Arclight (32 page)

I know now why Rue said that he wasn’t “Fade” but “Everything.” He doesn’t experience the world; he
is
every part of it, and every part of it
is
him. Whatever I was before Honoria named me Marina, I’m so much . . .
less
. . . now.

“You diminished me beyond words, and fractured me to less than nothing—a single voice pulled from the roar of the wind.”

“Very moving,” Honoria says. “But your story lacks perspective.”

All I have is perspective. The only way to truly know the Fade is to be the Fade. The only way to truly know the human is to be human. I’m both and neither in a single breath.

“That roar? It’s the voices of the ones they took. Those who ran in terror for days and weeks and months and years until they were chased down and devoured. If anything remains of who they were, it’s chained without the ability to speak or move or even think for itself. The creatures who spawned you—they’re a farce of the lives they ended.” Her voice turns nearly gentle, and I wonder if this is how she sounds telling stories to the children. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like to run in the middle of the day or burn your house as you went because you hoped it would keep them back. To count your living friends and family down like a timer set for Armageddon until you only needed the fingers on one hand. But I do.”

“That was generations ago,” Tobin says, tossing a look at me. It’s not possible for her to have memories that old, unless the Arclight holds bigger secrets than even he knows.

Honoria begins to pace again. Each time she passes us, I’m reminded of the pistol tucked into the back of her waistband; she’s never harmless. Even Tobin looks like he’s scared of her now.

“It started here, did you know that?” she asks. “With my father, in this room.” She sweeps a hand through the air, letting her eyes rove over the White Room’s expanse as though there are vistas drawn with lines Tobin and I can’t see. “His dreams lived and died here. He said they’d unlocked the secrets of life. There’d be no more disease, and people would live forever—but one tiny miscalculation and he was the first one to fade.”

For the first time, I see true emotion on her face, but it’s buried so deep she doesn’t know how to express it.

“The Fade took my family. I watched friends walk out as their minds were overcome, and they surrendered their bodies to a deathless oblivion. Trees, grass, animals, even the bacteria in the ground gave birth to the Dark. One night, my brother swore he heard his best friend calling to him, and when he took the walk, I went after him.”

She pauses long enough to push her hair back from her brow line so we can see clearly how far the V-shaped scar extends. Below it, her eyes shine, giving the grey a silver cast.

“That’s where I got this—when the thing that stole my father’s face took my brother from me. I heard them calling for me, but I fought. I held a piece of heated metal to my skin until it melted and they couldn’t speak to me anymore . . . I was sixteen.”

So that’s what Rue meant. Honoria removed herself from the hive; she went silent.

“It happened over and over as the ones I couldn’t reach replicated and spread. So I’d burn them again until they went quiet.” She turns her head, baring the back of her neck, pulls her sleeves up at the wrists. Her skin is nothing but scars on top of scars.

“How old are you?” Tobin chokes out. If Honoria was here to see humanity fall to the Fade, then she’s at least as old as his sixth-greats-grandfather.

“Old enough to know the Fade never truly leave a body once they’ve taken it.” She brushes her hair back over the V on her head. “There were billions of humans on this planet when I was a girl. In the course of three years, that number dropped by more than ninety percent. Over the next thirty, it did it again. We went from dominant species to endangered species in a single generation, and as we fell, they rose, using our own hands and feet to stand against us. So forgive me if I don’t tear up when you say the Fade felt the loss of
one
I dragged into the light.”

No.

She doesn’t get to turn this around so I pity her.

“You want to know why I survived when the others didn’t, Honoria? You want to know the big magic secret?
Rue
. That’s it. He kept me sane. He was more afraid of the void than the pain, and he refused to let the others shield him from it. We aren’t like the Fade you knew; we’re born connected. Because of you, I can never get that back.”

I expect Tobin to be furious, hearing me talk about Rue and what he meant to the me-I-used-to-be, but instead, he steps closer. He doesn’t say anything, but his arm draws me in and I settle against his side.

“We can cure your friend as easily as we did you. We intended to, as soon as we had the data we needed, but he ran off before we had the chance. All you have to do is bring him back and you’ll never have to miss him again.”

