Summer Ruins

by Trisha Leigh

  “I don’t see how we could alter what they collect at the end of the day,” Reese offers in her quiet voice. “I mean, we’re just breaking off chunks of rock and ice and soil.”

  “It’s the soft metals that thread through a lot of it. But we don’t have the tools to extract it ourselves. The best we could do is give them less, but with only the four of us working at it, we wouldn’t make a difference.” Emmy shrugs. “I’m not trying to be discouraging, but it’s true.”

  Wes has been silent the whole time, staring off into space. Maybe he’s thinking of something brilliant, but I’m starting to wonder if Emmy’s decision to include him has more to do with his handsome exterior than any potential ability to help. Or perhaps it was just because he knew Pax and she felt sure that he wouldn’t betray us.

  He’s strong, at least. Wes will be good in a fight.

  “If you could extract it… if you could, you could deconstruct it.” Rita’s voice has changed since her days instructing our Cell courses in Danbury. It’s soft and shaking, and her eyes flick around the room too fast, the way Mrs. Morgan’s did before she Broke. As she Broke.

  “This is what we’ve been discussing,” Leah adds. “She has good ideas of what we would need to do if we ever got out of here.”

  “Need to analyze it first, find out what it is, take it apart, put it together—”

  “Hold on.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to make sense of what she’s saying. It’s manic, her speech, and it runs together sort of like Kendaja’s.

  But most of the time Kendaja makes sense, even if finding her train of thought sometimes hurts my brain. “Emmy said you don’t think they’re mining neodymium exactly—or if they are, they’re changing it chemically before ingesting it. So, we need a sample and we need equipment to do… what?”

  “To reverse engineer it,” Leah pipes up when Rita appears to lose interest in our conversation, her gray eyes sparkling with anticipation. “Create our own version, so we can alter it at a subatomic level. And make it kill them.”

  We all go silent. It might be the answer.

  Chapter 19.

  “What do you mean?” Pax turns toward Leah the same instant she twists into him, and for a moment it’s like watching one person. It makes me wonder just how much time they’ve been spending together, and whether or not they’re being careful enough down in the mines. It seems like Leah gets into trouble wherever she goes, and to be honest, I’m not sure what would happen to Pax if he were to shoulder any more guilt.

  “Like… if we could analyze the neodymium or whatever it is in a lab, like Rita said, we could figure out how to create it synthetically. Right?” Leah tears her eyes from Pax and flicks them toward the Monitor for confirmation.

  When Rita jerks her head up and down several times Leah nods back in excitement, her fingers twisted and knuckles cracking until Pax covers her hands with his. I chew on my lip, her idea sinking in. There’s so much potential.

  If there is a way to create neodymium instead of mining it, maybe we won’t have to kill off the Others after all. They could survive without stealing planets and enslaving inhabitants. Then we wouldn’t have to destroy another species. We wouldn’t be as bad as the Others.

  “If we could somehow get the tools and equipment required to figure that out, it could work.” Wes frowns at Leah, who returns it.

  “I mean, if we knew how it assisted their ability to thrive, we could engineer a version without that component that looked the same!” Emmy jumps from the chair, pacing the room.

  “That’s the missing link. We know what it is but not why they need it. You’ll have to know why or you can’t change it.” Rita looks up now, staring right at Leah as though the rest of us aren’t here.

  It’s a lot of ifs, but figuring out how to unmake the pink substance so that we can remake it to our advantage would be ideal. Everyone’s talking at once; how to do it, whether or not the Others would just leave and never come back if they no longer needed a mine on Earth, how fun it would be to watch them shrivel up and die without ever figuring out why.

  There will be time enough later to decide how best to use such a concoction—first we have to figure out how to make it.

  But my suspicious nature flares, dampening my excitement over Leah’s very good suggestion. Lucas presses a hand against the small of my back, his blue eyes questioning when I turn to look at him. I shrug. “It’s just, the science is complicated. Sure, we’ve read about particle acceleration, and combining and altering molecules, and we’ve done some controlled experiments, but not like this. We could figure it out, but it would take us a long time.”

