Meridian (6 page)

“G
ET
out of here,” Dad orders me.

“What’s wrong?” Trey asks. No one’s told him how he looks.

This pretty much blows Rueful’s “only willing hosts” line to bits. Trey has no idea what’s happening to him. How can that be willing?

So much for neutrality.

Mr. Pace starts stacking Trey’s drawings into a pile, as though that’s the problem.

“Am I in trouble?” Trey tries asking Annie.

“Move!” Annie’s mom pushes her to her room and uses her override to lock the door.

“Let me out!” Annie screams from the other side. She’s beating on the door, but she won’t even make a dent. “Mom, please! Let me out! Mom!”

Nique won’t do it. She’d rather have Annie locked in and scared than free to roam and turning Fade like her brother.

“What are you doing?” Trey asks. “What’s wrong with Annie?”

“Nothing,” Mr. Pace says. He grabs Trey’s wrist when Trey tries to leave his room. “You stay here.”

“But what’d I do?”

“Go.” Dad shuffles me and Marina out the door when we don’t leave on our own. “Marina, you’re welcome to stay with Tobin, but I want you both out of here. And I’m checking the entry alert, Tobin. You have two minutes to get to the apartment and ping me, or I’m coming to find you.”

Marina doesn’t say a word, but I know what she’s thinking, and none of it’s good. When we get to my place, she keeps going. I’m not stupid—she’ll go to
him
to sort this out.

I go inside and then stop the door so it can’t close all the way. Once I’ve tripped the entry sensor, so Dad will get the ping to tell him I’m home, I head back out, allowing the door to close behind me. Hopefully, he’s too busy to notice my tracker heading toward the Arc.

If Trey turns, I’m next.

No, Annie’s next. She was exposed first.

What am I thinking?
Everyone
is next.

“How did you beat me out here?” Marina catches sight of me halfway across the quad and crosses the rest at a jog. “How’d you even know I’d be here?”

“Closest crossing point. I took a different route.”

She stops beside me, at the edge of the Arc. The lamps are conserving power right now. They give just enough light so people can see where they’re going and find their way back. No one’s panicking yet, but they will. Then the lights will go completely hot.

“Were you put back on duty because of Trey?” Marina asks. “Are they tightening security already?”

“They wouldn’t start with me, and they wouldn’t put me here.” Sykes would be patrolling the short side. Trainees get dumped in low-priority sections. “The lights would be brighter.”

We’ll be at Red-Wall as soon as our elders declare Trey a security breach.

“How long have we got?”

“As long as Dad and Trey’s parents can buy us.” So, not long.

It’ll only take minutes to get Trey to the hospital, so long as he doesn’t flip out and fight them. Mr. Pace and Nique can stall Dr. Wolff for an hour or two before he either alerts Honoria out of habit or she hears about Trey herself. If they’re lucky, no one will see Trey en route and they’ll be able to lock down the hospital without details circulating.

Crap.
I’m starting to sound like Honoria. Worse, I’m starting to understand her.

The only choices are to hide what’s happened or to start a riot with full disclosure. They’ve got to get Trey contained.

And then they’ll come for us.

Marina knows that, too. It’s why she’s here.

“You’re going out there, aren’t you?” I ask.

“Like you’re not here for the same reason.”

I’m here because I don’t believe in coincidence. Trey’s bait. The shadow-hugger probably planned this. He left Marina a trail of Fade-crusted bread crumbs, and she’s going to follow it until she loses her way home.

“It’s too dangerous,” I say.

“If Rue or one of the others knows something, then—”

“Then
what
?” I snap, harsher than I mean to. Louder, too.

She flinches back, and I tell myself to get a grip before I scare her and she goes looking for
him
to protect her from me. I’m too jumpy. The nightmares were bad enough, but seeing them on paper, like Trey pulled them out of my head, was too much.

Touching those things changes people, no matter what they say.

“What if they expected this to happen, Marina? What if Trey’s just the first?”

“I don’t believe that.”

Of course she doesn’t. All she can see is the tragic hero who risked his life to save his lost love. Rueful’s a fairy tale. How do I compete with that?

“We should wait and see what Doctor Wolff says,” I suggest.

“I don’t trust Doctor Wolff.”

Right.

“Then we wait here. Honoria’s brother might show. We can—”

“Take a look, Tobin. What do you see?” she says.

I turn back to the Grey, but there’s nothing there.

Nothing. No one, and no Fade. There hasn’t been a night without at least a handful of them hovering in the Grey until sunrise drives them back. Tonight, there’s only the fog, coming too close and making my skin crawl. I can almost hear the click-clack of tiny feet marching up my arm.

