Burn Out (15 page)

The last time I’d been in this room with him was the day before he left for his last Consulate meeting. He’d been in there for hours, and when I knocked on the door he hadn’t answered. Worried, I’d opened the door and found him sitting at his station with his head in his hands. The tablets were spread out everywhere.

“Dad?” I’d asked. “Everything okay?”

“Come in, Tora. I want to tell you something.”

The tone in his voice sounded worried and sad. I didn’t detect any of the confidence he’d had when he’d taken me to the Consulate meeting in the pod city.

“Do you see these books? All my years of work are contained in them—everything about bioenergetic weapons that you’d ever want to know.” He took his arm and swiped the tablets onto the floor. “And I’m ashamed of them. I wish I’d listened to my gut instead of the Consulate propaganda. I’m so sorry. You must think so little of me.”

“No, Dad. I think you’re so strong. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to the government.” Even though I still had no clue what the Consulate intended to do with the weapons, I wasn’t used to seeing Dad like this. He was usually so stoic and calm. I picked up the tablets and set them on the edge of the station.

He reached out and gave me an awkward pat on the arm. “Thank you. Remember how strong you are, Tora. Don’t ever forget that, no matter how hard things are.”

I smiled and put my arm around him. “Come on, Dad. We have a dying sun and barely any air or water. How much worse could things get?”

If I’d only known at the time. I picked up a random tablet and leafed through it. It wouldn’t be good to leave these behind. This one contained detailed descriptions about how to rekey a trigger panel to a different vibration. Pages of equations filled other pages. Equations I didn’t understand, nor wanted to, but knew they’d be of interest to the Consulate. Not that I wanted to bring the tablets with me either. Too easy for them to fall into enemy hands—or Kale’s. I wasn’t sure which option was worse. I decided I’d use the natural resources around me to my advantage. I’d burn them.

When I set the stack of tablets atop the desk, one stood out, different than the rest. The one that I’d stuffed deep in the drawer because the sight of it caused me pain. Instead of a red, yellow, or green color, it was mauve. My mother’s journal. She had to have been the only person left in the world that still used a diary. She’d started using it after we’d moved to the bunker, after she’d become a ghost of her former self. She kept it mostly to herself, hidden, which I guess was the point. I found it after Dad died and thought reading it might help me understand the great sadness she carried. The first few pages broke my heart so much that I couldn’t go on. I’d put it away where it couldn’t hurt me anymore.

I gripped the edges of the notebook, and forced myself
to uncurl my fingers and open the cover. I lifted the pages to my nose, inhaling, desperate for a trace of my mother’s scent. All I smelled were the plastic pages.

My mother’s loose sentences flowed along the pages, tangential ramblings about her fears and shattered dreams. Nothing about hope or love. Before I knew it, tears dripped from my eyes onto her words. It was just pain and more pain—no wonder I’d stopped reading. I wiped my face in frustration and flipped to the last page of the book. Instead of my mother’s large, looped writing I found my father’s small, blockish handwriting. I looked up to the date at the top of the page and slammed the book shut.

It was the date of my mother’s and sister’s death.

I
SHOVED THE BOOK DEEP INTO THE BAG, NEXT TO THE MEDS
, like that could distance me from whatever truth it contained. Truth that I wasn’t sure I wanted to face. Memories of my mother, begging my father for more pain meds, crying late into the night. Memories of my sister’s light laughter as she danced just out of reach. If I read any more of the journal right now, I’d fall apart, which was something I couldn’t afford to do. Maybe the day would come that I’d be ready, if I lived that long, but today was not that day.

“Get the hell out here, Tora. We’re packing for survival, not an intergalactic vacation.”

I marched down the hall with my bag over my shoulder and the stacks of scientific notebooks in my arms. “For your information, Markus, I was going through important
documents.” Then I realized that their com systems were on, and I didn’t want Kale to know about the existence of the gun journals.

A sharp rapping echoed on the metal wall and Britta stumbled inside when he opened it. She tore off her helmet and threw it on the floor at Markus’ feet. “Your turn, big guy, it’s so burnin’ hot up there I’m about to pass out.”

