Meridian (9 page)

H
ONORIA
,
Dr. Wolff, and Lt. Sykes stand huddled up with Mr. Pace and Col. Lutrell; no one’s smiling.

If I’m right about Lt. Sykes and the colonel, then the others could round out Honoria’s five. They all hold positions of authority here, and she
did
mention a teacher in her book. But what would that make Trey and Anne-Marie?

Parents pass things to their kids all the time. Maybe Bolt isn’t responsible for triggering what happened to—

Oh God . . . Tobin.

If Mr. Pace passed the Fade to his kids, did Col. Lutrell do the same to Tobin? Is that why his mother was working so hard to find a cure?

Where is your Trey?
Rue asks.

“Behind that drawn curtain, I’d guess, but we can’t go out there until they cool off.” I crouch down so there’s room for the others to peek out the opening, too.

“Agreed,” Tobin says, whispering.

Disagreed
, says Rue. “We help. We leave.”

He steps forward, folding his hand around the edge of the panel to open it all the way. I can’t reach his arm, so I grab his ankle.

“Run into that room, and there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

Stalling,
he says.

Strategizing,
I correct. “You can’t even go out there invisible. They’ll see the panel open if you push it that wide. Wait for some of them to leave.”

Preferably Honoria.

A door opens in the hospital, stopping our argument.

“Go home, Nique,” Mr. Pace says. “Keep an eye on Annie.”

“It’s Anne-Marie’s mother,” I say, knowing Rue and Bolt won’t recognize her name. I try and repeat the one Cherish gave her.

“Annie should be in the safe room with the others,” Honoria says. “And you shouldn’t be here.”

All my hopes of getting through this unnoticed vanish. Of course Red-Wall means everyone’s in the bunkers. They’ll all be wondering what the danger is, now that they believe the Fade aren’t a threat. And they’ll notice we aren’t with them.

“Unless you want every child in this building to know what’s happened tonight, the last place you want my daughter is locked in a room for hours. Now tell me what’s going on with my son.” Ms. Johnston moves into my line of sight, but Honoria doesn’t relent.

“Go home. Make sure Annie’s where she’s supposed to be—
this time
.”

“Don’t you dare. She went into the Dark to save her brother and her friends. You’re not going to vilify her for it.
You
started this. You and your lies.”

Normally, Anne-Marie’s mother would lash out with more than words, but too much has piled up on her too fast. She grinds the heels of her hands into her eyes, pushing back the tears.

“What’s important is making sure Annie stays safe.” Lt. Sykes becomes an unexpected voice of reason in the room. Ms. Johnston startles like she’d forgotten he was there. “If she’s by herself, she’s more likely to do something reckless. I’ll have someone watch your door. You can stay here.”

She’s always nervous around him, but it’s more than the silent way he moves or the way he seems to watch everyone and everything—she knows.

Every adult must know about all five of the originals, but Lt. Sykes is the first one they have grown older than. As a child, Ms. Johnston would have seen him as an elder, but now she looks like she could be his superior or teacher. Her own son is his age.

“I’ll send someone to your place. They won’t even go inside—I promise.” Lt. Sykes squeezes her arm; she doesn’t quite manage to stifle the flinch.

“Thank you,” she says. I honestly hope he can’t smell the ashy unease from her.

“Get a head count on the kids,” Honoria says. “If anyone other than Annie is missing, I want their names, and I want them found.”

“Channel two on the radio,” Lt. Sykes tells her. “Ten minutes.” He hurries out the door.

“That’s not a lot of time,” Tobin says, giving me a hand up.

“I know.”

Bolt moves for the first time since we opened the panel. He takes my place, staring into the hospital.

“If you can tell us anything about your sister that might help, now would be the time,” I say. She’s still our greatest point of opposition, and her presence here says she still holds sway with the others.

“Waste of time,” Tobin says. “I’ve known her my whole life. Dad and Mr. Pace are our best shot.”

“She helped,” Bolt says.

