Meridian (16 page)

T
WO
hours pass, almost three. The truck keeps a steady pace, but we’ll have to move faster eventually. The cleared area is narrow, and only open for the time we occupy it, but I can tell things are different here. These buildings were framed with metal, and made of concrete instead of wooden beams, so more of them survived. They stand close together on both sides of a road clogged with abandoned vehicles that move out of our way before we reach them as loose nanites lift them up and shuffle them through the veil.

This was a city, where people lived and worked stacked on top of one another. I watch it disappear as nanites fill in the space behind us. On the other side the buildings grow smaller again, spaced farther apart.

Rue’s hive is enormous, and they’re barely a blink compared to the rest of the Fade out there. How are we going to do this?

“Not long now,” Col. Lutrell says, automatically turning to read a green sign that’s still on its post. “That was the only real city left between us and the capitol. The rest is rural.”

Maybe that meant something in the days before, but not anymore. There’s only our territory and theirs.

The truck pops with an ill-timed recoil that turns our smooth ride into a stuttering crawl before we roll to a stop. Both men in the front seat say “Uh-oh,” under their breath.

“What’s wrong?” Honoria asks.

“Something gave,” Col. Lutrell says. He turns off the truck, even though the engine’s already quiet. “This thing’s an antique. The stress was bound to show at some point.”

Couldn’t it have picked a point closer to the Arclight?

He and Mr. Pace climb out. Rue knocks on my window.

Return to home?
he asks.

I don’t think we’re going anywhere,
I tell him.
Something broke.

A clang comes from the back as Mr. Pace digs through containers for the tool kit. Our view in front’s been blocked by the truck’s raised hood.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” Honoria asks, still in her seat.

“It’s running hot,” Mr. Pace says. He waves his hand in front of his face to clear the air.

“We might pull the last fifteen or twenty miles out of it,” Col. Lutrell says, “but if you want to get home, it’s going to take some tinkering.”

“Tinker when we get there,” she says. “I’d rather stay a moving target.”

“Our space is the safer stop,” Rue says.

“We’re on the edge of Rue’s territory,” I say, interpreting his meaning. It registers as a bubble, bowing out from the relatively safe part of the Dark behind us but pressing against the unknown ahead. We’ve stretched it to its limit. “The wild ones are wary of approaching Rue’s hive in noticeable numbers, but the closer we get to the edge, the bolder the wild-Fade become. Rue’s people can’t keep the road clear without endangering themselves, and we won’t have another chance to stop before we reach our destination.”

“
If
we make it,” Trey grumbles.

I ignore him and keep talking. “If we stop here, they can still buy us time.”

“We will observe the boundary line,” Rue offers.

“Worry about your lines,” Honoria says. “We’ve got lamps to draw ours. Work as fast as you can,” she says to Col. Lutrell and Mr. Pace. “I’ll start us a campfire.”

She’s out the door.

“You two stay put until we’re sure it’s safe,” Mr. Pace tells me and Trey.

They drop the tailgate, grabbing equipment they need, and then they’re gone.

“I’ll scoot over if you want to get in,” I say to Rue. Cherish and I both long for him to say yes, but he’s already hopping off the step rail.

“I must see beyond,” he says, leaving Trey puzzled.

“He’s going to check in with the others before the lights come on,” I explain.

As he leaves, Rue adds his opinion of the truck and its noise and smell, finding both so distasteful, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near them.

“You hear more than the ones we can see, don’t you?” Trey asks. He stares at his reflection in the rearview mirror, so only his eyes fill the glass.

“How—”

“You mumble when you answer, sometimes.”

“Cherish—that’s the human version of what they call me—she’s still in my head. I don’t know how.”

“Perfect. I have seizures that make me draw things I’ve never seen, and you’ve got a dead Fade-girl taking up space in your head. I wonder what Annie will get—random dance numbers?”

“She’d probably like that.”

We both laugh, but neither of us would find it funny if it actually happens.

“Please don’t tell anyone about Cherish.”

