Steel Lily ARC

by Megan Curd

  “Hey, you okay?” whispered a voice to my right.

  I bit my tongue and immediately tasted blood. Sari jumped back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Have you found them yet?”

  Jaxon called from around the corner before I could reply. “Avery, get over here. Help me.”

  After another steadying breath, I peered around the corner. Jaxon had a teenage boy over his shoulder. Blood stained Jaxon’s thermal Henley, and his hoodie covered most of the boy’s torso.

  Jaxon beckoned me again. “Sari, Avery, come on! I can’t carry him all the way by myself.”

  I willed my legs to move. Muscles contracted, but stiffened in refusal. Sari pushed me gently from behind. Step by dizzying step, I made my way to Jaxon.

  The boy looked to be about Alice’s age. Dark scarlet stains blossomed on the shoulder of Jaxon’s hoodie, and the sleeve covered most of the boy’s face. The overwhelming scent of rust and metal filled my nostrils.

  Blood.

  There was no way we could save him. There was too much blood.

  My face must have told Jaxon as much, because his features hardened. “I don’t care what you think. We can fix this.”

  I glanced down at the still body slung over Jaxon’s shoulder once more, but then Jaxon jerked the boy away from my gaze.

  “Time to make an exit,” he said quickly, and turned the opposite direction of which we’d came.

  Where was he going? I called out to Jaxon, confused. “Jaxon, the passageway is—”

  “I know where the passageway is; I made it,” he said over his shoulder. The poor boy bounced limply on his shoulder with each stride Jaxon took. “But we’ve got more company than I’d planned on!”

  I looked over my shoulder.

  I knew those uniforms.

  Forty or fifty Polatzi were materializing from between cars and out of alleyways.

  No time to think.

  Time to run.

  Sari and Jaxon were ahead of me. I sprinted to keep up with Jaxon’s long, loping strides and Sari’s quick head start. An eardrum-bursting boom exploded not ten feet from us. A massive iron ball crumpled the side of a long-abandoned tank like it was a soda can.

  Polatzi bodies flew backward, and screams of agony shattered the air around us. I fell to the ground in fright.

  Sari grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet, my sweaty palm slipping against her leather glove. She reached into her pants pocket and produced a contraption I recognized.

  My oxygen mask.

  “Put it on now,” she ordered as she looked skyward. “You’re going to need it.”

  Sari placed an oxygen mask over the injured boy’s face as well. His chest heaved as he struggled to breathe.

  Jaxon led us into an abandoned store. The desks still stood with computers and gadgets, as though consumers might return one day. I ran my hands over the banned electronics. I’d never seen a computer before. Jaxon pushed my hand off the device gently. “Don’t touch anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’ll know.”

  He didn’t tell me who they were, but it gave me enough fear to drop my hand by my side.

  Jaxon ducked down below the front windows of the store and gingerly sat the boy against the wall. His arm was a stump at the elbow, and blood poured from it. Sari was checking for a pulse. By the thin line of her lips, I worried we were too late.

  “There’s a heartbeat, Jax, but barely,” she whispered.

  Jaxon pulled off his shirt to reveal his chiseled chest and stomach. He ripped the arms from the stitching at the shoulders of the shirt. Without a word he tied the strip of fabric above the wound, then placed the remainder over the stump. He used the other strip to knot the makeshift tourniquet in place. He worked quickly, as though he’d done it before. “We need to get him back before the carbon dioxide eats at the wound.”

  He gave Sari a look and nodded once to the fallen plaster on the ground, then to the back of the store. Sari seemed to know what he meant, because immediately she grabbed a large chunk of plaster, aimed, and threw the mass at the back right corner of the room. Sparks flew and metal fell from its mounting. A camera. Wires dangled and sparked as last surges of electricity pulsed through the now ruined contraption. I wouldn’t have known it was there, had Jaxon not pointed it out.

  I took another deep breath as Jaxon’s comment came back to me. “I thought this dome had clean air.”

