Meridian (17 page)

I
run toward Tobin’s voice.

“Marina, wait!”

Trey catches my jacket, but it’s so big, it’s easy to shuck.

“It’s him. Trust me,” I say.

If this were a deception, Rue’d warn me. Instead, his marks tighten down, pencil thin, nearly writing out
hate
across his skin. There’s only one person who can get that reaction out of him.

Tobin and I collide along the perimeter.

“Who’s there?” he demands. He stumbles back, pulling us to the ground and into the outer glare; it’s like the White Room from this side.

“It’s me,” I say.

“Marina? I can’t see.” He sounds like he’s gulping air rather than inhaling it.

“Get inside the circle. It’s not as bright.” I wish I had my Red-Wall shades. The lights have left my eyes full of spots.

I crawl back the way I came, careful of the lamps. On the other side, I’m grabbed up and pulled away, but I can’t tell by who.

“Hey!”

“Marina?” Tobin calls, worry in his voice. “What—Let go! Let go of me!”

His voice moves in the opposite direction from the one I’m being taken.

“Sit!” Honoria orders and then drops me.

Should have remained with Rue,
Cherish tells me, smug.

Tobin’s still fighting. I can hear him from here.

“Calm down,” his father says. Col. Lutrell comes more in focus as my eyes adjust.

“Dad?”

Tobin turns and hugs him, like he’s surprised to see us alive. “I’m never doing that again. I didn’t think we’d make it.”

Tibby’s scared,
Rue says, but I got that part already.

“Did something happen at home?” Col. Lutrell asks.

If what took Dante and Silver spread . . . Maybe there is no home.

“Why did you leave?”

“Where are Sykes and Doctor Wolff?” Mr. Pace asks as another voice bursts through the silence.

“Toby?” Anne-Marie crosses the lamps with her arms over her face. She’s breathing hard, with so many leaves stuck to her that she looks like she’s wearing a bush for a shirt.

“Annie?” Mr. Pace asks. “What are you doing here? Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.” She checks her arms to make sure. Her aura’s blue and bright; it barely wanes at all when she sees Honoria with her gun. “Are you going to shoot us? Because that would make this whole trip a colossal waste of time.”

She’s giddy.

Honoria puts her gun down and picks up her radio from where I dropped it.

“Sykes?” she calls, but there’s only static. We’re either out of range or something’s blocked the signal.

Or there’s no one to answer,
Cherish suggests.

I suggest she shuts up.

“Was there another incident?” Col. Lutrell asks Tobin.

“Yes—Annie’s overprotective reflex has officially reached insanity. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Your mother’s going to tear her hair out when she finds out you’re gone.” Mr. Pace is obviously relieved that nothing new has befallen the Arclight, but relief isn’t what I hear in his voice. “She’d tear yours out if you had any left on your head.”

Anne-Marie gives him a hateful look for the mention of her hair.

“I left a note,” she says.

I can imagine:

Some note.

A dozen new fears take hold as the initial glow of seeing Tobin and Anne-Marie safe wears off. With them here, I’m one step closer to the scenario from my nightmare.

“How did you get here? There’s no way you caught up with us on foot,” Honoria says.

“Yes, we did,” Anne-Marie says. “They just weren’t our feet.”

She giggles again. Honoria pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Whisper and Schuyler brought us,” Tobin says. “They found us on their rounds and didn’t want us wandering alone.”

Subterfuge,
Rue snarls, with a vague threat of pain for Honoria’s brother. His marks swirl across his skin like swarming bees.

The Fade could have sealed the Dark up tight, so that neither Tobin nor Anne-Marie would have been able to see the way, much less follow it. Bolt came to protect his sister and used them for an excuse.

“Bolt wants you to drop the lights enough that they can come through,” Anne-Marie says. “They need to talk to him.” She points to Rue, and then sniffs the air in the direction of the fire, where Honoria’s food has charred to ash. “Is something burning?”

“Your brain cells,” Tobin says.

“It was not that bad, you big baby.”

“Yes, it was—and it should have been worse for you! Since when does your claustrophobia come with an off switch?”

“I could see out,” she says. “It was amazing.”

“Not amazing. Never doing it again.”

That’s all he says, as though the memory’s too terrible to recount. Anne-Marie chatters away at Trey and their father, speaking as much with her hands as her voice, in an attempt to describe what they’ve gone through.

What happened to them?
I ask Rue.

