“I’m terribly hungry,” I say, to cover my disgust. He starts to get up, but I stop him. “Wait.”
He kneels back down, his hands resting on one raised knee.
I examine him properly for the first time with a clear head, free of pain. He is extraordinarily tall; even kneeling, he is looking down on me where I sit. His shoulders are broad, and in the daylight I can see a small mark in the segmented armor where he pulled Topher’s arrow out. It seems, somehow, healed, like a scar, although how there can be a scar on armor I don’t know. There is a similar, larger but possibly older scar on his chest. I wonder, again, if this is his skin.
Skin or armor, it seems to suck the surrounding light away, making him difficult to focus on. The hard plates cover his whole body, moving and rippling as he moves. His chest rises and falls. It looks like he’s breathing, but the buzzing sound this makes is more machinelike than alive.
My heart is pounding, I suddenly realize, and I’m frightened, so horribly frightened of him. I see the Nahx in the stadium falling on me, I see this Nahx, August, wrenching me out of the toilet in the trailer and hanging me by my wrists until they almost broke. I think of him with his rifle pointed at my head, the tiny sharp spikes quivering on his face. Can this gentle August be the same Nahx, changed somehow? Reformed? Or is this some perverse new game? How many of my people did he kill with that rifle before he took pity on me? Was he the one that killed Sawyer and Mandy? I’m so sickened I want to look away. I want to run away. I turn my head to the door, the window, trying to find a way to get out. Perhaps I could get up and leave, walk down those endless flights of stairs and through the city, somehow find the tunnel again, and then go back to the barn, find the others. But that was days ago. I’ve been missing for over a week. They have returned to the base by now and told everyone I’m dead. If I am to survive, much less get back to the base, it depends on him. Whatever his plans for me, I’m at his mercy. This makes my stomach turn. I want nothing more at that moment than to hide from him.
I’m hanging my head, unable to look at him anymore, when he makes a noise, like a purr.
“What?” I say, looking up. He points to his own chest, then to mine. When I don’t react, he repeats it, raising one hand, palm up, like a question.
“Oh! Raven,” I say. He nods and points to the sky, making a waving motion with his hand. “Yes, it’s a bird. A black bird.”
Nodding, he reaches out, very slowly with one hand, and gently fingers my damp golden ringlets, shaking his head. I must flinch, because he quickly draws his hand away.
“I’d rather you didn’t touch me,” I say. He nods slowly and turns his head toward the wall.
For some reason, as he stands up and walks into the other room, I blush with shame. Perhaps I should have said, It’s nothing personal. But of course it is.
While he’s in the other room, I stand, experimentally putting weight on my injured leg. Pain shoots up to my hip, not quite bearable but nearly. In a few days, maybe a week, I could walk out of here. I’ll need clothes. Men’s pajamas will not do, and although it’s hazy, I’m pretty sure he cut my clothes to pieces when he was treating my injuries or . . .
My skin prickles as I remember the men’s boxers I woke up in. I wasn’t wearing them when I got attacked, which means he undressed me at some point.
The beginnings of a scream take root inside me. I catch it, pressing my lips together before it comes out and alerts him to my distress. I don’t need to see him now, and I don’t want him to see how the thought of being unconscious, half naked, with him hanging over me threatens to undo me. I need to focus.
Focus. I need warm clothes. I’ll snoop through the drawers and closets.
Find some kind of a bag, pack some food. Maybe try to purloin a weapon. Then I’ll leave.
I sit back on the sofa, leaning on the pillows. My eyes sting with frustrated tears.
It’s a ridiculous plan. I’ll freeze or starve, and where would I go? The base is hundreds of miles from here. I guess I could try to find human survivors, the ones we hoped were hidden in the labyrinthine parking garages under the city. I don’t remember seeing any evidence of them.
Maybe I could hide on my own. Maybe somewhere near that store where everything went so horribly wrong. There’s enough food in there to keep one person alive until spring. If I leave in spring I could hike over the mountains and head for the coast.
Nearly a thousand miles away.
I wipe my face. This is not how I expected it to turn out. I expected Topher and I would get away, kill some Nahx, and escape together, head west like Lewis and Clark. Or something. That was stupid. I know that now. Topher is probably dead. Just because this Nahx didn’t kill him doesn’t mean one of the other billion didn’t.
This thought makes me sob and sob until my ribs hurt. Topher can’t be dead. How could I have been so stupid to become so attached to him? Or to anyone in this world? We’re all going to die. Through the blur of tears, I see the Nahx, August, returning with a steaming bowl. He sets it down on the coffee table and kneels next to me again, putting his hand on my splinted arm.
“Please don’t touch me.”
He sits back, picks up the bowl and holds it out to me. Believe it or not, it’s actually chicken soup. What are the odds?
“I’ll eat it later. Can you leave me alone?”
