Meridian (24 page)

I
crack the door Col. Lutrell showed me, and stagger back. Fade have died in this room.

When an included voice falls silent, there’s a signature left behind. Feedback. An echo. That remnant’s here. More than the few voices Whisper lost, this is a colony of nanites. A whole person’s worth.

Maybe it’s old, but it feels as fresh as a ripped-away bandage, and only one Fade was locked in here recently.

Cherish is already calling out to Rue, fretting over the lack of an answer, but the speakers have her spinning again. They’re making me nauseous.

And why hasn’t Tobin said anything?

“Shouldn’t it be brighter in here?” Anne-Marie asks.

She’s right. Heat roars out of the opening, on par with what we felt in our own cell, but toward the left corner, farthest from us, someone’s built a blockade in front of the window.

The crude lean-to is made of broken shelves and chairs, with other bits of unused material laying scattered on the floor. Sections of hammered metal have been pried loose from the reflective walls, but they’ve been abandoned in favor of one long strip that came completely off.

“Marina.” Trey nudges my arm and points.

“Tobin!”

He’s kneeling, half falling from the top of the lean-to.

“Tobin!”

He still doesn’t answer.

“Cut the speakers,” I tell Anne-Marie, and start for the pile. “If Rue’s hurt, he won’t be able to heal with that racket.”

“How long do you think he’s been like that?” Trey asks.

“All day.” I’d bet my life on it—and Rue’s.

Tobin’s cuffed arm drags sharply down on one side, cutting into his skin so deep that there are trails of dried blood where the wound has closed and broken open throughout the day. His other arm steadies the piece of sheet metal braced against his back and shoulders, and tilted toward the window to prevent sunlight from filtering through to where Rue’s hiding inside. He’s turned himself into a human sun shield, balanced on the top of the stack and blocking the light from above.

It’s enough,
I tell myself. Tobin’s determination and Rue’s resilience have kept Rue safe. It has to be enough.

“Tobin,” I call as Anne-Marie guts the speakers behind us and the room falls silent. He’s about a foot over my head. “You can come down now.”

“M-Marina?” He blinks. “Am I hallucinating? How—”

“Escape now, questions later.” I jingle the keys at him. “Let’s go.”

“But—” He glances from the window to the pile of chairs under his feet.

“Rue can handle the light long enough to get to the door.”

He moves stiffly, after hours of keeping his muscles tensed in a single position. Trey reaches up to take the piece of sheet metal, and the entire structure groans.

Tear it apart,
Cherish says.

It could hurt Tobin.

Reassemble him later.

She’s joking—
I think.

Tobin lets the sheet metal slide off his back so that it hits the floor. He moves his weight to one foot and jumps, dislodging two chairs as he goes. When he lands, he holds his chained wrist up so I can unlock the cuff.

“Tell Rueful we’re even,” he says, wincing when it comes loose. His wrist is mangled below the cuff.

“You’re insane for even thinking about standing up there like that,” I tell him.

“Nanobot would have fried without a shield. He never made a sound, but it was like I could feel him baking in there. I had to cover the gaps, but the metal wouldn’t stay in place unless I held it. Pretty stupid, huh?”

“Not stupid.” I shake my head, lean over and kiss him. “Brilliant, and amazing.”

“Less kissing, more rescue.” Trey claps his hands the way Mr. Pace does to call for attention in class. “Thank him when we get home.”

Tobin laughs, but I feel myself turning red. He reaches his hand up for help getting off the ground but groans as soon as someone touches his hand.

“I don’t have anything to put on it,” I tell him. I’d suggest letting Rue help, but that’s probably not an option.

“I’m still better off than her.” He turns his head to the other side of the room, and so do I.

Gina’s dead.

She could be sleeping, the way she’s lying on her side, knees tucked in with one hand stretched over her head, bolted to the wall. But her eyes are open and murky. Ashen Fade residue surrounds her body. When the nanites died, and the protrusions that ripped her skin crumbled, she bled out.

“Is she—” Anne-Marie falters when she catches sight of Gina’s body.

“She’s lucky,” Tobin says, accepting Trey’s offer of a hand up, now that he’s caught his breath. “Those things started jumping left and right looking for a new buffet table. Made me glad I was out of range.”

