The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (5 page)

Besides the gash on his head, one cheek was red and the other eye was going black. Ruby tore more material from the shirt she’d already mangled for Fox’s foot. She handed strips to Onor and Marcelle, who pressed them against Hugh’s head to stop the blood. After, Onor spread fix-all tape across Hugh’s scalp. Lya clung to Hugh’s hand, her knuckles white. Not a perfect job. Bits of dried blood stuck to Hugh’s hair and stained his neck. Hugh whispered, “Thanks,” his eyes slightly shocky and still full of pain.

“Keep him awake,” Ben advised.

“I will.” Lya squeezed Hugh’s arm. A single bruise darkened the back of her hand and she winced from time to time when the train shook. So Lya’d gotten a little of whatever Hugh got.

Ruby sat back and closed her eyes, too tired to avoid the memory that Hugh’s beating brought up for her any longer. It had been a year ago, but when she let herself think about it, it felt both more distant and more recent, like something so bad it couldn’t have happened at all.

She remembered walking softly as she snuck down the corridor between habs. She hadn’t wanted her mother to wake up and keep her home. If fifteen was old enough to be on shift after school, old enough to get in trouble, then it was old enough for her to solve her own troubles.

Or, more specifically, to help her friend Nona solve
her
problems. Nona was being stupid with dangerous people, and Ruby was going to stop her. It was bad enough Ruby was already scared her mom might be killed doing the same thing, and her mom was way smarter than Nona, had more edges and more toughness.

Nona had let it slip that she was meeting reds on the maintenance level. Stupid. Ruby had been there a few times, although never alone. She’d gone with senior repair techs to learn where the parts depots and the metal reclamation bins were.

No one had ever let her go to the maintenance levels alone.

The nearest entrance was in the corner outside the train station. The unmarked hatch in the floor swung up easily on well-oiled hinges. She climbed down a ladder, balancing the hatch over her head, letting it down slow enough that she barely heard it close.

The corridor here looked like the one above, except greasier and more banged up. Pipes and braces and way-finding signs hung overhead. The lights shone bright and stark, encouraging her to go about her business instead of standing still in their cold, square patterns.

Before she started off, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. With any luck, she’d go straight to Nona, and she’d catch out the men who were using her. Reds were supposed to take care of you instead of hurt you. Reds were supposed to protect.

That’s what they said in school.

It was a lie. Mostly. Sometimes it was a serious lie.

If Nona had told her the truth last night, protecting wasn’t what they were doing to her at all. She’d come back with bruised forearms and a thick lip. She’d also come back with a flask of clear still and some pain cream her mom needed.

Everyone should be allowed to make
some
mistakes, but Nona had used up all the tolerance left for her, even though she was only a year older than Ruby. If she got caught skipping school or work again, she’d have to live down here the rest of her life.

Most lives down here didn’t last very long.

Ruby frowned as she passed a door that had been permanently bolted shut. A toxic sign warned people away. Probably medical waste.

Ruby and Nona had sworn to graduate together and get on one of the good crews together, but it was only going to happen if Ruby made Nona act differently.

Her journal was folded into a sharp hard square and clipped to her belt. She opened it up and set it to be ready to take pictures.

It was nearly the end of second shift, and the corridors were so quiet Ruby heard her own breath and the laboring of the air scrubbers above her head.

A tall, lanky man with three half-height bots squeaking along behind him rounded a corner. Ruby hid in a side corridor and waited for them to go by.

She swallowed and kept going, passing the bottom part of the water reclamation plant, its doors all marked with the same familiar water-drop symbol that she saw on the maintenance doors of her own level and on some of the pipes above her head.

Nona had told her that the men met her just past the water plant, in some space that had once been a storeroom, and then offices, and was now a makeshift sleeping quarters.

Ruby planned to catch them and report them. Sex with underaged girls was against the rules, even if it happened all the time. All she needed was proof. Gripping her journal so hard that the edges dug into her palms, she turned sideways and sidled along the wall, trying even harder to be quiet. She wanted to see what was happening and get a picture of the men, but she didn’t want them to catch her.

A squeak. A click. Laughter and then a harsh word, cutting it off. Footsteps around a corner from her, going away.

Heavy. Not Nona’s boots. Whose?

Ruby shuffled as fast as she could go without making noise. Rounding the corner, she caught a glimpse of two red uniforms. She reacted before thinking, drawing back, hiding. When she got the courage to look around again, she cursed under her breath. These were probably the men she had meant to catch, and now they were gone.

Should she leave or go find Nona and confess that she’d been spying on her? Ruby sighed. Maybe she should wait a minute for Nona; but she was afraid that if she stayed down here she might lose all her courage. She took a deep breath, just the way Bari had taught her—the steadying breath to soothe her nerves before she sang in front of a crowd—letting it out slowly.

She walked as calmly as she could around the corner.

