Fear My Mortality

by Everly Frost

  I managed a final shout and put every bit of threat into it. “Get away!” Then my throat closed up, spasms trembling down my neck.

  He backed off, scraping his knees along the grass, reaching the concrete pathway that way, where he jumped up and ran into the bushes.

  I closed my eyes in relief, but I knew he’d be back. He wanted nectar—somehow he knew what it was—and Michael said they’d given it to me. I had to move. I had to.

  I started small, focusing on the first joint of my little finger. It was crushed under me, curved toward my chest. The tip of my finger twitched as I attempted to straighten it. I tried again, and this time it obeyed. I groaned with relief and checked to see if the drug addict was back, but if he lurked in the bushes, I couldn’t see him. I told myself to hurry, working through the other joints of my little finger. By the time I reached my hand, the rest of my fingers had released, movement seeping back into my wrist, my elbow, and finally my shoulder. I regained enough control to push up from the ground and stretch my neck, easing it from side to side until I was as certain as possible that it wouldn’t seize up.

  Resting down again, I hazarded to check the status of my back where he’d cut me. It was higher up than I first thought. The pain radiated down to my side, but as I ventured up, seeking the spot, I found I could barely reach it. I tried angling my other arm over, but the wound was right between my shoulder blades. With a final determined stretch, my fingertips touched something hard. It was definitely not my bones, but some kind of lump under my skin.

  I remembered the whoomp, the black drone, and Michael’s wide eyes as he checked my back and said they’d given me nectar. He’d shouted something about a tracker. I remembered him telling me his dad worked on tranquilizers and tracking technology as well as nectar. I tried to reach the lump again and managed to touch the edge of it. It was hard, foreign, and as I pressed it, it vibrated under my fingertips as if it was emitting a low-level hum. Could they have shot an ampule of nectar into me? Did such a thing exist? Was the tracker inside it? Maybe I should have let the addict have it …

  Something crept through the bushes. The addict was back. The thought of staying made my heart go cold. Even though I wanted the device out of me, he could just as easily slip the knife between my ribs and kill me in the process.

  Shaking my legs, I wriggled the feeling back into my toes. The concentration of paralytic must have been in my arms and torso because my legs responded much more quickly. I scrambled to my feet and snatched up the sleeping bag, seeking around for Michael’s duffel bag. To my surprise, they’d left it beside the tree. I needed to treat it with suspicion, but right then I didn’t have the luxury of time. The shape of the addict appeared around the bushes, startled as I hurled a rock at him. I raced into the dark, my heart up in my throat.

  Michael had guided me before. I didn’t know this part of the city. I’d never been this way. I didn’t even know how to get out of the park, although I was pretty sure I could scale any fence right then, I had enough fear pumping to get me anywhere. The question was where.

  I veered across the vacant stretch where the helicopter had landed. Lights sparkled through the branches beyond. The addict might follow me out, I couldn’t be sure, but staying in the trees felt like the worst thing I could do.

  The sleeping bag slapped my legs and Michael’s duffel bag was heavier than I thought it would be, but I ignored them both as I pressed through the nearest break in the tree line. Beyond it, there were more trees. No path.

  Tree is nectar. Whatever the addict meant, maybe I could use the trees to slow him down.

  Another crash behind me—closer this time—spurred me on through the thick tangle of greenery. Halfway through, the sleeping bag got caught. I tugged hard, something gave, and a branch snapped back—straight into a person-shaped shadow.

  At the same time, a creature screeched at my ear and suddenly the air was filled with black, flying things. They whizzed past my face and torso. Sharp things pierced my skin. I tried to shield my face from claws and teeth. The addict wasn’t fairing any better, shrieking on the other side of the branches. Desperate to clear the tree, I shielded my face and pushed through sideward, shoving through debris, scraping my arms.

  My vision cleared as the flying creatures hurtled up and away. Hundreds of bats circled and beat the air above. Something dropped, thudding onto my foot, and I smelled rotting fruit.

