by Everly Frost
A prickle of fear crept up my spine as his hand lingered over my shoulder, not quite brushing my neck. My mouth was suddenly dry, my voice a bare whisper. “Do you think the nectar made my hair grow when I healed?”
He nodded. “Heaps.” But he looked at me very intently as if nectar and its effects on my hair were the last thing on his mind. As if he wanted to draw the deepest thoughts out of my head and claim them.
“Ava…” His other hand captured my waist as he said my name.
This time when he touched me, I felt it—the zap.
I never thought I’d be so happy to feel that sharp sting. I was myself again. I couldn’t help but smile and wince at the same time. He must have caught the wince because he paused, giving me the chance to break away from him.
I took a step back. “You said you’d tell me about walls.”
His face fell as if he’d forgotten all about it. As if he’d wanted to forget all about it.
“You said you’d tell me how you knew.”
“Yeah … um…” He looked down at his feet, shuffled a bit, and then looked at his hands, not meeting my eyes. “How about you ask me something else instead.”
I frowned, not liking the evasion. “Something else? But you promised.”
He looked around again as if he’d find something to distract me. He must have come up empty because finally, he met my eyes. “Ask me something else. Please?’
I didn’t want to ask him something else, but the look on his face made my think twice about pressing him. He probably thought I wouldn’t be okay, that I wouldn’t get better, so he’d never have to tell me how he knew what was inside my head. Still, I wasn’t about to let him get away that easily. I folded my arms. “All right then, what did that guy back there—Jeremiah—what did he mean about you being an immortal?”
Michael paused, and I glared. “Don’t skip out on me.”
He exhaled. “Did you know that some ancient Seversandian tribes used to ritually kill their babies?”
“You’ve got to be joking. That’s even worse than Implosion.”
“They believed it was necessary to weed out the weak. To guard against extinction.”
“Okay. That’s pretty horrible, but it doesn’t answer my question.” I scowled at him. “You can’t get out of two questions.”
“I’m getting there.”
I nodded to let him know I’d listen.
“Those who didn’t regenerate fast enough were buried in specially-made tombs and left to fall into a death-sleep.”
My eyebrows rose. There was something on the news once about a kid who wandered away from his parents in the national park without food or water. His body had shut down into some kind of preservation state—they called it a coma—not dead, but not alive either. Apparently, he could have stayed that way for a hundred years or more before his body died.
Michael continued. “Only the fast healers were allowed to live with the tribe. It was survival of the strongest.”
“That sounds a lot like the Bashers,” I said.
“The Bashers think they’re descended from the tribes. They want to recreate a society where only the strongest survive.” He slid to the ground and rested against the tree. “Dad used to talk about the tribes. He was an anthropologist before he went into big business. He did his Ph.D. on tribal culture. He even went to Seversand on some international goodwill exchange years ago—some of their academics came here to study how we manage our resources and he got to go there and study their military culture. He was totally into observing the biological basis for killing. It’s why he helped design the Terminal. When I was small, he used to call me his little warrior. He called me one of the immortals.” He caught my eye. “Crazy, right?”
I knelt beside him and reached out to touch his shoulder, but he shrugged away from me as if he couldn’t stand to be touched.
“When I was a kid I thought it was talk. But the thing is … the tribes … with what they did, after a while, there weren’t any slow healers left. They got stronger and stronger and people lived for hundreds of years. Not just 400 like most people do. But 700, 800. Nothing made them sick, nothing hurt them. They were the closest thing to immortal.”
He picked at the hem of his pants. “The Bashers wanted me to join them, but I said no. As if I would even think about it after what they did to my family. But sometimes I wonder if I’d joined them … maybe I could have protected my brother.”
The Basher girl back at my home had said that Michael’s kind were everything the Bashers were fighting for. If he was immortal, they would see him as the strongest, the most worthy. And yet, he’d rejected them. “You don’t know that. They would have expected you to hurt other people just like your brother.”