Despite her whining, she managed to smile at him, and he grinned at her. “Don’t worry, baby. I got it covered.”

Baby? Just when I thought they couldn’t get any worse.

He patted her ass as he went past her. She blew him a kiss before securing the wall behind him.

James looked up at me from the table. “Hey, can I talk to you a sec?”

I shifted the tablets in my hand. The book burning could wait another minute. I nodded toward my room, and he pushed his chair back slowly and walked toward me. My stomach started doing somersaults.

I led James into my room and put the books on the floor before turning to face him. He took a step toward me and kicked the door shut with his foot. Even his method of shutting doors was hot. “Before we leave, I just thought I should get a look at those ribs. Make sure they’re healing okay.”

My hopes deflated. “Seriously?” Maybe I’d only imagined that time in the weapons room. “Uh, sure. Okay.” I shifted my satchel over to the other side, and lifted my shirt up a little.

James took his fingers and gently pressed on my rib cage. “Does that hurt?” he asked.

“No.” My eyes focused on the wall in front of me. I was not going to look at him.

“Not even a little?”

Did I detect a note of urgency in his voice? I forced myself to look at him, and his eyes seared into mine. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. The crackle of his com device reminded me we weren’t really alone. I tried to focus on his voice.

“Um, maybe a little right there,” I said.

He moved closer to me, until our faces were inches apart. Still staring at me, he moved his hand down lower over my ribs. Electric tingles shot through me as he ran his hand back up my rib cage and traced the highest rib from the outside toward my sternum. His touch was soft but sure. His eyes were what got me. They looked vulnerable, like they did when we were in the weapons room. If this was all an act, he deserved a prize, because I was beginning to buy it.

Our lips were so close that I felt his breath in my mouth as his fingers continued to caress my body. My body shuddered under his hand.

“How ’bout here? Does it hurt when I touch here?” he asked in a professional tone, but both his hands slid down toward my hips and his lips almost touched mine. I was no doctor but this was definitely not part of any medical exam I’d ever seen. My legs turned to jelly and I trembled. When
I sighed, James raised a finger to his lips. Oh yeah, the com system.

“Um, no. Just a little tenderness there but I think I’ll be okay,” I lied. I might never be okay again, knowing how his hands could make my body react. Not that I minded him speaking through his hands, but I wished he could also use words.

Words
. My eyes fell on the stack of books on the floor, and I pointed at them. He nodded and grabbed one, while still talking about my injury in clinical tones.

He handed me one of the books and kept his hand on my arm, while I dug for a writing instrument in the satchel. My body burned in a way it never had before. Maybe some feelings weren’t so bad after all.

I found my e-pen and flipped open a page, while James coughed to mask the sound.
How come you can fire the guns too?
I wrote, while I asked aloud about my estimated recovery period. His hand felt like fire on my arm.

I have no idea. I was hoping you could tell me
. He paused, then scribbled quickly as he spoke about the projected healing time of a fractured rib.
What’s your sister’s name?
He handed back the pen.

My hand froze. I hadn’t spoken her name since I was ten years old. It was painful enough referring to her as my little sister. Her name might rip me into a thousand little pieces. I’d been afraid all these years that saying her name aloud might kill me. Guess writing it might be easier.
Callie
.

He twisted the e-pen from my hand and left his fingers
twined with mine a minute before he started writing again.
My sister’s name was Autumn. Even though the only season we’ve known is summer, my sister dreamed of leaves. Like Callie and her flowers
.

I grabbed the pen again.
They would have gotten along great
. I knew what else I needed to know.
Why so loyal to Kale?

James paused and his face looked darker when he began writing again.
Kale is part of something bigger. I have to make sure—

“James!” Kale’s voice filled the room and I gasped.

“Sir?” James clicked the button on his com device.

“I need you over here pronto to help with some parts.”

