Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) (32 page)

18
• to heal with gold

[Dev]

Of all the times over the past day that didn’t feel real, none hold a candle to this one. The breath in my lungs feels fresh, my senses return to me. Numb nerves are washed in bright, stinging feeling. Even though I don’t want the moment to end, Ashton pulls us apart and looks at me, almost as if to reaffirm that yes, I exist, yes, I’m really there. I must look the same.

If this is a dream, I’d be okay with never waking up.

“But... I saw you. In the white hall. The light, it....” It’s too soon to bring that up, though, I can’t say it.

Ashton shakes his head and says with laughter in his voice, “It never touched us. James got a loose panel on the wall open as soon as it deployed. We went into the next room and found our way out of the cleansing halls. Wait, how did you know the cleanser deployed?”

“I saw it. Heydrich, he activated the cleanser for that room, he brought it on the screen. I was sure you....”

“We’re all fine,” Ashton breathes. “All okay.”

“Where is everyone?”

“They should be in by now,” he said. “I ran ahead.”

I can see it in my head— Ashton, frantic, sprinting through the Ecodome to find me. “I can’t believe you’re actually here.”

“We lost track of you ages ago,” Ashton says. “At least a day. When the cleanser deployed, we went looking for you. We had to find a different entrance to the control room. We found your pack. We thought something went wrong. There was... a lot of blood, and scorch marks, and we thought....” Something chokes him up.

I touch my injured face briefly. “He started everything.”

I read his expressions like a book. He’s confused, wondering what I mean.

“He was Altered. The revolt, Ash. He started it.”

He looks away and furrows his brow, trying to figure out how the pieces fit together.

“He said he—”

He stops me. “I don’t want to hear anything he had to say,” he says vindictively. “He’s dead now. I found his body. He doesn’t matter anymore.”

Always knows what to say.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” he asks, on to more pressing matters.

“What?” I look down at the hole in my chest. “Oh. No, not anymore.”

“It looks pretty awful,” he says, looking at it uncomfortably.

The wound had started to pucker and is warm to the touch. I never considered it would get infected. I guess I didn’t really care, before. “It’s nothing. Just can’t use the fire anymore. At least I don’t think so, anyway. I haven’t tried.”

I thought he’d look disappointed but he doesn’t. “I’m just glad you’re alive,” he says with an exhausted smile.

I just laugh. This moment is still so unreal.

His hand grips my shoulder and yes, it’s real, he’s here. No dreams are ever this real.

“The others should be close,” Ashton says finally, looking the direction he came from. “Let’s go.”

My heart pounds at the thought.

As we walk, I recount to Ashton what happened once we got separated. How I confronted Heydrich. I told him about the fight and the screens, why I thought they all died. I told him how my bitter victory against Heydrich brought no comfort. The parts where I wandered aimlessly in the dome are the hardest to recount, but Ashton is patient with me and doesn’t press. Thank everything for Ashton. I leave out the parts where I gave up all hope and didn’t care whether I lived or died. I decide to tell him that I eventually got going by thinking about Alessandra’s people back at the desert, though.

“You should have seen Alessandra when we got here,” Ashton says. “She was so overwhelmed.”

“In a good way, right?”

“Oh yeah. She even broke down in tears,” he adds.

“I can imagine.”

“And I think we were all about ready to cry when we found the huge stash,” he says, laughing.

Stash? “Of what?”

“Food, water, medicine....” his grin is ear-to-ear. “The people who made this place really went overboard, but it’s amazing. The room we found is huge, bigger than our old home. Stocked to the brim with food and fresh water, an armory, medicine,” he makes an incredulous sound. He only half believes his own words.

It’s been ages since we’ve had any good news.

We walk mostly in silence for the rest of the way. It reminds me of trips to the city. Those days seem like ages ago, but just walking in the wilderness with Ashton by my side takes me back. But this time, we aren’t going with the nagging fear of being attacked. I guess this is what real happiness feels like.

I can get used to this.

The sun is higher now and the dew that settled on the grass turns to mist lacing the ground. We near the edge of the clearing and my heart leaps at the sight before us. I recognize Alessandra first, then Peregrine, Vinder, and James. When they see us, the reaction is immediate. Alessandra starts running first, then the others. They’re on us in seconds. I can’t get a word in before Alessandra’s tiny arms wrap around me and squeeze.

“Hi.” Can’t think of anything else to say.

After the initial excitement wears down, James remarks, “You look like shit. Is that glass? In your face?”

I laugh. “Yeah....”

“No, he’s right, what happened to you? Oh, god, that’s disgusting,” Vinder says, excited smile replaced with a wrinkling nose.

I sigh. “Heydrich got smart.” I motion with a small stabbing motion at my chest. “Right in the fuel reserves.”

Peregrine looks at it, looks at me, and just smiles like we’re sharing a secret.

“That needs treating,” Alessandra says. Sounds more like she wants it treated for their sake more than mine. “Come on, explain what happened as we walk. I trust Ashton told you about the storage unit...?”

I smile. “Yeah.”

She smiles as well and says, “There’ll be something there to patch you up.”

Retelling the story a second time makes it feel less real. Now, it’s all just words and phrases. We’re nearing the edge of the dome and I’m getting to the part about the cleansers.

