“We think Calgary and Edmonton were bombed,” Kim says. “But possibly not destroyed, though we haven’t been able to confirm that. We try to send data back via the landline, but we can’t know if anyone gets it. They might not know we’re here. And it’s risky using radio or wireless, because we’re pretty sure the Nahx are tracking that. And all the satellites have been taken out.”
I look down and see Topher’s hand gripping the back of a chair so tightly that his knuckles practically glow. And I know what he’s thinking. All this time we assumed everyone we knew back home was dead. But they could all be alive. Somehow. Somewhere. And the coast . . . God. If my parents left early enough that morning, they might have made it.
Kim continues, oblivious. “We don’t know why the coast was spared. Vancouver seems to be functioning as a refugee camp.”
“Can’t we go there?” I ask. “Surely that’s safer than here.”
“We’ve already lost two choppers trying that,” Kim says. “The Nahx have a kind of web of attack drones west of here. They hit any aircraft with some kind of scrambler, like an electromagnetic pulse or something. Knocks them right out of the sky.”
“What about over land?”
“The main roads are heavily watched. And we don’t have enough vehicles. There are over two hundred people here. And anyway, most land vehicles lose power too. And then Nahx move in and dart you. We watched exactly that happen with one of our drones.”
“Walk, then,” I say, and even I can hear the desperation in my voice. “You’d be much less visible from the air. Hike along the Fraser River and then . . .”
My geography fails me as Kim gives me a withering look. “All the way to Vancouver? In this weather? We’ve got children. Elderly. We’d never make it.”
“So we’re just . . . sitting here?”
“Raven . . . ,” Topher says.
Kim continues, her tone becoming impatient. “We’re not sitting here. We’re fighting back. We’re gathering intel. We’re looking for weaknesses. Anything we find out will be useful. You’ll see.”
“But—”
“What have you found out so far?” Topher asks her, glaring at me.
With a wave of her hand, Kim invites us to sit at a long conference table. There are maps and schematics spread out like fallen leaves, along with black and white chess pieces strategically placed in various locations. Kim grabs a white chess piece from a spot by a curve in the river and repositions it off to the side with a pile of others.
“That was you,” she says with a wry smile. “Rescued.”
“We’re very grateful,” Topher says. He said these exact words a lifetime ago when the judge explained we’d be working off our sentence instead of going to juvie. I suppose I should be grateful too. That judge might be the reason I’m alive. Also the reason Tucker is dead though, so maybe gratitude isn’t quite right.
“We put together a briefing package,” Kim says. “Summarizing what we know. The brief is updated weekly. I’ll get you a copy and you can add to it, if you’ve learned anything new. In the meantime, anything specific you want to know?”
Before I have time to think, Topher speaks. “How do you kill them?”
“With difficulty. Their armor is very tough. And no one seems to have been able to capture one, or even bring one in dead to study. The ships have wicked countermeasures against missiles.” She shakes her head.
“Arrows,” Topher says. “One video said arrows could disable them.”
“Yes, I saw that one. I heard you had a pretty close encounter yesterday. Did any of you get a good look at them?”
Topher glances at me, but I just shake my head.
As Kim opens her mouth to continue, there’s a knock on the door. Liam pokes his head in. “Commander? The tech staff need to see you.”
Kim nods, with a grim look. “I’d better check this out. You can go. I’ll get copies of the briefing for you, and we’ll talk more later.”
Topher disappears with Liam soon after Kim dismisses us. After exploring for a while, and having a meal, I follow directions to the quarters I’ve been assigned and am almost happy to discover I don’t have to share with Emily, who snores like a tiny consumptive hamster. It’s Mandy who has to suffer my company, but she doesn’t seem to be around to either tolerate me or complain. The room is like a prison cell, about six feet wide and ten feet long, with a set of bunks and a tiny table and chair. No bars though, just a regular door, so that’s worth celebrating. I note that Mandy has claimed the top bunk, which suits me. I like to be able to put my feet straight onto the ground when the shit starts flying.
When, not if.
