Reaping (6 page)

“You’re nuts,” I respond. “Let’s get the prisoner.”

Jahnu stays behind with Firestone while Kenzie and I creep into the clearing.

My gun is up, Kenzie at my side. Smoke floats around us. My eyes cloud and water, and I blink and try not to cough. I duck low, both for cover and to stay out of the smoke. I come to the woman’s motionless figure and find her eyes open, staring at me. Kenzie immediately drops to the ground and pushes her hair back, examining her, looking for a wound, an injury, anything she can splint or bind or stitch. The girl’s strawberry blond hair is matted and bloody, caked to the side of her head, and her body is covered in dirt, cuts, and bruises. Her pupils are so dilated, her eyes look otherworldly.

“Can you hear me?” I ask.

She nods and starts to speak, but coughs instead. Her eyes widen slightly, and I sense she’s recognized me. “You! You’re—”

“I’m here to help you,” I start to put my hands under her back and legs, to pick her up, but she thrashes out at me, glancing at Kenzie as if afraid. She’s so weak her movements don’t do much more than startle me, but I don’t want to carry her if she’s going to fight me every step of the way.

“Listen,” Kenzie says fiercely, “he’s not with the Sector soldiers. We’re part of Thermopylae Team Red of the Resistance. We’re going to get you out of here.”

She shakes her head fiercely. “Too late,” she chokes. Spittle flecked with blood wets her lips. I jerk my head up and around, looking for soldiers. Has she seen something I haven’t? But she reaches up and grabs my jacket collar, pulling me back to her. “Doll’s eyes,” she rasps.

I swear under my breath and glance over at Kenzie, who’s staring at the young woman in front of us, aghast. 
So that’s why her pupils are so big.

“How long ago?” I demand. Doll’s eyes are poisonous. They kill by attacking and rapidly shutting down the body’s organs. Depending on how many berries she ate, she’ll have between fifteen and forty-five minutes before her heart stops beating. Kenzie’s got a few antidotes in her medical kit, but I doubt she has anything for that kind of poison, and the expression on her face confirms my suspicion. The plant is pervasive around the Sector, but the berries are distinctive enough that everyone knows to avoid them.

The woman shakes her head. “Long enough.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t want—” she rasps, shuddering, her words slurring. “Didn’t want to see—the Dragon—”

Evander Sun-Zi? The director of the Farms?
 I never had much to do with Farm Operations, so I never worked with Evander, but he was close with both of my parents. He was a closed, impassive man, with a reputation for ruthlessness, but he was never as frightening to me as Aulion.

“Why?” I ask again, confused. I stare at her, trying to understand, as her eyes lose focus and her breathing grows shallow. “What about him?”

She closes her eyes for a moment as if gathering strength, and then looks up, and this time there’s more power in her voice.

“Before the Resistance, I worked the Farms, a Dietician. Got pregnant by one of the workers. A good man.” Her eyes focus on me, intense. “Evander transferred him and took my son,” she says. “My son. Samuel. He took my boy and he gave me this.”

Her head rolls to the side, and she releases my collar from her grip to gesture weakly at her neck. I follow her hand to the side of her neck, where I can see thin lines of white, scarred flesh. It looks like a brand. I lean over her to look at the pattern more closely and realize it’s the stylized image of a dragon.

Evander Sun-Zi. The Dragon.

“I will not give him the pleasure,” she says, her voice barely more than a breath. Her eyes are rimmed with red, but clear as she stares blankly up at me. Her hand goes limp and falls against her shoulder. I press my fingers against her neck, checking her pulse. It’s there, but barely. She hasn’t got long. I glance around. I don’t have much time left before the soldiers come back, unless Jahnu has somehow taken them all out. But it’s better not to count on that.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Lila.”

“Which Farm?

“Doesn’t matter now,” she whispers.

“We could try to find them. Tell them.”

“Too dangerous. Best to let them be....”

“Lila,” Kenzie says, “we have to go.”

She nods weakly.

I take her hand and squeeze against her slack fingers. But her eyes are already closed. I stand, reluctant to leave her to die here, alone. But she’s made her choice, there’s nothing more we can do.

Kenzie turns to run back to the trees, and I follow, listening for sounds of conflict in the distance. 
Who shot that soldier? Who put an arrow through the heart of a highly trained Sector soldier and then disappeared?

