UnBound (14 page)

She tries to walk, takes her first tottering baby steps. Her infected hand feels like a knife has gone through it.

The heatsuit's faceplate display winks on, and Anissa squints, trying to focus. The display provides an interactive readout, showing everything she needs to survive: the outside temperature, her current location, the oxygen reserves, and remaining battery power—still over 80 percent, after years of disuse. With luck, it's enough to get her to safety.

But it won't be easy.

The temperature in the mine is a searing 647 degrees Fahrenheit—enough to flash-boil her sweat away if it escaped the heatsuit's recycling system. The temperature in a mine fire can reach one thousand degrees, so she counts herself lucky. She still can't see anything, just flames curling and dancing, filling the cavern. She can only follow the moving map projected on her faceplate.

Just like Dad used to,
she thinks, though it's not comforting, because he was doing that when he died.

She stumbles, jamming her hand against a spur of rock, and cries out in pain. She can't see her fingers under the bright yellow glove, but they feel swollen and tender. She wonders if the suit's biomedical scanners will detect it.

They do. On the faceplate readout, a picture of her hand appears.
SEPSIS DETECTED,
it says.
RECOMMEND AMPUTATION.
Standard procedure, she knows, is to anesthetize the injured limb and then sever it—something the suit can do automatically. But for Anissa, that's not an option.

“Amputation refused,” she says.

She keeps walking, trying to figure out what happened aboveground. The Centralia camp has been attacked, maybe destroyed, by forces unknown—someone who knew where they were hiding out and decided to squash them. She wonders if they knew, somehow, about Heath's poison-unwind program, if Sebastian and his scouts were too conspicuous in hunting down candidates and attracted the wrong attention from someone who decided to destroy them. Or perhaps there was a mole, someone Heath trusted but shouldn't have. All she knows is there was a massive explosion, like a clapper's detonation, although she can't imagine why clappers would be involved. Blowing up a secret AWOL camp doesn't seem like the high-profile kind of terror they go in for.

Not that it matters.
My friends are gone,
she thinks despairingly.
Heath's gone. I warned him, but they found us too soon.

There's a lump in her throat, an aching sadness for everyone consumed by the inferno. The ones who survived will probably be captured and taken to the nearest harvest camp. But she can't worry about that now—her priority is survival.

She checks the readout. The temperature's rising, and she's headed down, not up. The map display says
SURFACE ACCESS 6.3 MILES
. Worse, the suit's cooling system is starting to stutter, overloaded by the unrelenting heat. But that's not her worst problem.

She's being followed.

It's there on the map: The red blip of a second heatsuit behind her, drawing steadily closer. Anissa tries to pick up the pace, the sweat beading on her brow, her hand throbbing incessantly. She keeps glancing backward as if to spot her pursuer, but of course he's not
visible
—the rippling flames conceal him from view. Only the instruments on her heatsuit can detect him.

Until he speaks.

“Come back, Anissa,” says a voice in her earpiece. She remembers Dad telling her the suits could communicate over short distances using subsonic transceivers. But the real surprise is who's talking.

“I can protect you,” says Heath Calderon.

“Leave me alone,” Anissa says through the heatsuit's subsonics.

“I can't let you kill yourself. This is suicide; it solves nothing. Come back with me. They won't hurt you.”

“They just blew up half the town, moron! Why wouldn't they hurt me?”

“Because I cut a deal. They take me, you go free.”

“Just like that.”

“Not
just like that. I gave them everything—my notes, records, whatever survived the explosion. Enough so they'll never be fooled again. Whatever threat I posed has been neutralized.”

Anissa hesitates. “And in return, I go free?”

“I had nothing else to bargain for. They won't let
me
go. They only let me come down here because it's near suicide. They don't care if we burn up down here—but if I can bring you back, at least you'll have a future.”

“Not much of one.” Anissa flinches. “My hand's infected; it's getting worse.”

“Cut it off,” he says. “They'll replace it for you.”