Only empty hallway, with doors on either side.

She whispered, “Nona?”

Silence.

She said it louder. “Nona. Are you here?”

Ruby took a few more steps, and her foot slid on something wet on the floor. She bent down and ran her finger through it, bringing it up to her nose.

Blood.

Her body went hot and shivery, her breath racing up and down the back of her throat and catching in her nose.

One of the doors hung a little open. Just a crack.

She stepped to it and pushed it the rest of the way open. It squeaked.

A dark room full of lumps and shapes. “Nona?” she whispered again, and this time she heard the faint scratch of fingernails on metal.

Her journal was still in her hand, so she told it to illuminate.

On the floor, Nona, on her side, her arms tied behind her back, naked from the waist down. Her shirt had been pulled up over her face. The hem was soaked and dark with blood.

The rectangle of light from Ruby’s journal was too small to illuminate the whole room, so she flashed it around, making sure there was nothing else to see. There wasn’t. A soft moan and a shudder told Ruby that Nona was still alive. She knelt beside her and touched her arm. Her skin felt cool.

“What did they do to you?” Ruby murmured as she untied Nona’s hands and rolled her over.

“Oh, oh, oh.” She heard herself gasping the word over and over as she spotted a dark metal shard of thin pipe or bar sticking out on Nona’s side, blood welling out around it. “Ix!” she managed to scream out before she dropped her journal onto Nona’s bare chest. She scrabbled around in the gloom, found the bottom of Nona’s uniform, and folded it around the shard, applying pressure to try to stop the bleeding.

“Light. Ix. Light.”

Damned machine. The cloth under her fingers was getting soggy. “Hang on, Nona.”

Ix’s voice, finally. “What’s wrong, Ruby?”

“Nona’s dying.”

“Can you show me?”

“No. Send someone.”

“I already have.”

“Thank you. Light!”

Two of the four lights in the ceiling bloomed on. Ruby swallowed at her first real sight of Nona. She wanted a free hand to help cover her, but she didn’t dare stop doing her best to staunch the blood. At least it wasn’t gushing out over her fingers, but there was already so much on the floor. She’d never seen so much blood in her life, not even when Lou had cut off two fingers in the machine room. Ruby had been so close that his blood spattered her shirt.

Nona watched Ruby, her eyes intense in the white field of her pale face. She opened her mouth. “Thank you.”

“Who did this?”

Nona shook her head, barely.

“You knew them. You met them here.”

“Don’t. Mess with It. Ruby.” A long breath, thin, Nona wincing as she added, “Not safe. Don’t be me. Stay safe.”

“Shhh . . . stop talking. You’ll be okay.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Not. Good. Enough.”

“What wasn’t good enough?”

“Me.”

“Of course you were. You’re good. You’re my friend. I need you.”

Nona lifted a hand toward Ruby’s face. She almost made it, but her hand fell away before their skin touched.

Ruby froze, her hands still over the wound, her voice shaking as she called Nona’s name over and over.

Long after she’d lost all hope of helping Nona, and long before anyone came to help her, Ruby whispered, “I’ll change this. I’ll stop it. I’ll do it for you.” It became a mantra, and then almost a song, a shaky, scary little song that she sang over and over to the empty room while she waited.

“I’ll change this. I’ll stop it. I’ll do it for you. I’ll change this. I’ll stop it. I’ll do it for you. I’ll change this. I’ll stop it. I’ll do it for you . . .”

The rhythm of the mantra matched the rhythm of the train, the rock and murmur of the cars, as they slid across tracks in the darkness between pods. Ruby whispered the words again into the near dark, feeling Onor’s hand on her shoulder and hearing Lya whisper something into Hugh’s ear. Ruby whispered, “I’ll change this. I’ll make them stop. Nona.” Then she added, “Hugh.”

6: Kyle

Ruby jolted awake, blinking at bright light, surprised she’d passed so deeply into her daydreaming that she hadn’t felt the train stop.

Ben stood in front of her, his arms crossed, using his best red voice. “Off.”

Beside her, Marcelle had already gathered her things, and Onor looked anxious.

Ben gestured toward the door. Ruby clutched her bag to her chest. Where was her family? Why hadn’t she asked Ben about them?

The B-pod transport station looked like theirs, except painted mostly blue instead of mostly orange. It smelled cleaner than the train, and far more sterile.

As soon as they stepped off, a red called them over, squinting at them as his journal queried their chips. After a moment, he identified them by name. Apparently satisfied, he launched into a few sentences that he seemed bored of repeating. “You will remain here until told to go anywhere else. Travel between pods is currently restricted. Resettlements are based on order of evacuation.”

So she wouldn’t see her family. She swallowed hard, listening for the red’s next words.

“You will be expected to contribute to B-pod. Your ration allotments have already been switched in case you have immediate needs. Logistics will resettle you based on skills and family needs in the future.”

