Aerie (8 page)

My brain's clattering against my skull, trying to map likely
trajectories of Aza, likely emotional paths of Aza, and the rest of my head is insisting on a loop in which everything is broken forever and I have to find a way to save a girl who loved me a few days ago, but who maybe doesn't love me anymore.

Or, at least won't, the moment she learns what I did.

Other parts of my brain are mapping my own betrayals, and I don't know if she knows I don't know what she knows I don't know what might be about to happen, and—

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A monitor goes on outside the glass of the conference room, showing a huge ship, an aircraft carrier, really, in the middle of which ocean? No indication.

I see helicopters, small launch boats—

And in the middle of all of it is Aza Ray, in handcuffs. I jolt against the glass like I can get to her, but she's
there
, wherever
there
is, and I'm in a locked room underneath a shopping mall.

Someone else comes into the frame. Aza the way I first knew her, Aza the way I first fell for her. As in, not Aza. Black
hair. Pale skin. Ice-blue eyes, the only difference from the version I used to know.

SHIT.

“Get her off that boat! NOW!” I'm shouting and pounding the door, but the SWAB people on the other side are working. Everyone's making lists and scanning data, and watching the monitors calmly.

Aza, and Heyward, opposite each other at a table.

I'm making sounds I didn't know I was about to make. I try to calm my adrenaline rush. I feel lightning struck all over again. The version of me that thought I was ahead of SWAB suddenly feels like a fucking fool.

Jason. Kerwin. You. Idiot.

The audio goes on in my conference room, and I hear Aza losing her shit in exactly the same way I am.

“AM I HERE BECAUSE OF
YOU
?” she shouts. “Are you working with them?”

Aza's gasping in a way I haven't heard her gasping in a year. She can't get enough air. I'm scared for her. I'm leaning forward, praying her off the ledge, but I'm too far away to do anything. She dissolves into coughing. Her voice sounds wrong. It sounds bruised. She holds her throat and winces.

“What did you do to my voice?”

No one answers her. I want to know that answer too.

“They want the Flock,” says Heyward. The way she says it is chilling. She looks hard at Aza, and says it again. “They think you can give it to them. If you can, you'd better do it. Zal Quel has escaped from prison, and she's on the move. She's assembling her forces. Things have changed in Magonia.”

The hair on the back of my neck is up, and I have goose
bumps all over. The doors are still locked. No one's looking at me. Everyone's glued to their monitors.

“What do you mean, escaped?” Aza asks.

“She has a ship. She's recruiting Magonians to her side. And she has one more thing—”

“Caru,” says Aza, and her face contorts in pain. “She has Caru, doesn't she? I felt it. Who sent YOU?! Was it Zal?”

She sounds hysterical, and she also sounds like she's about to fall over choking.

“They want the Flock. If you're not working with Zal, you'll give it to them.”

“Who's
them
? And how could I be working with Zal?”

I hear things from outside the conference room.

“Shut her down,” says my boss. “Raise the levels. Slowly.”

Aza suddenly chokes again, her hands around her throat, and then something changes. Her eyes widen. I see her mouth open, but no sound comes out. Pain all over her face. What's happening?

“Use the balance tones,” says Armstrong. “Go.”

There's a sound in SWAB's offices. A sound I recognize. It's Aza's song, the song that makes rocks out of rain.

It's the song I recorded. Oh god.

THIS WAS ME.

Those are files I gave SWAB for “research” in trade for security on Aza's house—a bargain for getting SWAB to guard her from Zal. Or so I thought.

Instead? I gave them everything they needed to control her. I've never had a feeling this bad before, never felt my whole soul orbiting a drain this way, but I'm on my way down.

“Convert it,” says someone outside this room. The song
shifts into a whining keen, and on-screen, Aza looks horrified. I see her double over in pain, silenced.

I pound on the door of the conference room, and no one pays any attention. They're all out there, and on every monitor, on every screen, I still see Aza.

Aza's silently, furiously fighting as she is removed from the deck, and Heyward's watching her go.

The images shift, new cameras, following Aza and her guards below deck, past glass cells.

Full of creatures.

Smoke coheres into a green-eyed leopard, a blur. A man who seems to be made of lava has hands full of molten red-orange. It's pouring out of his fingers. There's a cage full of wings, rising, rising, and the wings are made of something like knives, not soft. Stiff and sharp.

