Rank? he signs.
Sixth, I lie.
My mind spits up a piece of procedure. Something Sixth may or may not have told me. Split up. I start at the top, you at the bottom. We meet in the middle. Though I never searched a high-rise with her, I know what this means. There is a girl on the top floor; this one’s Offside is up where Dandelion was. Right now. And I can’t move from dreading she’ll dart Dandelion and this will all be over.
Too late I remember I should have asked for the boy’s rank too. He’s a high rank. A Third maybe. His armor is shiny clean.
What are you doing? he asks me, impatiently, because I’ve been standing there staring at him like a dull-witted Twelfth.
Preparing, I sign. I have searched this building.
Where is your Offside?
Dead. I think of the shape she left in the crushed grass, the wings of blood. Dead doesn’t seem like the right answer anymore.
Upstairs, I say, in a rare moment of inspiration. What is your rank?
Third, he snaps. Come with me.
I have no time to think or plan. I step up behind him as he turns, grab his head, and kick his feet out from under him. That’s been done to me enough times that I am something of an expert. His knife flashes in the dark as he falls. I hold my hands on his head and twist until I hear a crack, then push his body down the stairs. The knife clinks onto the concrete. Stepping down, I pick it up and stare at it for a moment.
It is easier than I thought it would be, to kill one of my own kind, in cold blood. I killed the one who was attacking Dandelion in the stadium, but that was different, a moment of rage and terror, fueled by the sludge churning inside me. This broken-necked boy on the stairs was a rational choice. I wonder now why I didn’t kill Sixth that day in the rain.
Kill. Dead. Stop. Stopped.
I should just walk away. This Third cared nothing for me, and even less for humans. But I can’t shake my sense of allegiance to him. I flip his lifeless body over. With the knife I dig the transponder out of the back of his neck, dropping it and crushing it under my boot on the concrete floor. At least now if he ever wakes up, maybe he’ll be free like me.
Dandelion is sitting in the dark when I find her, in our apartment, wrapped in a blanket, a sharp knife in each hand, the smell of fear wafting around her. Fear and bees and wildflowers. Her hair is tightly twisted to her head, with feathery puffs escaping the edges. Not a dandelion now so much as a bird. A scared bird. A bold, defiant bird.
Raven.
“I killed a . . . one of you,” she says. There’s a line of blood down one side of her face.
Me too.
“What will they do to you if they find out?”
I draw my thumb across my throat, then hand her coat to her.
I give her the knife I took from the boy and point to the spot under my chin. I’d like to explain that the blades are specially designed to cut through my armor. Why has never been explained to me.
“I know,” she says, sliding the knife into a holster she has strapped to her thigh.
Don’t be scared, I sign. I don’t want to tell her there’s a chance one or both of them will get up eventually.
“I’m not.”
I reach forward and unzip one of the coat pockets. Then I slip in a small pistol I found, dropping two ammunition clips into the other pocket. I tap my chin again.
As we leave the tower that has been our home for so long, we pass the bodies of my two colleagues, one limp on the stairs, one twisted and broken out in the snow.
The beginning of our journey is not as happy as I had hoped. But at least we’re together.
RAVEN
I’m not sure why I didn’t get angry at August for leaving me alone to be attacked by a Nahx in the dark. Maybe I’ve finally realized that none of this is his fault. None of it is my fault either, I now know too. Nothing either of us could have done would have made a difference. I couldn’t have known, and he has no power or influence. I’m not even sure how I know this now—I just do. It’s clear that he is an underling, a foot soldier. He’s AWOL, a deserter, too, which I’m sure is not good, for either of us.
Both of us are on the run now, but only one of us has somewhere to go. As we creep along the dark streets, I wonder what will become of him when we part. I wonder, and I wonder, and I begin to worry and obsess, chiding myself, reminding myself that he’s not my problem. He walks slightly behind me, rifle raised in one hand, the other hand resting on my shoulder. I shove it off periodically, but it always finds its way back there. Eventually, I ignore it. He’s used to walking like that, or he wants us to look like a normal pair of Nahx, whatever. It’s irritating, but at least he doesn’t chatter the whole time the way Xander did.
