Niko

by Kayti Nika Raet

  Chapter 30

  She was in a white room again.

  She rubbed her eyes with one hand; the medical squad must have done something to knock her out after she saw how bad his infection had gotten. She had no idea how long she’d been out, an hour? A day? A week? Maybe it was only a day, she already felt much better than she had Outside as if the sheer commitment it took to survive out there had drained her dry of energy and now she was being plumped and re-hydrated like a sponge.

  Niko swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. The room she was in was as white and as spare as the last one though the bathroom was on the opposite side. In there the mirror was cracked, giving her multiple and fragmented views of herself and she wondered about the room’s previous occupant. Had it been someone about to change into a Slither and they couldn't bear to see the change impassively reflected back at them?

  She shook her head vigorously, it made her think of Malik, and thinking of him made her think of the breakfast room, and she’d done so well to keep all that out of her head.

  Hoping the cracked mirror hadn’t destroyed her image too much she turned around and pulled off her paper shirt. As she’d suspected when her back didn’t protest upon waking someone had placed MRG on her back and removed the stitches. The MRG couldn’t perform cosmetic miracles though and where her cuts had already healed somewhat there were scars, but the faints scars of someone injured years, not days, ago.

  She had pulled the shirt back on and was exiting the bathroom when the room door opened and Ari stepped in.

  Sometimes on her way back to the city she would wonder, only for the briefest moments, how Ari would react when they saw each other again. Would Ari be nervous, aloof? She had to know that she was one of the reasons Niko had left so suddenly. Perhaps she would be angry; Niko had destroyed their primary option for escaping the city.

  But Ari was none of those. She threw her arms around her shoulders squeezing tightly and rocking her from side to side.

  “We’re so worried about you!” She exclaimed. “Malik thought you guys were dead. He couldn’t sleep – well, he hardly ever gets any sleep anyway, poor boy, but that’s a different story – he was really worried, we all were but him especially. It’s sweet how much he cares about you.”

  Niko couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. Ari was laying it on kind of thick.

  Ari broke out of the embrace. “We wanted to look for you guys but the Council thought you guys were dead as well and they---” She pitched her voice high and nasal obviously mocking a particular Council member. “‘Don’t want to waste a valuable resource on a fruitless mission. We understand how distressing it is to lose a friend but getting yourselves killed as well will not bring them back.’ Gods, they’re so annoying. They wouldn’t even listen when Duc said that since you were an Outsider it was very possible that you guys survived and were trying to make it back to the city.” She huffed. “And see? If they let us go we would have been able to help Ben.”

  Niko felt as if she had swallowed a mouthful of rainwater, her whole body burned. “What happened to Ben?”

  Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.

  She had already sacrificed all hope of finding Jared by bringing Ben back to the city, she didn’t think she would be able to take it if she learned that she had been too late, the infection had progressed too far.

  “He might lose the leg. They’re working on it right now and they’re trying their best to save it but ...” With a pained expression Ari sucked her lower lip and jerked her shoulders forward.

  Niko’s reaction was the exact opposite; she relaxed and nearly smiled. He wasn’t dead, now all that was left to do was figure out how to get out of the city again. Next time she’d be more prepared, nothing spur of the moment.

  “I’m glad you’re okay.” Ari clasped her hands together. “Something happened while you were gone.” She kept her eyes lowered and Niko couldn’t read them and discover how bad the news was going to be.

  “You can come in now.” Ari said and the door leading into the room uttered a loud creak as it was pushed open. Someone stepped in.

  Niko’s hands flew to her mouth and when Ari lifted her eyes she saw that they glittered with excitement as she bounced on her toes.

  It had been nearly two months since the fire and Slithers had destroyed her house killing one brother and causing the other to go missing. In two months Jared had changed, he’d grown a little taller, and while he no longer looked as gaunt as he had in the photo there was a certain sharpness to him that wasn’t present before, it was in his stance and his expression. It filled eyes that were no longer wide-eyed and eleven. She wrapped him up in a hug that he didn’t return.

  “He entered the city the day after you left,” Ari said. “That’s why when we couldn’t track your id chip we grew really concerned. We knew how much you wanted to see him again. He was with –”

  “The Gemini gang,” Niko interrupted. “It was in a file.” And she watched Ari’s expression change as something clicked into place.

  She looked down at her brother, most of the changes settled into place as if he’d always been that way. Every change except one.

  She reached out to touch the square eye-patch covering his left eye but he moved his head back before she could lay a hand on it.

  “Who did this to you?” She asked the horror in her voice turning to anger by the last word.

