Veracity (41 page)

"Now you know."

Jingo moves closer, keeping his knife at the level of her throat. "We're not that different. If you'd been born a man, you'd be a Blue Coat, too. Hell, you might have been my partner. Damned shame, Ezra."

"Damned shame," she agrees, widening her feet and taking the sideways posture to which I've become so accustomed.

The Blue Coat guarding us has become intrigued. We've already become heaps of former things. Discarded bits of waste. He's bored with the lot of us. Would prefer to see the fight.

I catch Lilly watching him, too. We nod at each other. We'll wait for an opportunity. If it doesn't come, we'll make one.

"So Lazarus Cobb is right here in my little corner of the world." Skinner looks at Lazarus, who's glaring back at him from his station on the ground. "And
The Book of Noah
."

Lazarus pushes himself clumsily to his feet. "You want me, Jingo, you can have me. Leave Ezra alone."

"I don't want you, Mr. Cobb. It would be best for everyone if you'd sit back down." Skinner points the tip of his knife at the ground. Before Lazarus can bend his knees, Skinner starts toward him,
The Book of Noah
not ten feet away.

Lazarus holds up his hands. "Fine. Fine. It just takes me awhile." With a sound like snapping twigs, his hips hit the earth. Ruined shoes go up in the air.

Skinner marches back to Ezra.
"Where is it?"
he snarls.

"It?"

The thought of killing her has affected Jingo. His eyes are pink and unbalanced. He's developed a taste for retribution that has him constantly licking his lips. "Come on now. Where's your book?"

"Fight me and I'll tell you." Ezra glances my way briefly.
Watch now, Harper.
Then looks back at Skinner. "Who sold us out? Was it one of my team?"

Skinner smiles. "You don't trust your own people very much."

"They haven't seen the sun for years."

He points at Ezra with his knife while nodding at his compatriot. "You want a little of that before I gut her?"

The other man shakes his head, missing Ezra's eyes, which are on mine. "Hell, no. I know where that's been."

Ezra blinks.
Go.
It's all the opening I need.

Three quick strides and then I dive toward Skinner's partner. His gun fires as he falls. The bullets fly over my head and into our people. I don't think about who might have been shot or who's dead. I do it exactly as Ezra's taught me. Use the force of my stride to grab the earth with my hands and swing my outstretched legs into the side of his knees. There's the muted snap of a bone breaking and the man goes down with a scream. He loses his grip on the guns and one bounces toward me.

I pick it up and turn it round. Point it at the Blue Coat. His eyes grow large as I squeeze the trigger. The man's head recoils before I hear the sound.

Jesus, forgive me.
It's the worst feeling of my life.

He was someone's son. Someone's father maybe. Someone.

"Throw it down, Adams!" Somehow, Skinner has found Ezra's gun in the grass. He has it in his left hand, pointed at her head. His knife dangles awkwardly from his right hand. The tendons there no longer pull correctly on the fingers protruding from his cast and he has a hard time keeping up the blade. "I said, throw it down!"

Ezra's not going to wait for me to decide. She and Jingo are
only ten feet apart. She starts walking straight toward him. Is there before I can tell her no.

"Ezra!" Jingo lifts his gun. "Stop!"

But she doesn't.

The first bullet catches her in the top of the shoulder. It turns her sideways, like an invisible hand pushing. Does nothing to stop her progress. The second catches her beneath the ribs and she steps backward, then forward. By the time I have my gun trained on Jingo's head, she's already to him.

"No, Harper!" she shouts. "He's mine."

Ezra makes it look so simple. The knife comes easily away from Jingo's bad hand. With a simple swipe of the blade, she's drawn him a second mouth. It forms in the skin above his slate, smiles big. Jingo falls to his knees. His hands are up, trying to catch the blood that's pouring out of him, unsure of what to do with it. He blinks at Ezra, then falls back.

Ezra walks over so easily that for a precious moment, I allow myself the idea that she's not mortally wounded. But then she turns and the sun catches her clothes and the fresh holes made there. Her blood shining on the grass.