He shrugged again as if it didn’t matter. “Maybe I’ll live a long time. Maybe I won’t. But that’s what Jeremiah meant.”
I didn’t let him shake me off this time. “It’s okay.” I met his eyes. “Really.” I didn’t know how to tell him that he and I were opposite sides of the coin—opposite ends of the spectrum. In a perfect world, maybe we would balance each other out. I struggled for the words and finally found them. “I’m a freak, too.”
He looked at me with something dark in the back of his eyes. His face reminded me of a storm right before the first thunder. Then a spark lit behind his expression and a smile broke through. “We’re both just freaks of nature, huh.”
I pulled my knees up to my chest. “I feel much better than before. Do you think we should get moving?”
“I don’t know, Ava. Let’s just stay put for the rest of the evening. Just in case. Okay?”
I stared out at the thick bushes and the cracked concrete pathway running through them. I didn’t like the idea of staying. Now that I wasn’t out of my mind, the park was beginning to give me the creeps. Before I could say anything, someone lurched out of a bush a few feet away. He had tan arms, a weathered face, and scraggly gray hair, but he didn’t notice us as he lumbered past, fixated on something I was sure nobody else would ever see.
I waited for the stranger to disappear back into the trees before I tugged on Michael’s arm. “Are you sure we shouldn’t keep moving today?”
“We could, but the next safe place is a long way from here on foot. We should start out in the morning.”
“You mean there’s actually a ‘safe’ place waiting for us out there?” The corner of my mouth twitched upward, trying really hard to lighten the weight that settled in my chest.
He rubbed his jaw. “Starsgard,” he blurted, as though he’d been thinking about it a lot longer than he’d wanted to say. “I think that’s where we should go.”
I frowned. “Across the border?”
“Nobody can follow us or make us come back. Drones can’t enter their airspace.”
“But it’s…” So far away. Even if we made it that far, we had no way of knowing whether they’d let us in. Starsgard was locked down, guarded against Evereach on one side and Seversand on the other. I remembered the picture plastered outside the dance studio, of the towers in the background, so tall they might actually touch the stars.
“We can make it.” He took my hand. “We just have to take it one day at a time and we’ll get there. I don’t know for sure, but I think that’s where my mom went. Look.” He dug around in his bag and handed me a small square of paper. “A year after she left, I got this in the mail, no return address. My brother was always drawing things—fish, lizards, birds, mountains—I’d know his pictures anywhere.”
I studied the simple sketch of a mountaintop covered in snow, a single star drawn in the center.
Michael said, “I’ve heard of people being granted political asylum there. Not very often, but there was something on the news the other day, some hacker the government wants, but there’s no extradition treaty with Starsgard. Once we’re there, there’s nothing anyone here can do to force us to come back, and if Mom’s there, they’ll let us in. It’s the only chance we have, but it’s a
good chance. I know it.”
“Okay.” I turned from the certainty and determination in his eyes, trying to quiet the doubt inside me and failing as dismally as if I’d tried to stop the buzzing of his skin on mine. I stooped to the clothes spread out across his duffel bag. “I’m getting changed behind this tree. Keep your eyes closed.”
“Don’t stress, star girl. You’re safe with me.”
I wasn’t sure that I would ever be safe, but I didn’t want to say so.
We ate oat bars and apples for dinner and I didn’t pretend to be a horse. I hung my pajamas out to dry over a nearby tree branch and wondered why he wouldn’t tell me how he knew about walls. I guessed I’d never know like so many things in my life. At one point, he collected wood and twigs and set about making a small fire. He produced a bag of marshmallows with a grin.
“And you said you don’t plan for everything.” I scoffed.
Still, my stomach rumbled louder than I wanted to acknowledge and, after he put out the fire so it wouldn’t attract attention in the dark, he promised to get more food in the morning. “Shank’s pony at the crack of dawn,” he said, rolling out a sleeping bag.
I eyed the bag. “You got two of those?”
“Nup.” Without another word, he shimmied into it, wedging himself back against the seam and leaving a space at the front on the side of the zip.
