That hulking shadow in the corner was stern, frowning, and I could imagine how angry Porter would be with me when I reconnected with him. He’d yelled at me before. Been beyond pissed at me. Before I left on this mission, he told me he trusted my instincts.
How would he trust me now?
Blue tucked his hand up the back of my undershirt, his fingers skimming my bare skin, and I wanted to arch toward him and give him the permission he was waiting for, but the heat between us faltered. The flame guttered, then snuffed out. And suddenly, I was cold.
“I can’t do this.” I climbed off of him.
He sat up, concerned. “Sousa, if you’re not ready…”
“It’s not that.” I scrambled for an excuse that wouldn’t reveal anything about my team, and I came up with one so glaring, so obvious that I felt stupid for forgetting about it in the heat of the moment. “We’re not supposed to use these bodies like this, are we? It’s against the rules.”
Not to mention extremely disrespectful. What if Lo Jie didn’t want to do this kind of thing? I was using her body like a puppet to get what I wanted, just like Gesh.
And it made me feel sick.
Blue shook his head, scrubbed his hands over his face. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking about that.” He didn’t press me to keep going, didn’t push me, just backed down right away, agreeing with me. “When I get around you, my head goes all fuzzy.”
“Come here.” I wrapped an arm around him, knowing exactly what he meant. “Why are you so good?”
“Remember what I said in Chicago, Sousa? Good is relative.”
I should’ve gone to my room, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to be alone, and I didn’t want to face Porter just yet. I was too ashamed. A coward.
Blue and I curled beside each other, letting ourselves give in to sleep.
A Stranger
I don’t know how long we slept before I awoke. Blue thrashed in his sleep, whimpering, crying out.
“Blue?” I shook his shoulder. “What is it?”
He woke with a start, a sharp breath. His eyes darted around the room, round and frightened. “Where am I? Where have you taken me?” He spoke in English, his voice rough like sandpaper.
I touched his arm. “You’re in China. You’re on a mission with me, remember?”
“Don’t touch me.” He snatched his arm away. He scowled at me like he had in 1876, when we were train robbers, when he was Heath, when he didn’t remember who I was.
I lifted my hands, palms out, letting him know I didn’t mean any harm.
“Where is he?” Blue demanded.
“Who?”
He leaned forward, his eyes almost maniacal, and he whispered, “The one who uses chains.” He rubbed his wrists. “The one who pricks my veins and spills my blood and cuts me open.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I didn’t like seeing Blue like this. It scared me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
Before I could answer, his body shuddered and collapsed. And then he was asleep again, fitfully so. For what seemed like an hour he thrashed, cried out, shook. I wanted to relieve him of his torment, but I didn’t know how, other than to send us both back to Base Life. End the mission. And I wasn’t going to do that. Not without the cure for Audrey.
What did that say about me? My willingness to let Blue suffer so I could save my sister?
I held him fast and still, and whispered truths into his ear. “You’re safe,” I said. “You’re strong. You can beat this, whatever it is. I’ll find you. You’ll be reborn.”
He began to repeat me, twitching, his eyes still closed. “Reborn, reborn, reborn, again, again, trapped, trapped, chained, chained.”
“Blue?” I reached for his shoulder, but my touch was like a hot coal to him.
He sat up, eyes wide again, and backed away from me to the far corner of the bed. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch, don’t touch. Don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not, I wouldn’t—”
“Fire, burning, flesh, ash…” Blue wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth, his eyes locked on something unseen in the corner. “Ash, fire, burning, fire, fire, fire, blood, teeth.”
On and on he went, ranting, and I couldn’t keep going without Porter’s help. I reconnected, and my team toppled into my mind like they were leaning against the door I’d closed, eavesdropping.
What’s going on? Porter demanded.
I don’t know, I said, panicked. He’s having some sort of attack.
They were furious, all of them, their anger filling my head like thick flames, but Porter didn’t scold me yet. He focused on the task at hand.
