The Vestige

by Caroline George

  Wood splinters above—the Scavs must have kicked open my bedroom door. Rifle lasers flash through the window like spotlights in search of someone to fry. Wood splinters beneath me, too—I fall and slam against the earth with a loud, bone-shattering crack.

  Pain as intense and harrowing as the agony I experienced during the emergency van surgery pierces through my torso, ripples across every fiber of my body. I wheeze, dig my fingernails into the dirt. Then, I can’t breathe at all, only release jagged exhales.

  Military aircrafts soar across the black sky. Their turbines growl and their spotlights strike the lawn in search of me. I have to breathe. I have to run, even if I die in the process.

  Gasps and sobs leave me as I climb from the grass and wobble into the shadows. Cramps rip apart my insides. The ache of broken bones sends tears cascading down my cheeks, but I run. Through backyards, over highways, in and out of sight—I sprint until my legs collapse.

  Concrete slaps the final bit of strength from my frame. I curl into a ball and squeal into my bloody skin. The Vestige will help me, won’t they? Colonel Buchanan won’t leave me in this bubble for the Feds to find, torture, and kill. I’m a loose end that needs to be tied.

  Wires stab my fingers when I reach into the sweater’s pocket, and a suffocating weight settles within me. I scrape the radio onto the pavement in fragments.

  ****

  At two thirty-five in the afternoon, light would hit the sunroom’s glass in such a way, it’d fill my house with oval rainbows. Sybil said they were pieces of a promise, gifts from God. She’d run up and down the hall, trying to fit the small spectacles into her fists. Her laughter rang like a boat’s sail clanging against the mast. She’s here. Now. Running through the City in search of me. I know it’s all a delusion—her laughter, the rainbow fragments that appear on buildings and lift from streets—but part of me would like it to be real.

  “Come on. Keep moving.” I stagger across a deserted parking lot and screech when my pain magnifies into something close to death. Vomit dribbles from my lips. Sweat soaks me as I convulse with an unstable violence. “Don’t stop. Fight. You’re almost there.”

  Rainbows flicker onto a blank billboard.

  They’re not real.

  I trudge into the gut of downtown but remain in the shadows where light cannot reveal me. Purebloods sashay on the illuminated sidewalk. Their sleek figures pass without so much as glancing in my direction.

  Emergency protocol is to contact Colonel Buchanan, find a secure location, and wait for orders. To reach him, I’d have to use a pay phone, and I can’t risk revealing myself to the Feds. I might be safe at Jack’s apartment for a while. The lease was signed under another name. We’ll be off-grid for a few hours, maybe a day or two, enough time to mend my body.

  “Julie?” His voice melts my level ten pain into a seven. “What happened?”

  I blink Jack into focus. He fills the doorway of his penthouse, disheveled from sleep. His hands draw me into a narrow foyer. Soft hands that can fix me.

  “Oh, gosh, you’re bleeding.” He peels off the sweater and gasps. His brow furrows. His mouth twists into a frown. “Your shoulders … they’re pitch black. Did you walk here?”

  Yes. I’m not sure. How did I get to the apartment building? Elevator? Bus? Rainbow fragments? Jon might have helped me, but I’m not sure.

  “I’ll patch you up,” Jack whispers when I collapse against his chest. “You’re safe here.” He gathers my limbs into a neat wad and carries me into a postmodern living room. “Who hurt you? Was your cover blown?”

  “Scavs came.” I wince as he lowers me onto a vinyl couch. The upholstery crackles like bones—maybe the sounds are from my own torso. “Fell out a window.”

  “Have you coughed up blood?”

  “No.” I trace a finger along his stubble-shaded jaw, up to the dark circles encompassing his eyes. “We’re not safe anymore. Radio the Vestige. Tell them…”

  “Shush. Let me take care of you.” Jack crouches and rubs his hands together for a solid minute. He rolls up the sleeves of his t-shirt and then unzips my dress. Curses slip from his mouth as he probes my stomach and spine. “How’d you manage to get here? You’re a mess.”

  “Wow. Thank you.” I suck air between my teeth and press my heels into a cushion. No matter how I position myself, pain continues to ripple through me. “Everything hurts.”

