The Fall

by Laura Liddell Nolen

  The group exchanged a quick glance of curiosity, but they were happy to comply, and we headed toward the second door of the airlock at a brisk pace. My heart rate sped up, and I realized Dad was acting a little nervous. He and I were separated by a few people, all of whom leaned in, consciously or not, to be sure they caught everything he said. It was a familiar sight in a strange setting.

  Two men carried Eren, and a couple more crew members had Adam, including the woman who’d spoken to me.

  “I’m not sure,” my dad was saying, and his voice suddenly carried to the back of the group. “You’d have to ask my daughter. Charlotte, what’s the story on the drug Adam’s been using? They’re going to need a complete rundown of everything you know. Size, color, dosage, whatever methods he uses to adminis—”

  A high-pitched scream erupted from behind me, followed immediately by a light thud. I jerked around to see one of the crew members on the ground, unconscious.

  Oh, no. No, no, no.

  Adam stood, unsupported, in the middle of our group, a long, black stick dangling from his grip. It wasn’t a stunner—it was more narrow than that—and my grip tightened on my helmet. I couldn’t see his sinister grin through the mask on his helmet, but I knew it was there.

  “Dad, run!” I shouted, and jumped toward Eren. He was half-supported by his remaining crew member, but I was too late. Adam broke off the handle of the stick and threw it into the floor between us. It landed like a gummy, weighted puck and began to smoke. My brain clouded with terror.

  What horrors had we brought to this Ark?

  Two of the crew tried to tackle him. I wanted to scream at them to stay away, but my mouth felt fuzzy. Everyone who made contact with his stick was immediately thrown back, unconscious.

  The smoke grew thicker and began to fizz.

  “Charlotte!” my father yelled, and I reached for Eren. In the same moment, the panel beneath the puck gave way as the puck melted through the bottom of the hangar. There was a sickening hiss as the hull was breached and the airlock gave up its seal.

  I slammed my helmet over the gaping hole and, holding it down with my bad arm, pressed my hand around the loose elastic of its neck so hard my wrist ached immediately. I couldn’t tell whether my makeshift seal was effective until I heard a rubbery sucking noise that stopped when I spread my fingers a bit wider around the collar.

  That’s when I finally heard someone calling my name, clipped and distorted in a familiar, sickening tone. Char. Like something burning.

  Adam came near me, stick extended, and too late, I opened my mouth to scream. My neck went cold where the stick touched it, but he didn’t pull the trigger. His face came near to mine, and I contemplated yanking the helmet off the hole it protected.

  I could kill him, right here.

  He would take me with him, of course. That was an acceptable price to pay. But the vacuum would claim Eren and my father, and Adam’s death would end my Ark, so I forced my hand to remain where it was.

  He didn’t touch me. Instead, he laid a hand on the helmet, toying with the seal and watching my panicked reaction with interest. His gaze broke only for a moment as he assessed the progress of the EuroArk’s response.

  “Come and find me, Char. I’ll be waiting for you at the end of the storm. So come and find me.”

  His arm twitched as he activated the weapon at my neck, and my face hit the panel. He lifted the smallest part of the neck flap a fraction of an inch, breaking the seal, and I breathed out the air that the vacuum claimed as the hangar blanked out of view.

  Through his mask, I thought I heard Adam laughing.

  Eight

  I am lying on the couch, face up, staring at the ceiling in my parents’ den. Our den. It’s warm. I am safe.

  I’ve been out of juvy for three days. My parents are still tiptoeing around me, not asking any pointed questions about my latest stint, but West and I, we’ve had a lot to catch up on. And this time, I’m doing everything right. They didn’t have to take my phone away—I gave it to them. When the psych stopped by, I didn’t hold back. My caseworker brought me a doughnut, and I listened to everything he said. We signed me up for some classes online. I’m already three lectures in, and that was only yesterday! All physics, though. You got to stick to your strengths.

  I don’t like sleeping in my room. Too isolated. But Mom and Dad don’t say a word when I park it on the couch my first night home. I’ve barely moved since. Just a few trips to West’s room when the parents are asleep. Mom even kissed my forehead before she left for work last night. I grin at the ceiling fan. It’s almost like anything is possible.