Could be his memories seeping through from his time at AIDA, Porter said after listening to Blue.
When we were tortured. When Gesh cut us open and rummaged inside our brains.
What do I do?
Nothing. Let it run its course.
Blue’s eyes snapped to mine. He stopped rocking. “Tell me your name.”
“What?” I whispered.
He cocked his head to the side, and something terrifying glinted there, deep and dark. “Your name.” He dragged the word out, and fear slithered around my heart. That’s what Gesh’s Descender had asked me in 1876, right before he painted a limestone bluff with my blood.
I glanced at my daggers lying on the floor.
“He’ll stick it in your eye, you know,” Blue said. “He’ll stick it in your eye if you’re useless for The Cause.”
His words felt like poison in my gut. “Who will stick what?”
“It’s like an ice pick.” Blue pressed a finger into the inner corner of his eye. “Pop!” His eyes danced with fire, and he laughed.
He’s talking about a lobotomy, said Porter.
Why the hell is he talking about a lobotomy?
Gesh used to perform them.
Shit, Porter. What’s happening to him?
And then suddenly, the fire in Blue’s eyes faded, slowly, slowly, until he was rocking again, hugging his knees. He looked smaller, folded in on himself like a wounded child.
It felt like a lifetime, sitting at the end of that bed, watching Blue turn into a cornered, caged animal, then into something fierce and delusional, and then back again, his fear as palpable as the sweat beading across his skin.
But as quickly as it began, it ended.
“Sousa?” The madness in his eyes was gone. His muscles loosened, his arms dropped to his sides. “What are you doing awake?” He crawled over to me and pulled me close, like I was the one needing comfort.
Maybe I was. Now.
He had no idea what had happened. Had no memory of it. I couldn’t form words. I let him hold me for a while, but I no longer felt the warmth from before. I was frigid, tense, waiting for it to happen again. For that light to snuff, for Blue to disappear.
At one time I thought of him as the only constant in my life. The one true thing. But Blue wasn’t constant. He was the most shifting, changing piece in the entire puzzle. Maybe I never really knew him at all.
Maybe Porter, Levi, and Micki were right. And now I had to go to them, cap in hand, asking for forgiveness.
Porter didn’t lay into me until I gathered my things and went to my own room. Until I closed the door and sank against it.
What the hell happened? he boomed. Why were we disconnected?
His anger shook within me, and it was all I could do to keep the tears inside. I’m sorry. I just needed some time alone.
You did it on purpose? Have I taught you nothing? Any number of things could’ve happened to you. What if you were soulblocked? We wouldn’t be there to help you. You had us worried sick.
I’m sorry. I messed up. I didn’t waste my breath justifying myself. There was no defense, only guilt.
Silence. From all of them. Levi the most. It was like he wasn’t even there.
Where’s Levi?
He
disconnected.
Porter didn’t have to say why. I knew. Everyone knew. We didn’t have to talk about my blindness, my weakness when it came to Blue. Nothing they could say would convince me to knuckle down and fight for this mission. I had to convince myself. I had to stop being such an ass.
Because it wasn’t about me and Blue anymore.
Maybe it never was.
My Coping Mechanism
The next morning, after a breakfast of steamed pork buns and porridge alone in my room, we boarded the wagon with the other passengers and set out on the second leg of the trip. I sat beside Blue, and our conversation was short and light, if there was any conversation at all. I felt cold and stupid and weird around him now. It wasn’t fair to him. He had no idea why I had turned silent and prickly, but he didn’t try to pull answers out of me. He let me brood and frown and stare out across the mountains as we rocked and bounced along the top of the ridge. We were at the top of the world, but I felt like I’d fallen to its depths.
At midday the convoy stopped at the shores of a small lake, and Blue and I rested our aching bones beneath the shade of larches and willows. The branches danced and swayed over us. Like my soulmarks, their movements were hypnotic.
