Burn

by Sarah Fine

  But less than an hour ago, I was talking to Ellie . . .

  “Shit,” I snap. “The Sicarii is with the Archers!” I take off, my feet pounding the pavement as I fly toward the side lot, dread beating a pulse in my head as pieces of a horrible, devastating puzzle click into place. The Sicarii stole the scanner. It knows our satellite shield is live and controlled within this compound. If it gets out or signals its friends that it has what it came here for, there’s nothing stopping them from coming in and destroying us.

  Race is a few paces behind me. He calls out to the guards to secure Brayton and search the residential building for the real Ellie as I veer to the left and bolt for the side lot. Workers are busy with the interiors of the Archers, and in just the past hour, they’ve loaded the consoles into the heavy vehicles and are installing the systems. Several others are rolling carts carrying the live ammunition toward the Archers, and some of the workers are loading the cannons. The sun is setting, and the glitter of the massive lenses beneath the overhead stadium lights is nearly blinding, but so are the smiles on every face as they prepare these powerful machines to defend the compound.

  No one realizes the enemy is right next to them.

  Christina, Leo, Manuel, and Ellie are standing together at the rear of one of the Archers, watching as a worker secures the console to the floor. Christina sees me first, and her face lights up, but when she takes a good look at me, her smile dies. Ellie frowns as she sees Christina’s reaction, and her head whips in my direction. I don’t have to say a word. Her mouth goes tight, and she takes a step backward, looking around, assessing options. Leo’s brow furrows, and he looks back and forth between me and Ellie.

  Ellie darts behind one of the Archers.

  “Stop her!” Race shouts from behind me, but the crowd of workers is too stunned to move quickly. They look around as if wondering who Race wants them to stop.

  An engine roars. The last Archer on the line rolls forward. Leo sprints for it just as it snaps the cables tethering its undercarriage. “No, Leo!” Christina and I shout at the same time.

  Leo’s fingers skim the side panel of the massive armored vehicle as it lurches forward, trying to get a grip on it, but he stumbles when it zooms away. I change direction quickly, sprinting for the Archer that had been next to it, diving into the back and feeling the console rattle when I push past it to get to the driver’s seat. The gunner’s pit isn’t bolted down yet. It may not even be connected. As I look above me and notice that this one doesn’t even have a lens in place, I realize I may have picked the wrong ride. This one’s not battle-ready. No time to go for another, though—I can already hear a distant explosion. Cursing, I throw myself into the driver’s chair, twisting the square key in the ignition as I do. The engine roars.

  At least there’s gas in the tank. I shove it into gear and shudder with the deep vibrations as the Archer rolls forward. Through the tiny windshield, I can see that the Ellie-Sicarii has made it halfway across the compound.

  And it’s firing its hood cannon at the nearest perimeter defense station. I thunder after Ellie while I scan the controls in front of me, looking for a way to fire my own hood cannon.

  “Damn it!” a voice shouts from a few feet behind me, startling the living shit out of me.

  “What the hell, Leo?” I yell, jumping a curb and skimming around the lake that covers the eastern quarter of the compound.

  He must have dived into the back right as I took off, and now he’s squatting in the entrance to the cramped driver’s compartment. “I wanted to be your gunner, but the weapons console isn’t hooked up back there!”

  One of my wheels rolls over the side of a boulder as I try to avoid hitting a tree. “Is there a harness back there? Buckle yourself in!”

  He doesn’t respond, and I focus again on reaching Ellie. All I can see is the rear of her vehicle—and then the bright burst of fire that zings from her hood cannon toward the perimeter station set into the inner edge of the mile-wide crater’s rim. The station explodes in flames, debris and bodies flung outward and colliding with the ground a few hundred feet below. I can barely hear Leo’s shouts of rage and horror over my own.

  Ellie makes a sharp turn just in time to avoid colliding with the crater wall and roars toward the next station, only a half a mile away. I veer to the left and head after her. Movement on that side draws my attention, and I see another Archer in pursuit of her as well.

