by Tracy Korn
Why was everyone tweaking if it's just an ant? How could they even see an ant, Liddick? I think, starting to feel a little dizzy because I'm too afraid to take more than a shallow breath.
"Jazz, you have to put your fire out. Count your breaths…you have to relax," Dell says, which sends a crashing wave of anxiety through my stomach.
They were tweaking because they're jellies. You're going to feel like such a mollusk for worrying when you see this thing. Just hold still. Liddick answers, but he's nervous under it all, and I know he's holding something back.
Myra starts to whimper, then tries immediately to stifle it.
Tell me the truth, Lid—! I shout in my mind as I fight the urge to open my eyes, but stop when I feel a heaviness on the side of my head, then a faint tickle just under my cheekbone. Everything in my body freezes solid: the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins.
"Just like that…good," Dell sighs like he's finally let out a breath he's been holding in. "Keep still just like that and breathe so your fire stays out," he says, sounding a little closer now.
The tickle on my face turns into small prickles as the heaviness shifts in my hair and I suddenly feel something clinging to my cheek. Tears constrict my throat and rush into my eyes, which I don't dare open now.
"Dell!" Arco says, his voice sounding forced through his teeth, and my chest instantly tightens so much that even my smallest breaths are sharp inside my ribs.
The multiple, small prickles start moving over my lips, and I fight to keep my mouth closed against the pulling sensation. I hear a strangled scream in my throat and swallow as slowly as I can to keep it from coming out. Tears fall from the outside corners of my eyes and burn the sides of my face, and when I hear a hissing, high-pitched chirping, I start to see stars in the blackness behind my closed eyes.
Rip…breathe. Crite…all right, Dell is almost there. Just breathe. You can't pass out, OK? You have to be still. Don't move…ten more seconds…count them. Count, Rip. One…two…Liddick says, and his voice warbles in my head like he's talking under water. It feels like everything around me is starting to spin when I hear him again, louder this time. Three! Four!
But on four, something cold and sharp touches my cheekbone.
"Don't move, Jazz. Don't even breathe for a few seconds, all right? Just a few seconds…" Dell's voice is low and calm, and as if by some magic command, his words stop the breath in my chest all over again. I feel nauseous just before I hear a whoosh, then feel burning on my cheek.
Before I can open my eyes or even take a breath, someone…Arco, wraps his arms around me, and I fall against him.
"It's gone…it's gone…" he repeats, stroking my hair, and as soon as I can feel my feet under me again, I open my eyes and move back from him just enough so that I can look around.
"Where is it?" I scan the ground frantically, then cross to Liddick. "Where is it?" I ask, grabbing the black dive suit fabric over his chest, which gathers and bunches between my fingers. "Liddick, where—"
"Dell killed it. It's gone, Rip," he says in a quiet voice as he meets my eyes and covers my hand with one of his. He brushes my face with the other, and I notice a sting just over my cheekbone. His eyes are so clear and so blue under his thick, dark brows and lashes, the blond ends of his hair dripping either water or sweat or both over his temples as he studies me. Standing this close to him—feeling this close to him again—fills the hollow that terror just carved out of me, but I can't tell if this is his relief or mine because we're both occupying the same space inside each other again.
Thank you…for talking me through, I think. He swallows hard and nods, then brushes the wet hair from my face as the start of a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.
Just one little scratch…right here, he thinks, running the edge of his thumb just under the stinging part of my cheekbone. His hand is warm…everything about him is warm. That's all, Riptide. You just have one little scratch.
I lose control of my breath all over again when I realize I'm being folded into the gravitational pull of him, but then Dell's voice breaks my focus.
"Bullet ant…" he says on an exhale. I turn abruptly from Liddick to see the black, hairy corpse impaled on the tip of the machete Dell holds out.
"That was on my face!?" I shout because it's as big as my hand, and when the long, spindly legs twitch, the ground feels like it gives way under my feet. My knees buckle, but I catch myself before I fall, and Liddick supports my elbow until I stand up straight again.