He shows me Anne-Marie and Tobin’s trip through the Dark in a blink, and it feels like they were moving that fast. Where born-Fade can break apart, slipping into the constant flow of nanite trails that thread through the Dark, the others move the way Rue and Dog did when they were sliding alongside the truck. For Anne-Marie and Tobin, they came up with an alternative method—enveloping them in a capsule of nanites and shuttling them along at high speed.

No wonder Tobin’s still trembling. I’m surprised he hasn’t blacked out.

“What do you think?” Col. Lutrell asks.

“That this is another bad idea in a long chain of them,” Honoria says. “Make a path. If anything about this reads wrong, turn them back on.” Then she addresses Rue. “Only bring faces we know.”

She keeps to the middle, where she’s got the best vantage point. Mr. Pace and Col. Lutrell make for the lamps nearest the spot where Tobin and Anne-Marie came through, and turn off two lights to create a walkway.

Bolt, Whisper, and Dog come out of the shadows, nearly incandescent where they pass close to the light.

“That’s it?” Honoria asks. “Three?”

“Three you recognize,” Rue says. The Fade follow him to a spot farthest from the lamps.

“How many are out there?” Honoria asks Tobin and Anne-Marie.

What does it matter? The Fade are infinite and are always adding more.

“Besides whoever came with you, a couple dozen followed us,” Tobin says.

“Why so many?” his father asks.

Reinforcements,
Cherish supplies; I repeat it out loud.

“They’re a security detail. The hive senses danger and drafted more to keep us safe.”

“You make them sound like an army,” Honoria says.

They are—and they’re ours.

“Anyone know what exactly is it that our soldiers are doing over there?” Mr. Pace asks.

Whisper and Dog stand facing each other, each clasping the other’s wrists. Bolt and Rue are doing the same. Their marks rush together and apart, mingling across their arms and hands.

“Status report,” I tell him, but I’m not the only one. Tobin says it, too. So do Anne-Marie and Trey.

“We’ve got to get them out of here,” Col. Lutrell says, glancing at each of us in turn.

“We can’t send them back alone,” Mr. Pace says.

“They didn’t come alone,” Rue says out loud. The Fade-caucus has broken apart, but their frustratingly blank faces show no clue of what’s been said or decided. “They won’t leave alone.”

“Because we aren’t leaving,” Tobin says. His nerves tuck themselves neatly into their hiding place behind his temper, now that he has an opponent to spar with. “I’m not doing that again. Period.”

“Go home,
Tibby
,” Rue says.

“I will. In the truck, when this is done.”

“You don’t belong in this place.”

“Yes, I do.” Tobin pointedly takes my hand, threading our fingers together. “That’s what’s needling you.”

“Enough!” Honoria shouts. “Get your hormones in check before I take after you all with a spray bottle. You are not starting a fistfight on the edge of hostile territory.”

Very hostile.
Extremely
hostile.

“
You
keep watch on the perimeter,” she tells Dog and Whisper. No one argues. “And you keep
him
away from
them
,” she tells Bolt, pointing to Rue and then to me and Tobin. “This situation’s volatile, but it’s what we’ve got. We’re going to make it work.”

Rue actually growls.

“Save it for someone you’re not trying to convince to like you,” Honoria says before issuing orders to me and the others. “You four into the truck, and
stay
there.”

The conversation’s over before I realize she never demanded proof that Tobin and Anne-Marie hadn’t been affected by their time with the Fade.

She’s different,
Cherish says, and I let myself mumble, “I know,” back to her.

Rue doesn’t speak as I head for the truck, but I can feel him watching me. I climb in through the back with Tobin, then turn to look through the flap. Rue’s just standing there, separated from everyone. That’s not what I wanted.

Not your choice?
he asks.

I didn’t mean it to be,
I say, then close the flap, and snap it shut.

I
really do envy Anne-Marie’s ability to turn anything she touches into a pillow. She’s piled some canvas bags from under the seat into a heap against the door, and she doesn’t even mind the smell—a musty combination of old socks and older mildew. There’s no indication that her dreams are anything but happy.

Trey’s her exact opposite—awake and guarding his sister from the monsters in our shared nightmares. He’s at attention in the front seat, with a rifle across his lap, exactly the way Mr. Pace would be.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were scared,” Tobin says. He bumps my shoulder, trying to prompt a smile, but I don’t feel like smiling. “Don’t you think the payoff’s worth the risk?”

“Being worth it doesn’t mean you can’t be afraid to take it.”

We’ve taken refuge in the truck’s cargo space. We have to shove a few things around to make room, but back here, I can pretend nothing’s happening outside. We’re simply sitting in the stillness of the Well, without the luxury of stretching out.

“Weren’t you scared when the Fade came up with the capsule idea?” I ask him.

