Escape (Alliance Book 1) (16 page)

He didn't need to tell her, looking at him like that, with the knowing already in her eyes, so he just nodded to her and to Drake, who seemed to know everything Ella knew without needing to talk to her, and walked over to the chair by the window, the farthest from the wall with the pictures on it, pictures he couldn't get out of his head now. Drake had his shirt off and the strange man was touching him, like he was looking for something. Of course he is, stupid, the tag. Ella was holding Drake's hand, as if this looking could hurt him, and then he knew she wasn't holding it for that, but for the chance that they couldn't find it, and that she was doing it for her, not Drake.

Ams was curled up on the couch, her back to everybody. He knew he had to let her be after what she saw. There is no talking that out of somebody. So he watched the man move from Drake's back to his chest, poking at him with his fingers, probing, and then he stopped and looked at Ella. He was pointing at a spot right over Drake's heart, "It's in here. I knew they'd do something like that sooner or later, so you couldn't disable it with an electric current without killing the person. Any current to where the tag is would stop his heart is what I'm saying." He looked sad saying it. He also no longer seemed mad in the way he talked now, as if drawing that picture on the wall, letting them know what happened, made him okay again. He didn't even seem to notice when Ams walked in, didn't seem to mind her now. Maybe Ella and Drake told him about the girls, and he knew they wouldn't hurt him. He was just glad the man wasn't ranting anymore.

"Can you cut it out?" Drake asked him, flatly. The man shook his head, "We don't have anything to do that with. You'd need meds, to put you under. They put it really deep in there. I'd have to cut your chest open, and it's too risky to do something like that. I could kill you. I'm a scientist, not a doctor. I wouldn't know how to do that, get it out of you without killing you, I'm sorry." Drake nodded to him then and walked away, not looking at Ella.

Her pad was out and she was writing frantically on it, and showing it to Drake, and he was shaking his head at her. They kept at it for a while, and finally he couldn't take it anymore, so he walked over to her and took her pad, quickly flipping through the last few pages. She wanted to do it. She thought she could, working in clinics as long as she had. She'd dealt with all kinds of wounds. She could make it work. But Drake wasn't letting her for some reason. He couldn't figure out why he wouldn't let her do this thing she at least had some training for but would have no problem letting this stranger try to cut him open. It didn't make sense. Only it did. Of course it did. He thought of Ams stitching him up and how badly it hurt her to hurt him then, and she didn't even really know him yet. Drake didn't want Ella to hurt for him. But he had to let her do this. There was no other way.

"You have to let her, Drake. I'll help. Ams will help, but you have to let her try. It's her burden to carry if it goes wrong, not yours. You can't take that away from her, I won't let you." He meant that last part. He couldn't let Ella be destroyed by losing Drake, not if there was anything at all she could do to change it. Drake was staring at him, as if he didn't know who he was, as if he had forgotten that Ella was his much longer than she was Drake's. After a beat he nodded at him, and left the room.

Riley walked out after him, knowing he needed to talk to this man in a way that would make him okay with all of this, not the way he just did. He saw him standing at the end of the hallway, leaning on the wall, eyes closed. He was still shirtless, and Riley stared at his large chest, thinking how little sense it made that this big man seemed to feel so little to everyone, to himself. Little enough to get picked on at school, and then at the compound. He walked up to him, thinking of just the right way to say it, looking at his face, eyes still closed.

"If you could have done something to stop Hassinger that night," and he saw Drake flinch at that, but knew he had to keep going, "if you could have stopped it but I didn't let you, and you had to live with that, would you ever forgive me, Drake?" He opened his eyes now, staring at him and then shook his head. "That's what it would be like for her if you don't let her try to save you. I am not an idiot, Drake. I know you don't plan on going back if we can't get the tag out of you. So you have to let her save you or you will leave her with watching you die, not knowing if she could have helped, and that will destroy her. I can't let you do this to her or to you. I see the guilt you feel when you see my scars, but you couldn't have done anything then, Drake. I always knew you couldn't have. But maybe she can," he said softly, as softly as he could, and watched Drake nod at him again, his face tense. He knew he hurt him, could see it in his eyes, but he knew it was the only way to get him to see it the way Ella would if he didn't let her do this.