"Are you OK?" he whispers. I nod, still unable to take my eyes from the ant.
"These ants sting," Dell says, then lifts the point of the machete straight up so the ant's body arcs toward the ground. "It's named after old bullet guns, so if it would have been singed at all by your fire, or if you would have twitched even a little, the sting would have felt like you were shot…and that would have been the least painful part of it," Dell adds, pointing to the ant's sharp, curved stinger. Everything inside me gets cold again, my skin feels clammy, and my mouth goes dry.
"And that…was on my face?" I say again in an effort to keep the darkness pushing at the corners of my vision at bay.
"They climb to the tops of the trees to eat the fruit…probably another half-mile to the Bog, and we'd have been clear of them," Cal says, scrubbing his hands over his face and then shoving them through his short, white-blond hair. "We need to get there and make camp before it gets dark, which will be anytime now," he adds, looking at the sky again, and I remember that once the clouds spread out, night can come out of nowhere.
I take a few absent steps from Liddick, and Jax moves to my side, wrapping his huge arm around me and pulling me tightly into him.
"Come on," he says in a low, steady voice close to my ear, and I feel sick as the aftershock hits me and the adrenaline floods my veins now that I'm safe…now that I have the luxury of falling apart. My hands start to shake uncontrollably, and I feel tears burning my face again, but it doesn't feel like I'm crying. They just fall like they're part of some completely separate biological operation that I don't control.
It's just shock, Rip…Liddick thinks from behind me, and I remember he must still be feeling the physical lash of my feelings. It'll pass. I promise, it'll pass, he adds.
I try to turn to acknowledge him, but my motor functions abandon me when Dell flings the dead ant into the brush, and I actually hear it land in a thud. Everything sounds muffled after that. Jax and I walk side by side, and all I can really feel is the solid mass of him like a building or a mountain, like nothing could knock him down or force him back, and in this moment the wave of homesickness that passes over me is so debilitating that I almost have to stop walking.
I want to go home…I just want to go home…I think, but I don't consciously form the words, they just come. They just rise up in me like flood water and crest until I'm submerged in them, and I don't care at all if I go under as my lungs start to burn with even more tears.
It's all right, Riptide…we'll be all right, no matter how bad it gets out here, remember? As long as we're together, we'll be all right. Liddick thinks, his desperate, exasperated words floating to me like a buoy on the waters of my disembodied thoughts, which I'm sure will drown me until I see Arco's lost, grateful, conflicted face, and I'm startled into breathing again.
CHAPTER 43
The Bog
The trees have completely thinned out, and ahead of us, they seem to give way to a grass field clearing. Jax and I walk along in silence with everyone, and even though the air is stickier and somehow heavier in the span of what can't be more than half-a-mile of walking, he doesn't take his arm from around my shoulder, and I don't want him to. For just a few more minutes I need to be able to close my eyes and shut this place out…the impossible reality of stupidly sized bugs, of Joss being gone now just like Pitt. He was here when we woke up this morning, and in the span of less than a minute the zephyrs just took him. It could be any of us tomorrow, couldn't it? Or right now? One minute
from now, another one of us could be gone forever. What if it's Jax? What if it's Arco…or Liddick? What if it's me?
Another wave of nausea crashes over me at the thought of losing anyone else. How can we not come apart out here knowing that everything we've ever been taught hasn't prepared us for any of this? I can't schedule my way through it. I can't juggle responsibilities to free up time or force myself to study for good marks. Those actions all depend on constant variables…on outcomes that I can't predict out here.
"Stay out of the clearing, it's mainly water. Welcome to the Bog biome," Dell says, breaking the silence. "Those gas clouds aren't coming back together, so we need to start making camp by the trees," he adds as we follow him and Cal to the tree line where everyone starts gathering fallen wood.
"Lay the wood down in a rectangle as a barrier—things…crawl out here. Clear a spot, then put leaves down so you don't have to lie directly on the ground," Cal says to everyone, then turns to Arco. "We need to dig a trench for the fire…about 20 feet in diameter. Try to keep as many trees out of the circumference as possible so we don't have to deal with what might be in the branches."
