Reaping (30 page)

He drops the childish narration. His voice harsh. “There was a rebellion at Four. Live Oak. They stormed the silos and tore down the greenhouses, just like they’re doing today. Three hundred workers in one of the hothouses, looking for something to eat, snatching tomatoes and peppers right off the vines, tearing down trellises, stuffing their faces as they went. Poor hungry bastards.” His eyes gleam with anticipation. “Know what I did?”

Suddenly Evander’s not looking at me, but above me, beyond me. I can’t help it. I follow his eyes, turning slightly to the side so I can keep him in my peripheral vision and still see whatever it is he’s looking at.

Another airship is hovering over the Farm. It sits about thirty meters above one of the hothouses the workers have broken into. It takes me a moment to recognize the design. It’s not military-grade. With twin flamethrowers positioned at the front, these are the ships we used to use to clear forest or swamps for new farmland. They aren’t equipped with gun batteries or shield capabilities and they haven’t been in regular use for about thirty years. But now I’m thinking of Evander’s nickname and wondering … 
Where is Remy? Where are the others? 
My eyes are trained on the airship, watching it descend. I can barely comprehend his words when Evander says, from behind:

“I breathed fire on them.”

The airship now hovers about ten meters above the ground, and my heart stops as twin jets of blue-white flame erupt, sending people below running, screaming, engulfed in flames, their clothes incinerated, hair burning, and flesh dripping like grease from their bones.

I cry out, but no sound comes.

“Evander Sun-Zi, the Dragon,” he says slowly, drawing out every syllable. “That’s how I got my nickname.”

I pause for another half-second, my thoughts rattling in my skull, watching as dozens—no, at least a hundred—Farm workers are incinerated in the flames. The field lights up, wet and smoking, as the airship pivots in the air. People running, screaming, rolling on the ground. Smoke and autumnal orange and dragon’s breath. It smells like fall, the crisp scent of crackling fire, but with the added aroma of death. Flames sucking at the heels of screaming protesters like a cat lapping up cream.

I turn, lunge at him. My only thought now is preventing that airship from doing any more damage, and I can’t do that if I don’t have a weapon. I put every ounce of energy I have into that initial spring, bounding at him like a deer over a hedgerow. His eyes go wide with surprise as he skitters backwards and pulls his gun up, but I’m too fast. My hand is on the barrel, pushing it to the side and out, so that when he pulls the trigger the hot metal burns my arm but the shot goes wide. He throws his other arm up at me, perhaps thinking my hands are going for his throat, to kill him, but I’m focused on the weapon. With my right hand I pin his shoulder to the ground and with my left I wrench the Bolt out of his hand. He brings his knee up into my gut but I’ve already got what I came for, and in an instant I’m off and running.

The airship hangs in the sky, and I imagine the pilots sitting safely above the melee, smug, waiting for orders. Bolt fire from our cloaked airship starts raining down on the sector ship, but Miah and Firestone are too high, their direct hits can’t target the underbelly where it’s most vulnerable.

The ship’s attributes run through my mind.

Airship, light class, model introduced S.A. 64. Twin flamethrowers installed for land clearing and Farm work.

Firepower: None unless modified.

Shield capacity: Light.

Shield dispersal: Located at the wing-to-hull joint.

Control systems: Hull, front belly, beneath cockpit.

That’s twice in one day I’ve had to be grateful for Aulion’s intensive drills. The idea that I might owe that man anything makes me sick. I bit back the sting of bile as I run.

I don’t have much time before Evander or one of his soldiers comes at me, so I flip the energy dial to its highest setting, kneel, take aim, and fire. At this setting it takes three full, endless seconds to recharge, but in that time I can see I missed. I swear, aim again, and fire, and as I wait for the capacitor to reload, I watch the blue Bolt fire strike the exposed intake vent of the engine compartment. Sparks and flame shoot forward as the airship lurches sideways and starts to fall. I stand, watching as it tumbles slightly from the sky, listing downwards, and then—

White explosions of light in my vision, followed immediately by blackness.

Pain.

Nausea.

