Meridian (20 page)

W
E
aren’t running. Not yet.

We’re tiptoeing across a sheet of ice, while loose nanites crunch under our feet like the first cracks of an early thaw. My legs want to run so badly that it hurts, but pace is key. As long as we hold steady, and Honoria keeps that flare burning, we sidestep the coming melee.

Nanites roll under our feet, and we try not to flinch—even when they grab hold so that we have to kick them loose. A formation wraps itself around my boot, tugging back when I step forward. Tobin takes my hand and pulls, but the wild-Fade hold fast until Trey strikes the column with the end of his rifle as he passes, sending them back to the ground. Honoria waves her flare at them, and they scatter.

Are they going to attack?
I ask Cherish.
Can you tell?

They do not speak to me.

The truck should have blown by now, shouldn’t it? How long does it take for a flare to burn through metal?

Long tendrils of moss and vine slip from the branches overhead, uncurling into our path at a lazy roll. It drifts back and forth, attempting to look accidental in the breeze that brings it close to our faces. Anne-Marie tries to move the one tracking her by blowing on it as she watches it from the corner of her eye.

“Easy,” Mr. Pace whispers, wary of a possible panic attack.

He’s watching his daughter the way she does the Fade. Beads of sweat have already gathered at her temple; soon they’ll be spilling down her cheeks and nose, dropping to the forest floor.

The vine nearest Anne-Marie refuses to move, matching her progress inch for inch. She blows harder, cringing, and it still remains.

“Easy, baby girl.”

“I can’t breathe,” she whispers back. “They’re too close. I can’t move when everything’s this close.”

“She’s gonna lose it,” Tobin warns, like I don’t already know that.

Another flare hisses to life in Honoria’s other hand. She holds it behind her and waits for Anne-Marie to take it. Anne-Marie lets go of my hand and holds it tight. Under her breath she hums the songs she uses to keep the babies in line in class.

“Everyone turn left,” Honoria orders, keeping her eyes straight ahead as she motions for us to go right.

The Fade aren’t fooled; they follow along.

Honoria’s aura is dancing, cascading from bright to dim, wide to narrow, as far beyond her control as moths buzzing a lightbulb. Her injuries from the crash must be worse than we know. The nanites are replicating to fix them. Col. Lutrell and Mr. Pace are stable, but Honoria’s veins glow blue through her pale skin. I wonder if her eyes are shining, too.

The fall of crystalline moss that’s shadowing Anne-Marie begins to flutter and trill. She raises her hand an inch, like she’s going to bat it away, and I catch her hand. The ones who took Silver ate my gloves. Leather’s nothing but dead animal matter.

“Don’t touch them,” I tell her.

“I don’t want to touch them; I want to melt them.” She swats at them with her flare. “Get them away from me,” she bites out. Her free hand has a death grip on the dart case’s strap. “Get them away. Get away!”

Trey and I move together. I hook one of her arms and he takes the other, so she’s stuck between us and the Fade can’t reach her. They fly into a fit, rustling and shaking with an awful racket that knocks nanite-encrusted leaves from their branches.

“Where’s our explosion?” Tobin asks. “It should have gone off by now. This is weird.”

“No weirder than that,” Trey says. The path lightens in front of us.

It seems like an impossible mirage. Moss feelers recede into the trees, leaving our path free of obstructions. The coasting leaves fall back up.

“What’s happening?” Anne-Marie squeaks.

“Something’s drawing them off,” Mr. Pace says.

The ground turns brown and rocky beneath our feet as the nanites there skitter away. They peel off trees and stones, leaving us with the eerie silence of a storybook wood in an enchanted sleep.

“Is it the other people?” Anne-Marie asks. “Did they find us?”

“We’re in Fade territory,” Honoria says as Mr. Pace and Col. Lutrell sweep the trees overhead with the red scopes from their rifles. “Whatever this is, it isn’t human.”

Cherish stirs to life inside my mind, opening shutters and raising the shades on our connection to the others.

“It’s Rue,” I say. The knowledge blooms up as a warm spring in my chest, confirmed by Cherish’s agreement.

“He came back?” Tobin asks.

“He never left. None of them did.” The block’s gone. I can feel him, and Bolt and so many others. They’ve stayed out of range and out of my sight, but the wild-Fade could sense them, and so they’ve tread carefully. Now they’ve made their presence known in full, aggressive force to take the focus off of us. “They’re giving us an opening.”

“Then let’s not waste it,” Honoria says. “Go!”

We charge off, crashing through bushes and low-hanging branches. Overhead and underfoot, the flow’s still in progress, but we proceed unhindered.