“He activated the cleansers from that room?” Alessandra asks urgently.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I have an idea. After we get you fixed up we need to check out that room.”

The echoing metal chambers welcome us back. I don’t miss the facility, but the sight of it brings no foul memories. I feel invulnerable. I guess besides the festering holes.

After a brief maze, a vast and well-lit expanse opens before us. Shelves, most as tall as the ceiling, cover the walls all the way down the narrow room. I walk in deeper to soak it all in. Boxes, crates, plastic bins, all piled to the brim inside the room which was, as Ashton aptly put it, bigger than our old home.

Alessandra and Ashton set to work finding the right sort of medicine for my wound, which admittedly had started to hurt a bit more. It’s almost hot to the touch, now. I sit on one of the nearest crates and, to my dismay, I feel light headed. Is it from the wound? It’s probably infected. Even my body can’t heal itself after that. The cuts on the side of my face had mostly healed and are scabbing, though. I pick out a particularly large hunk of glass and hear James make a disgusted noise. Scared of heights
and
squeamish? Come on....

A cold liquid on my neck: Ashton is daubing it on with a cotton swab. “What’s tha—OW.” Alessandra swings by and sneaks some sort of shot into my neck. The little needle device hisses and clicks and damn does it sting. “What was that?”

Ashton laughs slightly and Alessandra says, “It’s for your gaping wound,” like I’m stupid. I rub my neck bitterly.

“So,” Alessandra continues. “It’s odd how black around the edges it is.” She adjusts the white rubber glove on her hand.

I shrug.

She starts touching it. No, don’t mind me, just do whatever... “Can you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“Dev, I think you’ve got frostbite.”

Really, because I’m pretty sure the chemical fuel burns, not freezes.... By my look, she knows I’m making fun of her.

Alessandra rolls her eyes and says, “In high concentrations, some chemicals have strange effects. The ones in you probably cause extreme cold in the right amounts.”

“Neat.” But it’s not. I continue to pick glass out of my face.

“We have to trim the excess scar tissue away eventually, but for now let’s just bandage it up,” she says.
Great
.

The wound will scar. I’ll have it for the rest of my life. The crater in my chest will be a constant reminder of my previous self. I think I’m pretty okay with that.

The food in the gigantic pantry is all powdered this and dehydrated that... not the best stuff I’ve ever had, but still food. I have food in me. Never thought it could feel this good.

“Anyone coming to the tower with me?” Alessandra asks the group.

“I’m staying here,” James says at once.

“I’m so done with ladders,” Vinder says, plopping down on the ground by Peregrine as she finishes her powered... stuff. “You try using it with only one arm.” At least he’s taking his situation lighter, now. I’m almost proud of him.

“I’ll go.”

Ashton and Alessandra look at me, surprised. I feel like I need to make amends with the room, with what happened. For some reason it seems wrong to leave it as a memory.

“You should really be resting,” Alessandra says.

“Sorry.”

“I thought you’d say that,” she says. Ashton smiles at us.

I knew I wouldn’t like it, but I had to do it.

My blood is dried in the cracks of one of the screens and there are remnants of my fire on the ground, well, pretty much everywhere. I kneel down and touch the warped surface of the floor where the fuel burned away. How ironic that the last thing my fire would ever burn would be myself.

“Now,” Alessandra says, eager to draw our attention away from darker things, “Let’s see if we can figure this out.”

“Should we wait and see what you’re talking about, or are you going to tell us?” Ashton asks in good humor, leaning against the doorway, watching her crawl under the storage areas under the panels.

“I’m, ugh,” she makes a series of grunts and strained noises, “I’m trying to find the... instruction manual, actually—”

“It’s that easy,” he says. “Really.”

“Well, I watched the programmers a lot as a kid,” she continues. “I can piece it all together— aha!” She emerges, dust-covered, clutching a fat binder of yellowed papers. “Now,” she continues, straightening up and dusting herself off properly. “To reprogram our friends the Sentinels. You might not believe me, but they’re remarkably simple. They were made to be reprogrammed on a whim by regular soldiers in the middle of a fight... if you know the right codes.” She pats the binder. “Which... I do.”

Ashton and I exchange excited glances and he says, “We’ll leave you alone.”

Alessandra hops over to a panel and starts tinkering.

Ashton and I walk out to the scaffolding platform again. We lean on the railing and for once just relax. We have nowhere to go, nothing urgent needs doing, and we have no enemy to be worried about. And we’re well fed. Have I felt those things all at the same time before? Probably not. It’s nice.

“So. It’s finally over.”

“What is?” Ashton replies as he braces himself to balance. His feet can reach all the way across the scaffolding to rest on the opposite hand rail while he leans against the tower it’s mounted on.

“I don’t know what to call it,” I admit. “Our journey, I guess. We finally got here.”

“Well,” Ashton says.

“...Yeah. Jules would be happy for us, though, wouldn’t she?”

Ashton smiles, though the answer only seems to partially comfort him. “Yeah, she would.”

We’re quiet for a moment after that and just listen to the empty expanse of the room, the gentle hum of machines. I still think she’s going to reappear at any moment... but the numbing pain is just sore, now. I guess like most things it’ll heal....

Alessandra comes into view in the doorway and leans against it, acting irritated. “Well,” she says, “We won’t have to worry about the giant killing machines anymore.”