Anissa stands stock-still, processing what she's heard. She remembers Heath's brother, who was sold to organ harvesters to save him, an act so revolting that it defined his life forever. What would make him betray everything he believes in, just to save a fleeing AWOL who he doesn't even seem to like much?

“You're afraid of me,” she says. “Afraid of what I may know.”

“You know nothing.”

“But you can't be sure of that—
because you're not Heath
.”

Anissa shuts off the transceiver, pushing herself harder than before, determined to escape despite her failing health. Her pursuer—the man impersonating Heath—seems to be getting closer, though it's hard to be sure. The only thing she knows for certain is that he's got a more advanced heatsuit that can, among other things, mimic voices.

Heath has been captured or more likely killed; she knows that. They must have swooped into the wreckage of Centralia and started capturing AWOLs, rounding up survivors like ducks in a pond. Until they realized that the mine had blown open, the heatsuit was missing, and someone
had
escaped, right out from under them, into the burning maze under Centralia. And they sent someone in after her—with orders to make sure that no one escapes.

The words “sepsis detected” seem to pulse with a life of their own, like an attention-grabbing headline. The outside temperature has dropped to a balmy 619.

She wants to break into a run, but the heatsuit isn't built for that—she can only keep walking, at maximum speed, through this surreal landscape. If she slows or stops, he'll catch her. If she succumbs to the spreading infection, making her dizzy and weak and sick, he may not even
have
to catch her. She can feel her strength draining away, the pathogens in her bloodstream spreading, her world turning gray at the edges.

“You can't escape,” says a soft voice.

Not Heath's voice, it's coarser and lower pitched, because the man behind her isn't pretending anymore—he's become brutally candid.

“I turned you off,” Anissa says.

“I'm on an alternate frequency. We know you're Anissa Pruitt. It's time to stop running.”

“Why, what's the alternative? Is there a reward for giving up?”

“A painless end,” he says. “A chance to live, divided.”

Gosh, thanks,
Anissa thinks but says nothing. Her pursuer doesn't wait for an answer and elaborates on his proposal.

“I know you're hurt, Anissa. I know how
badly
you're hurt, because our suits automatically share information. You're in a lot of pain right now, but you don't have to be. Give yourself up, and I'll adjust your anesthetic feeds to end your pain. Then I'll get you out of here. You'll be taken to a harvest camp, and your organs will help others keep living.
You'll
keep living, through them. Isn't that better than this pointless suicide?”

“Shut off all frequencies,” she says.

The voice cuts off, leaving a strained silence. He's still there, a red blip on her readout, mute but relentless.

Anissa steels herself. The mine stretches impossibly before her. Her feet are heavy, hard to lift, and the heatsuit's getting uncomfortable. She's in a race she can't win, burdened by infection, unwilling to surrender.

A part of her wants to amputate the hand and be done with it. It makes sense, because it would neutralize the infection. Amputation wouldn't
cure
her—the sepsis in her blood would have to heal gradually, over a period of time. But surgical intervention would help to kick-start her body's own recovery system.

There's just one problem: She can't bring herself to do it.

My dad wouldn't, and I won't either,
she thinks, gritting her teeth. These suits were designed for firefighters ready and willing to receive unwound parts. Accepting amputation would make her complicit. This is the line she won't cross, the very thing she won't do, even if it means she'll die in this awful mine. Her one consolation is that they can't harvest her if she's dead. By the time they drag her body out of here, it'll be in no shape for organ donation.

So she keeps walking. She'll walk until she keels over from septic shock.
This is where I die, in a tunnel of fire that feels like damnation.

Then an idea dawns.

A stupid idea, something she'd never have the nerve to try under any other circumstances. She's not sure she has the nerve to do it now. But her options are narrowing. It's either give in and let the machine amputate . . . or this.