Even at night I can see that we are walking through a nightmare. I focus my eyes on my feet, so as not to have to bear witness to the devastation around me. After an hour of walking I begin to realize a small voice in the back of my head has been counting, despite my efforts, noticing each of the dead humans we pass. I become aware of it at around five hundred. Many of them are so covered in snow they look like indistinct shapes of white fluff. But I know what they are.
The darkness is still profound when we reach the stadium. It rises above us like looming cliffs against the starry sky. I feel a perverse desire to go inside, to examine the place where I fought with the Nahx, where August rescued me. I’m not sure what I expect to find. My bloodstains, maybe. The body of that Nahx. Did August kill him? I’ve never asked. Or have I? The attacker and rescuer swirl together again. August grabs my arm as I stumble in the snow.
Feel broken?
“Fine. I slipped.”
I tell myself that what happened in the stadium doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t. All I need is an escort back to the base, back to safety, and then August will not matter to me anymore, nor what he did or didn’t do, nor why.
We skirt around the stadium, staying close to the wall. We haven’t talked about where those two Nahx came from earlier. August doesn’t seem very worried about it, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of more Nahx behind them. Maybe they were a routine patrol or something. I count on August knowing if more are likely to follow. I count on him to be able to spot the transports, which can fly silently. I count on him for everything. If I ran off, would he follow? Would he let me do something so stupid?
I count on the answer being no.
August hands me a small flashlight when we reach the entrance to the tunnel. He hesitates as I head down the ramp, but follows me as I descend, his hand on my shoulder.
The tunnel is dark and cold and smells of fuel and damp, something I didn’t notice last time I was here. My flashlight, and one August clips to his rifle, provide a small pool of light to guide us. I walk ahead, with August trailing, and I feel his tentative pace, almost as though he doesn’t want to be down here with me.
“Is this too low for you? You prefer the high ground, right?” I shine my flashlight at him as he nods. “Will you be all right?” He rolls his finger in a circle, which I interpret as “Let’s get on with it.” It’s strange how familiar many of these signs are to me now.
If he’s some sort of machine, I think as I walk, then why would they make him so he can’t talk? Surely that’s a limitation his makers should have thought of. Perhaps I could ask him about it later. Now is probably not the best time. I think of the weeks we spent in the comfortable penthouse when I could have been learning to communicate with him better, when I could have been asking him every possible question. But instead I seethed with anger, avoided him out of fear and disgust, or wasted time trying to make him feel bad. All those years of effort I put into trying to contain and channel my rage through martial arts and philosophy came to nothing, I guess, when it mattered. Thinking of it makes me want to kick something.
We slosh through a fetid puddle and soon we are up to our ankles in suspiciously oily water. I take back what I said about the chatter. It’s creepy down here with nothing to listen to but my thoughts. To fil
l the silence I start to chatter myself and hope that August doesn’t mind.
“I used to be afraid of the dark, you know.” Stupid thing to say, but the echo of my voice off the weeping walls provides a bit of atmosphere. “I guess in a world without electricity that’s a pretty crippling phobia. Darkness is a natural thing, after all. Like death.” His feet slosh behind mine. “Why is the electricity off anyway? Do you guys bomb the power stations? Wait, was it like one of those, what are they called, EMPs? An electromagnetic pulse? Those antiterrorist nuts used to talk about that. You guys showed them, huh? Way to incite terror. Kill everyone. That’s pretty terrifying.”
We walk in silence for several minutes during which my face burns. I don’t even know if it’s anger or shame at this point. God, if we have to walk back to the base, it will take weeks. I’m going to lose my mind, being stretched out between resenting him and needing him and feeling sorry for him and wishing he were dead. And wishing I were dead. When finally I can’t help but release a shaky sigh, he gives my shoulder a squeeze. Even through my coat and sweaters I can feel his hand is hot. Unnaturally hot, like an iron or a kettle. If it weren’t for the thick layers of clothes, it feels like it might burn me.
