by Anna Vera
Would never think to hurt him at all.
The others arrive, Jac in the lead. His cheeks red and shiny as apples, lips peeling and chapped. “Looks like a tarp. Must be their camp, all right.”
Rion brushes my shoulder as he passes by, pistol raised as he approaches the nearby camp. “You have a gun?” he asks quietly the second I catch up.
I reply by way of cocking an old revolver. He nods and we walk in tandem, knowing, somehow instinctively, that he’s to guard the left and I’m to guard the right.
The others keep their ranks tight. Apollo holds up the rear with a freshly loaded rifle, aided by Cyb.
Rion and I break through a tight crop of saplings, exploding through the campsite’s perimeter.
It’s been destroyed.
A fire reduced to a single dying flame cooks an overturned pot of beans—smoking and charcoaled, plastered hard as concrete to the bottom of its pot.
Then, I see the bodies. The first is tagged against a tree, as though he’d tried to climb it to safety. The left side of his ribcage is ripped entirely off, the other half still attached, but flayed, skin peeled back like a glove.
Blood is everywhere, dripping and mixed in mud.
I step forward, treading carefully around a body still tucked in a sleeping bag. The body is that of a man, his face still visible despite being fixed in a perpetual scream—the crown of his skull broken and jagged, empty. Brain gone.
I suddenly feel like I’m about to be sick.
Rion inches closer, arm brushing my shoulder as he keeps his pistol raised—eyes cold, calculated.
Apollo dives in, scouting the camp’s supplies. There isn’t anything worth keeping. Whoever these people were before they were killed, they didn’t have a lot.
“Traveling out of desperation, I bet,” Jac mutters, lips white as he regards a third body: slack-jawed and lying sprawled out on its chest, as though trying to crawl away—the sclera of his eyes a solid red, matte after drying out.
“Hey, you guys?” Cyb says, holding up a gasmask and a pair of bulbous, black goggles. “They were Skims.”
Rion and Jac cast each other glances, uncharacteristically frantic in nature, setting me on edge. They approach Cyb, taking a look at the supplies.
Rion clears his throat. “There’s an extra pair of goggles and a gasmask—at least one of their group flipped and started killing the others without warning, maybe more.”
A cold chill passes over us all.
The smell of blood gets stronger with every breath, as the reality of the situation continues to get clearer, more undeniable and real and terrifying.
I lean against a tree, watching the others rummage through what’s left of the camp—and suddenly hear a voice huskily speak from somewhere behind my back.
Not a voice. A whisper.
“Help me.”
I whirl around, gun raised, moving so quickly as to draw the attention of my whole group. A few feet away from my boots is a withered man, face gaunt, eyes gold with jaundice.
The others are at my side in a heartbeat.
“Who are you?” Jac crows, aiming a rifle at the man’s face.
“I was with—this group—but I’m not a Skim,” he wheezes as he lies in the mud. I realize his body is badly bruised, but not critically injured; his clothes, even, are barely dirty.
Rion kneels down, pressing the barrel of his gun against the man’s sweaty forehead. “That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I—I’m Eli,” he stammers, holding up a hand. “I work for the military, as a recruiter. I was taking those men back to base so they could fight in the war.”
This, at least, is so unexpected we can’t forge words.
Eli licks his lips. “Anybody involved in PIO Morse gets a roof over their head and free food. Perhaps the six of you would like to be involved?”
The fact that Eli so effortlessly counted our ranks suggests he possibly isn’t injured at all; he’s thinking clearly enough, or so it appears, at least. Yet his eyes are colored by jaundice.
There’s something he isn’t telling us.
I kneel beside Rion. “What happened to you?”
Eli’s eyes are wild, ransacking mine. “We—we were—it was the strangest thing—I think we were attacked by a league of those otherworldly space people!”
“Specimens?” Jac asks, side-eyeing Rion curiously.
“Yes,” Eli replies enthusiastically.
“What did they look like?”
