Those inside steel buildings and underground will last longer than those out in the open air, but not forever. The acid can corrode glass, and it will slowly leak through cracks in the steel until it reaches every single person still alive.
Everyone is going to die.
“What do we do?” I ask, clenching my hands as if that’ll keep my voice from trembling.
Beechy doesn’t answer for a moment. He just stares out the window. When he speaks, his words are soft and slow. “This ship will hold up. It was built for that. We can try to make it to the generator, to destroy it with the bomb, so this doesn’t get any worse. Charlie will put the shield back up.”
“How do you know that?”
“He doesn’t want to die. He wants to make us turn around so he can go through with his plan and get the Core warship in space.
That makes sense. But …
“You said the generator’s too far.”
“It might be. We have to find it first.”
I dig my nails into my arm and look back out the window, understanding. Even if we can reach the generator before the detonation timer hits zero—fifty-one minutes from now—there’s hardly any chance we’ll have enough time to deploy the bomb and flee the fire. It will explode while we’re still in range, taking us with it.
We will never see Logan or Sandy again.
“We didn’t get to say goodbye to them,” I whisper. I hope Beechy knows who I mean.
“No, we didn’t. I’m not giving up yet, though.” Beechy reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “Either way, we’ll end this together.”
I squeeze his hand back. “Okay.”
He gives me a tight smile. “Now, hang on.”
With my free hand, I lock in my seat straps and grip the armrest.
Beechy slams a lever forward, and we lean back and back, heading straight toward the moon, speeding through the clouds. I hang on to his hand and my chair for dear life. My seat straps aren’t tight enough, and I’m afraid I’ll slip out and crash into something. Oliver better be safe back there.
Oliver.
I have to wake him up. He has to know what’s going on before we all die.
He has to hear me say I’m sorry we didn’t leave him there on the hangar, where maybe he’d be safer.
But I can’t tear my eyes away from the view just yet. We leave daylight, as well as the Surface, far behind. We rip through the place where the atmospheric shield used to be and head out into space.
The moon grows bigger outside our window. It’s bigger than I ever imagined. Heat waves rise from its surface: clouds of pink acid. Deadly, but they are beautiful.
Beyond the moon, there are stars and stars and endless stars. They’re pink and gold and bluish-green, dotting the galaxy with light and color. I see them, and I don’t feel trapped anymore. I see them, and I’m sure there’s someplace out there better than the world I left behind.
*
My bare feet make no noise on the ground of the corridor. We’re still moving fast, but out here in the vacuum of space it doesn’t feel like it did in the Pipeline, when the force of gravity kept me pinned to my seat. It’s more like we’re floating.
In the passageway by the cargo lift, Oliver sits wrapped in wires and strapped to his chair, his head flopped onto its side against the wall. There’s blood on some of his hair. It’s still wet when I touch a finger to it. He must’ve banged his head when we were flying fast back there.
I swallow hard to keep my throat from tightening. We shouldn’t have brought him here. We should’ve taken him out of the ship on the hangar, even if officials shot at us, even if Logan and Sandy found out what we were doing.
Turning away, I find an antibiotic vial in one of the medikits, unscrew the cap, and squeeze a dot of gel onto my finger, hoping whatever germs are on my hands won’t screw up Oliver even more than I already have. With unsteady hands, I ease his head forward and gently rub the gel into his hair.
I want to wake him up, but I don’t know how. I gave him a slumber injection, and those are pretty powerful.
I’ve made so many mistakes.
If he doesn’t wake, he won’t know what I did to him and he won’t feel it when we die. Maybe that’s a good thing, except he won’t hear me say I’m sorry. I need him to hear it.
“I am sorry,” I whisper. “I swear it.”
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I wish there were some way I could hack into the KIMO control system and reset the timer. Or put the escape pod that’s carrying the bomb on autopilot so we could detach it from the main ship and it could fly to the generator on its own.
My heartbeat picks up. Its thuds fill the silence in the corridor.
Autopilot might require a passcode I don’t have, but manual piloting might be possible. Someone could detach the escape pod from the main ship and transport the bomb to the generator on its own.
Me. I could fly it. Then Oliver would live, and so would Beechy.
It’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of it before?
Running through the scenario in my mind, the problem hits me. There’s no way the pod could reach the generator fast enough on its own, especially carrying a missile half its size. It needs the bigger ship to get closer first.
But I could detach it once we’re close. I could wait until we’re almost to the generator, until I’m sure the pod can carry me the rest of the way. I’d buy the ship an extra minute or two, at least, compared to the time it would take if we waited to deploy the missile from the main ship console. Hopefully, I’d buy enough extra time for Oliver and Beechy to clear the detonation range.
I turn and stare at the passageway to the ladder. As for me, I’d be all alone in that pod. I’d be all alone when the bomb ripped me to pieces. There’s no way I’d escape the missile’s range in a ship that small. We have to make sure we hit the generator straight on, and that requires a close shot.
“Clementine?”
I jump, startled.
Beechy stands in the cockpit passage doorway with his hands in his pockets.
“Don’t you have a ship to pilot?” I ask.
