by Everly Frost
“Get down.” His voice was a rasp, a bare whisper.
With a shock, I realized that he was going to take as many bullets as he had to until I was out of range. His words from the night before rang in my ears. Make amends. I knew it from the look on his face and the way he held me so tightly, right where I wouldn’t get hurt.
I dropped to the floor and squashed myself against the carpet and he followed me down. At the last minute, he punched off the floor as if he was about to bash out a round of push-ups. Something bronze slipped out of his mouth.
“No.” I put my hand over my mouth as I realized that the first bullet had lodged in the back of his head. “No, no, no. Are you okay?”
His face contorted in concentration.
“There are two more,” I said, wanting to help, but not knowing how. He shoved my hand away, balancing on one arm as if it was the easiest thing in the world. I guessed, compared to spitting out a bullet, it was.
“I … can count.” He ground out the words as his whole body shuddered, his eyes squeezed shut. Something dropped from his shoulder. Another bullet. He flopped over and reached into the wound in his stomach, snatching out the final bullet before his skin closed. Dropping it onto the carpet, he ran his hand over his face. “I almost healed over it.”
My stomach turned. I tried to get closer to him, but he shook his head at me. “Just give me a moment. I’ll be okay, and then we have to get out of here.”
The blind hung in tatters at the window. There was no cover now, nothing to conceal us other than the bed. I couldn’t believe a drone hadn’t soared inside the room already. I looked from the exposed opening to Michael. He was only wearing blue boxer shorts and my face went red. I glanced away, but he raised his eyebrows.
I rushed to speak before he could say anything. “They’re using bullets. Not tranquilizers. And where are the drones?”
“Yeah, I noticed.” He grimaced. “It’s not Hazards.”
My heart pounded. “It’s Bashers, isn’t it?” They were out there.
As I spoke, another bullet bashed out the remaining glass from the window and knocked off part of the wooden surround. He grabbed my hand, urging me forward, and the shock from his touch stung all the way up my arm, so sharp my eyes watered. I crawled as fast as I could toward the door with Michael close behind me.
“I’ll get the door,” he said. “Stay down and cover your head.”
I wasn’t sure how he was going to get the chair out from under the door handle without eating more bullets. When he reached it, he crouched, poised against the wall. His hand shot out. He snatched the chair, angling it out from under the handle and flung it—one-handed—up into the air. The chair fragmented as a round of bullets cut through it. I face-planted on the carpet, throwing my arms over my head as Michael shot up into the path of gunfire, curled his hand around the doorknob and threw it open. He ducked, just as another bullet tasted the bedroom wall.
“C’mon, Ava. We have to move.”
But I remembered the medical kit on the dressing table. I’d happily leave the methylated spirits behind—even the bottles of nectar—but I needed that kit, the bandages and needles and thread. It may as well have been on the other side of the world right then.
Michael followed my line of sight and shook his head. “No, Ava. Don’t.”
I shimmied across the floor as he scooted out and tried to grab me to stop me from committing suicide. I readied myself, took a deep breath, and then launched myself toward the blue kit, into the path of gunfire.
Michael shouted and I caught his swift movement. As my hand closed around the kit, he leaped up and out toward the bed with something in his arms. In the next instant, he propelled himself off the bed end, flinging out the butterfly quilt. The giant pink creature spread out like a flag of war, blocking out everything around me. Bullets whipped through it and cotton filling floated like snow. One bullet hit my shoulder, but I didn’t have time to think. I scooped up the kit and plummeted. The blanket engulfed me and Michael with it, the two of us crashing to the floor, wrapped and twisted.
I heard a voice at my ear. “You’d better not be dead.”
“I’m okay. My shoulder hurts, but I think it only grazed me.” I checked and confirmed. “It nicked me.”
His arms trapped me so I couldn’t move. “Are you going to do anything else insane? Tell me now, all right?”
I shook my head, not sure if he could see it. I guessed he did because, in the next moment, we rolled out onto the floor. Clutching the kit to my chest, I shuffled forward, but before I dumped it into my duffel bag, I snapped open the lid and removed the two little vials of black liquid nestled inside, shoving them across the floor. With all the side effects, they were no use to me. Then I dragged my bag around the corner where he propelled me.
“Listen, we have to head downstairs to my car. And then we’re getting out of here.”
I tried to focus on his eyes and not the shooting tingle where he gripped my arm. “They’re waiting for us out there. There’s no way we can get past them—”
“Getting in the car and getting out of here is the only plan we’ve got.”
I tried to rid my mind of the image of him spitting out a bullet. There was still blood on his chin. I wanted to wipe it away. I reached out—almost touched him—but he grabbed me and pulled me after him.
Turning right past Mom’s study, we headed through the hall to the internal garage door.
He said, “Your parents took the remote control, so I’m going to start the car, press the button and jump in. Okay.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll press the button. You start the engine.”
“No way, Ava. They’ll have guns trained on the door.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I raced to the passenger side and threw my bag behind the seat. Michael opened the driver side, turned the key in the ignition, and raced to the back of the garage.
