Arclight (29 page)

Cherish who is a Fade.

Cherish who is his mate.

Cherish who is not Marina.

Marina never existed, because she is Cherish.

I can’t think of Cherish as me. The barrier’s still there, like pressing against that glass wall in the White Room, being able to see and hear, but not touch.

“I was a Fade, but they changed me.”

“Doctor Wolff would have known,” Tobin says desperately.

“He did.”

It’s such an easy answer. If I remove everything I was told by Dr. Wolff and Honoria, then all the assumptions of my being and the stitched-together explanations of my survival fall away. They knew I was a Fade this whole time, and they changed me into . . .
this
. I’m not a cure sent into the Dark to save what was left of humanity. I’m not the hope for a better future. I’m someone’s science experiment.

“He said you were a survivor,” Tobin argues. “Why would he lie?”

“Because we thought she was a human turned Fade,” his father says, his voice thick. “We thought they all were. Honoria and the Doc have been enhancing your mom’s suppressant for years, trying to make it into something viable to cure those beyond the Arc so we could regain some footing in the world. But all we did was drag her back over a line she never crossed in the first place.”

Another apology hangs on the end of his words, but he pulls it back.

“You saved her.” Tobin turns stubborn, refusing to humor his father’s confession. “You went into the Grey because she was human. You said—”

“I lied, Tobin—every time we went out. We knew if the suppressant worked, we’d need a way to explain how a new face appeared in the compound, and we thought the lie would be easier on everyone.”

“But why?” Anne-Marie asks the question I don’t have the nerve to ask myself. All I can do is sit here on my knees, watch Rue while he watches me, and not let go of my . . .

Blanca’s my little sister
.

My family. My own blood. It’s a painful truth, but there’s been too much pain too fast for me to feel anymore. It simply insinuates itself among the rest; I’ll feel it later.

Blanca picks up my thoughts as though I’d called to her out loud, and holds tighter.

The inaccuracy of the name Anne-Marie’s given her becomes clear. Her name isn’t Blanca, or anything that can be spoken. This baby-Fade clinging to my neck and wrapping her legs around my torso is the scent of air and the way it sounds when it blows through the trees, the color of flowers at our feet. My flowers, hidden and protected in the Arclight’s garden. Flowers that flourish in my mind, drawn by a child’s imprecise hand, over and over.

A wail comes out of my mouth so full of agony, and so far from human, that I don’t recognize it as my own voice until Blanca squeaks and runs to hide behind Anne-Marie.

“What’s going on?” Anne-Marie asks. Blanca shifts her colors, becoming a matched extension of Anne-Marie’s uniform.

“She was trying to tell me her name,” I sob, with my arms around my middle to contain the ache. “She wanted me to remember her.”

“The little one’s her sister, Annie. That’s why she kept following you into Marina’s room. She was worried.” Col. Lutrell sits heavy on the ground, as though my grief is contagious.

“Does this mean Marina can’t go back with us?” Anne-Marie asks.

“No,” Tobin answers at the same time Rue chimes in with “Yes.”

“Cherish remains to home,” Rue says.

“This isn’t her home,” Tobin insists.

“I brought Cherish to home,” Rue argues; the marks on his skin stretch into thinner lines with sharper edges. “Cherish remains.”

“Honoria fixed her.
Marina
belongs with us.”

As if I needed further proof that I can’t bridge the gap between my Fade life and my human one, even my name becomes an argument.

“M’winna me,” Blanca says from behind Anne-Marie. I can hear the tears in her voice as she disputes Tobin’s claim. “M’winna me! M’winna me!”

Rue joins me and lifts me up off the ground. Through Cherish’s eyes, his name changes from an expression of sorrow to a bird song, and cool rain through the canopy leaves—that unnamable something in the Dark that drew me into synch with every step I took deeper into its heart. My bird and my flower bush, the things I protected inside the Arclight for fear they’d be taken from me or destroyed . . . now I know why. I’d already lost them once.

Cherish catches me off guard. Free to act, she throws my arms around Rue’s neck and holds tight.

No . . .
I
hold tight. Cherish is me, not some foreign spirit inside my body.

