The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

  I try to call Mom again on the satellite phone Beth had stached in her utility harness.

  The satellite rejects my uplink. Again. I can’t tell if we’re too far underground or if Grandpa has blocked me.

  I try Dad, with the same result. I know it’s just a waste of battery charge, but I’m desperate to connect to someone, anyone who might be able to tell me what to do next.

  Chris slipped out a while ago. Maybe I should be worried, but I’m sure there are Takers out there watching us. They won’t let him get lost, if only because they’d never allow a human to wander their dark unsupervised. Besides, Chris is a lot older now than he was six Tau months ago, the last time we were here.

  I guess they’re just months now. Not Tau months. There’s no point in keeping track of Earth time anymore. The thought makes me dizzy. The whole universe has shifted on its axis.

  No. That’s not true.

  The universe is exactly as it was. The only thing that’s changed is my point of view. Nothing will ever look the way it did, from where I’m standing now.

  Strangely, I don’t think that has anything to do with Earth dying.

  Another human being shot at me.

  Another human being tried to kill me.

  I know. I know. Human beings have been killing each other for as long as there have been human beings. But not in my world. Not the human beings I know.

  Knew.

  My parents were born just after the Storm Wars. Mom was three when the newly formed International Space Agency gave Grandpa a medal for his work negotiating the peace accords. I’ve seen pictures of the ceremony. Mom’s generation was too busy fighting to survive the famines and flu epidemics that followed the wars to fight with each other. By the time I was born, we were flourishing again. Working together, possibly for the first time in history. That’s the world I grew up in. That’s the humanity I know. But an IntGov marine just tried to kill me. Has losing Earth broken all the bonds we formed trying to save it?

  We will protect your trees. No. Humans. Here.

  The phytoraptors and the Sorrow are forming those bonds now. Pulling together to survive. To save their world. From us.

  We will protect your trees. No. Humans. Here.

  I’m human. I should resent those words. Shouldn’t I? But I’m relieved. Does that make me a traitor, like Shelby says? Do I owe it to my species to work with Grandpa? To compromise my beliefs for the sake of humanity’s survival?

  I can’t.

  The answer comes without my having to search for it. I don’t know if it’s the right one, but it’s the only one I have.

  No. Humans. Here.

  I wonder what the Sorrow think of their unexpected new allies.

  Once the raptors left, the Givers ushered Tarn away, and four Takers brought us back down into the caves, to a place that was too dark for any of us to see. They kept us there for what turned out to be hours. Then they brought us here.

  They hardly said a word to us the whole time in English, but I could feel them talking to each other in Sorrow. The sonar in their voices made my stomach flip like I was on a roller coaster. My brain’s way of interpreting fear and excitement in their sonar, I think. Both emotions make sense. As far as most Sorrow knew before today, the raptors were mindless predators. But they just watched a phytoraptor speak to their Followed and promise to protect the Solace. Their world must feel as upside down and inside out as mine does.

  Jay’s hand slides through my hair to squeeze my shoulder. “I can hear you thinking from here.”

  I twist up to my knees to lay my head on the pillow beside his. “How’s your back?”

  “It sucks,” he says. “But I’ll live.”

  I don’t know what to say next, so I just lie there looking into his eyes. His irises are only a shade lighter than his pupils. A subtle brown so deep you’d think it was black unless you got this close. They’re so sad, I want to crack a joke or kiss him or something. Anything to paper over the shadows.

  Before I can give in to the impulse, he says, “Thank you.”

  “For what?” I snort. “Dragging you along on this AWOL suicide mission? Getting you court-martialed? Using you as a parachute?”

  He almost smiles. “It was more like an airbag.”

  “Good point,” I say. “But you’re welcome, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

  “If not for your AWOL suicide mission, Shelby would have put a flamethrower in my hands this morning,” he says. The words are so quiet that I can hardly hear him, even with our noses almost touching. The next words are even softer. “I don’t know what I would have done with it.”

