Garvin turns and glances at Michael and Logan, who are now watching us with interest, sitting bundled up by the fire, their rifles in their laps.
“Okay,” he finally says. “If you could talk to her, get some information, that’s going to help us. We need to know where their bases are. We need to know if there is another way through the web. We need to know especially about their operations on this side. Are there any bases, headquarters? Was she trying to get to one? Where are they?”
“So you can attack them?”
“Damn right so we can attack them. That okay with you?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“It occurs to me that you must have been pretty friendly with the Nahx who got you across the mountains.”
“He was different. And we weren’t friendly. We just… had a deal.”
Garvin slings his rifle over his back and crosses his arms. “So make a deal with this one,” he says, pointing his thumb back into the cave. “She gives us information, everything she knows.”
“What does she get out of the deal?”
Logan and Michael scoff until Garvin shoots them a dirty look.
“What did your Nahx friend get out of your deal?” Garvin asks.
“Nothing,” I answer. “He died.”
Garvin nods. The satisfaction in his expression gives me a chill beyond the numb coldness that has already settled into my bones.
“Make sure she knows that,” Garvin says, turning away from the cave. “Make it sound like you killed him. Maybe that will motivate her to talk.”
“She can’t talk with her arms stretched out like that. Some of their signs need two hands.”
“That’s your problem,” Garvin says. He packs a pot with snow and sets it on the fire. Digging in his pockets, he pulls out a few tea bags.
“Will you let her go?” I ask. “If she gives you the information you want, will you let her go?”
“You think we can trust her? After the way we’ve treated her?” He seems almost amused by this.
“So you’re going to kill her anyway?”
Garvin stirs the tea into the steaming pot. “We’re all going to die sometime,” he says.
He’s right about that, at least. From his expectant expression I guess he wants me to start right away. I’m not enthusiastic, but on the other hand, I’d like to get a better look at the prisoner. I stand up, ignoring Michael and Logan’s jeering, and squeeze back through the crack in the rock. Poking my head into the cave, I strain to see the Nahx where she kneels in the dark. She turns her head up at me, letting out a low growl. Thinking of the pain she must be in with those spikes through her wrists and knees makes my breakfast threaten to come back.
“My name is Xander,” I say, kneeling just inside the entrance. I draw a Z in the air the way August did. “Xander, see? You could make it with your fingers. What’s your name?”
She ignores me.
“We just want to talk to you,” I say. “I think you can understand me, can’t you? And I know some of your signs.”
I edge forward a few inches, moving the lamp with me.
“Look, this one—please. And this, sorry.” I do the signs. They’re similar, and I’m slightly concerned I may have transposed them, but if I did, the Nahx makes no move to correct me. She still hasn’t stirred, though I get the sense that she has turned her eyes up and is watching me.
“I know you can’t make the signs properly, chained up like that, but if you just do the hand part, maybe I might be able to understand. Please? ” I repeat the sign, a closed fist pressed into the chest. “Please? ”
It happens so fast, I don’t even see how she does it, but suddenly the little lamp is flying through the air. It explodes on the cave wall, showering me with flaming oil.
“Fuck!” I lurch backward, just barely avoiding a face full of fire as I crash against the rock. My snow pants are burning and I’m screaming, trying to tear them off, while outside the cave I hear Garvin yelling, “Xander!? What happened?”
I’m swearing and rolling and trying to twist out of my pants when Garvin and Logan burst in, rifles trained on the Nahx, who has retreated back under her overhang.
“Get down!” Logan screams. “Get the fuck down! Let me see your hands!”
The Nahx curls her legs under herself and kneels, palms facing down, her head hanging.
Garvin tears off his coat and beats the fire out as I manage to shove my burning pants away.
“What did she do?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I lie. “I knocked the lamp over.”
The Nahx glances up at me and flicks her head back a couple of times. I know what that means. She’s laughing. Laughing at setting me on fire.