  “Don’t move. I’ll go get the first-aid kit.”

  Sweat beads on my skin even though the room’s temperature is low and the stained dress is gathered at my hips. Rainbows dart across the ceiling—they echo with Sybil’s laugh. Has physical torment fried my brain? Am I dying?

  “Help. Come back.” I pant for oxygen, sob, and shiver. “Something’s wrong.”

  Jack emerges from the kitchen with a blue box tucked beneath his left arm. He sits next to me and squeezes my hand. “Your parasympathetic nervous system is reversing your fight-or-flight response. Think of it as like … detoxing from a drug.” He fills a syringe with a clear liquid, taps the tip, and squirts a short stream into an empty mug. “Hold still.”

  I flinch when he injects the morphine into my forearm. It’s like hot coffee rushing through me. The rainbows grow brighter until they saturate the room, and then, they vanish with my pain and sweat. I lift my legs as if they’re toothpicks. Nothing has weight. Not my body. Not the world.

  “You have several fractured ribs and severe bruising on your spine and abdomen. It’ll take a good amount of time for you to heal so … I recommend toting around a bottle of pain killers.” Jack pulls the dress over my torso and zips it into place. His grimace morphs into a full-fledged grin while he stares at me. “You look like roadkill.”

  “Are doctors taught to laugh at their patients, or did you just miss the lecture on bedside manner?”

  “Rule of thumb—be nice if a solider is dying, act like a jerk to the maggots who’ll recover.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you say enough mean things to someone, they’ll try their best to get well enough to kick your butt.” He laughs and strokes the hair from my face. His touch is like stars and feathers, air streaming from a hole in a balloon. “Has the morphine helped?”

  Snow forms a halo around Jack’s head and then dissipates into a flurry of sparks. The room’s shadows turn to white blurs reminiscent of cigarette smoke. I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the hallucinations and roll into his lap where warmth isn’t a side effect.

  “The brightness will fade in a few minutes.” He eases his lips against my cheek. His espresso breath drifts nearby, somewhere in our secure third-space—it sends mental photographs showering from above, pictures of our coffee-stained table, his tattered novel and luminescent smile. “We’ll have to leave in the morning. Dad won’t let us stay in the City now that our presence has been identified.”

  I nod and hug his waist to moor my head and shoulders in place while the rest of my body suspends in an invisible water of sorts, drifts with a current. Shouldn’t I be bothered that the spy game has come to an end? Mom and Dad will be left in the Human Reproduction Institute—why can’t I be mad or upset, terrified our odds have run out?

  A wave slams against my butt, rolls me back and forth. I claw at Jack’s t-shirt and laugh when he smiles. Lots of teeth. Whiter than white. And dimples—what’s the point of dimples? How do some people have them? Why are they perfect accessories to a face?

  “You’re pretty.”

  “I’m pretty?” He raises his eyebrows—they’re like fuzzy caterpillars.

  “The prettiest.” I press my hands against his cheeks. They absorb my fingers like gelatin and jiggle when I touch them. Weird. Gross.

  “Well, if you keep slapping me, I won’t be pretty anymore.” Jack grips my wrists and pins them to the couch. He snickers. “You like the morphine, huh?”

  “Why is your face scratchy?”

  “I haven’t shaved yet. Does it bother you?” He rubs his chin and mouth. Lips. Nice lips. />
  “Kiss me … and we’ll find out.”

  “Gosh, you’re high. I should’ve given you a smaller dose.”

  “Want to know a secret?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to tell you.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Jack…” I climb up his torso and lean against his shoulder. He has to know my secret. He likes the truth. Lies are bad. “I’d marry you if you asked.”

  “Oh, dear.” He chokes on a laugh. “You need to sleep.”

  “Do you forgive me?”

  “We can talk in the morning.” He lifts us into the sky, far above the living room where constellations dance in unison. But I don’t have a parachute. If he drops me, I’ll die.

  “Please, Jack.”

