Her thoughts were spiraling into panic again. She dragged in a long breath that shuddered in her chest, clenched her jaw, and continued to press down onto the pad. It was soaked all the way through now, Felicia’s life pumping up through it, up onto Elissa’s hands. . . .
“Lin,” she said, and couldn’t hear her own voice. Either because she only thought she was talking, or because her ears still didn’t work. And if my ears don’t work—God, every thought apart from the panicked ones was coming so slowly, as if her brain were trying to run too many programs at once—if my ears don’t work, then Lin’s ears probably don’t work either, and even if I am talking she won’t be able to hear me.
Lin, she tried instead, speaking within her mind, using that weird new ability they’d only discovered today, Lin, can you hear me?
Lissa! Lissa, your hands—Is she—is Felicia—
She’s still bleeding loads, Elissa thought . . . or said . . . or whatever it was that she was doing. Give me your hoodie. Push it down on top of mine as I move my hands.
They managed it with a little fumbling, Lin’s icy fingers touching Elissa’s, a sudden panic sweeping through her that it wouldn’t be enough, that Felicia would continue to bleed and bleed until all the red life within her had soaked through everything they used to try to stanch it. How much blood can you lose before you die? How much blood do you have? She’d learned it once, in some lesson that seemed a million miles away from anything useful, from anything she’d ever actually needed, but she couldn’t remember it now.
The shrill sound in her ears had become louder while they worked, more intrusive, less easy to ignore. And now, all at once, as if she were coming up from underwater, it jumped a level, becoming louder—and as it became louder, she realized that the sound wasn’t ringing, it had never been ringing. It was screaming.
At the same time Cadan’s voice came through to her. He must have been talking all along, knowing she couldn’t hear him—probably not even being able to hear himself—ensuring that the first thing she would hear was his voice, low and steady in her ear, repeating, “Take no notice. Don’t look up. Just focus on Felicia. Focus on Felicia. Take no notice. It’s nothing to do with you.”
But she had to look up. Once she heard the screaming, she had to look up.
It wasn’t just Felicia whom the explosion had left bleeding or injured. Two of the people over at the playground were hurt too. A man was hunched over an arm that looked as if it had been broken—by a flying chunk of masonry, by being thrown off his feet by the blast itself? Another—a little boy—had been pinned under one of the benches. It had been pulled off him by two of the adults, but his face was a sickly greenish-white and he was lying gasping and whooping for breath, as if the weight had driven all the air from his body.
Sofia was the only other one who was bleeding badly, and that was where the screaming was coming from. Not from Sofia herself, but from El. Sofia was kneeling—not as if she’d gone to her knees deliberately, but as if her legs had folded and deposited her there—her face half-covered in blood, her hair soaked with it. Emily Greythorn knelt next to her, one arm around Sofia’s shoulders, one hand holding something to the side of her face. It looked horrible, but no way near as serious as Felicia’s wound—except to El, who stood, the hand not in a sling tight against her face so that it seemed as if she were trying to keep herself from flying apart, mouth open in a shriek of horror so extreme, so uncontrolled, that it made her look insane. Cassiopeia had pressed herself against the nearest wall, her hands flattened against the plaster, as still and pale as a paper doll.
“Lis,” Cadan said, his voice coming through clearer now, and her gaze flew back to him. “We can’t do anything for them. Not right now.”
Elissa nodded, her head moving jerkily, pushing the sound of El’s screams away into the background, trying to make them become nothing but the tinnitus-like ringing she’d thought they were before. The people attacking—I knew they wanted to hurt us. But if ordinary Sekoian citizens get in the way, they’re willing to endanger them, as long as they can still hurt us. How can they? How can they hate us that much?
Hate crime. She’d heard the term before, in the news, in ethics lessons and organized debates at school. She’d thought of it the way she’d thought of all violent crimes—robbery, piracy, assault, terrorism—as something you did only if you were halfway to crazy. Something that normal, decent people could never relate to, something that they could only stare at or talk about with incomprehension and horror.
