The Earth Dwellers (39 page)

My legs give out when I see the body, which is too small to be Circ.

I slump over her, bawling, unable to hold back the tears flooding from my eyes. And then Skye’s ’side me too, dripping all over her—all over Wilde.

She’s barely breathing, her chest rising and falling in a way that ain’t natural. The slash ’cross her stomach is so wide and deep it almost looks fake.

She’s trying to speak, her eyes dry, her tongue moistening her lips. “You’ll…”

“Don’t,” Skye says, choking.

“…always be my sisters.”

“No,” Skye says, but it’s too late, ’cause Wilde’s eyes are closed and she’s gone. The sun goddess took her.

We huddle t’gether, crying, crying, pouring everything we got left out of the deepest pits of our souls.

Skye, always the stronger one, stops ’fore I do. She kisses my forehead, tucks my head to her chest. “We hafta find Feve and Circ,” she says.

“No,” I say, ’cause I can’t do this again. I’d rather die.

“T’gether we can,” she says, but I don’t believe her.

She pulls me up and it’s all I can do to cling to her arm, which is so strong. There’re a few Stormers riding their horses toward the Soakers, who’re coming back from chasing the Glassies to meet ’em.

More’n more brown-skinned folks are on their feet, not dead, helping to find and tend to the wounded, even though they’re hurt too. None of ’em are Feve. None of ’em are Circ.

“C’mon,” Skye says, pulling me forward. My feet barely scrape the ground.

We find Feve next. He’s facedown and under the bodies of two Glassies, his blade still sticking into one of ’em. Even taking his last breath he was fighting.

I’ve got nothing left to cry so my whole body just shakes against Skye’s as we mourn another friend, one who I’d only begun to believe in.

“Stay with him,” Skye tells Grunt, who’s sticking close to us, I think ’cause he don’t know what else to do.

He nods and sits down.

“No,” I say, ’cause I don’t want to go any further. I’m done.

Skye scoops me up, carries me, trudging over bodies and ’round piles of the dead.

My heart’s in my throat, which is burning and dry. My breath’s coming in ragged heaves and shudders. How is Skye holding me t’gether when I’m in so many pieces?

I know every inch of him, so I spot him first.

It’s just his hand, sticking out from a pile of the dead. Not moving, like he’s sleeping. Just sleeping.
Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping
, I keep telling myself, again and again and again and again, and I’m not gonna stop saying it in my head, even when fresh tears burst out like blooming prickler flowers, even when a dreadful groan escapes my lips, even when my heart stops beating and I stop breathing.

His hand moves.

I squirm like a fussy baby in its mother’s arms and Skye releases me. On all fours I crawl to him, to Circ, who’s blinking at me, his eyes rolling ’round in their sockets. His face is puffy and bleeding.

“Where’reyouhurt?” I spew out in a single breath. Even if he’s cut open like Wilde, I’m gonna fix it, hold him t’gether with my bare hands if I hafta.

“Siena?” he says, like he’s all surprised to see me. “Thank the sun goddess you’re alive.”

“Areyouhurt?” I say. His eyes are having trouble staying open; is he dying, fading out like Wilde?

“My head,” he says, reaching up to touch his hair, but stopping halfway there, touching my cheek instead. I run my fingers through his hair, feeling ’round ’til he winces. There’s a big ol’ lump on his head. “What happened?”

“The Soakers came,” I say. “They saved us all.”

He nods, as if not surprised. “I got whacked,” he says.

“Wilde’s dead,” I blurt out. “Feve, too.” And then I’m hugging him and crying into him and it’s not all ’cause our friends are gone, but ’cause I’m ashamed that I’m feeling so much relief and joy right now. ’Cause Circ’s alive.

We stay like that even as we hear explosions to the west.

Tristan

We’re dying; they’re dying; the world’s full of smoke and blood and mortal shouts.

Even with our five thousand soldiers, the earth dwellers have the advantage in numbers, wearing sinister dark masks. Slowly, slowly, they’re pushing us back, cutting us down, winning.

A truck roars toward where General Rose and I are ducking behind piles of the dead, using our fallen brothers and sisters to save our own lives. Anna pops up and shoots three times in rapid succession. One of the front tires bursts and the truck swerves and then rolls, flattening a soldier wearing star dweller blue. Earth dweller soldiers fly from the back, landing hard in the dirt.

“We can’t hold them back much longer!” I shout above the gunfire. I pull the trigger and blast at an earth dweller who gets too close. She falls back with a cry.

“No,” General Rose says. “But we have to try. There’s nowhere to retreat to.” She pulls a grenade from her belt, rips the pin out with her teeth, waits three heartbeats, and then hurls it toward an enemy pack, which scatter like a discarded handful of pebbles. The explosion is so loud it’s as if it’s inside my head.

I look around, trying to think. Our forces are spread out, disorganized, splintered by the strength of the earth dweller attack. We’re pinned down, immobile. “We need vehicles,” I say.

Through the smoke-filled haze, Anna stares at me. Nods. “Spread the word.”

I peek over the dead soldier at the top of the pile, ducking as a bullet whines overhead. Then I run, keeping my head as low as possible. A crouch-run, awkward and slow, but the only thing that saves me from the enemy fire that buzzes around me. “We’ve got to get the trucks,” I tell each living soldier I see.

I move on before any of them can so much as nod in understanding.

When I reach the truck with the blown-out tire, I pause to catch my breath. An earth dweller groans, trapped beneath the mangled vehicle. It’s a wonder he’s still alive.

Across the battlefield, I spot Anna, who’s picking her way over to an abandoned vehicle, her eyes darting every which way, occasionally shooting the random enemy who gets too close. She reaches her goal and pulls the door open, slipping inside.

The truck springs forward and I rush out to follow its path, throwing caution to the gusting wind.

