“You can’t fix it? Give him a shot of psychaline or something?”
She crouched down next to me. “That would make it worse. Psychaline increases the body’s production of norepinephrine, the fight or flight hormone. He’s already dealing with too much of it.”
I felt a surge of irrational anger toward Marcela, not for the first time. “So you’re saying you can’t do anything? What kind of doctor are you?”
“The student kind. The Academy didn’t award degrees. We were too young, and there was too much other stuff to cover.”
I gaped at her. The Academy was a government-run program for extremely gifted children. It trained them in highly technical fields, the idea being that they would have the equivalent of ten extra years of experience and education when the meteor struck.
It also made no sense. If Marcela had been drafted into the Academy, then she hadn’t exactly had time to join the military, too.
I narrowed my eyes. “So, if you went to the Academy, how come you’re not in Central Command right now?”
Marcela bit her lip, then jerked her head to the side. “Move over,” she said. I complied, and she knelt down next to West, replacing my hands on his head and shoulder with hers. Then she leaned into his ear and spoke softly. I could barely make out the words. “West. Can you hear us?”
She rubbed his shoulder slowly, up and down. “West,” she whispered, even more softly. “West, it’s me.” Then, she leaned down and whispered something I couldn’t hear.
Wide brown eyes opened, and my heart was so full I nearly started sobbing. Marcela planted an elbow in my chest, pressing me back, and I suppressed a sudden urge to punch her.
“He’s getting up!” said Amiel.
My brother pulled himself into a sitting position, and pressed both hands into his scalp.
“Give him lots of room,” said Marcela. “And for heaven’s sake, get the rest of the copper wire off your body.” She breathed in, then kept right on cooing at West. “You’re okay, West. You can do this.”
I gave her a strange look, but whatever she’d said was working, so I took a deep breath and tried whispering at him, too.
“Hey there, stranger. Remember me?”
My brother looked up at me and smiled. Elated, I reached out to hug him.
Then he wrapped both arms around Marcela.
And then he kissed her.
Twenty-four
“What just happened?” I looked from West to Marcela, and back again. “Am I hallucinating, or did that lightning strike me harder than I realized?” Obviously my baby brother did not just kiss Marcela. Marcela.
“Tarry!” said West. His grin was lopsided, just like always, and I melted. He pulled me into his hug with Marcela, then released her. “That’s my Tar. I knew you would make it.” He placed his hands on both my shoulders and looked me squarely in the eyes. “I always knew we would find each other again. I never doubted it.”
“Me either, West. Never once.” I swallowed the lie, trying not to grin like a complete idiot. It was surprisingly hard, given our circumstances. “I found Dad,” I added. And then, because I felt stupid, I added, “He misses you.”
West frowned. “It’s complicated right now.”
“He’s not as angry with me as he was.” I looked away, unable to maintain eye contact. “About Mom.”
West didn’t answer right away. “Maybe we should be angry with him, for once.”
“For once? You just described my entire childhood.” I suppressed a shudder at the ice in his voice. It was so foreign, coming from him. “I can’t be angry like that anymore. Not at him, anyway.”
“How many lockies are out here?” said Marcela.
A steady light flicked on, somewhere in the distance, and Amiel’s little head twisted around, trying to locate its source. It was nearly impossible in the haze. Overhead, the clouds grew sharper. “Uh, you guys. That is not our biggest concern at the moment,” I said. “Let’s get going.”
Marcela scanned the ceiling, then grabbed my arm and pulled me away from West. When she had me standing, she reached down again and made an admirable, if unsuccessful, go at pulling West to his feet. “The clouds are back, and two of us are incapacitated,” she said in her military voice. “We need to move. Now.”
“Clouds, plural?” West curled up a little tighter. He must have seen them in action.
“Yep. Sorry.” She tried again, looping an arm around his waist, and yanked him fully to his feet. “Are there more lockies out here? Anyone from the Remnant?” she asked Amiel.
“Also not our biggest problem,” I said. My head began to swim again. We started running, a task I found quite suited to my rising panic.
“She’s had psychaline,” Marcela said. “We are all aware of the killer clouds, Char. That’s why we’re running away.”
“It’s a heck of a drug. My brain still won’t unfuzz.”
Amiel lowered her voice and paused at the end of the second row. “Maxx is out there. He went to find the others. We couldn’t move West.”
“Others who? Like more lockies? Or the—” Marcela stopped. The sound of hushed, deep voices filled the corridor, accompanied by heavy boots. “Wait. Does that sound like soldiers to you?”
“Ding, ding,” I whispered. “And that is our biggest concern. I think they’re coming from Command.”
“Could be the Nowhere Men,” Amiel said. “Command never sends soldiers in here. Only lockies.”
“It’s a special occasion,” I said. “And who are these Nowhere Men?”
“We don’t know. We thought they were a rumor until we realized the lockies were joining them, or being taken by them, little by little. They’re definitely not from the Remnant. Doesn’t make any difference now. There’s nowhere to go,” said Marcela. “No exits. None of the bins are safe from the lightning, either.”
