by Trisha Leigh
She’s trapped in the hive. We walled off her alcove.
Except she’s not.
Tommy screams and she leans in to kiss him—to kill him.
“No!” Pax shouts, barreling past me into Kendaja and Tommy so hard that he knocks the boy loose.
He manages to get in between them, shoving Tommy away. But Kendaja isn’t mentally present, not even as much as she normally is, and she simply plants her lips on the back of Pax’s neck instead of on Tommy’s face. A moan, deep and soaked in pain, issues from Pax. He squirms weakly, but her arms are like a vice around his chest. His skin splits at the base of his neck until white bone gleams through. Kendaja’s tongue snakes out, digging through muscle and tendon, blood gushing with every flick.
Jas cries and screams, beating at the deranged girl’s back but having no effect. Something snaps inside me, tearing loose my will to live and letting go of the idea that we’re meant to survive this. Maybe we don’t have a home because we were never meant to go back.
“All for one,” I whisper to no one in particular.
I take the two steps necessary to reach Kendaja and use every last ounce of strength to rip her away from Pax. He collapses to the ground, still and unmoving. I know it’s too late to save him—when Kendaja kisses people, they don’t survive.
Lucas and Greer are both screaming my name, their feet moving toward me, but they won’t make it in time. Kendaja’s eyes light up and she leans in. At the last moment before her lips touch mine, I smile and see fear flicker in her insane black gaze.
The pain of her kiss nearly ruptures my brain, shreds my nerve endings with screaming pain. Thanks to her brother, though, I can deal with pain. At least long enough to do what I intend.
I push the agony that’s crawling into my brain deep inside me and I kiss her back. Heat, more than I’ve ever used before, gushes from my lips, pours off my tongue and onto hers until it floods her mouth and throat, pushes flames inside her.
She tries to pull away, struggling ferociously, but I clamp my arms around her neck harder than I’ve ever held on to Lucas. The heat turns to fire in my mouth and I push it into her until I can’t breathe anymore.
Until all of my power is gone, until my heart slows to a stop.
Kendaja starts to melt the way her father and brother did, sticky black tar running down my chin and my arms, dropping chunks down my chest. She slops out of my grasp and I let go, stop clinging desperately to consciousness, and hit the ground next to her.
The sky lets loose, the first fat raindrops splashing cool against my skin. I lived long enough to see the rain, after all.
Chapter 41.
Sound returns first. Mostly voices. It confuses me because I’m dead and dead people can’t hear.
I recognize some of them. Deshi and Lucas. My mother. Mr. Morgan, even. They’re all talking about me. Lucas and Deshi take turns relaying what I did, how Pax saved Tommy and then I tried to save Pax.
Then feeling comes back. Something cool, like the refreshingly cool water I swim in when I have my memory dreams, presses against my head, then reaches into my hair. It trails down the back of my neck, around to my mouth and chin, until the dull pain goes away entirely.
“Lucas.” It’s Greer’s voice, and it’s nearer than the rest of them.
Then Lucas’s cold touch wraps around my hand, and he leans close enough for me to smell the wonderful crisp scent of him. I want to open my eyes and see his face, and I figure if dead people can hear and feel, maybe they can see, too.
Tears fill his eyes when I open mine, and he kisses me softly. “Don’t ever do that to me again, Althea. You scared me to death.”
Even though his words are angry, his voice breaks with emotion and I sit up, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him close. The lack of pain surprises me. “I’m sorry.”
I realize after a moment that people are watching so I ease back. We’re inside a tent, and my body rests on one of the cots the Others use for refreshing, but it’s not floating anymore. My fingers thread with Lucas’s, and he doesn’t seem inclined to let them go or move from my side.
“How are you feeling?” my mother asks, concern creasing her pretty forehead.
“Pretty good for a girl who thought she was dead,” I joke.
It falls flat. No one even gives me an obligatory smile, and I find Greer’s sad purple eyes. “You saved me.”
She shrugs. “At least I could save someone.”
“Thank you.”
A little while later Mr. Morgan returns to inform me it’s time for a discussion if I’m feeling up to it. Lucas and Deshi have brought me some food and water, and I feel surprisingly fine.
We file into one of the larger black-and-white striped tents, empty of refreshing equipment and filled instead with a large round table and twenty chairs. The air outside remains pregnant with water, leaving the grass slick and the afternoon chilly.
There are the three of us present, the Elements, a Goblert that isn’t Dax—his skin is clear of slashed names of the dead—and ten human adults. I recognize Mr. Morgan, of course, and the rodentlike algebra Monitor from Danbury, but no one else. One chair is empty. I swallow a pulsing lump of tears at the visible reminder that we’re missing Pax.
I’m not sure where Greer disappeared to, either.
We all take a seat, then everyone’s eyes turn to me. I’m not sure why I have to talk first or why anyone thinks what I have to say is important. Lucas squeezes my hand under the table and confidence finds its way into my mouth.
I clear my throat, then do it again. “We know this decision, what to do with the Others or how to run Earth now that they’re no longer in control, isn’t only ours to make, but Lucas, Deshi, Pax, and I have a few things you need to know.”