  The autocannons on its roof are as still and silent as ours, which means that either they’re not hooked up or there’s no gunner in the back. I grab the small control stick on my console and try to aim my hood cannon at Ellie, but while I’m dodging trees and boulders and signs, it’s nearly impossible to get a weapon lock on her vehicle. My target is small and moving quickly—but hers—the defense stations—are huge and stationary.

  “She’s going to reach that station in less than a minute,” Leo snaps. He wedges his torso next to my chair and reaches for the control stick beside my steering wheel. The hood cannon jumps to life again. His deft maneuvering spins the cannon around, its thick barrel aimed straight at the rear of Ellie’s vehicle. He jams his thumb down on the black button at the tip of the stick.

  Nothing happens . . . except that Leo starts cursing fluently. “It’s not loaded!”

  “She was watching long enough to know which ones were armed,” I mutter, trying to close the distance.

  “Why aren’t the stations shooting at her?”

  “They probably have no idea what’s happening! She’s supposed to be a friendly.”

  Leo rips his hands off the hood cannon controls and withdraws into the low doorway between the rear of the vehicle and the driver’s compartment. “I should have been paying more attention,” he says, his voice thick with anger and frustration. “She’s the Sicarii?”

  “Yes. I’ll explain lat— No!”

  Ellie fires again, the shot flying wide and slamming into the rocky wall of the crater right next to the second perimeter defense station. The station’s massive guns are swinging around, but they’re slow. I can only imagine the chaos within that station, where the guards are probably shouting and scrambling. They were prepared to meet an enemy coming from above, from outside the crater, and now one of our own best weapons is firing on them.

  And she does. Again. Direct hit. From behind me, I hear only clanking and a strangled cry. I grit my teeth and push the gas pedal to the floor, seeing my chance. Ellie careens to a stop and reverses to head for the next station. Already, the other Archer is racing ahead of her to protect that defense station, but the mixed signals and destruction must have terrified the station’s occupants, because their giant guns are gliding around and aiming at the friendly Archer, which careens out of the way as they fire at it. I push away the fear that Christina might be inside that Archer and focus on drawing even with Ellie, trying to get my vehicle in a position where I can run her into the crater wall to her right. We skim along the edge, her Archer just a few yards off my front bumper. I push my own vehicle a little farther, slowly gaining as her hood cannon once again aims at a defense station. There are only six, and she’s destroyed two. She’s coming at this one from the side instead of straight on, and the people in the station are obviously thinking the other—friendly—Archer is its enemy, because they’re focusing on it and not her. My stomach drops as Ellie fires, hitting a spot just below where the station juts out from the crater wall. A hail of rock and dust billows outward. I’m now only a yard from her bumper. If I can just—

  Something flies across the distance between our two Archers and lands on the roof of Ellie’s vehicle, right next to the massive lens.

  It’s Leo. He must have crawled up through the hole in my roof. “Goddamn it, Leo!” I shout as I watch him cling to the autocannon rails and inch toward the front of Ellie’s vehicle.

  My heart is in my throat. I have no fucking idea what to do. I can’t ra
m her. I couldn’t fire, even if we were armed. Leo is out in the open, his wiry body clinging to the back of a metal monster in an arena of rock. I’m helpless.

  But the defense station isn’t, and its heavy cannons are now rotating toward us. “Please see him,” I whisper as I race along behind Ellie’s Archer. “Please don’t shoot.”

  I’m not just talking to the defense station. Because Leo has made it all the way to the front of the Archer and hurls himself onto the hood as Ellie sends another blast toward the defense station. It takes out the large cannon and part of the floor of the station, and I try not to look too closely when I realize one of the guards is dangling from the shattered paneling and wires.

  I focus on Leo, who is crouched on the hood of Ellie’s Archer. Blood streams from his ears—the last blast shattered his eardrums. His arms are wrapped around the barrel of the cannon. He’s the reason Ellie’s last shot wasn’t a direct hit.