"Rita?" she asks.

"I'll handle Rita," I say, and Ezra nods her head.

"Good, then." Her words collapse in the air. Never really get out of her mouth.

Ezra is resting at my feet. Her gun is in my right hand. She's bled out and blue, and in no time at all. Lazarus has come forward and is standing next to me. The rest of us have made a semicircle around Rita, who's been set directly in our center.

"Why?" I ask her.

Rita's face is closed. She isn't giving me anything, least of all an answer.

"Was it Lazarus?"

Lazarus watches her with a look of incredulity. Betrayal shows as a set of two white circles on his cheeks.

I step closer. My gun raised. "Was it because he brought you into the bunker?"

Rita's eyes float over to our leader, then back to me. "I was just a kid," she says, pulling out her gun. "Six years beneath the earth! Six years without--"

Our weapons fire simultaneously.

I feel the bullet graze the side of my head, but there's no pain. It feels like someone running their fingers too close, pulling hairs. I have no idea if I've hit Rita.

Suddenly, I'm lying in the mud. Lilly's face is above me, blotting out the sky. Noam is over her shoulder.

"Harper!" She dabs a wad of cloth against my head where something warm and pulpy is leaking out. It's soaking my collar and running down my shirt to pool at the apex of my abdomen.

"Lazarus?"

Lilly pulls the towel away. The material is soaked in my blood. "He's fine. Rita didn't get the chance to shoot him."

I'm on the field. I can feel Lilly shaking my shoulders, but I've evacuated the premises. My body's grown tired of fighting me. Always in control. Pressing on when I was supposed to just stop. I never did, so my body's doing it for me.

I sigh and the breath takes me away from the field and Lilly's voice. The backs of my eyes go bright, then Veracity is there. Sitting in the same old chair, in front of the same yellow wall.

"Mom . . ." she begins. "I understand now."

This time I can see the whole room, including the woman who's now her mother. She's petite with black hair and a kind face. I can see their dog, a little brown terrier they call Scout who sleeps with Veracity at night. I can even see Veracity's room with its four-poster bed and blue and white comforter. Here, everything flows together. I dip my toe in this river and seem to be able to find any answer I seek.

I have no eyes here, no limits to my perception, so I focus on the ubiquitous. The worn floor tiles beneath her chair. The side table and its picture of Scout in an ornate silver frame. A clock and its red, boxy numbers flashing the time, just past seven in the morning.

I hear the electricity that begins the worst part of this dream. Then the sound of my daughter being electrocuted stops and the room becomes silent. I drag my attention back to her seat and, to my surprise, Veracity is still there. Staring calmly back at me.

"Mom, it's time."

Mom
. . . Her voice sends me traveling down a tunnel. Then I'm
dumped out on a floor and left lying in a closet, Veracity's picture taped to the ceiling above me.

You can do this,
she says. Then, just like before, she reaches down and cradles my face in her small hands.
Finish this.
Veracity looks me in the eyes and there it is, the answer reflected back to me. So simple and ever present. As most answers are.

I watch from above as floating bits of me are deposited on the shore of my body below. Watch as my chest rises and falls and the cool air enters my lungs. Immediately and with great force, I'm slammed back into myself. I lie gasping for air, blinking at the bright morning light like a fish just thrown out of the ocean. It is both painful and wondrous.

"Harper!" It's Noam. He's standing above me, wiping blood out of my eyes.

All around him, the sky has caught on fire.
Thank you, God.

I push myself upright and stare at the sparkling banks of salmon pink and daffodil yellow disappearing against the dark horizon. It's the aura of night, a set of colors I've never before noticed, or maybe never before had the ability to see. Beneath this sky, a cobalt blue floats over the dutifully breathing grass. The color comes up from each stem with a burst. Combined, these millions of blue exhalations make the earth look like the starriest of twilights. And then there are the colors of my compatriots. Beneath the war-worn colors of puce and ash, each and every one has retained a core of the most magnificent magenta. It is their literal spark of passion, still intact.

