Destroyed

by Madeline Dyer

  “He and Elf are looking for more game,” Esther tells me. “The others are looking for plants—Bea recognizes some around here. Said she can find ones to make painkillers with.”

  “So we won’t be raiding for painkillers then?” I say the words lightly, but Esther winces.

  “We can’t risk a raid,” she says. “Not with how important you are.”

  I twist around a little, try to ignore the pain. “Do you know where we are?”

  Esther shakes her head. “Corin said the terrain’s like this as far as we can see, all around.” She indicates the grassy lands with a few trees scattered. “No towns though. That’s good.”

  I nod and rub my head, try to clear the headache. Is that part of it, the Seer instability? And part of me recoils—I shouldn’t have it. My mind was supposed to be healed. Yet saving Taras undid me.

  It’ll be okay, I tell myself. It has to be okay.

  “How much stuff have we got with us? How many blankets?” My voice cracks as if it hasn’t been used for hours, not just a few moments.

  Siora holds one up in answer. Her sleeves fall, and I see her wrists are tattooed in an intricate ink that almost glows silver when it catches the light. The ink looks new, her skin a little sore, peeling. She sees me looking and drops the blanket, yanks her sleeves back down.

  “Only a couple,” Esther says. “Bea’s survival bag was transported with her. That’s it.”

  I look at the meat I’m chewing. “But we’ve got food and water?”

  “That’s the last of it,” Esther says. “They got two small desert rats when you were sleeping. Gave them to us. Taras insisted.” Esther smiles, but it doesn’t reach the corners of her mouth, not properly. “You look much better now.”

  I nod, though I don’t feel much better.

  “Hey, Siora, can you give Yani a hand with the fire?” Esther asks.

  Siora looks surprised, but she nods and sets off for where Yani’s rubbing two sticks together, trying to get a spark.

  Esther lifts Toivo up, holds him against her chest with one arm, then scoots a little closer to me. “What are you really going to do?” She raises one eyebrow at me.

  “What am I going to do?” I frown. My head hurts. I don’t feel like doing anything.

  “About Corin. He told me what you’d agreed, but you’re obviously not going to let him die—and you can’t take away all the Enhanced Ones’ addiction, that’s clear with the effect this has had on you. So what’s the plan? How are we going to win? How are you going to kill Raleigh but save Corin?”

  I shake my head. “No. Corin and I…we made that deal. We decided.” But just saying the words makes me feel darker, worse. Corin’s going to die. And I’m not going to do anything to stop it.

  She snorts. “Really? You’re giving in? You’re not even trying?”

  “Esther, we talked about it—”

  “No.” Her tone is harsh. “He’s my brother, and I don’t want him to die just so the rest of us can live. Seven, you’re the powerful Seer. You can do something about it, I know you can. He’ll thank you, in years to come, when he’s got a family and is alive. All of this up until now, this isn’t a life, growing up in danger, constantly on the run, hunted down. There’s so much more to come, when we’re free.”

  When he’s got a family.

  My heart squeezes.

  A family with someone else.

  I swallow hard; jealousy shouldn’t play a part in this.

  Esther’s right.

  I want Corin to live.

  To be happy. It’s what I wanted before, before he made me agree not to do anything. Because my first instinct was to make Raleigh undo it.

  But a family…with someone else? I want that for him, don’t I?

  Of course. But I know it’s a lie. I want him to myself. I don’t want to think of him kissing another girl, holding her, being with her.

  “Corin’s just being silly, emotional, thinking he can’t live without you. You love him, don’t you? You won’t let him die. Please, Sev?” Esther stares at me, earnest, then tilts her head to one side. “How can you even contemplate not doing anything?”

  A weak, sour taste spreads across my tongue.

  I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I’ll sort it. I’ll make Raleigh undo it. I can’t do it now though.” The pain in my head is too intense, and Taras’s warning about my powers—about them stretching my mind—has scared me, scared me deeper than I ever thought possible.

  Because I can feel them, feel my soul—and it feels different, heavier. Not as stable.

  I look at her. “Don’t worry… Corin won’t die.”

