Then I realize I’m holding his hand. I drop it and pull my legs underneath me.
“What time is it?”
“Just after six,” he says. He’s still sitting on the end of the couch. The chair near me has blankets on it and a stack of books, an empty plate, a cup of water. I look at Xenith. His blond hair is messy, and his clothes are wrinkled. He’s been waiting for me to wake up.
“Everything went okay?”
“Perfectly, now that you’re awake.”
His gaze hangs between us. I have to break away, to look somewhere that’s not at him, so I look past him toward the wall. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday.” He says it like it’s supposed to mean something. I shake my head. My hair feels strangely stiff against my neck, and I probably look like a monster.
“How many days are left?”
“Eleven.” Xenith taps the side of the couch, a rapid tick tick tick. His hands still for a second, then play with the edge of my blanket. The fabric slides between his slender fingers like water. He drops the cloth when he notices my gaze, then clasps his hands together. “Are you hungry? I can make you some breakfast before I go.” He moves from the couch and picks up his drink.
“Go where?”
He takes a sip, peering at me over the rim of the cup. “Your ceremony.”
“It’s today?”
“In an hour.”
“My own ceremony?”
“Your father deemed it so. Rumor has it that the Elders are coming.”
The Elders are coming here for my ceremony. They never come here.
“That’s bad, isn’t it?”
Xenith shrugs. “It’s something.”
I look away from him, search across the room for that familiar glass globe with the Old World. I stand slowly, knowing that Xenith is watching me. My legs are like jelly from not moving for so many days, and the first steps I take are a little shaky. My feet are wobbly, and the sudden shift between sitting and standing causes the room to be unstable, but my fingers reach out toward the globe, tread over it. I’m going to be there soon.
Xenith is watching me when I look back at him. “Who are they really mourning at the ceremony?” Because it’s not me, not when I’m really alive.
“Just some girl,” he says quickly.
“Some girl. Where did she come from?” I say. The cup is in his hand, and he’s at the counter-the same place he stood the first time I came to his quarters. I expect him to put up a fight with the information, but he doesn’t.
“Kai and I had to sneak into the restricted part of the medical ward to switch your body with someone else’s, in less than two hours and without being caught.” He jumps up on the edge of his counter, pulls his feet under him, and takes another sip.
I look at him from across the room. “Sounds simple.”
“Typical Tuesday night with the boys.”
“You have boys?” I say.
He gets quiet. I’m stupid. Of course he doesn’t have boys. He’s Xenith Taylor. He doesn’t have anyone.
He clears his throat. “Not usually.”
I avert my eyes for a second and try to think of something to break the small awkward tension between us now. “Kai was helpful?”
Kai was Xenith’s idea. Since he’s a Healer, he already has direct access to the building. It took a lot of convincing and explaining why he couldn’t tell Thorne any of this. Xenith met with him in private, and I don’t know what was said, but eventually Kai agreed.
“People are surprising,” he says. He stares at me when he speaks. I’m suddenly unsure about all of this. About what I’ve done and where I am now. Not that I can change it.
“Who was the girl?”
“An Unclaimed,” he says. He places his mug into the sink and jumps off the counter. Xenith picks up a few things as he walks across the room and disappears into his room.
An Unclaimed is in my urn. The Unclaimed are the bodies that have been frozen since the Takeover. They were kept by the Elders. Kai told me once that it was a strange sight, these people who are frozen and waiting to find peace.
“I never understood why the Unclaimed were there. Do you know why the Elders keep them?” I say into the empty room.
Xenith comes back with a black dress shirt and coat in his hand, tosses them on the couch. “Those frozen souls are research-two hundred years of research.”
“Research for…?”
“Why do you think we don’t get sick?” he asks me. I never thought of it. “There are others down there that are more recent than the Takeover. New diseases could develop, and the Elders never want us to fall victim-” He scoffs as he says that word. “-to the same things that destroyed the Old World.”