My sight is back. And maybe even more than that.

"I know how to find it . . ." I mumble.

"Sssshhhh. Quiet now." Noam dabs at my wound with the sleeve of someone else's shirt. "You're going to be fine. She got you right above the ear. It's just a flesh wound."

"Listen to me, Noam!" I grab his arm. "I know how to find the main redactor. You just have to get me there."

His eyes widen in understanding. "You're sure?"

I nod.
Yes.

"Okay, then. I'll get it set up."

As Noam prepares for our impromptu session, I retrieve
The Book of Noah
from its temporary resting place. It's glowing so brightly beneath the soil, I have to hold a hand over my eyes and direct our guard, Daniel, from a few steps back. It's a good thing my abilities have returned. The sprig of yellow flowers I'd used as a marker was lost in the scuffle. Probably knocked away and trampled under someone's boot.

Daniel digs up the dictionary and, with great reverence, wipes off as much of the moist dirt as he can. When I again accept my twenty-pound parcel, the silver jacket is still caked in brown mud. It's a long moment before I can bring myself to put the book back in its velvet binding. To me, this now represents the loss of Ezra. What she gave her life for.

I walk back toward the fence where the guards are meting out our dead. They're putting our fallen troops on this side of the fence and the Blue Coats on the other. Lilly is waiting to wrap a length of cheesecloth around my head. She agrees to hold my precious package for me while Noam and I go to work. Noam has collected one of the guard's backpacks, and from it pulls a perspiring silver canister and a large black tarp. Unfurled and held vertically to the earth, the material becomes a six-by-six-foot wall behind which I'll find some uninterrupted space.

"Come on, Harper." Noam beckons me with a hand.

I pray as I walk over.
God, make your truth mine.
This is our last chance.

Noam has taken off his jacket and laid it on the wet earth, making a place for me to sit without the distraction of sticky, seeping cold. The two guards holding the tarp stand on the
side nearest the fence. They've formed themselves into poles with only their fingertips visible over the cloth. Noam kneels down next to me and leans in close.

"Ready?" he asks.

I nod and close my eyes.

"The main redactor will look like the others. But it will pulse, as if it has a heartbeat. All the lives touched by it, John's nearness to it as he wanders the halls looking for it . . . they bind themselves to it. Make it into a sentient thing that calls to you, Harper. Find the life in it . . . the master . . . the master . . . the master . . ." Immediately, I am pulled out of my body and spirited away on the sled of Noam's voice.

Things are different this time. There is no light inside this dark tunnel, though I can see scant traces of it as I fly past. I appear to be high up in the sky, above the radiance of earth, and it's unnerving. The effort of looking for something familiar is affecting my body. The sensation of my eyes working hard beneath fluttering lids threatens to pull me back. I breathe it away. Think of Veracity's calm voice and of John and am rejoined to my course. The sky is rising or I'm falling and the barest bit of sun floods this hollow space.

I blink and am in the basement of the Geddard Building.

Usually, I see a place as a product of the energy within it. But the room is as clear as if I was actually standing on the white tile floor. It's huge, a football field with a nine-foot ceiling. There are six-foot-tall redactors organized around three main aisles that run the length of the building. I'm at the room's center and need to walk or run or think myself forward to a brown-red glow shining in the room's northeast corner.

Go
. A handful of steps and I've covered hundreds of yards. I'm now in the correct quadrant of the building with my head near the ceiling tiles and my lower half warm and tingling. I look down and find a redactor where my legs should be.

This refrigerator-size metal box is humming with active
machinery. I know each part's purpose and name. Even intimate details of the men and women who sparked it into life and fed it the colostrum of bios, making it thrive. Through this redactor flows more lives than I can stand to consider. Information is this creature's sustenance, received from the many and returned to the one. Then the flow reverses and information comes from the one and returns to the many. Red Lists and infractions and biographical data. Everything, about everyone. I sense it all.