Summer Ruins (21 page)

“What did he look like? My dad.”

“He was so handsome, Althea. Dark brown hair and these brown eyes that were so soft you’d swear they were made of velvet. He was tall. His voice struck me first; it had this quality, like music, and I thought right away that I could listen to him speak for hours and never get tired of it, no matter what he was saying.” She gives me a look from the corner of her eye. “He had these impossibly deep dimples. It seems you share your mother’s weakness for those.”

Heat blossoms in my cheeks and swims through my blood. “You know about Lucas and me?”

“Yes. Very little escapes the Prime’s attention. It makes you vulnerable, your love for him. The Prime will exploit it. He’ll use it to hurt you, my daughter. And it will hurt like nothing you can imagine.” Tears gather in her black eyes, the blue pinpoints expanding with her growing emotion.

The pain collapsing her throat makes me want to cover my ears, but then her words sink in and I raise my chin. “Love might make us vulnerable, Flacara, but it also makes us strong. It’s what we’re fighting for. All of us, in our own way.”

She leans forward, slipping an arm around my shoulder and tugging me against her side. Since this may be my last chance, I let her do it, laying my head on her chest.

“You are right, of course. That is why we are fighting still. For love.” Her fingers comb my sleep-tangled hair. “I love you, Althea. It is the only thing that has mattered since the minute you came into my life.”

As much as I want this moment to be perfect, I can’t say it back. I don’t love her, not the way kids who grow up with parents seem to naturally care for them. My whole life, her image has frightened me and driven intimidation through me, not affection. This sweetness is new, and I like it. Instead of lying, I settle closer. “So, what happened after he yelled at you? My dad.”

Flacara chuckles, and the beautiful water-tripping-over-rocks sound tumbles out of her and into my memory where I can keep it safe. “Your father, he fancied himself charming and claimed he needed more time to determine whether or not I was lying about being in the courtroom for research, and would I have dinner with him to be sure. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

“Who says that?”

“I don’t know. Humans, I suppose.”

She tells me stories for the next hour, about how my dad loved lasagna, too, and that she would find him in my room hours after I went to sleep, just staring at me. He told her he was afraid I’d be grown up in the morning, and he wanted to remember me as I was that day. How we all enjoyed the lake and the ocean, and how I loved swimming and sunshine before I could walk. That we were happy, and the three of us laughed every day.

Then my mother tells me about how he made her promise to keep me safe, no matter what happened to him. That Ben Davies knew he would die to keep his daughter alive, and that was what he wanted. And that Fire let him, even though she still feels, every day, as though someone ripped her in half.

For me. Because I’m what they created, and as long as I’m alive, so is their love.

Chapter 21.

Everyone’s deep asleep when my eyes open to the blackness of the furnicar. The night has taken every last ounce of energy remaining in my already dead body, but the morning announcement rings through the still darkness seconds after my eyes fall closed.

As the girls and then Wes slip out one at a time, hurrying to their tents to dress for breakfast, I huddle with Pax and Lucas and share my nighttime adventures.

“So our parents… they’re going to help us?” Lucas asks, pride and love shining in his eyes so bright it hurts to look at him.

“I don’t know if they’re going to help us, but they’re going to refuse to take part in anything that will hurt us. Except Pamant. Although if we can get Deshi on our side, he might come along, too.” I take a deep breath. “But we have to figure out how to get out of here and back to the cabin. Fire said it will be a week, maybe two—if we’re lucky--before the Prime forces Apa into Nat’s sinum, and then the Others will know where he’s hidden. We’re out of time.”

“But how?” Pax grabs a handful of his hair, clenching a fist and leaving wild tufts in its wake. “We can’t travel without help, and from what I recall about our maps, we must be way too far away to even think about walking or Lucas building a boat made of ice or whatever.”

A desperate clawing sensation shreds my lungs, and my overwrought brain tries again to spit out any kind of solution. Then Pax’s suggestion that Lucas’s ability could build us a boat smacks me between the eyes. “Maybe a boat can’t get us home, Pax, but what about you? Could you fly us the way you took us up to the top of Mount Rushmore?”

He looks at me, considering, while I smooth his hair back into place. “It’s possible, and I know we’re running out of options. But that took tons of energy, and this would be three of us instead of two. And a lot farther. I might not be able to sustain enough power.”

“I bet you could. If our lives depended on it,” Lucas adds softly.

Pax’s eyes flash, landing hard on mine. “And what, Althea? Leave our friends here after they’ve taken huge risks to try to help us? Leave Leah again? And Tommy?”

He looks away when I don’t answer right away, but I snag his hand and force him to turn back. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but we don’t have any good options. At least Leah and the rest are safe for now. If we don’t go, everyone at the cabin could die.”

“We can’t win.” His shoulders sag, and even though I know he’s talking about the choice we’re facing, it feels as though he means it on a larger scale.

We finish getting dressed in silence, then hurry over to get breakfast. More bread, more cheese, and a special treat—pears. The day in the mines passes quickly, and so does the next. Workers dislodge chunks of rocks, kids retrieve and deliver them. I count my people three times, work for a while, glare back at Eula when she sneers at me. Jas doesn’t have any attacks, and even though the eight of us spend hours alone in our furnicar at night, we don’t come up with a better idea than Pax using his power to get us home.

Rita drills Leah on a list of lab equipment we’ll need to deconstruct the Others’ brand of dymium—we’ve taken to just calling it dymium, instead of neodymium, since that’s not exactly what it is—and also gives us some suggestions on potentially still standing places that house sophisticated enough equipment. She’s also told us all, more than once, the process for breaking an element down to its basic components—isotopes. It’s dangerous, since neodymium is radioactive, and it’s going to take us a while, but I think we can do it. We
have
to do it.