“I’m beginning to think secrets are the best road to survival,” he says. “If you or your brain-buddy were dangerous, I think we’d know by now.”

Through the window, I see the colonel approaching. Rue comes back into view, having finished his survey of “beyond,” and falls into step with him, stopping when they reach the door. The other Fade, including Dog, have disappeared.

“Can we get out now?” I ask.

“Once the lamps are hot.”

“The rest of mine have been warned. I remain,” Rue says.

“I thought you’d say that.” Col. Lutrell makes a circle in the air with his finger, and the lights flare in a ring around us. He slaps the side of the truck twice. “You guys can haul out.”

My legs have recorded every bump and twist we hit on the way through the Dark, and as I stand, they play them all back at once.

“Whoa . . . ,” Trey says, climbing out behind me. “Are you seeing this?”

He stops in a crouch, too stunned to stand up straight.

With the Fade pulled away, and the ever-present black shroud of nanites removed from the area, what’s left of the world is illuminated by spears of light. It’s no longer the narrow chute we drove through. Rue hovers near the edge, his muscles tensed from the sudden intrusion of light, but he’s determined to bear it.

Mr. Pace and Col. Lutrell stare. Honoria stops fidgeting with the fire she’s built. For me and Trey, the scene is new and fascinating, but for them, it’s a ghost dragged screaming into view.

Side roads end abruptly where they’ve been torn or damaged. They lead nowhere, starting at buildings full of nothing. More vehicles sit in clumps, where they died as people tried to flee. Now they’re scattered mementoes of the lost. Boxy bags spill clothes that must not have been organic. The devastation’s endless.

This is a wasteland.

For years, Honoria and the others fought for the idea that they could return things to the way they were before the Fade, but there’s no way to repair this; we can only start over.

“I think I’m going to go and see if they need another set of hands up front,” Trey says. “I can’t use the wrenches, but I can hand them out.”

“Hey,” I say to Rue, once we’re alone.

I don’t expect an answer. Hellos are a human ritual the Fade don’t need.

“Are you okay? Inside the lights and all?”

“I can tolerate,” he answers, after searching my vocabulary for the word. I feel like giving him a sentence as an example—
I cannot tolerate your barging into my mind—
but it would be futile.

“It’s shaded in the truck, if you’d rather sit there.”

“I do not like the truck.”

He says
the truck
as one word.

“Are the others okay?” I try.

“They are uncomfortable, but close. They will be closer if needed, but then they will be more uncomfortable.”

He’s standing sentry, scanning the open areas and listening for anything that shouldn’t be there—which would be anything at all.

Nervousness makes me twitchy. I find myself picking at the dog tags Tobin gave me and popping the rubber band against my wrist. If he was here, he’d be on guard, too, but not the same way. Tobin stands solidly on his feet, daring anyone to try and move him. Rue’s agility incarnate, balanced on his toes and ready to run toward danger.

Thinking of Tobin sets Cherish off. She tries to nudge me closer to Rue.

Don’t be so pushy,
I say silently.

She answers back with a “push” so hard, it knocks me forward. Rue throws his hand out to steady me on my feet.

“Cherish is stubborn,” he says. “She hears, but she doesn’t listen.”

“You really can hear her, can’t you?”

“Marina often drowns Cherish out. She’s stubborn, too.”

“How do you hear her from inside my head?”

“She would not fit inside your head.”

He begins to pace the perimeter, either for a better look or to cope with the heat generated by the back of the light stands. This is his way of saying our conversation about Cherish is over, but I still follow. Out here, I understand why silence means death to the hive. This is the held breath when walking over a fresh grave. Without nanites poured out over everything, there’s no way to ignore the emptiness.

We walk side-by-side for a while, every step reminding me how awkward I feel. I don’t like it. Rue’s never made me feel awkward before. Even when I thought he was my enemy, there was something about him that made me think he was worth listening to, but now he talks
at
me instead of
to
me.