My brain, my brain. So much fuzz. What would the old Char do? “I mean, it makes a little difference where the soldiers came from,” I said. “Officially, Command is supposed to be an ally now.”
Marcela looked at me, deadpan. “Yeah. We should really have them over for tea.”
“Point taken. But hey. At least we’re armed.”
“It’s going to be, like, fifty to one if we engage them, judging by the bootsteps,” she said, her voice rising.
“Well, sure, if you want to be all pessimistic about it,” I muttered.
The door the soldiers had come through closed, darkening the hold, and highlighting the lightning as it flashed in the distance. The psychaline sent wobbles through the area, and as we ran, my lungs began to burn again. West groaned, leaned against a bin, and slid down into a stoop, like he was about to go fetal again.
“Oh, no you don’t,” said Marcela. “You get up right now. We can’t carry you and fight the Command soldiers and look for shelter from the killer clouds, all at once.”
“It’s dark,” he said.
“The better to hide us with, my dear,” said Marcela. “Since that’s our only real option at the moment.” She pulled him up, gently and firmly, and I pretended not to notice how his hands lingered on her waist.
An instant later, he straightened. “Wait. Did someone say copper wire?”
Twenty-five
I pulled my shirt up, showing them the nest of copper around me. “It’s… kind of knotted up right now.”
“You haven’t lost that yet?” said Mars.
“It’s not like I enjoy being chased by lightning. I can’t get it off.”
“Thanks to you, we are all being chased by—”
West held up a hand. “Everyone just stop.” We looked at him expectantly. “What if we could set a wire up on a bin and have it sticking out in different places? Like a lightning rod.”
“We’d be safe from the clouds,” Amiel said.
“And the soldiers, as long as we could guard the door.” I smiled. “That’s not half bad.”
“Okay, so we need to find a bin,” Marcela said firmly. “Somewhe
re in the middle, something the lockies haven’t gotten to yet.” She pulled a sidearm out of nowhere and shot the shiny new keypad on the closest bin.
“Hey, I’ve done that before,” I told her, still struggling not to slur my words. The psychaline was slowing down, and the pain was steadily building back. I welcomed it. “It’s not as effective as you’d think. The bullets don’t go through—”
“Plastic. Yeah, yeah.” She scratched her head, sending a few final waves of crimson through the air. I watched, mesmerized, until a bolt of lightning struck a bin an aisle over, and sending us flying out of our skins.
We were running again.
This was accomplishing nothing. At this rate, it would be better just to surrender to the Commander’s squadron and call it a day. But West was here, and so was Amiel, and I strongly doubted that the Commander would be inclined to take any prisoners today.
“Can’t you break one?” said Amiel.
“What?”
“The locks.” Her eyes were huge in her head, and they focused on me intently. “You can break into anything. That’s what Adam said.”
I stared at her. She was eerily calm, easily the most level-headed among us, as though she had experience dealing with near-death situations. She’d left her brother’s side, an act that made perfect sense to me now, for a life—no, an existence—scavenging among the bins, dodging the guards and the Nowhere Men. She had no parents, and something about the set of her chin told me she hadn’t known any on Earth, either. Was there no one left to worry about her? My chest tightened against my lungs, making everything heavy.
“I don’t know, Amiel,” I said. “Maybe I could have a long time ago. If I had my sack. And if these locks weren’t brand new.”
But she shook her head. “He said you disarmed the lasers in the control center without even touching a computer.”
I had done that. One of the worst mistakes of my life, as it turned out.
“She can. I know she can,” my brother said.
“West. Not helping.” All I needed was my brother’s misplaced faith in my criminal abilities. The boots thudded closer. They’d be armed, and except for Marcela, we weren’t wearing uniforms. The bullets would cut right through our clothes.
They had a point, though. I was good at breaking into things.
I shook my head, begging it to sharpen up, willing the last of the psychaline to burn off into space.
And to my surprise, it did.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “I have an idea.”
“Just anytime you’re ready,” said Marcela, wincing at a crash of lightning.
“It’s… kind of iffy. But if we can expose a wire in a keypad, we could use the copper to short the—”
“Lock mechanism!” West whisper-shouted. “Brilliant.”
“Um. Thank you. But we need wire cutters.”
“Or anything harder than copper,” said West.
“We could shoot the wire with the gun!” Amiel ducked at the edge of a bin, and looked back at us enthusiastically.
“Won’t work. They only penetrate skin,” I said.
“Or we could just use a utility knife,” said Marcela. We looked at her. “Like, say, an M9 bayonet. Oh, and hey, look at that. I have one right here.”
She drew a scabbard from her hip and pulled out a black blade about seven inches long. At that moment, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
West thought so, too, apparently. He was staring at Marcela with a look I’d never seen on his face before: something like a cross between a craving and a grin. I sincerely hoped I never saw it again.
I cleared my throat. “Maybe try loosening the plate, and I’ll—”
“Yep. I’m on it.” Marcela went to work on the keypad, jimmying it gently apart with the blade, and West went right on staring at her.
“It’s a cool knife,” he said finally.
“Why, thank you, West,” she said, returning his expression before flipping the knife back to the scabbard. “Now. You. Hold still.”