“Yeah, and I’ve seen what happens when she tries to help. So have you.” Tobin rubs the spot near his heart where Honoria’s bullet left him scarred.

“She helped ours.”

“She
shot
you. How’s that helpful?” I say.

“She helped ours to see.”

He faces me, locking eyes, and suddenly, I’m in his head. He and Cherish shared the same hive mind; his memories are a part of her, if she wants them to be.

I hear Honoria’s name, spoken by a human voice and translated into the raging burn the Fade associate with her. My mind’s on fire—no, my head. My head’s on fire, my skin’s melting, about to burst into flame. I smell my own flesh singeing as the voices of the Fade scream in confusion as to why I’m hurting myself. They plead for me to stop.

“It’s not me,” I say.

It’s not me, it’s—

“You felt Honoria burn herself out of the hive?” I ask. “Is that why her name means fire to you?”

“She helped us see,” Bolt says, and turns back to the panel’s opening. “We will help her see.”

Honoria’s still shouting.

“This was
always
a possibility—you
both
knew that.” She gives Mr. Pace a sour look.

“You can scold me later, Honoria. Right now, we need to focus on helping my son.”

“There
is
no help,” Honoria says, her voice softening in a way that shocks me. “Have you honestly forgotten that? It’s past contact—they’re in his organs. Likely, his brain. We can’t burn them out; at this point, even the serum would be risky. If we kill them, there’re enough that the dead will poison him as they decompose.”

Anne-Marie’s mother chokes down a sob, turning her face into Mr. Pace’s shoulder.

“We had some early success with dialysis,” Col. Lutrell suggests. “Filter his blood as they die, so they don’t have a chance to reach lethal toxicity.”

“That’s never worked long term.”

“We have to do
something
,” Mr. Pace says.

“I’m not gloating, Elias,” Honoria says. “But you knew the risk and you still took it.”

“The only risks I took were for my family,” Mr. Pace argues.

“Your family’s dead. You should have left it that way.”

Anne-Marie’s mother lunges toward Honoria; Mr. Pace grabs Nique up off the floor so she can’t reach.

“Sometimes I think your body’s the only thing about you that aged, Honoria Jean,” he says. “Inside, you’re still the bitter little military brat who used to cheat on her exams.”

If he
was
her teacher, then how did she end up in command?

“That’s enough—all of you!” Dr. Wolff steps into the middle of them, waving a folder. “The bickering is getting us nowhere. I’ve checked and double-checked Mr. Johnston, and the nanites are
not
spreading. This isn’t an exposure issue.”

“You mean he’s not turning into one of them?” Anne-Marie’s mother asks.

Hope calms her down like a shot of tranquilizer; enough so that Mr. Pace decides it’s safe to set her back down.

“The markings on his face have dissolved; they never appeared elsewhere. He’s calm, and was even presedation. There aren’t any spikes on the monitors. I believe what you witnessed was a result of dormant symbionts in your son’s body reacting to live ones when he was healed.”

“But it’s been almost two months,” Col. Lutrell protests.

There were so many drawings in Trey’s room that he could have used them for wallpaper and rugs. That could have easily taken two months, but how did he not show signs?

Uninjured,
Rue supplies. Dr. Wolff seems to agree.

“They’ve had no wounds to treat, so no reason to replicate for healing. They’ve likely been building steadily in his system since contact with the live specimen.”

“You said dormant,” Trey’s mother says. “He’s had them all this time?”

“It’s possible that he’s had them from the point of conception. I wouldn’t doubt that Annie and Tobin have small numbers of them as well.”

“What’s he mean?” Tobin asks me. I shrug. He doesn’t need to hear from me that his father could have passed the Fade to him like an errant gene.

Or a disease.

“We know the Fade can procreate,” Dr. Wolff says. “The only difference is, in this case, one parent is fully human, and the one exposed has kept his nanite load suppressed. The children were born with no indicators.”

“So Annie, too?” Mr. Pace asks.