There’s a window, a nice surprise, although I would have to have been dead for a month to fit through it. It’s a wide, low rectangle, and looking out I realize the room is mostly belowground, like a basement room. The window looks out into the quarry.
By the light, I estimate it to be late afternoon, maybe close to sunset. The snow has stopped blowing and now falls softly in fat flakes like turkey feathers. It looks like the aftermath of the kind of pillow fight that we all once believed would happen naturally at sleepovers, after we stripped down to our lacy underwear and painted each other’s toenails. I was never much for sleepovers. I pretended to be disdainful of them, but the real reason was . . . I shake that thought away—the thought of my mom, of how much I once needed her. It seems wrong that I have lived this long not knowing whether she’s dead or alive, as though it’s a discredit to her and all the things she did for me that I probably didn’t deserve.
The falling snow does something medicinal to my head, and I find I can’t look away. I almost feel like laughing, putting on snow pants and running outside to make angels. Or I could just lie down in the snow, maybe, and never get up. Either way, watching it makes me smile, with nostalgia bubbling inside me, painful and potent as white liquor. Snow pants, snowmen, me and Jack making snow angels in the front yard of our house. Stuff from before my life went off the rails.
I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there when I feel someone come up behind me.
“This is where you’ve been hiding?”
Topher, sounding so much like Tucker again I clench the windowsill with my fingers to keep from spinning around. He puts his hands on my shoulders, resting them there before gently massaging my neck, like we used to have to after the cooldown stretches at the dojo.
“It’s hardly hiding, since this is my room,” I say. “Where have you been?”
“Watching videos.” He leans forward, resting his chin on my shoulder, and looks out at the falling snow, now barely visible in the dark canyon. “We should go back to Calgary. I want to look for my parents. I need to tell them about . . .” He turns his head to the side and sighs forlornly. I smell the alcohol on his breath.
“What’s that, moonshine?”
“Vodka,” he says. “Stolish-stoliks . . . some Russian pish.” He moves in and presses his lips onto my neck.
Great. Drunk Topher. So drunk he doesn’t even know what he’s doing. Just what I need. I’m actually perfectly positioned to flick him off me like a bug, slam him down on the floor, and smack his stupid face with the heel of my palm. His lips move to my ear.
“Toph, don’t do that, come on.”
He moves his hands down, wrapping them around my waist, pulling me back to him. I can feel his drunken enthusiasm pressing into my hip.
“Topher, please let go.”
I really don’t want to hit him, not in his current state. At the dojo I took every opportunity to humiliate him. Outside the dojo I had to restrain myself from decking him several times an hour when we had the misfortune of being in the same room. But grief has softened me toward him. His grief and mine. Now I just feel sad. He’s hurting. I’m hurting. Maybe this is all we have. And I miss Tucker so badly suddenly, it’s like being strangled. If I close my eyes . . .
“What’s the harm?” Topher slurs, one hand drifting up to cup my breast. “Turn around.”
I turn, though the sensible part of my brain is telling me not to, that’s it’s stupid, that I should just punch him and be done with it. The only light on in the room is a small reading lamp in the bottom bunk. It’s just enough to see his face, his eyes looking into mine. Enough to see his expression slowly downgrade from teenage lust to resignation and then something else. Maybe boredom, or heartbreak. His hands fall away from me.
“You don’t really like me that way, do you?” I say.
He doesn’t even pretend, or try to be polite. “Not really, no. But you don’t like me that way either.”
Like that’s an excuse.
“Actually, I hate you, Topher,” I say, outward calm concealing something inside I barely recognize. He has somehow made me feel like a thing he’s scraped off the bottom of his shoe, while at the same time making himself look the victim. “If you don’t get out of my room, I’m going to drop you so hard right here that your brains will come out your nose.”
He takes a step back, laughing a little. “Hard-core,” he says. “Tucker always liked the badass girls. Couldn’t resist them. Not even for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He chuckles blearily. “Ask Emily.”
My fist lashes out into a straight jab before I can stop it.
