by A. L. Davroe
I open my mouth to say something—anything—but someone places their fingers against my spine. I spin around to find Bastian standing there, his expression dark and troubled.
“Let it go.” He glances at Delia. “Both of you.” He draws himself closer to me, protective as I remember him being. I haven’t been close to him in over a year and it feels so good. I just want to melt into his brotherly shelter. “Come on,” he whispers.
I turn back to Delia, fists balled and spoiling for a fight, but she’s already stalking away. The other Aristocratic girls rally around her, throwing me dirty glances as they shuffle into their room.
“What-what just happened?” I whisper, tears stinging my eyes.
Bastian tugs on my arm. “Let’s go.”
Feeling like a puppet, I follow him back to our shared room. Sadie is sitting on the sleeping bag beside mine, and Bastian’s is on her other side. Sid and Cam—Snakeskin—are there, too. That doesn’t surprise me; there are a couple of Dolls setting up in each of the rooms.
I sit beside my pack and promptly fall into a fit of burning tears. “How?” I cry. “How did it come to this?”
Bastian’s voice is grave. “Things change, Ella.”
“No!” I whip my head up, pegging him with my glare. “Not my best friend. Not Delia. Delia is Delia. Not that— Not that thing,” I nearly scream, emphasizing my words with my finger.
Bastian sits back and lets out a long sigh, his eyes wandering the floor. “I don’t know what to say, Ella. Things were really hard for her after you. After you…”
“Died?” I offer, bitter. His lost expression sucks all the fight and anger out of me, and I sag against the wall, hugging myself. “She sent me messages every day for months. All that pain. All that pining and crying over my death. And I have hundreds of letters where I wrote my deepest, most heartfelt feelings to her almost every day for more than a year on my flex bracelet.” I touch the bracelet around my wrist, useless without my G-Chip to control it. “She was my best friend. And now this? Why would she say something like that? Why would she wish me dead?”
“Perhaps you should ask her that yourself? She’s your friend, after all.”
Feeling hollow inside, I shake my head. “Have you looked at her? Delia isn’t in there anymore.” This hollow feeling—it’s like she’s dead. Like how I felt when Nadine and Gus died in Nexis. “I’ve lost her. And now I’ve lost Gus again, too!” I wail, tears coming hard again.
“I’m sure you’ll make up.”
“No. You didn’t see the look on his face.”
“I can’t make out any sort of look on that face of his,” he admits.
“Well I can. I know him, Bastian, front to back. He’ll never forgive me.”
A low growl sounds in his throat. “I suppose now isn’t the time to ask how exactly you know Shadow.” I shake my head and then he says to Sadie, “A little help?”
Her answering voice is confused. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“I dunno, give her girl advice or something.” His words only make me cry harder because Delia used to be my girl-advice giver.
“I don’t know anything about this kind of thing,” Sadie explains. “I’ve never dated anyone but you.”
“But you’ve lived with her this past year? That’s what you told me.”
“Well,” Sadie says haltingly. “I never actually talked to her.” Then, “Don’t look at me like that, you’re her cousin. You mourned over her for months. You grew up with her, you think of something to make her stop crying.”
But Bastian doesn’t know what to say. He never really did when it came to my being upset. It always just made him stare at me with this helpless expression on his face. Something I’m sure I’d find him doing right now if I looked up.
Gus would know what to do. He always does. He’d hold me and kiss me and tell me it was all right. But he’s not here. Because my ex-best friend has some foolish notion that she has dibs on him.
“Love is a tricky thing,” Violet finally offers. “Sometimes you think you’ve got it right, but you don’t.”
I don’t want to hear that Gus isn’t for me. He’s perfect for me. He’s mine. We’ve been together for a year! But Delia—she’s my best friend. I could never hurt her, not knowingly. And now I do know. “What do I do?” I whimper.