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  Every marine from both squadrons was out there today. Jay would have been with them if we hadn’t snuck out. If Jay had refused to burn the Solace grove, what would Shelby have done?

  The tormented look on his face as we crouched over Hart’s body last night slides into my head. Would Jay really have refused that flamethrower? Or would he have felt duty bound to use it, to make sure his mom and his sister and his squad mates survived?

  That thought tugs another worry along behind it.

  What’s happening to Sarge and the others right now? Sarge ordered the retreat. Not Shelby. And he tackled her in the flyer to give Jay and me the opportunity to escape. Will she punish him for that? What will Grandpa do when he hears what happened at the solace grove?

  What will Mom do?

  Jay fingers the torn edge of my flight suit collar. “What happened to your pips?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I had just torn them off when I saw the roots going dark. I guess I dropped them somewhere.”

  “I know what they meant to you,” he says.

  “Not as much as I thought they did,” I say, realizing the words are true even as I say them.

  We slip into silence, just lying there, studying each other at close range. After a while, his eyes drift closed. His hand settles on the pillow between us. His breathing slows.

  He’s asleep.

  I ease back to sit against the cot again. Beth is quietly going through the med kit, taking inventory. Leela is sitting against the wall on the other side of the cabin. Our eyes meet. She offers me a bittersweet smile.

  She’s missing Teddy.

  I know it as surely as if she’d said it out loud. If he were alive, he’d be sitting next to her right now. Or maybe we wouldn’t be stuck out here, AWOL and alone in the middle of an impending war. Maybe he would have had a better idea. Maybe everything would be different.

  The cabin door opens and Chris skids in. “You guys—” He sees Jay sleeping and lowers his voice. “You gotta see this.”

  “Is it going to explode?” Leela groans quietly. “Immediately?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then I’m out,” she says, before Chris can argue with her. “Had enough excitement for the day.”

  “I need to monitor Leela,” Beth says.

  “No, you don’t,” Leela snips. “I can watch the glue dry just fine on my own.”

  “You know, there’s a relevant Shakespeare quote about excessive protestation,” Beth replies, shooting Leela an arched brow, “but it’s overused and I try to avoid clichés.”

  Leela rolls her eyes. Beth goes back to her inventory.

  I follow Chris into the dark.

  “What did you find?” I ask him as the lights of the cabin dwindle behind us.

  “You’ll see,” he says. He sounds excited. Not excited and terrified or excited and stressed. Just pure, bouncing-off-the-walls excited. It makes him sound younger. Like the kid I used to know, before his mother died in our arms.

  When the graceful curve of a matte-black wing emerges from the darkness ahead of us, I understand why.

  “Is that . . .”

  “Hell yes, it is,” Chris crows.

  Tarn is building a spaceship.

  “It’s a Ranger scout ship,” Chris says, the words he’s been holding back tumbling over each ot
her. “Like the Vulcan. It’s only half done, but the construction is solid. It’s—”

  “Beautiful,” I breathe.

  “Yeah,” he says. “It is, isn’t it?”

  I circle the fledgling ship. It’s just as unimaginable as Shelby shooting at me, but in a totally different way. This is . . . new life. A new future. Not just another tile ripped free from the one I always thought was waiting for us.

  Teddy would love this.

  The thought doesn’t ache the way I expect it to. It’s just there. A simple truth. Teddy loved spaceships. I can just picture the look on his face, looking up at this beautiful, impossible ship.

  “I want to help them build it,” Chris says abruptly. “I want to make her fly.”

  Me too.

  But it isn’t that simple.

  “We don’t know what they’re planning to use it for.”

  “I don’t care,” Chris says. “Is that . . . I know that’s bad. I know it could hurt us, probably, somehow, but I want to be part of this. Part of their future. Not . . .”

  “Not their enemy,” I say, finishing his thought with my own.

  “We’ll find a way,” Chris says.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I really do.”