  The bats would buy me time. I grabbed the sleeping bag and flung the duffel bag across my shoulder, already running.

  A shout behind me told me that, despite the bats, he was way too close.

  Something latched onto the duffel bag and yanked hard. “Nectar!”

  Without a second thought, I let the bag go and dashed across the grass. The darkness lifted—sunrise was on the way—and I made out the shape of a path. Just as I reached the edge, something slammed into my back and the air left my lungs. I fell, not getting my arms under me in time. Only the sleeping bag broke my fall and stopped me cracking my jaw open on the concrete. The weight stayed on me, shoving down hard as I tried to push up. I rocked and tried to roll my body over, but two grimy hands clutched my neck. The fingers squeezed tighter and tighter. Desperate for air, I forced my arm out from under me and thumped at the knee on one side of me, only then seeing that he’d dropped the knife when he started strangling me.

  If I stretched, I’d reach it.

  Black spots appeared in my vision and grew. Everything went hazy. My fingers closed over something. I didn’t know if it was the knife. I drove it backward, sensing that something connected, but he didn’t even react. His hands clenched deeper and deeper into my windpipe. Something ruptured in my throat and I couldn’t breathe anymore.

  I gasped. My shoulders were numb, my arms dead. I must have dropped the knife, it was impossible to tell. Blackness swirled over me and then there was nothing.

  A silence. Not deep, not shallow, not anything.

  Every particle dispersed and disappeared. Gone without a single thought or a single sound.

  A tiny trickle of warmth drew me forward like a dewdrop warming in the sun.

  Consciousness burst back into my body, sizzling through my nerve endings. I heaved upward, thrashing with every part of my body, kicking and punching. I was alive and I wasn’t going to let my life go.

  He’d released my neck and my back stung again. Catching him off-balance, I lurched sideways. His weight lifted. He thudded and howled onto the grass. “Sweetie!”

  The sting left my back—fast. It was the nectar doing its work, healing me, but I couldn’t let him get back up again. I couldn’t let him grab me again.

  When I was seven years old, I’d taken tap dance lessons. I’d learned to stomp and my legs were even stronger now. I ran at him, kicking straight toward his face and knocking a couple of teeth flying across the grass as he howled. I snatched one up before it could reattach, and at the same time, I sought Michael’s bag, lying at the edge of the trees ten feet away, determined to get it back.

  “Hey, you!” I shouted, holding his tooth in my fist. “You want nectar, I’ve got nectar.”

  He stopped yelling, his hand across his mouth, gray eyes meeting mine.

  I inclined my head across the grass, backing up toward the duffel bag. “It’s in there. You let me get it, and I’ll give it to you. Then you leave me alone. You understand?”

  He grinned.

  I slid across the grass, not taking my eyes off him. He struggled to his knees, scrambling for his teeth. While he was occupied with fitting them back where they belonged, I risked a glance backward and located the bag. I pivoted back fast and felt for the zip. My other hand clutched his remaining tooth. I wrenched open the bag and rummaged around, panic rising when it took me forever to find that little brown bottle Michael had used on me.

  Methylated spirits.

  My fingers closed around the cold glass and I resisted the urge to close my eyes with relief. The addict was sit
ting quietly on the grass, watching me now. One finger prodded a gap in his front teeth.

  I lifted the bottle high. “See? Full of nectar.” I hefted the bag over my shoulder, wondering if I’d get away with it. I’d have to sacrifice the sleeping bag—I’d never get away with both—but I didn’t have a choice. I held up my other fist. “You’ll get your tooth back, too. If you stay there. Understand?”

  I edged around past him, back to the path. The bats were settling into the fruit tree, their screeches lowering.

  When I reached the path and was as far away from him as I dared, I stopped and lifted my hand. He’d obeyed me that far, his face glued to the bottle, eyes flitting to my other hand. The tooth was warm, creating a gentle tingle inside the cage of my fist.