I feel like I’m wearing a costume. These aren’t my arms, and this isn’t my skin. My hands, my hair, none of it’s mine. And when Rue returns the embrace, radiating that same fierce concern, followed by relief that turns my muscles into jelly, the divide that shouldn’t exist becomes clear. I’m Cherish, but she’s not me anymore.

“Marina . . .”

I meet Tobin’s eyes over Rue’s shoulder. Anger I would have expected, but not vacant, bereft shock. He’s the shattered shell from the photos taken after his mother died.

“Put me down, Rue,” I say, wriggling out of his arms.

He sets me on my feet, but doesn’t let go; his hands settle on my face. That brilliant aura turns dingy, and the joyous vibration I’d felt when I first found myself stutters, losing momentum.

“Cherish is still silent,” he says, confused.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “You recognized me in the hall when we caught you.”

I hadn’t understood at all. What I assumed was a plea for me not to hurt him that day was his first promise not to hurt me. Rue was trying to tell me I was safe with him.

“I gave you my Cherish’s image.”

“But you didn’t tell me what it meant.”

It’s a twisted proving of my own assumptions. I
was
the cause of all the turmoil, but not for the reasons I thought. As I clung to the people who stole me away, I was hiding from the one trying to rescue me.

“You didn’t say ‘Marina, you are Cherish.’”

“You’re not dead water. I can’t say ‘You are Marina, you are Cherish.’ We should return to home,” he says, taking my hand and tugging me back toward the trail I’d taken from the Fade houses.

“As should we,” Col. Lutrell adds. He nods into the distance where the Arc has begun to shine through the night sky and into the Grey. “If there’s any chance at all for us, we have to go before the kids are locked out, too.”

Agreement passes through the Fade, followed by hope that Col. Lutrell and the other survivors are able to return to where they want to be. It’s laced with a mild sting, anticipating the loss of their presence among the hive. Separation is the Fade’s greatest fear.

“A couple of us are going to have to hang back until we can explain what happened,” Col. Lutrell says nervously.

“They are welcome to remain,” Rue says.

“Thank you,” Col. Lutrell says. He glances at me, then away to Tobin and Anne-Marie, and I know what he wants to ask, but Anne-Marie beats him to it.

“You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”

Blanca tugs my shirttail, and grateful for an excuse to turn away from Rue’s over-acute focus, I cling to the sister I barely remember. She settles into my side, leaning against my shoulder as though this is something she’s used to.

One more awkward reflection of a life I can’t believe is mine.

“M’winna me,” she says again, twisting strands of my hair in her fingers.

“I . . . I don’t know, Blanca,” I say. There’s no way to verbalize her actual name, but the one Anne-Marie’s come up with doesn’t seem to bother her. “I don’t think I can stay.”

How can I exist in the Fade’s world without the nanites required to experience it? Whatever Honoria’s suppressant did, my body’s static now, unlike Blanca’s or Rue’s. His nanites healed me, like they were designed to do, but they didn’t bond to my cells. They couldn’t fight what the injections and inhalers did to me. They can’t turn me back into the creature made of a billion parts working as one.

I’m immune to my own nature.

“Cherish belongs to home,” Rue says.

“We’re not going back without
Marina
.” Tobin tilts forward onto his toes. It’s a subtle shift in his posture I’ve come to recognize as the tipping point of his temper.

“Stop it, both of you,” Anne-Marie orders, making the questionable choice to step between them with a hand on each one’s chest to hold them apart.

“You can’t want to leave her behind,” Tobin says.

“Of course not,” she says. “But we can’t go dividing Marina up like the last cupcake at snack time.”

“Annie’s right,” Col. Lutrell says. “Marina, it’s up to you. What do you want to do?”

It seems like someone should have asked that sooner.

“What happens if I stay?” I ask.

“You remain Cherish,” Rue says, but I don’t think that’s possible. Even if I could accept Rue’s offer and take the nanites back into my system, I’m not completely sold on the idea of ceding part of myself to the hive. I’ve spent too long trying to figure out who I am to be redefined again.

“If I don’t go back with you, what will Honoria do?” I ask Col. Lutrell.

“Assuming Tobin and Annie can talk some sense into Elias, I’m hoping he’ll force Honoria to bring us in. We’ll have to spend some time in quarantine, which is why I want to go first. Someone like Elaine would die under the lamps.”