Stopping, I turn and shine my flashlight at him. In the near dark his armored plates disappear into shadows somehow so I can barely see him. He drops his hand from my shoulder and lowers the rifle he carries, tilting his head to the side.
“Are you a machine?” I’ve asked this before, but this is one of the questions he walked away from. “Answer me this time.”
He makes a sign with his hand, moving his fingers like he is pressing buttons or levers.
“Machine, right. Well? Are you a machine?”
He sighs and, after a moment, shrugs.
“What do you mean? How can you not know?”
Reaching forward, he taps me on the shoulder.
You. Machine?
“No, I’m not. I’m a human being, of course.”
He simply raises his hand to form a question without any words attached to it. I somehow know he’s asking me Are you sure? I walk on, unable to find the right answer to that. A moment later, his hand appears on my shoulder again. Is it so odd that he doesn’t know what he is? If someone had asked me a year ago what my purpose was and why I was here, I wouldn’t have had a clue. I would have shrugged like the surly teenager I am, neglected my homework, and slumped into a chair to waste more time blasting space zombies, all the while slowly becoming one. Outside the dojo, was I any less a mindless machine than August? And inside the dojo all I ever wanted was a win for myself. August was part of a mission at least, part of an encroaching army that had a shared goal, a plan, and a pattern of operations.
Space zombies. That’s funny.
I shove his hand from my shoulder, but a minute later it reappears. I wonder how we would look from far away, if we look like two Nahx strolling about their business of ridding the Earth of human scum. I imagine myself joining this mission, firing darts, and laying waste to a civilization. I know it took thousands of years to build, but maybe it wasn’t all that great anyway. Maybe we deserved what we got. And I might like being a Nahx. I’ve always preferred wearing dark colors anyway.
As though he knows what I’m thinking, he squeezes my shoulder again.
With nothing but the circle of light in front of us to look at, it’s easy for my mind to conjure other images. I picture August reaching out to the left with his hand, leaning on the wall, on furniture, reaching for something that is not there. Something, or someone. Someone. I think of the way the Nahx walked in those fuzzy videos, one with their hand on the other’s shoulder. The one where the head disintegrated. And that girl who lost her head had someone leaning on her, too, once, I imagine.
I really hate this tunnel. It’s dark and wet and making me maudlin and stupid.
“Who was it?” I say to August eventually, when I can no longer resist. “The one you reach for? When you are upset or in pain, you reach to the left. Who are you reaching for? Someone you used to walk with, like this?”
He grips my shoulder hard and pulls me to a stop.
“Never mind,” I say quickly. “Forget it. It’s not my business.”
Turning my flashlight to him, I can see he is looking away from me, though his hand is still on my shoulder. I don’t know why I keep talking. It’s as though there is some bridge that needs crossing that I need to draw us over if we’re to get where we’re going.
“Was it a girl? The girl you traveled with?”
He nods, still looking away. My flashlight illuminates his profile, which in its lack of detail, still looks disarmingly human. A strong chin, the sweep of a nose, even a slight brow ridge in a permanent frown. He sighs then, a long growling sigh, which resonates down the tunnel.
“Did you love her?” I don’t know what the hell is happening to my mouth. It seems to be proceeding without any reference to my brain or what might be sensible things to ask him. It’s several long seconds before he nods again, slowly.
I barely take the time to process that this creature, who may or may not be a machine, has admitted to loving someone. “Where is she?”
He takes his hand from my shoulder and draws it across his throat.
Dead.
He puts his hand back on my shoulder and squeezes, letting his head drop and hang down. Then he gives me a little shove. I turn my flashlight forward and walk on, blinking, blinking, and thinking of Edgar Allan Poe.
Zero repeat forever.
