Judgment (11 page)

“You were easier when you were a hardass.” Lila said it without any edge.
 

Meyer sat on a cot. “That was the old Meyer Dempsey.”
 

“I’m pretty sure you’re still the old Meyer Dempsey. We have a new one, too.”
 

“
Original
, not
old
,” Meyer clarified. “Now I’m the kindhearted father you’ve always deserved.”
 

“You still wear suits.”
 

“The coats are warm. I don’t wear them for fashion.”
 

“If you shaved that beard,” Lila said, now poking in a minuscule pile of loaned belongings, “I’d never be able to tell you apart from Kindred.”
 

“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about, right there. You didn’t just recapture the caring side of your father. You got a second caring father, too.”

Lila rolled her eyes. It had become an unfunny joke. Meyer knew he’d never fully have his daughter back — not as long as Kindred was around. Everyone knew the group contained one Meyer and a copy, but Kindred had all of Meyer’s memories up to the point they’d split. It was only a semantic matter to say that Lila wasn’t his daughter, that Clara wasn’t his granddaughter, that Piper hadn’t once been his wife, and that he hadn’t lost a son — and a good friend and secret lover — to the Astrals.
 

“Stop it, Dad.”
 

“I’m not doing anything.”
 

“You’re going to try and convince me that I shouldn’t go to Ember Flats.”
 

“I haven’t said anything of the kind.”
 

“That’s why I said, ‘going to.’”
 

Meyer watched Lila for a long, quiet moment. Then: “So do you think Aubrey grew that little mustache on purpose, or has he just been missing the same spot for months?”

“I’m not going to change my mind!”
Lila snapped. And in the sentence, Meyer heard all the petulance he’d grown used to through her spoiled teen years. She wasn’t coddled these days, and her words rang in his ears as almost funny.
 

“It’s too dangerous, Lila,” Meyer said, giving up.

“Then none of us should go.”
 

“Some of us need to.”
 

“And that ‘some’ includes you and Kindred.”
 

“Ember Flats has a viceroy we may need to talk to. I was a viceroy.” He corrected himself. Their memory sharing only went one way, but sometimes it was hard to disentangle himself from his doppelgänger regardless. “Well, you know what I mean. He was. I’m his other half, yada yada.”
 

Lila put a fist on her hip. Technically, it was true. When Meyer and Kindred could stop arguing and put themselves on the same wavelength, some trick of the collective gave them deductive and mental abilities Sherlock Holmes would envy. But really Meyer was going in addition to Lila because he was Meyer, and Meyer Dempsey didn’t stand at the back of any line.

“And Clara … hell, you know I wish she didn’t have to go. But you know how she is and the kinds of things she can see. If there are other Lightborn children there, then I guess it’s moot, but … Piper is staying,” he said, changing tacks.
 

“No she’s not.”
 

“Yes, she is.”
 

“I just talked to her five minutes ago, Dad. Don’t lie to me.”
 

“Damn. I knew I should have stealthily manipulated her first.”
 

Lila sat. She exhaled slowly. After a bit, Meyer sat beside her.
 

“Dad.
Daddy,”
she said, putting a hand over her father’s.

“Don’t use ‘Daddy’ on me.”
 

“I’m not the bratty little rich girl I used to be. The world isn’t what it was. Once upon a time, it was your job to protect me. But I have my own job to do.”
 

“It’ll never stop being my job to protect you.”
 

“Then protect me on the road. Protect me in Ember Flats. I can’t just stay here. How does that make sense? You’re going. You need Clara. Chris won’t stay, and good luck convincing Piper. So am I supposed to stay by myself? Maybe with Aubrey? How is that preferable to … ”
 

She wouldn’t finish the sentence, but Meyer knew what she’d almost said:
How is that preferable to dying in Hell’s Corridor?
It should have sounded like a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t. The world was so upside down now that death with family might be better than living alone.
 

“It’s a suicide mission, Lila,” he said anyway.
 

“Then don’t go.”
 

Meyer felt his face work, trying to find a way through the bind she’d put him in. But there was no escape; Lila was telling the truth that she was no longer who she’d been. None of them were. The Meyer of seven years ago would have kicked the Meyer of today right in the balls for being emotional: weak, human, vulnerable — more compassionate in a world where hardness was perhaps needed more.
 

“I know how you are, Dad. And I know how you are when you work with Kindred. You don’t believe it’s a suicide mission. Not for the mission as a whole, at least. I’m not stupid. I’ve heard all the same things about Ember Flats as the rest of you. And it feels like there’s nobody, anywhere, who hasn’t heard rumors of the freaks and cannibals in Hell’s Corridor. But you wouldn’t do this if you didn’t think it could succeed. You’re too logical, even now, to be content with a heroic gesture. And you wouldn’t even consider it if you didn’t think it was important. Vital, even.”
 

Meyer said nothing.
 

“Yesterday, this group was running from the Ark. It felt like Cameron had a compass that told him nothing other than when the Ark was at his back, and he always wanted to get as far away as he could. The rest of us felt the same. Charlie and Kindred complained, but we’ve been ignoring them forever. But I’ve been watching you change. All of you, one by one. Now it’s like this sense of grim duty. So tell me, father of mine: tell me how, when everyone else suddenly sees such importance in this mission that all minds have changed 180 degrees, I’m supposed to be the one stubborn holdout who refuses to believe.”