“They were older—different than the other leagues—maybe a new breed, I don’t know.” Eli’s eyes widen. “They had a tattoo of a constellation on their faces, cupped around their eyes, kind of like a fish’s gills.”
Apollo stiffens dramatically. “Cassiopeia,” he says.
“Maybe? I’m not—”
“I’m sure it is,” Apollo interjects, keeping his gaze averted to the ground as he speaks. “Rion?” he says coolly. “Kill him.”
“Don’t you dare do any such thing!” Merope steps forward out of our line, shielding Eli. “Our Purpose is to help, not kill.”
I raise my own revolver, challenging her. “You seem to have forgotten one thing: we don’t have a Purpose anymore, and the one we had originally was a lie.”
I look to Apollo. “Why should we kill him?”
Rion surprises me by answering. “Because he’s going to die regardless. He’s infected.”
“I—I can make it back to the base, if you help me—I’d like to be buried with dignity, not die—”
Eli’s head snaps backward, pulled by a bullet. Apollo stands with a gun outstretched, his face white. “Sorry, Eli, but there’s no way you would’ve made it.”
We walk until sundown.
Leading the way alongside me, Merope nods to a small rip in the fabric of night—a space that’s clear of trees and shrubbery, doused in the dusty white light of the moon.
We filter out, single-file, into another clearing. The canopy drops off to a clear sky, and like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral, it arches up high and endless.
The stars are scattered crystals against a backdrop lit up by the glow of a full moon. Farther away, creeping like ivy along the horizon, are the thick clouds of a snowstorm approaching.
Jac staggers, collapsing on a nearby tree for support.
“You all right?” Merope asks, taking in his complexion, which is the color of an eggshell: pale and slightly ashen, a spoiled kind of hue that sets me instantly on edge.
Breathing heavily, he rips off his jacket and exposes a thick bandage heavily sodden with blood—the very bandage Cyb just applied yesterday, last night.
My breath catches and I’m at Jac’s side in a beat, taking off the sodden dressing to better examine the injury. The others gather around, faces waxy.
“It won’t stop bleeding—why?” I wonder, looking at the gaping hole in his shoulder, still draining blood. “There has to be something we can do.”
“There is,” Jac grunts, patting my hatted-head fondly. “As long as the injury isn’t infected yet?”
“It’s not,” I conclude. Even in the moonlight, the wound is a clean shot straight through his shoulder, the flesh healthy—no puss or fever or swelling.
Jac nods, running a tongue over his lower lip. “I’ve gotta take care of this tonight, Rion.”
Rion nods, albeit reluctantly. “I’ll help.”
“No,” Jac snaps.
“I’ll help.” Rion stands inches from Jac’s face, speaking with such unyielding finality, I realize he isn’t offering his help—he’s making an order. “We’ll set up camp first. Get a fire going. I’ve got a knife you can use, and—”
“A knife? For what?” Cyb inquires.
“Cauterizing.” Rion’s eyes reflect the ivory blanch of the big and bloated moon swelling overhead. “It’s the only way we
’ll be able to stop the bleeding.”
Rion marches off and Jac follows, wincing against the pain of his shoulder. Cyb looks at me, as though to say, They’re going to seal his wound by burning it shut?
How absolutely archaic . . .
I gaze out over the clearing that sags slightly, as though set in a cupped palm. “I wonder,” I say, while everybody else picks a place to set up camp and begins working.
I fire off a single round, aiming at the very place where the clearing dips lower. My bullet explodes through something, a veil of ice, and water splashes up in reply.
“It’s a lake!” I tell the others, firing off two more rounds to make a triangle shape along its lacy rim.
Kneeling, I pound the triangular chunk of ice free, gaining access to the clean water. We’re on our last water bottles. Only three remain, given it’s the resource we use the most.
However, being surrounded by snow and ice, running out of water to drink hasn’t been a huge concern for us. But I’ll always rather have too much instead of too little.
