The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (35 page)

It’s actually Noah who
gets her bags, and carries them onto the aircraft, and helps her up
the ladder, and obeys her when she tells him to help the rest of
the Cardiff people. He dotes on his aunt and she pets him
distractedly on the head in return, caught up in awe of the flashy
machine. Guess they don’t have the same kind of technology as
Manchester here.

I’m so busy watching
Vivienne with her resilient grace and her grouchy muttering that I
don’t notice Yosiah isn’t by my side. Tom and Livy shuffle into
their usual seats and I warn them not to move, peering my head out
of the door to look for my best friend.

He’s still on the
ground, arguing with Timofei. I shove a woman out of the way and
lean further around the door to hear better.

“I
can’t, Tim,” he says,
pleads
.

Timofei’s shoulders
droop. He looks tired and old. “But what if—”

“I can’t, and you know
why.”

“We’re going to die, Vi,” Timofei hisses. His voice carries
on the wind. “You know we are. We need all the advantages we can
get and you’re a
huge
advantage.”

“What I am,” Siah’s
says, cold and controlled, “is an abomination.”

I can tell by his tone
that he’s closed off the conversation so I hurry back to my seat.
Livy raises an eyebrow.

“Quiet,” I tell
her.

“Alright.” Her smirk
is one of mine. “For what price?”

“What do you
want?”

“Carry my bag.”

“Fine.” I speak
quickly, looking over the heads of Guardians and strays to see Siah
come through the door. “I’ll carry your bag for the week.”

“The rest of the month
or I’ll tell him you were spying on him.”

“Fine, whatever.”

Siah takes his seat.
Olive’s grin is slick and smug.

“You’re such a brat,”
I hiss so only she hears.

“I wonder where I got
that from,” she throws back.

She glares. I glare.
Stalemate.

I turn away from my
sister to Siah. His attention is fixed on the corrugated metal of
the ceiling. His hands are shaking. I cover the hand closest to
mine and hold it tightly. A tiny breath seeps out of him, and then
another, and another, until he’s calmer.

“I’m not telling you
what that was about,” he murmurs.

“I don’t know what you
mean.”

He nudges me. “I know
you were listening. I always know where you are.”

Great. I’m carting
Livy’s bag around for nothing. “What are you? Superhuman?”

“Don’t joke about
that.” He says it too seriously, like I’ve just joked about dying
from a Strain.

I feel my forehead
crumple with confusion. “Why?”

He shutters his
expression, covers it with a sardonic smile. He’s doing this way
too often with me. He’s keeping something big. “Can you imagine how
much worse this world would be if there were superhuman people
running around?”

“You really think it
gets worse than this?”

“Fair point.”

***

Honour

10:23. 04.11.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.

We end up in Plymouth,
right at the bottom of the island where the air is salty mist and
the people talk with weird accents. There’s a buzz of excitement
among the Guardians, whispered conversations and hesitant smiles.
They relax for the first time since London, and I get the feeling
that Plymouth is as safe as we’re gonna ever get. I notice nobody
is watching the skies today.

I see intent stares
from locals pressed up against their windows, desperate for a
glimpse of us. I’m reminded of a different time in a different
city, when we were investigated for the Strains, when the Officials
thought we were in on John’s crazy plot to trace the President back
through his timeline, when our neighbours sent us glares through
windowpanes, thinking we’d killed John—thinking Tia and I had
killed John because whenever something bad happened on our street
we were to blame because we were black.

It’d be nice to think
those days were behind us now but I’m sure half the hostile looks
we’re given by Guardians, their families, and these strangers are
because they’re white and we’re not. I haven’t heard the inevitable
insults yet—we’re not settled down, so I don’t think anyone feels
comfortable enough to be a complete asshole—but it won’t surprise
me when I do hear them. I’d love for someone to say something nasty
to Horatia though, and to watch them hit the floor from the force
of Miya’s punch.

They’re stood together
now, Miya and my sister. They have conversations of gestures and
facial expressions, Miya’s huffed laughter paired with the nudge of
Tia’s shoulder.