His chest rose in a deep breath. Then he thumped the button with his fist and ran back to the car. I expected to hear the chatter of gunfire. The door was already a third of the way up when he hurtled in, slammed the door, and revved the engine.
I waited with my heart pounding in my throat as the metal door rose. I stared out the back of the window. Michael revved the engine, inching backward without getting too close, waiting and looking, arm tensing on the gear shift, ready to gun it out of there as soon as the gap widened.
The door rolled up high enough, and I gasped.
A single figure stood waiting, covered tightly from head to foot in motley brown and beige Basher cloth so I couldn’t see her face, but her figure marked her clearly a woman. She stood very still, all alone, but she held what looked like a bomb launcher.
Michael saw it too. “What the—” He froze for a split second.
I wondered how many pieces I’d explode into. I wondered how Michael’s body would heal itself. Whether he would fragment and then pull himself back together like the people who were hit by the nuclear bomb. I wondered how that would work. By his expression, he didn’t exactly know himself.
We both knew I’d be dust afterward.
His jaw clenched and the car roared backward, straight toward the figure.
“You’re going to hit her!” I shouldn’t have cared whether we ran her down or not. She was a Basher, which meant she was a fast healer. Being pummeled by a car wouldn’t keep her down for long.
“It’s too late.” Michael’s face turned white. He heard it too. The whoosh.
As the car escaped the garage, flying down the drive, the bomb zipped toward us. Michael’s foot came off the accelerator. He let go of the wheel. In the second before the bomb hit, he threw his body across the gap between us, shoving me hard up against the passenger door, and at the same time reaching for the handle.
I dropped as the door gave way.
“Michael!” I screamed for him as I crashed toward the concrete driveway. Trying to shield my head, I threw my arms up as I thwacked the ground.<
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Michael leaned halfway out of the car, trying to get out, tugging at something.
The missile hit.
Flames burgeoned. Windows cracked open. Metal tore apart. Somehow, I was clear of the explosion, but heat scorched my face, my arms, my legs, more heat than I could bear, and all my thoughts ripped apart. Michael was so close, yet so far. I’d made it out of the car, but I wasn’t far enough away to miss his expression.
A second explosion burst across us. Michael’s face floated in flames for a split second. He found me, saw that I was clear, that I was safe.
Then, with a faint smile, he shattered.
Terminal
Chapter Thirteen
A SECTION OF METAL frame zipped past my curled up body, hurtling beyond my vision. I sought the place where Michael had been, the center of the explosion close by, a giant burning hole that glowed in the middle of the white-hot carcass of his car. I wanted to see movement, to see him stand up as though nothing had happened. Part of me believed he would.
My whole body hurt from the fall. I was still lying half on the concrete driveway, not present enough to roll away from the flames. Even when I thought about moving, I couldn’t make my arms and legs work, kind of like they didn’t belong to me anymore. As if they’d become somebody else’s.
As if they weren’t there.
The sickening suspicion made the world turn. My eyes ran toward my arms, reassuring myself. My hands, too, and each of my fingers. Maybe, if I concentrated really hard, I could feel them, even if they were full of tremors. I watched them twitch, forcing myself to at least try to control the shaking, although I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I didn’t have time to check my legs before pounding vibrations broke my concentration, drawing my eyes up and beyond to the figure coming toward me—not Michael, but our attacker. I stared up the barrel of a gun.
She nudged me onto my back with the tip of her boot. She spoke, but it was a buzz in my ringing ears and all I did was frown up at her, feeling like she was too far away to hurt me. She said something else through the warbled voice modulator and the gun moved closer to my face. The weapon shook.
“…misery.”
I didn’t understand, could barely hear her, but I figured it didn’t matter what she was saying. She was going to kill me—that much was clear.
Something moved at the edge of my vision—another person. I froze, hoping with all my heart that it was Michael, but it was another disguised figure. He ran into my field of vision, grabbing the girl with the gun and snatching it away from her. His words rasped through the buzz in my head.
“You idiot! What are you doing? They need her alive!” It was a guy. I could tell that much from the set of his shoulders, even though his voice may as well have been the beat of a moth’s wings.
The girl yanked away from him. The way her mouth moved told me she was shouting, but her words were a mere whisper to me, barely recognizable through the metal mouthpiece. “She has to die! That’s the only way any of this will stop. Don’t you see? It’s going to be war.”
“It already is!” He grabbed her shoulders and she winced in response. “You can’t back out now. You know what they do to deserters. Tiny, dirty cells for you and your family to rot in.”
She screamed. “Josh died because of her!”
“No.” He took her shoulders. “Josh died because of us!”
The girl’s shoulders slumped over, her legs looked like they’d buckle.
The boy said, “Josh would hate us for this.”
She clutched her chest as if she thought her heart was going to crack. Her voice must have lowered because I couldn’t hear her anymore. “…don’t want this.” Then her face darkened and she grabbed the gun and said, “She’s not going to make it through the next five minutes. Look at her legs!” She ran a hand over her eyes, the gun passed across her forehead, leaving a shadow trailing her face.
“What did you think was going to happen? I never should’ve let you out of my sight.”