Drunk or not, Topher ducks and blocks like the black belt he also is. He doesn’t try to hit back though, something to be grateful for. That really would get ugly. He holds my wrist for a second, making the ring of bruises throb. I yank my arm away.
“Get out, please,” I say, my eyes starting to sting. “You’re drunk. You’re horny. Or you wanted to hurt my feelings for some fucked-up reason. Mission accomplished. You can go. Please go before I’m forced to kick the shit out of you. Tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . .” I can’t finish because my mind is screaming at me.
Emily. E.M.I.L.Y.
The sudden rage is so disorienting, I feel nauseous. And it has nowhere to go. I can’t fight Topher here. I can’t go chasing around the base at night like a madwoman, looking to confront Emily.
And Tucker is not around to deny or admit it.
Tucker and Emily. And all that time they spent alone in the woods practicing archery. It could be true. Or it could not. It wouldn’t be the first time Topher has said something nasty to get on my nerves. Maybe being drunk has made him forget we’re friends now. We were friends. Now I want to kill him. Or someone.
I close my eyes and say a little prayer, to whom I don’t know. When I open my eyes, Topher will be gone. Then I count silently backward from ten, pressing my fingernails into the palms of my hands. When I open my eyes, I’m alone.
My mind is like a horror story, told to scare children. Later, after Mandy comes back to the room, also smelling of vodka, and I lie in the dark, listening to her breathe above me, Tucker and Topher swim behind my eyelids until my head spins so vigorously I feel like I might vomit. Tucker, who loved me, is dead. Topher, who probably hates me, cried when he thought I was dead. Is that hate? Tucker, who might have cheated on me with Emily. Topher, whose hands and lips felt like needles under my skin. Tucker, whom I miss so much, I sometimes daydream about crawling into his grave. Is that love?
My parents love me. I should know what it is.
As I finally begin to surrender to sleep, my body recalls a rocking motion, and unnatural warmth wrapping around me, and snowflakes drifting down on my face. I smell charcoal and hear the buzzing of bees. I see my own face reflected in black glass. My bruised wrists still ache, as though I’m being pulled along in chains.
He built a fire and pressed cold snow on my bleeding forehead. He carried me and left me somewhere safe, somewhere warm, where Topher could find me. A heartless, soulless Nahx did this for me.
EIGHTH
The Rogues find me in the darkest part of the night, in the thick of the forest. I’m connected, at least, so my reflexes are fast and my strength sufficient to fight them. But they don’t attack. They surround me in a circle, as I step back, pressing into the straight trunk of a tree. Even the way they stand is disobedient, disorderly. Lazy almost. It’s as though the rigidity of our armor doesn’t affect them. They are dirty, too, though so am I.
One of them raises a human bow and arrow, drawing back the bowstring and pointing the arrow at me. I fix my eyes on it. If she lets it fly, I can catch it before it hits me. I think. I think I can. It seems like something I should be able to do.
Rank? her Offside signs. The other Rogues draw weapons too—some have our rifles, some human axes or knives.
The Offside growls and takes a step toward me. RANK?!
Eighth, I sign. Eighth.
They exchange a look. The first Rogue lowers her weapon, tucking both bow and arrow behind her back.
Join us? she signs.
Fear makes the fluid pulse through me. And the directives buzz, making the back of my neck itch. Dart the humans. Leave them where they fall. I want to answer, but it seems impossible to choose anything but the directives. And Sixth. I should go and look for her.
In the low light, the other Rogues surrounding me come into focus. Some of them seem injured. I notice the one to the right of the Offside is missing part of her arm. She has woven branches with sharp thorns around the stump. Another is missing half his helmet. The exposed skin is mottled and twisted, like the roots of a burnt tree.
Sixth. I should look for Sixth.
The Offside lunges toward me again, hissing. His hand slices through the air.
JOIN US!
I shake my head. No.
The Rogue reloads her bow and points it at me. Her Offside raises his rifle, a large and heavy human rifle. I have seen these kill us.