There’s future in this
briny air or, if not the real thing, there’s the promise of it.
It’s obvious in the casual way we stand around. Nobody’s in a rush
to get anywhere, not now we’re in Plymouth. I remember what I
promised myself: I’m going to make an actual effort to help the
Guardians, to stop people’s suffering. And I think I know how to do
it—not with words but with strategy and Dalmar’s help—but that will
have to wait. This is the town John got Wes out to.

Today I will find my
missing brother. Well—my other missing brother.

Word has been sent out
to all the small safe zones dotted around Forgotten London, the
ones people had escaped to long before the Fall. I can’t believe it
when I’m told there are eleven of them in total. God knows how many
people escaped to them. Even The Guardians have lost count. All
those people living so close to us for years, all those safe places
we could have run away to.

But if we’d have got
out sooner, we wouldn’t know the Guardians, we wouldn’t be a real
part of the revolution, and we wouldn’t have some of the friends
we’ve picked up along the way.

I’d never have met
Branwell Ravel. I don’t even want to think about a life without
him—he means too much to me now. I don’t want to think about him
going home, going back, either, but sometimes that thought strikes
me viciously, the way it’s striking now.

I grit my teeth,
closing my eyes for a split second. I trip over my feet and slam
back to reality. Plymouth. Waiting. Future.

The future. I breathe
through my nose, picturing it, picturing being free.

By the end of the week
all the people left in the safe zones will be here, and the
republic army in Bharat will have sent us aircrafts. A way out.
Three of the aircrafts they’re sending are fighter planes, loaded
with every gun, canon, and bomb imaginable. A way out with the
power to defend ourselves.

It’s happening.

I can finally imagine
an end to this.

I’m barely off the
aircraft before Dalmar closes a hand around my arm and drags me
behind the aircraft.

He’s staring at me,
furious, his skin flushed red and his pale hair a total mess.

“You haven’t told
anyone have you?” he demands. “I knew you wouldn’t. You can’t
pretend this is fine, Honour. I know it’s not.”

“What are you talking
about?” I try to shrug off his grip but he tightens his hands on me
to a painful degree.

“Your hallucination!
Nobody knows about it, not even Timofei. I asked if there was any
progress with you, and he looked at me like I was talking a foreign
language. He’s a doctor, Honour! You should have asked him for
help. Don’t you care? Aren’t you worried about yourself at
all?”

I wrench myself away,
walk a few paces away. “Are you serious? So I’m seeing things, so
what? I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“That’s my
point
. You don’t know what caused that, or if it’ll happen again,
or if it’s killing you.” He drags his hands through his hair,
looking at the grey sky. It looks like it’s gonna rain. Good—it
might cool Dalmar’s anger.

“You’re overreacting,”
I say.

“And
you’re underreacting.” He hisses, “
Anything
could be wrong with you.
Anything, Honour. If what you said about Underground London Zone is
true, they could have done anything to you. You might have a
Strain, you might have an even worse illness. Those exist, still,
no matter what anyone says. And that’s not even taking into account
mental illnesses. Do you have any idea how many things there are
that could kill you any minute now?”

“Dal,” I say, softer
now. I know where this anger’s coming from—he’s worried about me.
“I’m alright, really. I don’t think it’ll happen again.”

He
looks at me for a long moment. “Are you sure about that?” He comes
closer, a deep crease between his eyebrows. “Are you
certain
? What warning
did you get last time? Is there something you felt, sensed, that
told you it wasn’t real?”

My stomach drops.
There wasn’t. There wasn’t any warning that it was fake. I thought
it was real, but all that time I thought I was hitting out at
Officials, I was really fighting Dalmar. I raise my eyes to his and
my despair must be visible because he catches my shoulder,
comforting instead of confronting this time.

“You see the problem,”
he says. “It could happen again any time. And you’re right—it might
be nothing at all. But we can’t know for sure.” His turquoise eyes
beg me to be reasonable. “Will you let Timofei check you over?”

