by Danielle Monsch, Cate Rowan, Jennifer Lewis, Jeannie Lin, Nadia Lee, Dee Carney
With Bennet’s support, he hadn’t felt the blindness to its full extent. Time was short, but with the complete darkness in front of him, he couldn’t make a step. Breathing in, he held the air in his lungs. Truth was, he hadn’t spoken to Zel in days. She’d probably wondered if he’d abandoned her. There wasn’t a choice. He had to walk, blind or not.
Using his fingers as guides along the wall, he made his way to her door.
Step by step.
It took a toll. The slow progress left him weak, shaky, but he didn’t stop. He placed his hand on the security pad and her door slid open.
Chapter Five
‡
Zel ran on the treadmill, but no matter how hard she pushed herself, she couldn’t outrun the fact Langley hadn’t come back. He’d said to trust him.
Langley’s wafer-thin tablet hung on the wall and slowly flipped through an album of stills. She’d memorized every shot.
“Pfft,” she ripped her attention from the images, hissed at the exercise display, upped the speed past recommended levels, and forced her pace faster on burning legs. Despite the anger and pain, she was worried. She’d surprised herself by believing he’d come back and help her escape. She’d waited for three days until the stress had made her too nauseous to eat.
She tried to ignore it. Nearly tore it down, but she gave in to the undeniable craving and stared straight ahead, where she’d put Langley’s gift on the wall—the tablet filled with pictures. Every day she visually consumed it while she exercised. Or any time she wasn’t staring out the window.
The images flickered in a memorized scroll.
A shot of him as a teen, standing with a group of uniformed kids. First day of school and he stood slightly apart. Alone. Another had captured her imagination. He’d taken a panorama from the island as it passed over a crater in a section of New Castle that had burned to the ground during the food riots two hundred years ago. The ground was too unstable to build scrapers so it remained a pit of refuse and camps of indigents.
Her favorite pic made her heart beat faster, a shot of several men and women at a party, laughing, standing close to him. Still aloof, separate somehow, she imagined what it would be like to dress in such finery and couldn’t help but be jealous of the women, though she had no idea if any were his date. She’d never had a group of friends. Or a date.
As usual, she lost herself in imagining Langley’s world as the album slideshow sucked her into its allure.
The door slid open, and she stumbled off the treadmill, trying to orient herself and gasping for breath. A shiver worked over her skin, telling her who was there.
“Zel.” His deep voice stroked balm over the hurt that had taken root beneath her ribs.
He shuffled into the room and the light from the window fell on his face. Bandages covered his eyes and a large portion of his pale face. He was injured. Anger rushed through her and made her stomach burn.
“What did she do to you?” She ran to him, slipping her arms around his lean waist and hugging tightly, burying her nose into his hard chest and breathing in his scent—now tinged with medical antiseptics. His firm body crushed against her and burned her skin almost as if the layers of their clothing didn’t exist, her dingy exercise sweats and his elegant, clean lined business attire.
“I’ll be fine.” His breath whispering across her skin, he wrapped his arms around her and spoke with his lips lightly touching her scalp before he kissed her head.
Goose bumps covered her body, and she groaned. “If I’d known how sexy it felt for you to kiss me there, I’d have shaved my head the first day here.”
“But then, we wouldn’t have had this time together.”
She squeezed him harder, as if she’d fall apart if she let him go. Not long ago she would have scoffed at his response, saying she’d have given up her time here, even to be with him, if she could be back on the ground and working in the gardens at Mother. All she’d ever wanted, ever, was to live a quiet life, as a regular human being, and tend her herbs and flowers, even if it meant living in a small condo at the Mother compound. But she’d never been a regular human being. Like a pet, she couldn’t go anywhere without a keeper. Not having the option to live simply, she’d tried to do the opposite and become a Mother agent, but even that wasn’t available to her, a creation. Bovine had let her be a research assistant, but it was a gift from the caring man. Something he didn’t have to do for her.