“I can test her, but the nanites she came into contact with were never active in her bloodstream. However, the same isn’t true for—”

“Tobin,” Col. Lutrell finishes for him.

I glance back at Tobin; he’s looking at his fingers, shivering.

“They’re gone,” I whisper to him.

“I know.” He nods, but he still wipes his hands on his pants.

Back in the hospital, Honoria snatches the radio off her belt.

“Sykes,” she hisses. “Collect James’s son and bring him back here once you’re done at the safe rooms.”

“Problem?” Sykes buzzes back.

“The way this night is going? Almost definitely.” She clicks the radio off, hooking it back on her belt.

“This is
not
a disaster,” Dr. Wolff says. “The sample I took from Trey is inert, and I’d rather not spark a panic by implying there’s a risk of an outbreak.”

“Then why were his eyes shining?” Honoria asks.

“It’s part of the reaction, but considering the appearance of Marina’s eyes, and those of our people who were treated long term, it won’t be back. The shift to light blue is likely a side effect of the nanites’ melanin-blocking properties.”

“Trey’s eyes turned blue?” Anne-Marie’s mother asks.

“Once the suppressant was in his system, just like with Marina. But unlike her, the concentration of nanites wasn’t high enough to affect Trey’s skin or hair. He’s showing no lingering signs of contact. You’re all worried over nothing.”

“
This
is not nothing,” Honoria insists. She snatches up a pile of Trey’s drawings. “He was connected to them, and if he still is—”

“It was just an accident,” Tobin blurts, rushing into the main room and exposing us all.

I don’t think he could take hearing any more symptoms or guesses. He wanted them to stop talking so he didn’t have to think about all the things that could have happened to him if Rue hadn’t taken his nanites back. But Tobin can’t smell the shock for his sudden appearance, and he doesn’t know there’s an explosion building to critical mass inside Honoria that’s worse than anything I’ve ever registered from her.

“They’ve come to fix it.”

“Tobin?” Col. Lutrell says. “What—”

“We went to get help.”

“Help?” Mr. Pace asks, squinting toward the tunnel entrance where the Fade and I are still mostly hidden by the sliding panel. I step into the open, reaching back to bring Rue and Bolt with me.

“He’s the one who healed Trey before,” Anne-Marie’s mother says. She starts toward Bolt, but Mr. Pace holds her back.

“Don’t,” he warns.

“But if he can help—”

“Give it a minute, Nique.”

It’s not Bolt who Mr. Pace is wary of. Shadows are banking up around Honoria like clouds on the verge of a gale. He doesn’t want Anne-Marie’s mother crossing in front of her.

“
You
brought them here?” Honoria goes perfectly still.

“To help Trey,” I say, risking another few paces into the room and hoping Honoria’s grip on her sanity holds out, but she’s cracking. I can see it.

“We’re at high alert,” she says. “And you brought them
here
.”

“The alert hadn’t sounded when we left,” Tobin said.

“Honoria, I—”

“Stop!”

She cuts me off in every sense of the word—voice, thought, and motion, and suddenly, the silver pistol that nearly killed Tobin is back in her hand.

E
VERYTHING
from the most chaotic night of my life floods back.

All of us packed into this room. No patience to spare. And Honoria with a gun pointed straight at my chest.

“You gave her the gun back.” I state the obvious because it’s so ridiculous that it has to be another nightmare.

The uneasy tilt of déjà vu throws everything into a spin. The walls close in from both sides. No, not walls—Tobin’s back, and Rue’s. They’ve stepped in front of me, leaving a narrow gap between them. It’s wide enough for a bullet to pass through, and Honoria’s a crack shot.

“Explain yourselves,” Honoria demands. Her aura crackles with fury, but outwardly, she maintains her steady calm with only a tremor in her voice.

“Stand down.” Col. Lutrell approaches her cautiously. “You heard Tobin. They’re here to help.”

“If they help much more, we all might as well move into the Dark.”