I put my hands on my hips. “I’m not sleeping in there with you.”
“I don’t snore.”
“I know that already.”
He pummeled the ground under his head, as though that would make it more comfortable. His voice got serious. “You’re safer in here with me, than you are out there. Plus, the bugs won’t bite in here.”
“Bugs don’t worry me.”
“Suit yourself.” He started to zip up the bag and I hugged myself, wondering if I could find a blanket in that duffel bag of his. Somehow I didn’t think so. I huffed and rushed over before he finished zipping the blanket all the way up. “Move over. Keep your hands to yourself.”
He didn’t say anything as I slid inside the bag, trying not to touch any part of his body, which was an almost impossible feat. Just when I’d managed it, he reached his arm around me and dropped it over my shoulders. I stopped breathing, tingling all through my neck and back. His hand reached for the top of the zipper and rested there, curled around the metal loop, right at the level of my chest.
I stayed frozen, eyeing his hand with distrust, ignoring the part of me that didn’t want him to take his arm away. My voice was sharp. “What are you doing?”
“Have you ever tried to get out of a sleeping bag really fast?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s super difficult, so don’t knock the hand on the zipper.”
I snorted, trying to relax. “There’s something rude about what you just said, I know it.”
He laughed, and the sleeping bag jiggled. “I never say anything right when I’m around you.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to stop talking now.”
He did, and I missed his voice.
My arm stung. I tried to swim up, toward the metallic thud that repeated itself over and over again. I couldn’t quite locate it—close or far away, up or out there somewhere. All I knew was that it was wrong. That sound didn’t belong in a park.
The air went whoomp and my back hurt all of a sudden. The cold flooded in. Michael shouted my name.
I was half-crouched, partly out of the sleeping bag. He was on his feet near me, struggling in the shadows. I tried to focus. I thought for a second that I didn’t have my eyes open. It was all a dream: the shapes converging on us, whoever had hold of Michael, the elongated, black and gold drone at the corner of my eye.
There was another whoomp, much closer this time. It reminded me of the exploding missile that destroyed Michael’s car and very nearly destroyed us, too. I expected to see flames, burning trees, the air filled with floating leaves.
The only thing that happened was my back and arm ached, followed by a crawling sensation under my skin and my brain stopped working. I half-turned as Michael kicked his way out of the stranglehold of two men. One of them was Reid.
I tried to get up, to help him, but my legs wouldn’t work. I checked them, petrified that I’d lost my legs after all, but I touched them all the way to my knees, my calves—
Then Michael was beside me. He gripped my arm, right where it throbbed, looking from the thing that stuck out of me, up into my eyes. “Oh, no, Ava.”
My words slurred. “Something bit me. I thought you said there’d be no bugs.”
“I’m sorry, Ava. They’ve tranq’d you.”
“I can’t move.” I found out how untrue that was when I fell forward onto my face.
He pulled at the dart in my arm, cursing. His hand pressed on my back, right where it ached, trying to turn me over. “There’s something else. It’s right under your skin and I can see…” His eyes went wide. “I’ve seen these before. They’ve given you nectar and it’s got—”
Running boots filled my vision. Reid reached us and Michael’s hand left my spine.
As the air pumped around me, Reid dragged Michael back, struggling, far away from me, capturing his arms this time and locking them into a glinting restraint.
Michael shouted, “Ava! It’s got a tracker!” before they pulled a bag over his head.
Officers swarmed Michael and dragged him with them. Two men crashed down—he must have kicked them—and clambered back to their feet, dragging him to the machine with the pounding rotor blades. Michael shouted, they were all shouting, but his voice became more and more obscured until there was only the thud of metal blades slicing the air. A high-pitched whir shrieked through the park as the helicopter rose up and up, taking Michael away from me. Leaving me behind in the dark.