Seeing Langley hurt brought everything into clarity. She loved Langley Gothel. Langley, who picketed her birthplace, wanting researchers to stop making bio-creations. Langley, who had convictions, but was tender, and made love to her with his whole body and mind.
“What happened?” Unable to get her arms to let him go, she whispered into his chest.
“I let my mère replace my eyes. She’s been asking me for years. Surprised she didn’t do it without my permission before now.”
“You, who calls for the end of bio-tech, even mods?” She didn’t understand. He looked down on her, a creation not born, at some level. She felt the disparity and still didn’t think she was worthy of him. She couldn’t share her feelings with him. He’d never love her back.
“This was the only way. We have to get out of here, now.”
She stepped back and caressed his bandaged face, running a hand along his cleanly shaven cheek. “You’re letting me go?”
“Yes.” His jaw worked beneath her hand as he clenched his teeth.
An incredible rush of sadness hollowed her chest. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave him. Once he got her to the ground, she’d never see him again, but she couldn’t stay. She’d long realized that as soon as the novelty of her wore off, he’d stop coming to visit. Once Gothel finished her research, Langley would let Zel go, maybe not even say goodbye. They’d always been on borrowed time.
“I’ll help you down the stairs.” She took a deep breath and expelled the regret. “Where’s the hair? We can’t leave it here.”
“We’re not going that way.” He grinned, and though she couldn’t see the light of his eyes beneath the wrap, she’d never seen him so carefree. His grin wrapped around her heart and squeezed.
He shrugged a backpack from his shoulders, fumbled with the opening, and brushed aside her hands. “Don’t. I’ve got it.”
She knelt next to him, but when he’d lost the grin, floundered, she wanted to help. Instead, she ran aching, hungry fingers down his back and along the crisp, clean, button-down shirt. Even with his face bandaged, he had the same tidy, masculine look that made her want to muss him up.
She stared at a rope he pulled from the pack. The flash of familiar gold stunned her. “What are you doing with my hair?”
“Using it to climb out the window.” He said it calmly, naturally. Maybe the surgery had done something to him. Rattled his thinking, his senses.
“Why not just go down the freaking stairs?” Her question came out a bit more urgent than she’d wanted, but she couldn’t stop the incredulity from making her want to bash him over the head. She might hurt his eyes—but certainly less than falling to the ground would.
“There are too many guards between here and the hovercraft bay. We’d never make it out of here. Even I can’t leave without Mère’s permission. I have ways around that, but none of them would get you to the ground, too. She started tracking the craft the first time I leaked information on her research to NOMBIO. It caused her a bit of bad publicity.”
“You did that?” Something loosened in her chest before she made herself realize it didn’t mean he’d changed his views. He wanted the abuse of property—of live beings—to stop but he wanted that property—people like her—to not exist.
“I did.” He shrugged. “All will go well.” His assurance calmed her. The near panic went away, and it still amazed her that his control over her body let him ease her fears with a few insistent words.
“Come. We’re climbing down.” He stepped forward and halted. Lips tightening, he put out
his hand in front of him to tap the air.
“Let me.” Every question and concern other than him vanished. They made their way over to the already open window. She kept it ajar at all times, eager to breathe in the fresh air and do anything to escape some portion of this small, stale prison.
“Put this loop around the closest leg of the bed. Quietly. The guard is back by now.” Langley gripped the window sash and cocked his head, listening for anything that would put a stop to his plans.
Thankful for the industrial, prison-like bed bolted to the floor, she knotted the end of her hair tightly, tested it by leaning back and tugging with all her weight, and fed the silken rope into Langley’s hands. With dexterous, nimble fingers that had played along her flesh with glorious results, he uncoiled the rest, a long line of braided filament.
“You really think we’ll make it down that? It’s thin.” It wouldn’t break. Logically, she knew it, but a base, primal fear gave her doubt. Looks were deceiving. She knew this well.