“That’s for you to decide. And her. And him,” Violet says. “I’ve read a lot of journals. That’s my favorite thing to read. From all different times. I have a standing order with the relic retrieval unit in the Outer Block. Everything I’ve learned from reading about people’s lives from prior to the war is this: the pieces will fall as they will. You’ll live. May not feel like it at first, but that’s how life is. Sometimes we steal someone’s lover. Sometimes lovers find out we used to hate them. Sometimes people can’t accept it when friends and family who died in a war suddenly come back to life. They were prisoners of war or lost at sea and have finally come home after five, ten years—but the people they come home to have come to terms and moved on. They have new lovers, new family, and they don’t like those wounds opening again so they push the returned soldier away.”
Everyone is silent as those words sink in. What will I do if Gus pushes me away? The thought hadn’t really occurred to me. What if I made all that sacrifice for a boy who doesn’t even want me in Real World?
I sob myself raw and dry. My eyes feel like acid. Sadie, who hasn’t moved from my side, lays her head on my shoulder and sighs. “I’m sorry, Ella,” she whispers. And it’s an apology for everything, not just what happened with Gus.
Something breaks then, and I suddenly find myself unfolding and pulling her into my arms. “I’m sorry, too,” I sniff. “I’m so, so sorry.” She’s stiff for a moment, but then squeezes me back and a single sob escapes her.
As we cling to each other, I realize she needs this hug as much as I do. She needs a friend as much as I do. We’re both lost. She’s here in a room with me, Violet, and Bastian. Apparently she didn’t find anyone who wanted to befriend her among the other Aristocratic girls. It doesn’t surprise me. Most of those girls are Elites. Sadie was a ward of the city. Cared for by a nobody. They wouldn’t accept her. Even now, with Quentin’s words of change fresh in everyone’s head.
But I will accept her. Despite our past—her turning a blind eye while Katrina and my uncle kept me imprisoned and practically starved me to death. Because if I can’t forgive, then how can I expect anyone to forgive me?
chapter five
Post-American Date: 7/4/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 5:42 p.m.
Location: Sub-Tunnel 6
Dragon fire. A body falling from the sky. Nadine’s blood trail leading under my feet and back behind me into the streets of Evanescence. My own screaming as the interior of a pod tumbles over and over, blasting into heat. Gus’s bloody-mouthed grin as Damascus Knights thunder down upon us. I’m running, faster, harder, heart hammering. The tunnel just goes on and on and on, escape never coming to me. A hand grasps my throat in the darkness. President Cyr’s intestines spill from the dais. The door slams and guns start firing, people start screaming. Meems’s face twists, contorts.
You led us here to die!
I flinch awake, gasping, then lie there, still and sweating, gulping in mouthfuls of cold, stale air. And then I hear Gus’s voice. Blinking hard and fast, I try to get my eyes to adjust. The light-sticks have burned so low I can only see shadows in the darkness.
As my eyes adjust, I find it’s not Gus at all, but Quentin speaking. Circuits, I hate that I keep mistaking them for each other! It’s unfortunate they both have the same voice Mod. Quentin is hunched beside Sid.
I hear Sid say, “—do this in the morning.”
“No, I need it done now. Get up.”
Sid sits upright and glances around, then turns sapphire cat eyes on Quentin, who tips his head toward the open door. Quentin moves on to Cam.
Cam doesn’t respond as quietly. He murmurs and mu
tters, “Not now, Beau, I’m sleeping.”
As Quentin grins at this, Sid softly mutters, “Jesus H, what an idiot.”
When Quentin shakes Cam harder, he flails and starts speaking. “Wha—” Quentin slaps a hand over his mouth and shushes him.
Cam’s face turns toward the rest of us and then back to Quentin, who lowers his hand. “What’s going on?”
“Get up and come with me,” Quentin whispers back, grabbing Cam’s boots and shoving them at him. “I need you to help me.”
As Sid gets to his feet, Cam pushes the sleeping bag away and groggily struggles to insert one foot in the wrong boot. “Why do you need us? Can’t Gus help?”
Quentin’s lips narrow. “He’s offline right now, all bent out of shape about Ella and Delia. I can’t deal with him, so I sent him to bed.”
Cam grunts in response and, yawning, stands. “Okay, okay.”