An arm shoots out from behind a tree to grab mine, and my heart skyrockets. I whirl and pull my Bolt up, squeezing the trigger to fire—and then I see Firestone’s matted curls, his narrow eyes.

“What happened? Why didn’t you bring her back?”

“She ate doll’s eyes. She’ll be dead in minutes.” I cast my eyes back towards the clearing, now invisible through the smoke and trees. “Her name was Lila.”

“We need to move,” Kenzie says. “We have no idea how long the soldiers will be distracted.”

“Don’t want to join the growing body count,” Firestone says, with rare urgency in his drawl. “We head to Normandy. Put as much distance between them and us as possible.”

Firestone leads us at a jog through the woods, though his steps are clearly laden with pain. We reclaim our packs and set off at a run, our feet heavy and tired in the dead leaves, no doubt leaving a trail bold enough for a child to follow.

“Who shot that arrow?” Jahnu asks, wondering aloud as we jog.

“Maybe it’s better we don’t know,” Kenzie says.

“You don’t think it was someone from the Resistance?” I ask.

Kenzie shoots me a withering look. “You think we use bows, Vale? Technology from before the Great Wars? Our weapons may not be Sector-issue, but they’re functional.”

“We use bows to hunt,” Jahnu interjects, ever the peacekeeper, “but they’re bulky, and we’ve never trained with them for combat.”

“Outsiders, I’d say,” Firestone pants, his voice thick. “Only folk I know who can shoot an arrow like that.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

“Met a few of ’em when I was living in the woods,” he says. “Caught me some game a few times when I was damn near starvation.”

After another twenty minutes of jogging, we slow to a walk. Firestone asks Jahnu to lead through the dark undergrowth. We set our biolights as the twilight fades to black and the dull green shadows guide us through the woods.

“Did you know anyone at Waterloo?” I ask finally.

“No,” Kenzie responds. “I know a few people stationed at Teutoburg and Alamo, but that’s it.”

“You don’t know anyone else?” I ask, surprised.

“Of course not,” she responds curtly. “The fewer people we all know, the fewer we can betray if any of us gets caught.”

The fewer we can betray. 
Of course they would operate in secrecy, protecting their members from each other, protecting the group from the individual.

I focus on running despite my worn and tired limbs. It’s better than remembering how I tried to get Remy and Soren to betray their friends and families, everything they fought for, in the cell where I kept them as prisoners. It’s better than remembering Lila and her dragon-shaped scar, her son taken from her. It’s better than remembering my mother, calling on Chan-Yu to kill Remy, a teenager, a former friend, her son’s first love.

With strength born from the injustice of everything the Sector has done, I pick up my running pace, following Firestone. I drown my exhaustion in anger. One foot in front of the other, I run through the sweat and smoke and blood.

4 - REMY

Winter 33, Sector Annum 106, 08H05

Gregorian Calendar: January 22

“Remy?” Something prods my shoulder. A finger, likely, to accompany the voice. I open one eye. There’s a hazy mug of steaming, orange-colored liquid floating in front of Bear’s nervous, worried face. For all my sullen fatigue, the smoky, woody aroma is tempting, and I know he’s trying to be helpful. I sit up, throwing the meager blankets off of me.

“What is it?”

“Rooibus,” he says.

“Roy-what?”

“It’s a kind of 
thé
,” he responds, using the Old French word for 
tea
. “Hodges made some. Well, actually, he said it’s not really tea, which is why there’s no caffeine in it. But it’s supposed to be ‘energizing,’ or something, was what he said.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.” Bear smiles, and it lifts my spirits. He’s so anxious to please. After everything that’s happened between us, it still surprises me that we’ve become close.

After all, I put a knife in his best friend’s neck.

It’s something to admire, that he was able to forgive me so quickly. Of course, he didn’t have much choice if he wanted to stay alive. He could have taken his chances alone in the Wilds, but he wanted to come with us. To the Resistance. But what astonishes me is that he doesn’t just 
tolerate
 me. No, Bear seems to admire both Soren and I, for reasons neither of us can discern. We’ve talked about it, the way Bear follows us, eager, so earnest, so kind. 
How did he get that way? After everything he’s been through? After everything we put him through?
 Neither of us have come up with a good answer.