“You have to go first. I hate being like this. I can’t protect you.” He frowned as the wind tousled his glossy black hair. Gorgeous, natural hair with wisps curled around the bandage covering half his face. So strong, even without sight. He’d make it to the ground.
She couldn’t believe she was going along with this insanity, but she did, because even though he was an uppity ass, Langley was the most grounded person she’d ever met.
“Let’s get this over with.” She straddled the window ledge and looked back into her room. Alarm jolted her and she plopped back down onto the floor. “Just a minute.”
She ran to the wall and carefully lifted the album of pictures off the wall. The images flickered off when she started to fold the thin device. Reverently, she kept folding it in on itself until it was small enough and she slipped it in her pocket.
“Ready now.” She brushed against him on her way back, and his frown eased. Once again, she perched on the window. This time she had no reason to look back and instead, looked down.
Her room was in the top of the highest tower, at the edge of the levitating island. Far below, through trails of clouds, New Castle stretched along the ground for miles and miles. The city was so large, she’d never find the end of it on the horizon. The island floated above, in a regular circular flight path, the same as the other islands. She gulped. “So you know what part of the city we’ll come down in?”
“No. We’ll have to make do, somehow.”
He didn’t seem concerned. Spoken like a man who’d lived his life in the sky. Depending on where they landed, they could be in a safe-enough neighborhood, where people left each other alone. Or, they could drop down into a cesspit, where people did anything to stay alive. Not that she knew any of this from personal experience, but her creator, Bovine, had loved to talk with her, tell her stories of the world outside, and shown her when he took her out of the compound.
“Stay right behind me. When we get to the ground, we don’t know what we’ll face.” She could best any of her Mother instructors, but she’d never been in a real fight because they’d never put her in the field. But still, she could get down this makeshift rope and take care of herself. “Here we go.”
She swung her other leg over, grabbed the hair, and though she hadn’t been scared, found a slight panic in pushing her butt off the ledge and into thin air. Langley patted at her back and along the window. His hands, though he seemed to be orienting himself, settled her nerves. Before she knew it, a laugh burbled through her. “You might need to push me.”
“You’ll do fine.” His deep voice burrowed into her, made her trust his assurances.
She nodded. “I’ll do fine.”
With a grunt, she heaved herself off the ledge and into the air. Her hands caught and she swung, arms burning, until she wrapped a leg around the makeshift rope. Above, Langley had taken her position on the ledge. She yelled over the roar of the wind. “Move that uppity ass.”
Grinning like a boy on an adventure, he pushed off the ledge, facing out instead of toward the rope. Her breath caught and her stomach lurched high. Heart thumping madly, she nearly screamed, afraid he’d fall. Time seemed to slow as he twisted around, his hand on the golden braid. She’d been scared to go herself, but seeing him jump terrified her through and through.
The rope jerked hard and she clung to it as Langley wrapped a leg around and hung there. After a few moments catching her breath and cursing his name to herself, she started the slow and careful descent, using all the techniques taught her at Mother’s agent academy. She’d done this in a training center under controlled circumstances, not in the middle of the air with the wind catching at her.
They made steady progress, Langley coming too close a few times. “Take your time, hot stuff.”
He chuckled. Even hanging in midair, a small slip from complete disaster, his eyes bandaged, he seemed free. Lighthearted.
And for her, it felt damn good to get out of her room.
The sounds of traffic and crowds cut through the wind and grew louder and louder as they closed in on the ground. People down there wouldn’t see them. Landers—even Mother agents—never looked up. Except her. Her face had always sought to follow the sun, even through the ever present smog.
A hovercar rocked past them, sending the rope spinning in the backdraft.
She slammed her eyes shut and screamed.
“Hold tight!” Langley cursed hotshot drivers and their mamans.
She clung for all she was worth until the rope stopped swerving. Above, the steadying voice of Langley called to her, “Ready?”