She breaks the seal on her left-hand glove. Peels back the reinforced fabric, exposing her flesh. It's sickly red-raw, sticky and oozing, and the superheated air strikes her nerve endings, making her cry out in pain. But the worst is yet to come.

“If this doesn't work, Dad,” she says, “I'm sorry.”

And she jams her bare hand palm-first against the red-hot wall of the mine.

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

Don't faint,
she thinks.
If you faint, you won't get up again.
But the ground is unsteady, lurching and heaving like a ship at sea, and the shock threatens to claim her because
OH MY GOD IT HURTS
, worse than anything she's ever imagined. She wants to curl up and die, wants it badly, but that merciful surrender is something Anissa can't afford and won't permit herself; she has to keep going.

The flesh of her hand is seared, but she tries not to register that. She pulls her glove back on over the ruined flesh, nearly screaming as the pain reignites, refusing to stop until the hand is covered again.

Her faceplate reads
THIRD-DEGREE BURN
and
SEVERE TISSUE DAMAGE
and, once again,
AMPUTATION RECOMMENDED
. But the “sepsis” message flickers and fades.
Because I burned it out of me, like putting a torch to an open wound.
She hasn't cured herself, not entirely; her blood is still tainted. But she's removed the primary source of infection and begun the process of healing. Her immune system will do the rest.

“Amputation refused,” she says.

She takes a step forward. Then another. And another.

•  •  •

Two miles later she's still going. So is her pursuer.

With the nerve endings in her hand burned away, the pain has settled to a powerful, but manageable, throb. Her pursuer is getting closer, gaining ground. She realizes there's one last chance to lose him. Up ahead is an overhanging rock shelf, slicing across the tunnel at a place where it narrows to near impassability. Probably from a cave-in, where the support beams were burned through and couldn't carry their load. Whatever the reason, it gives Anissa the advantage. The man behind is larger and stronger, normally an asset, but here it works against him—he'll never get past this obstacle.

But can she?

She crouches, gauging the dimensions of the opening, planning her approach. The trick is not to touch the walls, because of their furnace heat—something she knows all too well. The heatsuit can survive the heat of the mine, but not if it's pressed against the near-molten stone. Anissa sidles forward awkwardly, crouching to clear the overhang. Her balance wavers and she nearly topples but manages to keep her footing. Her injured hand brushes the wall just once, with a sunburst of pain, but she bites her lip and keeps going.

She's clear. The obstruction is past. Her pursuer can't follow.

•  •  •

Some impossible time later, after an interval she can't clearly measure, Anissa emerges from the burning hell of the Centralia mine into a bright spring afternoon, many miles from the ruined AWOL camp. She's near a stand of gnarled-limb oak trees and rolling hills of grass and thistle and windblown dandelion. She peels off her heatsuit, like a prisoner escaping from bondage, and breathes in a lungful of air that's neither superheated nor caustic. She can almost forget the throbbing pain in her ruined hand.

They'll be looking for her; she has to keep moving. Anissa has ample time—she hopes—to find help, someone to clean and dress her wound and help her escape from the Juvenile Authority. Plenty of locals are sympathetic to AWOLs. She gives herself an even chance of getting away clean.

She turns to leave—but then hears a voice behind her.

“Help me. . . .”

A stooped figure emerges from the mine, tearing at a badly damaged heatsuit. He's a boeuf—someone Anissa's never seen, blond and buzz-cut and clearly in pain. The suit is crumpled and torn on the left-hand side, perhaps because he was too large to wriggle through that tight passage but somehow did it anyway. His left arm, Anissa notes, has been severed by the suit, just above the elbow.

He tumbles to the ground and lies still.

She checks his pulse. He's still got one. The smart move would be to forget about him, hoping he'll die, maybe even speeding the process. She admits it's tempting. Ignoring him would make her escape much easier. Getting help for him will call attention and risk her own safety. She could find a roundabout way to do it—get a backwoods hunter to say he found the man, perhaps, making no mention of Anissa. But anything she tries will increase her chance of getting caught.