I can barely see her in the cab, as she’s ducking low, practically steering blindly into the midst of the earth dwellers, hitting one, then another, throwing them up and over the windshield and roof.

Another truck is tearing for her, spitting up dust and rocks in its pursuit. No, not pursuing…joining! Another stolen vehicle. The word is out.

Could this work?

Just as a shred of hope fills my chest, I see them:

A dozen trucks erupt from the New City, heading right for General Rose.

Bright spots of gunfire rip from them, sending sparks dancing along the sides of Adele’s mother’s vehicle, spiderwebbing the windshield. Two tires burst at the same time and the truck flips, the back soaring over the front, crashing onto the hard ground, sliding twenty feet on its roof before coming to rest.

My heart sinks. There are too many, but if there’s any chance Adele’s mother is still alive, I have to get to her before the enemy does.

I steel my resolve and prepare to charge into the open.

That’s when I hear the chorus of shouts, not from the New City, but from the south. I crane my neck, my breath hitching when I see them. The rest of the Tri-Realm soldiers, come from the remaining subchapters. Five thousand strong and already shooting at the enemy, which suddenly doesn’t look like too many.

With renewed vigor, the soldiers around me are popping up and pushing forward, the weaker side of a pincer attack. I dart out, shooting at anything that moves, killing one earth dweller, then another, as they try to decide which direction to look.

One of the new trucks explodes, presumably from a hit to the gas tank.

The earth dwellers are dying in waves and some of them are losing their resolve and fleeing back toward the city, only to be cut down by the force from the south. We’re winning. No, we’ve won.

I let the soldiers clean up the remaining enemies, veering off toward the upside down truck. Toss my gun aside. Dive to the dirt. Anna’s slumped inside, covered in glass, the windshield having shattered inward. Her arm is contorted awkwardly against the steering wheel. But she’s looking at me with blinking eyes.

“I’m gonna get you out of there,” I say.

“That’d be good,” she says.

“Are you okay?”

“I think my arm’s broken,” she says, whistling out a sharp breath through her teeth. “Other than that, I’m fine.”

“This is gonna hurt,” I say, getting a firm grip on the arm that looks okay.

“Just do it quick.”

With everything I have, I pull her from the vehicle. Her mouth opens like she wants to cry out, but she doesn’t, just screws up her face. She slumps over when she’s free of the carnage. “Tristan,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Find my daughter.”

Adele

I could shoot—I could. But I’m not the best shot in the world, and if I miss or don’t kill Lecter with the first bullet, then I’ll be dead and so might the fire country natives. Tristan, too.

So I do it. I drop the gun, hating the dull thud it makes at my feet, and hoping I’ll get another opportunity to kill Lecter.

I want to ask Jocelyn why she’s doing this, but I don’t, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t understand the answer anyway. Her head is all screwed up, brainwashed by the very person she hates and loves.

My mission has failed because of the very person who started everything when she paid an unexpected visit to my mother.

“Bravo,” Lecter says, clapping slowly. He walks across the room, which is full of screens with colored dots, and blinking lights on shining metal panels. The room where he controls the world he’s created, where tracks the implanted chips of his people. “I’m glad I don’t have to use this,” he adds, holding out a gun I didn’t even notice.

“Of course not, darling,” Jocelyn says, her eyes narrowed. “I told you I’d do it.”

“And you did,” Lecter says. “You’ve come so far from the skeptical, questioning person you were a few years ago. I’m most impressed.”

“You’re sick,” I say. “Both of you.”

Jocelyn gives me a surprised look. “Don’t you see, Adele? Borg has created everything that my former husband refused to. An equal world, where everyone gets the same amount of food, the same living conditions. There are no Realms. There is no poverty, no crime. It’s a perfect world…one that deserves to grow.”

“You’re delusional,” I say.

She shakes her head. “One day you’ll understand,” she says.

“No,” I say. “I’ll never understand either of you. Tristan would say the same thing.”

Hearing her son’s name, she jerks slightly, just in her face, her gun remaining firm against my temple. “You may be right,” she says. “But I’m willing to try to explain to him too. To teach him, like I always did.”

This woman can’t be reasoned with, can’t be talked out of the disease that’s consumed her. I can’t be a prisoner in this world. Even though it’ll only take the slightest squeeze of her finger to end me, I have to try to do what I came here to do.

I don’t tense my muscles in preparation. I can’t give any indication of what I’m about to do.

“You’re the crazed soldier,” Lecter says. “Why are you doing this? Who sent you? Was it Nailin?”

“Nailin is dead,” I say, trying to keep the conversation going, waiting for the perfect opportunity to make my move.

Lecter tries to cover his surprise, but I see it in his eyes. I’ve shocked him. “How?” he says.

“I killed him.”

More surprise. “But why?”

“Because he was evil, like you.”

“You’re an assassin.”

I’ve never been called that before, never thought of myself that way, but I guess it’s not that far from the truth. I shrug.

“Kill her,” Lecter says to Jocelyn.

I’m running of time. I’ve got to do something or Jocelyn might actually…

Jocelyn grabs my wrist with her other hand just before I start to bring it up to attack. “Don’t,” she says. There’s something in her eyes, something different…

She pulls the gun from my head and aims it at Lecter, who doesn’t even have his own weapon raised. “Die,” she says and pulls the trigger.

A puff of red plumes above his scalp a split-second before he falls back, blood oozing from the hole in his forehead.

My eyes are bulging and my mouth is open in shock, but every instinct in my body is telling me to act, to seize the opportunity to gain control of the situation. I lash out, chop at Jocelyn’s arm to dislodge her weapon, but the gun is already slipping from her grasp, falling to the floor. She collapses on top of it.

I just stand there, gasping, my heart bouncing around wildly. What just happened?