my spine again. I lift a corner of the green dress to crush against my mouth. It doesn’t work, and before I can stop it, I’m sobbing uncontrollably, streams of silver tears staining the green satin.
August’s head shoots up and he holds me, making the sign for sorry on my back with gentle chopping touches. He edges away so he can look into my face and sign properly.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
But that doesn’t help. It just makes me cry harder. Because if I can convince him to stay behind, what would he stay for? My ruined body coming back in a coffin? I wallow in it for a few more seconds before I realize the only way to break down this horror that is consuming me is to get it out, to say things I’ve been trying to forget.
“Sky… Sky…” I have to gather myself before I can go on. “Sky told me you must have done it on purpose!”
Then I’m sobbing again, as August tries to hold me. I push him away.
“When we were living in the penthouse, the curtains were never closed in that room! I didn’t even notice they were there!”
I don’t understand.
“Yes you do! Don’t lie to me! You went in there and closed the door and the curtains so there wouldn’t be any sun. So even your solar backup wouldn’t keep your armor charged. Sky explained all of it to me!” I’m howling now, like a lost child.
Explain please, Dandelion. I don’t understand.
“You were trying to kill yourself! You promised you wouldn’t! You promised!”
It was so long ago, it’s like another universe, but I remember it in precise detail. The two of us standing at the top of the path down to the base in the mountains. And me asking him to promise he wouldn’t harm himself because I couldn’t bring myself to say the word “suicide.” And I couldn’t bear to think of a world without him in it, even if I never saw him again.
And his reply, a sign I’d learned only the day before.
Promise.
He sits back on his heels, his hands curled into fists and pressed over his mouth, his eyes haunted and streaming with tears. And he tries to sign to me, but he’s now shaking so badly, his words are mangled, and through the blur of my own tears I can barely translate them into any kind of sense.
I was lost. I was broken. I wanted to rest. Repeat rest. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
We stare at each other for a few long seconds that feel like a timer ticking away our last moments together. There’s a low tap on the door. And Mandy’s voice.
“Raven?”
Standing, I leave August by the bed and open the door.
Mandy doesn’t bother with pleasantries.
“Did you feel it? It knocked me clean off my feet.”
“I felt it,” I say dully.
Behind her Ash trails through the snow from the transport parked at the edge of the plateau.
“We need to go,” Mandy says.
Behind us, August hisses, and I turn just in time to see him stand up. He takes one step toward me before his eyes suddenly flicker and he falls forward.
“August!” I rush to him, turning him over just as Ash arrives. “Help me!”
If sign language can have a bored tone, Ash manages it. He left his armor off too long, he says. Bending to retrieve August’s helmet, he kneels and straddles his chest, sliding the helmet into place.
The tubes flail around for a second before finding August’s face, his nose and mouth, and starting to slither in. Smaller, very fine tubes emerge from the goo inside the helmet to wriggle into his ears and the metallic conduits in his throat. Finally the tubes constrict and seem to suck the two pieces of the helmet together. It snaps shut with a click so loud, I jump.
August’s armor ripples, and after a few seconds the defensive blades in his face mask flick out before disappearing again. Then his whole body jerks, making the armor plates clatter against the stones. Finally, with a sharp, tortured gasp, August abruptly sits up, sending Ash sprawling. Mandy and I have to practically jump out of the way.
Ash huffs as he gets up. Slinging his rifle behind his back, he backs out of the hut, shaking his head.
August moves slowly, raising his hands to hold his head, and I think I must emit some kind of toxic-fury force field, because Mandy practically tiptoes out of the hut and closes the door behind her.
“August,” I say through clenched teeth. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Sorry.
“I want you to stop apologizing and start being a bit more careful.”
He holds his head, armored fingers clicking against the metal of his helmet as he awkwardly bends his legs around and struggles to his knees. I stand and am only a little taller than him kneeling. Putting my hand on his shoulder, I soften, like I always do, because sure, Aug
ust is a mess, but he’s my mess. That much is clear. After a few seconds he speaks.
I’m a soldier, he says. I can fight.
“You can’t. Not this time. Not this battle.”
Outside the hut, the distinctive rumble of the transport echoes across the plateau.
“I have to go,” I say
No.
“Yes. You can’t come with me. You can’t follow me. Or come looking for me. No matter what.”