“You gave her the gun back.” It’s either repetition or screaming bloody murder, and I’ve had enough of blood and murder.

“Seal the ward,” Honoria says.

“Wait,” Mr. Pace joins Tobin’s father.

“The situation—”

“Is Trey, and he’s contained. Hear them out before someone says or does something that can’t be taken back.”

“You gave her the gun back! Do you honestly not know she’ll shoot Anne-Marie or Trey the same as she did Tobin? Because she can pull that trigger a lot faster than you can stop her.”

“We needed the extra hand,” Mr. Pace says.

The hospital seems infinitely smaller. There’s not enough room to move or air to breathe. Honoria’s attention is honed in on me, between Rue and Tobin, as though getting rid of me will negate all her mistakes, but she has to know how reckless this is. Can’t she taste anxiety’s crush or smell the burnt fuse atmosphere that’s so much like the bite of cordite after gunfire?

“Everyone take a step back.” Col. Lutrell puts himself beside Honoria. Mr. Pace closes in on her other side. “Give me the gun, Honoria Jean, or pass it to Elias.”

I can see the argument forming in her mind as though letters are flashing in her irises, but there’s something about the way they use her name: Honoria Jean. It’s what she answered to as a girl, when she wasn’t in authority. It has a definite effect.

I focus tight on her hands, picking up every aspect of them in razor-sharp detail, from the way her fingers tighten on the gun’s grip, to each individual wrinkle of her gloves where they bend at the joints. But this time
she’s
the outlier, and she knows it. Honoria makes the only choice open to her, which is to surrender the gun—though she pointedly hands it off to Dr. Wolff rather than Mr. Pace or Tobin’s father.

“Now, everyone sit,” Mr. Pace says, pointing to the empty hospital beds on either wall.

Tobin pulls me with him toward the bed nearest his father. We sit on the edge, stiff and still. Neither Rue nor Bolt move. Bolt hasn’t even left the threshold of the tunnel.

Rue,
says Cherish, using my name for him for the first time.
Rue . . . imploring. Please.

My leg begins to throb again, over my scar.

She’s begging me to call him over, so she’ll feel safer, and I have to agree. We’re all better off with Rue close.

I reach out to him, silently so Tobin can’t hear, pushing the urgency in Cherish’s voice at him. He keeps his eyes on Honoria, but comes our way, and sits in the chair beside the bed. Cherish’s voice dulls to a hum, matched to the pulse of his aura. No matter the choices I’ve made, or the distance I’ve put between myself and her, the connection between Rue and Cherish hasn’t died.

Bolt leaves his hiding place and takes a chair, too, leaving the middle of the room empty, until Dr. Wolff steps in to address us.

“Given the circumstances, perhaps it would be best to make sure everyone’s who and what they claim to be. Then we can move on to things not requiring threats of violence.”

He thinks we’re like Trey. Delayed-reaction Fade-bombs, waiting to go off.

“I’m Tobin, she’s Marina. The end,” Tobin says bitterly.

“Not the time.” Col. Lutrell gives him the warning look Anne-Marie’s mother uses when she’s upset. “What do you need, Doc?”

“A pinprick of blood on a slide should be sufficient. Even in the early stages of exposure and replication, the nanites will show under magnification.”

“Give him your hand.”

If humans could growl, Tobin would be.

“You can check mine,” I say, offering my hand.

“Thank you,” Col. Lutrell says quietly. “Nique, a little help?”

Anne-Marie’s mother nods, relieved to have something to do. She follows Dr. Wolff to the cabinet, waiting for instructions.

Honoria paces, as she always does when she’s nervous or losing control of herself. I can imagine her wandering the halls below at odd hours, stricken with insomnia and walking through her boots, constantly fidgeting with things, trying to keep an eye on everything at once, but I doubt she’s ever realized why she does it. Nanites never stop moving. They’re still influencing her.

“Hold still, okay?” Anne-Marie’s mother says to me. She has a lancet in one hand and a box of glass plates in the other. “I’m shaking bad enough for the both of us.”

