The Ferrymen (The Culling Book 3)

by Ramona Finn

  She held up the paper and shook it at me like it was my fault that the plan was so complicated.

  “You’re going to psych yourself out if you go over it too many times, Aine,” said Kupier, suddenly swinging down from the hallway into the kitchen, which sat half a level lower. The ship shifted a little and Kupier steadied himself with one hand firmly on the counter next to my knee. I stared straight ahead at Aine.

  “I know,” Aine admitted suddenly, and I looked at her in surprise. I knew her as impossibly stubborn, unwilling to fold on almost anything, fighting me on everything.

  “I told you the exact same thing an hour ago!” I said. “You told me to shove it. But when he says it, you’re all ears? What the hell?”

  Aine lifted an eyebrow at me in a slow, pointed way that I knew instantly she had learned from me. “Do I really have to explain to you the difference between you and Kupier?”

  I could feel Kupier’s grin aimed at me, and then I felt it dim when I didn’t even look in his direction.

  “No,” I told Aine. “You don’t. I’m well-aware of the ways he and I are different.”

  I hadn’t actually meant it as an insult, but I saw in my peripheral vision that he’d taken a step back from me as if I’d slapped him. He didn’t say anything more as he gathered up a sandwich for himself and then swung his way up out of the kitchen.

  “What is it that’s making you so mad at him again?” Aine asked. She’d asked me this same question a hundred times since take-off. “I know, I know,” she cut me off as soon as I opened my mouth. “He pressured you into this plan before you were willing to say yes, and you don’t like being manipulated.”

  Yeah, that, and the fact that he’s willing to get himself killed just to make this stupid plan work and he didn’t give me any time to come up with something better. But of course, I didn’t say it out loud. Because Kupier and I were the only two people on board the Ray who knew the very last part of our plan. We were the only two people who knew what we’d all really agreed to. That these were Kupier’s last days alive.

  “But really, Glade, that doesn’t seem like enough for how mad you are. You’re tearing him up with all this. I guess I just don’t understand why you’re punishing him the way you are.”

  Punishing him.

  Was that really what I was doing?

  “Don’t make me explain it, Aine. I can’t talk about it.”

  She eyed me for a long moment before she slid off the counter. I thought she was going to leave the galley, but instead, she turned and looked me straight in the face. “Glade, I think you know by now that I like you. At first, I hated you. And then I tried really, really hard not to like you. But there’s no fighting it. You’re brave and smart and moral.”

  I drew my head back in surprise. No one had ever really said those things about me before.

  “But right now, you’re being really selfish. And shortsighted. Look,” she said as she dropped her head down, and when she looked up, I was surprised to see bright spots of color on her cheek. “I’m going to tell you something that is really, really embarrassing. And I just want it to die when I’m done telling you. I love Kup. I always have. Since I was about five years old. And when you really, really love someone, you want the best for them. You want them to be happy and healthy and fulfilled and taken care of. I made my peace, a long time ago, with the fact that I could never give him those things. Then you came along and started giving him those things. And sure, part of me wanted to shave your hair off while you were sleeping because of it.”

  We grinned savagely at one another for just a second, breaking some of the tension that had bloomed up and filled the room with air, thick and thin at the same time.

  “But mostly, I was happy. Because Kupier was happy. But this shit you’re pulling? Nuh-uh. I didn’t give up my chance with Kupier just so you could treat him like crap. I don’t care what’s between the two of you. Fix it. I’m serious, Glade. FIX IT. Because you know what? We’re all headed toward the battle of our lives. And none of us deserve loose ends when we do it. Bottom line, we don’t know what’s going to happen once we pass the asteroid belt. And we might as well have done everything we could to live the happy, free, human lives that we’re fighting for in the first place.”

  With that, she turned and strode toward the door of the kitchen, but then she put her hand up on the roll bar and paused. She turned back to me, fire in her eyes. “If you hurt him again, I’ll kick your ass. I don’t care if I have to shoot you with a paralytic the way your Datapoint friend did. But I’m gonna do it. Got it?”

  I nodded at her. She nodded back. And then she was gone.

  “Why’d you do it?” I stood in Kupier’s doorway, the universe rushing past the Ray on every side, our future barreling toward us.

  He startled up from his half-doze, the book he’d been nodding off in the middle of hitting him in the face. “Huh?” He looked one way and then the next, neither being in my actual direction.

  Damn it. Why did he have to be so dang cute?

  “What?” he tried again when he finally found me in the door. He dragged a hand over his face. “What did you say?”

  “I said, why’d you do it?”

  “Do what?” His expression was clearing and he was sitting up in bed, tossing his feet over the side and starting to put his boots on.

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  He paused, dropping his elbows to his knees and tracing a hand over the back of his neck. “I thought you already knew the answer to that. Because I was always destined to manipulate you just like everyone else in your life.”

  I grimaced at him. “Don’t be an asshole, Kupier.”

  “Out of the two of us, Glade? I’d say we’re both assholes.”

  “Fair enough. Now answer the question.”