  All in all, these are maybe the best three days of my life. I have the house to myself right now, and all I want to do is sleep. And eat, obviously. Later, I’ll knock out a few more classes. Maybe even tackle English lit. Maybe.

  I mean, it’s like I said: a perfect day. Why ruin it with Shakespeare?

  The latch clicks on the door to the garage, and my mother slips into the kitchen. She’s early. Only halfway through an eighteen-hour shift at the hospital.

  “Mom. Hi.” My hand goes to my hair. It’s a mess, of course. I’m not totally awake yet.

  She doesn’t notice. She doesn’t even answer me. “Is your father here?”

  “Work, probably.” Weird question. Where else would he be on a Tuesday morning? Or any morning, for that matter.

  She nods absently, her gaze shifting to the pile of laundry on the floor of the den. Maybe I’ll fold it when she leaves again. She’ll know it was me; I won’t even tell her.

  She isn’t really seeing it, though. Her mind is on something else. She chews her next word around a few times before speaking it. “West?”

  I raise my eyebrows. What is wrong with her? “School. Can we have pizza for dinner? Just this once?”

  She focuses on me then, as though noticing me for the first time. “Where is West, Charlotte?”

  “Mom. It’s Tuesday. He’s at school. I just said.” Like he’d ever miss during the week before exams. I, on the other hand, am not allowed back in classes until fall, if then, so my days will consist of waiting for West to take a break in his never-ending cycle of studies and tests, punctuated by the occasional competition in nerdery or pre-OPT training session.

  It goes without saying that I am not exactly allowed around any of my old friends these days. A rule I’m happy to keep, for once. Kip and Kingston know I want out. We played a dangerous game, and now that the meteor is coming, the stakes are even higher.

  So every time Kip calls my cell, I hit ignore, and every time I hit ignore, I become a little stronger. A little more hopeful. And he calls less and less. Sometime soon, he’ll stop calling altogether.

  Heck, maybe if I stay away long enough, they’ll all forget I ever existed. Cassa probably already has. I could make a clean break. Finish school. Maybe even train for a specialized job on an Ark and get extra points in the lottery. And once I make it onto an Ark, who knows what’s possible? Rumor has it they’d train anyone—anyone—for an advanced degree up there. I could be a nurse, and work for my mom. I rub the arm of the couch, thinking.

  I could be a doctor.

  And dolphins could start flying, too, as long as we’re making up fairy tales. I close my eyes. Right now, right in this moment, even fairy tales are not out of reach.

  The door to the garage slams, louder than necessary, and we both jump. I turn to exchange a look with my mother, but she is frowning toward the source of the noise.

  “Where is she? Where is she.” My father’s voice fills the room before his presence, an impressive feat on its own. Coupled with his stature, which tends to make grown men shift their shoulders around when they talk to him, it’s not hard to see why he’s never lost an election.

  “In here, Michael,” Mom calls, her voice barely carrying.

  “Same place as when you left this morning,” I say cheerfully.

  My father squares up to the kitchen island. “Well?” he says, his pitch
rising.

  I look at him. “Hel-lo? I’m right here, Dad.”

  “What do you know about this?” He slaps a plastic bag onto the counter. The lid on the coffee canister rattles nearby—a little silver fox atop a snowy crystal mountain. Why my parents don’t keep their coffee grounds in the same plastic container they bought them in is beyond me. Other than appearances, of course.

  I turn my attention to the bag and recognize its contents right away. It’s twitch, a chemically modified form of valium. People call it that because you twitch when you take it too often. Just one of many, many reasons I’ve never tried it. This particular sample is in little packets, not pressed back into pills, so it’s probably laced with a nicotine synth for an extra kick on the front end and the added benefit—to the dealer—of making you miss it even more when it’s over. Probably popular with school kids working their way toward the hard stuff.

  When it comes to drugs, I don’t touch ’em. I like to be in control. I like to think clearly, especially on a job, and I like to win, which is significantly more difficult when, say, you’re trying to crack a safe, but your hands are twitching.

