She saw a swing in front of one, like the ones they had at the compound when they were little, and then they got taken away overnight, and she remembered missing those swings. She’d spent so much time with Ams going up and down and talking at each other when their swings came together for just enough time for a word, a long word at first and then shorter and shorter. They made a game out of it then and whoever had the longest last word that the other person could identify won. It was usually Ams who won all of their games, but the swing one she was better at.
This one was painted pink, the seat dangling on the long chain, making a ringing noise every time it touched one of the metal poles. She saw that Ams saw it too, and watched her turn away from it, only she couldn't tell if it was because she was missing theirs or because she could picture a little girl on it who was now gone.
They turned the corner where Riley disappeared earlier. The houses were farther apart here, and they didn't have window boxes, but trees and flowers growing right in the ground in front of them. Then the houses stopped altogether, and there was just empty land on both sides of the road for as far as they could see, and far ahead of them, Riley. He must have been running this whole time. Still couldn't stop running by the looks of it, only she couldn't tell what it was he was running to. There didn't seem to be anything ahead of them, but he kept going, so they followed because there didn't seem to be anything else for them to do.
She thought they walked for hours, in silence, when suddenly they couldn't see Riley in front of them anymore, but there was no place he could have disappeared to this time, no turns off of this road, not even trees. And then she saw it, a patch of grass to their right that looked all black, and then the patch turned into a field, as they got closer, all of it looking charred, like their campfires at the end of the night.
Riley stood still, hands making fists at his sides, and then he turned and ran back to them, shaking his head, screaming at them to stop. "You can't...." He was panting so hard he couldn't talk. He had his arms out in front of him, stopping them where they were. "You can't go there. You just can't." And for the first time since she met this boy, he looked utterly broken. He kneeled in the middle of the road in front of them and put his head into his hands, and she knew he was crying and that she needed to let him.
She looked at Ams who stood there watching Riley, and she saw that flash of anger in her eyes again, the thing she didn't understand in Ams at all, that made her do things that Ams never did before the boy happened, and then Ams ran past where Riley was to the charred field, and she let her. She couldn't stop her when she got like that, and she couldn't go with her. Whatever this thing was that broke Riley, she didn't want to see it. Didn't want it to break her.
She knelt next to Riley and put her arm around him. She didn't know what else to do now but wait. And so she did, for a long time, and then Riley was done with the crying and looked at her, a question in his eyes. She nodded toward the field without looking at it and watched him dart away from her, and she hoped he could make it okay for Ams somehow, even if she couldn’t.
She sat there alone, not wanting to look behind her where the sadness was, the ugliness. She chided herself for not being as strong as they were, trying to force herself to get up and go to where her friends were hurting, and hating Ams for doing this to her, making her feel like a coward. She finally forced herself to get up and walked to the black field, to where Riley was holding Ams in his arms, and she knew that Ams, too, was broken now.
They would tell her, they would have to tell everybody, so she didn't need to keep going, didn't need to see whatever it was with her eyes. It would be so much harder to undo the picture if she saw it. Words, those she was good at. She could undo almost anything made of words, but not if she saw it. She stopped far enough away from them to not hear what Riley was whispering to Ams, feeling like she was intruding on her friends. Something caught her eye while she was turning away from them, something that didn't belong in the field. A stick lay on top of other, different-sized sticks. And then she saw that this whole field was made of sticks, piles of charred sticks, but this was wrong, because sticks burned, and these weren't burned. She knew then that they weren't sticks at all but bones, and the part of her that didn't want to know any of this knew that this was why the city was dead. All the life that was there before was here now, in this field. She turned away from it. She wanted to lash out at Riley for falling over that wall at the compound and at Ams for finding him and then for all the other things that happened that made her end up here, that made her see this.
She remembered the way that man looked at her and at Ams as if they were the monsters that somehow turned everyone in his city into bones, and she couldn't think of how anyone could possibly do this to anybody, not even Keller. And then she remembered putting HealX on Riley's scars, and she knew that anyone who could savagely beat that boy like that could do this, too. Could do worse things.
She thought of Kaia and what they may have done to her for asking too many of the wrong kinds of questions, even though they all thought she was mute, but she felt now they knew she had the questions in her, and that's why they took her away. Her people did this. Her people took Kaia, killed Riley's parents and shot his dog, took Ams away from her family, stole Ella's voice. All these horrible things that civilized people didn't do, savage things... Her people did this.
Maybe that thing she had in her head that gave her all the words made them do it, and someday it would make her into someone who could steal babies and shoot people's dogs and take a razor-sharp whip to some boy's back. This man looking at her and Ams like that, maybe he knew it about them, that they were all going to turn into monsters, and there was nothing they could do to change that, and that's why he was so afraid.