Ella was writing things in her pad when he got back to the room, with the strange man hovering over her. It occurred to him just now that nobody knew his name, or maybe it was just him who still didn't. "Stan," he told him flatly when he asked, and went back to whatever he and Ella were working on. He sat down next to Ams on the couch, watching her. Without thinking he reached out and patted her hair, the little bit of it that was sticking out from under the blanket, until she stirred and she looked up at him, eyes red-rimmed, tired. He hugged her silently, breathing in her Ams smell, holding her close enough to feel her heart beating into his own chest.

"We are ready, if the big man is, and anyone else you think you need who could help you. You'll need all the help you can get. I'm not so good with blood. There is a hospital about 200 meters down the road. It'll have all the surgical tools we'll need, but they wouldn't have left any of the stuff to knock him out with. We'll have to pick up some liquor on the way to help him some, we just can't give him too much, or he won't stop bleeding, but it should be enough to take the edge off."

When they finally made it to the hospital, it was starting to get dark outside. They had to turn the lights on to just read the signs for the different floors. Surgery was on the 7th. He had never been to a real hospital before. In Waller, they went to this one doctor who would still barter for something his parents could give him the few times that he got sick enough to need medicine. They went to his house, a shack only slighter bigger than theirs, that smelled like chemicals. He didn't remember much of it except for the smell. It smelled like that here too.

Drake hasn't said a word since they left, not to Ella, not to anybody. He was walking behind all of them with Ams, holding on to her little hand. He loved that little girl since the night she ran up to him all tears in her hands, saving Riley. It's as if they knew the best in each other and never needed to talk about it. Loved her in the way that she'd never think Drake capable of thinking of her as a monster. He shook these thoughts out of his head. Lousy sense of timing he had with his thoughts.

The surgery floor was flooded with light now. They followed the strange man, Stan, through sliding glass doors into a large open room with a flat bed in the middle under even more lights. Those lights came on now. Stan must have found the switch. Ella walked over to the metal shelves against the wall, and started pulling out various shiny objects and putting them on top of a rag on the tray she was holding.

He flinched involuntarily when he saw a tiny-handled knife with a short sharp blade on it. He looked at Drake, hoping he could take this. His face looked serious, and a little sad, but he didn't seem afraid. Ella stuck all the metal things she collected into what looked like an oven, and pressed a button. The thing beeped after a little while, and she took the metal things out and put them back on a tray next to the bed. She seemed done with preparing whatever she needed to.

Stan handed Drake a bottle of something that he swiped from a tiny dark-looking place on the way here. He went in there by himself and they let him, somehow knowing he wouldn't run, that he had nowhere to run to. Drake was shaking his head at it, "I don't drink."

Stan unscrewed the cap, took a long sip, and handed it back to Drake, "Today, you drink, big man. Or you die from shock," and he did then, drank in long gulps, making a face as if what he was drinking was hurting him. It probably was, by the looks of it. And when he had as much of it in him as he could take, he gave it back to Stan, pulled his shirt off and walked over to where the bed was, nodding to Ella that he was ready, and then whispering something to her that wasn't meant for the rest of them.

She strapped his arms to the bed, put a wide belt around his waist and tightened it. He and Ams would have to hold him down by the shoulders, so he didn't accidentally hurt himself. He hoped they could do this thing, and a small part of him wanted to say goodbye in case something went wrong, but even the thought of doing it scared him, as if he were inviting the wrongness, so he shook his head hard, and put both his hands on Drake's shoulder, pressing it into the bed with all his weight.