“It’s not a cure!” Tobin says exactly what I’m thinking. “Don’t you realize you did to Marina the exact thing you accuse the Fade of doing to your family?”

“And I’m going to make sure that everyone here knows it,” I say. “The only danger they have to fear is the one you’ve put them in.”

“Go ahead.” Honoria stands aside. “Walk out that door and tell your friends the truth. Tell them exactly who you are and where you came from. See how fast they turn on you.”

“I don’t have to,” I tell her. “The people you tried to sacrifice will say everything for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

I count the surprise she can’t cover as a small victory, hopefully the first of many to come before sunrise.

“They’re coming home. Like they’ve been trying to do since
you
locked them out.”

“To
protect
the compound. They’ve been exposed too long.”

“I saw them,” Tobin says. “Marina saw them. Annie saw them. They bleed red.”

“How many?”

“All of them. The Fade healed them and let them go.”

“Impossible,” Honoria says, but her assertion is countered as, one by one, the different security zones light up on-screen, screaming breach.

She brushes us aside and enters a swift sequence of commands into the console. The chain of file headings disappears, replaced by a grid of camera feeds from the Arc. Near each one stands a familiar face: Silver, Dante, Trey, Becca, nearly all the members of our year plus Trey’s. They’re jumping back and forth across the barrier to overload the sensors, throwing things at the lamps, and taking out the bulbs and lenses by shattering them.

Honoria selects the camera nearest Anne-Marie. It zooms in as Anne-Marie kneels down and places her palms flat to the ground so the nanites hidden beneath her sleeves rush off now that the Arc’s gone darker on the boundary. She steps back and watches them fan out into lines while the first signs of doubt appear in those close enough to see it happen.

Up to now, it would have been easy for them to believe Anne-Marie was still herself. But seeing those marks on her skin, and seeing them move, the others must be questioning whether or not they’ve just sealed their own fates.

“What is she doing?”

“Opening the door.”

Rue rises from the ground. He grows large on the screen as he nears the camera, and sets a path straight for the Arclight.

“I don’t have to call Rue back,” I say. “He never intended to leave me behind.”

T
HE
Arclight’s in chaos, the walls screaming red, when we leave the White Room. Honoria tears out so fast, she doesn’t bother to check the door. Why should she? The Fade have just been ushered across the Arc; we’re the least of her worries.

Posts go unmanned while those responsible for them try to locate their kids. As one parent after another checks their wrist alarms to track their families, their faces turn an apprehensive grey. They huddle up in the hall, comparing their findings to those of the others around them. If the plan’s on schedule, then the trackers should be going off-line.

“We need to find Annie before Honoria does something stupid,” Tobin says.

In her present state of mind, she could very easily write Anne-Marie off as an acceptable loss. No one will question that Anne-Marie’s turned; not once they know she’s the one who let the Fade in. No one will balk at the suggestion that she’s not really Anne-Marie, but an imposter who fooled the other teens into helping her.

After all, everyone knows that’s what the Fade do. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.

“Get to your bunker,” a guard in the hall says absently, while pressing the command buttons on his personal alarm. He doesn’t wait for a response.

We sprint through patrols and groups of younger children being herded toward the safety zones as they wail for their siblings. We try to keep our heads down so no one notices us, but eventually our luck runs out.

“Tobin?” Mr. Pace skids to a halt on his way around a corner at the end of the hall, between us and the door we need to reach.

“This way.” Tobin snags my arm to lead me down a different corridor.

We take off, leaving no question that all pretense of my injuries in the Grey was just that. Mr. Pace is right behind us, and much faster than I’ve ever realized.

“Get back here!”

“Go help Annie,” Tobin says. “I know how to handle him better than you do.”

I doubt anyone’s going to be able to “handle” Mr. Pace right now.

“He’s less likely to chase you,” I argue. “Find your dad.”

I stop on the spot, not giving him a choice. Tobin scowls at me, but keeps going. If he slows down, we’ll both be caught, and he’s of more use to the others than me. There’s a chance that the guards might listen to him; with me, they’d likely shoot first and worry about asking me questions if I survive.