Xenith pulls his shirt off, and I can’t help staring. I’m pretty sure my mouth might even be hanging open. His arms are chiseled, abs more perfect than I expected. He keeps talking, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world to stand half-naked in front of a girl. In front of me. My cheeks burn. How do I look compared to him, with my rat’s nest of hair and wrinkled clothes? I hope my hair isn’t as bad as it feels.
He keeps talking, and it’s kind of hard for me to think straight.
“Sometimes people wander too close to our barriers. The Troopers take them out on sight and stash them away. After proper research, they are disposed of in the night. They have to do it like this. If everyone knew there were others, the leaders would lose predictability, stability, and order. They have to be consistent no matter the cost.”
He slides a tank top over his chest. I should be glad; I shouldn’t be looking at him like this. Still, I can’t stop. The shirt covers his chest but accents the lines and curves of his arms, displays the muscles there until I’m aching to be wrapped up in them. I shake my head, force those thoughts away, and bring my attention back to our conversation.
“There was one down there who passed for me?” I ask, keeping any disappointment out of my voice-it shouldn’t be there anyway-when he pulls his black dress shirt on.
“Number Fourteen. I knew she was there. My father was the one who found her before he died.” Xenith buttons his shirt, his fingers moving deftly over each small piece of metal.
“Who was she?”
He shrugs. “How do I know? Number Fourteen. Just a girl. She looked like you. Same hair. Close to your height. She looked as if she’d drowned, bloated from the water in the same way you would’ve been.”
He stands close to me. His scent is intoxicating, and his hand sweeps a piece of my hair behind my ear. The whole action makes my stomach jump into my chest.
“What about my branding?” The words come out breathless.
Xenith reaches out for my hand, warm fingers pressing against my palm, and pulls me close to him. His fimgers trail up my neck and linger over my branding, tracing it as he talks. “Just a few minutes and a little rod that makes the same ink print on the skin. That was all it took. No one looked that closely.”
I pull away from him. I can’t have him that close to me. “How did you do that?”
He tilts his head and smiles. “I can’t reveal all my secrets, now can I?” He steps away from me, plops down on his chair. “Just enjoy being dead.”
I’m dead. My ceremony is today. Everyone’s saying goodbye to Cornelia Ambrose. Will they be upset that I’m gone, or grateful they were spared from the fever and the Raven’s Flesh?
“Which one?” he asks, jolting my thoughts away.
Xenith’s across the room now-how does he move like that?-and holds up two ties, one black and one purple. I point to the purple one, and he smiles, tossing the other aside. “Anyway, after the switch-you for her and her for you-I carried you through the back of the medical ward during the night shift’s lunch break. They don’t care so much. Kai walked out the front door, same as he came in. It was done. Brought you back here.” He loops the end of the tie through the top. “Kai questioned my motives. I told him what he wanted to hear.” He pulls the fabric tight, his eyes not
moving from my face. “Is it straight?”
I reach out and pull the tie a little to the left. Xenith leans into me, his breath warm on my face. He touches my hand before I can move it. Have his eyes always been the color of the ocean?
“Then I gave you the red pill with the white letter and waited through the night for you to come back.” He pauses. “And here you are.”
We stand there for what feels like hours, but is probably only seconds. He removes his hands from mine. Bounces back away from me and slips on a black jacket.
“You’ll wait here for a few days, and then you’ll go to the Old World. Only the four of us will know.” Xenith spins around in a circle. “How do I look?”
“Four of us?” I say.
He nods, touches my cheek. “You, me, Kai, and Fourteen.”
DEADLINE: 23D, 8H, 16M
EL PASO, TEXAS
FOURTEEN TIMES I ASK to see Thorne. I can feel him, but it isn’t the same. All I feel is his pain. It’s masked, like he held some of it back, but it still impacts me. They don’t let me go to him.
DEADLINE: 21D, 8H, 31M
EL PASO, TEXAS
I’M IN AND OUT of sleep for two days before they let me see him. He waves at me from the other side of a window. A little ragged, a little bruised, but still the same.