I held up my shirt, and Marcela used the scabbard and its blade to sever the knot of wire around me, as though she’d been doing it all her life. “Combat training,” I said appreciatively.
“Combat training,” she agreed, straightening the wire into a point and handing it over.
I wrapped the end of my shirt around my fingers, in case the circuit board carried a defensive charge, and worked the wire deep into the cable harness, making sure it bypassed the transorb and hooked directly to the negative terminal, so that the surge would have nowhere to go. “I can’t find a grounding wire,” I said at last. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t plan for lightning up here.”
Marcela was staring at the circuits, a bemused look on her face. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t plan for you, either.”
I smiled a little at that. “We’re almost set. I just need to make sure the fail-safe won’t activate when the controls are shorted. Shouldn’t take long.”
West was scanning the ceiling with growing apprehension. “I hate to rush you,” he said. “But could you possibly move any slower?”
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, buddy.”
“Rome wasn’t dodging killer lightning clouds,” he said, scanning the ceiling. “Which, I should point out, have congregated anew, just for us. Char, they’re doing the swirly thing. They’re gonna strike any second.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said grimly. “Marcela, cut here, if you please.”
She complied, black blade twinkling in the gathering fog, and I pointed the end of the wire straight up, doubling it back to brace it against itself. Not half bad, all things considered. “Nothing to do now but wait for a bolt of lightning.”
“Hang on,” said Mars. “Where’s Amiel?” She trotted to the end of the aisle, all thoughts of hiding abandoned. “Amiel! Get back here!”
I looked around. The air became electric, signaling the oncoming attack, and the hairs on my arm stood up in response to the sudden cold. Or fear.
“Oh, no. No, no, no,” I half-whispered.
The clouds swirled faster, forming a defined circle, sucking the sounds away. At that moment, Amiel came sprinting around the corner.
“You scared me to death!” I said. “Get down. Everyone get lower than the antennae!”
“I went to find Maxx,” Amiel shouted. “He’s out here somewhere.”
I threw myself on top of her. “We got incoming!”
Amiel’s mouth moved.
“What?” I shouted back.
“I said, boots or bolts?”
“Yes!” screamed Marcela, and the world exploded into light once again.
But this time, I was ready.
When the smoke cleared, a few things were obvious. Thing one: my plan had worked. The lock took the hit, dying in a blaze of sparks. It wouldn’t do for a paperweight now.
The door to the bin hung open impotently, and Amiel didn’t need an invitation. She leapt in immediately. Marcela was crouched on the ground nearby, drawing my attention to thing number two, which was curled into a ball half-in and half-out of the bin: West.
“Is he hurt?” I shouted. My hearing had yet to return. Marcela said something that looked like “Lightness,” and I bit my lip. That was bad timing, made worse by the arrival of thing three. Which was, of course, the soldiers.
They must have found us before the bolt landed, and they must have decided to take us by surprise from both ends of the aisle, because we were already surrounded, and the gap was closing fast.
Masked operatives crouch-ran toward our position as fast as cats in a rainstorm. Even working together, we’d never move him in time.
I planted my back on the ground near my brother and positioned my feet on his ribs and shoulders, then jammed my legs straight, shoving him over the doorway. Marcela leapt in after him and grabbed the edge of the door, slamming it shut as I rolled in after West.
Almost shut.
The black barrel of an assault rifle blocked the
door panel from sealing just as I landed. It entered our space, our almost-haven, directly above my head.
I’d seen a weapon like this before, but it was somehow smaller around than I realized, and sharper. It jerked to one side as its owner attempted to pry the panel, then shifted while he sought better leverage. My breath caught. We were fish in a barrel. The rifle twitched again, this time, accompanied by a grunt.
Amazingly, the door did not budge.
Marcela was strong.
She lay into the panel, forcing it to stay where it was.
I pulled my gun off my back and aimed it at the crack in the door. “When I say go, let the door open another couple inches. But no more, if you can do that.”
She took in the gun and quickly focused back on the door. “Yeah, hang on.” She shifted her weight to her back leg and placed the toe of her forward boot precisely two inches to the left, then nodded at me.
“Go,” I said, and the panel cracked open. The man in the mask saw the gun, and I aimed it at the only exposed skin I could find: his eye.
I hesitated, adjusting for the kick, and felt my soul slip down into the darkness below the ship.
I squeezed the trigger.
The hesitation was all he’d needed. But instead of firing into the bin like you’d expect, the soldier fell back, out of the path of the bullet, taking the rifle with him. Marcela slid the door in until it clicked, a soft echo of the unbearably loud shot I’d fired.
“Okay,” I said, my voice shaking. “They’re definitely Command. Not that we had any question. And I don’t think they were ready for the lightning anymore than the rest of us. Is he okay?”
Marcela gave me a long, appraising gaze before replying. “He will be. Are you?”
“Can you wake him up?”
She kept right on looking at me. “You know that feeling you get? In the back of you mind, when you’re walking down the hall, and you realize there’s just a few feet of metal separating you from space, and then it hits you that you’ll never jog down a street again, or see a tree, or drive a car?”
The Remnant Page 15