The three of them skulk out of the room. Suspicious, I slide out of my bedroll and follow after them. The concrete is cold and rough on my synthetic feet and my knee feels creaky and wrong as I limp after them. It’s not hard to follow their whispering voices or keep my distance in the darkness, and Cam keeps up a steady stream of conversation that covers any noise I make as Quentin leads us into the dark unknown of the Undertunnel.
“What’s so important that you need to do this now, Quent? You should be sleeping.”
“I can’t sleep,” Quentin replies. There’s a moment of silence. “How’s everyone doing in your group?”
“Eh,” Cam says. “Sid and that redhead seem to be hitting it off real well.”
Sid speaks for the first time. “Her name is Sadie Turline.”
“Oh,” Cam says, “excuse me.” He chuckles darkly. “Sid’s got it bad for the prissy Aristocrat.”
“She’s with Bastian, if you haven’t noticed them fawning over each other. At least I’m not swapping bio-matter with Beau.”
“Oi,” Cam grunts. “There’s nothing wrong with Beau.”
Sid scoffs. “Except that Beau’s a guy.”
“So what? It’s been legal for hundreds of years.”
“Would you two stop, please? You’re giving me a headache,” Quentin growls. “Honestly, how long have you two been Dolls? How many times do I have to tell you to drop the Disfavored prejudices. If Sid wants to fall in love with an Aristocrat, that’s fine. If Cam wants to be gay, that’s fine, too. Seriously, I’m getting sick of it.”
The ribbing comes to an end with that, and they walk in silence for another few minutes. Finally, Quentin speaks again. “Besides Sid having a crush on this Sadie girl, everyone else is okay?”
Sid says, “I don’t have a crush on Sadie,” at the same time Cam says, “You mean, is Ella okay.”
Quentin doesn’t answer.
“Gus gave her the total brush-off today,” Sid says. “In front of everyone. She cried.”
I almost stop walking. It feels too weird to be hearing them talk about me, but curiosity has me continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
Cam says, “Delia got between the two of them and caused it. I told you saving her would be trouble.”
“Hey,” Sid barks defensively. “I’m not the one who grabbed her and Carsai and threw them into the aerovator. Personally, I feel that they both should have been left to the killer robots, but I wasn’t about to fight with Gus when he did. I like my windpipe open and functioning.”
Cam mutters, “I still have no idea what he sees in that girl.”
I blink, confused. Gus saved Delia and Carsai?
Quentin sighs. “I do. Delia has some pretty compelling qualities when you get to know her. Trust me, between her relationships with Carsai and Gus, I’ve had to deal with Delia quite a bit over the past few months.”
Whoa, wait a second. Is Quentin Cyr actually complimenting Delia? The girl he never looked at twice?
Quentin makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Ugh, but Gus is such an ass. Getting mixed up with her in the first place when he had it so good in the game. One in each world? That’s just selfish.”
“Dreams are dreams, and reality is reality,” Sid says quietly. “One would think you’d know that better than anyone.”
“Oh,” Quentin’s voice is a dark chuckle, “trust me, I do. Doesn’t mean I can’t be upset about it.”
“What are you going to do?” Sid asks.
Quentin is quiet for a long time. “Nothing.”
Cam says, “Uh, what does that mean?”
“It means what it means,” Quentin replies. “If Gus wants to act like an ass, then let him. She doesn’t deserve it, but I don’t think she deserves me keeping him in line, either. She deserves to know the truth about him. Don’t you think?”
No one objects, but I don’t expect them to; they, after all, know what the hell is going on and I can’t, being the eavesdropper that I am, exactly demand clarification.
Quentin changes the subject. “Keep her occupied. I don’t think she’s handling what happened very well.”
“Not sure if you noticed, but no one is,” Sid mutters. “They’re in shock now, but wait a day or two and you’re going to end up with quite a few problems, and Ella is going to be the least of them.”
A bitter scoff escapes Quentin and he says, “If anyone thinks they have more of a right to act out than anyone else does, they’ve got another thing coming. I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with everyone else’s grief. Ella is my top priority.”
