Liberty (28 page)

“Lead the way,” said Berrett.

We made a short trip to the seedy side of town to buy me a new knife. Then we snuck across the city of Avalon and darted into the Académie hedges. We huddled close, waiting for the fields to be clear enough to get to the cellar doors, but this time I felt nothing. No anxiety, no spark, nothing. Like the hedge that concealed us, I was hollowed.

We didn’t have to wait long. A bell rang out across the grounds and the students were called off the fields. We bolted for the doors and made our way down the rickety staircase. In the darkness I felt my way over to Hobs’s lamp and flicked it on.

There were all his extra supplies, just as he had left them. Berrett and I gathered them all up into a pack and started pulling his notes down from the corkboards hung on the walls.

“Dix?”

I turned toward Berrett. He had dropped some of the papers and was pointed to a loose-fitting brick in the floor.

“What?”

“It has your initials carved in it.”

I dropped to the floor and felt the engraved T.D. with my fingers.

... I
always kept my heart in a box in the floor. It’s where I’ve always loved you, Tabitha. No one else
...
just my Dix.

“All that’s holy,” I whispered. I whipped out my knife and dug at the brick until I could lift it up. Underneath the brick was a small hole Hobs had dug into the earth. I thrust my hands inside and pulled up a small lockbox.

“Did he give you a key?” asked Berrett.

“No, but’s pick-able.” I jimmied the lock with my knife and opened the box.

Inside I found a black velvet jewelry box and a handwritten letter sealed with wax.

Berrett leaned over my shoulder. “What’s that?”

I flipped the letter over. “Dunno, but it’s addressed to me.”

I popped open the wax seal and read.

My Dix,

it occurred to me, as ci-ci and i were riding that escape pod, that before this is over i might wind up dead, so i put this box together just in case. if you’re reading this, something has happened to me, and For that I’m sorry, i’m just paraNoiD enough to believe that something might go aMiss on our adventures, so You’ll Just have tO carry on by yoUrself. I am so soRry that I have to leave you. knowing me, i probably Never took the chance to tell you some importAnt things.

first, i wish that just once i could have seen your hair in its natural state. i think you would have looked even more beautiful than you already do. i know that the alias thing always bothered you, but you should know that who you are inside never belongs to anyone else. and it is the you on the inside that i will Love forever and cherish with all my Soul.

second, if i’m gone, then i’m sorry that i let you down. i think you know how badly i wanted to be able to give you that formula for the eternigen. but i know you. you’re a survivor, you’ll find another way. don’t ever lose hope. i love you. yours forever,

Isaac

p.s. i hope someday you get to stop wearing the vial around your neck. thought what’s in the velvet box might be a better option.

The final nail slammed into my heart. I couldn’t open the velvet box. I put the letter and the velvet box in my pack and closed my eyes.

“Well?” asked Berrett.

“Said he’s sorry he didn’t get the Eternigen figured out.”

“Can I see?” asked Berrett.

I pulled the letter back out of my pack and handed it to him. “Don’t laugh at the punctuation. Hobs had his priorities, and punctuation was never really one of them.”

“Makes sense when the fate of the world is at stake,” said Berrett. “He was a good man.”

I nodded as I shoved my emotions into the pit of my stomach. “Let’s get this cleared up before someone finds us.”

I watched with clear eyes as Hobs’s casket was wheeled into the small chapel. The late afternoon sun was shining through the stained glass windows and casting colored shadows on the casket. I stood up tall, lips steady, shoulders back. Every ounce of my will drew my muscles up and kept me standing. My mind hazed over, and I had the foggy sense of being in a dream, in someone else’s life. I kept expecting to feel Hobs poking me in the ribs, telling me I was being too serious about all of this. I couldn’t believe I would never see his face again.

I just could not believe it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. Thank you for being here today to honor the life of Isaac Hobson. We will begin with a prayer, after which we will hear the eulogy from his father, John Hobson, followed by a few remarks from his mother, Sara. The graveside service will follow immediately at the ....”

I started to blank out. I started thinking about the attack, how easy it must have been for Eira’s giant ship to land over ours with her loading bay doors open, lift us off the ground, and break inside. I should have done more to protect us. I should have known Eira would find a way around the sanctuary status of Neptune.

It was all my fault. My family, Caleb, Hobson, and all the others ... all of it. The guilt swelled inside me, bloating me with bitter, rancid bile. I kept my eyes open during the prayer and looked at the congregation, wondering how many of them knew that it was all my fault.

Mr. Hobson stood and started to tell stories about Hobs, how when he was a child he had loved to put mud pies in his mother’s oven to see what would happen. “Isaac was always experimenting. There was only one thing that fascinated him more than science, and that was people. After graduating with honors from the Académie, he had so many options, but he chose to take a job flying with his best friend. Perhaps Isaac’s greatest legacy was the effect he had on the crew he flew with. His heart was devoted to the people around him.”

I stared at the casket. What had that devotion cost him? His life. He loved me, and it cost him his life. And I would have to carry that knowledge for the rest of my born days.

I started to shake as I tried harder and harder to hold it all in.