Our lights have trapped a squat, one-story building within the ring. It’s got giant front windows and the spindly wires of an awning frame that’s lost its cover. Both windows are broken, but one still has most of its glass. Large red letters read
OPEN 24/7
, while smaller ones tell me that the Lucky Eight jackpot is up to two hundred and seventy million dollars. Apparently, I could buy a ticket here, if I wanted to play.

It’s tempting to dash inside for a look.

“Do you think it’s safe?” I ask Rue, peeking through the empty pane of what was once a glass door.

“Shadows.” He blocks my entrance with his body. Inside the building, shelves and big glass cases block the lights from reaching the farthest areas. “Cherish didn’t listen. Marina should learn from her error.”

He means the night he lost Cherish to the Arclight, when she went exploring alone and was imprisoned in the light.

It’s the light Rue usually mistrusts, not the Dark. If he has reason to doubt the shadows, I shouldn’t be so keen to see them closer. Despite the rising temperature from the fire and the burning ring of our lamps, I shiver, mesmerized by the layers of Darkness that deepen away from the door. My mind plays tricks, telling me these shadows are moving and transforming into the devourer from my nightmare.

“The voices here are different,” Rue says. “We should move elsewhere.”

He turns from the building.

“But what about our voices? Is it okay to talk?”

He holds his hand out, no real expression on his face to betray if he thinks I’ll take it—or if he actually wants me to. Cherish wants to, and my hand lifts toward his. It has to be Cherish. I can’t possibly be considering it on my own.

“Out loud, Rue.” I snap myself, then tuck my hands into my crossed arms. “I want to ask you something.”

“Ask what?” He drops his hand.

“You know my family, right? My mom and Blanca?”

Calming pine wafts in on a breeze that fills my lungs but doesn’t lift my hair.

“I know them. They know me. We know you.”

“What about my dad, my father, my . . . Do you know what that word means?”

He shuffles through my thoughts, bringing faces to my attention, then discarding them until he settles on Tobin and Col. Lutrell. Tobin’s face dissolves, leaving only his father’s behind. He repeats the process with Anne-Marie and Mr. Pace.

I’ll take that as a yes.

“Evergreen is what I call my mother, because of the pine,” I say. “Who’s my father? I don’t know his name.”

Rue shows me the image of that rock set into the current.

If water is part of my name, then putting a rock in front of it clearly means “blocked.” What’s the big secret?

“Why doesn’t anyone want me to know?” I cry. How can someone I don’t even remember hurt me this much?

Negative,
Cherish says.

Rue adds:
Inquiry
.

“Every time I ask about him, there’s a rock in my way.”

He laughs at me, and I don’t find it funny at all.

“What?” I ask, angry.

“Your name is from his name.”

Water
.

Rue calls me by my Fade name and then shows the rock again. That’s my father’s name. He’s a stone set so deep that a river bends around him.
Unyielding
. Stubborn.

“Then he was there when we passed through?” I ask. “He was answering me?”

Affirmed
.

He came.

One of those reaching hands in the veil was my father’s. I feel like crying again, but not from sadness.

Pain?
Rue asks, confused by the reaction.

“Not anymore.”

H
ONORIA
stands alone in the middle of our camp, tending the fire she’s built.

“You still move like one of them,” she says without looking up.

“Do you want some help?” I ask. “I don’t really have anything to do.”

“Only if you can fix an engine as quickly as your guard dog can heal himself.”

She leaves the fire to unpack a canvas bag full of wrapped packages that turn out to be food. Dried out and lumpy, but food, in theory. I should really stop complaining about Common Hall lunches.

She plops one of the bundles into a pan sitting on the fire.

“I’m not a Fade anymore, and they’re not mechanics.”

“Then we’re even, because I am definitely
not
a cook.” Another of the packages hits the pan.

That sounded disturbingly close to being a joke, and that’s more jarring than Honoria with a gun.

“Tell your friend there’s enough if he’s hungry.”

“Rue doesn’t eat that way.”