As I lay there, I hugged the vase to my side. I knew it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, journeying so far with eighty million strapped to my back. I probably should’ve stashed it somewhere by now, but I couldn’t bring myself to part with it. Not until I had the cure and I knew the mission was a success.
Our driver, Zhen, waded into the lake and tossed a net for fish. His bald head glistened in the sun, and his long salt-and-pepper braid dipped in the water as he stooped to work the net. After a while I wandered over to the two old ladies who shared our journey. One sliced sweet potatoes beside the fire and warmed wine in a pot over the flames while the other prepared a stew for the fish. I asked if I could help, and they nodded, smiling.
They put me in charge of boiling rice, which was smart, given my extreme lack of cooking skills. They called me a good boy, a nice boy, and I wondered if I’d crossed some kind of gender barrier, helping with the cooking.
You should be fine, Micki said. There are definite gender constraints under Confucianism, but on a journey like this everyone is expected to lend a hand.
The tall, wiry one who used a cane was called Ning. She had very few teeth and long gray hair twisted in a knot. She smiled with her entire face, which was covered in lines, deep creases spiderwebbed across her cheeks and forehead. Mei was smaller and rounder, with white hair covered by a white shawl tied under her chin. She had the same pronounced wrinkles, and after only a few minutes with the both of them I knew the lines had been cultivated from years of belly laughing and squinting in sunlight. They pointed out their husbands, Honqi and Quon, who were scaling Zhen’s fish. They were both thin, wispy men, with sinuous muscles and sun-weathered skin. They wore conical hats and scraggly beards.
Blue helped fillet the fish. He laughed along with the other men and seemed to enjoy himself, despite the tension between us. It was nice watching him smile again, hearing his laugh, but I knew it wouldn’t last. It could disappear in a split second. And I found I was expecting it, tense, like waiting for a balloon to pop.
Tre, Nick, John, Heath, Tao Jin—they were all suits he wore, chosen from a rack. I knew his face, his hands, his smile, his voice, but I didn’t know him. Not in the way I once thought I had. And I felt like a fool.
Such a stupid, stupid fool.
Had it all been a fantasy, this portrait of Blue I’d painted in my head? It was like I used him as a warped coping mechanism. He distracted me from real life, from my visions that spiraled out of control, from a dying sister and grieving family, from bullies who forced me into hiding, from the popular boy I didn’t think I deserved.
Blue was a way to deal with it all. More escape. More ignorance. And an ego boost, feeling like someone finally wanted me.
Only he didn’t know me. Not at all.
If Lo Jie’s independence and self-discipline taught me anything, it was that life was sacrifice. It was work. Only cowards tried to escape it. The strong didn’t sit around waiting for life to hand them what they wanted, complaining about their lot—no, they respected themselves enough to work hard and fight for what they deserved.
Death was near. It was time to put away the fantasies and learn to live with myself, with what I’d been given. Truthfully, my life wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined. I wasn’t alone like Lo Jie; I wasn’t sleeping on the streets, wondering when I’d get my next meal. My life was hard, and monumentally screwed up, but wasn’t everyone’s? I had people around me in Base Life who loved me, protected me. They were steadfast. My foundation of stone. So why was I chasing something so unreliable in the past?
The passengers gathered around the fire, spooning fish stew and sweet potatoes over rice. They told stories about their ancestors and how the hero Pangu created the heavens and earth. Wind was his breath, thunder was his voice, his left eye the sun, his right the moon. I grew heavy and content, listening to the cadence of the language. We drank warm wine and bit into sweet plums and cherries, wiping the juice from our chins. Our lips were stained red from it. Our bellies were full from it. And in the afternoon, we traveled down the other side of the mountain, each of us satisfied, legs stretched out in the wagon, eyes closed, snoozing the rest of the day away.
We’d be at Shang Guan Jian’s farm before sundown. If everything went my way, I’d have the cure buried with the vase by morning light.
It was within reach.
If I didn’t screw it up.
Chapter 20
Trust
At the bottom of the mountain the path grew too steep, and once again, we were asked to walk behind the wagon.