  I reach out and grab his hand. He squeezes my fingers and hangs on. We stand there in the dark, at the foot of a spaceship that shouldn’t exist, and just believe. Just for a moment.

  “Joanna Watson.” A voice like a chorus flows out of the dark behind us. I turn toward it. I can just barely see the Sorrow past the light of my flex, which is surprising. They are wearing a gray robe, not the nearly invisible black of a Taker.

  “Can I help you?” I ask. I’m surprised how calm my voice sounds.

  “That is unlikely,” the Sorrow hums. They drop their hood, revealing a blindfolded face traced with delicate whirls of bright spring green. “But the Followed wishes to see you anyway. Come with me.”

  The messenger turns and walks away without giving me a chance to object.

  I throw a look to Chris.

  “I’ll be okay,” he says firmly.

  He will. He isn’t a little kid anymore.

  I wish Teddy could see that, too.

  As I hurry after the retreating green glow of the Sorrow’s biolight, I look back at Chris, standing tall and unafraid in the cool white glow of his flex, the beautiful black ship perched behind him in the dark. The image cuts straight through all the uncertainty I’ve been wrestling with.

  That’s what we are. That’s what we need to be.

  That’s what I can fight for.

  I don’t even know what it means, not in a practical way. But I know that somehow, some way, I want to live in a world where Chris can help the Sorrow finish that ship.

  We just have to figure out how to get there.

  The grass-green Sorrow doesn’t say a word as they lead me across the expansive cavern to the tunnels into Sorrow’s Solace. I catch up with them as we enter the city. There’s something familiar about this Sorrow. The delicacy of the veins that branch below their eyes and up over their forehead, maybe? They look almost like they’re wearing a mask of glow-in-the-dark lace. And their biolight is such a distinct color, like new grass in spring back on Earth.

  The memory slaps me in the face.

  Hands outlined in pale green light, raised in front of a hidden face under a faintly glowing gray hood.

  This is the Sorrow Jay didn’t shoot.

  This is the Sorrow who killed Ryan Hart.

  I stop walking.

  I don’t really mean to—it just happens. I stand there gasping, like the rage in my chest has sucked all the oxygen out of the tunnel.

  This is the Sorrow who killed Ryan Hart.

  I want to turn and run. To get as far away as I can from this being who killed a kind, funny man not that much older than me. Jay’s friend.

  Jay . . .

  Abruptly, I wonder if any of the Takers Jay killed last night are friends of this Sorrow.

  The thought reshuffles reality. Again.

  How can I hate them for killing Hart if I expect them to not hate Jay? Jay killed seven Takers last night. And I came here to make sure he doesn’t have to do it again.

  “Is there a problem?” the green Sorrow hums back at me. Their voice a rich minor harmony.

  Yes.

  “No,” I say, scrambling to catch up with them. “No problem.”

  The grass-green Sorrow stares at me for another endless moment. They don’t believe me, I think. But they turn and walk forward again without another word.

  We avoid the spiraling boulevard around the Solace this time, slipping instead through the narrow alleys that run through the edges of the city. We stop at a single-story structure huddled below a soaring scaffolding structure of bone and translucent fabric. In contrast, this building is small and dark, with coarse opaque fabric draped over its bone framework.

  The green Sorrow reaches for a seam in the wall hanging, but then they hesitate and turn back to me.

  “He’s risked a lot for you. Make it worthwhile.”

  The inner harmony of their voice is melancholy, and I can feel the depth of emotion there. Whoever this being is, Tarn matters to them.

  “I will,” I say.

  My escort raises their hands to cover their face, palms out. Then they pull open the seam-door and usher me into a spacious room with high ceilings. Cascades of something soft and fuzzy drip blue light from spherical pots suspended at different heights around the room. It’s some kind of bioluminescent plant.

  A bigger clay sphere, the size of one of Dr. Kao’s cooking vats, rests on a simple bone frame at the center of the room. The lattice of bone that supports the fabric walls is simple and unadorned by carvings. Tangles of opalescent cloth fill each corner. Their graceful folds catch and amplify the light of the fuzzy plants.

