The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (34 page)

55: Partings

Ruby woke to the memory of Joel’s body, taller and firmer and slightly more awkward than Fox’s. She lay still, afraid to move lest she forget where his knee had rested on her thigh, or between her thighs, or where his fingers had tightened against her nipples. If she lay still long enough, perhaps the ghost of him would stay in bed with her.

There was a similarity between waking up after a night with Joel and after a night with Fox. Except for her naked body, and the memories of the man, the bed was empty.

The table.

The battle.

Ruby flung the covers aside and went to the privy.

A handwritten note had been attached to the mirror. “Good luck, little gray. I’ll find you. Soon.” Attached to the note was a chain fashioned of metal loops, and on each loop, there were four tiny beads. One gray, one blue, one red, and one green. She picked it up in wonderment. Where could he have found such a thing? It could be a man’s necklace, so maybe it was something he had. Nevertheless, she slid it over her head and put the note into her pocket.

Ruby expected it might be awhile before she saw Joel again. But she was already looking forward to it.

She stepped into the shower. Water poured over her head. She’d find someone to help her go home. Give her people heart. Maybe Ani would still be around and she’d have something pretty to wear. The cascade of warm water stopped long before she felt ready.

She dressed in a clean blue uniform that had been laid out for her, silently thanking Joel. There was no comb, so she used her fingers again.

She opened the bedroom door to find Onor waiting in the living room.

Her face flushed hot, and she stopped dead, swallowing. He made her think of Dayn. She didn’t want a keeper. Ever. Again.

Not even if it was Onor.

Onor handed her a cup of stim.

She took it, angry and sheepish at once, looking down at the steaming liquid instead of meeting his eyes. She knew what she’d see in them. “I’m sorry,” she said.

His voice shook. “For what, exactly? I need to know.”

“That you’re standing here right now.”

He put a hand out and touched her cheek. She looked up then and saw the pain she had expected in his eyes.

“You will always be one of my two best friends.” The words sounded inadequate even as they left her lips. She took his hand in one of her stim-warmed hands. “Always.”

His voice shook a bit as he said, “We need to go. There’s a status meeting every half hour now, and the next one will be soon.”

He turned for the door.

“How is the battle going? Are they telling you anything?”

He blinked and frowned, as if resetting his thoughts. His demeanor didn’t look better for it. “There’s a thousand dead. Almost all of us. We hold the same territory that we did, nothing more. All of our own level, except lockup and a bit around that, and a few corridors and offices on the logistics level. We’re not winning.”

“Yet.” She could help. “I need to go home.”

Onor glanced back at the bedroom door, as if shaming her with her dalliance.

“We need him,” she whispered.

“I don’t.”

She had seen the way Onor looked at Joel, the respect in his eyes. But Joel would have to regain that. “All right. I need him, and you need me. And right now, we need to get to gray. Where’s Ani?”

“Do you need her, too?”

She let out a long sigh. “Onor. I will always love you. I love you now. I loved you when we were seven. But you cannot be everything to me.”

She expected him to head for the door, but he held his ground. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I.” She leaned toward him, offering a hug or a kiss on the cheek or some other thing, but he stiffened and pulled away.

Damn
. She’d meant what she said, that she’d always need him.

But there had been magic between her and Joel. Not just sex, not even just during sex. There was power, and with that, she could help bring her people home safely.

She could keep her promise to Nona.

The door beside her burst open and a red glanced at them and barreled past, heading for the bedroom she’d just left.

Damned good thing Joel was already gone.

Onor grabbed her arm and they threaded through two more reds and out of Joel’s quarters.

Onor’s stunner filled his hand. He pointed it behind them and shot, the sound a rush of deadly softness.

Someone fell. Someone else screamed.

Footsteps started after them.

Onor jerked her left. Pain shot up her arm. “Run!”

She ran. Their footsteps echoed down the corridor, and they came to a two-way choice. “Which way?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Guess.”

She chose the right turn, and then another, and then a left. They slowed to a walk, their raspy breath too loud. Hopefully no one would stop them.

“We need to go out,” she said. “Back home.”

“The trains aren’t working.”

“We can walk.” Her feet were already sore from the long walk here the day before.

It took three hours of walking to find one of the flexible tunnels that led between levels and pods. She’d learned to read the markings on the walls well enough to tell it led outward, to logistics, but not well enough to tell which pod it led to. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she realized Onor was standing and waiting for her to make up her mind. She was leading again.

This was why he couldn’t be everything to her. He needed someone to follow. She stepped through the opening and motioned Onor in, closing the hatch behind them. The tunnel sensed them, leaving lights on for them, pulsing slowly in the right direction.

“Be careful.” She started to whistle softly as a way to fill the space with something happier than her fears. With luck, they could slip through and find a path like the one Fox had led her through when he first rescued her. She had lost all sense of location. The corridor felt longer than she expected. Maybe she was just tired. If only she had a way to call The Jackman to her.