“I set us on a course. We should be okay for a couple minutes.” He gives me a crooked smile and comes over, looking at Oliver. “Are you trying to wake him?”
I nod, pressing my lips together. “I don’t know how to, though. I gave him an injection to put him to sleep. Anyway, he’s probably still subdued. He’d still try to kill us if he woke.”
“Hmm.” Beechy walks past me and opens one of the wall compartments. He rummages through the kits inside.
My eyes stay on him. I wonder if he’s had the same ideas as me, about piloting the escape pod. I wonder if he was planning to sacrifice himself for me and Oliver, but wasn’t going to tell me.
I’m not going to tell him. I know he’d try to stop me.
“Here we are,” he says. He holds up a syringe in a plastic wrapper. It looks like the slumber injection I gave Oliver before.
“What is it?” I ask.
He holds it out so I can read the label as he moves to Oliver. ENERGY INJECTION.
“I’m surprised you never asked me how I manage to fight the monthly injections,” he says, ripping off the wrapper.
I frown. “I guess I forgot.” Other things seemed more important.
“Well, I use one of these.” He pops off the needle cover. “See, the monthly injection calms the mind—it makes it easy to manipulate. To combat it, you do the opposite and make the mind frenzied with a high energy boost. But that causes confusion, which is why it takes a strong mind to fight submission off completely.” He rips off the plastic. “Oliver, here … Well, I don’t think there’s any harm in trying.”
I chew on my bottom lip, thinking of Oliver after our first Promise Elevation. How subdued he seemed, even then. “Are you sure?”
Beechy nods. “It’s been some time since he had the injection, anyway. It should be starting to wear off. Here, hold this.”
He hands me the syringe. I hold it by the tips of my fingers, as if it’s poisonous. Beechy works the wires off Oliver, freeing him.
The ship rumbles. Beechy glances toward the cockpit. “You’ve got it, yeah, Clem? I don’t want us to crash. Just stick the needle right into his shoulder.”
“But—”
“It’ll work.” He throws me a smile and disappears down the passageway.
I grip the syringe, staring at Oliver. What if it doesn’t work? What if he wakes up and he’s even worse?
But I guess I owe it to him to try. He deserves to know what’s happening and why before he dies.
I hurry forward before I can change my mind, and peel his shirt back a little to expose his shoulder. I count to three.
I jab the needle into his shoulder, and press the plunger.
He moans, and his eyelids flutter.
I pull the syringe out. Take two steps back.
He blinks once. Twice.
Looks at me.
I tense instinctively. I wait for him to start screaming again or lunge at me now that he’s free.
He blinks again. Faster.
His eyes widen. “What’s going on?” he asks, sounding a bit panicky.
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. He sounds like Oliver again. He’s okay. He’s better.
He has no idea what’s going on.
I hesitate. “Charlie subdued you,” I say slowly, still afraid I’m going to set him off. “But we snapped you out of it. Do you remember anything?”
He nods, pressing a palm to his sweaty forehead. “He made me help fly the hovercraft to the site. He told me I was special, that I got to stay behind to protect the bomb and make sure no one messed it up. I don’t know why I agreed to that.”
“It was the injection. It wasn’t you.”
“But I knew I was gonna die.”
“Well, you’re not dead.” I want to add: And you won’t be because I’m going to save you.
“I’m not.” He blinks, processing the information. “Where am I? What happened after I tried to stop you and Beechy?”
So he remembers that. I bet he remembers me knocking him out with the slumber injection, then.
“Uh.” I shift my eyes away from him. “How about I show you? That would be easier.”
“Okay.” He pushes off his seat, trying to stand. He wobbles on his feet and reaches for the wall.
“Here, I’ll help you.” I let him lean on my shoulder.
“Thanks.”
We join Beechy in the cockpit.
“Hey,” Oliver says.
“Hey,” Beechy says. “How are you feeling?”
Oliver doesn’t answer. He’s looking out the window, staring at the moon for the first time in his life. It’s thick with the fog of moonshine. It’s hard to tell whether there’s even a solid surface underneath, or just fog and fog and more fog.
I prefer to look at the stars. They shimmer reds, purples, and blues in the distant reaches of the universe. They’re tiny specks of light, but each one is a sun or a planet. Marden must be somewhere out there. I can’t tell which speck it is, though.
“Why are we flying to the moon?” Oliver’s voice cracks. He clings to my shoulder like he’s scared of the moon and I can protect him.
“Charlie turned off the acid shield because we hijacked the bomb,” Beechy says. “Now we’re transporting the bomb to the generator that makes the acid, so we can blow it up.”
Oliver’s eyes have never been wider. He opens his mouth and closes it twice, no doubt trying to figure out which question to ask first.
“Generator,” he repeats. “What generator?”
“That generator,” Beechy says, pointing out the window.
41
There’s a spot on the moon’s surface where the fog clears a little. It’s far away and tiny, but I can still make out something unnatural there, something with a color darker than the fog. It might be the top of a massive structure. A generator that pumps acid into space, for some of it to float into Kiel’s atmosphere and kill people.
Kill me. It’s going to kill me.
“You knew about this?” Oliver asks, pulling away from me. He looks from me to Beechy and back again.