  Just for example.

  Besides, Kingston didn’t like us getting jacked up. He’d call interference. As in, someone had interfered with his income.

  As in, you do not want to be that person. Trust me.

  Kip was never one to learn from his mistakes, with one exception: the day we showed up to case some fancy prep school dorm, and he couldn’t keep his eyes on the first lock on the gate. It was a basic one, as I recall. Aluminum at most, with a magnetized inner mech. Two polarized pins and you’re done in under a minute, easy. Kip fumbled for about ten seconds before Kingston grabbed his jaw in his hand, palm flat, looked into his eyes, and scoffed. Then he sent us straight home.

  Well. He sent me home. I have no idea where he sent Kip, but I didn’t hear from him all night, and I never saw him high again. I had shivered on the walk home, even though it was August, and my back was dripping sweat underneath my pack. For the first time, I had wondered what it would take to get free of Kingston forever. Free of all of them. Even Kip.

  Anyway. No drugs for me. But no matter how many times I tell people that, they don’t believe me. I’m a criminal, right? So I must be getting my kicks from somewhere.

  If they only knew the feeling of beating a safe people twice my age hadn’t been able to break, or the way the adrenaline turns to lead in my veins during a job, steadying my hands and evening out my breath, or the way it feels to slip into a shadow without the slightest whisper of noise, inches from a guard, inches from the camera’s line of sight, inches from escape, then believe me, they’d stop asking me how I got my kicks.

  “Well?” The full circle of flesh underneath my father’s jaw took on a tinge of red, snapping me back to the present. He’d gained weight during my last turn inside. “What do you have to say about that?”

  “Uh, nothing?” I shrugged. “I’ve never seen it before. I don’t even know what it is.”

  “I can tell when you’re lying, Charlotte.”

  “Good!” I say, angry. “Then you can tell it’s not mine. I have no idea what you’re on right now, but I haven’t left this house since I got out. And I’ve never seen those before.”

  My mother presses her tongue into her teeth and looks from me to the marbling on the counter. There’s something else on her mind. Something heavier. “Go upstairs, Charlotte,” she says quietly.

  “I’m not done with her,” my father says.

  I roll my eyes and head toward the stairs.

  He grabs my arm. “You tell me where he got that.”

  I look at him. He isn’t nearly as scary as everyone else seems to think. Not to me, anyway. Not compared to Kingston. Besides, what could he possibly do to me that he hadn’t already tried? “Who?” I say evenly.

  “You know who. West.”

  I blink. West?

  “Start talking, Charlotte. I know you had something to do with this.”

  “Dad. That can’t be West’s. He doesn’t get—he doesn’t do stuff like that.”

  “So you do know what it is.”

  I stare at him. “I know it’s drugs, if that’s what you’re asking. Doesn’t take a detective.”

  “And?”

  “And I’ve never seen it before. Really.”

  He doesn’t let go of my arm, and we stare at each other for another moment.

  “Dad—” I begin.

  “Get out of my sight. Get out—” he breathes harder, squeezing my arm, trying—and failing—to gain control of either one of us. I keep right on staring. Like I say, he doesn’t scare me. “Get out of my house.” He shoves my arm when he releases it, throwing me slightly off-balance. I stumble, halfway to the door before I have a second thought.

  When I look back, the lines around his eyes have changed shape faintly. It’s subtle enough that I could have imagined it, but right then, it hits me that it wasn’t really anger that made him loud. Fear, maybe. Lack of control, certainly.

  “Michael,” my mom whispers. But she is tired, and worried, and her mind is on West.

  My father doesn’t speak again, so I let the door slam extra hard on my way out.

  The sun hits me along with the cold air, and I take a deep breath to stretch my lungs. Then I start jogging. I’ve left my coat, but there’s no going back now. It’s not too bad out. I can keep moving until I come up with a plan.

