Arclight (30 page)

“I am
not
pouting!”

“I spend twenty hours a week with four-year-olds—I know pouting when I see it. You won’t even look at her.”

Tobin does it just to prove her wrong, but the instant our eyes meet, he looks away. The whole thing takes less than a breath, but the sting lingers.

“She’s one of
them
, Annie. One of them pretending to be one of us.”

I’ve become an other, a changeling who stole away the person he’d come to accept as part of his world and replaced her with someone else. I don’t know how to make this better for either of us. How am I supposed to make up for something someone else did?

“She didn’t know.”

“You really believe that?”

“Your dad does.” Anne-Marie speeds up when he tries to get away from her. “She’s our friend, Tobin. And she’s every bit as upset as you are—
look
at her!”

He keeps his head down, letting the light on the ground guide him home.

“At least Marina has a reason to go sullen and surly on me,” Anne-Marie hisses. “You’re just being an ass. What happened to wanting to bring her home?”

“She’s not coming with us because she wants to; she’s coming to protect the rest of
them
.”

“Yeah, the same way she went with Rue to protect
you
. Don’t you get it? She doesn’t know where she belongs, and having you turn on her ten minutes after nearly knocking Rue’s head off to stake your territory isn’t helping.”

“Every time I think about what she’s supposed to look like. . . .”

An image flashes over my own thoughts: me and Tobin, in the Well . . . that spontaneous kiss that surprised us both . . . only now, I look like Cherish.

“She lied to us,” Tobin says quietly.

“When?” Anne-Marie asks.

“When she said she was a human named Marina who escaped the Fade.”

“I never said that.” They turn to me. “I never said anything about who I was or where I came from that I wasn’t told by someone who supposedly rescued me. I’m the one who kept telling people I
wasn’t
Fade-proof or a Fade-killer or any of the other stupid things they came up with as reasons to loathe or love me. I’m not the one who lied—they are.”

Hours ago, had Tobin’s father mentioned a chance to save someone like Blanca by turning her human, I would have agreed with him. Reclaiming a human life seemed more important than anything, but my life was never supposed to be human. And now that I know that, and the twisted, melted parts of my existence are coming back . . . what am I supposed to do?

The reason Honoria Whit doesn’t trust me isn’t a mystery anymore. I’m a Fade; altering my face doesn’t change that. No wonder she was waiting for me to break and run back to the Dark. The closer we get to the Arclight, the louder Cherish cries for the Dark and those she left behind. She fights my control and tries to make me turn around. It’s that “itch” that kept cropping up near the boundary line.

Tobin still walks ahead, holding himself too stiff for me to believe he’s not as confused as I am.

We’re about half a klick from the Arc when Anne-Marie stops him.

“We’re getting close,” she says.

I nod mechanically, and wonder if it’s still a human gesture now that I know I’m not human. I wonder if my posture or mannerisms have changed so that someone would know there’s something off about me just by looking.

“If we’re going to pull this off, then they can’t catch us walking apart,” she says.

It would be difficult to sell the idea that she and Tobin had to carry me back if they did. Tobin stiffens further when I move close enough to touch him; at least this time he tries to hide it.

“What are you doing?” he asks as I bend down to pick through the broken stones that litter the ground.

“You know they won’t buy it unless they see it for themselves.”

There’s one detail we’ve chosen not to discuss. No one inside the Arclight is going to take our word that the Fade didn’t turn us; the only way to make them believe it is to give them as many visual cues as possible before they have the chance to doubt us. Without proof, they’ll treat us the same way they did Tobin’s father. They have to see red blood where they expect black.

I select a stone that’s flat and thin, and close enough to sharp, but I hesitate before making the cut. My hand hovers over the ragged rip that used to be my pant leg before Rue tore it in two.

“Do you want me to do it?” Tobin’s shadow appears at my side. I can tell he’s uneasy with the idea of spilling my blood, no matter how hard he tries to keep the sound out of his voice.

“No,” I answer. “I’ve got it.”

For as much as it represents, the narrow and not-quite-straight line I dig into my shin is unimpressive; the scarlet tint deceptively normal. It doesn’t even hurt.

I toss the stone away when I’m done. I could have just dropped it, I guess, but flinging it and watching it fall feels cathartic. It’s freeing to hurl something into the void and know there’s no reason to fear it.

