The Wounded (The Woodlands Series) (41 page)

My breathing thinned
out, and then it stopped.

Rosa was dead.

Everything clouded over, and darkness settled over this room of death.

Deshi knelt down and checked her pulse, mine picked up
in hope, but he shook his head, his breath catching in his throat. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and spoke. He said something, his face urgent and concerned, but I couldn’t hear him. I just stared at her lifeless body, wondering how all of what made her Rosa was just gone, and all that was left was a body, bones and flesh.

Where did she
go, and how could I follow her?

What was she thinking?

I thought of Orry, and I sunk to my knees. Orry, your mother is dead. Orry, your mother died to save me. Orry, she loved you, she loves you. She will always love you.

This couldn’t be happening.

I punched my fist into the tiles, because I couldn’t stand the pain; I needed to feel something else, anything else. But all my mind, my heart, my body, kept pulsing over and over again was dead, dead, dead.

My skin
tore and shards of grout stuck to my knuckles. I didn’t look up; I just kept on pounding until I heard the rip of fabric. I looked up and saw Deshi yanking a curtain from the window. He walked over to Rosa and knelt down beside her. Looking at me darkly, he said angrily, “Get up and help me!”

I did what I was told. I would have been confused if I could bring myself to care. He lifted her body gently and slid the curtain under her middle. She bent in a disgustingly unnatural
way, and I gagged as I saw some of her insides.

Everything quickened. My breath, my movements. Deshi wrapped her together tightly and tried to speak again
. This time, I tried really hard to listen.

“There’s a chance we can save
her, but we need to be fast. Joseph, look at me,” Deshi said, his dark eyes intense. “Why do you think they wanted me in the first place?”

I blinked and ran my hand through my hair. I felt stupid. Nothing was getting th
rough.

“They forced me to rebuild the healer.”

The realization hit me hard. I snapped Rosa up, trying to ignore how much lighter she felt in my arms. How very cold she was.

Deshi ran ahead
. I followed, my eyes forward. Because when I looked down at her head lolling around at the bounce of my steps, I thought I would vomit. This was not meant to happen. I wanted to go back to that moment, put myself between her body and the blade, not the other way around.

He
turned down corridors and up some stairs. All I could hear was the drum of my blood in my ears, and the drum of our feet on the tiled floors.

When w
e hit a dead end, Deshi swore, typing a password into the keypad by the door, a single red light blinking over and over. “C’mon, work, work…” he said.

We watched as the light flashed red and then green, the seal of the door opening with a sucking sound.

*****

The machine was the same
as the one from home. I placed her gently on the slab and started inserting needles in her skin, as many as I could find. I tried to pretend she was sleeping, but it didn’t work. I knew
this
might not work.

The glass coffin
wobbled and lowered. I urged it to hurry up. They would be coming soon.

“Block the door!” Deshi yelled
as he quickly pried open Rosa’s cold, stiff hand and pressed two pills into her palm, closing it over roughly.

I grabbed a chair and shoved it under the door handle
, turning to see the glass close over her body. A glass coffin for this nightmare fairytale. Deshi was frantically typing and pushing buttons at the control panel, his eyes darting towards the blocked door.

He slammed down a final key and then looked at me, his eye
s apologetic but fierce. “We have to go.”

I shook my head
. “No. I’m not leaving her. I can’t.” I pressed my hands to the glass separating us. The machine started whirring in the background.

Deshi grabbed my arm and pulled
. “What about Orry?”

I shook my head; my legs were cemented to the floor. Deshi sighed harshly
. “Rosa didn’t throw herself on that knife so both of you could die and leave Orry an orphan.”

The machine click
ed. I imagined the door started vibrating from people pushing it from the outside, but it was silent. Dead silent like my girl, lying in front of me.

“Oh God
.” I put my hand to my forehead. “But I won’t know. I won’t know if she lives or dies.”

Deshi gave me a half-smile, but I knew he wasn’t sure either
. “This is Rosa we’re talking about.”

I laughed. Because I knew as soon as I left that
room, the grief would crush me. But at that moment, I could believe that she might live and that if she lived, she would somehow find her way back to me.

We ran to the window behind the control panel and kicked it
in, just as blinding light sparked and swirled around Rosa’s body like a miniature storm. My blood red handprints turned black as the light got brighter.

Deshi pushed me through
the window, the night air pricking the hairs on my arms. But I couldn’t feel the cold. I couldn’t feel anything.

JOSEPH

From this
height, we could see the whole compound spread before us like the segments of a pie. Este’s slice was crowded compared to the other three. They looked more like Salim had described. Open, grassy green mounds separated by low, stone walls, demarcating each Superior's section of land. Desh’s hands were in my back, and he pushed me gently.

“We need to move
now,” he said in a coarse whisper.