  He sighed and dropped his head down again. I took a step into his tiny room and leaned my back against the wall. It was small enough that, were I to stretch out my leg, I would have been able to kick the other wall. But I was at home here, I couldn’t deny it. I loved Kupier’s room. It’s where I’d been brought back to life just a few months before. It was where my horrible injury on my arm had healed. It was where I’d mourned the death of my mother. And actually, if I were being honest, Kup’s arms had really been where I’d mourned the death of my mother.

  “Just tell me the truth,” I demanded of him. “Tell me why you did this. Why the hell you put me in this position!” My hands were shaking now, and I could hear the emotion in my voice. Half of me wanted to march forward and shake him, and the other half of me wanted to march down the hall and slam my own door. To hell with him. He’d left me out in the wind? Well, now he could know what it felt like to be cast aside and ignored.

  But, no.

  Aine was right. Kupier was worth getting to the bottom of this. He was worth a conversation, at the very least.

  “This plan is hard on every single one of us, not just you.” His voice was low and honest, there was nothing combative about his tone and, oh, how I wished there was. I wanted him to pick on me, scream at me, and tell me I was selfish or overreacting or acting like a child. I wanted to fight with him.

  “I know we’re not flying off to a vacation right now. I know everyone has their part to play, Kupier, I’m not an idiot. But I also know that you forced my hand. I’m the lynchpin in a plan that ends up with you dead. And I’m just supposed to accept it? Move on? Make nice with everyone on the way there?”

  “Seems like you’re making nice with just about everyone.”

  With one notable exception. Him. It sat between us heavily. My anger for him. My fear of what was coming. “You expect me to forgive so quickly? I thought you knew me.”

  I could hear the frost in my voice. But there was something else there, too. Something hot and raw. It was hurt. Visceral hurt, and fear. Kupier’s fate was rushing toward us as fast as the Ray could go, and anything I might do to stop it threatened our mission. Our one chance to really put the Authority d
own.

  Kupier sighed again and leaned forward. I could feel his eyes on my face, drawing my gaze like a set of magnets. But I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes toward the ceiling. And then, when I couldn’t take it anymore, in the darkness of my own forearm. Almost as if I were shielding myself from him. I pictured what we might look like from the side, from the view of someone who came into Kupier’s room at that very second. Him leaning forward, me pulling back, the pain ricocheting every which way. We’d probably look like two young people in the throes of a break-up. That was almost laughable. What I wouldn’t give for that kind of measurable pain. It changed a person, sure. But this? What we were facing? This was the kind of pain that ran the risk of ending me. My life. My heart.

  Losing Kupier was unthinkable.

  I felt the truth of that land with a sick thunk in the middle of my heart. I realized that it had been circling me this entire time. Dizzying me. I wasn’t angry that he’d taken my choice away. Sure, I wasn’t thrilled about it. But this thumping toxin in my veins, the sick mania that overtook me whenever I saw his face… that wasn’t betrayal. That was fear. I was terrified of what might happen to him. What was definitely going to happen to him if everything went the way he’d planned it.

  What the hell was I supposed to do with this sort of sickening, overwhelming combination of panic and fear? What did normal people do when they felt this way? The only person who could have taught me properly was the reason I was feeling this way in the first place. I felt a sort of wet relief when anger, a feeling I was much more comfortable with, started to twist its way back into the mix.

  My back was straightening and my arms going back to my sides when Kupier finally spoke again. “Glade, I know that being a Datapoint is difficult. Especially the kind of Datapoint that you are. You know, wildly talented and sort of epically doomed.”

  “Doomed?”

  “You know what I mean. It seems like things have been stacked against you from the beginning, yeah?”

  “Yes.” What was he getting at?

  “Just know that I understand the level of difficulty that you face on a daily basis when I say what I’m about to say next, okay?”

  “Okay…”

  “Glade, being the leader of the Ferrymen is very, very hard. It was even hard for Luce. Who was good at it. He wanted it. He was charismatic and fierce and had this spooky sense of knowing exactly what the right move was at exactly the right time.” Kupier sighed yet again, his eyes on the floor. I wished he’d look up at me. “I don’t have any of those things. And I’m still trying to make this all work and not get anybody killed while still fighting for freedom. I’m making it up as I go along, trying to trust the right people and distance myself from the others. I’ve chosen a course of action, even knowing that there’s most likely a hundred better ways to do this whole thing. I know it! But the point is that I have to choose. I have to move forward while minimizing risk to my people.

  “Otherwise, we’re just apples on the vine, waiting for Haven’s bow and arrow to pick us off one by one. And I refuse that option. I refuse.” His eyes were on the floor now, his hands laced together at the back of his neck. He was practically trembling with the weight of his emotion. Normally, he looked like life was trying to burst forth from him, lead him in every direction at once. Now? He looked like one false move was just going to slam him straight into the ground. Crushing him flat.