We’ve come into a world where death is a sign of good fortune. If this is what’s out here, I’d rather live inside the Arc.

“Sorry, that sounded cold,” Tobin says. “But—”

“No, you’re right.” I say. “They’re Killers, like Rami’s people call them.”

And that’s why we still have an edge. They have reasons to kill; we have reasons to live.

“Has Rue said anything?” I ask.

“Not since we got the tower built.” Tobin’s testing his arms and legs, shaking the kinks out. “It took a lot out of him, but the stack blocked most of the light and some of the sound. I think he’s hibernating.”

“Someone should wake him up, or this is going to be the shortest rescue mission in history,” Trey says. “Curing Gina was Honoria’s only leverage.”

“Right.” Tobin reaches for a chair and wriggles it out of the stack. “Start high, otherwise you’ll bring the whole thing down on his head. I’m not sure what shape he’s in.”

The four of us become an assembly line, picking the lean-to apart a chair at a time until there’s an opening big enough to see that Rue managed to erect a veil around himself.

Emerge!
Cherish shouts, but he doesn’t drop the veil.

“Something’s wrong,” I say.

“Maybe it was the speakers,” Anne-Marie says. “Give him a minute.”

“We don’t have any to spare,” Trey says.

“It’s not from the speakers.” I move closer, almost touching the veil. Through the side, Rue looks like he’s trying to hold himself together, arms clenched around his middle. A tremor cycles through his arms and legs, and even though his head is bowed, I can tell his mouth’s moving. If any words are coming out, they fall unheard on the other side of the nanite wall.

Rue hates talking like a human.

Speak,
Cherish prompts me.

“Rue?”

It’s not enough. Cherish’s urgent cries for speech become more forceful and more clear. My right hand begins to tingle. I shake it like I would if it fell asleep, but the sensation gets worse, turning warm.

“Hey! Sleeping Beauty—rise and shine!” Tobin bangs his fist against the veil, then pulls it back, hissing. “Is that thing supposed to be hot?”

“Hot?”

“Yeah, like burning.” He holds up his hand, and the whole side is blistered.

No, the veil shouldn’t be hot. It also shouldn’t have been solid enough to hit. The nanites’ strength is in their flexibility. They absorb force and distribute it. Tobin’s fist should have bounced off, like Rami’s bullets being deflected in the lunchroom.

I lay my hand against the cocoon and it scalds me, too.

What is this?
I ask Cherish.

The tingling feeling spreads from my fingers and into my wrist and on up my arm, mimicking Rue’s contact with Silver.

My throat closes off, stuffed from diaphragm to mouth with something coarse and sandy.

I can’t breathe!

Strangled,
says Cherish.
Choked
. Cherish’s words are joined to the squawking cry of a bird as it soars from my memory.

Rue
.

“He’s under attack,” I say with a gasp. The wild ones are attacking Rue. “When he went into hibernation, they latched on to him like they did to us when we fell asleep in the truck.” He can’t take the veil down; they’re using it to restrain him.”

I reach for one of the chairs, hoist it over my head, and bring it down as hard as the combined strength of a worried human and an angry Fade can manage. It’s like hitting solid steel; more of the impact reverberates through my hands and arms than the veil itself, until I feel it from teeth-to-toes. Each strike’s the solemn ring of a death knell.

My hands are numb. My body aches, but I keep going, pushing aside my concerns over whether or not Rue can tolerate the clanging.

Tobin’s beside me, using the legs of a chair as a battering ram. Trey’s dismantling the tower from the back, in an attempt to expose it to the window and direct sunlight.
Something has to work,
I tell myself. There’s always a way through.

Suddenly, someone grabs my arm, stopping my next swing.

“Marina!” Anne-Marie shouts in my ear, as though she’s been trying to get my attention for a while. “I said, try this.”

Pinched between the thumb and forefinger of the hand not gripping my arm is a tiny silver dart with red feathers on its end.
Fade suppressant.

“Where—”

“I put some in my pocket in case I lost the satchel.” Anne-Marie slides her hand into her pocket and brings it out with a half-dozen more. “It’s not like they’d hurt me, even if I stick myself. Will it work?”