“They’re going back the way we came,” Tobin says, ducking to avoid the lower limbs. “Why would Nanobot be drawing them back to the truck?”

The surest way to create silence is fire,
Cherish answers bitterly, adding the inferno she uses as Honoria’s name to the end.
Ours will see their voices go silent. Ours may go silent with them.

It’s a horrifying version of Honoria’s method for controlling the nanite population in her body.

Step one: create a disturbance to catch their attention.

Step two: draw them to a common point.

Step three: burn them out.

“The truck’s about to go.” The words fall out of my mouth in time with Cherish’s breaking heart, and mine shatters, too.

Rue left to guard our retreat, waiting for the opportunity of greatest value. He knew I’d try to stop him—all of them. They’re willing to die for us if it helps right the balance thrown off in the early days.

You should have told me,
I charge Cherish.

Ours requested my silence.

Then you should have told them no!

Free will works both ways. Humans have it, and so do Fade. Cherish shouldn’t have to stand by and watch what she loves disappear any more than I should.

I grind to a dead halt, and the others don’t leave me behind.

“Rue!” Out loud, or in my head, what does it matter at this point? “Answer me!”

He does, with one word:
Run!

“Marina,” Col. Lutrell asks. “Can you hear—”

His voice disappears beneath the rumble of an explosion.

A bleak and aching chill flows across the divide between me and Cherish, coming in the wake of a searing flash of heat. I cross my arms over my face to block the light, but it doesn’t do much good. I feel the pain of agonizing death and hear the harmony of the hive stumble over gaps where there were once voices. Cherish forces it all into my head, as though she wants to imprint my soul with the cost.

“Rue!”

Run,
he says again.
They are coming. We will follow.

He urges me forward, willing me to find the speed I possessed as a Fade. The wild ones not consumed by the truck’s sacrifice have realized the ruse.

“They’re coming,” I say as we scramble into motion again.

“Our Fade or the other ones?” Anne-Marie asks.

The answer comes as an enraged stampede. The wild ones stream into view, disoriented and tattered, swarming inelegantly without the cohesive motion of a hive. We’re at the center of chaos, fighting our way out of whirlwind.

Cherish leaves the connection open. Weaker than it was when the hive welcomed me home, but enough to know Rue and the others aren’t letting the wild ones go without a fight. Their well of shared strength flows into my arms and legs, turning my muscles to honed steel and reminding my feet how to race.

I am movement. I am speed. I am wind’s current moving effortlessly from here to there. I’m definitely faster than a human girl should be. What I’m not is alone. Tobin and Anne-Marie have never left me behind; I won’t abandon them.

Stubborn,
Rue accuses.

Just get here!

The wild ones aren’t touching us. Even without the truck or many weapons, they keep their distance. This hive could obliterate us, so why hide behind cheap intimidation tactics?

What’s going on?

The ground begins to tremble, vibrations so strong they override the effects of adrenaline. More wild-Fade vault into what had been a clearing. A row of identical creatures forms; they look nearly human on the top, but the lower half is a huge four-legged something that has to weigh at least half a ton. Hot breath snorts out long snouts, tossing tiny plumes of nanites with the air. Their front feet paw the ground with the hollow whine of nanites grinding against nanites.

We’re hemmed in.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mr. Pace says.

“Since when do they have cavalry?” Col. Lutrell asks, stunned.

Cavalry
. Horse soldiers. These Fade are fused versions of horse and rider, twisted incarnations of the pictures in our history lessons.

A flare ignites to my right and another to my left. Mr. Pace and Col. Lutrell throw two of the slim canisters into the nanites pooling on the ground. They become a lake of fire, only going out when the hive withdraws, leaving the unfortunate to burn. Nearby, I hear a zipper opening one tooth at a time as Anne-Marie tries to reach for one of the serum guns without drawing attention to herself.

The creatures rear up, churning the air with hooves that drip nanites like blood from an open wound.

Honoria lights another flare and pitches it at the lead creature’s chest.

It becomes a candle set alight, fire racing along its spine to catch its hair and tail. The nanites turn to molten bits and blow away, as though the creature underneath has shaken itself free. There’s no scream and no twitch to its muscles as it falls—only a pair of ghostly white corpses whose skin hasn’t touched the sun since the Fade rose.

“How can you be smiling?” Tobin asks me.

“Because they’re here,” I tell him.

The tide’s turning.

Rue’s Fade descend upon our enemy like angels of death, eyes shining through the Darkness while their skin blazes with reflected firelight.

