Numbers Ignite (23 page)

I shook myself awake as my head became submerged. I hadn’t had time to take a last breath. I instinctively kicked, then waved my arms—and nearly blacked out again from the fire in my shoulder. My head hit the top of the cage. It was still intact, a solid grave sinking downward in the blackness of this watery world.

I grabbed the bars again and pushed them with all my strength. They held, just as they always had. I leaped upward and kicked the top where it curved, but my legs moved in slow motion and glanced right off the bars. I tried sticking my good arm through the bars and flapping downward, anything. But the cage continued its slow descent—in this darkness, the only way I could tell was by the increasing pressure in my ears.

My lungs burned nearly as bad as my shoulder now. Soon they would give way, and I would inhale a chestful of water. That would be the end, the moment the water doused the fire in my chest forever.

A strange clarity came over me then. I’d heard people say drowning wasn’t a bad way to go. The brain calmed itself, offering comfort as the life-giving oxygen faded away. You simply went to sleep. But what I experienced now was anything but calm. Something inside me was screaming.
No!
it protested.
Not like this. This is not the end!

Why not? I argued. My trial was nearly here. Mills had won already. I would be executed, a quick bullet to the chest.

Because I still want to fight.

The truth sank into my heart like the cage into the belly of a mountain. I wasn’t done. My mother was being tricked, my clan was suffering. I couldn’t let Mills get away with this. I was the only one who knew who Mills really was. Which meant I was the only one who could stop him.

I had to survive somehow.

My body began convulsing, my lungs trying to take control of my brain and gasp for air. I held it in with the last bit of consciousness I could muster, still straining against the bars to slow the cage’s descent.

Then something happened. White flashed in my eyes, then away, like a flashlight.

The cage jerked.

I strained to see something in the darkness, but I could only feel movement. The cage tilted one way, then the other, and it slowed. Had I reached the bottom?

No, I was moving upward again. There was noise beside me, bubbles, like someone blowing out air. The light was back, shining in my face. I strained my eyes against it and reached out, catching hold of something. A person. There was someone out there, fingers grasping the bars from the outside.

The cage lurched, sending me against the bars, where another arm held me in place. Two people, one on each side. Lifting my cage upward.

I tilted back toward the center of the cage and looked up. Blue moonlight rippled above us like a watery sky. The surface. It was too far. I couldn’t make it. I just—had to—

Everything faded.

“…think that did it,” a woman’s voice said.

My insides rushed up and out my throat, burning and suffocating. I coughed and spat, my body shaking.

I was lying on my side. My hurt shoulder lay limp, and I fell onto my back and gasped.

“You’re one lucky son of a—er, gun,” a boy said. A tan blanket was wrapped around his shoulders, and he shivered but wore a triumphant grin on his face. Selia Dunstrep’s talkative boy from yesterday. The older boy also wore a blanket, but he looked somber.

A lantern sat nearby, and I heard the sound of water behind us. The lake that had tried to kill me. My cage lay partially submerged in the water, the top torn cleanly off as if with a powerful laser.

The woman who had spoken at first sat back and put something down. A plastic cup with a bulb, some kind of respiration device. “Never thought I’d have to actually use that thing,” she murmured.

Her face was slightly more tanned and her hair a darker brown instead of the blonde I remembered, but I knew instantly that it was Selia.

She gave a grim smile. “Better get these wet clothes off, or you’ll die anyway.”

The clouds had parted in the night sky above us, revealing thousands of brilliant stars. I was alive. Water lapped against my feet, but I barely noticed.

“How do you f-feel?” the younger boy asked.

I couldn’t speak. A low moan escaped my lips, and my teeth began chattering. The pain hit again full force.

“He’s in shock,” the woman said. “Let’s get him inside. Do your remember the hold I taught you?”

“Yeah. Clasp hands under him, right?”

It took them a minute, but they figured it out and lifted me over their shoulders, sending a new wave of pain ripping across my shoulder. I must have blacked out again because I woke up shirtless and covered in blankets.

“Don’t move,” Selia said. “I didn’t realize the shooter got you.” She turned and muttered something about clean bandages.

My body shook violently, but my mind was clearing. I’d arrested this woman and sent her family to the work camps. I had betrayed her in the worst way, and she’d saved my life. She was probably the woman who had run out and startled the shooter, too. “Thanks,” I managed.

She gave a wry smile. “You owe me big after this. My poor boys are chilled to the bone. They had no change of clothing, so they’re stark naked under their blankets. I’m sure they’ll be back when they’re decent.”

“That man. He didn’t—hurt you?”

“Don’t concern yourself,” she told me. “The shooter ran off after he shoved you in. I figured saving you from the lake was more important than chasing him down. You’re lucky my boys were able to find you in all that water.” She fingered a bandage, lowering it onto my wound, then pulled it off again. “The bullet may still be in there. We’ll have to get a physician. I only had a year of medical training.”

