Impact (19 page)

They sleep ten to a room, curled up on the floor. There used to be bunk beds on the walls–Prakesh saw the places where cots were bolted on–but they're long gone. There's no light in the ceiling, and when the door behind them is banged shut the room is in total darkness. The bodies inside it quickly raise the temperature, and the smell of sweat mixes with the coppery tang of dried urine.

At least the room is large enough for all the workers. They huddle in small groups, sitting against the wall or trying to stretch out on the hard floor. Prakesh tries to find a spot, tripping over outstretched feet more than once.

He's too tired to sleep, and too wired to do anything but sit and stare into the darkness. The last few hours passed in an exhausted blur: more soil bags, another dose of slop in that mess hall, some water, a chance to use the bathroom. Then this…
hole
. He saw Jojo come in with them, caught a glimpse of his face before the door was shut, but he doesn't know if he should call out for him.

He keeps seeing Carver, vanishing under a hail of feet and fists. Keeps seeing the look on his face. Prakesh curls his hand into a fist of his own.

Jojo's voice comes out of the darkness, so close that Prakesh nearly jumps. “Hey. Y-y-you… uh, awake?”

The kid is right next to him, his mouth by his ear, but Prakesh can't see a thing. “Yeah,” he says, keeping his voice low.

Jojo's stutter seems to be less prominent, as if the fact that it's too dark to see him means he finds it easier to speak. “W-we can talk now, if y-y-you want. W-what's it like?”

His question catches Prakesh off guard. “What do you mean?”

“Outside the sh-ship.”

Prakesh tries to marshal his thoughts. It's hard to even know where to start. “We weren't out there long,” he says. “We got picked up by Ray and Nessa.”

“I hate them. R-R-Ray 'ssssssspecially. So w-where are you from? I'm f-f-from Denali, up north, or I w-was before my p-p-p-” He stops, and makes two of those gulping sounds again. “Parents brought me here. Th-th-they n-named me J-Joseph, but th-they always called m-m-me Jojo. Everyone d-d-does.”

“Where are your parents now?”

“D-d-dead.” He says it without regret, like it's a simple fact, and that alone is enough to make Prakesh's stomach clench. It's enough to remind him of his own parents, on Outer Earth. Thinking about them is like walking on the edge of a gaping hole. He knows he'll never see them again, but even trying to comprehend that fact is like leaning out over the hole, daring gravity to take him.

“B-b-but I'm g-gonna get back there,” Jojo says. “My uncle st-stayed b-b-behind. He's w-waiting fffff-for me. I know he is.”

Prakesh nods, knowing Jojo can't see him, but not sure what else to say.

Jojo saves him the trouble. “So w-where
are
you from?”

Prakesh takes a breath. “Outer Earth.”

“Like the ssss-space station?” Jojo says. It's impossible to miss the excitement in his voice.

“That's right.”

“But that's a m-m-million m-miles away! W-why did you come down here?”

Because I unleashed a virus that destroyed the station. Because we couldn't stop people from leaving. Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't do the right thing.

“Doesn't matter,” Prakesh says. “We're here now, and that's all there is.”

Jojo pauses, as if turning this over in his mind. Prakesh takes the moment. “Jojo,” he says, leaning in closer. “How many people on this ship? How many prisoners?”

Jojo shrugs–Prakesh can feel it, feel JoJo's shoulders brushing his. “Th-thirty of us in the farm. M-m-m-maybe another thirty somewhere else?”

“What about the guards?”

“Twenty-f-f-five, I think? B-but they got all the guns and they never let us near them and th-th-they—” He stops, and takes a couple of hitching breaths.

“How long have you been here?” Prakesh says.

Another shrug. “A c-c-couple years. I d-d-don't r-really know. L-lost time. But P-P-Prophet says we have to w-work for the—”

He stops, coughing, like he hasn't talked this much in years, and isn't used to it. “Engine,” he says eventually, without a single hitch in the word. “The Engine.”

“And what
is
the Engine?” Prakesh says.

“W-we don't know. It's b-b-below decks, and they d-d-don't l-let us go there.”

“You've never been?”

Jojo makes a negative sound. “Th-they keep their f-f-f-f-f-
fuel
down there, right at the bottom of the sh-sh-ship. Th-th-they won't l-let anyone near it.” A note of excitement creeps into his voice. “One day w-w-we're gonna burn this place down. All of it. G-go off and f-f-f-find a suh-spot of our own.”

Prakesh hears movement–someone scrabbling across the floor in front of them. He feels hot breath on his face. “You two shut up. Shut up right now.”

“We were just—” Prakesh says.

