Ignition Point (9 page)

She woke Ghost’s Dust now, showed it what she needed it to do. The Dust moved through him, coursing through his cells with electrical impulses that burned away the infection. It wasn’t just the site that needed cleaning, though. With Lena’s mind riding with it, the Dust hunted down the sickness throughout his body, making a clean sweep.

Once only healthy cells remained, Lena pulled back. She placed her hand on his torso, above the still open wound, to keep him still while she blinked away the exertion. When she was certain that she hadn’t pushed herself too far, she inhaled long and deep, and her mind fell away, back to the Dust.

Knit. Heal
, she instructed the Dust, visualizing Ghost’s flesh being repaired.
Knit. Heal
.

She didn’t know how long it took. She was spent when she finished, as she knew she would be. Her head throbbed with a vicious feedback headache. She’d expected that, too. Working with the Dust created an energy loop within a Spark. If they went too long without releasing the built-up energy, they could stroke out. Unfortunately, the only way to release the energy was through grounding, the lightning strike release of energy from the Spark back to the earth and the sky. The Dust coated a Spark, protecting them from burns, but it still hurt. A lot. She’d pushed it off for almost a week longer than was smart this time—then she’d healed on top of that.

Lena settled back on her legs, her back curving, head drooping. Movement fluttered in her peripheral vision. She raised her eyes to Ghost. He was examining his side, eyes wide. His face was still pale, but not with the onset of creeping death. He lifted his gaze to hers.

She steeled herself. This was the moment of truth. She was too exhausted to defend herself. If she tried to use her Spark, she’d probably kill herself. She hoped that if he was going to betray her, he did it quickly. Her lips thinned. She held his gaze as he sat up.

“
Un milagro
. What are you?” His voice was low and reverent.

She shook her head. “Just a Spark.”

He barked a laugh. “Not
just
anything.” He shook his head, his hand rubbing his side where the rotting wound that had been killing him gaped moments before. “Rest, Spark. I’ll keep watch like I promised.”

She stared back at him, trying to gauge his sincerity. Finally she shook her head, a small movement.

“I have to ground first, then I can rest.” It was dangerous with her so exhausted, but she’d have to rest again after grounding, and she didn’t want to slow him that much. He needed to go after the boy.

He nodded, eyes lit with curiosity. Anyone who’d ever seen a relo-city from afar, lightning arcing up to the sky all day and night from the grounding platforms built for the city Sparks, was curious about the process. It was rare to be close enough to see it happen. Sparks were prized commodities. Only the most well-trained, the strongest of them who were taken as children and brainwashed into becoming Council Agents, had any kind of freedom. The rest were confined to the cities they powered, safe from the predations of the wild world outside.

Except for Lena. She had fled the life of comfortable servitude when she was fifteen.

“What do you need me to do?” Ghost asked.

Lena barked a tired laugh as she pushed herself to her feet. “Stay out of the way so you don’t get electrocuted. In fact, just stay here.” She had started to trudge away but turned back now. “I mean it. Once I start, I can’t stop. If you get caught in the discharge field, it
will
kill you. There are things I can’t heal. Having your brain fried is one of them. Do you understand?”

Ghost nodded.

“I’m just going over the rise. If I go too far, I’ll be too wasted to get back. You’ll hear the discharge, and then probably me falling. Leave me be. I’ll wake up and get dressed and come back on my own. Got it?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned away to trudge over the hill. Her feet slid in the loose sand. She was already too tired to really dig her toes in like she needed in order to climb quickly in the desert.

This should be fun.
She hoped she didn’t kill herself. Being a Spark sucked. What did they get in exchange for being superhuman? The responsibility to keep what was left of humanity comfortably powered, the envy of the unpowered…and, oh yeah, the risk of strokes and heart attacks, too.

When she reached the bottom of the hill on the other side, she plodded across the sand a good thirty feet and glanced around. This would work. Fingers clumsy with exhaustion, she pulled her clothes off and tossed them away into a pile with her boots as far as she could throw. The sun was bright above, but the air was still cool and she shivered. Giving a silent apology to the low scrub around her and the animals who lived within it, Lena set herself. She swallowed back the bile that always rose in anticipation. Toes dug into the earth and arms spread, she exhaled. She opened herself.

It was fast this time, the Dust racing to the ground for release. The energy rose back through the conduit of her body. The first bolt speared out of her, rising to the sky with a boom that deafened her, the sound and acid heat leaving her senseless. Electricity fanned out across the ground around her, danced over and through her, then flared up to rise to the clouds.

It was gone as quickly as it started. The earth rushed up to her, darkness closing in until her consciousness was a pinprick of light. Even that irised away just before she hit the newly glassed sand.

She woke to hands on her skin. She clawed at him as she reared up and scuttled away, cutting her foot on the glass her body had fractured when she fell.

Ghost scrambled backward away from her as well, one hand raised to forestall her panic. In the other were her clothes.

Actually, he held only her shirts and boots. She glanced down. Her pants had been clumsily twisted up to her waist. He was dressing her. He averted his eyes now, holding up her things.

“I didn’t know how long you’d be unconscious. I thought you might burn in the sun.”

Lena shook her head. “I told you to stay there.”

“I just—I thought—”

“I know.” She took her shirts and pulled them on then sat to make her point. She held her hand over her bloody foot. After a moment of concentration, she wiped the blood away. The cut was gone. “Even if I burned, I could heal myself.”

Ghost looked mortified that he hadn’t thought of that. Lena flashed him a small smile.

“But thank you. You promised to watch over me, and you were trying to do that.” She glanced over her shoulder at the sun. “I’ll need an hour or two to be up to speed. By then, it’ll be dusk. What are your plans for the night? Rest? Or moving on?”