He nods, trembling.

“They were everywhere. I could see past them, but they were still there, making my nerves tingle where they touched my skin, and I’m pretty sure they touched all of it. I kept holding my breath because I was afraid I’d inhale some, but that made me light-headed, and I didn’t want to pass out.”

“You really hate them, don’t you?”

“I don’t trust them, not completely,” he says. “With the ones like Honoria’s brother, it’s not so bad. You can see them coming.”

“Most of the time,” I mumble, wondering if who and what I am has ever fully sank in for him.

“It’s the little ones I can’t handle,” he says, oblivious. “Not little like your sister, but tiny. Those other . . .
things
.”

“Nanites.”

“
Them
, I hate. That one word. It makes them sound simple. I still feel like shaking out my clothes and stomping my feet to make sure they’re gone.”

I remember that feeling. I had the same disgusted thoughts, and that makes me disgusted with myself.

“I don’t think you have to worry.” I ruffle my hands through his hair to show him nothing’s going to flake off, but I understand his fear.

Rue told me once that his people weren’t the ones who were faded, but the same isn’t true of those pulled into the wild hive. They dissipate a piece at a time until there’s nothing left but an echo trail. It’s every bit as violent as the conversion that tore me out of the hive. I can’t stand the thought of it happening to anyone.

I want to go home.

Cherish and I think it at the same time, though we don’t have the same destination in mind.

I want horrible, vitamin-infused cafeteria food and my pink-walled bedroom. I want to bury my hands in a bucket of dirt from the Arbor, where I can think of my sister and know she’s safe with my parents. And I want
my
Well—the real one that’s a sanctuary because we choose to make it one, not because we need a place to hide.

“Do you think . . .” I turn so I’m facing Tobin rather than beside him. He sits up straighter. “Do you think this is all because of the Fade?”

“Why else would we be out here?”

“No, you and me,” I say. “You being friends with Anne-Marie. Her being friends with me. The only way Trey and I could share what we saw is if we’re connected. Were we programmed to gravitate toward one another because we’ve all touched the Fade from birth?”

I expect anger for the suggestion that the Fade have any part in his life at all, but there’s only contemplation of the possibility.

“I don’t know,” he says, leaning back so he’s balanced on his palms against the floor. “I don’t
think
so. If that was all it was, wouldn’t we have clicked straight off? And you’d think Annie and I would have responded better to the nanobot.”

“You can say his name, you know.”

“Not until he stops calling me Tibby.”

At least I don’t have to worry about Tobin changing too much too fast.

“Besides I can’t really say his name, can I? None of them have real names, except the ones like Dog who had them as humans.”

“I don’t think his name was Dog.”

“They’re not like us, Marina, and they have nothing to do with your choices or mine. You said it yourself—you took the path that was best for you, and it wasn’t the one he
or they
wanted you to take.”

I made the only choice I thought I had. Becoming Marina wasn’t something I would have done as Cherish. Why can’t he understand that?

“I wish we could see the stars,” I say, glancing up the ceiling because it’s too hard to look at him right now.

“What are you talking about?” he asks. “They’re right there, over our heads. That bunch there looks like a fish.”

He points to the truck’s canvas covering, where snags in the weave and old stains have created patterns. One of them really does look like a fish.

“They’re not very bright.”

I get a grin for that.

“That’s because they’re a secret.”

Tobin shifts, putting himself back beside me. I take the cue—our first trip to the Well—and rest against him.

“I see flowers,” I say. “And trees.”

Death Trees.

An old water stain near the center has the same branches as the mark on Silver’s back, but I keep that to myself and let Tobin transform it into everything from Anne-Marie using an angry Arbor cat for a pillow, to one of his beloved snow globes.

Cloistered like this, with Tobin close enough that I can hear his heartbeat and feel his body heat, it’s as cozy as under my lopsided quilt. I’m being lulled back to sleep.

“Sorry,” I say through a yawn, forcing my eyes wide open. I snap myself with the band from my jacket again. “What was that last one?”

Hopefully, something exciting or funny enough to keep me awake.

“You can go to sleep if you want. I’ll watch out for nightmares,” Tobin says.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Too keyed up.”

It takes some semi-painful maneuvering and a few kicks at the supplies to carve out a space long enough in which I can lie down and still hold Tobin’s hand while he settles into a niche against a gas canister belted to the truck’s wall.

“Tobin . . .”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think we’ll make it home again?”

He picks up our joined hands, holding them in the space between us.

“My mom used to say that home was more people than place, so I guess we never really left.”

Yeah, I don’t think I’d have answered that one honestly, either.