I reached up with my good arm and grabbed her wrist. “Why did you help me?”

She sighed. “I’ve wondered the same thing. Maybe it’s because I’ve been talking to people. Maybe I see a little bit of your father in you after all, or I remember what you were like as a child.” She put the bandage on the wound and pressed down. “Or maybe it’s because we were better off as NORA prisoners than as settlers here. And you know what I think?”

I gasped at the pain, then managed, “What’s that?”

“I think that, bad or good, you’re the only one who can save us.”

The excavator broke out of the ground three days later. We sent scouts out to investigate, but they returned within the hour. NORA was nowhere in sight.

We traveled all day before finding a ravine that would give us shelter. I tried to pull Ruby aside to tell her good-bye, but she was too busy attending to important matters to talk to me.

While everyone settled in for the night, I sat against an outcropping of rock, gazing out at the never-ending hills and weeds that stood between us and the mountains. It was like I remained in limbo, forever between worlds. Not a child, not an adult—not a NORA citizen, and yet, not a settler either. This must have been how Vance had felt, working for the government that had killed his father and destroyed his way of life.

I felt eyes on me in the darkness. When we had emerged from the shelter this morning, Ruby had reminded everyone that the peace pact was still in effect. Violence would get someone kicked out. Her meaning was clear. I was off limits. Maxim’s eyes had bored holes in me as she’d said it.

It was kind of Ruby to try, but I didn’t belong here. I knew it as well as they did. I’d scout ahead and leave a trail for them, even though not a single one of them would thank me for it.

As if listening to my thoughts, Ruby emerged from the heat and stood over me. After a moment, she lowered herself down, slowly, as if in pain. Her bony thigh rested against mine as she settled back against the wall with a groan.

“Are you okay?” I asked, growing alarmed.

“My bones are angry with me today,” she said. “Getting too old to sleep on the hard ground. Although I guess it’s better to be on top than underneath it.”

I wasn’t sure if she meant the tunnels or death. Or both.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about,” Ruby said. She pulled something out of her pocket and held it out.

I gasped. “My ametrine stone! Where did you find it?”

“It was in the box Coltrane brought me on my birthday. I think Lillibeth found it and put it in there, not knowing it was yours. I wondered if it might belong to you.”

“It was gone when I woke up in her dwelling.” I took it from her and rubbed the smooth surface. “Thank you.”

“I wonder…” She held up her hand. On the third finger, she wore a ring with a red stone. “Have you noticed this? It’s a ruby.”

Her meaning sunk in, and I threw my arms around her, maybe a little too tightly. “We’re related!”

Ruby returned the embrace. “I was going to get to that eventually, but there you have it,” she said, her voice muffled against my shoulder. Who are your grandparents?”

I pulled away. “Alex and Lorenda James.”

“Ah.” Her eyes were distant. “Alex is my brother.”

“My mom is his daughter. He passed away when I was six.”

Ruby closed her eyes against the words. “Sorry to hear that. I hope he had a happy life. I never did get the chance to say good-bye to him.” She went quiet for a minute, then came back, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “So I’m your great-aunt, then, and this stone is your family token.”

“The Peak family tradition.” I paused. “I’m leaving, Ruby.”

She gave me a sharp look. “You’re running away again.”

“I can’t live like this, knowing what they’ve lost because of me. I wish I could just forget.”

Ruby’s expression changed—it became raw, pained. She gazed distantly at the desert. “Certain memories will never fade. You’ll forget what people looked like or what they said or what you ate. But the moments you try to forget are the ones you never can. Like a broken arm—not life threatening but painful enough to remind you they exist.”

I studied her. “Do you dream about life in NORA?”

“Every night.” She looked down. “I dream about my mother. Her features have blurred in my memories, but I remember how it felt when she braided my hair, her nails running through it and catching on the ends. She said I didn’t use enough smoothing cream. I hated the stuff. It made my hair smell strange.”

I chuckled. “It still does. You’d think they would have improved that by now.” It had been a very long time since I’d used it. Weeks? Years?

“And then there are the bad memories,” Ruby said, her voice low and quiet. “I’d love to forget my twenty-six months as a Rater.”

I sat taller. “You were a Rater?”

Ruby nodded. “When the Academy approved me for the program, I thought I’d burst with happiness. I had everything I ever wanted.”

“Why did you leave, then?”

Her expression fell as sorrow lined her eyes. “A discovery. Something I learned about some of my coworkers. Something so horrible it clutches my heart to think of it even now.” Her voice was tight. “I had an urgent question and went to find my mentor, a man I respected like my own father. It was during the frenzy, the last month before Rating Day, and I thought he’d be reviewing files in his office.”

She stopped, and I leaned forward, not wanting to miss a word. But Ruby didn’t seem to want to go on. She wrung her hands, grasping them together and then spreading her fingers and doing it all over again.