“No,” I say. “We had no idea. I found out in Karum.”
“You’re serious? Someone just built a generator on the moon. That’s where all the acid came from.”
“Why don’t you sit down,” Beechy says. “I’ll explain.”
Oliver grumbles, but I can tell he’s having trouble standing anyway. So he slips into the chair I was sitting in, the copilot seat.
I stand there behind the two of them while Beechy starts telling him about Marden and Charlie’s war and everything we discovered. I wring my hands and swallow the lump rising in my throat. It refuses to budge.
I glance at the timer on the dashboard:
00:19:01
Nineteen minutes.
We’re going to be close enough soon. We’re going to be close enough for me to detach the escape pod and transport the missile to the generator without the timer running out. I think. I hope.
But I have to slip away first. I have to figure out how to fly the escape pod.
I have to say goodbye to Oliver and Beechy without really saying it.
The seconds tick by. I pretend Beechy’s smiling instead of staring out the window with emotionless eyes. I pretend Oliver’s hoarse voice is laughter. I pretend we’re flying to the moon to see the sights instead of on a suicide mission.
I’d pretend forever, if only I had more time.
But the timer is down to seventeen minutes and thirty-five seconds.
I tuck the curls behind my ears and take a shaky breath. “I’m going to check if there’s a restroom,” I say, interrupting Beechy.
“Okay,” he says. “There should be one attached to the bunk room.”
“Thanks.” There’s a lump in my throat, and my voice almost cracks, but I fight it. I glance at Oliver one last time. His cheeks are pale. He thinks these seventeen minutes are all he has left.
But there’s wonderment in his eyes too—dull, but it’s there. Because of the stars, I bet. He always wanted to see them. He always wanted to fly in a spaceship.
I think he’s going to be okay.
Beechy continues talking. My heart thumps against my ribs. It might shatter one or all of them if I keep standing here, so I turn and hurry away.
I don’t look back.
*
I press the button on the wall, and the doors to the escape pod slide open, one after the other.
There’s the screen where I tried to type in the code to disable the bomb and failed. There’s the window showing me the moon. There’s the floor separating me from the missile, from the weapon Fred built that will blow me to smithereens in fifteen minutes and seven seconds, and, I hope, the generator too.
I sit in the pilot seat and put my head in my sweaty hands. My whole body is shaking.
I need more time. Fourteen minutes isn’t enough, not at all. I need to say goodbye to everyone. To Logan especially. He said he’d wait for me on the hangar, but I left and I’m not coming back.
Logan, oh Logan, I hope you’re okay. I hope you’re not dead.
I wish I hadn’t left him. But then he’d be dead for certain; he would’ve been blown up with me when the bomb went off. This way, maybe I can save him.
Please, please, let me save him.
Outside, I can see the top of the generator now. It’s a tower, thin and rectangular, peeking through the clouds. A red light flashes on the top of it. It could almost be my school building on the Surface, or that tower I tried to climb the day I met Laila.
When I die, I’ll be with her again. That’s something good, at least. I’ll die out here with the stars and the dust in the moonlight. The bomb will take me out. That’s better than dying from the acid. I won’t feel any burning; I’ll just be gone. My ashes will float off to the stars. To Marden, maybe.
The dashboard starts beeping. I stare at the timer. Ten minutes.
Focus.
I have to figure out how to fly this thing.
I scan the dashboard. Most of the buttons and controls look the same as the ones in the main cockpit, there are just fewer of them.
I flip a switch and a dim blue light comes on overhead. I flip another and the dashboard powers on. The buttons light up yellow and red and purple like the stars.
“What are you doing in there?” a voice says.
Oh, no. I haven’t shut the transport doors yet. I think I was waiting until the last second.
I turn my head. Oliver is at the top of the ladder down the short passageway, staring at me, bewildered.
He shouldn’t have come looking, but part of me is glad. Part of me is relieved. Now I can say goodbye to him.
I swallow. “I’m gonna do it myself. I’m gonna fly this pod to the generator, so I can deploy the bomb and you two can get away. We’re close enough now that I’ll reach my target.”
“No, you’re vruxing not,” another voice says. Beechy hoists himself up the last rung of the ladder.
“Yes, I am.” I reach for the button to seal the doors.
Oliver blocks the entranceway. “You can’t.”
“You’re not.” Beechy pushes past Oliver.
“Get out.” I press hard against my seat, afraid one or both of them will rip me out of it. “Please leave me alone.”
Beechy grabs my shoulders. I kick hard against his legs, forcing him back a step. Then Oliver grabs me too. I’m not stronger than both of them. They wrench me to my feet. They’re ruining this. They’re ruining everything.
“Stop it!”
They don’t stop. They drag me out of the transport into the passageway.
“Let me go!” I yell. I didn’t want this to happen. I wanted to save them both. “We’re running out of time!”
“If anyone’s going to sacrifice himself,” Beechy says calmly, “it’s going to be me. Oliver, please help Clementine down the ladder. You two can fly the ship home.”
“No!” I shake my head, panicking. “No, no, no, you can’t do that. I’m supposed to do that. You have to let me.”
“You can’t fly the pod.”
Extraction Page 32