Everyone listens attentively. No one comments on my inclusion of Pax. I’m not ready to exclude him from this victory yet, nor will I ever be. “We’ve created a synthetic version of the praseodymium that keeps the Others alive—a real synthetic, not the variation we used to poison them today—and we think we should consider giving it to the Others and allowing them to leave.”
“What’s to stop them from returning?” the algebra Monitor asks. “Or doing this again to another planet?”
“Without the need to mine more praseodymium, they won’t have to. And with enough synthetic, they can survive on their ship until they find a planet that’s uninhabited, or not negatively affected by their presence,” Deshi explains.
Everyone is silent for a while, until Fire speaks up. “We—the Elements—have discussed what we can promise, if you allow us to live. We know we’re not welcome on Earth, and our presence would only continue to cause you environmental issues. But if you allow us to leave, the four of us can rule our people as we were meant to, now that the Prime and his son have been deposed.”
“Won’t someone else be able to control you the way the Prime has all these years?” I want to know the answer because as much as I believe in my mother’s strength, it hasn’t helped her since arriving on Earth—maybe it hasn’t for a long time.
Her eyes soften as they find mine, and I feel her affection warm me from across the table. “The majority of the Others are not violent. The Prime was not always that way, either. If this synthetic praseodymium truly works as you say, it removes our need to conquer other species. We only want a place to call home, after all. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
“But will you be able to handle any Others who wake from this fever and don’t agree with your decision?” Lucas prods. “We can’t take the chance that you’ll lose the ship and they’ll turn back, start this whole thing all over again.”
“The Others are genetically designed to follow a leader, or leaders. They’ll go along with us, and if they don’t, the four of us have the power to put down any rebellion.” Flacara smiles. “The only reason we’ve had so much trouble on Earth is because of you, Althea—and Pax, and Deshi, and Lucas—we couldn’t risk the planet or fighting the Prime unt
il the four of you were old enough to fight, too.”
It makes sense, and I know everyone at this table would rather trust the Elements to do the right thing than kill hundreds of defenseless Others, no matter how they’ve abused and controlled us for almost twenty years. Even the humans at the table, who’ve had decades of freedom stripped from their hands, don’t seem angry. They seem to feel the same way Brittany and our other friends do—that they’d really like to just go home and start over.
“What do you think we should do about the Sanctioned Cities and the fences and getting everything back to normal?” I ask, looking to Mr. Morgan now.
“Don’t worry about that, Althea. We don’t want you or Lucas or Deshi to worry anymore. We’re going to spend the next couple of weeks here and in the Sanctioned Cities taking inventory of what professions we have, what we need, and how many people aren’t going to come back—mentally.” He frowns at having to say the words, and it makes me wonder if he’s thinking about Mrs. Morgan.
I’m surprised he doesn’t hate me for what I did to her.
“Anyway,” he continues, “if you and the Elements can get the Others on their ship and make sure Earth isn’t going to fall into an imbalance, we’ll take care of rebuilding.”
The rest of the adults at the table nod, and when I look at my mother, tears shine in her black-and-blue gaze. It’s a strange but welcome sensation, being told I don’t have to worry about everything from now on.
But as much as I’d like to agree, a little voice inside me won’t do it. “That’s nice of you all, and honestly I’d like nothing more than to go back to being a kid. But I can’t. We can’t. We gave up everything…” My eyes sting as I think of what Pax sacrificed. “Everything to fight the Others, and we aren’t going to let you turn the Earth back into the mess it sounds like it was before they took over.”
The algebra Monitor’s beady eyes harden. “You’re children. You know nothing of the way things were before, or how to best bring society back to its former glory.”
“Glory?” Deshi questions, blowing a chunk of hair out of his eyes. “You mean when the planet was divided into warring countries, when people were full of hate for each other, and when the men and women in power weren’t of strong enough character to fix it?”
I have no idea how he knows all of this, but it must have been part of his retraining by the Others. They recruited him well. Knowing those specifics might have made me question again whether or not the people at this table deserved a second chance. They probably weren’t at fault for the way things were, but if they think everything was fine, they’re wrong.
“And what about everything that happened to get you to that point? The killing and the wars?” I think about the books and plaques we read about the Native Americans, the boy from A Separate Peace who took his own life because of a faraway war.
“How dare you? The world was fine. We had problems, but it was better than this. And better than taking orders from some kids who think they’re damn royalty because they were brave.” The Monitor spits the words, and for a moment silence wafts over the tent.
Then Mr. Morgan speaks up, soft but firm. “You can leave now, Walter.”
The Monitor gapes, but Mr. Morgan just shakes his head. “They’re not wrong, and you know it. Things weren’t good. We have a chance to start over, to do things right, and I don’t want anyone in this tent—or part of the rebuilding effort—who wants things to go back to the way they were.”
The Monitor gets up and leaves without a word, knocking his chair into the grass in the process. Mr. Morgan raises his eyebrows at the rest of the adults rounding the table. “Anyone else?” When no one moves, he turns back to me. “Go on.”
Lucas squeezes my hand again, and I let him answer. “We know we’re kids, and that you are all better equipped to be in charge, but we want to be involved, at least peripherally.”