  He sighs. His smile shrinks into a straight, understanding line. “Julie Stryker, I’ve been in line for you since day one … so why the hell would I let you go?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”

  Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

  Mom must be washing clothes downstairs—that dang machine has vibrated my bedroom since Jon squeezed himself into it during a game of hide-and-go-seek. What time is it? Why is she doing laundry in the middle of the night?

  I roll over and scratch the sleep from my eyes. Drool puddles on what could be a pillow, wets my cheek. This can’t be home—the air is too cold, the rumble matches a plane’s turbines better than a jacked-up washing machine. Where am I? What happened after I arrived at Jack’s apartment?

  Darkness accommodates the light stripes penetrating the shaded windows. Not sunlight. Or the glow of electricity. Something else that burns red. A vicious crimson.

  “Jack?” I claw at silk sheets, stretch myself across a bed wider than a dining room. The nightstand’s alarm clock blinks 2:30 AM—how long have I been asleep? Why am I not in pain?

  The low growl climaxes into a hiss, and the bloody light condenses into two circles like eyes anxious for a peep into the penthouse’s bedroom. I prop my back against the metal headboard and press a button on the built-in tech panel, lifting the shades into their cuticle.

  A chunk of jagged metal fills the window frame. It hovers outside, close enough to touch.

  Faceless silhouettes watch me from the cockpit.

  Guns eject from the fighter jet and twist into gear.

  “Oh, crap.” I throw myself off the mattress as the vibrations reach an all-time high and then fall flat on hardwood when my feet slam against flesh and bone. The tear-jerking ache of injuries spears through me—I choke when it reaches my chest and throat.

  Jack cries out and clutches his stomach. He writhes on his floor pallet, knocks over a trashcan filled with old ramen noodle containers and notebook paper. “Julie, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Move,” I screech. “They’ve found us.”

  Bullets blast the windows inward and spray the bedroom with glass and lead. I curl into a ball as shots tear the mattress into a wad of stuffing and explode plaster from the walls in ashy puffs. The Underground ended in a scene like this, with machine gunfire and red light. So many people died. Sutton became faceless like the jet’s pilots. Puffs of human ash fell through the trees at dawn.

  “Hold your ears.” Jack crawls to the wardrobe. He removes a grenade from the bottom drawer and yanks out its pin. “Get under the bed.” His body shakes like mine, and his lips quiver between pants.

  I squeeze into the shielded gap while bullets ravage the space. Sound fades into a single pitch hum without variance. No more explosions. Just a constant ring. I press myself against a sliver of wall and pluck the glass from my knees and elbows. Pain. Good. It means I’m alive.

  The floor quakes. Fire ripples across the carpet before disappearing into smoke wisps. Is it over? Did the grenade put a stop to the violence? Where’s Jack?

  “You better not be dead.” I cough soot from my airways and mow a path through the rubble, from beneath the tattered bedframe. “Jack?”

  “I’m in one piece.” He stands where the window used to be with nothing but a metropolitan chasm behind him. Shrapnel protrudes from his left shoulder, soaks his shirt with blood. “We need to leave. That was only the first wave. They’ll come back.”

  “This is my fault. I should’ve known they’d track…”

  “You saved us. We’d be dead right now if you hadn’t trampled me.” His mouth twitches into a smile. He removes a duffel bag from the bookcase and uses a dirty towel to slow his bleeding. “Let’s go. We can’t waste time.”

  “Where will we go? The Vestige can’t help us here.” I follow him into the living room even though moving defies my instinct. I’d rather stay beneath the bed because luck runs out—no hot hand can roll successful pairs of dice forever.

  “Trust me. I have a plan.” Jack slides on striped socks and sneakers. He removes a handgun from beneath a couch cushion and tucks it into the lining of his sweatpants.

  A blazing, orange cloud lifted into the sky like a nuclear plume and billowed over the canopy of leaves. The bomb, the energy surge carried a sound unlike anything I’d heard before, a distinct sonic boom. It’s come back to haunt me. Now. When the main door flies off its hinges. The sound returns.

  Smoke bombs clatter across the threshold and diffuse fog throughout the room. Scavs rush into the penthouse with their rifles and lasers aimed in our direction. Loud voices. Bright lights. Bullets—why can’t the shots be silent, less terrorizing? Didn’t weapon designers consider the effects those sharp claps would have on people’s psyches?