I lower cupped palms into the icy water—so deep as to look endless and black—and draw up a sip, which I drink first, and splash over my dirty face second.
I shiver in the strangest way—a liberating way, as though all the hardships of the last two days are being slicked off the surface of my skin as I rinse away half-dry blood, patches of mud like sleeves of fish scales, and every lie I once believed to be truth.
Gone. Washed away. Gone.
I torture myself with an upward glance. Beside the moon is my spaceship. Home. Even now, despite it all, I ache for my own bed there, for the people—for Onyx.
Who’s my . . .
Who’s actually a . . .
The gravity of my situation hasn’t fully struck—like Merope said earlier, I don’t process, I bury.
But this water, there’s something about it. I can feel it filter and pool chillingly at my core. I can feel it eroding the hardest parts of myself, and unearthing the place where I’ve buried all my fears and failures and shortcomings.
Unearthing the grave I’ve dug inside myself, a grave which is too full and too deep and too angry. And I should’ve known it would surface one day, and that my cowardice wouldn’t be able to outrun it anymore.
And I’d have to face it all again eventually. Harder, fiercer, angrier, and festering.
As I rinse myself off in the water, I remember everything about my experience here on Earth, only in flashes:
Nova’s death.
The look Onyx had when she realized I was deploying with or without her consent—and her final words to me as I sat in the podcraft, her cryptic farewell: I tried.
Lios’s body shook violently by a Mute.
Apollo’s panicked face after I’d used my ability to discover his deepest and darkest secrets, my esophagus crushed under the weight of his hands.
Rion, Jac, Silas, and Mia. Natives. When did they start to feel like family? When did I start loving them the way I do the members of my own league?
Fighting alongside them during the supply raid. Trying to help a woman—Amy—and killing a father instead, leaving his two daughters to fend for themselves.
My actions, leading to Jac getting shot in the shoulder.
My actions, leading to us crashing the truck.
My actions, leading myself to Rion.
Discovering we aren’t who we thought—that we have been lied to in ways unfathomable. That we aren’t people, but truly specimens: genetic creations to facilitate a war we didn’t realize we were fighting, forced to adhere to a Project and a Purpose, to fulfill a duty and perform accordingly. All for what?
I don’t stop. I keep drawing handfuls of water over myself, rinsing and cleansing and concealing. Why are we even here, what is our—their—motive?
I look up at the sky, glaring at the Ora. What is it they could they possibly want with Earth’s people? Why kill them off and save them all at once? Why create specimens to do the dirty work?
Shaking my head, I try dislodging the thoughts, but the ache gripping my stomach won’t leave—a writhing, seasick kind of feeling that’s reminiscent of the time I got really ill and kept throwing up, even when there wasn’t anything left.
I hear voices and realize everybody at camp—now set up with a fire and tent and all—are watching.
My face reddens, but I’m not ashamed. For the first time, I think I’m processing. Not burying.
Of all people, Cyb gets up off the snowy boulder she was sitting on and approaches me at the lake’s edge, a serenity to her features that renders her unrecognizable.
Without a word, she sits beside me, drawing water over her arms and face. The first splash is the coldest. After she gets used to the temperature, she goes faster, rinsing herself off altogether in spite of her chattering teeth.
And when she’s done—stopping abruptly—she holds out a shaking hand, tinged blue with cold, for mine.
And I take it.
Cyb’s silver eyes burn ferociously, finding mine. Her lips are periwinkle, her face clean. But it isn’t what I see on the outside that strikes me—it’s what lies beneath. What she’s dug up from her own internal grave.
Cyb’s voice is strong. “We still have each other.”
And then she gets up, brushes herself off, and walks fiercely back to camp. All the time I’ve spent disliking her, the time we have bumped heads, or disagreed, or fought—I thought it was because we were fundamentally different in ways that couldn’t possibly be reconciled. But now I realize out of everybody in the league we share, we’re the most alike. And I’m proud of that.
I’m proud to be like Cyb, who is my sister, and family, and a challenge, and person who’s right and wrong—but above all else, somebody who’s truly a force unbreakable.