  “You know which two words haunt me when I’m falling asleep, Glade? When I’m waking up? Collateral damage. It’s something that has haunted me from the second I accepted this job. Every Ferryman death. That’s on me. Your mother’s death, even. You blamed yourself, Glade? For not being able to stop Haven? For being under the influence of your tech? Well, I blamed myself, for not having stopped that faction of the Ferrymen from sending her to the Station in the first place. Every action I take, everything means something else. You press one button over here and there’s an explosion over there. Everything means something. And in most cases, it means human life.” He rose up, his bellows of a chest just a foot from mine. “Getting to know you, getting close to you, it’s the happiest I’ve ever felt. And in some parallel universe, where humans were still on Earth, and we were just worried about the weather, or our jobs, or paying for school? Well, I would have put you and your choices at the top of every single list I had. You’re it for me. But this gig? It’s like juggling knives.” His voice broke for a second before he cleared his throat, sounding even more resolute than before. “And I pretty much accepted, when I took the job, that happiness, if I ever got a taste of it, would be fleeting at best. That I would never be able to prioritize my own happiness over everything else.”

  He sighed, heavy and deep. His hands came up to my shoulders and he finally, finally gave me those slicing blue eyes. “I guess I’m just saying that I’m grateful for the time we had together, Glade. I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Even if I had to hurt you at the end.”

  I wanted to pull him into my arms and bury my face in his neck. But instead, I went with my instincts and I slapped his hands away. “So, you’re not going to tell me why you jumpstarted the mission without discussing it with me first?”

  He laughed then, so suddenly it surprised me, his face warming and all those smile lines just sort of lighting him up. He fell backwards onto the bed and bounced against the creaky springs. The intensity of the moment before was popped like a feather pillow. “God, you’re hard to deal with,” he groaned out as he caught his breath from the sudden burst of laughter.

  “Kupier…”

  “No, I’m not going to tell you. Because if I tell you, then you might go and do something stupid. And this whole thing was designed to keep you from doing something stupid.”

  “What do you mean, ‘something stupid’?”

  He knitted his lips together and put his hands behind his head. There was a mulish expression on his face that I instantly recognized as one of my own. Apparently, he’d been learning from me just as much as I’d been learning from him.

  I tossed my hands onto my hips and raised an imperious eyebrow. “Kupier, you’re nuts if you think I’m going to let you get yourself killed.”

  He smiled up at me, but it was fatigued and sad. “I’m not sure you have a ton of say in the matter.”

  “For God’s sakes, let’s just scrap the last part of the plan!” I threw my hands up in the air and stepped forward, and somehow, I ended up sitting next to him on the cot, my palms on his chest. “Let the chips fall where they may!”

  “Glade.” Kupier half-laughed and raised his face to the ceiling like he was praying for patience or something. “The last part of the plan is a little something called our exit strategy. Scrapping it would be a little something called ‘tripping at the finish line.’ I refuse to make all of my people – you included – prisoners of war just because I didn’t want to jump on the grenade.”

  “We can think of a new exit strategy,” I said stubbornly.

  “We tried, Glade. We tried over and over again. There was no other way. Someone has to man that ship.”

  “I’ll hack into it—”

  “The Database will already be down by then. It has to be. We’ve been over this. We need a body in the pilot seat.”

  “But why does it have to be you?” This time my words weren’t fierce or stubborn. They were hushed and grief-stricken. I felt my throat go tight and my eyes go hot, and I was only dimly aware of my hair passing through Kupier’s fingers.

  “Because I’m never going to ask someone else to do it. And frankly, I’m replaceable.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said fiercely, through the emotion clogging my throat. “You’re the definition of irreplaceable. There is literally no one else like you in the universe.”

  He was quiet for a minute, just combing his fingers through my hair. I couldn’t bring myself to raise my eyes above his chest level. “Glade, I’m not magic, you know. I just love you. And I act like it. I’m kind. And patient. And I feel m
y feelings. You’ll find that again. I promise. That’s what being human is all about. It’s not rare. I swear.”

  My eyes swam with tears as I looked up at him. Through every swoopy blur in my vision, I saw the blue of his eyes. “There’s no one like you,” I repeated through a whisper.

  “Stubborn,” he chuckled, his fingers working their way through my hair.

  “You love me.”

  “Sure do,” he said in that deep voice of his. And then his arms went around my shoulders and he held me tight.

  Chapter Fifteen

  So, Kupier and I weren’t fighting anymore, but anyone who thought I’d accepted his fate was a regular idiot. If anything, after our conversation in his room, I was more determined than ever to find another way to end all this. I couldn’t lose Kupier. I just couldn’t. The thought simply didn’t compute. It was like trying to imagine a future without happiness of any kind. Yeah, I’d lived that life, for pretty much the entire time I was on the Station. I was not going back. I’d bring the whole thing down in flames before I went back to that.

  Instead, I needed to find the missing angles of this plan. I knew they were there. The plan was human, which meant that it was subject to human error. Which in turn meant that there were ways to alter it, fixing the errors, if only I could identify them. The problem was, over the last few days, I’d gone over and over every angle of the plan until I pretty much felt my brain bleeding out of my ears. The bottom line was that I needed a sounding board, a fresh set of eyes. But I couldn’t talk to anyone about it because the whole Kupier-human-sacrifice thing was supposed to be a secret. If I revealed it, there would be a mutiny on board. I wasn’t even sure that I could trust Cast in that regard.