I barely feel the needle. I pick a slide with a yellow sticker on the end and touch my finger to it. Rue bristles at the sight of my blood seeping red, but he stays quiet.

I hold my breath, half expecting the tiny wound on my finger to heal over, but it keeps trickling.

“Pinch it off,” Tobin says. “It’ll stop faster.”

He holds his sleeve cuff against his own finger once he’s pricked it, so I do the same, strangely relieved by the sting.

“Well?” Honoria asks. She’s already made up her mind; she’s just waiting for those little slips of glass to agree with her.

“Patience,” Dr. Wolff says.

The room dims, allowing a projector to shine on the wall.

Dr. Wolff adjusts the scope, sliding Tobin’s plate into place over the light, and the wall turns red. But this is nothing like a security alert. It’s not vibrant or blaring. The darkest red forms dots that float around, bumping off one another. Between them are specks of black dust.

Nanites.

Fade
.

“He’s infected,” Honoria charges.

Tobin becomes the center of attention. He eyes the nearest curtain, as though debating whether or not he should pull it shut around us.

Is this why he protected me? Or why Anne-Marie risked talking to me that first day in the Common Hall? Were they only responding to the familiarity of the hive—not me at all?

“I’m not infected,” he insists.

Rue agrees, telling me that Tobin definitely cannot hear the others.

“I’m seeing evidence to the contrary,” Honoria says, staring at the wall.

“Actually, you’re not,” Dr. Wolff says. “If this was a contact situation, the machines would be active and inside the cells, not floating in plasma.”

Tobin moves, trancelike, from the bed to the wall, putting his hand into the projection to try and wipe the dark patches out of his blood, but they’re not dirt or scratches on the lens. They stay put.

“Is he safe?” Col. Lutrell asks.

Dr. Wolff doesn’t get to answer.

“How can I have Fade in my blood?” Tobin asks. “Nanobot took them back—I saw it.”

“The nanites you’re seeing here are inert,” Dr. Wolff says. “They’re as benign as the day you were born.”

I see the exact moment he knows he’s said too much. He meant that last bit to be reassuring, but Tobin heard something else.

“We’re born with those things? Like one of them?”

He glances back at Rue, horrified.

“Not everyone,” Dr. Wolff says, like that makes it better. He starts to explain, but cuts himself off and pats Tobin on the shoulder instead.

“Dad?” Tobin asks, but Col. Lutrell won’t look at him. I don’t think he wants Tobin to see his eyes right now.

It’s not fair.

Until now, Tobin’s faith in his father was unwavering, even when he found Col. Lutrell among the Fade and even with silver eyes. Watching that die as the colonel’s secrets emerge breaks my heart. I know how it feels to realize everyone in the room knows more about me than I do, and know they’re keeping the secrets I’ve been killing myself to try and uncover.

At least I knew parts of my past were missing; Tobin’s been blindsided.

I stand to bring Tobin back to our seat as Dr. Wolff removes the slide with his blood from under the microscope. Tobin startles from the change.

“How is this possible?” he asks me.

Another slide—
my blood
—replaces his in the projection circle.

“When this is over, talk to your dad,” I tell him, staring at the blood cells on the wall. My sample looks almost identical to Tobin’s, though there are more nanites present, and they’re ringed neatly around my cells. None are moving.

What if this happened another way and they’d tested us before we went into the Dark? Would Rue’s nanites have shown up active on the screen?

He could have ruined everything.

Remorse,
Rue says.
Apology
.
My intent did not equal the result.

Then what did you intend?

To hear Cherish.

But you can still hear her,
I say.

Because you are near. Once I return to home, there will be silence.

The familiar heartbeat sound dies to nothing.

I don’t feel so good. His regrets infect Cherish, and she passes them to me, filling my insides with the fear of separation.

I thought breaking away from the hive would allow Rue to move on, but he’s no better off than when Cherish was first taken. What have I done?