  “It does,” he answered, disgust tinged in his words. “When Riggs wants it to.”

  A hissing noise—like a balloon losing its helium—sounded from beyond our hiding place. Sari took a running leap from the back of the store and slid to us on her knees, her arms covering her head as chunks of plaster rained down. I looked outside to see a Polatzi running toward us, clutching his throat as blood made his already red lips even brighter. I skittered backward and screamed.

  “It’s fine,” Jaxon said, “he won’t make it here.”

  As if on cue, the Polatzi coughed and spewed blood all over the front of his tan shirt. Blood ran from his nose and ears, and the man crumpled to the ground.

  Dead. Dead as could be.

  Dead like my parents might be.

  Like I could be soon.

  “That one was quick,” Jaxon muttered. “He probably didn’t feel much.”

  I crawled on my hands and knees to Jaxon and the boy. I held my mask tighter against my face. “What happened to him?”

  It was Sari who answered. The gas mask covering her mouth made her sound hollow and robotic. Maybe it was a tone of despair. “The oxygen purifiers were cut off.”

  I closed my eyes as I tried to imagine dying by suffocation. It wasn’t a pretty image.

  “Pike. Long time no see,” a new voice sounded. A voice I knew.

  No one called me Pike. No one but…

  I squeaked in shock. “Legs?”

  “The one and only,” he coughed behind his mask, then lifted momentarily it to spit out blood. “Did you miss me?”

  Excitement and shock coursed through me. It was Legs! Alice and I weren’t alone! “What the hell, Legs? How’d you end up here? Where’s your sister?”

  Another shot resonated in my bones before Legs could respond. It was from farther away, but it still shook merchandise off the walls.

  Jaxon cursed under his breath. He hiked Legs back on his shoulder and took off toward the back of the store. “No time for reunions. Come on, before any cannon fire finds us by accident, or worse, on purpose.”

  He led us through dirty alleyways and between cramped, towering buildings. Cannon fire sounded in the distance from where we’d came. Cries of pain reverberated off the buildings. I’d never been part of the war, but this must have been what it felt like.

  We continued our steady run, our feet pounding against the broken concrete. It felt as though we’d run miles and miles. Shock and fear coursed through my body. This was not like home. As downtrodden as our dome might be, no one was murdered or feared attack. My ears rang from the shots and cries of people I’d never met. What had they done to deserve this? I didn’t even realize it when we reached the white stone tower.

  Sari ran her hands along the stone in search of the passageway I assumed. “I can’t find the stupid latch, Jaxon. We need to get inside before anyone notices we’re gone.”

  “Avery, listen to me,” Jaxon whispered, “take him for a second. I need to open the door.”

  Legs coughed as he leaned against me and I tried to manage his weight. “You were always there to keep me out of trouble,” he said through the mask, his voice garbled. “I shoulda known you’d save me, and it wouldn’t be the other way around.”

  “Yeah well, you saved my ass enough to make up for it.”

  Legs laughed weakly. “I always liked your ass.”

  Jaxon stepped in and slung Legs over his shoulder before heading into the tunnel. “Come on, he’s becoming delusional.”

  “There’s nothing delusional about liking Avery’s ass,�
� Legs argued, sounding more out of it by the minute. “Come on, man, don’t tell me you haven’t checked it out.”

  Sari snorted. “If he wasn’t half dead, I’d say he was a pig.”

  “He’s not a pig,” I argued in his honor as Sari shut the door. “He’s bleeding out.”

  “Yeah, well, he won’t be winning any gentleman quarterly awards today either,” Jaxon said in the distance.

  “Ain’t got to, buddy,” Legs said weakly. “Just gotta get Avery home.”

  His comment made me go cold. How did he get here? Why was he here? There were so many questions and I had no clue where to begin. “How did you…where did you…what is this place? This tunnel?”

  “I wanted a way out of the Academy if there was an emergency and Sari helped,” whispered Jaxon. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “I think I’ll stay in the Academy if the outside is as dangerous as it was today, thanks.”