He didn't scream when she cut into him, eyes shut so tightly he saw the creases all around them. His jaw was clenched, hard. He could feel the tension in him, but he didn't make a sound, and he didn't move, and after too long of cutting into him, Ella pulled a tiny metal round thing out of him, smaller than one of the eyes on Brody's dragonfly. She was stitching him up now, and her hands moved in a way he knew she's done this many times before, not the way Ams' hands did it. He was still pressing on Drake with everything he had, and Ams was doing it on her side, only her face was wet, and she looked like she'd want to take a swig out of that bottle when this was all over.

And when it was, and they let Drake just lay there and breathe afterwards, they all did, Ella too, sharing it, drinking the strange liquid that burned all the way down. He knew what it was for then, this liquid Brody handed him all these years ago to take away his pain at having lost everybody.

He drank to make everything blurry in his mind, the door of their little house with the words on it, Samson's collar, Ams kicking at a dead body, Drake who wouldn't scream, and that awful charred field on the edge of the city.

He drank until all he could see was Ella leaning over Drake and kissing him softly on the lips, not caring that everyone was watching her do it, not caring about anything other than this man who was still breathing, and who wouldn't have to die now.

What the hell would possess her to hide in this nothing of a room?
She and Riley spent half the night looking for her after getting back from the hospital, leaving Ella to watch over Drake. Half the night of frantically checking every room on the floor, hoping she didn't run off while they were gone.

She felt guilty for not knowing until they were done with Drake that Laurel wasn't with them. None of them noticed. She was mad at herself then, and scared when she couldn't find her in any of the places she expected to. Finally they did find her, curled up like a little kid in this tiny chair, head in her knees.

And she wouldn't talk to them, when they got her out of there, not even about how Drake's tag was out of him now, and that he could come with them wherever they were going and they'd be safe because of his not having the tag anymore. She just nodded at them and didn't say anything. They put her to sleep on a couch in the east room, and she stayed with her the rest of the night, arm over her, waiting for her to talk, but she didn't talk, and then the stuff she drank finally took her to a dreamless sleep, and she was glad for not having any dreams in her.

A voice of a stranger woke her up before she felt ready to be up, so she lay there listening for a while. Not a stranger, Stan, she heard it now. Stan and Laurel. Something about the implant. She made herself wake up more, enough to where these snippets made sense. Laurel wanted to know if the implant could make them do things they didn't want to do, bad things. She thought that's how all the people here went to the fire, but he was telling her that Zoriners didn't have implants. Of course not. Everyone knew that. Laurel knew that. She wanted him to tell her how it worked and if there was a way to get it out of her. It seemed to be scaring her, to have it in her.

Ams couldn't figure out why it would suddenly be scaring her after so many years of it being there. And then she knew what it was that Laurel was so afraid of.That whoever put those implants in them could maybe do something to them through these things, change them somehow. But Stan didn't know much about how they worked. Just that they were these tiny neuro blocks of data that were now a part of them, not really implants so much as microscopic computers, and they couldn't take them out like they did Drake's tag. He seemed genuinely sorry telling her this.

She was up now, all the sleep gone from her, looking at Laurel and reading so much fear in her face, fear and sadness. Stan was drawing pictures for her on one of Ella's pads, and chewing on the pencil when he was thinking of how to draw something. These weren't like his other drawing, like the stick figures and boxes earlier.

He drew the little circle metal thing they took out of Drake, and then a drop of blood, and a tiny speck inside the blood bubble, and then added a few other specks like that and drew tiny lines between them. That was the implant, these tiny specks that would all fit inside a drop of blood and still have plenty of room left to move around.

Then he drew a small thing that looked like a bug, like something Riley called a spider, only he made it look shiny with the pencil, as if it were made out of metal. "This thing - this I can fix. It's why Ella can't talk. They didn't take her voice, they just put this bug in there and it's clamped on her vocal chords so nothing comes out when she speaks. I can fix this, brake it with an electro-magnetic current. It's the only thing I can fix, I'm sorry," and he really did seem sorry that he couldn't fix anything else.