I reach down for a rock and throw it, but it drops out of the air on its own without hitting anything.

“Bolt’s not coming,” she says. “No one is.”

Our night started with an invisible Fade on the front line. Now they’re at full retreat, and Trey’s jacked into my nightmares. What’s next?

“I can stop you from going,” I tell Marina.

“You’re not going to hit me.”

“No, but I can hit my wristband and send us straight to Red-Wall.” She might hate me now, but she’ll thank me later. “For all we know, Trey had a bad reaction, like an allergy. If it was serious—”

“Your eyes were silver.”

Her answer’s ice water to my face, knocking the air out of me.

She’s lying. She has to be. Marina picked a sore spot because she knew it would get a reaction.

“You don’t have to make up—”

“Your eyes were silver in the Arbor, when you saw the blood on my hand. Look at my hands.”

She removes her gloves and holds her hands out, palms up. She turns them over to let me see both sides, and the perfect, unscarred skin that’s replaced the cut I cleaned and the one from the broken bottle.

“What happened?”

“I fell asleep after Honoria’s presentation, and had a nightmare—
your
nightmare. The cuts were gone when I woke up. Your eyes were silver, and I’m healing like someone’s reknitting my skin from the inside out. We shared a dream, Tobin. Whatever’s happening to Trey, he’s not the only one. I’m not waiting. I’m
going
to find Rue. I’m not giving him a choice but to help—the end.”

“Wait.” I grab her by the shoulder as she steps forward. “What if it’s not a dream? What if it’s a premonition?” My voice sounds strange.

“It’s not.”

“What if the Fade are spreading again and we caused it by bringing down the Arc and letting them in?”

Never forget,
Honoria’s voice drones in the back of my mind.
It was a single mistake that put us over the edge.

“Tobin, listen to me. Rue will fix this.”

Sure he will. The mighty Fade Charming can fix anything.

I pull my gloves off my shaking hands, searching them for lines on my palms and knuckles. I check between my fingers in case they’re hiding, but it’s just skin. A fading tan from wearing the gloves so long, and fingernails that are clean, except for the one I tore trying to bite off a hangnail.

“You don’t have lines,” she says. “Neither do I. The silver was only a flash, but it was there.”

“Maybe it was a trick of the light.”

“That’s what I thought. I thought it was Cherish, and her mind games, but now—”

“You said you couldn’t hear them anymore.” I take a step back. I want to throw up, but my stomach’s got a giant knot in it that hits my throat every time I try.

“Not
them
,” she says. “
Her
. She messes with my head sometimes.”

“But she’s you, isn’t she?” And since when is there a distinction? The shadow crawlers are an all-for-one deal. If you hear one, you hear the rest.

“I thought so, too, but I’m not sure about anything tonight,” she says. “Something must have gone wrong when Bolt and Rue healed you and Trey.”

I’m more concerned with the idea that something went right, and this is stage two. She might be convinced that the Fade mean no harm, but their definition of help isn’t the same as ours—that’s why they’ve stuck with Dad. We don’t always speak the same language. This could be their idea of “better.”

“You should have told me,” I say.

“I just did.”

Marina stands on the Arc with her foot hovering above the ground, but she can’t manage to take the first step.

“What if she’s stronger than me?” she says, but more to herself than me. She flinches, slapping at her ears. Did one of
them
say something back?

“If you’re crossing, I’m going with you, and it has to be now. Leaving after the Arc goes hot will set off an alarm.”

“This is a bad idea,” she says. “But I don’t have a better one.” She takes a breath, closes her eyes, and steps over the boundary into the Grey.

The short side used to be most dangerous place I knew; it’s where we were most vulnerable. Anytime the Fade tried to break in, they did it here, because it’s the only place you can cross and get back in a few hours. Now it’s simply the most convenient. A couple of other people are already out here, barely within sight of the Arclight, but none of them are the kids from Honoria’s speech.

“Tell me your dream again,” Marina says after we’re past them.

“I’m standing on the Arc, when it comes on and fries me where I stand.”

“Now tell me the real one.”

I don’t want to. If I recount it, then I have to think about it, and if I’m thinking about it, then I might as well be living it.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because maybe I’m wrong,” she says. “Maybe mine wasn’t the same and I only convinced myself it was.”

“That’s probably it. I doubt your brain is as twisted as mine.”

“I saw the Dark, Tobin,” she says. “But it wasn’t the place we went before, with the houses and families. It was like Trey’s drawings. The whole thing was one writhing monster, ready to devour the world.”

“I call that variation two,” I say. Number one is worse.

We’ve reached the point where the terrain begins to change. Murky water appears in puddles and then turns the ground to mush that sucks against the bottoms of my boots. That’s the only sound here beyond the wind and the occasional movement of the water.