He shook his head. “We won’t all make it. Maybe through the badlands outside Ember Flats, in Peers’s outfitted bus.
Maybe
. But I’ve seen enough cities to never want to see one again. There’s been anarchy since Heaven’s Veil fell. They’ll see us coming. There’s no way to sneak in — not the way we’ll be hightailing and hauling ass through Hell’s Corridor with road warriors screaming behind us. Between Kindred and me, maybe we can talk our way in. Peers thinks the Astrals actually want Cameron to open the Ark, and the more Kindred and I think on this, it almost makes sense. So maybe the mission succeeds. But why risk bringing extras? You’ll be …
fodder
, Lila.”

“Chattel with my family over staying here alone.”
 

“You might have Aubrey.”
 

“But he can’t even shave properly, Dad. He’s been missing the same spot on his upper lip for months.”
 

Something inside him ached, but Meyer laughed anyway.
 

“Peers says he can clear us to take most of the main roads, but it’s still over a thousand miles.”
 

“Oh, you didn’t mention a long car ride. My mind is totally changed.”
 

“It’s going to take days to get there.”

“I had fun the last time we took a road trip,” Lila said.
 

“When the Astrals invaded? The trip that ended with us shooting our way into a bunker then practically being smoked out before I was abducted?”
 

“Good times,” Lila said, leaning against her father’s side.
 

“If the Astrals abduct us again, you might not get your own room.”
 

Lila giggled.
 

“They’ll probably probe the shit out of us, too.”
 

“I’ve got Christopher for that,” Lila said.
 

“Dammit, Lila. Don’t ever say that sort of thing to your father.”

She laughed again, and for a moment it seemed like everything might be okay.

But they wouldn’t be, and Meyer — with Kindred’s help — already knew it.
 

There would be blood on the way to Ember Flats.
 

There would be death.
 

The logic said so, and the logic never lied.
 

Cameron felt the repulsion of Giza the moment they all piled on to the bus for their journey. It was as if he’d been walking away from the wind for so long, he’d grown used to its subtle nudge at his back. Now he was a long way from home, turning around to retrace his steps. And even though he’d been told he needed to return, the wind’s insistent hand, shoving him away, said otherwise.

Everyone boarded the bus. No one stayed behind, as if they’d decided to take a family road trip rather than barreling into the monster’s mouth.
 

Cameron
had
to go. Peers said he was the one chosen by both key and Ark to pull the metaphorical sword from the stone. Once he looked the issue in its eye, he had to admit he’d been feeling the pull for a while. He had dreams about finding the Ark again, even though word had clearly been passed around that it was right there, smack dab in the center of Ember Flats. Until the Den and its overabundance of information, Cameron hadn’t actually seen the thing on its enormous plinth, but every traveler knew where the archive rested. Every barman in every backwoods watering hole knew where it stood. In every city they’d fought through — every burg they’d eventually fled, holding their belongings and female members close — people had known where the Astrals had taken the prize they’d finally found in Horeb’s guts. But so many other things made sense, too — like why the Astrals hounded them constantly but never truly attacked them anymore. Why the Mullah, who opposed the Astrals, did. And why Cameron increasingly sensed that running from what had happened was only delaying the inevitable.
 

Meyer had to go, with Kindred by his side. The two halves — Kindred able to sense the Astral collective and Meyer with his former prisoner’s knowledge — would be needed if they faced the Ember Flats viceroy. The network was severed; they had no idea how the other capitals had fared or how far they’d fallen. They’d found a tyrant viceroy in Roman Sands, the Astral duplicate of some famous human soured — the opposite of Kindred’s softening. He’d told the others, as they’d run from those guarded walls, not to judge the Astrals harshly for that one. Kindred had discovered he wasn’t truly Meyer Dempsey, but it was unlikely the same would happen for others. The Roman Sands viceroy probably thought she was the real Liza Knight. The human had gone bad, not the Titan who’d assumed her shape.

Clara had to go because she was Lightborn. Cameron liked that least of all but knew it was true. She could see the path ahead, at least a little, and speak to what lay beneath the surface of Astral consciousness.
 

And because Clara was going, Lila and Christopher were, too. Because Lila and Clara were going, so was Piper. Charlie was their analyst and Jeanine their militant, having effortlessly stepped into Nathan’s cruel shoes. And after that there was nobody left besides the Pall, now unseen for the trio of days spent in the Den refueling, resting, deciding to trust the man who’d been watching, who’d saved them from what may or may not have been an actual Astral siege.
 

“I don’t understand why we’re not being followed,” Cameron said, looking through slats in the bus’s sides, where windows should have been.
 

Jeanine was beside him. Cameron would rather have had Piper at his side, but that would mean accepting her presence, and he was still hoping that at some point before hitting Hell’s Corridor he’d manage to shoo her and a few of the others off the bus.
 

“He has satellite feeds, like Nathan had,” Jeanine said. “And I get the feeling he’s made deals with whoever’s controlling these roads. Or maybe he’s the one who controls them.”
 

But the difference between Andreus and Peers was that Nathan had built himself an army. Peers had only Aubrey. Two mild-mannered Brits, controlling the Middle East by themselves.

“Nathan had access to satellites because the Astrals
gave
him access in trade,” Cameron said.

Jeanine didn’t answer. There was no good answer to most of what was happening. They could believe Peers just so happened to keep an eye on their group despite the effort they’d taken to hide themselves, the many waypoints they’d taken over the years, and the month they’d spent in a massive junkyard of entirely defunct vehicles, pinned down, subsisting mostly by hunting rats. They could believe that Peers got the gasoline to run his hybrid bus by raiding a mostly unguarded Astral refining station in the desert as he claimed — and that he and Aubrey had modified the bus by themselves, including adding the four thirty-gallon tanks behind the rear partition. It might be true.