The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (14 page)

The next assignment sent a young man to work in food preparation in E-pod. He, too, looked surprised, and he, too, glanced angrily at Ruby, then turned away from her. He had brought her beads one morning, something from a broken set of his grandmother’s, old and blue and yellow. She had pulled the blue ones out and closed his hands over the rest, and he had looked shy with her. His anger cut.

Each assignment felt like a small shock through the room, a moment of stiffening, of new fear, of a bit of anger.

By the time Salli was assigned half a ship away from Jinn, so much stony silence had fallen in the room that Ruby heard Salli’s tortured intake of breath.

She would rather have been beaten.

She steeled herself. They were the last three. Marcelle, trained to work in the crèche, ended up in the water reclamation plant on E, in a place Onor would have been happy. But Marcelle hated being dirty and wet, and she hated being alone. Whoever had done this had sat there after they turned in good tests and chosen their worst nightmares. And they’d known them well enough to cause real pain.

Onor backed up toward her. The red at Ruby’s right, under her, since Ruby was still on the table, blocked Onor with a hand, keeping him from coming close enough to touch Ruby. Onor’s face turned up to her, shock the most visible thing, his first reaction to anything unfair.

“Onor Hall, you will report to D-pod for janitorial duty.”

None of the students had drawn anything so bad. This would be below, where Nona was murdered. Below, where they put people who failed or grew too old for their jobs but not too old to work.

“Ruby Martin, you will report to cargo bay inspection here.”

She nodded, nursing her fury. For now, she was well and truly beaten. Her eyes stung with hot tears and her fingers had curled into tight fists, the nails digging into her palms. And under that, fear.

In the silence that fell across the room after her assignment, fear of it sank in.

They were keeping her here to be a target for the families who had just lost children to the other pods. Besides, three people had died already this year in the cargo pods: one had suffocated, one had fallen in the grav failure the day the sky fell, and one had died of a heart attack. Maybe they wanted her to die.

The blue had left at some moment she hadn’t seen, but the room was still ringed in reds, too many for resistance of any kind to matter.

Ix had gone silent.

There was nothing sane she could do except jump down as if she was just fine, as if it was all fine, as if her feet didn’t hurt from the sting of the floor and as if the worst hour of her life hadn’t just passed.

20: A Recording

Outside in the corridor, Onor drew a deep breath, struggling to get the stale taste of fear from the showdown between Ruby and the blue out of his mouth. Marcelle grabbed his arm, jerking him behind her. He stumbled before catching his feet.

“I take it we’re going somewhere?”

She cast him a don’t-ask glance and kept moving, eventually letting go of his arm, as if she no longer cared if he followed.

Maybe she didn’t.

So he followed.

They’d been outmaneuvered. Ruby could get killed. He felt as if someone had picked him up and thrown him against a wall and broken him.

He was supposed to leave tomorrow.

He followed Marcelle all the way back to Kyle’s and stumbled in after her. When the door closed behind them, she threw her stuff against the wall. She slammed her naked fist into the same wall, leaving a small dent in the thin metal. She cursed under her breath.

Marcelle the cheerful, upbeat, and polite.

He supposed he should be mad, too. Instead he felt dizzy and weak. At least Kyle was at work and they didn’t have to tell him about the debacle.

He flopped onto the couch so hard it jarred his back. They would all three be in different pods. He wouldn’t be able to protect Ruby at all.

What if he never saw her again?

He looked up to find Marcelle standing over him, her hands on her hips. “Snap out of it. We have things to do.” She started clipping them off on her fingers. Index finger. “We need to make a list of who got sent where so we can set up a way to communicate.” Middle finger. “We need to pack for ourselves.” Fourth finger. “We need to tell Kyle thank-you and ask him to help us look after Ruby.” Her voice sounded so controlled she might not have been slamming into things a moment before. Little finger. “We need to make a list of all the reds who were wearing beads.” She grabbed her thumb.

“We need to see Ruby,” Onor said.

A masculine voice answered him. “She’ll be watched.”

The door to Kyle’s room, always closed when he wasn’t home, slid open.

Marcelle yelped and Onor tensed.

“You need to see me.” The Jackman slid through the door.

“You broke in!” Marcelle managed to squeak out.

The Jackman shook his head and put his fingers to his mouth in an exaggerated gesture. “No. Kyle is one of us. How do you think you three all ended up here together?”