And today, she’s right: We still have each other.
23
i return to the sight of Jac stuffing a pot full of snow.
“You’re just in time,” he says, sponging a sleeve across his forehead to dab away a band of sweat. “Chef Jac’s in the kitchen.”
“Which means what?” Apollo replies coyly. “That we’ll all have food poisoning by the night’s end?”
“Everything we have is prepackaged, Apollo—nothing raw or fresh, alas.” Jac packs another handful of snow in the pot and sets it on top of the fire. “Otherwise, yes. Probably.”
Apollo scoffs, grinning as he rips off his boots and socks in order to dry them by the roaring flames. Behind him, two tents have been erected—tucked pleasantly in an especially dark pocket of the woods, covered by trees.
We haven’t heard or caught sight of a Mute in hours, and though that’s a good sign, there’s a certain gloom falling over our group I can’t deny. What if we don’t get rescued? Do we really stand a chance walking forty miles back to the quarantine, just us and our dwindling supplies? In winter?
I settle on a log between Merope and Cyb, directly across the fire from Rion, who’s whittling a slender sapling into what looks like a crude spear. Meanwhile, Jac digs through our bags of supplies and extracts a series of canned soups, labeled with only a stamp to signify its flavor.
“What are our options tonight, Jac?” Merope asks, her violet eyes flitting over the fire, landing directly on Rion—where they settle and don’t lift.
I bite down, chewing my lower lip. Rion steadily holds her gaze with an open smile hitched on his handsome lips, eyes freed of their previously concussed fog, and a—
I shoot up to a standing position at once. Eos, you’re being completely and totally absurd. Go somewhere else and distract yourself if this is bothering you, because Rion isn’t yours.
He never was.
Whatever happened before “can’t happen again,” remember?
Maybe all along it was because he wanted Merope—not you.
&nbs
p; Nobody bothers to notice as I dismount the log I was sitting on and walk to the far right, where Apollo sits, warming his bare feet by the fire. Ew.
“Is this seat taken?” I inquire casually, nodding to a gap at his side; there’s barely enough room for Apollo himself, honestly, but I’m going for it anyway.
Apollo eyes the space. He’s sitting on what looks to be a highly uncomfortable boulder—relieved of a layer of snow, but still likely as cold as the ice surrounding it.
“Well, I guess not,” Apollo says, brows furrowing.
I wiggle into the gap, snuggling up against Apollo’s broad shoulder, his pale skin icy as the snow itself.
“You’re freezing,” I say.
“Well, it’s cold outside, Eos,” Apollo replies. Platonically.
“Does anybody,” Jac interjects suddenly, squinting to read the labels on the cans of soup, “object to butternut squash as our entrée tonight?”
“As long as it’s not split-pea.” Everybody freezes, realizing that both Rion and I said the same thing in unison. Foolishly, my first thought is, We both dislike split-pea?
“Hey!” Jac wields a wooden spoon at us accusatorily. “I’ll have no haters of split-pea in my kitchen! Split-pea is a classic, my friends, and you can’t dislike the classics.”
We all laugh, watching as Jac—still shaky and pale, but not one to lose his humor—digs through the bag yet again in search of something else this time. I know, immediately, what it is the second I hear the clinking of glass-on-glass.
Alcohol.
I should’ve known.
Jac arranges a half-empty bottle of vodka and a large, unopened jug of whiskey, side by side on a log. Rion reaches for his pocket and extracts his port, lining it up along the others.
“When the world ends,” Jac says, uncapping the whiskey at the same time Merope seizes the half-empty bottle of vodka and swigs deeply, “Happy Hour is every hour.”
I wiggle out of the spot I’ve wedged myself in, trying to get to the port before it’s taken, but am stopped by Apollo.
“Jac’s going to get drunk because he’s going to cauterize his wound tonight—which will be quite painful,” he says, whispering in undertones. “You don’t have to.”