“It appears that both of our boundary-challenged young people are human,” Dr. Wolff says.

I used to think that was what I wanted.

Dr. Wolff turns off the projector, bringing up the room lights as Honoria huffs into a chair.

“Does that mean you’ll let Bolt help Trey?” I ask.

“Perhaps I can undo what was done by others,” Bolt offers, but Honoria’s already shaking her head. His voice makes her cringe.

“No.”

“Why?” I ask. “What could he possibly do to make things any worse? You already think Trey’s a lost cause. What are you afraid of? That they’ll fix this, and then you’ll have to acknowledge they aren’t monsters?”

The others look at her expectantly, but she refuses to answer. Bolt goes to Anne-Marie’s mother.

“May I see your Trey?”

She’s torn, her face a mirror of Anne-Marie, with her lip pulled into her teeth. She knows Bolt’s helped Trey before, and she knows that he’s never been aggressive, but he’s still the “it” she wouldn’t invite to dinner.

Her regrets smell of burnt fuses. Shame is worse—curdled milk and vinegar.

“I . . . I don’t know. Elias? What should we do?”

“Can you really heal him?” Mr. Pace asks.

“I promise the attempt, not the success.”

“Then do what you can.”

Honoria’s foot starts tapping on the tile. Dr. Wolff points down the row of beds.

“Don’t be alarmed that he won’t wake up,” he says. “It’s best if he sleeps through this.”

“Best,” Bolt agrees. “We are the same.”

“They put people to sleep to heal them,” I explain, knowing Dr. Wolff won’t find a healing stupor to have much in common with chemical sedation.

Bolt disappears behind the curtain, which no one moves to pull aside. They don’t want to see what’s happening, and they certainly don’t want to see failure, if that’s what’s coming.

“I still have a question.” Honoria’s out of her seat, pacing again, flicking her radio’s switch on and off. I check the counter to make sure her gun’s still where Dr. Wolff left it. “I’m willing to believe that
these
two Fade have no particular ill intent. And I’m willing to extend that belief to the idea that
you
brought them solely to benefit Trey, but that neither explains nor excuses your presence in a sealed access point. How’d you get through the perimeter?”

“We got lucky,” Tobin says.

“I doubt that,” she says.

“There’s a short in the lights,” I blurt. Tobin glares at me. I don’t trust her any more than he does, but something out there is scaring the Fade. We need all the holes in our security net plugged tight. “Anyone can run through.”

“You knew about this?”

“Not until tonight.” For me it’s not a lie. “When we saw the fires, it was either take a run at the lights or go the long way around to the old tunnels under the Grey. They flickered, and we took the chance. We got lucky.”

I see her weighing my words for a hint that they mean more than their face definition.

“There’s something out there, Honoria. You need to close the skips before it finds its way inside.”

“Did you see something?”

“No, but
they
did.” I look at Rue, who mimics Tobin’s scowl to the finest crease on his face. Exposing human secrets doesn’t bother him, but Fade concerns are another matter.

“The Fade are guarding their territory from something. They’re guarding
us
, too.”

“Guarding?” Anne-Marie’s mother asks.

“We have our patrols; they’ve got theirs,” Tobin says.

“And theirs are backing ours up,” I add. “Curiosity didn’t bring them into the Grey. They’ve been standing watch over us—every night. Something changed when our lights went down. They’re terrified.”

Rue stays silent. To deny it would mean a lie, and he won’t do that.

Dr. Wolff, Mr. Pace, and Col. Lutrell all exchange looks with Honoria—nearly identical to the ones the Fade wore when they were talking to one another. But this time, there’s nothing being said. They don’t
know
what to say.

“Ask Sykes,” Tobin says unexpectedly. “He tested the samples he took, didn’t he, Mr. Pace?”

“Elias?” Honoria asks.

“He took them, but we got a bit sidetracked.” He glances at Trey’s curtain.

“Has the hive told you anything?” Col. Lutrell asks me.

“They’re hiding, almost like radio silence. I think they—”