  I feel sick when Corin returns, as if I’ve betrayed him by having that conversation with Esther, and the next morning, I feel just as sick when he smiles and sits next to me, pulls me close. I shiver into his warmth, feel guilt climbing my core.

  No. It’s not betrayal, I tell myself. Esther and I haven’t talked strategy or anything. I don’t even know how I’m going to stop Raleigh. Or when. But Corin will understand, won’t he?

  Esther is right. I can’t do nothing. Not when I look at it logically. I can’t not try and save Corin. I shouldn’t have let him persuade me like that. He’ll be grateful, in the end.

  “No, child,” Taras says. He leans across, eyes large. “Don’t draw on your powers yet. Your mind is still healing. You have to wait until the walls are repaired before you summon any energy again—and to be sure it doesn’t damage you and leave you incapacitated after, the next time you use your powers should be the final act of the war, the very end.”

  I nod slowly, turning over his words until I understand them. I frown. No more power use until the final act? But I wasn’t drawing on my powers then. He was wrong. I wasn’t trying. I rub my eyes.

  Bea hums as she tips out several berries onto a linen cloth from her bag, and then divides them into nine portions. Three berries each. Yani kisses her as she gives him his.

  Elf jumps up. “What the hell?” He stares at the two of them. “Yani? My sister?”

  Yani laughs—then promptly stops laughing when Elf doesn’t reduce the power of his glare.

  Bea steps forward, ducking under Elf’s arm and picks up the next portion of berries, hands them to Siora. She doesn’t say anything, just continues the job she’s allocated herself.

  The rest of us look around at each other, a little uncomfortable, until Quinn suggests we play a game.

  “A game?” Corin raises his eyebrows. “We’re not children.”

  “Games aren’t just for children.” Siora grabs a stick and starts marking something out in a dusty patch between long grass stems.

  She and Quinn explain the complicated rules of a war-based game they know, and I try to listen, but my head pounds, and the pain’s getting worse. I can’t concentrate.

  In the end, only Taras and Yani say they’ll play the game with the girls, and the four of them move off to a bigger area where Siora can draw the board out more accurately.

  As soon as Yani’s gone, Elf uses the opportunity to not-so-subtly question Bea about Yani, and Corin rolls his eyes at me.

  I swallow my smile and look away, but I catch Bea blushing, though she pretends to be annoyed. I study the quick sketch Siora made for the game. Lots of little lines, but they make an intricate pattern. It’s clear she’s got artistic skill.

  “But Yani?” Elf’s saying, his voice way too high-pitched for comfort.

  Corin exhales hard. “Elf, it was obvious they were going to get together at Nbutai before…before Bea ran away, and Rahn told everyone she was dead.”

  Elf shakes his head, mutters something. Bea looks more uncomfortable than embarrassed.

  “Bea, can you pass that foil blanket?” I ask, pointing at the one Siora left behind.

  She nods, and I wrap it around me. The pain’s making me cold. But not just cold. Something else too. Oh Gods. Is this my mind? The Seer instability? I’d thought it would make me mad—make me see things, not have a str
ong grasp on reality—but my perception seems fine. It’s just the pain and the cold.

  The atmosphere around me seems too still, too tense, like it’s waiting for something to happen.

  By the time Siora and Quinn’s game is finished and we’re all huddled back around the fire, I’m freezing, shaking, teeth chattering.

  I frown, trying to keep up with the conversation. Bea’s describing the appearances of plants she wants us to look out for as we walk tomorrow—I frown, we’re walking tomorrow?—but I can’t hold onto her words and keep having to ask her to repeat them.

  “Sev, are you okay?” Corin asks, reaching for my hand. “Gods, you’re freezing.” He turns to Taras. “Should she be like this?”

  Movement out of the corner of my eye distracts me from his words, and I turn, see a large beetle on the ground. Its body is swollen, black, pulsing as it walks. I lean away from it, suddenly aware I have too much saliva in my mouth.

  I swallow hastily, and my eyes sting and water.