  He sighs, tugging his ear and glancing at our exuberant friends. “And that’s if we managed to get hold of all the equipment we’d need.”

  Leah’s eyes find mine and they darken at the look on my face, which I imagine is borrowed from Pax’s healthy skeptical reservoir. I give her a quick shake of the head and a tiny smile. Now isn’t the time to rain on anyone’s good mood, and everyone else is still sharing ideas.

  “Maybe Rita can help us with those things, too. It can’t be an impossible leap, from us understanding how to do something in theory to putting it into practice.” Lucas keeps his voice low as the rest of the kids settle down.

  I’m starting to think this is a lot of people to bunk for the night, but the furnicars locked a while ago and the only light comes from the generous-sized ball of fire on my knees. I lower my voice to a whisper. “It’ll take time, though, and we might not have much of that. And even so, if it were possible to build the substance from scratch instead of mining it, why haven’t the Others already done that? If they could make this compound, they wouldn’t have to take it from different planets. They could stop… Oh.”

  Lucas nods as the truth dawns on me. “They can’t stop. Even if they don’t have to mine the neodymium, they still need a place to live. A home. How many uninhabited, hospitable planets are out there, do you think?”

  “No clue, honestly.”

  Everyone’s staring at us, and I feel a blush creep across my face. Sometimes it feels as though Lucas and I have always been an us, but other times, baring that simple truth to other kids still feels wrong and too different. It’s a holdover from the days when showing affection was impossible and doing it with the opposite sex would have been shocking. To prove a point, maybe to myself more than them, I reach out and thread my fingers through Lucas’s. I notice that Pax never dropped Leah’s hand, and she holds his in her lap.

  “It’s a great start, you guys. It might be the best idea we’ve come up with, and you’re right—there’s tons of potential. The next step is for us to figure out how to get back home so we can find the resources to make it happen. Brittany and the kids at the cabin might be able to help, too.” I wish we had a way to get her a message.

  We’ve been spoiled with help from the Spritans and the Sidhe, making it all the more obvious how limited our own talents are when it comes to communication. We have the hive, but it only allows us to communicate with Others, not humans.

  “We’ll need a list of equipment we need to make this work,” I say to Rita, refusing to look away until her eyes meet mine.

  “Yes, I know everything, Leah can remember a list.” Rita swallows hard, looking desperate to drop her reddened gaze.

  I can tell everyone’s tired; it’s been a long day and sneaking around can take a lot out of a person. Exhaustion weaves into my muscles, loosening knots and leaving tired limbs in its wake. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  It takes a few minutes to settle in and figure out how we’re going to bunk eight of us in two beds. In the end, all four of us girls squash into one and the boys take the other. Rita insists on sleeping on the floor between the beds, borrowing a blanket from us and a pillow from the boys. It seems like the boys having a harder time trying not to touch one another than we are, which makes me smile through my half-open eyes. Boys and girls may both be human, but spending time with the unveiled o
f both—along with my weeks with Lucas and Pax—has revealed many differences.

  Emmy and I have been in the shower together, which killed any awkwardness between us weeks ago. I don’t know Reese well at all, but Leah and I have spent a night together before. To be honest, as much as I adore cuddling with Lucas every single night, this is nice, too. The feeling of friendship—or, at least, the potential for it—presses, heavy and tangible, against my arms and legs, and it slips a smile onto my lips. Greer has shown me the appeal of having girls for friends, too.

  I think everyone’s asleep after only a few minutes have passed. Deep breaths and silence invade the tent, and my own eyes start to fall closed when Leah’s hand presses into mine. I shift to look at her, and with my eyes long adjusted to the dark, her wide gray eyes are visible. They’re serious, the way she so often is.

  “You can do this, Althea. You’re going to do this.” Her fingers tighten around mine. “I know it.”

  I squeeze back. “We’re going to do this.”