The man cuts him off. “I don't give a shit. I don't want our rations taken away because you felt like a conversation.”

“Hey
f-f-f-f-f-
” Jojo says in a harsh whisper, not quite managing to get the curse out. He swallows loudly. “I'll talk if I w-want. Just 'cos you got n-n-nothin' good to say…”

He trails off. For a moment, Prakesh wonders if the other man is going to retaliate, but then the hot breath on his face vanishes and he hears the man withdrawing to the other wall.

Jojo shifts his body a little. “F-f-fraid he's right. We shouldn't r-r-really be talking. I'll s-s-s-s-s-see you tomorrow.”

He turns away. Someone snores loudly, groaning in their sleep.

Prakesh sits in the darkness, thinking hard. And the more he thinks the angrier he gets.

He's been on the edge of a long drop before, only that time it was for real. After Riley brought him the news about Resin, that it was his genetic experiments that caused it, Prakesh almost took his own life. The grief and despair was almost too much to take. He stood on the roof of the Air Lab control room, seconds away from stepping off. It was only a last-second thought that stopped him.

He was going to save as many people as possible. It didn't matter where they ended up, whether they stayed on the station or came to the planet below: he was going to dedicate the rest of his life to that goal. It was the only way to atone for what he'd done.

It's what he thought he was doing, when he helped stop Riley from destroying the
Shinso Maru
's fusion reactor.
Saving lives.

But it didn't work. Everybody he tried to help is either dead, or trapped here. His colleagues, his friends, his parents–another clench of his stomach muscles, an involuntary reaction. And Riley–gods, even the thought of what happened to Riley is enough to make him want to pound the walls, scream and roar until they come in and knock his head right off his shoulders.

What would Riley do? If she were here right now?

That's when Prakesh has a thought that is as clear and sharp as the one he had on the control room roof.
She'd fight. She'd do whatever it took to get to safety. She'd never give up, never, no matter how bad things got.

As sleep finally takes him, Prakesh has time to think one last thing. He's going to escape. No, not just escape. He's going to do what he promised himself, and get the rest of these people off this ship.

I put on an extra burst of speed, coming alongside Harlan as he reaches the stairs. My legs grumble, but I ignore them.

Harlan is still shouting at Eric. “There's a working seaplane out there, E? And you haven't gone to check it out? Are you crazy? That's what you've always wanted!”

We've reached the lobby. Eric ignores us, striding right past the desk at the back, not looking at the pile of bodies stacked in the far corner. He glances up at the mezzanine, where a guard is staring into the distance, half hidden behind a pillar, his rifle held at ease on his shoulder.

“Eric, wait up a second,” I say, aware of his short temper but not caring.

“Jesus,” Eric mutters, not breaking stride. “Finkler!” he shouts, bellowing down the passage where Finkler has his surgery. When there's no response, he starts striding towards it, only to be brought up short when the guard on the mezzanine speaks.

“He ain't there,” the guard says. “Went below.”

Eric's face twists in irritation. He turns on his heel, heading deeper into the hospital. “Come,” he says to me. “I'll let Finkler look you over once more, and then you get the hell out.”

I lag behind him and Harlan, my mind moving at light speed. I don't have the faintest idea how I'm going to get to the seaplane, but I am damn well going to try.

We head deeper into the hospital. It's not until we've actually gone down the second flight of stairs that I realise we're underground. It's quiet down here, and warmer. What was it that Eric told Finkler, before the Nomads arrived?
Stay up top.

The corridor we're in is dark, but there's a dim glow coming from round a corner. As we turn it, I see a small door set into a dead end, with a glimmering fluorescent light above it. There are two guards outside, both wearing thick, bulky black jackets. They spring to attention when they see Eric, dropping their rifles.

Eric nods to them, and pushes open the door.

It's the sound I notice first. It's like the noise of a gallery on Outer Earth–the hum of people, the almost subsonic rumble of machines, the clanking of old metal. In the galleries, the lights were set far above the floor–here, they're just above our heads, intensely bright. I have to squint to see.

We've come out onto a small metal platform in the top corner of a huge open space. After the closed-in passages, the size of it is startling. The floor below us has been cordoned off into discrete sections: a vegetable garden here, a common area there, an enormous section with cots and mattresses scattered around it. Wood panels separate each section. A group of children sit cross-legged on the floor in one corner, with two adults showing them something on a board that's been stuck to the wall. It's as if the entirety of Outer Earth has been condensed down into a space around half the size of the station dock.

There's a narrow metal stairway leading down from our platform. Eric descends, not bothering to check if we're following.