This is part of the dream, too.

A creature I first mistake for a log makes a whipping motion with its long snout and tail before sliding into the water with barely a ripple. Its eyes shine red beneath the surface, where it lurks, watching.

“So, once we’re in . . .
there
. . . how do we find the nanobot?” I ask. “Do we call its—”

“His!” Marina snaps.

“Fine. Do we call
his
name or try to find our way back to the settlement on our own?”

“I think Cherish can call him, but I’m not sure I want—”

“Stop.”

I throw my arm up so she can’t walk any farther. Finding the Fade won’t be a problem; they’re here. She should have heard them before me.

The terrain shimmers and then splits, forming two solid bodies with ash-pale skin marked with nanites. They head straight for us.

One’s female, bigger than Marina, but not by much. She has a broad nose and wide eyes framed by spirals. The male’s a head taller than me, but it’s his hands that stand out. Most of these things come pretty evenly marked, unless they’re hurt and the nanites go to the wound, but this guy’s got nano-doodles all over his hands. He’s scarred, too. A jagged ridge cuts through his scalp, leaving him with a bald spot.

I don’t know about the female, but he was definitely human before he was Fade. They’re both dressed in fatigues similar to the ones our security personnel are assigned.

“What do they want?” I ask Marina as they fall into step on either side of us.

“They didn’t say,” Marina says, cocking her head like she’s listening to something. “I think they’re escorting us in.”

“What’s with the silent treatment?” Maybe the ones born out here have trouble with words, but someone who started off human should be able to speak. Honoria’s brother can.

“They didn’t say that, either.”

They urge us onward and set the pace. If I fall off cadence, one pushes me so I’ll keep up.

Once we’re at the Dark, they show us where to enter through the trees and vines, cringing away from a burst of light that ignites the sky behind us.

The Arc’s back on full power, burning across the short side. A moment later, there’s a siren wailing in the distance, calling everyone to safety while the alarm on my wrist and Marina’s flash red.

She looks at me, and I nod.

Honoria knows.

W
E’VE
moved fully into the Dark, walking shoulder to shoulder with the unnamed Fade on either side.

Are they a good thing or a bad thing?
I ask Cherish.

Guard,
she says, but is that a warning, or does she mean they’re a guard detail?

Why would we need guards?
I ask, but she doesn’t have an answer for that.

Instead she says,
Home
.

That’s all she cares about—getting home.

She
wants
to be here. She
wants
to stay.

The moment I pressed my toes into the Arc, Cherish was pushing me to leave so hard, I could feel hands at my back. Other hands were reaching out for me the way they do in my dreams of belonging, promising to pull me home.

Home,
Cherish says again.

Not for me,
I say back.

It’s chilly here. The Dark’s always cool because of the shade, but this is more. Tobin’s hand is a block of ice inside mine. The heat flows off my body, siphoned away so I’m left shivering. The leaves and branches rattle, but there’s no wind. They’re shivering, too.

The Dark’s afraid.

“They’re scared,” I whisper back to Tobin, casting a wary glance at the male Fade beside him. Even if they don’t want to answer us, they can still understand us.

“Because the lights came on?”

“I don’t think so.” The Arc has kept the Fade away for decades. Crossing it is painful for them, if not outright lethal, but the lights don’t reach this deep.

What’s wrong?
I ask Cherish.

I expect her to answer the way Rue would, by allowing me to touch the hive’s mind, so I brace for the flood of noise and emotions that comes with it, but it never happens. She might as well have plugged her ears.

“She’s locked me out,” I say.

Cherish is doing this on purpose. She’s hiding something.

“You try,” I suggest.

“Try what?” Tobin asks.

“To talk to them. Try to hear.”

If Tobin is turning, he’ll be able to.

“I don’t know—I mean, how?” Tobin asks uncertainly, but he never suggests that he might not be able to hear them. Our shared nightmares, and Trey’s drawings, are coming from somewhere, and the hive is the only source out here.

“Act like you’re trying to get someone’s attention in a crowd. Pick someone you know and then shout.”

Tobin stops, bringing us all to a clumsy halt as he closes his eyes.

“I feel like an idiot,” he says. His face draws up more like someone in pain than attempting communication.

“You
look
like an idiot,” I say, and he scowls. “Did you hear anything?”

“Does my spiking blood pressure count?”

Sigh. I’ll take that as a no.

“It was worth a shot,” I say.

And, if nothing else, there’s a renewed sense of peace to Tobin’s demeanor. The hive didn’t answer him. They don’t answer humans.

Maybe that’s why they aren’t answering me. I chose a human existence; this is the cost.