When I come to, my head hurts like hell and I feel like I’m suffocating. I gasp for air before realizing there’s a boot pressing into my windpipe, just hard enough so I can pull in slow, raspy breaths. Before I open my eyes, I know the boot belongs to Evander. He’s holding the Bolt I stole from him, watching something in the sky. From this vantage point it’s hard to see his expression. I wriggle and try to move, but then he looks down at me and points the weapon at my head.

“Not a fan of fairy tales, are you? Otherwise, you’d know it’s a bad idea to rouse the wrath of a dragon.”

His face is neutral. He looks like someone casually remarking about a change in the weather. He turns back and looks at the sky again. I crane my neck, but nothing’s there.

“Aulion will be disappointed when he hears I got to you first,” he mutters to himself. Then he glances down at me, a look of fatality in his eyes. His fingers clutch the gun a little tighter, and I know he’s had enough of my antics. He’s stopped talking. That’s how I know. I close my eyes and wait for death to take me. The thought flies through my head as hope dies in my chest: 
I love you, Remy.

But instead of dying, I feel the pressure fall away from my throat and I open my eyes again to the brightness of the world and see that someone has a knife to Evander’s back. Someone small, dark, and with an unruly mess of brown curls like a halo crowning her head.

20 - REMY

                                                                                                                                                                                                                Spring 13, Sector Annum 106, 15h09

Gregorian Calendar: April 1

My heart beats all over my body. In my thighs, in my chest, in the pit of my belly, the blood pulses with insistent, unstopping regularity. In that pit I feel the spark of hatred, and it’s beautiful, powerful, intoxicating. I hate Evander and everything he stands for, and now he has nowhere to go.

“Drop the Bolt and get off him.” My voice emerges as a growl, low and unfamiliar, as though it came from someone else’s throat.

“Ah,” Evander gasps, as my knife presses into his throat. “True love. Aulion was right after all.” He chokes out a laugh and tosses his Bolt aside in a gesture of surrender. It infuriates me. I know he hasn’t given up so easily—no, this is mockery. “Valerian Augustus Orleán betrayed the Sector for a girl.”

Vale coughs, gasps, sits up. I can only just see him out of my peripheral vision. My eyes are locked onto the airship, the ship that just moments ago was hailing fire and death down onto the people we were trying to save. 
Was Luis down there?
 I wonder desperately. 
Was Rose?

Anger, the same rust-red color as the burning field below, clouds my vision. But it’s tempered by gratitude. 
Thank you, Vale, for doing what none of us could. For taking down that airship
. 
The damage has been done, but you did what you could.

Then an elbow connects with my ribs, and in one astonishingly fast motion Evander knocks my knife arm up and safely away from his throat, twists around to land an open palm in my diaphragm and a gleaming blade squarely in Vale’s shoulder. I double over, the air in my lungs gone. Vale, who had been struggling to his feet, is back on the ground, blood already staining his clothes. Evander dives for his Bolt, slings it over his shoulder, and turns away, sprinting.

Come back and face me, you fucking coward!

Vale sits up again, his face a mask of anguish and concern. I run over and kneel beside him. I lay my hand on his chest, and he looks at me almost bashfully, blinking back tears of pain and yet somehow a smile teases the corner of his mouth. Then he reaches up to grasp the hilt of the knife buried in his shoulder and wrenches it free, grimacing from the pain. He falls back on his elbow, gasping.

“I’m fine,” he manages. “I’ll be fine.”

I nod at him, briefly, meeting those sea-green eyes and thanking all the fates that it’s not him I’m facing on this battlefield. I draw in a deep breath, clench my knife in hand, and set off after Evander.

I can’t think of anything except The Dragon. I knew that he would be violent, but I underestimated his capacity. That double-barreled airship, the flamethrower, torching people—men, women, children—before my very eyes. Their screams, their limbs flailing helplessly, trying to beat out the flames. The way they eventually, inevitably, crumpled to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. They were innocent, and they died.

I couldn’t help them.