  She smiles then, but only slightly. A strange combination of fear and warmth wraps around my shoulders like a thick sweater, and I know it comes from having friends, and from the real possibility of letting them down.

  ***

  Althea. Althea, come out here.

  The words drag me from sleep. At least, I think they wake me, but the moment I open my eyes to the packed-dirt walls of my sinum, I know I’m wrong.

  “Althea!”

  Now that the part of my mind that rests in the hive is fully conscious, Deshi’s voice becomes clear in an instant. I take three halting steps toward the thick barrier of fire, air, and ice. “What do you want?”

  “I have something for you.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask whether he’s alone and why should I trust him. But he saved us in the Underground Core, and the logic that guided me during my weeks there still stands. If I want Deshi to trust me, I have to prove that I trust him.

  I take a deep breath and step out into the open tunnels.

  He’s alone. It’s been about a month since we arrived at the Harvest Site—as far as I know, neither he nor Zakej have returned since they left us here. Deshi appears thinner than the last time I saw him. He didn’t really have a ton of weight to lose, and there’s something different about his eyes.

  The black veins still race through the whites of his eyes like the legs of a spider, but the blue seems brighter, maybe even happy. It makes me want to smile at him, so I do. “Hi.”

  It takes him aback, and then he returns my expression. I think it’s the first time we’ve smiled at each other. “Hey.”

  “How long have you known where to find my sinum?” I know the Wardens have been guarding us, and the fact that Deshi could have come to me any time reaffirms that he’s still not convinced that he belongs with us. My defenses want to rise, but that won’t help anything.

  “These barriers are pretty easy to find. The Wardens know where you all are now.” He shrugs and knocks on the solid elements keeping me safe. “Not that it matters.”

  “But you don’t have a wall. Won’t they know you’re in here?” I can’t believe it, but I’m kind of worried for him.

  “It’s not weird for me to be in the hive as long as they don’t know you’re outside your sinum. Anyway this will only take a minute. Here.” He stretches out a hand, a white envelope pinched between two fingers. “I didn’t open it.”

  I take it from him hesitantly, seeing my name inked on the outside but not recognizing the handwriting. “Who’s it from?”

  “Brittany.”

  “How did it get in here?”

  Deshi shakes his head, looking irritated with me again. “You really don’t get how this works, do you?”

  “The hive mind? Not really. You just… imagine it and it’s here?” The same way I needed metal to melt into doorways or a pen to write down the twists and turns between Pax’s alcove and my own. “Is she okay? Brittany?”

  His mouth tightens. “She’s fine. Her charges are not doing so well. I wanted to speak with you about possibly turning Nat loose. He’s not going to make it much longer without their integral nourishment—”

  “The neodymium, right?” I watch for the reaction.

  Deshi’s gaze jerks to mine, emotions carefully under control now. “Right.”

  He doesn’t ask how I discovered its name. Again, I’m not sure how or why it matters while we’re stuck at the Harvest Site. “Does it really matter, Deshi? Whether Nat dies at the cabin or in the Underground Core? If we turn him loose and let you take him back to the Prime, he’ll kill him, anyway.”

  His shoulders sag, and it stabs sympathy into my heart. It can’t be easy for him to see a guy he knows suffering like that, and Nat’s pretty cool. For a Warden. I don’t want to think of him suffering, either. “Listen, I’ll talk to Pax and Lucas. Maybe if we took Griffin’s barrier down for a few minutes he could heal Nat and we could get away with it. Are the Wardens watching their sinums all the time?”

  It’s the first time I’ve asked Deshi for information, and his hesitation is all the confirmation I need. No matter that he’s still spending time at the cabin, or that he’s brought me a note from Brittany. Maybe he’s questioning, but he’s not yet made a choice. I turn away. “Thanks for the note.”

  “Do you want to write her back? I can wait a few minutes.”

  The idea that we could get Brittany the information about the neodymium sounds too good to pass up. “Yeah. Give me a minute.”