Rue, and those like him, born with nanites in their blood, are at a decided advantage. They go to pieces, crumbling away and re-forming just long enough to inflict damage before dissolving again. They’re faster than the wild ones, more agile. The wild ones try to strike, but hit air, the same way the Arclight’s security forces could never seem to wound them.

Those like Bolt, who were human first, are slower but far from helpless. They’re more evolved, and they have connections that go beyond the hive bond. They fight to keep those connections alive, and purpose is a mighty advantage.

Dog and Whisper move in perfect sync, with the grace of gifted dancers, each filling in the weaknesses of the other. And I see another familiar face—one I’ve only seen once before.

“Is that a general look of shock and awe, or did the nanobot tell you something I’m better off not asking about?” Tobin asks. He lights his flare and hands one to me.

“It’s my father.”

Cherish throws open every conduit, stretching toward the stoic Fade who guarded Blanca at their settlement. She reaches for his constant nature, striving to touch his voice so he can hear her, too. It must work, because he searches for me as he fights for us.

He nods at me, sending a sharp, curt:
Mine
.

My father came for me, and called me his, and that’s enough for now.

I make my stand beside the rest of the humans, backing toward the lights we saw and whatever safety we’ll find there.

Mr. Pace and Col. Lutrell fire their rifles, keeping the wild ones dazed with random bursts of sound.

“We’re almost clear!” Honoria shouts. “Torch it!”

For Honoria, fire’s familiar. It’s been her guardian since she was a teenager, and she’s not careful with it. She strikes another flare, flinging it into the trees so close to her brother that he has to dodge back. A fire blossoms where it lands, catching dry grass and wood and creating another obstacle the wild ones won’t touch.

Anne-Marie lets the dart case hang around her neck and lights a second flare. She runs with the live ends pointed out, skimming the moss and weeds as she goes, blazing a trail in the most literal sense possible. And we run. Human and Fade together, flying away from the wild ones as the fire spreads.

It races up the trees and vines, toward the canopy that creates the upper limit of the Dark. An outer crust made of layers of nanites long dead from continual exposure to the light shields the lower levels. It’s baked granite hard on the outside, but in here, it’s tissue paper.

The canopy cracks in the heat, dropping bits of itself into the fire below.

“James! Elias!” Honoria shouts. She points up, her fingers in the shape of a gun, telling Col. Lutrell and Mr. Pace to aim for the canopy. Her pistol doesn’t have the range to hit it, but their rifles do. They fire until they’re out of ammunition.

The Dark crumbles around us, blowing away on the night air, so that in the end we don’t escape—we’re spit out. Unpleasant food the Dark no longer wants to taste. Fresh air, clean and cool, replaces the grit of ash, and I can breathe again.

“W
E
survived,” Tobin says, incredulous as he tries to catch his breath. Smoke from the blaze has created cover for Rue and his hive mates, but the wild ones don’t risk following us out of their territory. They run in the other direction, widening the safe zone. Without them here, the fire won’t burn long.

“How are we alive?”

He’s on his hands and knees, beyond the burning Dark. I’ve got singe marks on my uniform, and a couple of holes where embers burned through. Trey’s heaping dirt onto his pant leg, where a flare caught the cloth. Anne-Marie’s lying on her back, staring at the sky. Everyone’s smudged with ash.

“They’re afraid of us,” I say.

“Oh, yeah. Obvious terror,” Tobin says. “I must have been thrown off by the fact that they kept chasing us!”

“They think we’re contagious.”

I struggle to interpret more of what I see through Cherish as she connects to her people. There are references to Honoria and how she burned herself. The wild ones know her. They know about Mr. Pace and Tobin’s father and every human who ever injured himself to remain outside the hive. Rue’s people broke away and closed themselves off.

Through Cherish’s hive and Dante, the other Fade know about me and how I was taken out of the whole.

“They think dissent is a disease, and we’re all carriers,” I say. “They want to include us, but they’re afraid it will spread like a plague and others will fall away.” We’ll bring chaos to their order. “They were only willing to risk herding us to keep us contained, or scare us off, but now—”

I stare into the smoldering Dark.

“Now we’ve drawn blood,” Tobin says. “They’ll retaliate.”

When night falls and they’re no longer confined to the Dark.

We may have survived the trip here, but they’ll be waiting for us on the way home.

Mr. Pace is attempting triage. Whisper’s on the ground beside him, shaking as she holds her arm up for inspection while Dog sits vigil, balanced on the balls of his feet.

Whisper’s clothes have changed configuration. Camo-colored bits are stuck to her arm where the nanites forming her sleeve melted to her skin. The rest are gone.