Marcelle crossed her arms over her chest. “There you go with all the
us and them
stuff again. Secrets.”

“Some of those kids will be telling everything they know just to keep their old hopes alive. Anything anybody but you two knows, our enemies will know.”

Onor objected, “I wouldn’t rat you out. They’d kill you. They’re not killing us.” He swallowed. “Except Ruby! You have to help me. I need you to keep her safe!”

The Jackman headed to the kitchen and started heating enough stim for three glasses. “Good to see you understand the stakes.” He looked as serious as Onor had ever seen him, which was saying quite a lot. “Did you tell any of those students there are adult grays just as dissatisfied? Did you mention my name, or Conroy’s?”

“We’re adults!” Marcelle protested.

The Jackman ignored her, keeping his eyes on Onor.

“No,” Onor said.

“Did Ruby?”

He shook his head, biting his lips. “Not . . . no.”

The Jackman turned to Marcelle. “You? Anybody? Or Ruby?”

Her eyes had grown wider, as if she’d finally stopped and thought about what he was saying. “No. Sorry. I . . . no one.”

“Ruby?”‘

“No one that I know of. Maybe her family.”

He didn’t look entirely satisfied. “See that you don’t ever talk about people who help you. From this night forward. Either of you.”

“Of course not!” Marcelle slid onto one of the kitchen stools. “You never tell us enough to tell anybody anyway.”

The Jackman raised an eyebrow. “What happened today? Wasn’t it exactly what I told you would happen?”

Onor took a deep breath to force his racing mind to slow down. The stim was beginning to warm, scenting the room.

Marcelle, still standing, went right up to The Jackman and stared at him, her face so close to his they must have been able to smell each other’s breath. “They knew. So how do we know
you’re
not telling on
us
?”

Onor sighed and took her shoulder, pulling her back. “Ruby didn’t keep any secrets from anybody. She told people she was rebelling every chance she got. The Jackman and Conroy did warn us there’d be trouble.”

The Jackman nodded at Marcelle. “That was a good list you started. We should do that. But first, did you get any of that recorded?”

“Oh!” Marcelle raced for her journal, abandoned the moment she’d come in. She scooped it up from the floor and plopped down on the couch, pushing buttons and frowning. “Maybe I . . .” She pushed something else, sliding her finger across the screen. “There it is!”

“Send it to me,” The Jackman said.

Marcelle glared at him. “What are you going to do with it?”

The big man glared back.

Onor watched the crossed legs and arms and the tense jaws until he couldn’t stand it anymore, then ran his hand through the air between the two of them. “Give it to him. If we can’t trust The Jackman, then we might as well give up now.”

Marcelle grunted. “I’m sending it to him and Ruby.”

The Jackman almost spoke, but stopped himself.

Marcelle pushed a few buttons and looked up. “There. You should have it.”

“You gotta help Ruby,” Onor said. “You know they’re going to have an accident.”

It was apparently The Jackman’s turn to grunt. “I’ll do what I can. But remember what I told you last time you asked.”

He remembered. “She might be past saving. . . . But maybe she’s so well known now that it’ll be easier to save her. It could work that way, you know.”

The Jackman looked a little like he pitied Onor, and Onor squirmed and looked away, feeling defensive and a bit stupid all at once. “It could,” he muttered. “People will notice if she disappears or gets hurt.”

“Yeah, like some mom who’s never going to see her kid again,” Marcelle said. “That’s who’ll notice her.”

The front door opened and Kyle came in.

“You’re home early,” Marcelle said.

Kyle went to the kitchen and started pouring the stim out, apportioning it so it would fit in five glasses instead of three. He handed one to Onor, one to The Jackman, one to Marcelle, and took one himself. He held up his glass as if toasting, “To the most blatant move against us in years.”

Onor drank, wishing Kyle had got home in time to make the stim as well as pour it. Kyle could make the bitter drink taste almost good. He pointed to the fifth glass, sitting all alone on the counter. “Who’s that for? Ruby?”

“No.”

Onor recalled The Jackman’s words and didn’t get mad at Kyle for not exactly answering. “Thank you for taking us in. I appreciate it. And for keeping us.”

Kyle blushed. How the heck was a man this soft part of an underground movement?

The door from the corridor pushed open and Daria rushed in, her hair a mess and her unusual green eyes glaring at The Jackman.