“Everyone else is getting breakfast,” Bear says. “They put Soren on mess duty this morning. You should have seen him trying to flip flapjacks.”

I choke on my tea, laughing.

“Did he get any of them?”

“Not a one. Luckily they didn’t land on the floor. Finally Zoe had to take over.”

“Who’s Zoe?”

“The girl who works the comm center here.”

I nod, slurping at the weird orange drink, letting it cool as I sip.

“Bear,” I ask, hesitantly. “Has anyone said anything more about…?” 
About my father,
 I want to ask. 
About Waterloo. About Vale and Firestone and Kenzie and Jahnu.

He shakes his head, and avoids my gaze.

“Want to come eat?”

Unlike last night, when the need to eat was physically overpowering, the idea of food right now feels vaguely repulsive. Hodges gave me two sleeping draughts after telling him I’d been having trouble sleeping. Now, I’m groggy and a little off, even slightly nauseous. Maybe that means I need something in my stomach. Or maybe it means I need to sleep off the effects of whatever was in those draughts.

“What time is it?”

“Eight.”

I shake my head.

“Thanks for the roy-bus, Bear, but I’m going to try to get a few more hours of sleep.” The last thing I want is get up and face the day, the unanswered questions, the nightmares I managed to escape in the night. I give Bear my bravest smile, trying to reassure him, 
it’s okay, I’m just tired, 
without telling him how much deeper the ache goes.

When he’s gone, I heave a sigh of relief, and close my eyes, sinking into my deepest sleep in months.

A few hours later, I feel fingers tracing circles on my back. Spirals, really, like the swirls in a snail’s shell. I smile, almost against my will. Soren. I find myself leaning into the shapes, into his touch, like a cat scratching its back against the corner of a wall.

“Hey,” he says. His voice sounds like echoes in a tunnel. I face him, open my eyes to his icy blues, lit as if by a flame when he smiles.

“Hey there,” I say. I watch the way his eyes crease, the way his mouth wrinkles at the edges. He leans down to kiss me, and I let him. His hands are cool against my skin.

“You’re quite the sleeper,” he says. “Everyone here is very impressed. Zoe said no one’s slept so well at Normandy since the victims of the Famine Years.”

He’s referencing the number of people who were buried here. A kilometer away from Normandy, there’s one of the largest mass graves found since the Religious Wars.

“I’m glad everyone thinks I have a lot in common with dead people.”

He laughs.

“At least you’re getting some rest. We all needed it.”

“I’ll add ‘good at sleeping’ to my list of skills, the next time I’m petitioning the Director for a good mission.”

“If she’s—”

He stops short. 
If she’s even alive
, I finish silently. If she, or my father, or Rhinehouse, or anyone else from Thermopylae and Team Blue, are still alive. I swallow hard and clench Soren’s hands a little more tightly.

“She is. They are. I know it.”

Soren crawls over and lies down in the space between the wall and me, pulling me to him. I snuggle up against him, eliminating the space between us as he wraps his arm around me. It would all be so much simpler if I could let go. If I turned toward him, kissed him. I know he would yield to me, each body curving into the other. Instead, I stare at the ceiling and wonder where the others are.

Where Vale is.

“You missed the morning briefing,” Soren says, breaking the silence. His voice sounds faraway, like maybe it’s coming from underwater.

“I didn't know there was one.”

“Yeah, here at Normandy it’s so small, they just get everyone together over breakfast and talk about the day.”

“Did I miss anything important?”

“Just that they’ve gotten word there’s a group of travelers set to arrive today.”

I sit up abruptly, looking down at him.

“Why didn’t you mention that earlier?”

Apparently their intel came from someone who’s not always trustworthy,” Soren says, placating me. “And even if it is true, there’s no guarantee.…”

“That my father’s with them,” I finish for him. I glare at the wall. I want to see him again 
so badly
, just to know he’s alive, just to know I’m not the sole surviving member of the Alexander family, just to have someone else who can grieve with me.

“Yeah,” he says, after a moment.

“What about you? Did you get any sleep?” I ask, chastising myself to remember that it’s not all about me. Soren used to accuse me of being self-centered, of thinking only about what I’d lost. I like to think I’m beyond that now.