Like Evander’s flames, the hatred grows, an inferno flickering into life in my belly. Sparks flying, it towers upward into my chest, spirals into my breath, ignites my eyes. Everything is at once more lucid, more 
real
, than it has ever been, and yet this is not me. Someone else, 
something
 else, is in possession of my body, propelling my legs forward, pumping the blood through my veins till I am deaf with the sound of it. A power I’ve never felt before overwhelms me, and I can only watch as this new creature hunts for justice.

I lob a few low-energy shots at him. My first two are misses, and he jumps to the side and starts running again, but my third connects solidly and brings him spinning to the ground. Another shot and he flops like a fish out of water, convulsing from the electrical pulses. Then I am on him, my knee drilling solidly into his diaphragm, preventing him from drawing breath or fighting back. I place my Bolt against his gut and fire again. He goes still, but at low energy the strike is not enough to kill him.

My mind is fully disengaged from my body, as if I am floating above myself, watching as I press the Bolt into his throat, grab my knife, and pull it up to his cheek.

“A is for Alexander,” I whisper, saying it aloud even though he’s unconscious, drawing shallow breath. He doesn’t stir as I draw blood. My words echo in the stillness around us, the bedlam from the battle behind us has faded to nothingness. I carve a thin, light A into his flesh and draw a circle around it. 
The crudest image you’ve ever drawn, Remy
. Droplets of blood collect on my knife and run down his cheek.

“For my sister, Tai Alexander. For my mother, Brinn Alexander. For my father’s heartache, Gabriel Alexander. For Eli, my chosen brother. For Sam, who asked too many questions. For my grandfather’s secret.”

Blood runs back toward his hairline, tracing its way around his ear and dripping into the grass. The blood is quick to congeal. I turn his cheek and slice an “R” into the skin of his left cheek, drawing a circle around it, too. “For the Resistance. For Remy. For Revenge. You won’t ever forget me, now.”

He opens his eyes and gasps, and the roiling inferno blazes so hot in me I want to retch. He doesn’t yet know what I’ve done. He can only feel the pain—thin, hot lines traced into his flesh.

“You’ll pay,” he chokes out, then he spits in my face, and I pull the Bolt back and crack it up against the side of his head.

“Fuck you,” I hiss and wipe his spittle off my chin with my sleeve.

I glare down, the fearsome Dragon, unconscious for the moment, my bloody marks carved into his face. But instead of pride, the usual reaction I have as I step back to admire my work, I feel nothing but shame. 
What did I just do? How could I have done this? How could I be filled with so much hatred, and think its power was beautiful?
 My insides are scorched, charred. I press a finger lightly to the edge of the “R” and feel the bead of blood on my fingertip. With a heave, I pull off him and pocket my knife.

I leave him lying in the grass, and turn away, seeking peace and stillness and understanding. 
What have I done?

In the distance, the fighting seems to have quieted. A lull. Bodies lie strewn among the grasses, some moving, others not. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot two soldiers following me, creeping through the grass. I see a flash and dodge their Bolt fire by skidding then rolling on the ground in front of me, but then I’m on my knees firing and catch one of them in the hip. It’s enough to send him down. The other stops to aim at me, but the shot is off by a few inches.

But before he can reload, he gasps and crumples. I look in the direction of the Bolt that took him down and see Vale, kneeling behind a blossoming cherry tree, watching me.

The tree, a cloud of white-pink flowers and fragrant nectar, untouched, somehow, by the fighting, seems totally out of place amidst the death and destruction at my feet. The stark contrast between the serenity of the tree and Vale, decked in his military garb and with a gun cocked against his shoulder, makes me want to cry.

I turn a three sixty, looking around for any remaining soldiers, but I see none. Most have retrenched or evacuated—for now. They’ll be back, though. And in full force.

Reaching up, I touch the camera still attached to my headband, and I pull it off, turn off RECORD, and stuff it in my pocket. The world seems to have gone quiet and still as Vale approaches. I swing my Bolt back over my shoulder so it rests on my pack. He reaches out his hand to help me up, and I think back to the raid, the night he captured me and Soren and took us back to Okaria, prisoners of the Sector.

“Are you okay?” he says. He’d asked me that same question that night. And then he’d said, 
I’m not going to hurt you … Remy, I’d never….

Today he saved my life, just as I saved his.