As we get closer to the ground, I see that the space isn't as regular as I first thought. Jagged sections of concrete jut out of the wall, flat on top, with bent metal bars poking out of the sides like stray hairs on skin. Previous floors, perhaps, long since fallen away, opening the space up. And there's an even stranger structure diagonally across from us: a curving ramp, also made of concrete, with a high lip around its outer edge. It rises from the floor, bending back on itself. It must have been used for vehicles, like the ones Harlan and I saw on the road.

It stops before it reaches its highest point, ending in an explosion of metal rods. There's a depression in the wall beyond it, what looks like an exit to the outside world, now completely bricked up.

The moment Eric hits the floor, he's besieged on all sides, asked a thousand questions, his input begged for, his attention needed. The people–
his
people–are all thin, all dressed in threadbare clothing. Plenty of them are missing hands, or arms, or legs. He has a few seconds for each one, never lingering, giving clipped, direct answers to every question thrown at him.

Some of the people glance at me, with a few of the glances lingering longer than I'd like. I feel my face going red, a hot flush creeping under the skin. When I brought the Nomads to their door last night, I didn't know I was risking…
this
.

“They used to put cars here.”

Harlan is standing next to me, gazing around the space with pride. “Not that there's been a car down here for a thousand years. There used to be whole floors of 'em, just lined up next to each other. That'd be quite something, wouldn't it?”

I nod, more stunned than I'd like to admit. “How do the Nomads not know about this place?” I say.

“Eric's smart. It's why I married him. He—”

“Wait, you and Eric were married?”

“Sure. Twenty years and counting.”

He flashes me a smile. I decide not to mention the fact that Eric apparently doesn't want him around any more.

“Anyway,” he says. “Eric keeps scouts in the field. They get food, supplies, report back whenever Nomads move through the area. They get close, Eric locks the hospital down. Haven't been discovered yet.”

He sees my expression of disbelief. “Oh, they've been in the building plenty of times, but they never managed to get into the basement.”

I shudder. I had to get the wound in my thigh cleaned, didn't have a choice, but I'm appalled at the destruction I nearly brought down on Eric and his people. No wonder he wants me out of here.

Eric leads us to the far end. There's a tiny space, in the shadow of the giant concrete ramp, separated from the rest of the floor by scarred metal plates that look as if they were cut from something much larger, then propped up so they form a vertical barrier. There's a gap in the plates, guarded by another man with another gun. He starts when he sees us, but Eric waves us through and he relaxes.

I take in the space. A bent and twisted table, its surface empty, balanced on wobbly legs. Two straight-backed metal chairs. A duffel bag squats under the table, clothes spilling out of a half-open zip. There's a cot in the corner, a faded mattress on top of it. No blanket or pillow. The only decoration is on one of the walls: a map, like Harlan's, but in even worse condition. It doesn't show as much land mass, just what looks like the surrounding area. Printed on the map, running in large, spaced-out letters, are the words: THE YUKON.

“Stay here,” Eric says. “Both of you. I'll get Finkler.”

He steps out through the gap between the plates, and I see the guard slide into place, blocking off the exit.

“Harlan,” I say. “Where would this seaplane be? The working one?”

“Goddamn fool,” Harlan says, staring at the door. “Always was stubborn. That's what I liked about him. Even back when—”

“
Harlan
.”

“Kind of hard to say.” He saunters up to the map, running his finger along it. After a moment, he taps a segment on it where the brown land gives way to a splodge of blue. “My guess is Fish Lake.”

I blink. It takes me a second to dredge up the meaning of the word
lake
. The idea of a body of water that size is almost impossible to imagine.

“I was on the north shore few months ago, spotted smoke,” he says. “Got a look through my binocs–seemed like they set up a camp of some kind.” He shrugs. “Weren't no seaplane there, though. Not then, anyway.”

“I thought you said the Nomads moved around?” I say.

“They do. Camp might've been temporary. But if I was a Nomad with a seaplane around these parts, Fish Lake'd be the place I'd land it.”

“OK,” I say, studying the map. I spot Whitehorse, and nearly scream with joy–it's close to the lake, no more than a few miles on the map. I could get there soon. I could get there
today
.

“And they can get to Anchorage?” I say, trying to stay calm, tracing across the map with my finger. The paper feels slightly damp under my fingertip. “They can fly that far?”

“Range-wise? Sure. Assuming they've got enough fuel. And assuming they're even there in the first place. Nomads aren't exactly predictable.”

My finger touches the edge of the map, right on the border with Alaska–and that's when my heart sinks.

I need someone to fly the plane. It's all too easy to picture it coming down on the water–if the angle's off, even a little bit, it would flip right over the second it touched the surface.