Nothing again forever.
Nevermore.
“My boyfriend died too,” I say a few minutes later, for no other reason than I think he should know. He pulls me to a stop, tapping his shoulder where Topher shot him with the arrow, and shakes his head.
“No, that wasn’t my boyfriend. That was Topher. He’s just a friend. His brother, Tucker, was the one I loved. But he died. He was killed by . . . one of you. A Nahx. A while ago.”
See Topher? he signs, tapping his eye and his shoulder. It’s nice the way he’s given him a sign name, just like that.
“We’re looking for him, yes.”
See Topher repeat.
“I hope so,” I say. “I hope I see him again. He’s a good friend.” I say this with conviction, though I’m not sure I know what friendship is anymore. Maybe I only call Topher a friend because he’s the same species as me.
August stares at me for a moment, then nods and, gripping my shoulder, nudges me forward once more.
Ahead of us in the tunnel I see a dark shape. I shine my flashlight forward and there, parked neatly, across two lanes in the middle of the road facing away from us, is a bright red old-style pickup truck, something I’m sure wasn’t here the last time I came this way. I tug away from August’s hand and run. With his clanking footsteps falling in behind me, I reach the back of the truck and jump up to look at the flatbed.
It is lined with fuel canisters. Full canisters, I discover on shaking one. Enough gasoline to drive hundreds of miles.
“Yes!” Yes!” I leap down and throw the driver’s door open. Miraculously, the light comes on. On the seat is a plain white envelope. I tug my mittens off and tear it open with trembling fingers, climbing into the driver’s seat. August appears in the open door, but I ignore him.
There is a map. A hand-drawn map on a white sheet of paper. Start at the camp, it says. I know the way to the camp from town. The map shows the way from there to the base. The secret base. No one who doesn’t know what camp we were at could ever use this map. It’s brilliant.
There is also a letter. From Topher.
Dear Raven,
I’ve been searching for you for three days, and Liam says we can’t wait anymore. I can’t believe you’re dead. I won’t believe that. I chased that Nahx for miles, but he was too fast and I lost him. Please forgive me for letting him take you. Please forgive me for not searching for you forever.
I’m out of my mind not knowing what happened to you, and
I’m an idiot for hoping you’re still alive. But I hope you are and that you come back here and find this truck, this map, and this letter. Xander made the map. The route is mostly lower ground and back roads so it should be safer. We found the truck deep in a parking garage. Just touch the wires together and it will start. Since it’s so old, the ignition is simple. It should start. I pray it starts.
I hope we find each other again. I miss you, Raven, and I promise I will never forget you.
Please come back to me.
—Toph
I read it again, then again, to make sure that I didn’t imagine the more fanciful parts. The part where he says he’ll never forget me. The part where he says “come back to me.” August stands stoically, staring forward in the tunnel while I read the note one last time before folding it into my pocket with the pistol. Then I set my forehead down on the steering wheel and resist the urge to scream.
Come back to me? To ME? There is a sense of inevitability to it, that Topher would take his twin’s place as easily, in the end, as putting on his boots. I wonder if it will be that easy for me.
My heart is pounding in my chest so hard that my ribs ache. I tug at the scarf around my neck, loosening it, and take deep breaths.
After a few minutes I feel August’s hand on my shoulder.
Feel broken?
For once I don’t have tears in my eyes. I think I’m in too much shock to cry. “I’m fine,” I say, the millionth lie I’ve told him. “It’s just exciting. It means I can drive. At least part of the way. I’ll get there in a day or two, instead of weeks.”
August nods. His hand turns up to form a question, but I don’t know what about.
“I’m sorry I . . .”
He taps himself in the chest, with his other hand still making a question.
Me?
“What about you?”
August reaches past me and points to the passenger seat.
Me?
He wants to know if I still want him to come along. Like I would leave him here alone in the tunnel. Like I’m that kind of person.
Like that isn’t exactly what I should do.
Zero Repeat Forever Page 24