“Let’s get off this thing.” She popped her eyes back open and inched down. The hovercar had flown above regulation height. It hadn’t occurred to her until now, they’d have to descend through traffic. Below, a skyscraper came toward them slowly as the island’s path swung them toward it. She gauged their speed. They’d make it. “There. We’ll land on that roof. Before a hovercar smashes into us.”
“Just tell me when to let go.” He didn’t question her, though he couldn’t see the building or the lay of the land.
His trust in her absolutely amazed her. Blinking, she cleared her throat and focused, determined to save them both. Still, getting off this wire of hair couldn’t happen fast enough.
She got as low on the rope as she could, the roof line coming at them, faster than she was ready for. Her heart sped up again and the fatigue set in. She couldn’t hold on even one more second. Her arms burned.
The gray surface of the roof appeared under her feet. She let go and shouted at Langley, “Now.”
She hit hard and rolled, tucking her shoulder and trying to avoid breaking a leg.
The world spun around her before her feet slammed into the side wall. She opened her eyes to face the clear, blue sky. Gothel Island hovered above. The metallic circular platform with red engine lights cast a shadow on the skyscraper. Rising above the engine deck, a large mansion sprawled with towers on each corner. From one, the length of her hair dangled from a window. The silken braid sailed away into the distance. Gold twinkled off the fibers before it disappeared into a cloud.
A groan beside her reminded her that her knee throbbed. “Langley.”
“Here.” He sounded winded.
She tilted her head. Sprawled the same as she, he lay a few feet away and faced the sky he couldn’t see. He didn’t move, but he sounded fine when he added, “We’ll have to stay here until dark. I can’t help you like this, and by then, I can remove these bandages, and Bennet would have retrieved your braid.”
“All right.” Though, really, she could care less about the braid as long as Madame Gothel didn’t get it. “Let me catch my breath and then I’ll see where we are.”
“Oh, no. Zel, I didn’t think.” He sat up quickly, reaching out around him, his face contorted. “Are you all right? I didn’t think of a hard landing like this. You make me lose all sense and I didn’t think. Tell me you’re okay.”
She knelt beside him and
he brushed against her stomach, palming her with his warm hand before he pulled her onto his lap and crushed her to him.
She didn’t let his concern matter. He’d be gone soon. She sighed away the longing. “I’m fine. Really.”
Not understanding his panic, she didn’t call him on it while she snuggled against his chest and listened as his heart calmed from a thundering pounding to a calm rhythm. The entire time, he hugged her, placing kisses on her head, and stroking her back. By the time he loosened his arms, the ridge of his erection pressed against her ass and her middle was warm, yearning.
She couldn’t touch him again. Just couldn’t. He’d leave now, and if she didn’t close her heart, it’d rip to shreds.
When she pulled back, he spoke gruffly, “Find us cover. Where no one can find us while we wait.”
“Don’t try to move.” She struggled off his lap, his warmth catching at her, and cased the upper surface of the scraper.
It was a large roof, even for a skyscraper. The flat, insulated tiles at her feet warmed in the sun. A half dozen small structures lined down the middle, equal distances apart. She peered into the window of the first. These were the emergency outlets from stairwells. The area would be deserted. Buildings had stairs for code, but there hadn’t been a fire, collapse, or bio-hazard incident in her memory. The ultra-efficient hazmat systems took care of every alarm before things got out of control.
They’d be safe in one of these.
She helped Langley to his feet and guided him to the closest door. “This is the top of the emergency stairs. Nobody will see us here. Nobody comes up here.”
“I don’t understand why landers don’t climb up, to enjoy the sky.”
She understood. Landers kept their eyes to the ground, never dreaming to live in the clouds. Up there for twelve weeks, she hadn’t seen the attraction. She couldn’t wait to get her hands back into the warm soil of her garden.
Once she’d helped him to the landing, Langley sat on the top stair. Hand on the door, she lifted her face to the sun and smiled. Free.