Born-Fade
can
eat, and will on occasion, if they’re curious about the taste or texture of something, but it’s only the ones with hosts who have to ingest food.

“Then
you
can come back in half an hour, and he’s free to keep pacing,” she says.

Rather than take Honoria’s words for the dismissal she intends, I find a rocky patch and sit down next to the food bundles. I pick one up and peel the wrapper off before holding it out to her—whether she wants it or not.

“Is this what it was like? In the first days, before there was a real perimeter line at the Arc?”

That question gets me a heavy sigh as Honoria accepts that she’s lost the battle to make me leave. She throws the third packet into the pan.

“Actually, no. The first
days
were a lot calmer than this. It’s similar to the first nights, though. Only we had more people and less food to go around.”

She stabs at the stuff in the pan so hard that half a piece bounces out to fall in the dirt.

“It’s not my fault,” I say.

“I didn’t say it was.”

“It’s what you think.”

I hate Honoria’s laugh. It’s never a happy sound. “You are
nowhere
on the list of people responsible for this, Marina. What you are is a reminder of the mistakes I’ve made, and that makes for unpleasant company. Mistakes only end in tragedy.”

“You really think that, don’t you? You honestly don’t know what you did to them.”

She throws her fork down, leaving the food to sizzle while she faces me, arms crossed and glaring down. She’s as unpleasant as I’ve ever seen her, but that only means she’s out of options. Intimidation is her last resort.

“Believe it or not, I never did anything to them—or you—out of malice.”

“Neither did they,” I tell her, “but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

She looks puzzled.

“For someone who hears so well, you’re a lousy listener. Have you ever heard what the Fade call you?”

“I can imagine.”

“They call you Fire,” I tell her. “I thought it was a warning or an insult the first time I heard it, but it’s not. It’s a reminder of the moment your voice went silent among them. They remember the girl who made a choice to disconnect and who showed them that their way of life was hurting someone else’s. It took them a while to understand, but eventually, they got it. They stopped taking hosts. You
changed
them.”

“Quiet,” she snaps.

“Don’t dodge this, Honoria. You can—”

“Be quiet!”

I know that look. This is the dangerous Honoria. The one with her senses on high alert, gazing past me into the distance, head to one side as if to listen to something no one else can hear. She doesn’t even uncross her arms.

“Something’s moving out there,” she says.

“Maybe it’s the wind. It could be the wind, right?”

She steps away from the fire, reaching back to grasp the handle of her pistol.

“Wind doesn’t walk.”

I strain to pick up anything past the crackle of the fire and popping food, and I catch the sound of crunching leaves and breaking twigs as something moves toward us.
Fast
.

“Did you—” Honoria starts.

“I heard it. Someone’s headed this way.”

“Some
thing
,” she corrects. “Stay behind me.”

She’s using the gun that nearly killed Tobin to protect me.

“Hold up my walkie.”

I unhook the radio on Honoria’s belt and hold it high enough so that she can speak while I press the button.

“We’ve got movement in the trees,” she says. “Beyond the perimeter and gaining speed.”

When she’s done, I’m not sure what to do with the radio, so I keep holding it until the others trickle in. It doesn’t take long; we haven’t got a lot of space here, and it won’t take many Fade to surround us.

Without any sort of real cue or prompt, Trey and I are pushed together toward the center of a tightening circle formed by Honoria, Mr. Pace, and Col. Lutrell. Rue keeps to the edge. The sounds from the trees grow louder as who- or whatever’s approaching gets closer; they’re headed straight for us.

No danger,
Cherish insists.
Wait
.

Rue takes her side.

“No need to run,” he says. “They irritate, but mean no harm.”

“Who?” Honoria asks.

The bushes are moving now, being pushed aside as whoever’s on the other side forces their way through at a suddenly slower pace, and with one last, loud crunch, the next sound we hear is a human voice cursing.

“It can’t be,” Col. Lutrell says.

But it is, and I’ve never been so happy to hear such awful things in my life.

“Tobin!”