  He’s kicking at her tiny windshield, but there’s no way he’ll penetrate the bulletproof glass. He is distracting her, though. She swerves to the side, clipping my front panel and fishtailing. Leo holds tightly to the cannon, his little muscles standing out in sharp relief as he wrenches at it. One of his hands is working at something at the cannon’s base, but I only catch glimpses as Ellie weaves back and forth across open ground. The other Archer has circled around, but the driver obviously sees Leo, too, because the vehicle is hanging back instead of racing toward Ellie. It’s put itself between Ellie and the next defense station on the west side of the compound.

  Ellie makes a sudden, sharp U-turn, churning up turf like bunched fabric beneath the Archer’s massive wheels, and flies back toward the damaged defense station.

  Leo’s body bucks as Ellie’s hood cannon swings forward, taking him with it. I can see his frantic movements, his desperate attempts to keep the heavy metal barrel from aiming at the men hanging from beneath the shredded metal and sparking cables.

  I see the moment he makes his decision. His body goes still. He stops struggling with the cannon.

  And he plasters himself across the narrow strip of windshield, including the camera ports for her display screens, completely blocking her view.

  Ellie veers back and forth, trying to throw him off. My mind becomes an abstract whirl of physics calculations. Speed. Acceleration. Force.

  Oh God.

  “Oh God,” I whisper aloud.

  She picks up speed with frightening abruptness. She’s only a few hundred yards from the crater wall. “Leo!” I shout. “Jump off! Get off that thing!”

  He doesn’t.

  Ellie makes a sudden left just before it reaches the edge of the crater, so violent that when its front right side slams into the rock wall, the Archer rolls. I watch, helpless, as Leo’s skinny body disappears beneath the vehicle.

  And as the Archer rolls away, he’s left behind. Lying in the grass, not moving.

  I slam on the brakes, my chest filling with dread, and throw open the small driver’s door. My feet hit the emerald-green grass, and for this random second beneath the lights of the damaged defense station, I think how beautiful the color is, how full of life and promise. And then I force my head up as I run around the side of my vehicle and sprint for the crumpled figure at the base of the rock wall.

  Leo’s on his side. His fingers twitch in the grass. His blond hair is streaked with blood. The fabric of his shirt has been melted to the skin of his arms and stomach by the heat of the cannon. But he’s alive. I drop to my knees and skid as soon as I get close. “Leo,” I say.

  His glasses are gone, and his green eyes are bright with terror and pain. His mouth moves, but all that comes out is a broken whimper. I blink and focus, taking in the rest of him.

  It’s broken, too.

  His legs are twisted in an odd way, and my thoughts scream as my gaze moves up his body . . . spine shattered, organs twisted and hemorrhaging, ribs splintered, lungs perforated. Afraid to move him for fear of doing more damage, I lie on my side so he can see me. I gently smooth his hair from his brow, noting with a sinking feeling the blood dripping from his nose and mouth.

  “Someone call Dr. Ackerman!” I shout over my shoulder before returning my attention to him. “You crazy idiot,” I say, trying to steady my voice.

  “Did we stop her?” he asks in a halting, wet whisper.

  I have no idea. “You stopped her. She wrecked.” I nod, too, because the blood leaking from his ears reminds me that he can’t hear me.

  The corners of his mouth curl up as he watches my face, but when he parts his lips, the gurgling noise he makes is almost unbearable. “Tate?”

  “Yeah.” I take his hand, the one that’s twitching on the grass. I squeeze it. I’m not sure if he feels it. My eyes are burning, like the air is filled with caustic fumes. “I’m here. I’ll stay with you.”

  “Scared,” he mouths, still watching my expression.

  So I smile, but God, it hurts. “You’re the bravest kid I’ve ever met.”

  The choked, agonized cough he lets out might be laughter, but then his face twists with pain. “Tell me,” he rasps, his chest shuddering. “Tell me it’s going to be okay.”

  But then his eyes become unfocused, sliding away from me.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I say, but I can barely get the words out, because his hand twitches once more before going limp in my sweaty grasp. I feel for his pulse.