Wait, what? Me? Why me?
“Poor girl,” Cam says. “She shouldn’t have seen all that. With her uncle and everything.”
“Yeah, well” —Quentin breathes—“it had to be done. Who knows what he would have done if he got loose. Anyway, I’m glad she was there, she may not have escaped otherwise. I don’t think I could have dealt with that.”
His words make my chest flutter. Never in all my life would I ever have expected Quentin Cyr to care about my well-being for an instant. And this? Being a priority? But why? I can’t help but wonder if his concern for me factors into some greater plan, some other thing the Cyrs had planned for me.
I turn those possibilities over and over in my head as the boys walk on in silence and I follow like a shadow. I wince against the pain in my leg and that makes me start to wonder just how long Quentin’s quick fix is going to last.
“Here should be good,” Quentin says. And I hear his pack fall to the floor. “Try a light-stick. I don’t think anyone will see it from this far away, there’s a curve to the tunnel.”
I take a few hasty steps backward, biting my lip against the pain as I go, so that I don’t show up in the circle of light.
Crack. Orange light floods around them, making me squint. Cam puts the light-stick down between them. “Okay, what’s this all about?”
Quentin’s fingers fly to his sling. “This. Something’s wrong.”
Sid purses his lips. “Have you even bothered changing the bandages since the attack?”
Quentin’s lack of eye contact is answer enough. Sid throws his head back and sighs, but he steps forward and helps slide the sling over Quentin’s head. I watch, uncertain if I should or shouldn’t divert my eyes as Cam and Sid help each other strip a wincing and sweating Quentin’s doublet, shirt, and bandages away.
Quentin is no disappointment to what I had always imagined he’d look like under those clothes. Perfect. Too perfect. Hairless and pale with just the right proportions. Muscled like those Grecian statues in Dad’s archival files. I can see the tiny swirls of fiber-optic cable under his skin, but without the energy to light them, they look like fine scars. But even if they were scars, they’d still be beautiful. He’s just too pretty. It’s so fake. So… Customized. Not like Gus, who is so very real in his imperfections and flaws.
Sid moves to one side and I see the wound. Redness and swelling, dried blood, bruising. Ugliness. I wrinkle my nose, hating how wrong it looks on him.
“Circuits, Quent,” Cam says. “
Why didn’t you say something?”
Quentin stares at the floor. He looks like he wants to punch someone. I realize that he doesn’t like that he’s wounded. Well, no one ever does, but his hatred is beyond the pain and the marring of his perfection. Quentin doesn’t like that his injury makes him weak. Even from this distance, I can see the stubborn resolve in his eyes. That’s why he refused to have the bandages changed until now. He’s a fighter, I’ll give him that.
Sid must also see or know that, because he says, “Being stubborn about it isn’t going to help anyone. You’re useless if you lose that arm.”
For whatever reason, his words make my fingers go to my stumps. Useless.
“I won’t,” Quentin says. He lifts his hand, the one he punched the aerovator door with, and flexes it. The swelling is down, as is the bruising. “It should be healed already.”
“Those experimental regeneration nanos only work unhindered. Something’s probably preventing them.” Sid kneels down and begins shuffling through the pack. “Sit over there.” He gestures to the wall.
Quentin, straight backed and too pretty, marches over and slumps down like a rag doll, good arm slung across upraised knees. As he stares off into the nothingness before him, his lids droop. He’s got to be exhausted. “Do you think it’s possible anyone survived?”
Sid goes still and his gaze shoots to Cam, who hoods his eyes and looks away. Cam says, “I don’t know. And there is no way of knowing. It’s best to make peace with it and not get your hopes up.”
Quentin closes his eyes and nods, leaning his head back against the wall.
My mind wanders, wondering who else Quentin must care about back home. His mother, obviously. A good number of friends, some other Dolls who hadn’t made it out. A whole year has passed since last I saw him. Had his parents arranged a marriage for him yet? Had he liked her? Is he thinking about her right now?
Sid puts together some medical supplies while Cam squats beside Quentin and tries cleaning the wound.