Arco nods, then looks at me quickly like he's waiting for me to answer a question. Cal slaps him on the shoulder, then hands him the long, thick stick he has just sharpened with his machete before scanning the ground for another one to sharpen. Arco takes it, then starts digging.
"Do you think anything we've learned our whole lives is of any use now?" I ask Jax, interrupting whatever he's about to say when he turns to me. "All we've ever done is fight to stay in the top 10 so we could have a chance to get into Gaia. It all seems so worthless now," I add. His lips quirk in a small smile, and he studies the side of my face where the scratch must be.
"I think fighting to stay on top has taught us how to survive, you know? We've learned that we don't give up," he says, then meets my eyes again. His are a deep, warm brown and kind, just like I remember our father's. The smile spreads across his face, and he nods reassuringly as he grips my shoulder. "We're going to find dad, Jazz. That's our one thing, just like the top 10 got us through all those years of competing. Just imagine seeing him again…we're going to make it. We're going to see him again, OK?" he adds, somehow knowing what I've been feeling like he always does, somehow seeing my loss of focus. His eyes light with hope and purpose, his thick, heavy brows moving upward as if to get out of the way of his determined vision, which I feel starting to catch inside myself now too. He nods one more time in question, and I nod back in answer. "OK," he says, then hugs me, and for a few more seconds, I believe nothing can hurt me out here, or anywhere.
Dell, Tieg, Arco, and Jax finish digging the circle trench while the rest of us gather wood and leaves. Cal fashioned some kind of a rake to sweep the area inside the circle to make sure we don't inadvertently build bedding over any nests or burrows, and the idea of actually having to worry about things like that makes me shudder. We can't take anything for granted.
"Probably just short of an hour before the light goes, but storms don't rise up in this biome, so we can light an open red fire," Dell says, driving his pointed stick-shovel into the ground next to him as he nods to Avis. "Want to do the honors again?" he asks, gesturing to the perimeter trench. Avis smiles, then returns the nod before depositing scraps of wood in the trench for the fire. Arco drives his stick into the ground and looks at his hands.
"I made a place for you," I say, walking toward him. "Crite…Arco," I add, noticing the torn skin on his palms.
"I'm fine," he says, letting his hands drop to his sides as he looks anywhere but at me.
"Here," I say, reaching for his wrists. "Keep them up." I hold my hand under his and pour some water from the desalinator tube in my other sleeve over the cuts. He winces, but quickly closes it off with a sharp intake of breath. "Sorry," I say, looking up at him for a second, but he doesn't meet my eyes. "Why were you digging so hard?" I ask, but the heavy feeling pushing into my chest from him answers before he has the chance.
"Because I could, I guess," he says as I stop the water and pull my pack around to dig out a bandage wrap and the jar of Avo paste the Vishan packed for us. "I don't need that," he adds, shaking his head and recoiling when I open the little jar.
"If you want those cuts to heal before tomorrow you do. We have a long way to go, and you'll need your hands," I say. He sighs impatiently, but doesn't say anything else as I apply the mud. "I think this is the same thing we were putting on to keep the mosquitoes off," I say, then look up at him again, but he just keeps watching his hands.
"I don't know how to do this, Jazz," he says abruptly. "I thought I did, but I don't."
"We just have to keep going. We just have to focus on getting our people back, and that will get us through this place," I say, relating Jax's advice, which has been helping me.
"I don't mean this place," Arco says with a quiet edge in his voice. "I mean you and Liddick."
I finish dabbing the Avo paste over his cuts, then wrap a thin bandage over them and squeeze it in place over the backs of his hands.
"You're the one I want to be with, Arco," I say, and he finally looks at me. His hazel eyes are tired, red around the edges, and strained under the weight of his furrowed brow.
"You went to him because he talked you through dealing with the bullet ant, didn't he?"