  “It’s not the outside that have to be worried about,” Jaxon said darkly, “It’s what’s inside the Academy that you should be afraid of. Exegi monumentum aere perennius, remember?”

  “You mean…”

  “Welcome to Chromelius Academy, Avery. You may have come here with what you thought was free will, but you won’t be leaving unless you’re in a body bag.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  “Be careful with him,” I called as Sari and Jaxon carried Legs. The stairs were so narrow that they took them sideways, adding to the already dangerous trek down the slippery, mossy mess.

  “Oh yeah, because we planned on chucking him to see if he’d bounce down the last six steps before you said that,” Jaxon said.

  Legs groaned. “Might be better if you did.”

  His voice was so defeated that it scared me. I couldn’t lose him again. Everything that had happened to him was my fault. “Don’t say that! Jaxon told me they have a great medical wing here.”

  Legs laughed weakly. “Yeah, because I’ll be welcomed with open arms. Oops, arm. Get it?”

  He was delusional from blood loss. In the dim light, I saw Jaxon’s outline readjust him, then keep going. Sari said nothing, but kept pace with Jaxon.

  Guilt settled in the pit of my stomach. Legs was going to die in this hellhole, and it was because of me. Urgency washed over me. We needed to get him medical attention now. As we reached the foot of the stairs a thought struck me.

  “We can’t go parading into the atrium with a bloody guy, can we? That’s not conspicuous at all.”

  Jaxon grunted out a laugh. “No kidding, Sherlock. There’s another door down here.”

  Crowded at the bottom of the stairwell, Sari’s free hand found a doorknob to the left. The entryway blew cold air into our faces, and Sari took off her mask. I took it as an indication that I could do the same.

  This hallway was dank, and lights snaked along the upper corners of the walls from naked wires. They buzzed and the lights blinked as electricity surged. A few feet ahead, a shower of sparks flew from the cord where copper wiring showed through. I wondered how anyone hadn’t been electrocuted.

  There were niches along the walls like in the dormitory hallway, but nothing was inside them except spider webs that sagged under the weight of the damp air. Rusted bolts, screws, and old piping ran along the corners of the floor. Our footsteps echoed off the cement walls and a chill that had nothing to do with the cold ran up my spine. “Are there cameras around?”

  “No,” said Sari. “This is one of the only places they aren’t.”

  “And that’s only because Riggs doesn’t know anyone uses it,” added Jaxon bitterly. “He leaves this disgusting underbelly alone because no one comes down here. He doesn’t think anyone sees the ugly in this place, just like Alice said to me last night. She’s a wise one, even if she does have a weak stomach for rule-breaking.”

  We ran in silence for a few minutes. The tick, tick, tick, of the gears grinding and the hum of the power surging through the pipes put me on edge. Every step we took, I grew more worried about Legs’s chance of surviving. “How is he going to heal from this?”

  “We’re taking him to Xander. He’s the best medic we have,” Sari explained.

  “And thankfully he’s on our side.” Jaxon finished.

  Jaxon stopped abruptly and held a finger to his lips. Sari and I took a collective breath as Jaxon pressed his ear to the door. Satisfied with whatever he did or didn’t hear, he nodded and twisted the bronze handle.

  The room on the other side was impeccably clean; brilliant fluorescent lights bounced off the tile floor. A man no older than twenty strode across the room to where Jaxon and Sari gently laid Legs on a stretcher. His voice was hushed as he examined Legs, who had gone sickly pale. “How long has he been bleeding?”

  “Twenty minutes or so? I’m not one hundred percent positive, Xander,” Jaxon said. “We found him as quick as we could. We thought he was the only one, but —”

  Xander’s sharp eyes looked up. “There was a whole team, wasn’t there?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Too many shots were fired,” he said, untying the tourniquet. “You’re getting better at these, you know.”

  “Thanks. Look, can you fix him?”

  Xander lifted the mangled stump. “He needs a transfusion. I don’t know what type of blood he has.”