She stared back at him, then at the sky, biting her lip. She shrugged back at the shell of the car. “We can tell them it was because of Michael. He recognized me and there wasn’t any other way to keep him down. You know what they say about him. He should have joined us when he had the chance. His kind are everything we’re fighting for—”
“Shut up! She can hear you.”
“No, she can’t. She’s barely alive.”
They both stared at me—hard—and I did my best to look glazed and not focus on either of them. She’d said something about Michael recognizing her, but it wouldn’t matter because Michael was gone. No. Dead. I blinked against the burn behind my eyes. The realization that I didn’t want him to be dead shook me.
“Well, what are we going to do?”
He shoved his face up into hers. “I don’t know! You’re the one who blew off her legs. You think of something.”
Her tense figure blurred. All I heard was blew off her legs. I tried not to react, not to show that I’d heard them when all I wanted to do was scream my lungs out. Air built in my chest, waiting to be released. They had to be lying. It had to be a sick joke. Surely I could feel my toes, perfect and functional like they should be.
Worry raced across the girl’s face and that’s when she screamed. It was a high-pitched, winded sound like air being forced out of a balloon.
The guy tried to grab her, but not in time to save her from the two arms that crushed her chest. In the next moment, she soared high up into the air, only to crash down onto someone’s bent knee.
She dropped to the grass, floppy like a rag doll. Standing behind her, Michael glowed red from the fire. He reminded me of a piece of coal—burned badly, but somehow shiny and new.
I was too dead to care that he was hardly wearing a stitch.
The guy stood staring, tense shoulders squared, knees bent. He looked ready to tackle Michael at any moment.
Michael motioned to the lump on the grass. “You’d better help her. She’s going to need a serious recovery dome, real fast.”
The guy poised, fixated on Michael. His fists got tighter and Michael’s stance became menacing in response.
Michael shook his head slightly. “Don’t try it. Not if you know what I can do.”
I couldn’t see the guy’s face anymore, but his shoulders sagged and he seemed to make a decision. He hauled the girl up by her armpits and dragged her down the driveway, across the road, and that’s when they disappeared from view.
Michael’s torso and then his face came into view as he dropped into a kneeling position beside me. He ran a hand over his eyes. “Oh no, Ava. Your legs.”
I tried to speak, but Michael hushed me. He said, “I’m sorry I disappeared for a minute there. But I had to go back … for these.” He opened his palms to reveal the two black vials I’d left behind. “I know you’re afraid of what could happen, but I don’t know what else to do.”
He worked quickly, filling a syringe and ramming it into my thigh.
“Listen to me. Don’t think about your legs. You’re going to be okay.” He jabbed a needle into my other leg and sat back on his heels—head in his hands—waiting. “You’ll be okay,” he said again, but his voice trailed off like he didn’t really believe it.
I was ice cold. When he put his hand on my forehead, our skin sizzled. His fingers brushed my cheek, smoothing away my tears, turning them into steam so that little curls of white rose up around my nose and the side of my face. Stabs of energy traveled up to my eyelids and across to my temples, stemming from his fingertips, bleeding into me.
The nectar must have started working because tears ran down my cheeks and moisture came back into my mouth. I wanted to speak. “You’re hot,” I said.
A quizzical look passed over his face, and he got one of those pretend sexy-boy crinkles in his forehead. “Yeah. I get that all the time.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure you do.”
He leaned closer, intent. “At least you’re speaking again.”
>
“Seems so.” I looked up at the sky, wondering why it was so white. Maybe a cloud had gone over the sun. Perhaps it was about to rain. Then I said, “It’s okay.”
“What is?”
“About my legs. I wasn’t going to dance again anyway. Ms. White didn’t want me there anymore.”
“Who’s Ms. White?”
“She’s my dance teacher. She said I had to leave. So I guess that’s just as well.” Thinking about Ms. White made the sky even stranger. I wondered if she could become her name. The sun had shifted from the edge of my vision to the middle, but it was no longer golden. Big and round, it was a luminescent circle as though it had become the moon in the daylight sky. A white cloud sailed across it, delicate wisps forming into legs, pincers, and a deadly tail. The scorpion-shaped cloud stretched and shimmered across the sky as something white-hot built inside my torso. It spread to my arms, down to my fingertips, a cold heat like the burn of ice.
Michael seemed to be trying to get my attention. “Stuff Ms. White. You can do what you want.”
“Don’t say that.” My voice choked. “My legs are gone.”
“Ava?” He squinted as if he was looking into the sun.
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?”
“Just lying here.” I remembered the first time Michael ever spoke to me. I’d slipped on the wet bleachers at school during a rain storm, tripped backward, and would have fallen all the way to the bottom, probably would have broken my neck, except that he was right behind me. He told me to watch out. I didn’t remember if I said “thanks,” I was so embarrassed. Now I’d give anything to be able to trip again. Even clumsy legs were better than none.
“No, Ava, I really mean it. You’re hurting my eyes.” His voice jolted through my thoughts. He half turned away from me, reaching back to touch my arm, snapping his hand away with a curse. “Your skin’s like ice. And it’s glowing. You’re glowing. All of you.” His words were full of growing panic. He tried to look at me, but winced, his hand going over his eyes.