  He pulled out of her embrace adjusting the eye-patch though she had never touched it. He fixed the bands that ran above his right eyebrow. “It’s nothing, I did it. I had to prove something.”

  What could removing his own eye possibly prove? Her mind traveled to Phin’s comment about Jared, that he was crazy. He certainly seemed like it in that moment.

  “I’ll give you some time together.” Ari said, she began to ease out of the room. “The Director wants to talk to you when you’re finished.”

  “Ari.” Niko called just as she was about to step out. “In one of the clothes I had on before there’s a photo in one of the pockets. Can you put it back in my file? I don’t think I need it anymore.” She stared straight into Ari’s eyes. There was a challenge in them and Ari eventually looked away.

  “Sure.” She closed the door.

  Niko sat on the edge of the bed and Jared leaned against the wall besides the head of it. She wanted to reach out and touch him, feel the smooth skin of his arm beneath her fingertips and know that he really was there and wasn’t going to disappear the moment she turned her head like he had the night of the fire.

  “Where were you that night?” She asked and he needed no further explanation to understand the question. He looked away rubbing a finger under his nose. For the first time since their reunion her brother looked his age, small and vulnerable and eleven.

  “Shawn was hungry,” Jared said turning his eye back to her. “He kept crying and we weren’t sure if you were going to come back with anything this time. So I sneaked out and went to see if I could.”

  “And did you?” Niko asked softly. Unconsciously her fingers curled into fists. There was a simple rule in place when she went scavenging: They were not to leave each other alone.

  He nervously adjusted his eye-patch. “I snatched a box of crackers. They were just sitting on the counter and the window wasn’t even locked. I didn’t think I was gone that long but the house was on fire when I came back and the Richardsons wouldn’t let me go in and save you guys, said it was too late.”

  For a brief moment she wondered why had the members of the Rose Circle left with the fire still raging in her home then she realized they’d probably given away all their water earlier that day and had nothing to fight the fire with. The cowardice of the Richardsons was something she didn’t think she would ever understand.

  “I shouldn’t have let him alone.” He said, wrapping his arms around his stomach. “I could have saved him.”

  “There were Slithers there.” Niko said. Even if
he could fight Slithers she didn’t think it’d end well in his favor.

  He jutted his chin forward, the sharpness back to his whole demeanor. “So?”

  She smiled a little smile. If willpower alone was enough to beat back the hoard Jared’s was enough to wipe out all the Slithers on the planet.

  “Why didn’t you come to the city and try to find me?” She asked, steering the conversation slightly. “Didn’t the Richardsons’ tell you where I went?”

  Jared shook his head. “They said you were dead. That Slithers had gone into the house and must have set something on fire. They let me stay at their house for a night when I gave them half my crackers.” He looked as if he wished he had poisoned those crackers and Niko didn’t blame him, their neighbors were liars as well as the worse kind of cowards.

  “I didn’t stay there long.” He made a face that said everything words could not. “The fire was out so I went to see if there was anything I could save. I found this.” He dug into his pocket and placed something in her hands his fingers lightly brushing her palm.

  It was their mother’s watch. The leather band was soot stained and brittle, the face of the watch was cracked and beneath the round plane of glass the hands were frozen at nine and ten. She ran her thumb back and forth over its surface. “Keeping it under the mattress must have protected it.” She said. He nodded.

  “I left, I didn’t really know where I was going to go but Mrs. Mohammed gave me some water so I was okay.” His shoulders jerked up and down then he asked in a small voice. “Why didn’t you look for me?”

  Niko pulled her knees up to her chin. She wanted to list all the reasons why she hadn’t, why she’d waited, why it wasn’t her fault but they were just excuses, which wasn’t to say they were baseless or small, but Jared didn’t need to hear them right just then. “I did. We must have just missed each other. I went in a helicopter.”

  Jared’s remaining eye widened. “I saw one when I was coming here, it was so loud. I can’t believe you were in there. What’s it like?”

  Niko began to describe the feeling of being aloft with nothing keeping you in the air but four spinning blades powered by the energy of the sun. And to think if only she had stayed in the city one more day, she would have been reunited with her brother so much sooner instead of being connected to him for that brief second that she was above and he was below.

  “They waste a lot of water here.” Jared interrupted her mid-sentence. He looked appalled.

  Niko laughed, obviously that had been on his mind a long time just waiting to burst out of him. “Yeah, and they don’t even drink most of it.”

  “Remember the time we were playing and Shawn spilled all that water and you were so mad ...” The grin that was creeping across his face fell and he looked down at his shoes. “I wish he was here with us.”

  “Me too.” Niko said. In a span of three years their family of five had been whittled down to two. “Me too.”