I cough and blink away the burning of the smoke in my eyes. The cave now smells of kerosene, burnt polyester, and humiliation. One leg of my snow pants is scorched and shredded.
Garvin lowers his rifle and looks at me with a wry smile.
“Call it a day?” he says, holding a hand down.
I take his hand and struggle upward, careful not to hit my head again on the cave ceiling. Logan, apparently satisfied that the Nahx is done misbehaving for the time being, lowers his rifle and backs away. As we exit, he flicks on his flashlight, scanning the cave. Garvin steps back inside to gather the remains of the lamp and my shredded snow pants.
I turn as Logan ushers me out, taking a last look at the Nahx cowering in the dark. I can just make out one of her hands moving in a familiar flat, chopping shape, pointed at her chest as she flicks her head back again.
Sorry.
She doesn’t seem very sorry, to be honest, but I’ll take it.
RAVEN
The ship is exactly where the girl said it would be, and exactly as large, rising out of the frozen lake like a colossal leviathan. Unlike the Nahx transports, which are triangular and black, this massive ship has rounded silvery walls curving up at least twenty stories above the surface, almost disappearing into the sky. No entrances are apparent—the curved walls are featureless but for some rows of lights lining the very top.
The size of it is horrifying. In the first hours after the invasion, there were news reports of giant ships suddenly appearing over Canada and America, Peru, India, various North African and European countries. Ships like this one? This is huge, and if this is only one of many, then…
Doubt has been entirely absent from my mind-set the past few days, as we trudged along the shore of the endless lake with a single-mindedness that felt both unfamiliar and unsettling. Whenever my resolve seemed to flag, due to boredom more than fatigue, new reserves of focus would spring up as if from nowhere. It was as though my mind had set a goal and my whole body would see that goal achieved. But now, seeing the size of the ship, watching the Nahx transports flying in or out, even noting the way the snow around the ship is tamped down as though by thousands upon thousands of feet, my doubt flares back to life. I hesitate at the edge of the ice.
Tenth wriggles his fingers in front of his mouth.
What’s wrong?
Now my doubts unleash like a cascade. Why did I come back here? To look for August? To find Tucker and get him out? I should be running in the other direction, away from whatever the Nahx and their firefly overlords have planned for us, not toward it. I feel like I’ve been in a trance, and I don’t know whether its source is my loyalty to my friends or whatever has been done to my body and brain. Who is controlling me right now? Am I here to help August and Tucker escape or simply to report for duty?
Blue buzzes near my right ear and draws a big slow circle when I turn to them. I take a step back, trying to rein in my unease.
Tenth, who has turned away, hisses. I spin and see him pointing in the other direction, where the sky is soft purple and the unmistakable dark shape of a Nahx transport approaches us. As we watch, the transport banks and veers back toward us, coming to land on the ice. Blue, who has been hovering around my head, disappears into the front pocket of my jacket
as two Nahx appear in the hatch. Tenth takes my shoulder, gently nudging me on board.
It’s a larger transport than the one I was previously on. The hold of this one is wide and open and crowded with humans. Altered, upgraded humans like me, their hair and skin various metallic shades. What might once have been white or brown, blond, brunet, or rich, deep black is now coated with a glittery sheen. Even the eyes that turn up to me look glossy and pearlized, like frosted nail polish. I haven’t seen a mirror since I rose from the dead, so all I can see of myself is the coppery skin on my hands and the tendrils of my hair streaked with silver and bronze. Looking around at the others, I wouldn’t say we’re frightening to look at so much as intimidating. There’s something cold and hard, almost machinelike, about us. Not so much Snowflakes as shuriken, ninja throwing stars like the homemade one that got Tucker banned from the dojo for a month. He’s lucky he wasn’t arrested then and there.
Tenth disappears into the cockpit, so I sit near the wall among a group of silent Snowflakes. One of them looks me up and down as I get comfortable.
“Straggler? Me too,” she says vacantly.
