Wordless (5 page)

It occurred to me that I could still drive away from the insanity at this point, throw away the bloody evidence tying me to the scene like any other trash. But it was only a passing thought. I was already dashing back the way I’d come.

five

When I returned to the Word, she was crouched over her ankle on the lawn, muttering under her breath with her eyes closed, her right hand still held aloft. She looked like a dark goddess in the shining golden grass, a piece of night shoved out of the sky by dawn. Blood continued to flow from the place her thumb had been, but her ankle—she’d straightened the bone. I hadn’t heard her scream or even make a noise. I’d broken my wrist falling off the garbage truck when I was twelve, and when the local doctor straightened my arm, you could have heard me shouting from the other end of Eden City.

“My ankle isn’t healed yet,” she said, and I realized she was talking to me now, whereas she’d been mumbling words before—had they been
Word
words? “It’s better, but I’ll be too tired if I go all the way. Lost too much blood. I need to save energy for my thumb.”

She looked up, blinking at the layered bag slung over my shoulder and the roll of paper towels in my other hand.

“It already has something in it?” she asked, looking at the bag.

“My jacket and some … trash.” I wondered if a Word would be offended by the thought of sharing a bag with garbage. “To hide your shape.”

“Smart.” She sounded surprised by her assessment, and almost sleepy. She stood slowly on one foot. “I’m Khaya,” she said, meeting my eyes in a heavy-lidded way that made my heart lurch in my chest. “The Word of Life.”

I already knew who she was. What I didn’t know was why the Word of Life would want to escape the Athenaeum. And I didn’t have time to ask, because she fell over.

I dropped the paper towels and caught her before she hit the ground. She was easy to hoist with even one arm, her head lolling only as high as my shoulder, her frame warm and light and soft against my chest in ways I didn’t want to think about. I didn’t quite know what abilities the Word of Life had—aside from giving life, obviously, and healing, apparently—and I hoped mind-reading wasn’t one of them.

She smelled good, too, not like the trash bag I shook open with my other hand.

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked, doubt creeping into my tone—the one sane voice among the decision-making committee in my head. “You’re not doing too well. We can still find a doctor.”

In response, Khaya half-knelt, half-slid down my side, tipping sideways into the bag. Once in, she curled into a ball, wrapping her left arm around her tucked knees, trying to brace her ankle while still clutching her detached thumb. She held her disfigured hand upright as I ripped a small hole through the four thin layers of plastic: an air hole.

When she waved her raised arm at me—the arm with the bracelet—I realized she was doing more than trying to slow the bleeding.

“Do you see that drain next to the flower bed?” she asked, her voice muffled by the plastic but still firm. “Slide the bracelet off my wrist, quickly, then drop it in there as fast as you can. It will be sailing around in the sewer system after that. It will confuse them.”

I was confused myself until I made sense of what I should have minutes before. The bracelet was a tracking device—a very sophisticated one, if it also monitored her vital signs and could only be removed by chopping off a thumb, not by cutting the bracelet itself.

What the hell …?
But there wasn’t time to ask.

Another wad of paper towels soaked up the blood that had found its way back onto my arms and hands. Then I dropped it, with the rest of the roll, into the bag with Khaya. I clamped my fingers around the bracelet, eyed the metal grill set in the gutter several yards away, and positioned my feet.

“Ready?” I asked, almost more to myself than her.

Khaya gave a short nod from within the bag, her shadowed eyes showing a hint of fear for the first time.

“My name’s Tavin,” I said.

Then I whipped the bracelet off, ignoring her gasp as it brushed over her wound. I sprinted for the gutter and rammed the bracelet into the drain, like a starved nicotine addict racing to get a coin into the slot of a cigarette machine. I skinned my knee and jammed a finger, but I didn’t care. The bracelet was gone in about two seconds flat—but not before I saw a little red light embedded in the material begin flashing angrily.

As if she’d seen it, Khaya hissed, “Hurry!”