But although this was crazy, it wasn’t just like all other violent crimes. These people weren’t chasing the Spares to get something from them, or to try to force an unwilling government to change some law they didn’t agree with. They weren’t driven by ideals or greed. They were driven by hatred. Hatred so blind that to them, even people who weren’t Spares, who weren’t so much as associated with the Spares, were nothing but collateral damage.
You can’t argue with that. You can’t fix it. If it’s just hate, if it’s not need or greed or ideals, if it’s just total, mindless hate, how can you ever change it? How can you ever make them stop?
Lin held out another garment, folded to a pad. Elissa hadn’t seen where she’d gotten it. “Is it time for this one?”
Cadan’s gaze had dropped back to where his hands pressed next to Elissa’s, on the second pad. The blood hadn’t soaked through this one yet, Elissa noticed vaguely, which had to be a good sign, didn’t it? He answered without looking up. “In a moment, okay? I’ll nod when we need it.”
“But the flyer?” Lin’s voice was urgent. “Won’t the flyer be here soon?”
“Any minute. And they’ll have med equipment on board. She’ll be okay. They’ll all be okay.”
The words came out with patented Cadan-calm, but all the same there was something, the very slightest hesitation, maybe, just the edge of a tremor as he said “okay,” that made Elissa not believe him. And now, for the first time, as her focus widened from Felicia, from the groups of injured people around her and in the playground, she realized that Commander Dacre and Mr. Greythorn weren’t helping the injured. They were standing at the corners of two of the nearer alleys, guns at the ready.
That last explosion, the one that had hurt Felicia and Sofia—and probably the others—that had been the last. Why hadn’t there been more? Because of the commander and Cadan’s father, because they were defending them?
But they can’t defend this whole square! There are entrances all around it—they don’t have a hope. Any minute they’re going to attack again. If they’ve got a whole bunch of those grenades, they don’t even need to risk coming into the square themselves. They can just keep throwing grenades till we’re all blown to pieces.
And, like a weight dropping into her stomach, she realized why she’d heard that hesitation in Cadan’s voice. They were under attack. Not right this second, but there’d been one attack, and any minute now there’d be another. The flyer might be only minutes away, but by the time it arrived, it could be too late.
“Cadan . . .”
His eyes came up to hers. He must have read the realization in them, because his own moved, just slightly, a side-to-side flick like a head shake. Don’t say anything. His look couldn’t convey any more than that—it wasn’t Cadan’s mind she could read—but she didn’t need it to. She could see as well as he what effect it would have if everyone around them knew there might be no hope, that they might not get out of this alive.
Her arms were hurting from the pressure she was putting on Felicia’s wound. Speckles of dizziness raced across her vision, and she set her teeth in the soft inside of her lower lip, trying to draw on whatever reserves of strength or stamina she still had. Felicia was still breathing, her chest rising in one painful, labored heave after another. She might not—oh God, I can’t be thinking that—she might not survive until the flyer arrived. But it can’t be my fault if she doesn’t. It can’t be because I gave up too soon. Back weeks ago on the Phoe
nix, when Elissa’s decisions had put the whole crew in danger, when most of them had left and the Phoenix had been damaged, when Elissa had been in shreds about what she’d brought upon them all, Felicia had told her to stop looking guilty, told her that she didn’t bear the responsibility for what the crew had decided to do.
She can’t just die. She can’t just die like this.
Her ears filled with sound, not ringing this time but a high, thick whining, like swarms and swarms of insects, their wings whirring. Her vision darkened, not in specks but as if a cloud had covered the sun. Oh damn it all, no, no, I’m not going to faint.
Then the sound and the sudden dimness came together in her head, making sense. She looked up.
Overhead, a smooth dark shape against the blaze of the sky, blocking out the sunlight, the flyer was descending. The sound filling her ears was the whir of its propellers.