Death!
Cherish screams.
Poison!

She hurls the “poison” so fast and hard, I’m surprised it doesn’t appear on my forehead. The serum will definitely break the veil’s bonds, but the veil’s attached to Rue.

I could kill him.

“You risked me turning Fade to save my life,” Tobin says. “Don’t tell me you think him maybe turning human is worse.”

“You saw what happened to those things on the road,” I say. “If the serum reaches his body—”

“Chance of death or certain continued torture—which would you pick?”

“Fine.” I take the dart from Anne-Marie. “But we can’t just stab him.”

Minimal damage—that’s the key.

I press my thumb against the needle end, to snap the tip off the dart, but I stop. What will the serum do to me now if gets into my bloodstream?

“I need something to crush it,” I say, laying the dart at the edge of the veil.

“Stand back,” Trey says.

He straightens and then slams his foot down, crushing the glass chamber at the center of the dart and releasing the serum. It wicks along the seam between veil and floor, deceptively small in quantity for the effect it has. The veil dissolves on contact. Woven threads of nanites erode, exposing Rue’s body to the open air.

As soon as the space is wide enough, I scoot inside and take his face in my hands. His skin’s ice cold.

“Rue?” I call.

His eyes pop open, unfocused; full of pain, but also confusion and loss. Accusation.

My stomach churns as the first answer comes in Cherish’s voice:
Necessity
.

I’m surprised it’s not a condemnation.

“There was no other way,” I tell him.

The distant haze leaves his eyes, so they’re shining with that familiar silver-cast blue. Quickly, he pulls the remainder of the veil back into himself, and I feel his heart break when he draws the line on those he has to sacrifice. The ones left behind cry out, knowing they’re lost. I don’t think nanites experience physical pain in their individual state, but there’s no question that they’re capable of anguish. They know fear, and that’s how they die.

A body seems a solitary thing until each cell inside it gains its own voice, and when thousands of those voices all shriek in terror at the same time—when they all dim to nothing after that last brilliant flare of emotion—perception of the whole can never be the same again.

The hive outside takes up the lament, bringing tears to my eyes I have to fight. Cherish can sob on the inside; Marina has to compartmentalize.

“Rue, say something.”

He’s on his feet, stepping clear of the residue on the floor, careful to let the dead lie in peace.

Rueful,
he answers, and he doesn’t mean his name. A well of pain springs to life inside my chest, weeping like a wound too great to stop the bleeding.
Sorrow
.

“Finite words are insufficient for infinite anguish.”

His marks are different. They bear gaps no bigger than freckles where the lines are irreparably broken.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“The anguish remains infinite. We should leave this place.”

“Hey!” Anne-Marie grabs his arm as he passes. “You don’t get to pretend Marina did something wrong and sulk away.”

I expect a response. Vitriol, rage, insults involving the name “Tibby,” but Rue’s . . .
diluted
is the only word I can think of.

“We should leave before more is taken,” he says, glancing at Gina’s body.

“That’s low, even for you,” Tobin says, blocking his path. “We saved your life.”

Affirmed,
Rue says, confused.

“You saved many,” he says. “You lost many. Many more will be lost if we remain.” His eyes cut up, searching. A gentle nudge in my mind, and the word
leave
turns more dire.
Evacuate. Remove all life.

He’s not being cruel. He’s warning us.

“What did you see?” I ask him.

Darkness. Silence. Void.

An infinity loop snaps in half. The pieces become shackles, tying Rue’s hands and feet, so he’s powerless.

Failure,
he says. “My ending. My Cherish’s ending. Marina’s Tibby. Our others.”

“And I thought human nightmares were bad,” Trey says.

“They’re just dreams,” Tobin insists. “Intimidation tactics. Psychological warfare—nothing that can hurt you, unless you let it get to you.”

It’s more than that.

“Show me.” I grab Rue’s hand.

Cherish pounces on the connection, asking a thousand questions and getting the answers at the speed of thought. Anne-Marie’s voice, and the others’, fall to the back as Rue’s nightmare gains definition and focus.

It’s not what I saw, nor is it some idle threat. There’s no looming beast to represent the nature of the wild hive; it’s no testing of Rue’s limits. It’s far more immediate.