I arrived back at the bag, knotted it, and slung it—slung her—over my shoulder before she could say anything else. She was heavier than a normal load of trash, but not too heavy for me to march back to the waiting truck. I probably could have run, with the amount of adrenaline pulsing through my veins, but running would raise suspicion and not be too comfortable for someone with a broken ankle and a severed thumb.

Her body shook against my back, low sniffs punctuating the words she was whispering too quietly for me to hear. I would have been howling if I’d chopped my own thumb off, yet this was her greatest show of pain, even with the monitor bracelet gone. She
was
posing as a bag of trash, but still, I wondered if her subdued tears weren’t just to keep up her disguise. This was the Word, after all, who never smiled or showed any emotion. So I tried to ignore her reluctant, semi-private display, along with the less-subtle feeling of panic crashing over me.

Where the hell was I supposed to go now that I had a bloodied Word in a bag over my shoulder?

Out. She’d said she needed to get out. Who knew
why
, but I focused on that goal as I reached the truck and deposited her gently but hastily in the back among the other identical black bags of trash, avoiding looking at the security camera as I did so. I made sure the air hole was unrestricted and wiped my hands on my pants to clear any remaining blood before I leapt in the truck and turned the key.

I didn’t hear anything. Then I remembered how quiet the engine was, muttered another curse, and threw the truck into gear.

I was too anxious to worry about going slow. The slight hum of the engine rose until it became a high-pitched whine while the apartments and buildings flashed by my window in quick succession. Luckily, there was hardly any traffic. My eyes were half on the road and half on the lookout for anyone coming—coming to arrest me, in particular.

Or to kill me.

No one had stopped me when I reached the main road out of the Athenaeum, but as I flicked on my blinker like any good driver who hasn’t just been going sixty miles per hour, I realized something was wrong. The security guards were standing outside their booth again, not lazing in their chairs, and both were talking on portable radios. And then a siren sounded, echoing among the distant central buildings under the peak of the pyramid. It was so loud that I didn’t need to roll the window down to hear it, but I did anyway.

It must have been because Khaya was no longer wearing the bracelet. I didn’t know what else it could be.

I made the turn and drove at a measured pace for the gate as if I hadn’t noticed the commotion, trying not to think about the bloodstains darkly visible against my brown pants, my missing white uniform jacket, or the black bag with the air hole sitting in the back of the truck within plain sight of the security guards now that they were out of their booth. All I could do was take a deep breath, like Khaya had done against the pain of a severed thumb and a broken ankle.

The truck slowed to a halt when one of the guards inevitably raised his hand for me to stop. I tried to roll down my window only to discover that it was already down.
Deep breaths.

“You’ve finished early,” the guard nearest my window said, his radio still halfway to his mouth. “Thought you were done at noon.” He didn’t even look at me, his eyes on the source of the siren, emanating from the heart of the Athenaeum.

“Part of my contract agreement on … Wednesdays.” I needed to grope for the day of the week. When I found it, I realized I actually had a good excuse. “It’s garbage barge day for us, so I have to cut my route here short.” Only the second part was a lie. The barge left at night, so I would have had plenty of time to finish up all my routes.

“I wasn’t aware of that,” the guard said, more grouchy than suspicious. “And we have a situation, anyway, so I’m afraid you’ll have to sit tight before you’re clear to leave.”

“But I could lose my job.” My hands rubbed the steering wheel, stress edging into my voice. I noticed a splotch of blood on my finger and dropped my hands into my lap.

“Not my problem.” The guard still wasn’t looking at me, missing all the details that were screaming as loud as the siren, trying to give me away. He obviously didn’t imagine I had anything to do with the “situation.” How could he? I was a garbage boy. He was being a bastard to me because he could, not because he was trying to catch me out.

I forced a superior smile, adopting a tone to match. “But it is your problem, officer. Dr. Swanson is well aware of our agreement. We arranged it specifically, which is why he granted me a higher level of clearance. Don’t you remember that?”

He finally cast me a glance. “Yeah, but—”

“Well then, you’ll remember he gave me this card that says I can come and go as I please.” I ignored the other security guard, who’d stepped up to the passenger door with his hand on his hip—or, more significantly, on his gun holster. I passed the card out the window with clammy hands, breathing a silent thanks to the Gods that there was no blood on it. “Dr. Swanson wouldn’t be happy if you cost me my job for breaking the terms of my contract. I thought he made that clear.”