I dive to the side, pushing the girl with the half arm out of my way as I sprint into the trees. I hear them crashing after me. I should stop and assure them I won’t tell anyone where they are. That’s what they think, that I’ll report them to the high ranks, but I won’t. I don’t think I will. I don’t want to. What would I say?
I hear the ping of an arrow being released and twist in time to catch a glint of starlight on its metal shaft. My hand lashes out, sending the arrow spinning into the dark as I run.
The trees begin to clear, and the sky beyond them is the deep blue color of shadows on lakes. It will swallow me if I can . . .
The cliff beneath me falls away just as I hear a rifle’s loud crack. I land hard, falling forward and rolling over another edge and down to rocks and ice. Turning onto my back, I can make out the silhouettes of the Rogues, peering over the cliff, their weapons still raised. I lie still, not even breathing. If they think I’m dead or badly damaged they will probably leave me.
After a long time they slip back behind the cliff face, one by one, until only the leader remains. She lingers there watching me until I’m taking tiny stolen breaths and trying to resist the urge to stand and move. The fluid flows through me, pulsing relief where the fall left bruises. But it also makes me jittery, longing to get up and move, to walk, to run, to keep moving.
Dart the humans. Leave them where they fall.
After the last Rogue finally retreats, I wait, letting the stars drift across a swath of sky, before sitting up. My head throbs where I hit it on the rocks, and the fluid flowing through there leaves empty spaces behind it, lost thoughts and memories. What was I doing up in the mountains? The answer to that question flickers like a dying flame as I clamber to my knees. I wait there, feeling the stiffness in my armor and limbs release. By the time I move, the sky is lightening in the east, over the flat land back toward the city, so I walk in that direction.
I find a squadron just after dawn, boarding their transports on the shore of a frozen pond. Falling in beside two others, who I think might be low ranks, like me, I board with them. They reload their rifles. I hope they don’t notice mine doesn’t need reloading.
I’m not sure why I’m here. There’s something I’ve forgotten. My head hurts, and my hand hurts, burns inside my armored
glove, despite the fluid. I wrap my thoughts around the pain and cling to it, to the reason I stuck my hand in the fire in the first place.
A human girl, and something about our mission. And the Rogues and Sixth, and the reason my rifle doesn’t need reloading. And the human girl. And pine needles. Spiderwebs.
And the human girl. The human girl. The thought of her gets so big I can’t think of anything else.
RAVEN
Another video party starts right after I choke down a few bites of flavorless porridge for breakfast. Liam strolls over, whispers something in Mandy’s ear, and leaves.
“You coming?” she says to me, as she gets up to follow him.
“Are you sure you want an audience?”
Mandy rolls her eyes. “Don’t be gross,” she says. “We’re going to watch videos.”
I trail after her, wondering what pointless action movie has drawn not only me and Mandy, but also Topher and Xander, to Liam’s quarters. A large-screen laptop is open on his desk. Mandy and I slump into the lower bunk. Topher squashes in beside me. He turns his head half in my direction.
“Sorry,” he whispers, so quietly it sounds like a snake taking a breath. “I didn’t . . . I shouldn’t have . . .” But before he can finish, Xander dives into the bed, threads his head between us, and rests his chin on my thigh.
“I bet you’re the only one here without a ball-shrinking headache,” he says.
“I don’t have balls,” I remind him.
“I’ve heard otherwise.”
Mandy snorts beside me as Liam turns and gives me an appraising look. He clicks a few things on the laptop until a media player comes up.
“I hear you’re not crazy about the videos,” he says to me.
Nahx videos? This is what they were watching last night? And here I thought it would be James Bond or something. “I don’t see the point of them. Just a whole lot of death and destruction. Who wants to watch their team lose?”
It’s like some personal development teacher suddenly possesses him. “It’s complicated, but the point of watching the early NKVs was to learn as much as possible about the enemy. How they operate, what their weaknesses are. Admittedly, the thing we learned first was that they were utterly ruthless. But even that was useful. That is what feeds the resistance. Understand?” He clicks a few things on the computer, pausing a video and making it full screen.
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