“Moving on. I was close. They’re at most a day ahead.”

Lena raised her brows.

“I was slowed by my wound, yes, but they stopped twice to raid others. A village and a caravan. I found the skeletons of both on my way.” All that would be left were skeletons, but he left that unsaid. Anything useable, whether goods or humans, the Scavengers would have taken. They’d burn the rest.

She nodded thoughtfully. “If we move through the night and most of the morning, then rest tomorrow afternoon, we could catch up to them by the middle of tomorrow night.”

“Yes, I—wait. We?”

“You didn’t think I was going to let you undo all of my work by going out and getting yourself killed, did you?”

His lips turned down. “Not that I’m not grateful. I am. But this is my problem.”

“Scavengers are everyone’s problem.” She grinned woozily at him, pushing herself to her feet like she was moving through honey. “Besides, once I’m at full strength, I think you’ll find I have a very useful set of skills.”

He cocked his head to the side. “More than charging batteries and healing dying warriors?”

She nodded. “So much more.”

* * *

It took them two days to catch the Scavengers. Both of those nights, Lena woke often. It wasn’t just the cold or the anticipation that always built inside her before a hunt. Each night Ghost had perhaps an hour of peace before he began muttering in his sleep. The muttering became whimpering, broken only by soft moans and raw-voiced curses. He’d wake wild-eyed, coated in sweat, only to lay his head down and start the cycle again. He needed rest to heal enough to be strong for the attack. He’d never get it while his people were haunting him.

They spent the afternoon of the second day hanging back, using the daylight hours to gain the rest they both lacked, while they allowed the Scavengers to pull slightly ahead. They’d catch up that night, using the cover of darkness to put their plan into motion.

There were twelve men in the Scavenger group, which meant it was a smaller band of a larger group. They were probably heading back to whatever fortified home they ranged out from. This small group traveled with various others—a woman and a child, and the people unfortunate enough to have been taken in their raids. Of the twelve men, two patrolled at night. Lena would dispose of these two. Ghost would prove the truth of his earned name and sneak into camp. He would engage what men he found and hold them off as Lena picked them off from afar, one by one, for as long as she was able.

She’d warned him that she could only focus on one man at a time. He’d have to draw them out where she could see them, too. There was no “sensing” humans using Dust because the Dust was everywhere. The only time Lena could sense Dust at a distance was when it was moving—being charged by another, surging from one state to another. It took effort to communicate with the Dust. She had to limit herself to one activity at a time. It wouldn’t be smart to burn her brain out just to get a job done faster.

Darkness fell over their camp, and their eyes adjusted to the gradual loss of light. They were aided by the brilliant blanket of stars that lit the sky above them. As always when she was out at the same time as the stars, Lena stared up at them, tracing the bright whorls and shapes with her eyes. The Natives believed there were truths hidden in the stars. The old people, those who had died before the Second Dark Ages, had scoffed at such things. Lena wasn’t sure which was the truth, but she found peace in them. That was enough.

“You don’t mind the stars?” Ghost asked her. His quiet voice from where he lay on his side a few feet away barely disturbed the night.

Lena looked up over him. “Mind the stars?”

He nodded. “Some don’t like them. They remind us of how small we are. And alone.”

Lena chuckled. “I’ve had a long time to get used to the idea of being small,” she said, referring to her child-like height, “and I prefer being alone.”

“Why are you alone?” He stared, waiting.

Lena used her index finger to trace star swirls into the sand beside her. “I was always alone,” she finally answered, “even when I was surrounded by family. They knew I was different from the beginning, I guess. In the relo-cities, different is dangerous. When they sent me for my testing year—” She glanced up to be sure he understood. “They send us to be tested when we’re five years old, to see if we’re Sparks?”

He nodded in understanding.

“When they sent me,” she continued, “I was supposed to pretend to be weak.” She looked down at the shapes she’d drawn into the earth. She drew the side of her palm across them, wiping them away. “But I couldn’t. I forgot. So my father made me hide, instead. I lived like that, hidden in the house, until he died. After that—” Lena shrugged. “I left. And there is nothing that could ever make me go back. No one will ever tell me who to be or how to live ever again.” Her voice had risen, but the wind snatched the remembered fury and helplessness, carrying them away. She could feel Ghost’s eyes on her. Sheepish, she shrugged. “I got tired of hiding.”

“I can imagine.” He shook his head. “But it’s good that your family was able to resist the blood price. I didn’t think your kind—city dwellers—had that kind of loyalty. So that’s something to be grateful for, at least.”

“Blood price?”

“The blood price the Council offers for girls like you?”

Lena swallowed. The wind chilled her cheeks. “What are you talking about?”

“The Council sends people out to the tribes every year. They offer a blood price for any girls like you. They ask about our little ones. Have they learned to Spark? Can they do things they shouldn’t? They remind us that they will pay to raise them.”

“Pay to raise them? The girls?
Just
girls?” In the cities, it was the strongest of the boy Sparks who were taken from their families and sent away to the Ward School to be raised up into the Council’s elite agents. There weren’t any strong girl Sparks. None except for Lena. That was why her father had hidden her. He’d told her the Council would take her. But if she was the only one, why were they searching the Neo-barb tribes for more? Were they searching the cities, too?

Lena was too thunderstruck to sort through all of the questions his revelation raised in her head. It wasn’t the wind cooling her cheeks, though, it was the blood sinking down to her heavy stomach. She grabbed at the easiest question her brain produced. “But—the Council pays citizens in C-Notes. Everything comes back to how much they value electric charge. I didn’t think your people had any interest—”

“Not charge, no. They pay in food. They offer medicine. They tempt us with what we need most, and wait for us to hand over our own.”