The guard snatched the card from me and squinted at the words on it, under the barcode. There was a good chance he couldn’t read any more than I could, but he wouldn’t want to admit it. I hoped that was the case, because the card probably said absolutely nothing about me coming or going “as I pleased.”

“See?” I said. “I’m allowed to go now. You could call Dr. Swanson to double-check, but he probably wouldn’t appreciate having to repeat himself so soon.”

The guard thrust the card back at me with a scowl. “Fine, runt,” he said, even though I must have been a foot taller than him. “I don’t know why Dr. Swanson gives you the time of day. I certainly wouldn’t. Now get out.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, too relieved to be sarcastic.

I showed more restraint than I thought I possessed by not flooring the gas pedal as soon as he raised the gate. The limits of my restraint were reached, though, when I made it to the middle of the parking lot without being stopped or followed. I screeched out into traffic like a wild animal bursting from a cage, forcing a car to swerve widely around me. The little pickup was far more maneuverable than the garbage truck and I zipped between lanes of expensive vehicles, swearwords leaving my mouth in a rush to match my driving.

“What the hell were you thinking, Tavin? What are you doing with her, huh?” Apparently I not only cursed but talked to myself when I was in a state of near-hysteria. “Where the hell am I even going? Oh man, Drey is going to kill me … if the Word of Death doesn’t kill me first. Hey, but I’m okay, because I have the Word of Life to save me—in a
garbage bag
in the back of a
stolen pickup
!”

My tirade ceased when I eventually slowed down with the flow of traffic, no longer careening around other cars like I was in a high-speed chase. The only time I’d come close to feeling this way was one evening after Drey and I had gotten in our worst fight ever, and I’d stolen a hundred in cash from him along with the garbage truck. I’d felt unleashed—in a bad way—but I’d ended up only driving a few blocks and spending ten bucks on candy bars at a twenty-four hour convenience store. Drey hadn’t even been mad at me in the end, even though I’d returned at three in the morning.

I figured Drey would be pretty mad at me now, so that nixed heading back to the garage as a possible answer to the “Where the hell am I going?” question. I had no idea where in Eden City I could possibly take Khaya in her gruesome condition and not be turned in by people who might not even recognize her. And if they did recognize her, they might kill me
before
turning me in. The Word of Death wouldn’t even have to get his hands dirty—or his fingertip.

I had to go someplace where no one would expect to find her … without powerful or power-hungry people
… where anyone who saw her would ignore her.

Then I had it. Just the place. I’d been heading toward the mountains, deeper into the hillier, richer section of the city, but I made an abrupt turn and headed downhill toward the Nectar River.

I took narrow backstreets to get near the waterfront, which were blissfully vacant at this time of day. These types of streets were busier under cover of darkness. I parked well underneath the Old Bridge—not the oldest bridge, but the shabbiest alongside grander, shinier counterparts—and didn’t even have an audience as I hopped up into the back of the truck to tear Khaya out of the trash bag.

The ladies under the bridge worked at night, and the sun was now officially up.

A few years ago, after having one too many drinks one evening while keeping me company at the garage, Drey had told me about these ladies—women who wore scooping shirts and short skirts and leather boots that made my brain melt to mush. I mean, I’d seen them as a kid, but never really
seen
them until Drey’s story; and, after a couple more drinks, he’d told me exactly what they could do and for how much. But then he smacked me upside the head when I jokingly asked him for a hundred bucks.

Funny thing was, I had gone to see them. But Drey was with me, and we went for lively conversation, nothing else. We saw them usually in the early morning—the end of their “day” and the start of ours. People like us, who were only one step off of the streets and still worked on the streets, often only had people of like status for company.

Khaya looked barely alive as I knelt and pulled the black plastic away from her, her long hair and sticky blood all over. But she still somehow managed to look beautiful. Even crazier, her thumb was reattached, though there was still a sharp red line around it as if she’d glued it on. It was pretty amazing.