I'm freaking out. This isn't anything I know about. This is something else entirely. One cell is all lightning. A stormshark? Shit shit shit.

The feed follows Aza and her guards as she descends through the ship. There's a huge glass tank two stories tall, and I see something in it I recognize.

At SWAB, there are the bones of an archaeopteryx found in Germany, not the ancient one everyone knows about, the one on display in London, but a much more recent version, its beak lined with teeth, its name translating back to
ancient wing.
It's the size of a blackbird. And SWAB has the bones of another recent specimen of something that should have been dead millions of years, an
Argentavis magnificens
, or
magnificent silver bird
, with a twenty-three-foot wingspan. Birds so big and
heavy that some of them apparently had to jump off cliffs in order to take flight.

There's one there in the cell. A living one.

It's right there. Now. This tremendous extinct bird, this flyer. That's what it is. I know it.

I don't have words for what's reverberating through me, shaking everything I thought I knew about my life.

I can hear SWAB agents on the other side of the glass talking about the other prisoners, talking about how this is a maximum security zone for the most dangerous things in the world.

I see flashes of something in another cell, a thing made of dirt, shifting, piling itself back up from dust and into a form, the face of a man, hands and eyes, a thing full of worms and moles and earth tunnels, which then collapses, builds itself back again. Water pours from the ceiling to wash it away, and as it does, the creature made of dust opens its mouth against the glass to scream.

I'm being turned inside out, a sweater tugged over a head and unraveled into yarn. I'm as paralyzed by wonder as I am with horror. This exists.

Oh my god.

SWAB has a prison full of monsters, which I knew exactly nothing about, never mind my research, never mind my connections, never mind my allegedly capable brain.

Are they all “terrorists”?

How did I not have any version of this in my head? I know things about prisons. I know things about possibilities, and yet, I just thought, safe facility, safe house—

Oh my god, I'm an idiot.

SWAB knows WAY more than I know. And Aza's in their clutches.

Aza struggles past a lab containing a little boat, which levitates inside its confines. It looks to be made of silvery wood, but it bobs in the air. It's tied to a table, and a team of people are around it, sawing into its wood, taking samples. I see Aza turn her head to look at it, and the look on her face is yearning.

A Magonian boat, it must be. Aza looks more like herself than she's looked in a year when she sees it. She looks like she's seen something from home.

I've been missing memos on every front. I've been in the dark.

Pi appears in the air around my head, digits crawling up the walls and twisting before my eyes. The entirety of the universe feels covered in fog. There are too many unknowns. I shouldn't ever have trusted anyone but Aza.

The conference room door opens at last.

“Kerwin,” Director Armstrong says.

“What's happening?” I ask him. I keep my voice calm.

“Quel's on the move. Your girlfriend, she's safe shipboard. But we need her to give us the Flock. What can we use? We know you've got something that'll make her bend. It's for her own good.”

“What's the Flock, exactly?”

“The Flock's the way to take Quel out without officially getting involved,” Armstrong says. “Thanks to your intel, we turned Heyward Boyle. You can be proud. She's agreed to work with us to get the location of the Flock out of Aza.”

Never, not once in the past year, have I heard Aza reference anything called the Flock.

“You don't have to get it from her.
I
can get it for you,” I tell Armstrong.

Armstrong's face changes. “
You
know where it is?”

I stare him down.

“But I can't do it from in here,” I say.

Finally, he nods.

I get the agents to take me to my house. The SWAB car speeds down the highway, me in the backseat.

I'm not supposed to be the guy who can barely keep himself from shouting numbers, who wants to obsessively touch the lock over and over again, who is looping like no one has ever looped before in the history of the world. I'd put that Jason behind me. Or so I thought. Do you ever put yourself behind you?

There's an owl flying near us, surrounded by a bunch of other birds, nothing I can identify from here. I'm instantly on alert.

But, that might just be an owl.

The owl looks into the car window. I get a chill like I'm its prey. The bird, I swear, flexes its talons. They're as long as my fingers. Its face is round and its eyes are huge and it shouldn't be out in daylight, but it is. How long was I underground? The drive to headquarters is an hour and now it's . . . afternoon of the next day, the day after? I don't know.

I'm not going to clue the people in this vehicle into the fact that there might be a flock of Rostrae following us. I see a blue jay beside the owl. And then, above the whole thing, a golden eagle. They're flying fast.

Outside the window, the owl banks and rises up again, with the rest of the flock of random birds. Out of range.