  “Catch!” I threw the bottle first and the tooth second. Both in different directions, hoping that it would give me enough time to get away. The addict launched himself for the nectar, catching it before it hit the grass.

  Down the concrete pathway, with fruit trees full of bats, I sprinted another two minutes before I shot out onto a busy street.

  I skidded to a stop just before I ran out onto the road. A car swerved and beeped. Another raced past behind it. I blinked at the six-lane motorway, trying to place myself. I was sure Michael and I had been heading north, but the motorway led to the inner-city bypass, which led to the Terminal. I didn’t have time to figure it out. I ran to where the bushland stretched into the distance, keeping to the tree line to avoid exposure.

  A car beeped and there was the addict behind me, swaying at the edge of the road, vehicles swerving to avoid him. He held up the bottle like a final salute to the world and put it to his mouth, gulping it down. Glass shattered around him as he dropped it. His knees buckled and he toppled to the side.

  I paused mid-escape, wondering if he was dead. Methylated spirits could very well have been poison for all I knew, and he’d drunk the whole thing in one go. Trying not to care, I sprinted up the road, staying just inside the trees.

  The sky lightened as I followed the motorway to a crest that opened out onto a rise with the city in the valley. The Terminal building soared in the middle, all glittering metal in the early morning sun. I shrank back into the trees. I’d definitely chosen the wrong direction.

  I didn’t want to believe that Michael would have brought me this way—so close to the most dangerous part of the city. He’d said we should go north, to Starsgard. But then I saw the bridge over the river across to my far right. The winding water shimmered behind the Terminal, snaking along behind it and away. Far away. Ferries left the city bridge every hour and from there I could go anywhere, inland or out to the coast, it was my choice. This must have been what Michael had planned.

  Scrambling down the road again, I pictured the nearest motorway exit. As soon as I found somewhere safe to stop, I’d figure out how to get the ampule out of my back. If I focused on the gravel and the rising sun, maybe I wouldn’t think too much about it. Maybe I could stop the pressing panic. Maybe I could stop thinking about Michael and where they’d taken him. For another twenty minutes, I walked and blocked everything out of my mind, staying in the quiet shadows at the edge of the trees, away from the rushing cars.

  Reaching the road that would take me to the bridge, I headed down the slope to a stretch of industrial buildings. I crunched across broken glass to the front of an old motor mechanic’s shop. The place was deserted.

  Basher graffiti sprawled across the brick fascia in green and black, words obscured but still legible: Bury the weak.

  Shuddering, I slid behind a concrete pillar in the entrance, the best hideout I could find for the minute. It wouldn’t be long before this place was teeming with people and cars. I had maybe a half hour to rest.

  The lump in my back was difficult to reach. I had to hunch up my left shoulder and twist and stretch. It was still there, right in the middle between my shoulder blade and spine. It was smooth and at least an inch long, lying parallel with my backbone. I crunched my teeth together. A chill seeped down my back and out to my clammy hands at the thought of digging it out myself.

  I tried to control my breathing, clenching and unclenching my hands, focusing on the ridges of my fingernails. I had to do it myself. I would do it myself. Dashing out, I snatched up a piece of beer bottle glass and hurried back behind the pillar. Before I could think any more about it, I twisted and tried to reach the lump on my back.

  I bit my lip and hacked at it, and … the edges of my skin pulled toward each other before I’d even finished. I tried again, cutting as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough. My skin healed over in an instant, leaving me icy. I dropped into an agonized crouch against the concrete pillar. I didn’t know what to do. The ampule would keep me alive, but if they were tracking me, then I was already a prisoner.

  At the same time, Michael’s bag beeped.

  I swung, poised as I realized that I’d forgotten to check it. Another rush of dread washed over me, followed by the same trickle of warmth down my spine that I’d sensed when the addict strangled me. I located it this time, coming from the thing in my back. Nectar. My body knew it was in danger. I stayed, half-crouched, frozen, not knowing what to do as the bag clicked.