Onor stepped back. Daria didn’t like him at all, had made Ruby stay away from him whenever she could. But he might as well have not been in the room. All of Daria’s attention was on The Jackman.

“You told me she’d be safe!” Daria stood near The Jackman’s chest, even closer than Marcelle had been earlier. “You told me you’d make sure they didn’t hurt her or kill her or anything.”

The Jackman wore a clearly amused look on his face, and Onor noticed a softness pass across his features as he folded Daria in his arms and whispered in her ear, loud enough that Onor could hear him say, “I’m not done yet.”

Onor blinked, feeling stupid. This he would not have guessed.

Was every last gray part of a conspiracy?

Marcelle looked as sideways as he felt, her mouth open as she watched tiny Daria return The Jackman’s hug, nearly disappearing in the big man’s arms.

Onor went over and stood by Marcelle. He whispered, softly, right into her ear so no one else could hear. Not that anyone else was paying attention. “Have we been blind, or have we been manipulated?”

“I don’t know,” Marcelle whispered back.

21: The Closed Door

Ruby dreamed herself cold and alone in a cargo bay. Her dreaming self tugged on a bolt that wouldn’t let go. She braced in the low gravity to gain leverage with angle and torque, using her whole body as a tool, twisting. Just as the bolt snapped loose, the gravgens stuttered. She jerked downward, then floated untethered in an empty metal cylinder, knowing that at any second weight would return and force her to fall up, or down, or sideways. The dreaming jolt of gravity woke her, shuddering and moaning, sweat pouring down her face.

She used her fingers to brush her hair, then glanced down at her clothes. Still dirty from the day before, but clean enough to wear in public. She needed food. The floor dragged at her feet, her limbs thick and full of the dreams. She crept out the door, careful not to wake Suri or Ean, clutching her journal.

She needed stim. Thankfully the common kitchen was open this early. No one greeted her or said her name or even told her hello. They all ignored her, staying busy, keeping their backs to her.

Fine.

She didn’t want to talk to anyone anyway. Her footsteps were loud in the warm kitchen, the bitter stim burn in the air offset only slightly with fruit so sweet it smelled near rot.

She bypassed food and took her cup to common, where she sat down on one of the benches against a wall. She slumped and tried to sip herself awake.

She had been undone. So fast. So easy. Except she’d thought she had the others, that they believed. That they’d rebel with her. At least some of them. But when it came down to it, they’d all been passive and scared. Her too. She’d run out of ways to fight.

For a while.

After all, what if she had fought? She’d have been stunned and sent to lockup. She ran her fingers across the slick bench, swallowing. She wasn’t going to cry. That wasn’t what she did. She dug her fingernails into her palm and savored the pain, biting her lip for more until she had control.

She opened her journal and sent Marcelle a note, asked her to meet her in common. For the first time ever she wondered if Marcelle would really want to see her.

Surely Marcelle would come. She had always come.

They could make a new plan.

A pair of footsteps passed by in the corridor. Students, a year or two behind her. One of them spotted her and pointed, whispering to the other, and then the pair glared at her as they walked on.

Ruby tensed, considering whether to stand up and chase them or just ignore them. Before she decided, they were gone. She sat back down with a sigh and curled her hands around the half-empty cup of stim, wishing she’d brought two. She felt powerless to move, as if the events of the day before had taken everything from her.

She needed to do better, to recover, to think.

There was an answer. If there was no way to change it all back, surely there was a way to change
some
things.

A pale orange blink showed new messages for her. Her mother, via voice, her tone not particularly worried, as if maybe she was talking to her mirror or a total stranger, except for a tiny extra high note at the end: “Why did you go and ruin everything? We just moved here, and no one will respect us now. What are me and Daria and Ean going to do?”

Ruby cut the message off, glared at her journal, and hissed, “There’s a bigger picture here than you or me.”

The note from her mom energized her more than the stim.

There was another message. From Marcelle.

A brief text:
Here. This came out pretty well
. The recording. Ruby thumbed it on and bent her head, listening. She heard herself challenge Ix, the blue and her talking, words barely discernible over background noise, the rubbing of soft things together—probably Marcelle’s clothes—and footsteps from time to time as people walked by. Not completely clear, but at least she could make out most of the words.

Ruby brushed a stray bit of hair from her cheek and stared at the journal. Why had Marcelle been able to send her the recording? Ix knew about everything on anyone’s journals; she’d gotten in trouble for writing down things she shouldn’t before. So that meant . . . Ix had this recording, too? Ix approved of this recording? Ix hadn’t gotten around to erasing it yet?