She heard them whispering behind her. Ams ran up to her and took her hand and didn't let go. Nobody said anything. Nobody knew any of the right things to say. They walked back in silence, and she made sure not to look at the kid's pink swing or any of the flowers in the window boxes. She didn't want to look at anything in this city, so she kept her eyes on the road, holding on to Ams' small hand, and hoping that somebody, Drake, or Ella or the strange man would tell her if she was already damaged; if she was already somebody who could do something terrible to someone else; tell her if it was something in her, in all of them that made them do it. And if it was, she would steal the mushrooms from Drake, the ones she could smell on him, the ones he held on to for some reason. She could do it then if there was no other way.
Maybe that's why Drake didn't need the gun with Keller in the end. Maybe the real Keller couldn't really do any of these things after all, and she knew then why it felt so wrong when Ams kicked him after knowing that Drake didn't need the gun and that Ams knew it too, and felt the wrongness in it. That's why Riley's face was all splotchy when he came out with her, and why he didn’t talk to Ams or even look at her for a long time after that. She held onto her hand harder now, letting her know that she understood why she tried to make the boy not like her anymore, and that she still had her to talk to about any of it when the time was right; that she wasn't the only one afraid of whatever it was they made them and hoping it could somehow be unmade.
They finally made it to the tall building. Ella and Drake would be waiting for them with their questions, but she couldn't tell them any of this. Riley would have to do it, and she didn't want to hear him tell it, didn’t want to see his face go all broken again. She let Ams go when they got to the top floor and walked away from the big room, down to the other side, found a tiny closet of a room, and curled up in a chair that seemed more like the ones they had at the compound, hard and small, and waited. Waited until everyone else knew, and waited for them to cry over it. Waited until it would be the right time to ask any of them what she needed to ask them.
She felt her eyes close after a while, and she was drifting up and down in a swing, Ams smiling at her, screaming words at her against the wind they were making, short ones now, be
cause of how high up they were going, Ams smiling bigger and bigger, and as she came down to where Ams was just taking off from, she heard it, Ams screaming "Bones" at her.
22
Tagged
Riley, April 26, 2236, Reston Office Tower
Riley didn't need to tell Ella, with the knowing already in her eyes, so he just nodded to her and to Drake, who seemed to know everything Ella knew without needing to talk to her, and walked over to the chair by the window, the farthest from the wall with the pictures on it, pictures he couldn't get out of his head now. Drake had his shirt off and the strange man was touching him like he was looking for something. Of course, he is, stupid, the tag. Ella held Drake's hand as if this looking could hurt him, and then he knew she wasn't holding it for that, but for the chance that they couldn't find it, and that she was doing it for her, not Drake.
Ams was curled up on the couch, her back to everybody. He had to let her be after what she saw. There is no talking that out of somebody. He watched the man move from Drake's back to his chest, poking at him with his fingers, probing, and then he stopped and looked at Ella. He pointed at a spot right over Drake's heart.
"It's in here. I knew they'd do something like that sooner or later, so you couldn't disable it with an electric current without killing the person. Any current to where the tag is would stop his heart is what I'm saying." He looked sad saying it. He also no longer seemed mad in the way he talked now as if drawing that picture on the wall made him okay again. He didn't even seem to notice when Ams walked in, didn't seem to mind her now. Maybe Ella and Drake told him about the girls, that they wouldn't hurt him. He was just glad the man wasn't ranting anymore.
"Can you cut it out?" Drake asked flatly.
The man shook his head.
"We don't have anything to do that with. You'd need meds, to put you under. They put it really deep in there. I'd have to cut your chest open, and it's too risky to do something like that. I'm a scientist, not a doctor. I wouldn't know how to do that, get it out of you without killing you, I'm sorry."
Drake nodded then and walked away, not looking at Ella.
Her pad was out and she wrote frantically in it, showing it to Drake, then writing again, but he just shook his head every time she shoved the words in front of his face. They kept at it for a while, and finally, Riley couldn't take it anymore, so he walked over to her and took her pad, quickly flipping through the last few pages. She wanted to do it. She thought she could, working in clinics as long as she had. She'd dealt with all kinds of wounds. She could make it work. But Drake wasn't letting her for some reason. He couldn't figure out why he wouldn't let her do this thing she at least had some training for but would have no problem letting this stranger cut him open. It didn't make sense. Only it did. Of course, it did. He thought of Ams stitching him up and how badly it hurt her to hurt him then, and she didn't even really know him yet. Drake didn't want Ella to hurt for him. But he had to let her do this. There was no other way.
"You have to let her, Drake. I'll help. Ams will help, but you have to let her try. It's her burden to carry if it goes wrong, not yours. You can't take that away from her, I won't let you." He meant that last part. He couldn't let Ella be destroyed by losing Drake, not if there was anything at all she could do to change it.
Drake glared at him as if he didn't know who he was, as if he had forgotten that Ella was his much longer than she was Drake's. After a beat, he nodded and left the room without a word.
Riley went after him, knowing he needed to talk to this man in a way that would make him okay with this, not the way he just did. He saw him standing at the end of the hallway, leaning on the wall, eyes closed. He was still shirtless and Riley stared at his large chest, thinking how little sense it made that this big man seemed to feel so little to everyone, to himself. Little enough to get picked on at school, and then at the compound. He walked up to him, thinking of just the right way to say it, looking at his face. Drake’s eyes were still closed, but he could tell he was angry by how his face was.