No pain,
Rue says.

Her nanites can trigger enough endorphins to keep her comfortable. She’ll just have to wait for the skin to scar. She reaches up and touches the scar that crosses Dog’s scalp, and he shakes his head, probably telling her hers won’t look so bad, but theirs is a private conversation.

Bolt and my father stand to the side, hands clasped, also speaking among themselves. My father glances over at me and nods again. He hasn’t even said my name—either of them.

“I need something for bandages and a sling,” Mr. Pace says, and I shrug out of my jacket.

“You’ll be good as new in no time,” he tells Whisper.

“No, she won’t. The nanites there are gone,” I say quietly to Tobin as our teacher empties a tube of burn gel onto Whisper’s arm. “She’ll never get them back.”

“It’s better than dying,” he says.

“Their voices have ceased,” Rue says.

“Nanites replicate. She’ll get new ones.”

But their voices have ceased,
Rue repeats, only to me.

I know.

The ceased don’t return. They are ceased.

I know
.

It’s not better than dying. It
is
dying. Whisper will never be completely who she was before, and there’s not a single human here who understands that. They should, our elders especially, but the nanites are still parasites to them, squatters in bodies to which they have no right.

Would Mr. Pace think things were “less” bad because one of his children died instead of both? Would he be thinking forward to a replacement for Trey or Anne-Marie? Would he forget they existed?

They have no idea what Whisper, or the hive, gave up to help us. They are diminished and cannot reclaim their former number.

“Are you crying?” Tobin asks me.

I wipe my eyes and walk away. Rue follows me. The grief’s too great to stay so close.

Before us is our prize. Looking at it, I can’t believe it’s worth the effort it took to get here.

“Is that it?” I ask Trey.

“I thought it would be bigger.”

“Me, too.”

The building’s still standing, and it’s outside the boundaries of the Dark, but I expected it to be like the Arclight. There’s not even a real buffer; the lights aren’t bright enough to make one.

There’s nothing green here. No arbor or garden to provide food. The ground’s covered in poured cement, but even that’s marked with deep fissures where it’s broken over the years. Scorch marks tell of likely battles in the past, where fire protected the people here like it did us.

“Let’s move,” Col. Lutrell says, slipping a pair of shades over his eyes to hide the silver color.

“Is she mobile?” Honoria asks, glaring at Whisper as Dog helps her to her feet.

“They move together,” Rue says.

“But will they be able to keep up? We can’t stay in the open.”

Rue looks to Bolt and my father, now sharing their conversation with Dog and Whisper.

“Ours will watch from here. I will see inside,” he says, looking up. He checks the sky, where the smoke’s banking into drifts. “If danger ventures out, they alert me and I alert you.”

“You’re going with us?” I ask.

“I go with mine.”

Honoria clenches her jaw, but by now, she knows she can’t change his mind. Besides, it’s hard to think of a convincing argument against the guy who just saved us from the Dark.

“Move out,” she says.

Honoria stalks off toward the cement walkway in front of the Ice Cube, with Mr. Pace and Col. Lutrell behind her. Trey and Anne-Marie follow their father.

Whisper and Dog, my father and Bolt, and the others who survived break into teams of two and spread out so they can watch all sides of the perimeter at once. One by one, they blink out of sight, surrendering their true forms to the texture and color of their surroundings.

“Shouldn’t that be your cue?” Tobin asks Rue.

“I go with mine.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean we have to look at you.”

Rue’s marks stretch and flatten, taking a bit more of his features with each inch as they expand. Soon, all that’s left is a shimmer-line where the edges of his body warp the light.

“Tobin! Marina! Keep up!”

The colonel’s shouting at us. Our group’s stopped a few meters off, waiting.

“We’re coming!” Tobin shouts back.

We turn away from the Dark.

“You don’t have to be so awful to him,” I say.

“As long as he stays out of sight, I won’t be.”

I bite back my argument. The cement walkway is one of those places where speaking seems like a very bad idea. It’s cold and dirty and gray. The closer we come to the fissures, the clearer it is that they’re not cracks from age or use. Something broke through the ground, and inside the holes left behind, it still wriggles just enough to make itself known. The Dark is here, a great sleeping beast below our feet.

Our group packs in tight, moving fast. It doesn’t take long to cross the walkway, but every step comes with the certainty that something’s watching.

“Is anyone else creeped out by this place, or is it just me?” Trey asks as we climb the front steps.

His words are met by the whine of sharp wind swirling between us, and the crash of a piece of debris falling from the roof.

“Definitely not you,” Tobin says.

Definitely.