“My aunt is here,” Ruby said. “We can stay with her.”

“If you have family who were settled to other places, logistics will try to resettle you based on skills and family needs in the future.” The red repeated exactly.

She pursed her lips. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I’d like to find my aunt. Her name is Daria.”

The red blinked at her as if she’d sent him into full stop. “Do you know where she lives?”

She hadn’t seen her since she was ten. A long time ago. Maybe Daria wouldn’t even remember her. “No.”

“Then we’ll try to help you find her . . . in the future.”

Great. “In the future” meant don’t bother me now. He looked at his journal. “Ruby and Marcelle, you’ve been placed with Kyle Gleason.”

Ruby reached for Onor’s hand and did her best to look lost. “Onor should stay with us. We’re a family group.” Their chips would tell the guard something different if he was paying attention. She held her breath, waiting, smiling.

The red’s eyes had already been drawn to Hugh and Lya, who were coming off the train right behind them, Hugh’s head bandaged and his clothes stained with dried blood.

A tall man came forward to take Ruby’s bag. The man, who must have overheard, said, “I’ll make room.” He held a hand out toward them all. “I’m Kyle.”

“Thank you,” Ruby said.

Kyle’s dark hair hung long over dark eyes, and his skin was the brown of used robot oil. She held her hand out to him. “I’m Ruby, and these are my close friends, Marcelle and Onor.”

“One of you will need to sleep on the floor.”

Ruby nodded. “We’ll manage.”

Marcelle said, “Onor will sleep on the floor,” and then, a few seconds later, she squeaked.

Ruby didn’t turn around to see what Onor had done to Marcelle. “Thank you. I hope we won’t be here long.”

“Might be a while.”

It turned out that this part of the
Fire
had felt only small shudders, and no more. But they’d been told to expect refugees for weeks. They filled Kyle in on the barest details of their experience as they walked away from the transport station.

The corridors here were mostly blue as well, and a few of the walls had pictures of fish on them.

At home, the pictures had been of birds.

Kyle’s place was like her family’s hab—a small kitchen, a sink, a big shared-space room with a vid screen and a few chairs, a privy, and two small sleeping areas with two beds each. Shared walls with the neighbors on both sides. She asked for water, which tasted like the stars and a good song, and washed a bit of the scent of Hugh’s blood from the back of her throat.

Kyle said, “I’ve got to go clean up a mess I left behind at work when all this started. I’ll get that, and then I’ll bring you dinner.”

She hadn’t been thinking about food until Kyle mentioned it, but now it was hard to think about anything else. She looked around. There were few personal touches. A picture of an older woman on one wall. On another, a painting of one of the planets the
Fire
had been to, a blue-water world with almost no land. It wasn’t even the last one they’d been to, but somewhere in the middle, some place her grandfather’s grandfather might have seen before he died. The picture stuck in her head though.

She dibbed the top bunk, and she and Marcelle stowed their stuff in drawers built into the walls.

Onor had no stuff, but he hopped up on the top bunk and sat beside Ruby, both of their legs dangling over. Marcelle, standing against the wall, opened her mouth like she was about to complain, but he produced three energy gels from his pocket. “This’ll get us though.”

Ruby thought she might kiss him. Except he’d like it too much. So she punched him in the arm and took the gel. After the sweet sticky stuff hit her stomach and got her brains working again, she remembered why the picture of the planet bothered her.

“I didn’t tell you guys. We’re almost home. Fox said we’re going to be there soon, like in our lifetime. Maybe even in a year. The problems we’re having—the stuff today—that’s all from starting to slow down.”

“Fox?” Marcelle asked.

Ruby dug the story out for them both, doing her best in spite of being tired. Because Onor had seen it, she couldn’t hide that she’d kissed Fox. She didn’t tell them how much she’d liked it, or how she’d asked Fox to take her with him.

When Kyle came with food, they swarmed him, eating silently and fast.

As he was clearing up, Kyle said, “There’s a man who wants to see you. I told him tomorrow.”

“Who?” Ruby asked. “We hardly know anyone here.”

Kyle shook his head, and a thin smile showed one cracked tooth. “Owl Paulie.”

“I don’t know an Owl Paulie.”

“Me neither.”

“Or me.”

Kyle smiled at the serial response. “We all know him here. He’s kind of a legend to us—used to cause all kinds of trouble with the reds and get away with it. He said he owes you gratitude for wrapping up his grandson’s head.”

Hugh? “Okay, we’ll meet him.”

“That’s what I told him. I’ll take you on my way to work.”

In spite of her exhaustion, sleep visited in slight waves, and she spent a lot of time thinking. She needed to know who would help her here and who wouldn’t. Daria might not even remember her. Her family was far away, which was partly good, except that she’d like to know they were all right.

If only Fox had taken her with him. Then she’d be someplace strange, but it would be wonderful, too.