“The Nomads'll have a pilot, right?” I say, more to myself than to anyone else. Of course they'll have one–they couldn't fly the plane otherwise. I'll have to get hold of that pilot, convince them to get me airborne. I don't have the first clue how I'm going to do that, but it's a start.

Eric returns, entering the room without looking at us. “Where's Finkler?” I say.

“He'll be here in a minute,” Eric says, crossing around the other side of the table, dropping heavily onto one of the chairs. The metal frame protests, scraping across the concrete floor.

Harlan shakes his head, incredulous. “You know, I can't believe you, E,” says Harlan. “You've been wanting to get in the air your whole life, and you just leave a damn seaplane
sitting there
?”

“What?” I say, turning away from the map. Surely I didn't hear that right. “You can fly a plane?”

Harlan and Eric glance at each other, for just a split second, and something passes between them. I don't even think they know they've done it.

“I can't fly a plane,” Eric says.

“Sure you can,” says Harlan. He turns to me. “We grew up in the same bunker together. I always remember he had this book–about how planes work? Engine diagrams, things like that. He read it a thousand times, always talking about how he was gonna learn to fly one day.”

“Harlan, if you say one more word—”

“Well, sorry, E, but it's kind of obvious now, isn't it?” Harlan says, annoyed. My eyes drift to the logo on Eric's jacket. ROYAL CANADIAN AIRFORCE.

Eric sees me looking. “You want to know why I haven't gone up there?” he says. “Because I'd just get myself and my people killed. We're doing just fine here, and we
don't
need to risk everything we've built for a goddamn seaplane.”

I turn back to the map, studying it, buying myself some time to think.

Assuming the plane is still there, then somehow convincing a Nomad pilot to help me without getting captured or killed–when I don't know the terrain and all I have is Harlan's rifle and no bullets–is going to be next to impossible. There's an easier way, and he's sitting right in front of me, still arguing with Harlan.

Except it isn't easier. Because even if Eric has enough knowledge to fly a plane, I don't have the faintest idea how I'm going to convince him to help me. I don't have a single thing to offer him. Asking for more, after what happened last night? I might as well demand that Harlan pull a teleportation device out of his back pocket.

And that's when the anger comes back. I know what I'm asking is too much, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to scream at Eric, to grab him and
make
him take me to the plane. The existence of the seaplane ignited a bright, burning hope inside me, but now that hope is fading, and the anger is in its place, dark and hot. With it comes the voice inside me, speaking quietly, insistently, telling me what I have to do.

There's only one way I'm going to convince Eric to help me. And I don't like it one bit.

I close my eyes. Then I turn back to Eric, folding my arms. “I'm going to Fish Lake. I'm taking that seaplane. If you're too scared to come with me, that's fine.”

Eric is shrugging off his coat, pulling on a tattered sweater. I catch a knowing smile just before he pulls it over his head. “Nice try,” he says, when he re-emerges.

I take a step closer. “Because you
are
scared, aren't you? That's why you're in here, right? That's why you hide every time the Nomads come by. You don't want to fight them.”

“Careful,” Eric says. But he doesn't look at me when he says it, and I hear the voice again:
keep pushing
.

“Must be nice,” I say, and the spite in my voice shocks me. “Hiding out here while the rest of the world goes to shit.”

“Come on, that is not—” Harlan says.

I cut him off. “This is a sweet hole in the ground,” I say, spreading my arms wide. “But it's still just a hole. At least the Nomads have the guts to survive on the outside.”

Eric's eyes flash with anger. “I'm here to keep my people alive. This little hole in the ground kept
you
alive, last night. Or did you forget that?”

That almost derails me. I don't have any right to say these things. Not even a little bit. But I can't let that stop me.

I cup my hands to my mouth. “Can anyone else here fly a plane?” I shout, and that's when Eric grabs me. He wraps his hands around the lapels of my jacket and pulls me close, looking right into my eyes.

He speaks very softly. “Get. Out.”

I smile. Because I
wanted
that anger, that naked, white-hot fury.

“I would have hidden too,” I say. “I would have kept my people around me, and kept it just us.”

I can't help but think of the Devil Dancers, of the Nest. Of Amira.

“But here's the thing, Eric,” I say. “The world doesn't care. It will take your friends from you no matter what you do. Now you can get angry at me—” I drop my voice a little “—or you can get angry at the nomads. You can take the fight to them. Take the seaplane for yourselves.”

Harlan is staring at me, confusion on his face. I don't recognise the words coming out of my mouth. Whoever owns the voice at the back of my mind is speaking for me. It's like I'm jamming a blade into a tiny crack, twisting, finding the place where I can lever it open.