  But the first few blocks roll by, and I have nothing. It’s almost ten in the morning, and the cold begins to hurt my face. I still have a few more blocks to go before my nose gets numb. It’s too cold to stay outside. I’m getting hungry, and of course I have no money for food. I’ll die before I go back to my parents. They don’t want me there, anyway. They’ve gotten used to me being gone. Probably hadn’t taken long.

  I sigh and pick up the pace. Kingston will be awake in a couple of hours. He’ll know where Kip is, too. I can keep warm enough until then.

  “Adam! No!” my father was shouting.

  The ground fumbled past underneath my feet. I couldn’t breathe. There was a sharp ache in my arm, and on investigation, I found that my dad was squeezing it. I struggled, trying to escape the pain, but my vision was obscured by my skin helmet. Which was not ideal, I decided. My helmet should be covering the hole in the ground.

  Wait, no. Dad wasn’t squeezing my arm. He had an arm around both my shoulders and was gripping me hard enough to break them. I couldn’t see much, but his other hand popped the switch in my helmet, releasing oxygen, and I began to gasp. Pain. Pain was everywhere, and we were running.

  No, no. Wrong again. Dad was running. I was being carried.

  When at last he laid me down, I had a view of the entire hangar. A blue sheet of fire had pasted itself over the white ceiling, its tendrils reaching for both of us. Dad slammed the inner door to the airlock shut, rendering us barely out of its reach, and pulled my helmet off. He stuffed it into the pocket of his skin, and I realized it was his helmet, not mine. Adam had pulled mine away to unseal the vacuum.

  I touched my head, and my glove came away bloody. My dad pressed my shoulders into his chest, oblivious to the pain that surrounded me.

  “Dad! He’s getting away!” I shouted, but it came out soft.

  Dad cast an anxious glance at Adam’s retreating form. “Don’t worry about him. Stay with me, Charlotte. Breathe.”

  I wanted to stand. I wanted to help. I wanted to catch Adam.

  I wanted to kill him.

  But the fire grew too bright, and my eyes closed against the flames.

  Nine

  Somewhere far away, my father was screaming my name. There was an immense crashing sound that repeated itself at intervals, and I began to wince in sync with its intrusive tone. I could not move, but I could hear, and I could feel.

  And all I felt was pain. My arm, my face. The side of my head.

  My body was on fire.

  And someone was hitting me. H
ard.

  I opened my eyes.

  Dad was there, eyes wild, patting out the flames that had ruined my space skin. Bright steel slashed through the air in his fist, turning the skin into ribbons. Now why would he do that?

  I breathed in, and my lungs lit up like matches even as the hangar grew dim around me. Everything was fire. Everything was pain.

  And then everything was dark again.

  Daddy is taking us camping! He put Mommy and West in charge of the tent, so it’s just the two of us now, just me and Daddy, and the woods are green and brown and full of magic. I stomp proudly through the pine needles by his side. We are going to build the fire, the most important part. My arms are full of the kindling I’ve painstakingly selected: not too thick, not too wet. It’s a very grown-up job, and I am determined to behave accordingly. My father’s approval shines down from the greenest leaves above us.

  “Now, Charlotte,” Daddy says, not breaking his stride. I hurry my steps to match him, looking up to be sure he sees me. He is as tall as the trees around us. “Three things a fire needs to thrive. Oxygen, heat, and—”

  “EREN!” I screamed, and coughed. “Er—” I forced myself upright on my bad arm, barely able to straighten my head. “Dad!”

  But my father was gone, and so was the pain. Half my space skin covered my bad arm, and the other half lay in charred shreds where my father had knifed it off me. I wasn’t on fire after all; it was only the suit, and now I was on the other side of the airlock.

  I flipped to my belly, intending to stand, and willed my brain to locate Eren while my legs got their bearings.

  By the time I was steady, I found him.

  He was upside-down, a faceless, bandaged doll in my father’s arms, and coming right at me.

  He was also on the other side of the lock.

  Fear made me stupid, and I struggled to understand what my subconscious was screaming. They were on the other side. They couldn’t get here. I breathed fast, too fast, trying to compensate for their declining supply of oxygen. Eren was still unconscious. Dad locked eyes with me, and his panic was infectious.