The Isle

For my cousin Lauren, who is secretly a disco ball

made out of fossilized bat teeth, and who speaks a language

I'm lucky enough to be even somewhat conversant in.

T
hose pennies keep piling up.

Day four, and hundreds of lucky copper thank-yous are still outside Benny's garage door. We've been bringing 'em in, but people don't stop dropping 'em off. The Blight's nearly done with, but everyone knows it wasn't Governor Voss's doing.

We
got them the cure—me and the other racers.

They know. They know, and they're thanking us with luck.

If only I believed in luck.

I squeeze one of two penny charms hanging from my necklace—the one Aven gave me. Callum's is on the same chain, but I know which is which. They just feel different. I kiss the copper, remembering the night she asked to be
friends. She told me “Good skill” instead of “Good luck.” Didn't believe in luck then, either. It's too unreliable.

Aven understood.

And I let her get taken.

Some friend I am.

Dropping the necklace, I see my nails for the first time in days. They look like they got caught in the props of a running mobile, cuticles mangled from where I can't stop picking. I don't care.

He's going to hurt her.
He's going to hurt her.

He's going to—

Derek sees me stewing. He draws my fingernails away from my teeth. “We're getting her back, Ren—tonight
.
We're just working out the details. It takes time.”

I grunt. Governor Voss said he'd do it, it wasn't an idle threat. Called it “clinical research”—a sanitized version of the truth.

He wants to experiment on her.

According to Callum's intel, Voss took her to the FATE Research Center—a multipurpose government lab. I know about it from my DI days. Quarantine is a regular house of horrors. It's where Chief Dunn, my ex-boss, imprisoned everyone convicted of spreading the Blight.

That's not its only function, of course; it's much bigger. Voss's scientists worked there trying to find a cure for the virus. And I'd wager money it's where Voss has been trying to re-create the water.

FATE: Fight Against Terminal Epidemics.

To Voss, death
is
a terminal epidemic. He'll kill Aven if it meant killing death.

“She could be dead in the time it takes to work out the ‘details,'” I mutter, and continue making mincemeat of my hands. Don't much care that I'm leaving bits of skin and nail on the floor of Benny's garage.

“Enough, Renata!” Benny howls. My patron saint of racing and all things mechanical stands up. He wags a pointed finger in my face. “Worrying does nothing. Only action does something. And we are in the process of acting.”

I drop my hands. My face burns as I glance from Derek to Ter, avoiding Benny's steel-cut glare. I just got schooled. It's the worst.

“I did not decide to work with you so many years ago because you were a worrier,” he goes on, “but because you are a warrior! So please. Enough.”

I roll my eyes—hero speeches make me gag. Play me some vintage heavy metal and it'll work better. Still, I know he's right. I'm not doing Aven any good by worrying. As her best chance at escape, I need to be in full form. Not a distracted, cuticle-less mess.

Ter tips his chair forward, balancing on its front legs. “You sure there's nothing you need me to do?” he asks. “I'd rather not wait here while y'all are risking your necks.”

“You'll be more help if you're not there,” I say too quickly. It sounds like an insult I don't mean, and I watch him recoil.

Ter leans back in his chair. Both legs drop, slamming the floor. “Thanks for the overwhelming vote of confidence.”

Now, on top of the sick, alone feeling I've had in my gut since Voss took my sister, I'm also a brack friend. I don't want to fight with Ter.
I just want to leave.

“Terrence . . . Renata is not doing a sublime job expressing herself,” Benny says, leaning against the bumper of his Cloud9. “Which, considering the state of things, is forgivable. . . .”

Benny—the same Benny who just threw me out of my own pity party—has my back a moment later. I add this to the billion other things I want to thank him for someday.

“I believe she meant to imply that you and I are needed as a last line of defense, so to speak. If she and Derek are caught—”

I lock eyes on him. He amends his mistake.

“—
which they won't be
. But if they were, in this highly unlikely and hypothetical situation, we would be the ones to come in and get Aven.”

I meet Ter's eyes. If I had a tail, it'd be curled between my legs right now. “That is what I meant, really,” I say quietly.

Ter looks back at me, his Astroturf eyes warmer. “I believe you.”

“There's more than one opportunity for this plan to backfire,” Derek adds. “I can lead Ren to the lab, but Kitaneh and the others will be watching it, I have no doubt. If things start to look grim, we'll need you both ready.”

Kitaneh
. Derek's wife—by arranged marriage—but still. She'd love to shove a blade in my back and call it a day. Everyone in Derek's family, the Tètai, thinks I'm a liability . . . 'cause they're a bunch of lunatics. Misguided “protectors of
planet Earth.” They believe that the miracle must be kept secret, because someone might abuse it.

Someone like Voss.

When I found the spring, I used it to help people—my sister, and anyone else with the Blight. Unfortunately, the Tètai have a strict policy on this subject: you find the spring, you die.

Ter nods. “All right. I get it. You need me here. But I need to know what's going on—comm me at the first sign of trouble. Or if you make it through easy. It don't matter. No news is
not
good news.”

“You got it. Ren, have you heard from Callum again?” Derek asks.

“Nope,” I say. Aside from some back and forth about the
details
, and one random comm wanting the miracle spring's dimensions, Callum and I have hardly spoken. I flip through my comms and reread his last message. “Nothing since he agreed to be our getaway ride.”

“And you're sure he said she's in Basement A?”

I swallow the latest rock in my throat. “It's the prisoner surgery level, right next to Quarantine. Callum operated there a few times.”

“All right,” Derek says as he stands. “We leave in four hours to arrive in time for the graveyard-shift change. And I've got a distraction planned while Ren finds Basement A.”

Benny wiggles his fingers together. “Quite a plan,” he says, nodding. When Benny approves, we've got something. I may actually allow myself to start hoping.

“Four hours,” I say softly.

The room goes quiet. Since I'm no longer allowed to pick at my fingers, I've switched to obsessively chipping red paint from the seat of the chair. Pieces fly off into the air. I don't watch where they land.

“Get some sleep?” Derek says, gently squeezing my shoulder. I look up at him. His palm lingers, so familiar, with so much care.

I can't help it: I go stiff under his touch, waiting for some flicker of feeling. Anything. . . . How badly I wanted him to touch me like that before. But all I can feel in my stomach are the ghosts of some dead butterflies killed off the moment I got caught up with Governor Voss.

The moment I found the spring. The miracle. The curse.

How can I sleep?

Nothing will work right until I get Aven back. Not my head or my body or my heart.

“Sure,” I lie. “You too.”