  There was a pause, so long that I thought about a thousand things—Josh’s white lips as he died, the look on Michael’s face when he turned to me after the fight, my mom whispering good-bye, Hannah asking me where I was.

  One last thought rushed through my mind. Michael telling me about walls, refusing to tell me how he knew.

  His bag exploded.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Waves of orange heat washed over me. The concrete pillar I’d hidden behind fractured. One chunk of rock followed by many more, lit up golden in the fire, pelted the air and my body. My skin split in a hundred different places, a multitude of hairline cracks that closed as soon as they opened. Then more. As fast as the wounds appeared, my body healed them. I didn’t know if I was screaming because the world had gone silent. Somewhere inside the building there must have been a gas bottle because a cascade of explosions suddenly ripped through me. More glass. More metal. More blood suspended that never left the surface of my skin.

  The roof came down and that was when I made a leap for it. Out into the air, into space, with fire and bricks bursting around me.

  I thwacked into something softer than gravel. Someone held me tight.

  Michael pulled me down, waiting for the heat to end, for the flames to die. I sought his eyes, holding on to his shoulders, struggling to believe he was there. He came back, he must have escaped, but the look on his face told me it wasn’t so. Too soon, he stood up and pushed me away from him.

  “Michael … ”

  “They want you to … ” His jaw ticked. “They want me to tell you to come in.”

  I looked around, ready for uniforms and wasps, but it was just him with that same haunted look on his face that I’d seen a hundred times before, something in the back of his eyes that curled up tight and never let go.

  He said, “I’m not alone, Ava. We can’t run this time. They want you to come in or they’ll take you in.”

  “Why now? Why not last night? Why not days ago?”

  “It took them that long to make the ampule. Once they shot you with it, they planted the bomb in my bag so you’d be hurt and it would trigger the nectar. It’s settled into your body now.” He took a step toward me, grabbing my arm in a fierce grip. “They’ll use it to control you.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he cried out, his face scrunched up in pain.

  “Michael, what have they done to you?”

  “Why didn’t you get rid of it?”

  I wanted to tell him about the addict, but all I said was, “I couldn’t reach.”

  His expression softened and became wry. “Yeah. They think of everything.” The pain on his face lessened. “I couldn’t reach mine either.” He pulled up the back of his shirt, all the way up to
his neck. His lump was red and surrounded by scratches and welts. I stared at the implant and the wounds around it, thinking I couldn’t be seeing straight. He should have healed already …

  I wanted to touch him, but I stopped before my fingers connected. “Why have they given you nectar? You don’t need it.”

  “It’s not nectar.” He dropped his shirt. “They gave me you. Your mortality.”

  I wrenched my hand away. “I don’t understand.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t even begin to … ”

  I shook my head, over and over, trying to deny what I saw: the cut on his cheek, the bruise at the base of his eye, the scratches across his arms. He shrugged his shoulders as if it didn’t matter.

  “Michael.” I touched him. No zap. None at all. “That’s not possible.”

  “Believe it, star girl.” He winced, tried to smile, an expression that contorted his face. “I’m really sorry about the methylated spirits. I didn’t realize how much it kept hurting.”

  “It’s okay. That bottle saved my life. What will they do to you if I don’t come in?”

  “My dad’s not happy. Cheyne said he won’t protect me. The thing is, Ava, you shouldn’t either. I don’t deserve it.”

  A lump formed in my throat. “Is this about Josh? You know that wasn’t your fault.”

  “No. It’s not about Josh.” He suddenly gritted his teeth. He was hurting again, I could see it, as though every time he tried to tell me something important he was punished for it. He dropped to his knees—I followed him down, trying to see his eyes, to see what he wanted to tell me—and his voice became a whisper. “It’s about the walls.”

  Then he writhed and screamed and crushed his head between his hands.

  “Michael! What are they doing to you?”

  He collapsed all the way to the ground, almost in a ball, locked and stiff. He gasped and I ached for him. “Back of my neck.”

  I pushed aside his hair. At the base of his head, in between the vertebrae of his spine, was a second lump.