Lin’s face lifted, lit with relief, and for a moment that same relief swept through Elissa, too. It was here. It was here in time, and they were going to be okay.
Then the next attack came.
She saw the grenade as it was hurled from the far side of the square. This time it didn’t explode on impact, but bounced, once, twice. Elissa had time to crouch over Felicia, her hands flattened between them, feeling Cadan’s body cover her own, knowing that Lin and Cassiopeia had thrown themselves facedown on the ground, not knowing what Sofia and El—and oh God, Cadan’s mother—were doing, not having time to see, screwing her eyes tight shut against what she knew was coming—
The grenade blew up. She heard the crack of the pavement exploding beneath it, felt something whiz above her and Cadan’s heads with a rush of hot air, a smell of burning, managed to think, It’s not as close as the last one. I can still hear. Please don’t let there be another. Don’t let me go deaf again.
She didn’t go deaf, but when the next explosion came it cracked through her ears so painfully she almost wished she had. In the moment of horrible quiet afterward, she lifted her head, and the angle she crouched at took her gaze straight to the brightly colored play area. The slide lay on its side now, a couple of women in its shelter, their children huddled in their arms. The little playhouse was still standing, but flying shrapnel had melted great gouges across the blue-and-red stripes of its roof, blown straight through one corner so two of the little windows had become one big window beneath a sagging plastic ledge. Some parents and children were sheltering behind that, too, but the parents at least must know it was next to useless.
They’d do so much better running for the shelter of one of the security-cam supports. But they’re all around the sides of the square, the idea of running across all that empty space must be just too much to cope with.
Then the silence suddenly registered in Elissa’s brain.
El. El was no longer screaming. Elissa threw a terrified look toward her. They can’t die. None of the Spares can die, not when they’ve only just gotten free.
El was kneeling beside Sofia, her long limbs in a graceless huddle. She wasn’t hurt, at least not physically. Looking at her, though, Elissa was suddenly scared that this last escape, the attack, the danger and violence suddenly bombarding them were all too much for an already fragile mind. El’s eyes were wide and blank. Her fingers pressed into her face as if she were trying to push herself out of existence.
And above them all, the flyer had stopped descending.
“What’s wrong?” Lin’s voice was a whisper, as if shock would not allow her to raise it. “Why isn’t it coming down to get us?”
Elissa threw another look up. The flyer wasn’t an IPL craft, but a standard Sekoian emergency vehicle. On its sleek side, just visible from where she crouched, the trident-caduceus symbol showed. Her whole body seemed to sink as if she’d gotten caught in a high-grav field.
“It’s med-services,” she said. “They sent a med-services vehicle. It’s not armored. They can’t come down.”
“What?” The relief drained from Lin’s face. She cast one disbelieving look around them, at the shocked and injured Spares and twins, at the terrified people trying to shelter behind the ineffectual shields of plastic slides and swing sets. “But they have to. People are hurt.”
“They still can’t,” said Elissa, despair making her careless, making her forget to guard her words. “They can’t risk getting hit.”
“They can risk it more than we can!” Lin’s voice rose, a shrill edge to it that hurt Elissa’s ears. “If one of those things hits us, we’re dead!”
Elissa felt her shoulders begin to slump. If it hadn’t been for Felicia, still breathing under her hands, she’d have let them slump, let her whole body crumple. “If a grenade hits the flyer, if it punctures the fuel tank, we’re all dead anyway. It’ll go up like a fireball, Lin.” She shut her eyes for a hopeless moment. “They can’t land without getting themselves, as well as us, killed.”
When she forced her eyes to reopen she found Cadan looking at her. His shoulders had the same defeated slope to them she recognized in her own.
“Why?” she asked him, despairing disbelief in her voice. “Why would they send an unarmored flyer? The commander said it was an emergency. She told them.”