Blue finally spoke as we picked our way through rocks, sliding on loose dirt. “You’ve been distant today. Did I do something wrong?”
I was quiet for a while, focusing on my footfalls, looking for the right words. My faith in him had faltered. It was as shifting and unstable as the gravel beneath our feet, but I wasn’t sure how to tell him, or how to sift through all the questions circling in my head. At last I said, “How much can you remember, Blue? How much, really? You don’t have to spare my feelings. You can tell me everything, unless it hurts too much to talk about.”
“What do you mean? Why would it hurt?”
“You were talking in your sleep last night.”
His eyes darkened. “What did I say?”
“You were terrified. You kept telling me not to hurt you and talking about fire and chains and an ice pick in your eye. I think you were remembering our time at AIDA, when Gesh tortured us.”
His jaw clenched. “I don’t remember saying any of that.”
“Do you remember our life at AIDA? Do you remember the terrible things he did to us? Does it plague you? Is that why you have nightmares?”
“No.” His voice was flat. “I don’t remember any of it.”
I stopped walking. “I don’t believe you.”
He stopped too, and looked at me, hard. “You think I’m lying to you? After all we’ve been through, you don’t trust me?”
“I’m worried about you, that’s all. I want to try to help, if I can.”
“This isn’t helping. This is prying.”
“So now I’m prying? I thought you wanted me to help you remember. I thought you wanted me to find you.”
He shook his head at me, disappointed. “You’re not trying to find me. You’re trying to sort out if you can trust me with this mission of yours. It’s clearly more important than us, whatever it is.”
“It is important. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been helping you. I’ve journeyed all this way for you, and you still haven’t told me why or where we’re going. I’ve trusted you all this time. Isn’t that worth something?”
“It isn’t up to me. There are others who—”
Porter’s voice sn
aked into my head. Don’t mention others.
“What others?” Blue asked, narrowing his eyes. “Others back in Base Life? Are you working with someone?”
Shut it down, Porter said. Not another word.
I bit my lip so words wouldn’t tumble out at my feet.
Blue frowned, glanced away. “Maybe I was stupid to trust you.”
It was like a kick in the gut, hearing him say that. “Please don’t be like that.”
“Like what? Sensible?” His eyes were fiery. Dark. Like they were last night in his room. “How can you ask me to trust you when you won’t trust me in return? If this thing is one-sided, then you’re just using me.”
“I’m not, I swear.” I stepped toward him but he didn’t welcome my approach. “I like having your help, I’m not ashamed to admit that. But I like spending time with you, too, whatever we’re doing. You have no idea how frustrating it is not sharing things with you. And I want to trust you, I do. I just don’t trust who might be using you.”
“Using me?”
“In Base Life.”
“No one’s using me, Alex.”
“How would you know? If you can’t remember?”
He sighed. Clenched his teeth. His fists. “I just know.” Anger rolled off him as he stalked away down the mountain. Leaving me standing there alone, regret burning my stomach.
Focus on the cure, Porter said. Your sister.
Porter was right. If I were allowed to explain things to Blue, maybe he’d understand my mission and how important it was. But that wasn’t possible. Maybe later, in our next life, I could make amends.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
Audrey had to come first. I had to save her one and only life. I had a race to finish. And if that meant leaving Blue behind in order to win, then so be it.
Capture the Flag
Shang Guan Jian’s farm was nestled among a sweeping expanse of little green hills, hidden between the mountains. Cows and sheep roamed the grounds freely, nibbling the grass. His hut sat in the sun on one of the hills, almost completely obscured by flowering shrubs and vines. We found Jian tending to his garden, wearing a simple dark coat and pants, tied at the waist with a thin rope, a conical hat perched on his head. A thin gray mustache curved down to meet a long goatee, wispy and wiry. His skin was brown and sagged with deep lines, smeared with sweat and dirt, but when he smiled his whole face lit up, and you couldn’t help smiling in return.
The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare Page 16