“I think that’s fine. The four of you, what you did here today, won’t be forgotten. Can’t be forgotten. Our new society will need you.” Mr. Morgan says this grimly, as though he’s not happy to have to relay the message.
It dawns on me why a moment later. Symbols. We’ll be symbols, not just people, and it means we’ll never be able to fade into the crowd. To simply live.
My heart crumples, even though I already knew this would happen, and fresh tears prick my eyes. Lucas’s hand tightens around mine, but it can’t thwart the sweat on my palm. Then I look in his eyes and see determination and love and promises that allow my heart to expand again. It will be okay.
It’s time to stop being a child, or at least thinking like one. Maybe we didn’t ask for this, but we took the responsibility all the same. We can’t just give it back now because we’re tired. “Okay. What do we do first?”
“I talked to Brittany,” Deshi interjects. “With access to the extraction station at the Harvest Site, they could manufacture enough praseodymium to last the Others a year, and teach them how to make it, too.”
“How long?” Lucas asks.
“She said a month, maybe less.”
A rustling noise at my back shoots me to my feet and I whirl around, sure another enemy has popped up unexpectedly, ready to kill us all.
It’s only Greer, and she puts her hands up in the air with a tired smile. “Just me. Pax is asking for you, Althea.”
***
The tent they’re keeping him in is dark, but when I push aside the flap a beam of sunlight falls across his pale face. That’s the moment my heart stops beating. I don’t think I believed Pax was alive until now.
He squints into the light, his handsome face contorted in pain. The flap falls closed behind me, and we’re alone. I stumble to the makeshift cot, dropping to the cool grass and putting my hands gently to his cheeks.
Pax lies on his side, turned toward me, and is undressed from the waist up. He grins, trying for the stomach-flipping one but not quite making it, and a sob shudders past my lips. “You’re alive.”
“You saved me, Althea.” He reaches out a hand, grunting with the effort, and smoothes the wild strands of hair from my forehead. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I did, Pax. I love you, and you would have done the same for me. For any of us.”
“But I didn’t. I didn’t save anyone,” he chokes out, so much pain spilling toward me that I feel cold all over.
“That’s not true. You saved Tommy. And even though we didn’t save everyone today, a lot of people are alive because of us.” The words sound empty, even to my ears, because the victory feels like a failure when Leah’s grin pops into my mind.
“Leah,” he whispers. “She… I should have stayed away from her. She might not have been so eager to help if we weren’t spending so much time together.”
I raise my eyes to his, squeezing his hand against my cheek. “Don’t say that, Pax. She cared about you, and the two of you having each other these past weeks made her happy. She’d never have known what it was like to feel that way if it wasn’t for us unveiling them.” I swallow hard. “She wouldn’t have traded her whole life under the Others for her days with you. I know it.”
Pax drops his hand from my face, resting his head back on the pillow and not bothering to wipe the tears wetting his face. I grab a towel from the stand by the cot, drying his face until it stops getting wet again.
“Why didn’t walling Kendaja’s alcove work?” I ask, wondering if Pax has any ideas. “She sure did a number on you.”
“I told you she likes me,” he jokes weakly. “And I don’t know. I asked Greer the same question while she healed me—it actually felt like she was ripping me apart instead of putting me back together—and she thinks it’s probably because Kendaja’s mind doesn’t work the way everyone else’s does to begin with.” He tries to shrug, then hisses at the pain. “It doesn’t matter now.”
I suppose it doesn’t. I stay with Pax for a long time, until the sun goes down and he finally sleeps. We talk about where we’re going from here, what this ne
w civilization will look like, and what we’ll be asked to give to it.
I tell him about Deshi’s movie—how even though it might seem as though everything is terrible now, and we hoped so hard this would turn out differently, a lot of people are thankful.
When his breathing evens out, I stand up to leave and see the ugly black strings tying the skin of his shoulder, neck, and back together. Flesh-toned shimmers stretch out between them, obviously Greer’s handiwork, and revulsion tightens my stomach.
Kendaja nearly tore him in half.
The Others ripped us all open, and nothing Greer can do will make us mend.
We’ll all have scars.
***
Three weeks later, the four of us are gathered at the old Underground Core. The Others’ spaceship is huge—we had to wake about twenty of them from the fever state so they could move the pieces outside and put it back together—but now it sits behind Mount Rushmore, ready to fly.
All of the Others are on board. Most of them aren’t aware of what’s going on, and even though a few of the lucid Wardens didn’t like keeping their friends and family ill, they didn’t argue with the Elements when they said it was one of the terms of us allowing them to leave uncontested.
There’s one more thing to do before they can leave. Since the Others are locked in the ship, their air filtration system turned on, the planet has begun, at a deep level, to tip out of balance. The Elements promised to show us how to fix it before they leave.
“Your planet suffered from an imbalance before we arrived,” Vant tells us, sticking close to Pax.
We’ve all been taking turns sticking close to Pax since he almost died. He stayed in bed for the better part of a week while the skin on his neck, shoulders, and back knitted together. It turned out his Atlanta father—the Healer—had survived the events of the Summer Celebration and was able to help tend to him.