KJ had immediate person-to-person communication. She’d seen it the day she and Ani had followed him through the walls.

She whispered, “Ix?”

No answer.

She hissed louder. “Ix!”

No answer. Did it hear her in this corridor, or was it ignoring her, or was it helping her by pretending not to hear her?

With all she’d learned, she didn’t know anything.

As soon as they cracked the hatch on the other end of the tunnel, she wished she hadn’t. A couple hurrying down the corridor heard the soft wind of opening and turned to spot them.

She had never seen the people before, and they didn’t seem to recognize her either.

She turned the other way, hiding her face from the strangers. It should be okay. She and Onor were wearing blue, and while they had the absurd red stunners on their waists, the
Fire
had been full of mixed uniforms the day the sky fell. Surely a long fight like this would cause the same thing.

They came to a T-shaped choice at the end of the tunnel. Boot steps echoed, the sound hard to locate from where she stood. She peered around the corner, hoping that whoever wore the boots was walking away.

People converged from both sides. Sylva led the closest group.

She turned and bumped into Onor. “Trouble,” she whispered. “Walk the other way.”

“Can we get back to the tunnel?”

“I’m not leading them back to Joel.” Or giving away the room with the table. They needed that advantage. She walked close to the wall, leaning close to Onor and talking, trying to look like she belonged here. Maybe Sylva would keep going straight and wouldn’t turn to see her. Maybe she wouldn’t recognize her.

“He’d want you to.” Onor hissed at her. “He’d want you safe.”

“I won’t risk him.” She listened, heard footsteps turn behind her.
Damn
. Running would get her stunned, and she wanted her wits. She should surrender and then find a way to get free. “At the next opportunity, turn away from me.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have to tell people I’ve been caught. Tell everyone.”

“You haven’t been caught.”

The footsteps behind her hadn’t sped up. She couldn’t speed up and pull away. At least not until Onor was safe. “You have to stay free and tell people who has me.”

“Who?”

“Sylva. Remember it. Sylva. And stay safe.”

They passed the place where they had come into this level. Good. At least Onor couldn’t go back that way now. She took more steps, and more. Finally, a branching corridor. “Go, now. Cross and find a place like we just left.”

He touched her side, a swipe that might have been accidental but turned out to be a reach for her stunner, which he pulled free of her holster as he finished turning to face their pursuers.

No! There were too many of them. He’d die. Like Hugh. She pulled her hand back to knock the gun out of his fist, saw that he had both stunners, his and hers, pointed at Sylva and her escort. Sylva had at least three or four others with her, maybe more. Ruby couldn’t take her eyes from Onor’s to look back and see. He looked so full of purpose and fear it frightened her.

She leapt in front of his face, making sure he had no shot. “Run, you idiot,” she screeched.

“Why?” he answered, trying to get around.

“Because I need you safe.” Of course, it didn’t matter now. Her plan had been to separate from him before Sylva recognized her, give him room to escape. But now that he was pointing guns at her enemies, the only choice for either of them was to run. “Let’s go!”

She felt the weight of the stun, like a wrench hitting her in the back, and the softening of her limbs as they refused to obey her.

The floor hit her softly, her arms and legs bouncing. She felt no pain from the fall.

Above her, Onor shot two fisted, the slight recoil pushing him away from her as she fell. Her vision shrank to a point of light and stopped.

56: The Waterways

The boneless thud of Ruby’s body at his feet made Onor’s eyes sting and made his target waver in his vision. The stunners felt light in his hands, like air. Anger tightened muscles.

He recognized the woman from the test day, the severe redheaded one. He shot her.

She fell, the men behind her leaning down toward her, their mouths open in surprise.

Onor reached down and tugged on Ruby’s arm. Nothing in the feel of her body resisted his touch or his pull; nothing except breath and blood moved in her. Her eyes, closed, didn’t even flutter.

She’d become dead weight. Impossible for him to carry and run.

He glanced up.

Three reds rushed him, one with a stunner out.

He shot again. The closest man tripped over his own feet but held his weapon up, Onor’s shot too wild or too weak to bring him all the way down.

No time.

Onor dodged and raced, bruising his shoulders on the walls. He hated every step away from Ruby, expecting each to end with a graceless face-forward fall as someone stunned him.

She’d told him to get away. Tell someone.

His feet flew. Speed dried the water from his eyes, and his vision cleared as he ran. All those nights running.

Bless Conroy.

His legs moved fast, his body responsive.

Bless The Jackman.

The steps behind him sounded farther away. He didn’t dare stop and look back.

He’d abandoned Ruby.

Not that he’d had a choice. She’d known that. Told him to do it. Commanded it. Still, it ate at him, drove his feet to keep moving, to find help.

He hadn’t seen anyone yet. That must be pure luck. He needed to slow down before anyone noticed him running like a madman.