Anne-Marie mangles her hair, adding dirt and sticks before smudging her face. She uses another broken rock to make a cut above Tobin’s eye, then takes the flatter side and scrapes her cheek. She does the same to her hands. A few strategic rips in both their clothes, and we’re good to go.

Tobin leans down so I can slide my arm around his neck, then shoulders my weight; Anne-Marie takes my other arm.

“You’re going to have to actually lean,” he says. “It won’t look right if you don’t.”

“I’ll bleed on you,” I point out. Tobin’s attention drops to that winding trickle that’s begun to pool beside my foot, and for a moment he loosens his grip.

“I didn’t mean—” He starts to apologize, but I cut him off. There’ve been too many things that people didn’t mean to do or say for me to tolerate another.

“Let’s just get this over with, and get everyone back where they’re supposed to be, okay?”

And maybe make Honoria answer for what she did to me, and tried to do to Rue.

“Where is that for you?” he asks hesitantly as we hobble off together.

“You should ask one of the Fade to fix your arm,” I say, instead of answering. “Keeping the injury is stupid.”

I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. Anne-Marie and Tobin hardly speak for the entire population of the Arclight, and even if they’re willing to accept what I really am, there’s no guarantee the others will be so accommodating once they discover their supposed hope for destroying the Fade is actually one of the enemy. If the nanites can’t bond to my body, then I can’t go back to the Dark. I don’t think like a Fade; I’m not sure I ever will again.

“Marina, I—”

“Quiet,” I say, holding a finger to my lips, then my ear. “Listen.”

“It’s not one of those sand things, is it?” Anne-Marie whispers.

“Patrol,” I say. The rhythmic thump of boots is unmistakable. “Go ahead and do it.”

Tobin’s grip tightens, as does Anne-Marie’s, and then they begin to shout.

“Somebody help us!”

“Is anybody there? Help!”

“They’re coming,” I say. The patrol’s cadence breaks, speeding to a run, and changing direction so they’re headed straight for us.

“Go limp,” Tobin says.

I drop my weight on their shoulders. They straighten up so my feet drag, and shuffle forward, calling out for help as we go. A rifle spotlight cuts through the Grey’s fog, forming red dots on our clothes. This is a search party, not a patrol. There are five members instead of the usual two.

“Lieutenant Sykes!” Tobin plays his part to perfection, filling his voice with relief and hope.

We must be quite the picture: the bleeding leg that I have to remember to favor, Tobin’s still-bandaged arm, and Anne-Marie’s melodramatic limp.

“Stay back,” Lt. Sykes warns, commanding those with him to halt.

“She needs help,” Tobin says, twitching the shoulder I’m leaning on.

Lt. Sykes takes the radio off his belt. “We’ve got them. No, three . . . they’ve got the girl with them.” He looks us up and down, focusing on one after the other, starting with Anne-Marie, then me, then Tobin, then back to me. “They’re banged up; the girl’s in a bad way . . . yeah,” he says, focusing on my leg. “It’s red. All three are still red. You’d better get over here.”

I pick up the sound of more boots running, and Mr. Pace emerges from the fog. We’ve been here long enough that it’s settling uncomfortably on my skin, turning it clammy.

“Help us,” Anne-Marie says.

“Please,” Tobin adds.

Instead, Mr. Pace stands with the others, rifle in hand, but pointed down.

“They’re scared, Tobin. We’ve been gone too long,” I say.

“Her blood’s still red.” To my surprise, Tobin slips down so that Anne-Marie has the bulk of my weight and reaches for my leg. He wipes his fingers across the cut I made and holds them out to our teacher.

Our teacher who may want to kill me.

“Look at me,” Mr. Pace orders.

“Please,” Anne-Marie whines. “She’s heavier than you think.”

“Stay still.”

He shines the spotlight from the end of his rifle into each of our faces in turn. Tobin and I hold steady, but Anne-Marie’s hand digs into my shoulder, fighting the urge to flinch away and close her eyes. She blinks and looks down as soon as Mr. Pace draws back.

“Tell me what happened,” he says as he puts the light away. “We lost your alarm signals toward the edge of the Grey.”

“We found her,” Tobin says. “That thing took her and we found her.”

“Did you go into the Dark?”

