Meridian (28 page)

The Ice Cube looks nothing like it did when we approached. The Dark stretches over it, leaving the building inside giant cobwebs of nanite strands. The only evidence of Michael and the others are the discarded dart casings left from the serum Anne-Marie gave him. They’re empty.

“Where are your people?” Honoria asks her brother, scanning what we can see of the horizon.

“There,” he says, pointing to the emerging shimmer-lines of two dozen of his hive mates.

She locks down as they approach, knowing there’s no way home that doesn’t involve contact with them, but she at least tries to hide it.

“And this works, how, exactly?”

“They are my voice. You are my other. Mine doesn’t hurt mine.” Bolt puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Where’s Dog?” I ask again.

“He remained,” Whisper says out loud. She stands apart, her aura in turmoil, turning its usual blue-toned sour green. Rage explodes red and burns into a wash of despondent yellow. My bones feel brittle, about to shatter from the echoes of her pain. This is how a Fade cries. “He promised to follow, but he remained to hold the darkness back.”

“Dog’s holding that monster back?”

“I hear him, but he doesn’t answer my voice. I would have remained also.”

The marks on her face morph into a replica of his scars, and a smaller version of his dog tattoo appears on her arm, in nanites.

I knew that one determined Fade could be a relentless adversary, but Dog’s standing on his own against that thing.

Not alone,
my father’s voice breaks in.
Until he falls silent, never alone.

“It’s still only Dog’s hands, feet, and butt on the line!” And if
hold
means physically holding, then it’s a matter of death or absorption into the wild hive. “How much longer can he last?”

Another screech answers the question for me. The bear-beast charges through the rubble pile like it’s no more than a stack of pebbles. The creature’s separated from the rest of the wild-Dark so that it now has hindquarters. Dog broke it in half; this was the only piece that could get around him.

“Let me guess,” Tobin says. “That’s a group that all agrees we should die, isn’t it?”

“You had to ask,” I say.

Rather than pursue us down the steps, the beast throws itself into the air from the top one, landing on the other side of Anne-Marie and me. Between us and our way home.

The bear-beast roars, a blast of hot foul air so intense, it leaves my ears ringing. It hoists itself up on its back legs and splits in two again. One creature adjusts its height so that it’s exactly as tall as Anne-Marie. The other’s mine.

Rue disappears from my peripheral vision.
Don’t,
I warn. He can’t fool these things by being invisible.

“Annie—” Trey starts, but she throws a hand up to tell him to stop.

“Nobody move,” she says, but our elders don’t listen.

The creatures grow taller, towering up and up. Honoria, Mr. Pace, and the colonel blast straight through them, and their shapes warp further, starting to bow over. Those of us who’ve already had this nightmare know what’s coming next.

Anne-Marie shakes, jamming her eyes shut. I take a breath to hold, and raise my hands in an
X
over my head as the bear-beast falls forward and flattens me to the ground.

Darkness. Everywhere.

Help me!
I scream. Cherish screams:
Help us!

I can’t open my mouth to say it out loud.

I hear the Killers, but they’re all saying different things, interrupting, talking over, having a dozen arguments at once. Where the nanites touch my skin, they burn, biting my flesh with electric shocks.

I kick my legs and pound against the ground with my hands, but I’m drowning in the sludge that destroys everything.

I wish I had another flare.

I call out for Rue, but can’t hear through the wild ones’ insanity.

Cherish,
I call, and she calls for Marina.

I twine my consciousness to hers. In every dream I had, this was what saved us—both of us, working together.
Not
human.
Not
Fade. Together, we will
not
be destroyed.

Cherish rises to the surface. I feel her emerging as she did to save Tobin and becoming armor the wild ones can’t break. I can’t be included. We refuse.

No!
We shout.

Our choice.

The nanite cocoon’s surface ripples; I feel it like a flag popping in high wind, but soon it slows down and turns rigid. The sound is that of freezing water, but I’m not cold. The wild ones voices soften until they’re less than a whisper. Once more, I kick out and claw at the sludge around me, but this time it crumbles to dust.

I’m free.

Someone drags me away by my vest. I can feel my father, and Rue, and all the others again. They’re here, ready to take us home.

“Marina?” Tobin’s walking beside me.

“Don’t touch,” Honoria says—she’s the one dragging me. “Not yet.”

He’s on his knees beside me. “Marina? Are you still you?” he asks.

“Shut up, Tobin,” I say, trying to sit up, but I can’t. “Where’s Anne-Marie?” I turn my head sideways and see she’s out of her cocoon, too. Mr. Pace is next to her, on the ground, with Trey on the other side.