Dry breath wheezed through his chest as he jogged and then slowed further to a walk. He began to pass others, which made the level feel even more foreign. No one looked emaciated or overweight. No one looked scarred from accidents or red nosed from stim abuse or blown out from drugs.

He started to sound normal, to walk with the right movement and breath, even though he felt the need to find someone to tell, ten people to tell, like a racing sharpness in his blood.

An older man stopped and watched Onor approach.

Onor smiled while he gave the man the barest glance, trying to look like he belonged.

The man nodded, looked like he was about to say something, then nodded again and kept walking.

But surely he’d get stopped soon just for looking tired and worn out, if not for holding a stunner in each hand. He found a small galley and poured himself a glass of water.

Water.

The water system here must be like at home.

The two water systems didn’t connect. He and Ruby had tried to climb from one set of pipes to the other when he was an apprentice. But surely he could travel through this level the way he could travel at home, through the catwalks and ramps that allowed maintenance of the pipes.

He looked. There was no good access in this tiny white galley, with its clean silver sink knobs and simple storage drawers for food and utensils. He needed a bigger source of water—a common area or the kitchen or something.

After a glance in the mirror, he washed the sweat from his face and did his best to rake his disorderly hair into something presentable. He looked as scared and lost and angry as he felt, although the mirror didn’t show his shakiness. He slid his last power pack into one stunner and pocketed the other.

He checked another galley, a large bathroom, and a crèche before he found a water system access point big enough for a person. It turned out to be a closet behind a school room, the door so clean he almost missed the water symbol in the upper right.

The maintenance infrastructure here looked just like it did on the gray levels: a thin rail for the small repair bots to run around and a slender and compact walkway with just enough room for a human to walk carefully and do a visual inspection. It wasn’t any cleaner than his home systems, either.

He followed the grey-water pipe, sure it was heading outward.

A bot whirred by, shaking a tiny bit on its rail. It ignored him completely.

He saw a few more as he crawled and shimmied and sometimes walked upright through the bowels of the
Fire
. Hopefully the bots would all see him as a worker and part of their familiar landscape.

The pipe Onor had been tracking ended up in a group weld he’d already approached from two different angles. There were no seats in the maintenance catwalk, just awkward ways to stand or crouch. His feet hurt. His borrowed blue uniform had torn in two places where he’d snagged it on protrusions, and he had enough grease stains to lubricate a whole maintenance bot.

He stopped.

The day the sky fell and Fox and Ruby first kissed, Fox had been taken up into the sky on a flying cargo cart. It had come from this level.

He started off again, hunting an entirely new thing. Surely there was a place to dock maintenance carts and carry trash in and out and such.

When he found it, he realized he was still out of luck. There were four cargo carts in two different sizes, but none of them would obey his commands. Still, there was a hatch. No window, no way to tell where it went. It was big enough for the flying carts, but there were also hand controls, which must mean there was someplace for an uncarted human to go.

He grabbed a suit and helmet from a rack by the door. If the
Fire
were willing to give him any luck at all, he would get through the door and find a way between levels. If he could get to any gray pod, surely he could ride the train. It couldn’t be harder than moving safely all the way from command to gray.

The suit didn’t stink quite as badly as the ones he had used when he helped clean out his old home. Staler, and fainter, but still like trapped human. He took a deep breath and slid the helmet over his head, fastening it down to the collar ring.

“Onor.”

He startled, and then recognized the voice. “Ix.”

“Open the door now and go down.”

He didn’t understand what the AI meant until he was inside the lock, had closed the door, and heard the air hissing free. He stood on a hatch. There was just enough room to sidle to one side and reach down to pull it open. A metal stair attached to the opening let him drop through and close the hatch above him. “Why that way?” he asked.

No answer at all from the enigmatic AI.

Just like in the water maintenance byways, he now stood on a thin ladder in a tall and fairly slender opening between the levels. The turn through the hatch had kept him oriented the right way.

The ladder led to a series of beams wide enough to walk on and close enough together to jump from one to the other where there were no ramps. Pipes and wires lined the beams. As he stood still, trying to figure out where to go next, it looked as if the whole space breathed, or swayed, or something. His footing felt steady, so it must be part illusion from being inside the skin of the
Fire
in a place humans seldom went.

There were no nearby doors.

He picked a direction and started walking the beams carefully, conscious of the weight that sat above him (the blue and command levels) and of the gray level and cargo holds below.

He started toward the first hatch he spotted in a wall outside the gray pods.

“Next one.”

“Thank you.”

Damned AI didn’t bother to acknowledge even that. Onor climbed through the next hatch, which ended up being a down and then across turn, reversing what he had just done. He remembered looking up from the park the day the sky fell; the gap between levels hadn’t seemed so big then.

Home.

“So why didn’t you put me in D?” Onor complained. “I bet Ruby’s in lockup.”

Ix didn’t answer.

He started off down the tunnels, jogging, his helmet tucked under his arm but the suit still on to cover his blue uniform.