She ran out looking for Riley. They had to tell Ella that this strange man could fix her voice. She didn't want to tell him about the other thing yet. She didn't think anybody could make their implants do something strange, but a part of her wondered the same thing Laurel did. A part of her was afraid of it too. Riley was already at the hospital with Ella and Drake, the note he left for her told her, so she ran the few hundred meters, fast, impatient to see him and to see Drake, hoping he was awake now, and well enough for her to hug him. She desperately wanted to hug Drake.

When she got there, he was awake, and she hugged him lightly, afraid of the thing on his chest, just enough to let him know how worried she was for him last night. And then she told all of them about the bug, the metal spider, that Stan said he could make not work anymore, and Ella would get her voice back, and that they wouldn't have to cut into her or anything, just zap at it with something the name of which she couldn't remember now.

It made her happy to tell them, and see Drake and Riley smiling now, only Ella didn't seem happy about any of it. She was shaking her head at them, and it didn't make any sense that she wouldn't want this man to help her. It didn't make sense that she wouldn't want to have her voice back.

She grabbed Riley's hand and took him with her out of the room, thinking that Drake could make Ella happy about the voice thing, because she knew she loved Drake, and he just let her cut him open like that to take his bug out, knowing that he could have died then, and he let her do it anyway, so she would have to let them help her get her voice back, because she owed it to Drake.

"There is something else, Ams. I can feel it. Something you are not telling me. No more secrets, remember?" He was leaning against the wall in the hallway outside the surgery room, looking at her. She told him then, about the other things Stan drew on Ella's pad, and how he explained it to Laurel, who was scared of having it in her, and seemed really sad when he told her he couldn't fix it. She told him, too, that she worried about the thing Laurel worried about, that she thought maybe the implant could get to the places that make her
her
after all, because it didn't make any sense that anybody could do some of the things they did, her people, to his people, without something making them do it. And that maybe Drake didn't need the gun on Keller because it was the only way to fix the implant, that Keller didn't want to be Keller anymore.

She hadn't thought of any of it like that until just now, in telling it all to Riley, and the fear and sadness in Laurel's face must have shown on hers, because he was holding her to him, patting her hair, kissing the top of her head. He didn't say anything for the longest time, and she was afraid of what he thought of her now, only more than she was back at the stream after the serpent thing . And she knew that it was because Riley saw her kick at Keller, and then watched her hit him like that, and he had to think that maybe it wasn't completely Ams doing these things.

She stepped back from him to see his face, and he was looking at her with his sad Riley look, and she just needed to not have anyone look at her like that now, so she ran from him, ran all the way outside, hearing his footstep behind her, and kept running to the building. He caught her by the arm, and turned her around to face him, panting, "I can't tell you what I think you want me to, Ams. And I don't want to hurt you by telling you the other thing. One way or the other you will be sad or hurt or angry. But I can't lie to you, Ams. So here goes. I don't think the implant made you do what you did with Keller and with me. I think you were angry at everything Keller was to you, at the way he was with Drake, and you didn't think it was right of Drake to do what he did for him in the end. That's why you kicked him. And you were ashamed after that, ashamed that you did it and that I saw you do it, so you did what you did to me, because of that, because of the shame." He was watching her, worried look in his eyes.

"Ams, those things you did, they weren't as bad as you have it in your head, they were just really bad to you because you never did anything like that before and it scares you, knowing that you can do something bad. But we all can. It just makes you human, Ams, not a monster or whatever it is you think you are," he said softly, and let go of her arm and took her hand in his. They walked the rest of the way in silence. She knew he was right, knew that she wouldn't have felt how she felt if it wasn't her doing all of those things. Somewhere in her she knew it was never the implant.

"Riley... They can't touch the implants. They would have found Laurel and I already if they could see the implants at all, like they could see Drake's tag until Ella got it out. Or maybe they can see the tag still, I don't know, but we have to get out of here, this city, because that's the last place Drake was with the tag in him. We have to get out, Riley," she was almost yelling it at him, even though he was right next to her, and he was nodding his head at her, at all she was saying. And it felt good to have thought of it, and knowing that she could make Laurel not afraid of the implant anymore.