But we still have to figure out how the primordial element sustains the Others, exactly how it gives them life. And we have no idea how to find out at the moment.

I told Jas and Tommy that we have to leave but that they won’t be forgotten. I’m not sure how much good it will do, but I told Tommy to go to Emmy’s mom in Station Three for help if Jas gets bad again. I have no way of knowing whether or not she’s going to be any help, but it makes me feel better than leaving them with no options.

It’s been almost a week now, and my nerves stretch more every minute. We’ve needed the time to learn all that we can from Rita, but I can’t stop thinking of the cabin getting infiltrated, of all those kids who trust us being annihilated in the process of the Others retrieving their Warden. The loss of Griffin and Greer would cripple our ability to maneuver going forward—not to mention the toll it would take on my heart.

We’ve decided to leave tonight, and are busy saying good-bye. Emmy and Reese both hug me, Emmy in her stiff way and Reese quietly but determined, the way she does everything. Leah and I say our good-byes and I promise to find a way to come back for her.

The way Pax is staring into her eyes, I know he would bring her along if he thought he could hold up an extra person for as far as we might have to fly. To my surprise, she pushes onto her tiptoes as far as she can go, then reaches her arms around Pax’s neck and plants a kiss right on his mouth.

His eyebrows go up, and I know he’s as surprised as I am. Even though it’s kind of weird and rude, I have trouble looking away. Lucas chuckles beside me. “I guess she’s taking advantage of every minute.”

“I guess I can’t blame her.” I give Lucas a sly look that’s full of all the things I’d like to not miss out on doing with him again. His cheeks bloom red like they did the first day I met him, and I laugh, raising his hand to my lips and pressing a kiss against his cool palm.

It’s nice to see a genuine smile on Pax’s face, even if it is a bit bemused. He lifts Leah’s tiny frame against his chest, and his smile slips as he buries his face in her hair. I wish he’d had a chance to talk to Tommy, or say good-bye for real, but we never figured out how to do it and keep the kids safe.

Our farewells are finished when it occurs to me that we’ve got less than two minutes before the furnicars lock and Wes hasn’t arrived. Worry slithers beneath my sorrow and into my blood, zapping paranoia through me. We’ll have to leave without seeing him. As I think that, the tent flaps burst open and seven Wardens, including Carrej, stomp inside.

Eula slinks in behind them, her arms crossed against her drooping chest.

The seven of us in the tent freeze. Uncertainty curls my hands into fists while the heat and flames grow inside me. Do we fight them? We could get the seven of us out of this tent and away from the Wardens, but it wouldn’t do any discernible good. They’ve seen us, and from the grim expression of satisfaction on Eula’s face, she’s already told them enough to make sure none of our friends will survive.

But it would make me a feel a lot better to let loose some of my boiling anger.

Carrej looks at me, giving a tight shake of his head. He might be trying to warn me that keeping my cool would be the way to go, though I’ve never felt any particular goodwill from him. Like I told him that first day, he didn’t try to kill me, so that gave him a reprieve.

I suppose that applies to the Wardens crowding into our furnicar now.

The light bulb blinks off, then back on. One minute.

The Warden at the front, whose name I don’t know, steps forward. “Anyone who does not belong in this furnicar, please return to your own for the night.”

No one moves. My heart swells with pride in these new friends of mine. Leah’s always been far tougher than she looks, and she’s not cowering now. Her hand is firmly inside Pax’s, her gray eyes stormy as she bores holes in Eula’s traitorous face. From the tightness in her upper arm, it looks like Pax is holding her back from leaping and scratching the Warden’s eyes out.

But Emmy and Reese surprise me, each stoic and standing tall in the middle of the room. Emmy appears bored, if anything, her arms hanging loose at her sides. Reese plays with the ends of her blond hair, eyeing the Wardens warily but without fear.

They’ve been prepared for this, maybe. Ever since they arrived here at the Harvest Site they’ve been keeping their heads down, waiting for something. For us? To die? Or for circumstances to change? There’s nothing to be gained from disobeying the Wardens, and if anyone is going to be punished it should be the three of us.

Rita shrinks against the back wall of the furnicar, as far from the Wardens as possible. She’s muttering under her breath, the words indiscernible but her confusion and fear chilling my heart. Her face blanches paper white and tears course down her cheeks.

We will all be punished for breaking the rules. But I have to try. “Go, you guys.”

Three pairs of eyes slide from our uninvited guests to me. I nod. Emmy and Reese step around Lucas and me, then through the pack of Wardens, untouched. Rita seems frozen. Leah doesn’t move. I’m falling in love with that girl as much as Pax seems to be, I think, but it’s more than that. More than her bravery or her desire to see this thing through to the end.

She’s witnessed what happens when we leave people behind, and she knows the fear of wondering whether or not she’ll ever see us again. She cares about me, I think, as a friend. She and Lucas have a past, and maybe in a different lifetime, she and Pax could have a future.

Her eyes grab mine, holding a question, and nothing in me has the will to tell her again to go. She’s with us now, for better or worse. “So, what happens now?”

“The Prime has been summoned to deal with your plotting and transgressions. We will escort you to him.” Carrej steps to my side, wrapping rough hands tight around my arm.

I wince at the sharp pain of his grip but he only grins, ripping me from Lucas’s side and out of the tent. Rita’s sobs turn loud. Leah cries out; I imagine she’s enduring similar treatment. Neither of the boys utters a sound, but after another ten seconds we’re all together in the pathway.

“Stop crying,” one of the Wardens barks at Rita, who’s being dragged a few paces in front of me.

She can’t seem to make her feet work, and the Warden’s rough treatment elicits sobs that spike every couple of seconds into shrieks. He heaves a heavy sigh when she won’t—or can’t—obey his command to calm down.