“Tobin, stop,” Mr. Pace calls, pulling up short when I block his path. He glances at my leg, with its now missing limp. “You weren’t hurt.”

“Sure I was,” I say, crossing my arms to make a stand right here in the hall. I’m not much of a deterrent size-wise, but my rising temper makes up for it. “But the Fade make better medics than Doctor Wolff.” I guess now I know why he was so insistent that I’d be a natural healer.

One of those split-second emotional shifts lets me see fear on Mr. Pace’s face before it’s covered again.

“Trying to figure out how they healed me if I still bleed red?”

“How’d you get out of the White Room?”

“Honoria ran when the alarms sounded. Tobin and I decided not to stay behind and maybe get locked in for good.”

“Where were you going?”

“It’s an exterior door. Where do you think? We both know I don’t belong here.”

This time it takes more effort to cover his surprise.

“They’re not what you think, Mr. Pace.” If I can make him believe the Fade let me go voluntarily, then it’ll be easier when Col. Lutrell arrives. “I came back to help Tobin and his dad.”

“James is dead, and you just sent his son outside in the middle of a Red-Wall.”

“Anne-Marie’s out there,” I start to say, but I’m drowned by a screeched “Annie!”

Anne-Marie’s mother rushes from person to person in the hall, gripping their hands frantically in turn.

“Elias!” she calls as they point her down the hall.

Mr. Pace’s attention snaps to the sound of her voice.

“Dominique?” he calls.

“She’s gone, Elias,” she blubbers, nearly wiping out on the tile. She grabs Mr. Pace’s hands in her own, shaking them while she trembles. “Annie wasn’t in the apartment when I got back. . . . I went to get her something to eat. I was only gone five minutes.”

“You were supposed to keep her in sight,” he charges. “I told you she was at risk.”

“She said she wanted a shower. I didn’t think it would hurt, but she’s not there. Look!” She raises her arm, jiggling her wrist alarm at him. “It’s dead, Elias. The kids’ alarms are dead. Someone turned them off. Who could do that?”

Tobin’s father, for one.

“Did you check the hospital?” Mr. Pace asks. “Trey—”

“Jove’s alone. He gave me this.” Anne-Marie’s mother opens her other hand and unfolds a paper napkin that’s been clenched in her fist. The word
outside
is scrawled across the wrinkles.

“Outside, Elias.
Outside
. Why are my babies outside?”

“Trey thought he was going after his sister,” Mr. Pace says, resigned to the dark end he sees ahead. Tobin, Anne-Marie, Trey—in his mind, they’re already gone.

“Trey’s not in danger,” I say. “Anne-Marie needed his help, and Silver’s, and—”

The Red-Wall cuts off without warning, but instead of producing the usual blinding light, or going back to its inert state with a blinking blue indicator, the hall’s bathed in an eerie yellow-green.

“Where are the lamps?” Anne-Marie’s mother asks, clinging tighter to Mr. Pace.

“This is emergency power,” he says. “From the old generators. We’re on fumes.”

He turns from Anne-Marie’s mother back to me. There’s not much left of the unflappably calm man I know as my teacher and protector. I’m on the other side now—the thing he’s protecting someone from, and the determination I’d found comforting as his student gives me chills.

“Where’s Annie?” He doesn’t have to raise his voice. That restrained whisper is the most sinister thing I’ve ever heard. “Where did she take them? What did she do?”

“The only way for Colonel Lutrell and the others to come home was to knock out the lights,” I say. “Mr. Pace, please. Tobin’s father said you were his friend, that you’d listen. . . .”

Anne-Marie’s mother comes unglued.

“What did you do to my daughter? She’s out there because of you, and now you’re inside while my Annie’s out there with those . . .
things!
They should have never brought you back here.” Her hand comes down across my cheek in a stinging slap.

“I know that!” I’m also tired of shouldering the blame for what others have done to me. “I know I shouldn’t be here, but he”—I point to Mr. Pace—“and his friends brought me here so Honoria could play mad scientist. If you want to hit someone, hit him!”

“What’s Honoria got to do with anything?”

“Only everything.”