Chapter Seventeen
MY HEAD RESTED half on the sleeping bag, half on the wet ground. My legs had bent into a kneeling crouch under me, arms twisted out at my sides. The night air chilled my skin and the silence chilled my mind. They took Michael but left me behind. I couldn’t understand why. Why would they leave me behind? Just like when my parents left, they could have taken me in, right then, but they hadn’t, and it didn’t make sense.
The rustle of nearby bushes drew my attention. A pair of eyes watched me, the face shadowed. He didn’t move toward me, but the more I stared at him, the clearer his outline became until I realized he was sitting cross-legged between the branches of the scraggly bush. For the next ten minutes, he stared as though he was waiting to see what I’d do. Then he rose out of the bush and crept toward me, keeping to the line of trees at first, edging into the small clearing when I didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond.
It was the drug addict who’d passed us earlier, his face shriveled like a prune.
He shuffled up to me, a little bit at a time, stopping and waiting and then moving toward me again until his foot rested an inch away from my face. His boot smelled of sewerage and my stomach turned. He nudged my cheek with a grimy toe and watched me blink.
It was just like when Cheyne had shot me at the recovery center. I could still feel, even though I couldn’t move. Michael had dropped the dart right at eye-level, with the end pointing at my cheek. The addict crouched over it, glanced at my face, and whisked the dart up into his palms. He turned it over and over and finally licked the end. He screwed up his face and bent down to examine me again.
I wanted to tell him, it doesn’t have drugs in it. Leave me alone.
He stuck out his tongue, running it between his teeth as though he’d eaten a sour lemon. “Sweet, sweetie. Nectar. Nice nectar?”
Nectar? How did he know about it? My throat constricted with the effort to speak. Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone. He touched my back, plucking at my clothes, as though he’d find some on me. I gathered that he didn’t when he gave me a kick in my side. Except that he was laughing, in a weird, excited sort of way.
The air whooshed out of my mouth, b
ut that was the only reaction my body could make to the throbbing that remained after another kick landed in my ribs. To my horror, he lay down next to me, putting his face right next to mine, so close I saw the chip in his front tooth.
“Life is nectar,” he said, flapping his hand at our surroundings. “Nectar is tree.” He smiled and his swollen gums bulged beneath stretched lips. “Nectar means life.” He stroked my hair with his grubby fingers. “No nectar. No life.”
Something sharp touched my side. It stung much worse than the dart had. I tried to see what he was doing, but all I knew was his hand was moving.
He said, “Nectar inside. Inside is nectar.”
My heart was going to explode. The pounding was too loud in my ears. He was going to cut me open looking for nectar. Leave me alone, leave me alone, “Leave me alone!”
The sharp sting stopped. He jerked away from me, poised with what I now saw was a rusty knife. I was as surprised as he was. I’d spoken. It was slurred, that was for sure, but I’d got the words out. I focused every ounce of energy I had into my mouth. “Get away. Or I will tear you apart.”
He drew back into a crouch. The knife trembled in his hands.
I hissed at him because it was the only sound I could make after the effort of speaking. The knife disappeared somewhere on his person. He crouched even lower, reaching out toward me, placating. “Sorry, sweetie. Sorry tree. Nectar is life.”
I managed a final shout and put every bit of threat into it. “Get away!” Then my throat closed up, spasms trembling down my neck.
He backed off, scraping his knees along the grass, reaching the concrete pathway that way, where he jumped up and ran into the bushes.
I closed my eyes in relief, but I knew he’d be back. He wanted nectar—somehow he knew what it was—and Michael said they’d given it to me. I had to move. I had to.
I started small, focusing on the first joint of my little finger. It was crushed under me, curved toward my chest. The tip of my finger twitched as I attempted to straighten it. I tried again, and this time it obeyed. I groaned with relief and checked to see if the drug addict was back, but if he lurked in the bushes, I couldn’t see him. I told myself to hurry, working through the other joints of my little finger. By the time I reached my hand, the rest of my fingers had released, movement seeping back into my wrist, my elbow, and finally my shoulder. I regained enough control to push up from the ground and stretch my neck, easing it from side to side until I was as certain as possible that it wouldn’t seize up.