"If you could have done something to stop Hassinger that night–" He saw Drake flinch at that, but he had to keep going. "If you could have stopped it but I didn't let you, and you had to live with that, would you ever forgive me?"
Drake opened his eyes then and shook his head.
"That's what it would be like for her if you don't let her try to save you. I’m not an idiot, Drake. I know you don't plan on going back if we can't get the tag out of you. So you have to let her save you or you’ll leave her with watching you die, not knowing if she could have helped, and that will destroy her. I can't let you do this to her or to you. I see the guilt you feel when you see my scars, but you couldn't have done anything then. I always knew you couldn't have. But maybe she can," he said as softly as he could and watched Drake nod at him again, his face tense. He hurt him, could see it in his eyes, but he felt it was the only way to get him to see it the way Ella would if he didn't let her do this.
Ella was writing things in her pad when he got back to the room, the strange man hovering over her. It occurred to him just now that nobody knew his name, or maybe it was just him who still didn't.
"Stan," he told him when he asked, and went back to whatever he and Ella were working on.
He sat down next to Ams on the couch, watching her. Without thinking, he reached out and patted her hair, the little bit of it that was sticking out from under the blanket, until she stirred. She looked up at him, eyes red-rimmed, tired. He hugged her silently, breathing in her Ams smell, holding her close enough to feel her heart beating into his own chest.
"We’re ready, if the big man is, and anyone else you think you need who could help. You'll need all the help you can get. I'm not so good with blood. There is a hospital about two hundred meters down the road. It'll have all the surgical tools we'll need, but they wouldn't have left any of the stuff to knock him out with. We'll have to pick up some liquor on the way to help him, we just can't give him too much, or he won't stop bleeding, but it should be enough to take the edge off."
When they finally made it to the hospital, it was starting to get dark outside. They had to turn the lights on to just read the signs for the different floors. Surgery was on the 7th. He’d never been to a real hospital before. In Waller, they went to this one doctor who would still barter for something his parents could give him the few times that he got sick enough to need medicine.
They went to his house, a shack only slightly bigger than theirs that smelled like chemicals. He didn't remember much of it except for the smell. It smelled like that here too.
Drake hasn't said a word since they left, not to Ella, not to anybody. He walked behind all of them with Ams, holding on to her little hand. He’d loved that little girl since the night she ran up to him, holding her tears in her hands, saving Riley. It's as if they knew the best in each other and never needed to talk about it. Loved her in the way that she'd never think Drake capable of thinking of her as a monster. He shook these thoughts out of his head. Lousy sense of timing he had with his thoughts.
The surgery floor was flooded with light. They followed the strange Stan through sliding glass doors into a large, open room with a flat bed in the middle under even more lights. Those lights came on now. Stan must have found the switch. Ella walked over to the metal shelves against the wall and started pulling out various shiny objects and putting them on top of a rag on the tray she was holding.
Riley flinched involuntarily when he saw a small-handled knife with a short, sharp blade on it. He looked at Drake, hoping he could take this. His face looked serious and a little sad, but he didn't seem afraid. Ella stuck all the metal things she collected into what looked like an oven and pressed a button. The thing beeped after a little while and she took the metal things out and put them back on a tray next to the bed. She seemed done with preparing whatever she needed to.
Stan handed Drake a bottle of something that he swiped from a tiny, dark-looking place on the way. He went in ther
e by himself and they let him, somehow knowing he wouldn't run; that he had nowhere to run to.
Drake shook his head at it. "I don't drink."
Stan unscrewed the cap, took a long swig, and handed it back to Drake. "Today, you drink, big man. Or you die from shock."
And he did then, drank in long gulps, making a face as if what he was drinking was hurting him. It probably was, by the looks of it. And when he had as much of it in him as he could take, he gave it back to Stan, pulled his shirt off and walked over to where the bed was, nodding to Ella that he was ready, and then whispering something to her that wasn't meant for the rest of them.
She strapped his arms to the bed, put a wide belt around his waist, and tightened it. He and Ams would have to hold him down by the shoulders, so he didn't accidentally hurt himself. He hoped they could do this thing, and a small part of him wanted to say goodbye in case something went wrong, but even the thought of doing it scared him as if he were inviting the wrongness, so he shook his head hard, and put both his hands on Drake's shoulder, pressing it into the bed with all his weight.
Drake didn't scream when she cut into him, eyes shut so tightly he saw the creases all around them. His jaw was clenched, hard. He could feel the tension in him, but he didn't make a sound, and he didn't move, and after too long of cutting into him, Ella pulled a tiny metal round thing out of him, smaller than one of the eyes on Brody's dragonfly. He watched her stitch him up, her hands moving in a way he knew she'd done this many times before, not the way Ams' hands did it. He was still pressing on Drake with everything he had, and Ams was doing it on her side, only her face was wet, and she looked like she'd want to take a swig out of that bottle when this was all over.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 16