“How—”

Anne-Marie blinks. She tries to raise her hand, but it falls limp beside her. A crushed serum dart lies in her palm, mixed with the blood she spilled smashing it open on the ground.

“Look at me, Annie. Open your eyes,” Mr. Pace says.

“Dad?” Definite shock, but I’m not sure about pain yet.

He tears at her blood-soaked vest. The more he moves the material, it’s clear that there are rips in it. The kind that come from the claws of a large animal ripping through. I glance at my stomach—I’ve got them, too. Blood’s pooled red across my stomach and chest, where the bear-beast’s claws cut me; the slashes are already healing. I can’t tell if the black specks are from me or the broken cocoon.

Right now, I don’t care.

Heal,
I hear. My father kneels on my other side and takes my hand.
You heal.

Tobin bends down, putting his mouth next to my ear. “Can you and . . .
the other you
. . . can you do anything for her? Like Rueful did for me?”

Negative,
Cherish says.
Interference. Obstacle.

“No,” I say.

“Can he?” Tobin looks at my father.

“Not while the serum’s in her system,” I say. “She’s had two doses.”

“Get them on their feet,” Honoria says. “We’ll patch Annie up at home.”

She knows I’m healing.

Anne-Marie tries to sit, but barely makes it halfway before she gives another sharp cry. She tries to raise her hand again, pointing this time. The nightmare hasn’t ended yet. We’ve faced the beast, but not the flood.

The rumble starts up high, with the cobwebs that tether the Ice Cube to the Dark. They rain down from the building into drifts that reach the second floor. They’re amassing, taking on an oddly geometric configuration. Hosted Killers appear in the doorway of the school and on the roof. One of the animals moves apart from the others, growling low in its throat and ready to pounce, but the others turn on it, hissing and driving it back.

“What are they doing?” Tobin asks as Mr. Pace lifts Anne-Marie from the ground.

“It doesn’t matter,” his father says.

Col. Lutrell raises the trigger he’s kept in his hand since the lunchroom and presses the button. Another tremor shakes the school, but this one’s a lot bigger than the others. Glass shatters as the first explosion goes off, then it’s a chain reaction from room to room as each gas pocket ignites, racing along the lines through the school and back to its source. The Killers try to flee, but the fire’s faster. Those in and on the building burn.

Our Fade are in motion, surrounding us, creating capsules that grab each member of our group. Tobin takes my hand so we’re together, and the last thing I see as the nanites fill in the space before my eyes is the flash from the center of the school that brings it down.

T
HE
trip from the Ice Cube to the Arclight’s nothing but a blur, no matter how I try to slow it down. All I see is the flash of trees through the nanite capsule that keeps me safe. Their voices try to lull me to sleep—my father pretty much insists on it—but I refuse. I force myself to stay alert so I can keep asking about Anne-Marie.

When we reach the relative safety of the Grey, she’s still unconscious in her father’s arms.

I’ve never been so happy to see someone I care about soaked red with their own blood. She’s lost a lot, but still—it’s red. I can almost convince myself the wounds haven’t shrunk to a quarter of the size they were a few hours ago. I can almost believe her eyes will be brown the next time they open. I just can’t help but know that a cure isn’t the same as a vaccine.

I wonder if it did Michael or Noor any good.

Honoria’s on her radio as soon as the Fade let us out, telling Sykes to get the lamps back online and not to leave any gaps.

“Don’t wait for nightfall,” she says. “If night falls, so do we.”

Sykes wants details, but she won’t give him any. She tells him to “get it done,” and turns her radio completely off.

Time warps, this time speeding up, and after what feels like mere steps, we’re home. Mr. Pace has Anne-Marie in his arms. Lt. Sykes and Dr. Wolff are waiting for us, along with a scattering of others, including Jove, but it’s Anne-Marie’s mother I notice first and keep going back to. She’s bouncing, the way Anne-Marie does when she’s nervous, and chewing her fingernails, standing as close to the boundary as possible without crossing it.

I will never get the sound of her wailing out of my head.

“Annie!” Her mother rushes forward, trying to check for injuries.

“Don’t touch her, Nique,” Mr. Pace says, and dodges her.

“Elias? What happened?”

She already knows what happened—there’s only one reason you don’t touch the wounded. She heads toward Dr. Wolff, whose shoulders are slumped.

“No . . .” Her eyes, already red and wide seem to take over her face, but I can’t look away as she turns to Trey.