  Siora and Quinn stare at me, but whereas Siora’s eyes are concerned and wide, Quinn’s are narrowed. But there’s something in both their eyes that twists around me, wraps me in a cocoon. A sense of knowing.

  “Do you feel it?” I ask them.

  “What?”

  A heaviness spreads across my head, and I freeze, hands splaying out on the ground. Feel fine grass and specks of dust stick to them.

  “Sev? Are you okay?”

  I lie back, feel faint. My head swims.

  “She’s still not right. This Seer instability—how dangerous is it?”

  “I do not know how it will manifest in her,” Taras says. “There’s never been a Seer before who has powers that were not directly given by the Divine Ones. She is young, her mind isn’t fully formed. And no one’s ever taken addiction to the Enhanced Ones’ lifestyle like this before. It could be the effects of that, rather than Seer instability stretching her mind, though she has that too. We are dealing with too many unknowns to know for certain.”

  “Is she addicted then? Enhanced?” Yani’s voice, dark.

  “Her eyes aren’t mirrors,” Quinn says. I think she rolls her eyes. “So she’s not Enhanced.”

  “She’s not showing any signs of desperation for augmenters,” Taras says.

  “Which is what you’d expect?” Corin asks.

  “I don’t know what I’d expect. All we can guess is it will take a toll on her. But she’s strong. I’m sure she’ll be better after a good night’s sleep. We can reassess it in the morning if—”

  “What if it’s Raleigh?” Esther asks.

  I struggle to turn my head, so I can see her. “What?”

  “He made Corin ill. What if he’s made you ill, too?”

  Raleigh? His name swims above me, and it’s all I can think about—him—as Taras and the others talk, as they tell Esther it can’t be him, that it wouldn’t make any sense for Raleigh to bind my death to his when I have to die for the war to end.

  “But what if it’s just the illness part?”

  “But why would he make her weaker? Her powers save one group. He won’t want her too weak to be able to save the Enhanced.”

  “Taras, this isn’t right—it’s not a normal illness, and it’s getting worse,” Corin says. “You said before if she rested and didn’t use her powers, she’d feel better. But she’s not.”

  “We already know it is not a normal illness,” Taras says. “Trying to predict an accurate trajectory with so many variables is near-impossible. All I can say is not to worry. Worrying does no one any good. All it does is….”

  I lose their words—because a door appears before me.

  A wooden door.

  It opens, and I try to tell the others, but they’re not listening, not even Bea, and I can’t not do anything. So I get up and step through and—

  Body-sharing.

  It snaps around me like a second skin.

  It’s back. My powers are returning. That’s why I’m ill! Because they’re changing. I’m getting that power back, because someone needs help. An Untamed out there needs help—that’s why the door’s here!

  My limbs tingle with hope—or maybe it’s the body I’m going to—and I want to scream, yell at Corin and Esther and Taras, make them see what’s happening. My powers are healing, returning—whatever it is they’re doing. It’s not Seer instability at all, my mind hasn’t stretched.

  But I can’t speak to them. I’m not there.

  I’m in a room with floral wallpaper and velvet tapestries.

  A man. My host is a man. I feel his body: tall, muscular. He’s standing by a window looking out at a storm. Something is ablaze on the murky horizon, and he grips the windowsill with firm hands that are dark in color.

  A window? He’s in a building? Why’s an Untamed in a building?

  Is he a prisoner?

  No, he’s standing freely.

  The man smiles.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  My heart goes cold, tells me it can’t be.

  But it is.

  It’s Raleigh.

  A peppery smell in the air makes Raleigh’s nostrils twitch.

  I am body-sharing with Raleigh.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  Hatred boils inside me. I feel sick. I’m in his body. Him. The enemy. The man who tricked me, had me sleep in his arms when he pretended to be Corin.

  And I’m body-sharing with him.

  But, no! He’s Enhanced. I’m Untamed.

  This shouldn’t be possible.

  But I took the addiction, Taras’s addiction, absorbed the rotten parts of his mind, the Enhanced parts?

  A dog barks, and my blood runs cold. It’s my terrier, I just know it is.

  He’s here.

  With Raleigh.

  And I’m here.