Some of the other humans are filthy, covered in mud, their hair matted. One appears to be speckled with bird shit. I see torn, ragged clothes and an array of seasonal attire. One older woman is in a swimsuit and bathrobe. Others are in pajamas. Many are barefoot. These people have been as good as dead for months, more than a year, some of them. They wear the same impassive expression as the woman who spoke to me. I turn back to her.
“Straggler?” she repeats. “Me too.” Then she turns away, her silver eyes glassy.
As the transport shakes and lifts off I watch the sky through the open hatch and see the first tendrils of the aurora just drifting in from the north. Abruptly, my view is blacked out by something as the transport descends again. Seconds later we land with a crunch. The woman who spoke is jostled against me.
“Straggler?” she says for a third time. “Me too.”
Of everything I’ve seen so far since my rebirth, this makes me the saddest. She doesn’t even know how lost she is. Are these the only words she remembers?
“What’s your name?” I try.
She just frowns at me, not concerned so much as angry at me for bothering her with trivialities. Who needs a name when you’ve been made immortal? My ears start to ring.
Four Nahx emerge from the cockpit, ushering us back through the hatch. In the tussle of the crowd I lose sight of Tenth, or maybe he’s just lost interest in me, now that he’s back with his own people. I suddenly feel vulnerable without him, not physically so much as emotionally. I’d like to have someone beside me that’s not this woman who can only repeat the same inane greeting over and over. Glancing down at my pocket, I can just see Blue’s faint glow, and take comfort from it. They don’t seem to want to leave me, and right now I need all the friends I can get.
We step down off the ramp and into a wide-open arena-like space, so wide that I can barely see to the edges, and know they exist only because of the high curved walls of the ship rising over us. Crowded around us are thousands and thousands of other humans, their shimmering faces reflecting harsh artificial lights shining down from every side. We are outside, standing on snow and ice again, with the ship surrounding us, and the dark sky above. So the ship is some kind of torus shape? I’m disoriented for a moment—the crowd is so large and the space so wide that the scale of the ship is suddenly hard to process. Five miles across? That’s what the girl back in the forest said, and that seems about right. There’s a giant park in Calgary that we used to snowshoe in. Bigger than that.
And full of people, prisoners, though you wouldn’t know by the tranquil mood. As the new arrivals disperse into the crowd, I notice most faces share that dull expression. Tucker had it too, when we awoke on the dunes, as though he hadn’t a care in the world. I’m envious, in a way. I can see I have little choice in whatever is happening here. It might be nice to not care.
At the center of the arena, a bright sphere glows above the crowd, its surface marked by patches of blue, green, and red and pinpoints of piercing white. None of the other humans seem particularly interested in it, but even from a distance, something about it looks familiar to me. As I get closer I see why. It’s the earth, the traditional political borders marking countries neglected in favor of red patches representing the Nahx occupations. The rest of the land is green, the oceans blue. There are bright white lights seemingly at random points, some inside the Nahx zones, some outside. A few are even over the oceans. Their locations mean nothing to me, though I note there is one in Northern Saskatchewan, which could be where we are. Maybe the bright lights indicate where these giant ships are located.
It doesn’t make sense that some would be outside Nahx zones, unless the Nahx plan on claiming more territory. Is that going to be my mission, to help the Nahx take over the rest of the world? The idea should be abhorrent to me, but it has a strange appeal, fitting into my brain like a puzzle piece, as though I’ve put together the whole horror of human history and this is the logical conclusion.
I stare up at the globe, trying to let myself be pulled into resignation—that would be so much easier—but apparently there’s still a kernel of resistance in me, because the only clear emotion I can drum up is anger. Whatever is happening, none of us had any say in the matter, and that is unfair.
Yes. Unfair. I need to tattoo that word on my cerebral cortex. I’m still a human being, despite everything.
Turning away from the globe, I see that the huge crowd is being herded into militaristic groups and lines. I join one group, shuffling into place behind an older white woman with short gray hair that shines like it’s coated with glitter paint. Turning, I meet the eye of the person behind me, a dark-skinned black man who acknowledges me only with a blink of his glossy, obsidian eyes.