“... nothing he wouldn’t have done for his friends. In the end, he gave his life to save one of them, and I know of no other person who would honor him more.” Mr. Hobson smiled down at me through his tears. I wanted to smile back, but I didn’t have any smiles left to give. My relentless shame took them all away.

The fog in my mind returned, swirling in hues of gray and mixing with the blackness of my culpability. Hobs’s mother spoke next, talked about how much she loved her sweet son, her voice rising higher and higher as she tried to control her tears enough to speak. There was music, I think, but I didn’t really listen. I was lost, floating in the haze in my head. I looked down at my hands, clasped around each other and white-knuckled.

I shouldn’t even be here
, I thought. I
have no right to bring these people more pain.

“If there are any present who would care to say a few words, we will leave the last twenty minutes for you.”

A woman with an insanely large hat stood up in front of me, and I used her as cover as I bolted for the door. I stumbled outside and ran, the slight chill in the air whipping tears from my eyes. I ran until the sobs choked the air from my lungs. I forced myself on until I reached an alley that was relatively concealed, and then collapsed.

“Dix!”

Berrett had followed me out. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore. I had been right all along. I was cursed.

Everyone I loved, everyone I touched, died.

He shouldn’t have followed me. I’ll just kill him in the end too.

“Get away from me!” I cried. “Don’t come anywhere near me! I’m not safe!”

Berrett knelt down on the cold alley floor next to me and tried to wrap his arms around me. I fought him at first, but I was still weak. I curled up in his arms and wept.

“I never meant for him to get hurt,” I cried. “I tried so flarking hard to keep everyone safe, but it wasn’t enough and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it! I tried, I did, but before I knew what was happening, he was bleeding out. I tried to save him but I couldn’t. He was my family, and he’s dead. My family is dead!”

“Shh,” Berrett whispered. He rocked back and forth as he held me through the waves of grief that shuddered through my body. “I’m right here. Nothing’s going to take me away from you, okay? I’m going to stay right here with you. Just try to breathe.”

I tried to do what he asked. I focused on my breathing and felt myself slowly relax a little bit. “Berrett?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime, weirdo.”

I looked up at him and he smiled down at me. He wiped the tears from my face and pulled me closer.

“Just breathe.”

I
SAT STONE-FACED ACROSS FROM BERRETT. ONCE WE WERE
sure the coast was clear, we had snuck into the seedier part of town and had nestled ourselves into the corner booth at the back of the quiet Nook Café. He spun his straw in circles in his glass of soda. Piano music played quietly above the hum of conversation. The Nook was a favorite haunt of Hobson’s, dingy and out of the way, a place he would go sometimes if he needed to get out of his basement lab. The windows were in need of cleaning, and the dishes were as well. I ignored the pastry Berrett bought me and scratched at a pale piece of hardened food that had attached itself to my butter knife.

Everything reminded me of Hobs. The smell of coffee reminded me of the smell of his jacket. The scraggly fake plants hanging from the ceiling in dusty baskets reminded me of the messy state of his hair. Even the dirt on the windows brought back to my mind the ever-present smudge on the lens of his glasses where he pushed them back up the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

I scratched at the knife until only a ring of oil remained, reflecting in the light where the dried-on food had been.

“We gotta move soon, Dix,” said Berrett. He stared out the window.

“I know.”

I started pulling myself together when I heard a chair scrap against the tiled floor.

I thought I was too tired to care whether or not I got caught anymore, but I was surprised at my own relief when I realized it was Max.

“What the flark do you want?” I asked.

“If you go to her, you think I have anything to gain?” asked Max. “I need you to finish the job, get out of the System, and start a new world, Dixon. What the flark are you doing here? Aside from letting your roots grow out.”

“Saving the people I care about, and then whatever Eira wants. I’m tired, Max.”

Berrett’s eyes widened.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” He went back to drawing circles.

Max shook his head. “This is not a good plan. You have other options. I can get your crew off that ship, and you don’t have to surrender.”

“It’s not just my crew, you jackwagon. She has
Liberty.
She has everything,” I hissed.

“Easy,” said Max. “I am about to be the guy who hands you your life back, so you might not want to go around calling me nasty names.”

“And what’s in it for you, Max? What? You want to take over my ship once I get away from Eira? And what’s to stop the SUN from coming after me or finding another scientist to replicate the Eternigen? Have you actually thought about any of this?” I asked.

“I don’t want your ship, stupid. I want the market.”

“The what?”

“The market. I’m a merchant, Dix. Someone has to bring food to the worlds outside the System when you drag the rebels past the border. Clothes, supplies, all that jazz. I want it, and I want it before anyone else. So I need you to get people there.”

I crossed my arms and raised one eyebrow. “You have thirty seconds.”

Max grinned. “More than enough. I had a hand in building Eira’s ship. And knowing Eira, I built in a little blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” asked Berrett.

A thought occurred to me. “Wait, you built Eira’s—”

“It’s always a good idea,” Max interrupted, “when dealing with people like Eira, to have something on them. To, as I do with you, own a little piece of them. It’s how you stay in the game. On the outside of Eira’s ship is a little port, barely as big as your fingernail. I’ll get you close enough to step out onto the ship. Get to the port and insert this.”