  I stepped forward. “I have O-Negative. He can have mine.”

  Xander’s eyes narrowed curiously. “Is this the girl Riggs sent you to get?”

  Jaxon nodded and leaned against a metal tray filled with various surgical utensils. So much for sterilization. “Yep.”

  Xander’s eyes returned to me. “Have you had any tattoos in the past year?”

  “No, what does that have to do with—”

  “Have you been sick at all?”

  “No, look—”

  “Did the dome you came from have any viral illnesses?”

  “No, can I—”

  “Is there any chance you’re pregnant?”

  “NO!” I shouted as I stomped across the room. Pain shot up the side of my hand as it connected with the metal tray beside Xander. Everyone went silent as I fumed. “I have a blood type that could save his life. Are you going to let me do it or not? I’m not sick, don’t have some wonky virus, and I’m not pregnant.”

  “Well, that means you need some spice in your life,” teased Jaxon as he did a little two-step and winked at me.

  “Shut up, Jax,” Sari and I said at the same time. Sari punched him in the shoulder, which made me feel a little better.

  Xander nodded. “Very well. Nothing you could have would make his situation more dire anyway, I suppose.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said as I shrugged out my jacket.

  “Well this has been a fun morning,” Jaxon piped. “I’m going to take my leave, clean up, and make sure Riggs doesn’t suspect any shenanigans.”

  “I’ll go clear our images off the cameras if we were caught anywhere, then check on Alice,” Sari agreed. They both took off through the clear glass door on the other side of the room, leaving me speechless with this man I had barely met.

  Xander answered my unvoiced question as he dug in a nearby drawer, his back to me. “Jax is squeamish with blood. Sari tries to make sure he doesn’t feel emasculated because of it.”

  “I see.”

  “He has a good heart, even though he seems to have a penchant for alienating anyone around him until they believe he’s rock, stone and sarcasm. Ah, here we go.”

  “What’s all that?”

  Xander lifted his armful of medical supplies; their sterile packaging crinkled with the movement. “Eighteen gauge needle, blood tubing, and a line of normal saline. Usually we’d get blood from our stores, but as you’ve pointed out, you’re the universal donor and this is a rushed job.” He laid the packages on the bed and returned to the cabinets. “I’m going to give him antihistamines to control a possible spike in his temperature. You may wan
t to pull up a chair. This could take a while.”

  I nodded and pulled a chair to Legs’s bedside, where he was passed out. His remaining hand looked so lifeless and limp. I took it in my own so he wouldn’t feel alone. If he could feel anything at all.

  “We’re going to fix you up,” I whispered to him and wiped dirt from his cheek, “Everything is going to be all right.”

  “Search his pockets for identification,” advised Xander. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “I already know who he is.”

  “You do? Who is he?”

  I flushed. “Well, I don’t know his real name, but I call him Legs. He’s a vendor at the market in Dome Four. We…we helped each other out. Looked out for each other.”

  “And I’m assuming, by the looks of it, that he looked out for you more than you looked out for him?”

  Another pang of guilt. I felt the heat in my face. “That’s not true,” I said defensively, “I made sure he was taken care of. I don’t know how he ended up here.”

  Xander pointed to the remains of his clothing. “I wouldn’t have imagined you a fan of the Polatzi.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then why is he wearing their uniform?”

  I examined Legs’s attire closer. Xander was right; his pants were military issue, and what remained of his bloody top looked very similar to the tan undershirt of the Polatzi’s uniform. I swallowed hard.

  “He wasn’t a Polatzi the last time I saw him. They…they took him against his will.”

  Xander looked at me pointedly. “That you know of.”

  His comment left me with a whole new wave of questions. What if Legs was a Polatzi soldier before he was taken away? Could he have been an informant all along? No. He couldn’t be. Right?

  Xander walked over and stuck Legs with a clear fluid, which caused Legs to stir. He sucked in a choked breath.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Xander said, a hand on Legs’s chest. “You’ll be fine.”