Cadan moved his head in what was almost a head shake. “She didn’t say that we were under direct attack, though. She couldn’t: We weren’t. I . . . God, I don’t know. I’d have thought they’d have guessed how close we were to danger.” He shook his head again. “They’re overstretched, we know that. If they didn’t have a police flyer free . . .”
“So what are we going to do?” Lin demanded. “If they start throwing those grenade things again? If the flyer can’t come down to get us? What can we do?”
And it was that, the panic in Lin’s face, in her voice, that shook Elissa into realization. Here she was on the verge of giving up, when less than half an hour ago she’d been congratulating herself on the power she and Lin had discovered.
Her spine stiffened. Her head came up. “You tell me,” she said. “We moved a spaceship, Lin. We shouldn’t be asking what can we do. We should be asking which thing are we going to choose to do.”
Something rose, blazing, into Lin’s face. Her head came up too, and she swept one look around the square. “The people attacking us—they’re not in vehicles or anything, or I’d be able to feel where they were, we’d be able to do something to their vehicles.”
“What about the people themselves?” said Cadan, his voice pitched low so it wouldn’t carry.
Lin cast Elissa a cautious look. “Lissa said she doesn’t like me killing people. . . .”
It was true. She had said that. But right now, with Felicia’s life oozing away beneath her fingers, with a square full of hurt and frightened people who hadn’t done anything, who were just trying to survive in a world gone mad, she couldn’t remember why it had mattered so much.
Trust me, I can make exceptions.
She nearly said it out loud before she bit down hard on the words, forcing them back, trying to unthink them before Lin picked up on the thought. Right now she felt that, but she couldn’t say it, not to Lin, couldn’t confuse her that way. “They’re trying to kill us,” she said instead. “They’re not trying to negotiate or anything—they’re just a hate group. We can let them kill us, or we can defend ourselves. And if we can only do that by attacking back—”
Lin was shaking her head before Elissa finished speaking. “But I can’t see them. If I can’t see them and can’t touch them, I can’t do anything.”
“Not even knock them out?” Cadan said. “Like on the Phoenix?”
Lin had done that, had rendered the Phoenix crew unconscious long enough to take control of the flight deck, plug herself into the hyperdrive, and make that death-wish leap that had saved them all. But now she shook her head again.
“Not without touching them. I just can’t.” She was biting her lip, driving the blood from it with the pressure of her teeth. Every time she spoke she released it and the blood rushed b
ack in, making the skin bright red, swollen and sore-looking.
“Fine,” said Elissa. “We’ll do something else.” She cast a look around, trying to crush her own rising dread. What did they have? What weapons to use? What kind of protection? Her gaze swept over injured people, and others terrified into immobility, over Spares who might have something like Lin’s electrokinesis, but who, if so, hadn’t yet discovered it, and weren’t going to do so in time to help them now. Over Mr. Greythorn and Commander Dacre, their hands full with trying to defend the square. No one could help. It was her and Lin or no one.
She scanned the square again, and this time her gaze caught on the burned, half-melted trail across the playhouse roof, on the mothers and children sheltering ineffectually by the overturned slide. The play equipment. It was just plastic, it wasn’t even reinforced with anything stronger. But what else was there? What else was there that could be used as a shield?
She’d thought it a few minutes ago, thought that they’d be better running for . . .
For the security-cam supports. Supports that were made, not of flimsy plastic, but of super-steel.
“Lin.”
Lin followed where she was looking. “What? Those things?” Then, quick as a spark, understanding leaped. “You mean we can defend the square? Long enough for the flyer to come down?”
“It’s you who’s the heavy lifter,” said Elissa. “Do you think we can?”
“Yes.” Lin’s voice was all emphasis. “How do we tell the flyer pilot, though?”
“Cadan?” said Elissa. “The commander—she’ll have communication, won’t she?”
Cadan’s shoulders were no longer slumping either. He nodded, a quick jerk of his head, then shot a glance over to Cassiopeia and raised his voice. “Hey, can you keep applying pressure here while I get over to the commander?”
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