He jerks away from my hand and stands, looming over me.
“You have to promise, August. I mean it.”
He growls a low crackling growl, and now I feel like we’re back where we started. Maybe this can never be resolved. I turn, suppressing an urge to punch him in his stubborn head. That clearly won’t help anything.
Outside the hut, Mandy and Ash wait in the bright glare, while another Rogue clanks up the ramp into the transport. Apparently she’s going to be our pilot. I stomp through the snow and don’t acknowledge that August is following me, silent and sulky.
“Ash,” I say, pointedly ignoring August, who is sighing petulantly behind me. “Under no circumstances is August to come after me. Seriously. I would rather you kill him.”
Through the broken gap in his mask I see Ash’s eyebrow creep up, but as he reaches to put his hand on August’s shoulder, August hisses and shoves him away. Ash calmly grabs August by the neck and kicks his feet out from under him. They both go cloomph as they fall in the deep snow.
“I’m going now, August,” I say, a little louder than I need to.
He twists away from Ash and lunges at me, hissing. Ash yanks him back and holds him down, mashed into his own body print, looking miserable.
Mandy tugs my arm toward the transport as the engines whine up to full power. I’m lost as to what to do about August. This isn’t how I pictured our farewell scene. This isn’t how I thought he would be acting toward me now of all times, after everything we shared. I’m inches away from blaming myself for his bad behavior, which is exactly where I started and everything I’ve been trying to unlearn.
My eyes burn, and not just from the cold wind. I turn away from him.
“Let’s go.” I push past Mandy and climb up the ramp in three long strides.
Mandy follows me, and mercifully, our pilot, who I now recognize as the one Xander called Ember, activates the hatch door. It slides closed as the transport ascends. Blue appears, drifting out of the cockpit.
“Men can be a lot sometimes,” Mandy says as the interior lights reactivate.
I don’t answer. I’m clenching my teeth so hard, my whole head aches.
Ember sets the altitude thruster to auto and steps back into the hold, entering some numbers into a panel by the cockpit door.
“What happened between you and August? Did you have some kind of fight?” Mandy asks.
“No,” I snap. “It was nothing.”
Ember finishes whatever it is she’s doing and turns to us, flicking her head back.
Sometimes when you put the armor back on it makes you a little up and down, she says.
“Up and down?” Mandy says. “What does that mean?”
For a short time, Ember signs, the armor makes you crazy. While you’re putting it on. After you put it on.
“That’s not really an excuse for—”
“Oh, shush,” I say. I’m not in the mood. Moving into the cockpit, I scan the mountainside, now a hundred feet below us, through the window. August is running across the plateau, waving. A sniff behind me makes me turn. Ember flicks her head back in what I’m going to assume is the Nahx equivalent of a smirk.
“Can we go back down?” I ignore Mandy, who is standing behind Ember with her arms crossed. “Just for a minute.”
Ember hisses softly, but she tugs the hovering throttle down and we start to descend. By the time we reach the plateau, August is standing on the edge of a steep cliff above a ravine, with Ash running to catch up with him. Ember hovers the transport over the ravine. She turns us to the side and I jump back into the hold to activate the hatch. The thrusters and the mountain wind blow snow everywhere, but August stands firm on the cliff edge, with both of his hands in the air.
I hang from a handhold and look at him, trying not to smile.
I’m sorry, Dandelion, he says, making his signs big, as though he’s shouting.
It’s much too noisy for him to hear me, so I sign back, one-handed.
Stop saying sorry.
No, he says.
I give up trying to keep a stern expression. That makes me laugh.
I will wait for you, he says. Right here.
In the small house I hope Not out in the snow.
Yes. I will wait. You will come back?
Promise, I say. The wind buffets the transport and Ember adjusts the thrusters again, nudging us upward.
Promise? August says as we rise.
“I promise!” I shout and sign at the same time.
Repeat me, he says. I promise! I PROMISE I’LL WAIT! PROMISE!
A gust of blowing snow obscures him momentarily, and when he reappears Ash is standing behind him with his hand on his shoulder.
PROMISE, August says again, then he waves. Then he puts both hands on his head and Ember turns the transport away and shoots us up into the clouds before I have time to answer.