“Mom—”

“No.” She starts shaking her head.

“Mom, please—”

“She can’t be, not with you and Elias there,” she says, trying to force a smile. Her head shakes harder. “She can’t. She’s not. She’s just—”

“Mom!” Trey catches her as she tries to touch Anne-Marie again. He shakes her, and she crumbles.

The sounds she makes can’t be called words or even a scream. They’re a dirge, already anticipating the end of a life that was just beginning. Her arms and legs go limp so that the only thing holding her up is her son, and as he drags his mother toward the main building, he looks back at me.

It’s more horrifying to see guilt in his eyes than it would have been to find the accusation I expected. He blames himself for this.

The others who’ve gathered, realizing that this isn’t a false alarm or a drill, return to the buildings, too. Honoria heads straight for Lt. Sykes.

“Where do we stand?” she asks him. He doesn’t even mention how young she looks. Maybe it’s happened before. “Has it spread?”

“No. It was just the two kids. Tess’s boy ran. We tried to keep him sedated, but—”

“And the other one?” she cuts him off. Excuses don’t do any good, and she already knows what’s coming after the “but.” Dante’s a Fade. No, that would imply Dante still exists. The Fade took his body, the way they’re trying to take Anne-Marie.

“Silver’s still fighting. She hadn’t gone critical when Doc got her on the meds, so if Annie’s a recent case—”

“Good.”

“We’ll have the White Room viable in forty-eight hours. We can put them both there. He’s going to try the dialysis again.”

“Better.”

“Honor”—Sykes chokes on her name, glances at me, and turns sideways so they’re closer together—where he can whisper and I can pretend I don’t hear. “Jeannie, are you okay?”

“Get it done,” Honoria says. “Please.”

He nods, jogging off toward the main building, and she watches him until he’s out of sight.

“James, I would appreciate a thorough check of all the power systems, starting with the main generator,” she says.

“You got it.”

Tobin looks like he might say something to me, but pulls back at the last second, following his father.

I can’t make myself move.

I stand with my toes at the line between light and dark, watching the sun lose power in the Grey, and it’s like I’m looking through a window I’ve never used before. Familiar and different.

There are people out there. Are any of them standing at their boundary, trying to figure out where we are? Maybe Michael and Noor are safe. Maybe we’re looking at one another, but we can’t see because the Dark’s between us.

Honoria steps up beside me, sharing my view of the Dark, now that the Grey has lost its natural light. Is she blaming me or herself at the moment?

“We’ll be lighting another row of watch fires until we’re sure the high beams will hold,” she says. “Would you like to be assigned to a shift?”

I turn to face her.

“If that’s a joke, it’s not funny.”

“Of the thousands currently residing within this facility, you are one of ten people with the experience and motivation required not to consider the fires a secondary defense. You know their value, and you know the potential cost if they go out.” She looks down at my shredded vest and shirt. “Would you like me to assign you a shift?”

“Yeah. I think I would.”

“Good,” she says. “We’re at true night; you should get inside before the doors lock.”

Is it that easy? I’m an asset because I’ve seen how bad things are out there?

Honoria presses a pair of buttons on either side of her wristband. The face of mine, and every mounted emergency beacon, starts blinking Red-Wall scarlet as the sirens blare.

“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?” I ask her.

“You read my journal?”

“Yes.”

“You’re about to live it.”

She walks off, arms crossed, with the light glinting off the silver pistol at her back, and leaves me standing at the divide.

Alone.

Never alone.

“Rue?” I can’t see him, but I can hear him. “Are you there?”

I remain. You are healed?

“Pretty much.”

Pain?

“Not the kind you could fix.”

He reminds me of the state Whisper was in after we lost Dog.

“Something like that,” I say. “Is he really gone?”

He no longer speaks to us.

“I wish I could see you,” I say, and strain my eyes as far as they’ll go, on the chance that he’s hidden out there where I can find him. “They have to seal the tunnels. How will I see you again?”

There are always ways,
he says.

“Always?”

Affirmed. Always. Infinite.

Forever.

“Marina!” Honoria shouts from the doorway. “Inside, now!”

I nod, but take one more look at the Grey before starting her way.

It doesn’t look like there’s a war coming, but there is. We hurt the Killers, and once enough of them decide to mobilize, they’ll come after us with worse than bear-beasts and nightmares.

Can you tell what’s happening
back there
? I ask Rue at the door to the Arclight.
Is it still burning?

Burning,
he says. The door closes behind me.
Destruction. Fire.

Fire always makes things worse in the end.