I nod reluctantly. If
there is something wrong with me—and of course there is, but if
something other than being a carrier caused that vision—I want to
know what it is and if it’s fixable. “Okay,” I say.

“Thank you.” Dalmar’s
still holding onto me but I don’t feel too inclined to free
myself.

“I’ll be okay,” I say,
my eyes on the gravel under my feet.

“I know. I’ll make
sure you are.” There’s a stretch of the wind and the hum of the
still-running aircraft, and then he adds, “I’m not losing anyone
else, especially not you.”

“No,” I agree.

“But
I almost did.” At the break in his voice I meet his eyes. I press
my palm over his hand on my shoulder, wanting to say something but
not knowing what, or how. “In Manchester. You died. I’m sure you
did, I saw it, I
watched
you. If Branwell hadn’t—you’d be dead now. You’d
be gone.” He sucks in a ragged breath and says, with finality, “I’m
never going through that again.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumble.
I don’t know what else I can say. Nothing will make up for it, and
even though I feel like it’s my fault, I’m not sure it is. Yes, I
took the vaccine in Forgotten London, but I didn’t know it’d
activate in Manchester because of a stupid civilian guard with a
shitty gun. Still, I apologise again.

Dalmar squeezes my shoulder and releases me, taking a deep
breath. “It’s not your fault.” Sounding more like himself he adds,
“You have to tell your sister and the others, though. And if you
don’t,
I will
.
They deserve to know what’s going on with you.”

“Okay,” I mumble,
brushing drops of rain from my brow. It did start raining after
all. “I’ll tell them.”

Eventually.

“Good.” He nods,
satisfied. “I’m gonna find Timofei and ask when he’s got time to
see you.”

I don’t get another
word out before he’s run off, vanished into the rain. Why does he
always do that? I remember him doing the same thing back in
Forgotten London. We sat in a tiny park in Hammersmith and he told
me all London people had statuses, that ours was ‘Insentient’, and
he was working on getting us away from F.L. to somewhere better.
And then he just disappeared into the town.

It’s really
annoying.

“I can tell you what
you want to know.”

I spin around, heart
lurching. “Cat ...?”

She was the last
person I expected to see. I’d actually forgotten she existed. I’d
feel guilty for that but she doesn’t look like she cares what I
think of her. I wonder, not for the first time, what John was doing
with her. How the hell did they end up sharing a hole-in-the-wall
bookshop in Leeds? There’s something about her that’s just …
unsettling. She watches you too closely, stares for minutes at a
time like she’s analysing you for the best way to wreck you. A
shiver trips down my spine.

“I can tell you what
you want to know,” she repeats, coming closer. Her mousy hair is
damp and curling, the ends dripping onto her tan leather jacket.
The curls make her look younger, an edge of vulnerability I don’t
believe. The shrewd, sharp look in her eye is the truth of Cat. I
don’t need to know anything else.

It takes me a moment
to fumble together a response. “What do I want to know?”

“What they did to
you.” She leans nearer. Up close her skin is weirdly pale, almost
translucent, though that could be because of the drops of rain
speckled across her cheeks. This close, I can also see the flecks
of colour in her eyes, the vividness of the hazel, the imperfection
in her right eye.

I jerk back, not sure
what I’m seeing. It looks like the colour from her iris has … bled
out. The entire left side of the brown has leaked into the white of
her eyes. I swallow hard, my heart speeding. I know what she’s
going to say before she says it.

“They did it to me,
too.”

I
stagger back and catch myself against the slick metal of the
aircraft. Cat was
there
. She knows what they did to me, what they did to Tia. “Tell
me.”

“They made us …
addicted.”

“Addicted?” My mind is
numb. I thought she would say we were an experiment, some
scientific fuck up. I’m about to open my mouth when she rushes
on.

“They wanted us to be
dependent on them, because they weren’t done with us yet. They
needed us. I was … I was the same way when I escaped and your
brother found me.”