“It abandoned her on the rim.” Anne-Marie lies beautifully. “She was hurt. . . . I mean she
is
hurt. Marina needs a doctor.”

“It wounded you?” Lt. Sykes asks, backing up a step.

“I tried to run,” I say. Tobin stands again, letting me lean on him so Anne-Marie doesn’t have to hold me up. “But my leg couldn’t take it. The Fade left me out there to die.”

I have to ignore Rue’s plaintive chant of
negative
and
false
in my head.

“I tried to get back, but couldn’t drag myself that far.”

“How’d you cut yourselves?” Mr. Pace asks. “The blood’s fresh.”

“My fault,” Tobin and Anne-Marie say together.

“It was me,” Anne-Marie insists, grating the words through her teeth. “We’d been carrying her for hours, and it was getting dark. I tripped a few meters back and took them both down with me.”

“My head’s killing me,” I say. “That thing destroyed my inhaler before we left. I need Doctor Wolff.”

If Tobin’s father was telling the truth, losing my inhaler will get a rise out of them.

“You haven’t had it at all?” Mr. Pace asks, fear creeping into his tone.

I shake my head.

“No, and I really need it. Please . . .”

“Elias—” Lt. Sykes starts. He pulls Mr. Pace off to the side. “Don’t be stupid.”

I think we’ve failed. That they’ll turn away and abandon us out here—or worse, put us all down like rabid animals where we stand. It’s what Lt. Sykes wants, I’m sure, but there’s an obvious struggle going on with Mr. Pace.

“Is my mom okay?” Anne-Marie asks, before he can tell us no. This doesn’t sound like one of her random blurts, but a calculated bit of leverage, and I find myself rethinking the times I’ve compared our teacher to her brother. Maybe there’s a very good reason the two are so similar. “She has to be going nuts. Is she okay? Is Trey? My running off didn’t make him worse, did it?”

“It didn’t make him better, Annie.”

“Will you tell them I came back?” she asks. “I don’t want them to think I’m wandering lost out here. Even if you have to lock us up, Mom can focus on Trey if she knows I’m okay.”

His decision’s set in that instant. I had no idea Anne-Marie was this brilliant.

“You can tell her yourself.” Mr. Pace slings his rifle over his shoulder, so it hangs by the strap down his back.

“You can’t!” Lt. Sykes pushes him back when Mr. Pace starts for us.

“They’re within the window, Sykes. I’m taking them inside.”

He ducks down so he can replace Anne-Marie at my side. Mr. Pace slides one arm around my waist and one under my knees to lift me off the ground.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Come on, kids. We’ll take you home,” he says, just like he did the last time he didn’t really rescue me.

M
R.
Pace leaves me and Tobin in the White Room, just like Tobin’s dad expected. He locks the door, posting guards outside while he takes Anne-Marie upstairs. One well-placed temper tantrum coupled with a few tears and a perfect pout are enough to make him decide that since all she’s got are scrapes, she’s not much of a threat. Tobin and I have been exposed to the Fade by blood, but he has no reason to doubt her.

“Sorry,” I say when we’re alone. “I didn’t think they’d lock you up, too.”

“It won’t be for long,” he says. “They’ll figure out I’m clean and—”

“I’m not?” I ask.

“That’s not what I was going to say. I’m . . . I don’t know how to process this.”

“Try it from my side of the argument.”

“We’re not arguing.”

“Shut up and help me with the computer.”

Since Rue destroyed the containment area when he escaped, there’s no way to separate us from the main console that controls the room itself. All the records have to be there, including the proof of my origins. If we can show everyone that the Fade only wanted to rescue one of their own, and that they had no designs on the humans living here, it should be easier for the Arclight to accept that their lost citizens weren’t turned. And if we have any hope of backing up the survivors when they come home, we’ll have to find whatever we can before Honoria gets involved.

“Where do we start?” I ask.

“Push buttons, tap screens, and hope we don’t need a retinal scan,” Tobin says.

We get lights in different colors and intensities. We get sounds like music, but garbled and far too loud. Tobin slides his finger across a screen, and the broken wall of the containment area tries to retract, but it’s too damaged to move properly.

Desperate, I go still and beg Cherish for help, but all she knows is the agony of being inside the cell. She retreats from any mention of the White Room.