More importantly, what could she do with it?

She lifted her head and looked for Marcelle or Onor again. No one was in sight, no one even walking by. Surely they’d be here soon. They would make a plan together.

Two other videos had gone viral. “The Owl’s Song.” The Owl’s last speech. She still didn’t know why. It hadn’t been her or Marcelle or Onor who set them free to run through the ship like a good rumor. Both of those had been real video though, and this was just sound, and not crisp, either.

“Ix?” Her voice sounded lonely in the big room. “Ix?”

Common, like the school, had speakers. She almost jumped when the walls addressed her. Not the computer voice this time; one of Ix’s more human voices. “Yes, Ruby Martin?”

“Did you record the . . . the . . . What was the name of the blue in our test yesterday? The runt with all the control?”

“Ellis Knight.”

She dropped her voice. “Did you record Ellis Knight and me talking, and the reds assigning the students the way they did?”

“I always record potential confrontations.”

She grimaced. “And they are played for who?”

“Anyone who asks. Everything I record is free for anyone to listen to, unless it is specifically blocked by the peacekeepers or people in higher authority.”

Good. Until she thought it through and realized it was another nonanswer. “No one has blocked this?”

“Ellis Knight blocked it.”

She sighed and leaned back against the cool white wall. “If I send you a copy of a different recording, would you keep it safe so that I can request it again later?”

“The recording you have on your journal?”

“Yes.”

“I will keep it for you.”

She twisted the blue beads of her bracelet around and around, thinking. “As something personal? Not something Ellis can block?”

“And not something you can share.”

Well, it was something. “You don’t know if there are other copies?”

No answer.

“Ix?”

More silence.

She tapped her foot. Ix must have helped Ellis yesterday. Maybe mixing everyone up had been Ix’s plan. Yet this morning, the damned machine sounded downright conversational. But if it didn’t have any emotions, it wouldn’t care how fair things were or weren’t. Would it? She brightened. “The red? The one wearing the multi beads? He recorded it?”

“He was out of the room at the end.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yes.”

“Did anything bad happen to him?”

“Not yet.”

Why couldn’t the stupid AI just give her what she wanted? She forced herself to calm down and think the next question out. “Did Ellis Knight record the conversation?”

“No.”

“You’re infuriating.”

“You called me.”

“If you were physical I’d thump you for being so difficult!” Her hands were claws on the side of the bench. She forced the fingers to relax. “Did anyone else access your recording before Ellis blocked it?”

“Yes.”

She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Can you tell me who?”

A masculine voice came from the opening between common and the corridor. “I did. And I shared it with my friends. And they shared it with their friends.”

She twisted around, catching a flash of blue and then a shock of red hair.

Fox!

Her breath caught in her chest, and she put a hand up to smooth her hair.

“And I’m sorry if you’re frustrated. I told Ix to keep you talking so that I could get here.”

She felt her mouth open, as if she had things to say, even though she didn’t have a single idea in her head at that moment. Except maybe that she should have dressed better.

Fox walked normally, with no limp. He stopped a few feet away from her, his red hair slightly long, hanging almost to his shoulders, his blue eyes warm, happy to see her—not severe like Ellis Knight’s had been yesterday. Fox looked more confident than the man who had sat scared and injured on the bench beside her the day the sky fell.

He smelled like cleanliness and hope, like the world she wanted, like the long moments under the broken roof when suspicions had become truths.

He held a hand out to her. She wondered if this was a fevered dream from her lack of sleep.

His hand felt solid and real.

She leaned into him, drawn into his arms, which he closed around her, folding her inside of him, his palms a warmth on her cold back. He held tight. Her head fit into his shoulder and she pushed it there, putting her weight into him, feeling him brace and absorb her. She didn’t dare a kiss yet, but wanted one, confused at the way her heart beat and her belly felt raw and fiery. She should be mad instead of weak. She should be worried, maybe even afraid, or angry.

But right now she felt safe.

Fox pushed her gently away and stepped back from her, looking down at her face. He kept his hands on her arms, a current of . . . something, passing between them. “You’re as pretty as I remembered. I came as soon as I could this morning.”

“Why not mornings ago? Why now?” Why after everything has fallen apart?