Okay. Okay.

Jesus Christ, get it together.

I shut my eyes and visit my number. A loop of a number that could contain everything, could contain me and Aza. I imagine us in the center of this twisting circle of trillions of digits. I imagine a circle that could contain every possibility for the rest of our lives together and separately, that could keep us both on the same continuum, even if we were far apart.

Aza at one end of pi, and me at the other endless end, getting pushed and pushed away from each other every time a new digit is discovered. But we'd still be tied to each other.

We
ARE
still tied to each other.

What will I do with the rest of my life if it has no Aza in it?

I feel like I could take off on the open wind, not caring if I make it. There are certain kinds of swallows that rise up yearly and make their way across the straits of Gibraltar, across the Sahara. Those birds are British to begin with, and they make their way to South Africa every year to spend their summer vacationing feasting on insects. At this time of year, this moment when I'm sitting in this car in America, looking out at ice and snow, they've migrated to sun.

If I couldn't find Aza, I'd like to think I'd be like one of those birds. I'd get up one night and just start flying. I'd fly until I found her.

But I can't fly.

I can't sing.

I can't sail.

My house. My front door. We pull up a half block away, and I see no cars in the driveway. I don't want to deal with my moms. I've been gone too long, and—

I don't have enough brain for questions. Not right now. I feel like I've had about ninety cups of coffee.

“We'll wait,” the agent behind the wheel says.

There are birds everywhere when I get out of the car. They're all around the trees and all over the front lawn. I ignore them, even as one flies almost into the house with me. I have pi in my head and Aza is everywhere pi isn't.

I run up the walk to my front door, up the stairs, open my bedside drawer, and search frantically until I find another compass, the twin to the one I gave Aza.

My only hope is she wasn't so mad at me that she took it out of her flight suit and left it in her room. I saw what she was wearing when she was kidnapped. She was still dressed. It was in her pocket, or at least that's where she put it on the morning of her birthday.

Is the compass more than meets the eye? Yes.

Epic? Yes.

Hacked? Obviously.

I press a button on the back of the case and my compass hums and shows me a screen, a flat black space on the inner face of the cover.

“Aza, can you hear me?” I say. “AZA RAY.”

Guards haul me back to my cell and draw the curtains. I'm
like Caru when I met him in Zal's cabin, hooded in a cage. It's dark. When I press my hands to the glass, it now vibrates with some kind of current.

I'm not willing to die by electrocution, trying to smash my way out of here.

What can I do without my song? Without Caru? There was no sign of him up there, no pang in my heart of him trying to connect.

I hardly feel anything except despair. Zal, free. Caru probably with her. Dai, clearly plotting along.

What do they want with Caru? Zal can't bond to him. He's my heartbird now, not hers. So what's she looking for? Why's she using him?

To get to me? She's not wrong.

Except that I'm imprisoned and I don't even know who has me, or why.

Something hums inside my flight suit pocket. I fumble and find the compass I forgot I had. It's pointing north, ferociously, and I look at it for a moment, wondering.

I open it and Jason's face appears inside the cover, a tiny screen I didn't even know was there. He looks panicked.

THANK GOD. I don't care if he's panicked, at least he's okay, oh thank god. He's alive. Zal doesn't have him. He's in his room. I choke on relief, on my heart rising up and pounding in my throat, on the possibility of the rest of my life without him, and on just how much I don't think I could do that.

“AZA,” he says. His voice breaks. “Oh my god, Aza, I'm so sorry.”

I'm instantly talking as fast as I can, whispering, my voice still muted.

“I don't know where I am. Heyward's here too, and Zal's escaped and so has Dai, and they have Caru, oh my god, and I'm here, I can't get out, I can't help him, you have to help him—”

“You're on a prison ship,” he says. “I'm tracking your location now. I'm downloading coordinates. I'm going to get you out. I don't know how, but Aza . . .”

“What?”

He takes a deep breath. “I'm so sorry, I—”

I interrupt.

“—No,
I'm
sorry! I shouldn't have said you were trying to run my life. You were just worried about me, because you love me. And I'm an idiot. It was a bad moment, okay, and I lost control of my mouth, because I love you too and—”

“No. NO! I have to tell you something. You have to let me tell you. Aza, it's—”

What's he going to say? Is he crying?

Oh my god. Has Zal come for my family? My parents, Eli—

I can't survive that, I can't take it, I—

Jason breathes out raggedly. He shakes his head and then he
blurts, “Az, there's something you don't know about me.”