  And I can’t find it.

  His eyes are half open. Blood is still dripping from his mouth, but his chest isn’t moving anymore. “Leo, please,” I whisper. “Don’t do this.”

  He’s already gone. The certainty descends on me like an avalanche, burying me with a million separate impacts. I’ve only known him for a few days, but somehow, it feels like I’m losing another member of my family. A brother. I rub at my eyes, my fingers coming away wet with tears.

  A humming, rumbling noise behind me snaps me back to the moment, and I turn quickly, in time to see my own death roll to a stop less than thirty feet away. It’s a dented disaster.

  But the hood cannon is functional, and I’m crouched in the grass next to my dead friend, staring right down its barrel.

  EIGHTEEN

  I CLOSE MY EYES.

  The roar of an engine makes me open them again—in time to see another Archer T-bone Ellie, right on the driver’s side. Both of the vehicles are armored, so they withstand the impact fairly well, but hers is shoved across the grass. No sooner have both vehicles skidded to a stop than Race jumps out of the third Archer, and Christina gets out of the back. Weapon drawn, Race wrenches Ellie’s door open. He shoves her to the ground and presses his gun to the back of her head.

  Christina falls to her knees and throws her arms around me. She’s breathing so hard. Shaking. My head hangs. I know Leo is lying dead behind me. I know I have to face this. But I can’t make myself look at him again. And I can’t make myself look at Christina, either.

  “I should never have let you come here,” I say in a dull voice. “It’s going to get you killed. Just like it got Leo killed.” My voice breaks over his name.

  She only holds me tighter. “Leo did what he did to save others. He didn’t just get himself killed.” Her body shudders with a sob. “It meant something.”

  “Meaning or not, he’s still dead,” I snap. “And no amount of meaning would make me feel okay if you got hurt, too.” I try to push away a vision of Christina’s body crushed like Leo’s. “I wish you’d never come here. I wish you could leave.”

  She shakes her head. “Even if that were possible right now, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “What do you want to hear, then?” My voice is shaking. Because I can’t think of anything else to say.

  “Tell me I’m all right,” she chokes out.

  “You’re all right,” I whisper.

  “Now tell me you’re all ri
ght.”

  “I’m all right,” I lie.

  “And tell me we’ll do this together.”

  “We’ll do this together, Christina.” Despite those words, I still feel alone, carrying this collection of knowledge that feels like it should save us, failing at every turn, unable to protect the people I love.

  The sob lurches out of me. “At least I don’t have to worry about Leo anymore,” I say hoarsely as tears streak my face, as I lose control completely. I’m glad he’s not here to see this. More than anything, I want to make his death count, but I don’t know how.

  I am vaguely aware of Christina’s mouth against my ear, of her fingers in my hair, of her arms around me. I want to tell her I’m sorry, that I’m powerless, that I’ve failed, but I can’t even gather the syllables.

  Then she takes my face in her hands. She kisses my eyes, squeezed shut to keep the world out. Her lips graze my cheeks, my temples, my mouth. She holds me steady. “If Leo was still here,” she says quietly, “he’d tell you not to give up. And he’d remind you that you’re not alone.”

  “Bullshit.” I let out a raspy laugh. “If Leo were here, he’d call me a coward.” He was amazing, that skinny orphan kid, so easy to underestimate, braver than he had a right to be. My dad must have loved him. I was starting to love him, too. It feels like the whole world needs to stop and acknowledge that he’s gone. But as I raise my head, I realize it won’t.

  Like it’s happening in slow motion, Race waves a bunch of guards over. They wrestle a struggling Ellie . . . who I guess isn’t really Ellie . . . into a waiting SUV. His severe face all angles, his eyes violent red, Race turns to me. Those eyes slide to Leo’s body and then flick back to my face. His mouth tightens as I shake my head. He’s gone. Race nods toward the SUV, inviting me to join.

  I stay where I am. How can I walk away from Leo?