James rolled his eyes at me. “Got it. I’ll be right there.” He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand, in stark contrast to his businesslike tone. “Well, Tora, this looks as good as can be expected. Just let me know if you have any pain or discomfort. Okay?”

“Got it.” He stared into my eyes a second longer, before he took off to help Kale.

I exhaled slowly and attempted to regain my composure. The way I felt when he was near scared me, and I didn’t like to be scared. I reached down to grab the books and carried the stack into the front room, where Britta was busy sucking down some Caelia Pure.

“Let me in!” Markus yelled through the door. I opened it, helmet and books in hand, as he sauntered by me.

“Be back in a second,” I said and slipped through the opening.

Markus frowned. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I slid the door shut behind me.

“Hey—”

I ignored Markus’ protests and made my way up the ladder with the notebooks. Once outside, I placed the stack of tablets on the ground then stepped back ten paces. The sun would take care of them by itself, but I wanted to speed up the process. I removed B.K. from my waist, set it to burn, and took aim.

I pressed the button and the books erupted in flames, the smell of burned plastic wafting through the air. Hundreds of hours of my father’s work incinerated in an instant. A small pang of guilt hit me, but I shrugged it off. Though my father hadn’t intended it, his notes could be used to rekey the guns to any vibration. I couldn’t let that happen. Satisfied, I went back down and pounded on the emergency door.

Markus looked down at my now empty hands with a questioning eye. “Did you just shoot tablets? Because I really didn’t figure you for the book-burning type.”

I shrugged and kept walking past him and Britta, who just stared at me. “Just let me know when Kale and James get back,” I called over my shoulder.

I wanted some alone time. Once inside my room, I pulled up the ocean on my Infinity. My sister and I used to lie side by side looking at the screen, pretending we were on a family vacation.

Your pink swimsuit looks
muy bonita
on you
, she would
tell me, her seven-year-old voice mimicking an adult. We felt like rebels using Spanish now that it was supposed to be extinct too. Gracias, I’d respond,
now let’s collect seashells in your purple bucket
. It was a stupid game but it made us happy at a time when little else did. My father was always in his study and my mother … well, she was never happy.

I closed down the picture and opened the GlobalNet. Still no signs of life.
Qué sorpresa
. I’d neglected Surviving Burn Out the past two days. I tapped my fingers across the keyboard that had appeared in front of me. What to discuss? Coming under enemy fire by our own government? Admit to my vast readership that there is no surviving burn out—that death is the only real escape? Unless you can find a group of burners who want to “rescue” you so they can use you for your guns.

I didn’t notice the blinking light coming from the bottom of the screen at first. I’d never seen it before. Green and flashing rapidly. What the hell was it? It wasn’t like the battery could run low since it was powered by my own energy. I took my finger and scrolled down until my finger waved over the light. A caption popped up from the screen into the air in front of me. It was attached to my chronically recycled post.

My first comment.

H
EY—JUST FOUND THIS ON THE NET.
I
’M
A
LEC.
I
’M SEVENTEEN
. I’m the only one left in Sector 2. Maybe the only one left anywhere, aside from you. Please respond if you’re still there …
por favor.

There was another survivor out there, and he knew Spanish. The
por favor
added a note of desperation to the almost nonchalant tone of the rest of the message. I called up a map to look at the sectors. Geography didn’t matter much when every zone was a dead one. Sector 2 looked to be about where Australia was before the final drought when the government restructured everything into sectors. When I started to type a reply, a new box came up, saying he was on GlobalNet and ready to chat.

Alec?
I typed hesitantly.

The response was almost instant.
Damn. I thought it was too good to be true
.

My heart almost stopped in my chest. Though I’d faithfully posted on the Net each week, it felt like I’d been writing into a void. I’d stopped believing that I’d actually find a fellow survivor.

I’m here. I’m Tora
.

My finger hovered over the send button, when my cynical side took over. I typed rapidly.

How do I know you’re not really a poser from the Consulate pretending to be a survivor?

A long pause stretched into what seemed like eternity before I heard back. The string of expletives he wrote back about the Consulate told me he was either an excellent liar or he really hated them.