  I pause halfway through my swirling, flickering barrier, thinking to ask about Wolf. Missing him makes it hard to swallow the tears clawing their way up my burning throat. Without meeting Deshi’s eyes, I scrape out the question, “How’s Wolf?”

  His hand catches mine, an unexpected and strange expression of friendship, and I raise my cloudy gaze to his. His smile is back, and this time it stretches his lips wide into his cheeks, too. “He’s great, Althea. We have fun together, exploring. And he’s so smart, the way he knows so many words. I’ll… I’ll give him a scratch for you.”

  “Thanks,” I choke out, dropping his hand and slipping into the solitude of my own sinum before breaking down in front of him.

  It should be enough to know he’s not against us anymore. Except he’s not with us, either, and I’ve been as patient as I know how. Pushing him won’t get us anywhere. I sense that the things he’s seen at the cabin, with Brittany and Wolf, have changed the way he views the world, but something is holding him back from walking away from the Others once and for all.

  The way Zakej looked at Deshi with such fondness, the obvious and easy friendship between them, pushes to the forefront of my mind. It clashes with the images of Zakej from my own past—torturing me with a gleeful smile, dropping Lucas to the ground with a glance, biting my lip until it bled—until anger whips my blood into a boil. How can one of us not see Zakej for the monster he is?

  To distract myself from the bad taste that the friendship between Zakej and Deshi leaves in my mouth, I tear open the envelope from Brittany. Maybe Deshi knows how to bring physical objects in and out of the hive, but I don’t, so I’ll have to read it here and remember it.

  Althea—

  I wish you could be here, but I’m glad that you’ve sent Deshi so we know that you’re at least alive. Greer and Griffin seem to be fine—a little too thin and pale, but there are still flowers to clean up every morning. Nat’s the same. Wolf’s happy, but I think he misses you, especially at night.

  Deshi promised he wouldn’t read this note before he gave it to you, and I believe him. It took him a while, but he’s talking to me. Don’t give up on him, Althea. He’s going to do the right thing when push comes to shove, I know it.

  Everyone’s here now. The kids from Des Moines got here first, then the ones from Portland and Atlanta. It took our friends from Danbury the longest. They’re the farthest, as you know, plus they ran into not one giant lake but two. They were on the maps but I guess we didn�
��t expect them to be quite so big. We’re working the problem, but without knowing what the element is, answers are theoretical at best.

  Thanks again for sending Deshi. I would be desolate without him, honestly, and it was his idea to write you a letter. I just wanted to let you know that we’re all here and on your side, and want you guys to come back. Say hi to Lucas and Pax for me.

  Brittany

  The letter is nice and informative, but it cuts concern through my happiness at hearing all of the news from Deadwood. Nice isn’t Brittany’s default setting, so it makes me worry about how she’s really doing. It can’t have been easy there alone all that time, and getting thirty-nine strangers on the same page must have been difficult. I hope she can handle it.

  I close my eyes for a second, imagining an ink pen, and when I look again it’s cool between my fingers. I sit and flip Brittany’s note over, scribbling on the back:

  Brittany,

  You can’t imagine how good it is to hear from you, and to know that all is well at the cabin. I’m glad that Wolf and the Sidhe are doing okay. The boys and I will talk about what, if anything, we can do for Nat. Thank you for any and all help you’re able to give us with bringing Deshi around. I hope that you’re right about him—that we all are.

  There are two things I think you’d like to know. First of all, the name of the element the Others require for survival is called neodymium on the table of elements, but the sort they’re mining isn’t exactly the same—it’s a variation that the humans were apparently not aware of or that the Others purposefully removed from our textbooks. Instead of oxidizing yellow, it turns pink in the air (as you know), but it’s a similar soft metallic substance embedded in the planet’s crust. If you can figure out its components, that would be a big help.

  I don’t want to say anything about our plan, not yet, not in writing.

  Second, Leah is alive and well.

  I know things have not been easy for you, Brittany, but you’re strong. We’re working hard at figuring out how to get back to the cabin. Deshi might be the answer, if he can be fully convinced. Keep working on him.