PART SIX TIME
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
—MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN
RAVEN
Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Raven—”
“We’re really not people who talk about things anymore. Look at me. Look at yourself. We’ve changed.”
Anyone else would sulk, but Mandy laughs at me, which only makes me less in the mood to talk.
Even for a Nahx, Ember is aloof. She has barely made two signs in our direction since we left the mountains. Suits me. Something about slotting the answers I got from August into the information I’ve already gathered has started a frenzy of processing in my thoughts, and I’m just trying to keep up. If I can get a complete picture of what’s going on here, I can make a decision about my role in it one way or another.
Ember flies us above the clouds for most of the way, but while we’re still heading east, before we turn north to the unpopulated areas, I ask her to dip down so I can see some of the towns and highways.
Most of them look deserted. One highway is lined with cars, abandoned as though they just parked there and let the snow drift around them.
“Can we land here?” I ask. “Just for a few minutes? I want to look around.”
Ember nods once and sets us down in the center strip of the divided highway. Both sides of the highway are full of stationary cars facing west. They’re empty, most with at least one door hanging open.
“Darted,” Mandy says grimly. “I guess they got up and walked away.”
“Or were taken away.”
We come upon a truck. The cab is empty, the driver’s-side door hanging open, but the back is laden with supplies—canned food, a plastic tub full of medicine, and fuel cannisters. Full ones.
“Let’s take these.”
Mandy runs her fingers through her short hair and sighs, but she doesn’t argue. Ember begrudgingly helps us as we spend twenty minutes pilfering fuel and supplies from the truck and several of the cars.
“And our plans for this are…?” Mandy asks as Ember lifts us off again.
“North of the dunes, on the other side of the lake. There are survivors there.”
“Human survivors?” She makes a face. “I don’t like their chances with whatever is coming.”
“It’s our job to protect them, isn’t it?”
Mandy looks down at her hands, letting the light play on her metallic skin.
“Is that why they did this to us? So we can protect other humans? Why would they care?”
“I don’t know. But I want some answers before I join in any battle.”
&
nbsp; Mandy just scoffs. I suppose she knows we aren’t likely to get answers. And that we won’t have any choice about fighting.
“Do you think we’ll be in trouble for disabling their drone web?” Mandy asks.
That actually makes me laugh, though I’m not in a laughing mood. “Do you think we should tell them?”
That makes Mandy laugh, and soon the two of us are falling back on the floor of the transport among the fuel canisters and boxes of food, shaking with laughter until silver tears are streaming down our faces.
It drowns out the incessant calculations in my head for a moment and almost makes me feel human. Eventually reality creeps in, but we stay there, staring up at the metal ceiling of the hold. I wonder if Mandy feels what I feel—that weird shimmering sense of my cells moving around, adjusting with every mile we travel, as though they know what’s coming and are preparing.
Ember takes the transport into a shallow dive when we reach the dunes. Mandy and I watch through the cockpit window as Ember skims over the crowd of hundreds, thousands of Snowflakes. Some of them turn up to look at us, but most of them barely seem to notice. Even at this distance, I can see the dull expressions on their faces. Maybe their cells are preparing too, but they just don’t care.
“There’s a human camp on the other side of the lake,” I tell Ember. “Can you land near there? Not too near, though.”
Ember huffs but does what I ask, turning the transport north over the frozen water. A few minutes later we set down on a scraggly peninsula. I scan the landscape, recognizing the spot where I encountered the human girl about a quarter mile to our west. We unload the boxes and canisters as quickly as we can, and just as Ember lays out the last of the supplies on the icy ground, I spot the girl, flanked by two men, about a hundred yards away in the trees. They have their rifles raised.
“Fuel!” I shout. “There’s food and medicine too!”
I don’t know what kind of reply I expect, but what I get is glares. Not very long ago I might not have cared—I’ve always been a bit of a misanthrope and made a point of not bothering with what people thought of me—but now that I’ve been pushed out of the human race, I crave their approval. Why would they approve of me, though? After all the Nahx have done, everything associated with them is tainted. The fading, irritated human girl, who is nothing more than a shallow impression inside me, like a footprint on a thin layer of snow, wants to argue. But instead I turn and follow Mandy and Ember back onto the transport. As we coast away, a hundred feet above the lake, I look down from the open hatch. The girl and her friends are running for our pile of supplies.
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