DEADLINE: 20D, 2H, 14M
EL PASO, TEXAS
THORNE SITS NEXT TO MY BED and stares at me. He still looks weak to me, but he smiles and puts my mind at ease. Even if I know he’s pretending. We’re both getting too good at that.
“What happened?” I ask. “Help me up.”
Thorne doesn’t take my hand. “Doc said you couldn’t walk yet. The healing needs a few more hours before you can put weight on your leg.”
“I don’t care,” I say.
Thorne shakes his head. “Be reasonable. You need your strength.”
I cross my arms at his gaze. If he’s walking around, I should be able to, too. His injuries were worse than mine, and I don’t feel bad at all. We need to go. Time is wasting, and I have to get to the Mavericks.
“Fine, don’t help me.”
He doesn’t. I manage to get out of the bed on my own and stand up. I don’t put a lot of pressure on my right leg, just let it touch the ground while I stand on my left. I ease the weight down, and it only hurts a little. I’m standing tall, strong, and on my own. And then it hurts a lot and the pain shoots up my leg, and Thorne catches me when I fall over.
“Damn it, Neely,” he says. His words are breathless, and I know catching me hurts him, too. He sits on the side of my makeshift bed. “Did you hurt yourself?”
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
“It’s good you bounce back quicker than me.”
“So, what happened?” I ask after too much silence. He sighs and rakes his hand through his hair. “The guys from the first day have spoken to me a little. We’ve all been waiting for you to wake up. They have Healers here who fixed us up. Joe said those attacks happen every few months. He said the same thing about them being quiet for months the other day. So they took a chance and went aboveground to live. They’ve been up there for a while. Then, all of a sudden, someone spotted a Cleaner, and we came along. Joe said some people think it’s connected.”
“Who is Joe?” I ask.
“The big guy.”
“Joe thinks we brought them?” I don’t need an answer. I wondered the same thing when we arrived. It can’t be a coincidence.
Thorne shrugs. I clear my throat. “How did you get down here?”
“I got shot in the stomach. It was bad, Neely. I don’t even know how I got here. I know I wasn’t far from the entrance when I got shot, and people were coming this way. Maybe I followed them?” He looks at me. “They told me you broke in.”
Did I? It’s kind of vague in my memory. I remember the dead guy and trying to get him to move off the door. Was that breaking in? It’s fuzzy.
“I felt you in pain, like before.” I pause, thinking of Xenith and the deal that Thorne doesn’t know about. “Thorne, we should probably ta-”
“I see you’re up and about this mornin’,” a man says. I look toward the door at a short man with gray hair and a beard. He has small, round brown eyes and rosy cheeks, and he pulls a metal board from the foot of my bed. “You couldn’t keep her in the bed?”
Thorne shakes his head. “She’s impossible when she wants to do something.”
The man chuckles. “I’m Doc,” he says. “Everyone here calls me that, so I reckon you should, too.”
Doc has this way about him that puts me at ease. Or it would if I let it. He’s nice enough, maybe too friendly, but he did save Thorne. And me. He turns the pages on the metal board and writes down something about me.
“Thank you for saving us,” I say.
He looks surprised. “You’re welcome.”
“When can I leave?”
“What she means is, how long until she’s able to walk on her own?” Thorne corrects me. I hate when he does that. Doc starts to speak.
“No, I mean when can I leave?” I shoot Thorne a look, and he sits back in his seat. I have to get to San Francisco.
Doc takes a breath and puts the metal board back. “I’m not in control of when you leave-that comes from higher up-but your leg should be good soon. We’ve got some pretty advanced medicinal treatments here. You’ll have to keep a cast on it for a few more days, though, just to be sure.”
“But I’ll be able to walk?”
He runs a hand over his beard and makes a clicking sound with his tongue. “You’ll be able to walk.”
“So who do I talk to so we can leave? It needs to be soon.”