I swallow, trying to find a way to answer that will lessen the impact, but I can't find the words. I nod. Arco nods in answer, then looks off into the trees.
"It doesn't mean I want him instead of you," I finally manage. "It doesn't mean that I don't love you."
The anchor in my chest seems to pull down harder at this, which starts an ache that wraps around my ribs and squeezes.
"But I couldn't help you. All I could do was watch, horrified when that thing started crawling on your pack and then—" he stops abruptly, then clears his throat. "I told you when those Badlanders came out of nowhere and held that stick to your throat back on the virtuo-cine beach in Tark's class…I told you I couldn't watch you like that again and not be able to do anything. So if he can get to you…if he can help you when I can't, then maybe you should be with him instead of me."
The ache in my chest intensifies, squeezing more tightly until I can't take a full breath.
"You don't get to make that choice, Arco. You don't get to decide who I'm with because that's up to me, and I choose you, do you understand?" I say, trying to control my voice. Arco closes his eyes in a long blink, then sighs.
"I don't know how to be with you when I have to accept that when you need someone most, he's the one in your head. He's the one who's right there. I'll never be able to do what he can do for you, Jazz, don't you see that?" he asks, now struggling to control his voice too.
"You're blowing this up into more than it is. I can't get tangled up with him because I lose sight of myself if I do, and I don't want that. I've told him that."
"But how can you not be tangled up with someone who always knows everything you think?" Arco asks without hesitation, then waits a few seconds as I search for an answer that never comes. "Thanks for fixing my hands," he says after a deep breath, then nods once before walking to one of the last two bedding stacks. I follow him to the other as the light fades, and Avis kneels near the circle and lights a fire that encircles us all.
***
Arco is turned away from me when I wake up, and the last of the red fire glows in the circle all around us. We didn't talk any more before as we fell asleep, though as I run through the possibilities of what more I could have said, I can't think of anything that would be new information. Maybe he's right…is it easier this way? I never expected him to save me from anything, and I'm not going to be able to convince him that it's not somehow his responsibility. We all need to help each other however we can out here, and he'll have to find a way to accept that. He turns to me as if he's heard me say this, and I smile at him. He smiles back, but then his expression withers to something unreadable as he sits up an
d turns away from me again. I catch Liddick's eyes from across the circle as he lies on his side with Dez curled in front of him, and just like last night, neither of us seems to know what to say.
"We need to get moving," Cal announces over everyone, and I startle. "The gas clouds are packed together again, so we should have plenty of light," he adds as people start getting to their feet. Cal kicks dirt over the fire embers, then hammers a hole in one of the trees. A steady trickle of water spills from it, and he refills his bottle. "Top off if you need to," he says.
Ellis and Avis walk toward the clearing with Tieg and Myra, and I have an unsettling feeling that makes me want to call them back, but I don't have a good reason why. Didn't Dell say it was mainly water over there? And we're refilling our stores, aren't we? I shake the thought loose and get to my feet.
"How are your hands?" I say, looking down at Arco, who lifts the bandages I put over his cuts last night. He chuffs a surprised laugh.
"You were right about the green paste," he says. "Almost healed up," he adds, then looks at me for a long time as if he's going to say more, but Jax interrupts as he gets to his feet across from us and brushes off the legs of his dive suit.
"When they put that stuff on my eyebrow, Ada said it only took a day for it to heal a Vishan's cuts, but for me it would take a week or so. Looks like those treatments are coming in handy," he says, bouncing his eyebrows at Arco. "Get it…handy?" he says, then nods ridiculously. Arco laughs, more at Jax than at his stupid joke, and a ripple of levity falls over us. Jax grips Arco's forearm and pulls himself to his feet, then starts a conversation that I can't hear, so I pull the desalinator tube from my sleeve and head toward the tree. I press the button at the cuff of my sleeve so it vacuums the water that's pouring in a steady stream now, and when the little light on my cuff turns green several minutes later, I press the button again and turn around, almost directly into Liddick.