  My heart pounds—my own heart, far away. But I can’t see my dog. Where is he?

  Before I even register I’m doing it, I’m exerting authority over Raleigh, making him turn to the left and—

  I see him.

  My dog.

  In a crate. Locked up.

  His eyes look smaller than I remember, and his head is lowered. There’s tension in his shoulders, and he bares his teeth as I stare at him.

  “Ungrateful beast,” Raleigh mutters as he turns back to the window, apparently unaware of my influence on him.

  My influence….

  I could control him. Control him easily.

  The urge is there. Just to take over…completely. Every part of me wants to, to make Raleigh go over there and undo the lock on the cage. To crouch next to it, hold my hand out, tell my dog it’s okay, that I’ll get him out, that—

  Someone knocks on the door.

  I jump, make Raleigh jump.

  Shit. I need to remain passive—have to… If Raleigh knows I’m here, I’ll only have seconds, or minutes, if that. My head pounds. I either have to be completely quiet and passive, or take over completely, squash him.

  Save Corin. Esther’s voice.

  A slow feeling crawls through me. Yes. Corin—I have to save Corin. Get Raleigh to save him. Make Raleigh undo his hold on Corin. Or do I do it myself? Is that why I’m here, in Raleigh, of all people? Untamed-to-Enhanced body-sharing. Because everything happens for a reason.

  I concentrate. Can I feel his Seer powers? Can I undo the hold he has on Corin? Because that has to be why I’m here—now I’ve made the decision, aided by Esther, my powers are helping me, giving me the opportunity to do it. So it has to be easy. It’s why I got ill…must be.

  But Raleigh’s powers are hovering on the other side of the edge of my limit. I can feel them—a wave, so similar to mine—but I can’t reach that far. Not if I want to be passive. He’s not using his powers now, and, if I reach out, if I can do it, he’s going to know I’m here, I’m sure.

  I can’t have him knowing.

  Raleigh turns toward the door, and I’m painfully aware of
every sensation in his body—the slow beat of his heart, the itchiness of his jacket sleeves against his wrists, how his teeth feel dirty.

  “Come in.” His voice is brisk.

  The door opens, and a young Enhanced woman enters. She’s pretty, with long, black hair in loose waves. Raleigh smiles at her, and she visibly blushes.

  “The rest of the Section is here,” she says.

  The rest of the Section? My mind blurs, feels even foggier, like too much is happening, and it’s all going to burst out. A Section meeting? When I’m body-sharing again—when Taras said I couldn’t, that this power was useless to me and that’s why this new world didn’t support it.

  What are the chances?

  Unless my mind knew? Somehow, I knew and—

  “Excellent, Celia,” Raleigh says. “Lead the way.”

  I stay quiet, thinking, as he follows her through red-brick corridors. The peppery smell gets stronger. An extractor fan’s on, and it’s warm, but it’s a dry kind of heat. Near kitchens?

  This isn’t New Kitembu, I’m sure. But where he is—where I am now—I don’t know.

  Celia stops in front of a door, holds it open for Raleigh. He strides in. Several other men and women—along with the section leaders—are seated inside, each with notebooks and pens. The electric lighting flickers.

  “Has that not been fixed yet?” one of them mutters.

  “No,” another woman says, glancing across. “We suffered extensive storm damage when the Dream Land was destroyed.”

  “Thank you, Celia,” Raleigh says, his tone dismissive as he sits.

  Celia bows her head as she leaves. The door clangs shut behind her, and, immediately the room grows colder, makes Raleigh’s arms goosebump under his jacket.

  Raleigh assesses the room, and I look around. Akim and Sophie are next to him. The other section leaders are on the other side of the large table. Shiny mahogany that’s too much like a mirror for my liking. Suddenly, all I can think of is when Raleigh looks at it, he’ll see his reflection. He’ll see me inside him.

  He’ll know.

  He’ll know I’m here, what I’m trying to do, and he’ll throw me out, block me.

  So save Corin now!

  I force myself to remain calm. Raleigh’s powers are still lurking, but I can’t grasp them, not passively.