“But the nanites correcting your vision will be fried,” I say. “Honoria won’t let you out of the White Room until the shine’s gone.”

“These people are my responsibility, Marina. If there’s a risk to be taken, then I’m the one who takes it.”

“The people, but not the Fade, you mean?” I charge. “They saved your life. It’s not your risk, it’s theirs.”

“And if they’d agree to leave my body, I’d let them, and head home blind, but they won’t. They’re actually quite stubborn.” He glances at Rue, then back to me. “So is Honoria.”

“She’s going to keep doing this, isn’t she?”

Dr. Wolff called me the success that came after her failures. I’m the lucky one, and that’s a terrible thing to consider.

“As long as she has what she believes to be a viable cure”—he winces at the word—“she’ll use it.”

“And if she takes someone younger next time, or they die like the ones who came before me?” We’re past the point of evasions and excuses. “What if she takes Blanca?”

“She won’t,” Anne-Marie says. “We won’t let her . . . right?”

Col. Lutrell’s answer is a look that’s anything but encouraging. Honoria will call me proof of success, and use that to justify another scouting party—and another, and another, until the forgotten fight between humans and Fade turns back into a war.

I left the Arclight believing it would make the people I cared about safer, but now I know the only way to save anyone is to go back.

“Are you sure they’ll let us in?” I ask.

“They’ll be cautious, but containment procedures allow you to reenter.”

“No,” Rue growls. “Cherish won’t go back to burn.”

He’s right; Cherish isn’t going back at all. All this time I thought I’d lost myself in the Dark, and it was the Light I’ll never recover from.

“I’m going, Rue. We have to find a way to let the Arclight know the truth.”

“No,” he says again, stalking closer.

“They think the Fade are sick humans,” I say. “As long as they believe that, and so long as they think that what you call voices are some kind of malignant parasite, they’re going to keep taking us. If they know the truth, then there’s a chance they’ll keep Honoria from stealing anyone else’s voice the way she did Cherish’s . . . mine”

“M’winna me,” Blanca says, and shows me another drawing of the two of us tied together. I’m sure it’s her idea of a threat—
you’re staying here if I have to tie you down
.

But I don’t waver. Not on this.

“Think about it, Rue. The place they put you was built to hold your kind.”

“
Your
kind,” he says automatically.

“It used to be,” I say, and feel the dizzying rush of confusion and hurt my words send his way.

“Burned,” he says, opening his own memory to give me a taste of what it was like for him when Cherish was in the White Room where he couldn’t reach her.

“I know you’re scared. . . .
I’m
scared. But, we’re stopping this here,” I say.

“You need to go back to the White Room,” Col. Lutrell says.

“No!” both Rue and Tobin shout, for once in total agreement.

“If there’s proof Marina didn’t start out as human, then it’ll be there,” Col. Lutrell says. “Find it. I’ll be there to back you up.”

“How are we supposed to get you around the SOS?” Tobin asks.

“Your friend here popped the lock on one of the ladder chutes. We can get in that way, but it’s dangerous. We need a diversion . . . if you’re still willing to help us,” he says to Rue.

The nod Rue gives in return is automatic, as though he’d already decided to follow us whether we needed him or not.

“Good.” Col. Lutrell turns from the Fade to Anne-Marie. “Annie—do you trust me?”

“Of course,” she says, but some of her enthusiasm dies down when Col. Lutrell reaches for her hand and Rue’s, and joins them together beneath his own, just before the lines on Rue’s skin drain away, transferring to hers.

A
N
oppressive sort of dread descends once the Arc’s close enough to see clearly, burning through the gloom around me and Tobin and Anne-Marie without making a dent in the chill. She’s fallen into step beside him, as I walk behind. Every time he cuts his eyes over his shoulder to see if I’m still here, I want to turn and find someone else, farther back.

“This isn’t going to work,” Anne-Marie whispers to him. The problem with ears that can hear everything is that you hear the things you’d rather miss. “Not if you two act like you’re allergic to each other.” She stops and grabs his sleeve to make him face her.

“That’s my bad arm!”

“Your arm would be good as new if you hadn’t refused to let them help you. And I don’t feel like explaining to Jove that we lost our only chance to bring his mom home because you want to pout more than you want to do what needs to be done.”