I blinked away the stray tears that seemed to be making their way down my face and jumped to the
veranda and then the ground below, Desh right behind me. I stood in the garden, the grass wet with dew. I could have stayed there. Let the guards, who I was sure were on their way, take me. Desh’s long legs clipped my shoulder as he fell off the roof. I looked down at him and tried to remember. Orry. I had to get home to Orry. But fear seized me. When I saw him, I’d have to explain to him that his mother was not coming home. I froze in the grass, like one of the concrete statues.

Desh shook me
. “This way.” He pulled me through the garden, the light from inside casting lines over the bushes in the shape of the iron-framed windows. I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. The images of what lay in that room were burned in my brain.

I followed Deshi like a robot. My emotions shoved
deep down.

We moved silently through the garden
. Wet leaves smacked my face. It should’ve stung, but I was numb to it. We didn’t speak. Talking would take us both under. Desh led us away from Este’s compound and into another piece of the pie.

“We’ll go through Sekimbo’s grounds
,” he said. “He’s always too drunk to notice what’s going on. His guards often join him at this time of night. And Grant, well, Grant will take his time. Calculating bastard.”

I grunted
, a very real pain throbbing in my hollow chest. If she lived, she would wake up and find me gone. She would think I deserted her. I stopped and turned around.

“Oh
no, you don’t,” Desh remarked, grabbing my shoulder with his thin hand and dragging me forward. I didn’t fight him very hard. I was lost. Being pulled between my son and Rosa was slowly breaking me into two useless pieces.

We used the border wall as a
guide. There was no sign of anybody until we got close to Sekimbo’s house. Drunken laughter spilled out the windows, men shouting raucously and women giggling. We ran around the outskirts of his exotic-looking garden. Strange, spiky-looking plants shot out of sandy ground. I reached out to touch one. Rosa would have loved this. It pricked my hand, and I withdrew. There was no one guarding the gates leading towards the outer wall. Desh scanned his wrist, and it opened easily. “Why scanners here and padlocks in Estes sector?” I managed to stammer.

“You saw her, she’s nuts! She loves the technology but doesn’t trust it.”

My mind flashed back to that first meeting with Rosa. I’d held her wrist, turning it slowly to scan at the clunky scanner for Ring Three. She’d glared at me, but the pink flush to her cheeks told me the contact was creating a reaction in her. I remembered the feel of her skin under mine, soft, thin, the barcode breaking up the small veins that poked up on her tiny wrists. And those eyes. When she looked up at me, I was gone. Gone and shocked at the strength of my feelings. Scared too. She was intense, beautiful, and a complete surprise. I breathed in. There was no way all of that had vanished. She was too big, too much to just disappear.

Desh tugged at my sleeve. “
Joe, keep moving,” he said between pants. “Just keep moving.”

I trudged forward
, my footsteps punishing the earth. And as I stared down at my boot print like it wasn’t my own, the alarm sounded. The same sound the old megaphones made in Pau. It was a high-pitched warning that used to summon us to the center circle. This time it was alerting everyone to the scene at Este’s compound.

Desh cursed under his breath.
But this would work in our favor. If everyone was heading towards Este’s, then there would be fewer guards to face on this side. Again, I felt the pull to go back. We ran through a crop of some sort; it smelled sweet. Sticky, green tendrils kept grabbing at my legs. The last gate to pass through glinted in the moonlight. I nodded to myself and swung around, just as the gate in front of us creaked open. Desh jumped into the plants. I just stood there, my rage heating up inside me.

Before they had a chance
, I was on top of them. I swung out wildly at one, my fist connecting with his jaw. It crunched satisfyingly. He fell forward, clutching his face. I elbowed him hard, and he collapsed into the field. The other guy took one look at me and turned to run, but I grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him back, flinging him to the ground. He squirmed under me and opened his mouth to shout for help. Desh was there in a second, covering it with his palm.

This kid was a coward. He was going to leave his partner and run. Just like I did. I thumped his head into the ground
hard, and his eyes stared up at me woozily. I could have killed him right there. But I had to do something. I might have failed Rosa, but there was one thing I could do before I left. It was why we came here.

I shoved Desh’s hand off
and stared down at the young soldier shaking under my hold. “You tell your Superiors some of the babies may have a G6PD deficiency.”

He looked at me blankly
. “Say it!” I threatened, lifting him by the shirt, ready to slam his head into the hard stone path beneath us.

“
G6 P...?”

My hands crept around his throat. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to refuse me and give me an excuse.
“G-6-P-D,” I said slowly, emphasizing each letter and number.

Alarm sharpened his senses
. “Ok. Ok. G6 PD deficiency. I’ll tell them. I-I promise,” the soldier said quickly.

I saw myself reflected in his
eyes, and I dropped him. Grabbing his gun from its holster, I training it on his chest, my hands shaking. “Don’t move until we’ve passed through the gate,” I said as I walked backwards, letting the fear in that kid’s eyes punch me over and over. I needed to get a handle on my emotions, but I didn’t know how.

We went through the
gate, and I heard his footsteps running away from us.

JOSEPH