He spoke so softly she could barely hear him, and while he talked his hand ran along the curve of her cheek, distracting her. “I wanted to forget that I’d met you. But your song—'The Owl’s Song'—played up there. On the regular vid, over and over until people started singing it in the halls. Because we talked, I knew what you were singing. Most of the others started out believing you sang about hope, but I knew it for defiance.”

Something in her stuttered, a moment of mistrust. He was a blue, he was one of the ones who had just destroyed her dreams.

But he was Fox, and she had saved him.

And he had kissed her. Once. She turned her face up to him, hoping now for a kiss. He bent close, but only to whisper in her ear. “We need to go before Ellis or anyone else stops me.”

“Go where?”

He whispered one more word. “Home.”

She swallowed and stepped back. He would take her? Really?

“I couldn’t bear to watch yesterday, the test and you being so brave and getting nowhere. But we were. A lot of us were watching, in a bar, on a . . . never mind. Ix helped. And I couldn’t sleep, so I came here. We can talk later.”

Her nerves screamed at her. If she went, it would be irrevocable. It might kill her, might get her locked up, might do anything. It was like stepping into blackness through a black door and hoping for light.

But she was already dead here.

This was what she had wanted, what she never, ever thought she’d get. She knew for sure now that she’d never actually expected to leave.

Onor and Marcelle.

She hissed, “I need to tell people I’ll be safe. People need to know.”

“It will make you less safe,” he said, his voice laced with urgency, his hand on her back, propelling her toward the corridor. “We can find a way later. You’re going to be a hit, you’ve already got a following. We can get a message through.” He smiled. “We’ll write a song for them later.”

She didn’t quite understand his words, but she understood the pressure of his arm and the urgency in his voice.

He walked fast, his boots softer than hers. They passed Jinn’s parents, who glared at her. The woman, a tall blond with a scar on her nose and greasy hair caught back in a ponytail, smiled at Fox and said, “Thank you.” The circles under her eyes hinted that she might have been crying, and her mate pulled her close to him and nodded at Fox as well, ignoring Ruby entirely.

Fox smiled back at them but didn’t slow at all. He pulled Ruby harder down the corridor, making sure she didn’t interact with the couple.

It took her a breath or two to realize he was playing the part of powerful blue taking the troublemaker in hand. For a moment she wanted to pull away from him and protest her innocence, tell Jinn’s mom that she had done what she did
for
Jinn, for all of them, even for her. But the woman had looked tired and worn out, like she hadn’t slept. Like life had nearly finished with her.

If she didn’t go with Fox now, and if she didn’t have any accidents, she would look like that woman all too soon, and keep her head down and hide.

She had her head down when they rounded a corner, and she spotted the bottom half of a red uniform. Fox sped up. Ruby glanced at the man. Ben. “Wait!” she called.

Fox tightened his grip on her arm, stopping just at the edge of pain. A warning.

Ruby read the set of Ben’s face, saw worry there instead of mistrust.

He hadn’t given up on her. Ben’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Fox.

“It’s okay, Ben,” Ruby said. “Tell Onor and Marcelle I’m okay. Tell them to . . . tell them to keep going. To be safe.”

Ben opened his mouth as if to respond, and in that moment, Ruby realized she might never see him again, or see any grays again, whatever happened. She threw her arms around the old red and squeezed tight. The hard nub of his stunner dug into her hip, and even as old as he was, he felt solid and safe and comforting. She didn’t let go until he patted her back awkwardly.

“It’s okay,” he said, as if he understood the situation. “Do what you need to do.”

“Keep them safe if you can. Marcelle and Onor, and my mom, and Ean and Daria and Hugh and . . . even Macky.”

Ben hissed at Fox, “Keep her safe, or I’ll find you myself.”

Fox took a step back, then laughed. “It’ll be okay, old man. Go on.”

He almost sounded disrespectful to Ben. “He’s my friend,” she told Fox.

“I know who he is. I saw him in the ‘Owl’s Song’ vid. Let’s
go
.”

Ruby followed, her stomach now twisted with hope and fear all together. She had to go. She would lose herself if she didn’t follow. But she felt pulled apart, one arm into the future and one arm into the past.

After they left Ben, there were two more turns. Fox took her behind the school, in a corridor she’d never really noticed, a place scratched by the uneven wheels of bots and dented by carts. They came to a metal door with no handle, something she might have mistaken for a repair to the wall or a hatch to a storage closet.