When they got upstairs to the East room, Stan was sitting on the couch with one of Ella's pads, writing in it or drawing something. He didn't even look at them when they came in, so they let him be and went to the room on the other side, looking for Laurel.

She was standing by the window with her back to them when they came in, looking at something out there, only she knew that there was nothing new there for her to be looking at. Laurel was making a fist with her right hand, and she thought it was strange for her to do it with just the one hand, and then she knew that she wasn't making a fist, but hiding something, and suddenly all of this, the way she was standing and not looking at them, not saying anything scared her, and she ran to her at the window, lunging for the hand making the fist. Only Laurel moved away from her when she got there, and stood staring at her, shaking her head, and there were tears in her eyes, "Please stay there, Ams." The way she said it was wrong too, not at all like Laurel.

She looked at Riley for help, and he was standing there next to her, but he was all wrong too, very pale and tense all over, watching Laurel as if she was a serpent thing, "You don't want to do this, Laurel. You don't need to. There is nothing your implant can do to you. It's just data, that's all. It can't change you or make you do anything you don't want to do. I swear it, Laurel," and the way he said all of it, slow and quiet, she knew Riley knew what she was hiding in her hand, and what she wanted to do with it.

And she knew what she needed to do then, that there was no other way for Laurel to be okay. She took a few more steps towards her friend, holding her hands up a little, "Riley, you need to stay where you are and not do anything or say anything. You need to promise me." She looked at him, fear making his eyes bigger, and finally he nodded.

She was standing right in front of Laurel now, "You won't need all of it, Laurel. Take half and put it in my hand. If the implant can make you do things that scare you, it can do it to me too, and I don't want to do those things any more than you do. So if you believe that it can somehow control you like that, you have to believe that it can control me too. I need my half, Laurel." She moved her hand towards Laurel's, pried her fist open, and broke a large piece of the dried mushroom off the musky smelling gray lump.

She felt Riley move towards them and looked at him, her angry look, "You promised, Riley. You can't." He looked so pale now, his hands in fists at his sides. It hurt her to do this to him, but there wasn't another way, not with Laurel, and Riley didn't know Laurel the way she did, didn't know that she would never make her do something she didn't want to do, even if it cost her everything.

She could tell Laurel was shaking a little, her hands were at least. She was looking at the mushroom she took from her, shaking her head, "You can't do this to me. I am not you, Ams. I can't let this thing change me, I just can't. If there is even a tiny chance that I could do what Stan thinks we did, I can't let it happen. Don't you see that? The fear he looked at us with, it was real. It was the most real thing here, Ams. I can't be someone who can do that to people."

She heard Riley take a deep breath, but he didn't move towards them. "Ams and I don't think the implant can do any of the things you are afraid of, Laurel, but you are right, we don't know for sure. We can't know for sure until it does something to you or Ams. I know you don't know me enough to trust me, but I keep my word. I always keep my word." There was pain in his voice when he said it. After a beat, "If I see it suddenly changing you in that way, or Ams, the first time when we know for sure it's the implant, and not something else, I will help you do this thing, both of you, if you still want to. I give you my word..." Laurel stared at Riley, reading his face, and finally nodded at him, and he walked over to her and she let him, and took the piece from Laurel's hand first, looking her in the eyes, and then took hers.

She knew he meant everything he just said. He stood there in front of her, serious and sad, waiting for her to tell him that she knew, and that she trusted him enough to know if Ams was no longer Ams. And in her deepest parts, she did trust him, she knew that Riley was the best of them, better than she was, and knew then that if she ever did anything truly bad, she would lose this boy, and that would be worse than going to sleep and not waking up anymore. She nodded to him, and he left the room, and she knew she needed to let him go and do his own thinking and let all the sadness out.

When he was done and Drake could walk again, they would leave this city, and maybe not being here would make them more like they used to be. Make all the hardness she felt on everyone gone.