  “Go to the balcony,” Jack shouts. “Snap out of it, Julie. Move.” He charges into the wave of soldiers, fires his gun at the gap of armor between shoulders and necks. That sound—why won’t it stop? Blood—who’ll have to clean up this mess? Not me. I won’t touch blood. Never again.

  I pitch a nearby mug at a Scav’s head and then sprint out the backdoor, onto a poolside terrace overlooking an ablaze skyline. My lungs burn, so do my knees and elbows. I gasp for air, stumble past the glistening water as pain chews into my gut. No escape from up here. The only way Jack and I can protect the Vestige’s mission is to jump.

  “Get on the ledge!” Jack flies from the fog and forces me to climb over the concrete rail, onto a thin platform. “Fight the morphine. Focus.”

  Wind lifts my skirt, slaps hair into my face. I wheeze and grip the rail until my knuckles turn white. “Okay. I understand. We have to jump…”

  “Gosh, no.” He pulls on a pair of gloves and grips a metal beam trailing twenty-five stories to the earth. “Hold onto me,” he says, “and don’t let go.”

  The City folds around us like wrapping paper, curls toward the sky and ravels into a knot of buildings, cars, and concrete. I glue myself to the wall. My heart pounds and the world spins into a blur—the atmosphere burns my insides with a dizzying toxin. We can’t slide twenty-five stories. Impossible.

  Oh, I’m going to be sick.

  Jack pries me from the rail. I give him a koala hug, entwine my arms around his neck, legs around his waist. Okay. Good. Not dead, yet. But the ravine is deep. Up and down don’t exist anymore. There is a single direction—we will either escape or become bloody pancakes.

  “Be still. We have to do this slow and steady.” He leans into midair—I pinch my lips to cage a squeal—and drops from the balcony.

  Shots fire overhead, somewhere in the wrapped parcel of space and metal. I smush my face against Jack’s shoulder. I pant into the cavern between my neck and his back as wind pushes us upward and gravity drags us in rebel decent. Down. Fast. Past window smears. Through howling gusts.

  “You’re choking me,” he shouts.

  “I don’t want to fall.” I squeeze tighter and squirm as my knees slip to his hips. Thank you, God, for jeans and their bulky belt loops. “Hold on. Let me reposition myself.”

  “When’d you get so heavy?” He groans. His neck veins bulge. “Like, I know I’m
not much taller than you but … you shouldn’t be this heavy.”

  “Geez, I realize you’re stressed, but you don’t have to be a jerk.”

  “Sorry.” He scrapes his feet against the building and slows to a stop in front of a narrow ledge. His body shakes with fatigue. “Get off.” When I climb onto the platform, he hands me his gloves. “The drop is too extensive. We won’t make it to the ground unless we bear our own weight.”

  Bear our own weight, as in, slide alone? No, no I’m not coordinated or strong enough to control my decent. Heck, I couldn’t even ride the fireman’s pole on my elementary school’s playground. But I don’t have another option. If I slide, I have a better chance of survival than if I jumped or waited here for the Feds to find me.

  “Hurry. We don’t want the Scavs to meet us at the bottom.” Jack latches himself to the beam and drops six feet. “Put on the gloves. Chop-chop.”

  “You’ll hurt your hands.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  I put on the gloves, grasp the joist, and take a deep breath. The wall is friendlier than the ground—yeah, I’ll stare at the wall for a while. “All right. Slow and steady.”

  Jon and I had a fight a few years ago, on the day I decided to finish high school at home. He stormed into my bedroom while I was unloading my backpack, ripped a textbook from my hands and threw it so hard it dented the wall across from my desk. He yelled for an hour straight—I can’t remember everything he said, only a few phrases. He told me I have to be strong enough to stand up on my own, that I can’t use other people as crutches or depend on their strength to make me strong. If I spend the rest of my days running from pain and risk, I’ll lose what I’m trying to protect.

  So with tears dripping from my face, I lower from the ledge.

  I depend solely on my own strength to keep me alive.

  “Faster,” Jack yells from several stories below. “You can do this, Julie.”