  Tarn slips in through an opening I didn’t notice in the far wall. His hood is pushed back and his robe hangs open, revealing the dark gleam of the phytoraptor-skin armor that covers his narrow torso and hugs his legs to their first joint.

  He hums something in a soothing harmony to the green Sorrow. Their reply pops back at him like water on a hot pan; then they turn and march out of the room.

  “They don’t like humans much, do they?” I ask.

  Tarn raises his hands in front of his face, palms in. “It’s more complicated than that. And Nor is very loyal. She’s anxious about my well-being.”

  “She has good reason,” I point out as he crosses to the clay sphere at the center of the room. “You were shot today.”

  “But I have been healed,” he says, reaching into it and pulling out two smaller orbs.

  He holds one of them out to me. I take it. It’s filled with thick, dark liquid.

  Tarn crosses to one of the tangles of glowing fabric and settles into it in a splayfooted crouch, his trijointed legs folded like paper fans on either side of his body.

  “Sit.”

  It’s physically impossible for me to imitate him, but I manage not to fall or spill whatever is in this orb as I work my way into another length of hanging fabric.

  Tarn takes a sip from his orb, his round eyes on me. Waiting for me to match him.

  Ingesting unknown substances is high on the list of stuff pioneers aren’t supposed to do. I’m sure Tarn knows that. He’s testing me. He wants to see if I trust him. I don’t know if I should. I put the orb, which is obviously a Sorrow cup, to my lips and drink anyway.

  The liquid is warm and thick and sweet, with a sharp coppery flavor.

  “Lucille called this tea,” Tarn says. “It is made from the flowering trees your people find so attractive.”

  I take another sip. It’s good. And I feel like the heavy exhaustion is lifting from my shoulders. Fido flower tea must be a stimulant. Sorrow coffee.

  “You’ve made some unexpected choices today,” Tarn says.

  Like siding with him against my own people? Unex
pected is one word for it. I bet Shelby has a few others. But she seems to prefer bullets to words.

  “You’ve made some pretty unexpected choices yourself,” I say.

  He nods. “And perhaps a few foolish ones, as well.” He drinks again. “It has been a very strange day. I have seen things I never dreamed possible. Including a few so terrible, I cannot imagine them to be real, even after seeing them with my own eyes.”

  The acrid smell of burning solace trees floods my memory.

  “I’m . . . I . . .” I swear under my breath. “I want to say I’m sorry, but that isn’t enough to express how much I regret what my people did today.”

  Tarn raises one hand to cover his face, palm in, and then lets it drop to his chest. Running his fingers over the armor that hugs his body.

  “I am wearing the skin of a being whose descendants saved my home,” he says. “Thinking, feeling beings whose bodies my people have stolen and used to build our city and craft the very weapons we use to kill them. Humanity is not alone in its horrors.”

  “You didn’t know,” I say.

  He covers his face with an out-turned hand this time. “I should have. My people have used the Beasts for more than their skin and bones. Fear is a powerful tool.”

  Jay’s voice grates through my brain.

  He said surviving and being able to live with yourself aren’t always the same thing.

  Grandpa made Jay fear what would happen to his family and his friends if he wasn’t willing to kill innocent, sleeping beings in order to protect the people he loves. Grandpa and Shelby have been using that same fear to control all of us since they arrived.

  “A weapon we’ve been aiming at ourselves, this whole time.” The words are bitter in my mouth.

  “And at each other. Your grandfather’s attack on the Solace today was a retaliation for our raid on your settlement. Wasn’t it?” Tarn says.

  “That doesn’t make it right,” I say.

  “No,” Tarn agrees. “That makes it war. My Takers are already planning a counterstrike. I don’t have any reason to stop them.”

  “I wish I could give you one.”

  “You could,” Tarn says. “You could challenge your grandfather.”

  “It isn’t that simple,” I say. “Our society doesn’t work that way.”