“That’d be me,” Big Burly says, lingering in the doorway. “I was waitin’ for ya to be ready.” He stands next to Doc and looks between Thorne and me. Teapot and Benny are with him, standing silently in the back. They all look at me like they don’t trust me.
“Reckon it’s good you’re awake. Your boyfriend here was real worried.” He clears his throat. “We didn’t have much time to talk last time we saw each other. I’m Joe. That,” he says, pointing to Teapot, “is Ty.”
Doc scoots out of the room in silence.
“Why are y’all here?” Ty says. “We don’t get a lot of folks coming through.”
“It’s the timin’ that makes us wonder,” Joe says. “It’s some strange odds that two strangers arrive in sync with an attack force. Real fishy.”
I cross my arms and look to the white-blond boy. “We told Benny.”
“We done talked with him and with your boy here. Now I’m askin’ you.”
We have a stare-off, a battle of wills. Mine is strong, even if it’s tired. He reminds me of my father-sly words, a cunning smile, and charm that oozes off him. It will not drown me; I can swim.
“We just want to leave,” I say.
“It don’t work that way,” he says. “We survive ‘cuz we don’t give nothin’ without gettin’ somethin’. We helped you. Now, surely you can answer this li’l question.”
“Xenith Taylor sent word to Cecily. She said you would be nice enough to help us out.”
The three men look at me, eyes wide. “I heard ‘bout that,” Ty says. “Why’d you come out into this world? Whatcha after?”
Thorne looks at me, his eyes sharp and questioning. How much am I going to tell them? Just enough of the truth. “We’re going to the Mavericks,” I say.
The men shift, suddenly unsure of me and Thorne and our presence. Unsure of Xenith’s name. Unsure of everything, perhaps even themselves.
“Them things was chasing you,” Benny says. It’s the first time he’s spoken since he came into the room. His voice is low, and he repeats it, his eyes shifting around the room. “If y’all left the Compound, then they were after you. All our people died ‘cuz of you.”
“Benny,” Ty snaps.
I don’t say anything, but I think he’s right. I play it back in my head. The Cleaners found me right after
I left the Compound. The fire happened when I was about to leave the Burrows, and then the Cleaners tracked us here to a place they hadn’t been to in months. The Elders somehow knew where we were.
“But all them people is gone ‘cuz they led the Elders right to us!” Benny yells.
“Benny!” Joe yells back, his face red.
Benny huffs and slams the door against the wall as he stomps out of the room, and we’re all quiet. All unsure of what to say. Of what it means. How could they be tracking us?
“We can help you,” Joe says. “Get y’all out of El Paso. On to somewhere else. We have a trader truck leavin’ soon for ‘nother camp west of here. I’ll send word that y’all are coming. That’s all I can do for ya.”
“Thank you,” I say.
He nods, and then, “I reckon it was only a matter of time, anyway.”
Someone screams from down the hall, and it echoes in the silence that has fallen between us. Ty scoots to the doorway and out into the hall. He’s back in a matter of seconds, too short to count.
“The baby,” he says. “It’s time.”
Joe runs a hand through his short, cropped hair. He nods his head and exhales. He takes two steps before he looks at Thorne.
“Thank you,” he says. And he’s gone. The other two follow him out the door, and I can’t stop looking at Thorne.
I look at Thorne and remember the woman who fell. He saved her, and now she’s having a baby. They both could’ve died, and now a new life is about to exist. For the first time, I’m grateful that Thorne is with me. My best friend. The boy I love, whether it’s real or not. The one who saved that pregnant woman. A life has changed forever. It will never be the same. Not for us and not for Joe and not for that baby.
I take Thorne’s hand and feel the steady buzzing between us through the connection. Contentment. We’re quiet and still, listening to the noises down the hall. Yelling. Screaming. And, after a long period of silence, crying.
A baby is here because we were here, one that could’ve died. Or maybe would have never been threatened if we weren’t here. A tear falls from my eyes, too. A baby-a single moment of joy in all this terror. Acknowledgment that nothing is as bad as being alone, that life goes on and we must keep fighting.
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