Continue.

As if to prove me wrong, the male Fade speaks.

I’m not an outcast, I’m a misbehaving child, only allowed to speak when spoken to. One being told to stay out of the important conversations.

Motion
, says the female.
Forward
.

“We should go,” I tell Tobin, and we head deeper into the Dark, hand in hand.

The Dark’s always moving. Nanites swirl across their hosts’ skin, displaying emotions better than any expression. Lines of black crisscross the ground and snake up trees, altering their appearance in a never-ending crawl. If they stop the cycle, the ones on top creating the canopy will die from too much sun exposure. They mourn every voice lost and try to preserve as many as possible. Here, the greater good is distilled for the good of one.

Haunting reminders of the world before the Fade appear without warning. Some are subtle, like the painted lines on the ground that peek through gaps of rolling Fade, only to be covered again a second later. Others, like buildings that stand in various stages of decay, are harsher.

Eyes watch us. Ghostly faces appear and disappear at random; shimmers follow us from high up on the trees. Here and there, fully formed Fade approach from the remnants of houses, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re the ones who were human in the beginning. Were these their homes?

“You think they’d at least tell us their names,” Tobin says after a while. “They have names, right?”

I hear a growl, so close it makes me jump, but Tobin doesn’t move until I do, so the sound has to be for my ears only.

“What now?” he asks, tightening his grip on my hand. His eyes and ears don’t adjust as fast as mine. Here,
I’m
the one protecting
him
.

“I think he heard you,” I say. “He growled.”

Negative,
says the male Fade, followed by the same fearsome sound.

He lifts the sleeve of his jacket to bare his arm and then points to a shape drawn with colored lines. They’re static, and not crisp, until a rush of nanites darkens them, highlighting the image of a vicious animal lunging off his bicep, mouth open in a snarl.

“Is that your name?” I ask.

He growls again, replacing the sleeve over other pictures, including the obscure outline of a woman’s body on his inner forearm. The Fade have tried to mimic the ink he had tattooed on before they came.

“They call him Dog,” I say.

“Does that make her Cat?” Tobin snorts.

Shh
. The impression of a sharp hiss of air comes from the female.
Speak softly.

“
Speak—Oh! Your name’s Whisper.”

The female gives me a sharp nod, the only truly human gesture I’ve seen from either of them.

“We’re Marina and Tobin,” I say.

Invisible water washes over my legs, just as it did when Rue tried to make me understand that Marina was the place where he lost Cherish. Honoria made it my name, and now Whisper and Dog have, too.

After the water comes the streak of light Cherish attached to Tobin, but it’s only Whisper repeating his name. No one could have told her that name but Cherish.

Somehow Cherish can talk to them without me hearing it. I can’t shake the feeling that my Fade-self is lurking in the secret parts of my memory, using my own brain to plot against me. If I can’t hear her, I can’t anticipate what she’s planning. I can’t protect myself.

This is my body; I should have the advantage, not her.

“This looks familiar,” Tobin says of the deeper parts of the Dark. The relief’s so thick in his voice, I could pluck it from the air like fruit from the Arbor. “Either it’s all running together, or I recognize this place.”

He’s right. The monotony has broken, giving way to familiar trees with distinct roots and knots that mark the gates of the human-neighborhood-turned-Fade-settlement. The first houses are visible as swaths of white and blue, where metal siding has resisted both Fade and time. Birds alight on the eaves, trilling out a sound that can’t really be called a song, but it’s comforting. They sound like Rue’s real name. Flowers and ornate fungi spring up out of the ground as we pass, creating a path to lead us the final steps.

The color’s a spontaneous display of relief. Tension settles out of the air now that we’ve reached the place the Fade consider safe. They were worried we might not make it.

What could scare a Fade in the Dark?

“I know I was preoccupied the last time we were here, but this is . . .
not like it used to be
,” Tobin says.

More guards like Whisper and Dog mill the fringes in pairs.
Security patrols.
The loose nanites, which usually hang from the trees as moss, now form a fence, joining the trees together. The leaves rustle overhead, and Tobin points up. More regimented Fade are folded into the branches, clinging to the trunks with the claws that only appear on their hands when they need to climb. They’re all on alert.

We gain followers, so that by the time we reach the middle of the neighborhood, and the crowd waiting for us there, another has us penned in from behind.

“Bolt!” I cry, recognizing him in the group. I wave him over, but he turns and disappears. “Wait! Come back!”

“I really hope I was wrong about this being a setup,” Tobin says as one of the few Fade we know on sight deserts us.

“Me, too.”

Otherwise, I don’t think we’re going anywhere.

Maybe ever.