I stare at him through the tiny screen.

“Not true. I know everything there is to know about you,” I tell him. “I've known you since the beginning, and I'm planning to know you until the end.”

He swallows.

This is totally freaking me out. “Just tell me; whatever it is, we'll deal with it, okay. Tell me.”

“I'm the one who made them arrest you.”

“Right after we got back from Norway . . . they didn't give me a choice. I joined an agency. I've been reporting to them for the past year. They said they'd help me keep you safe—but now they . . . we have to get you out of there.” He pauses. “They think you're a terrorist, Az.”

WHAT.

WHAT?!

The way he stopped sleeping, the way he seemed like he had more information about Magonia than he should, all the questions he asked me—

It starts to make sense. In the worst, most miserable way.

I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to be sick.

“You lied to me,” I whisper. “You've been lying to me for . . . what? A YEAR?”

“I wasn't lying! I was just . . . not telling you some things. I had to protect you from the Magonians—”

He says it like he might say
aliens
. Or
monsters.

“I'M MAGONIAN.
”
My eyes are hot. My skin is burning.

“You know what I mean! From Zal, from Dai, from people who'd use you!”

“
Use me?
What do you think I am? Do you think I'm not a
person? Do you think I don't have any choice about anything?! You think I'm just something to be
used
?”

“I saw what almost happened in Svalbard—”

“YOU SAW ME FIGHT THEM. YOU SAW ME WIN.”

He breaks, sobs. “I was trying to keep you safe—”

Tears are running down my face. My throat hurts. It feels like I'm about to choke.

“I love you so much,” he protests frantically. “That's why I did all this—”

I'm breathing too fast, thinking about all the things we did together. Was he lying the whole time?

Nights sleeping in his arms, feeling like we were sharing a language more real than any other language anyone else ever shared—was it all fake?

What am I supposed to do if the person I trust most in the world lies to me? If he can look right into my eyes, wrap his arms around me, and lie?

I feel like I can't breathe. I feel like a dying girl all over again, dying Aza Ray, all those years beside him, all these years, almost my whole life beside him.

I think about {{{{    }}}}.

Oh my god.

If I can't trust Jason, who can I trust? He acted like he was always on my side, every moment, every day, every time I messed everything up. He was next to me in hospital rooms. He was next to me in my bed. He was holding my hand. He was telling me he loved—

“I'm gonna fix it!” he insists. “Aza, I'm getting you out. There has to be someone there I can talk to. Don't trust Heyward—”

I stare at him. Is
he
actually telling ME who to trust now?
Rage surfaces like a shark in my sea of disbelief. Rage feels better. Rage, at least I understand.

“Who should I trust, then?”

There's a sound on his side of the compass. A banging on the door, and someone bursting in. Carol calling his name.

“Jason? JASON! Oh my god, we thought you were gone.”

She's hysterical. I've never heard her sound this way before. She's weeping.

Then Eve. “We called the police! We thought they took you too—”

Jason looks stunned.

“
Who
took me too?”

“Whoever took Eli and Beth,” Carol says.

I freeze. I'm in this cell a million miles from anywhere. What did she just say? Took ELI??

“We thought you were with them. What happened? Do you know where they are?”

“I'm calling the Boyles,” I hear Eve saying. “Maybe Beth and Eli came home too.” She's dialing.

Jason's eyes tilt toward me on the screen, frantic.

Because we know. Both of us. Who else would it be?

Zal.

If I'd been there—

If I'd been home, she'd have taken me instead.

Jason's been lying to me for a year, and
this
is what his lies have done.

Zal has my sister. I wasn't there to protect her. She probably came for me, and she got Eli instead. Eli, grabbed by Breath. Eli snatched, Eli breathless, terrified, and all because of Jason.

Everything's wrong.

My heart is pounding. My heart is breaking.

I look at Jason, the love of my life.

I've loved him since we were five.

I can't love him anymore. He's crossed the line I didn't know was there.

I see him try to speak as I close the compass, but whatever he says, I'm not listening.

The thing buzzes in my pocket. It buzzes and buzzes and I don't open it. I put my hands to my chest and try to feel where my heart is. My heartbird is gone. My sister is gone. Jason's gone.

I throw up in the corner of my cell, because there's not another response. I'm a _____ instead of { }. I'm a flat line.

And I am all alone.