“What’s your name?” I ask, and when he doesn’t answer I try again in French. “Quel est?”
He blinks again, though a flash of something crosses his face, maybe just because he’s annoyed with irrelevant questions too.
Nahx patrol up and down the neat lines, watchful, as though they expect trouble. Above them, swarms of firefly creatures float around, occasionally coalescing into clouds as though to confer before drifting apart again. I watch, trying not to be obvious, as one of the clouds buzzes angrily around the head of a Nahx who is dragging a girl roughly by the arm. The Nahx releases the girl and she scampers away, disappearing into one of the formations.
Sorry, the Nahx directs to the cloud of lights, before turning and marching in the other direction, as though eager to escape further reprobation. So the Nahx defer to these creatures? Do they defer to single ones like Blue too? That could be useful. I file that away to ponder later.
When the lines are formed, an eerie stillness falls over the crowd. I study their number, and although there seem to be all ages and races and every variety of size and shape, suddenly the word Tenth used for us makes deeper sense. Snowflakes. Each one of us an individual among countless others. Unique but insignificant.
No one twitches or fidgets; they barely seem to breathe. I twist to look behind me, to scan the crowd for any sign of life, and the black man hisses at me, barely audibly. No words, just a hiss, like an irritated cat. Turning back, I face the front, waiting, because I can sense something is about to happen.
Some kind of alarm suddenly pierces the silence, though it’s nothing like a siren or any other kind of human alarm. It’s deep, so low pitched that I’m pretty sure a normal human might not be able to hear it. The throbbing noise gets inside me, and that feels so invasive that I struggle not to dive away and run, measuring my breaths, curling my hands into fists.
Invincible yet terrified. I wonder whether I wasn’t better off as a delicate little human, as breakable as the stem of a flower. At least then I had some choice about my destiny, even if it was only fight or die. But I shake that thought away. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not supposed to be
as aware as I am, that’s clear now. And I’ve managed to befriend both Blue and Tenth. I can use that against the Nahx, against whoever this enemy is.
I could be the only chance the human race has right now. I don’t know why, but that thought makes me feel even more alone. And annoyed.
I curse under my breath. The woman in front of me turns and glares me into silence, forcing me to press my lips together and listen to my thoughts, which naturally stray to August. August left me on those dunes. August must have shackled me to Tucker. Everything suggests he not only gave me up willingly but was happy for me to be drawn into whatever this is. That seems… so out of character for him. Something is not right.
The low groaning signal changes, taking shape as repeated words, at first just a muddle of sounds layered over one another. It takes a few seconds to realize that it is several languages spoken at once. Though it should be impossible, my brain homes in on the English and the French, parsing them out from the chaotic din.
“Be seated.”
Every human sits as one, like a wave resonating out to the edges of the crowd. The sight of it, of how easily these Snowflakes are instructed, enlivens the rebel in me. I remain standing, defiant, and note with some satisfaction that a few others scattered far across the crowd do the same. Spinning, I see four or five, and maybe a few more distant specks, standing up like beacons of resistance. One slender, shaggy-haired boy stands not far from me, looking nervous but proud.
The black man, cross-legged behind me, scowls up, horrified.
“Sit down!” he says through gritted teeth.
The humans sitting around me recoil as five Nahx come barreling out from the dark space beneath the globe. They veer off before I have time to react, and one of them connects his fist with the defiant boy’s face so suddenly and hard that the crack of skull bones echoes across the arena. He collapses like a rag doll as the humans around him scatter.
A deeper silence falls over the crowd. Where before there was a kind of hum of anticipation, now there is a deathly pall, a collective holding of breath as one of the Nahx drags the motionless boy away by his foot, facedown. His head flops over as they pass us, his face a concave, misshapen mass of blood and bone, all the features, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth reduced to red mush. But he’s alive. I can see his fingers clenching and unclenching, trying to claw at the bloody ice beneath him.
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