He sets the soup down, hesitating, but finally walks down the hallway to the bedroom and closes the door.
Even in the state I’m in, I take note that he hasn’t tried to restrain me. Maybe he knows how hopeless it is too.
It feels like another life now, when I had so much hope. But if I take a second to tally it up, maybe it wasn’t that much after all. It was only ever faint glimmers, like satellites exploding against a dark sky. I hoped I might make it up to Mom and Jack, that I might find them again. I hoped we might escape from the Nahx, that Topher might help me forget Tucker, or become him even, just take his place the way he seemed destined to. What evidence did I have that any of that was even possible? All I ever had was hope. So many tiny pinpoints of hope.
Now I don’t even have that. This Nahx took it all away.
I can barely look at him. His touch makes my skin crawl. The thought that he sat and watched me lying there in nothing but underwear for more than a week horrifies me. I was so delirious he could have done anything, looked at me, touched me.
Maybe he thinks I should be grateful to him for saving my life, but I’m not grateful. I hate him.
Yes.
I hate him. I don’t care if he saved me. I’m a soldier. I’ll watch him, learn about him and his kind. Then I’ll kill him.
Maybe if I were more sure of this, I would feel less humiliated.
AUGUST
August is my name now. I’m still a rebel and a deserter.
I’m still a sentimental idiot. Weak-minded and stupid.
Defective. Disobedient.
The moment the human has the strength, she will do her best to kill me. Not that I don’t deserve it for the things I’ve done. But I doubt she’ll be able to. It’s the trying that scares me. It’s the things I could do to her in my own defense.
The room where she didn’t die smells of twenty different things, most of them not very nice. I tear the sheets from the bed, then another cover, but discover the mattress is soaked with everything too. I haul the whole mess out onto the terrace and throw it over the railing, watching it sail down and land with a satisfying crash. My mind relaxes enough, for an instant, to think how much fun it would be to throw things over the railing for the rest of the day. Or to set them on fire and throw them out all night. Who among my people thinks like I do? That’s ridiculous.
I’m very good at breaking things—that’s still the case. August can break things, like doors and locks. I have terrible aim with my rifle, but I don’t need it. She’s right there, helpless. I could snap her neck like a dandelion stem. Crush her like a fragile baby bird and throw the pieces over the railing too.
r /> The thought of it makes me gag. I reach out with my left hand and find the cold brick wall of the terrace. Even walking away right now would be killing her. She’s too weak to survive alone.
I step back into the room and gather the piles of towels from the floor. Balling them up, I pitch them out the patio door, where they flap open and flutter on the wind, like giant snowflakes. Less pretty though. Snowflakes are so pretty. The thought of them skims a thin slice of misery away, and I feel light as air for an instant. But snowflakes make me think of the human girl. And why not? She’s in the next room, plotting ways of ridding herself of me.
Maybe I should tell her she can just walk away. Maybe she would believe that. Maybe if I concentrated really hard, I could let her go. I could go back to my people. I could beg them to fix me. They could close her behind the door in my mind with the angels and the other almost memories.
August. She gave me a name. It’s not what I meant to say to her. The names of the human months mean nothing to us, but we used their moon as part of our process. I’m from the eighth moon cycle. Eighth. Like all the others. It’s not really a name. It’s a rank. The ranks mean so much to us, but I guess they mean nothing to her.
August. Eighth Cycle of the Moon.
She told me I don’t have to be who I am. She gave me more than Sixth ever did. All Sixth ever gave me were orders. And mysteries. Questions she wouldn’t answer.
How much time has passed? I’ve been standing in the middle of the bedroom with a damp towel in my hand for what seems like hours. The sun will set soon. I could watch it from the other room. But she hates me so much, it hurts to be in the same room with her. I should be used to it by now. Stupid defective Eighth, I thought that if I saved her life, she might not be so repelled. She might be grateful. If Eighth had saved Sixth . . .
Not Eighth. August. August is even stupider. August has feelings like a human. Stupid feelings that make me pathetic. Disgusting, perverse feelings that make me not want to leave her when I know I should.
I should leave her.
Once I thought of leaving Sixth. I thought of turning away from her while we walked in a heavy rainstorm. I let my hand fall from her shoulder experimentally, and she snapped her head back. Stay together, she signed. That was about as close to affection as she ever got. That was also the moment I realized to get away from her I would have to kill her. And that I couldn’t kill her because I loved her so much.
Love is not really permitted. We are supposed to feel protective toward the girls, and the girls are supposed to lead us, and mentor us, because they are more experienced. I knew this. There are other things that Sixth knew that I didn’t. I’m not sure if she was supposed to explain them to me, if she was waiting for the right time, or if she neglected to, or refused to, because she hated me. I was supposed to feel attached to her, and dependent on her. And I did. That’s how the pairs are supposed to work.
But love? It should not have mattered to me, the names she called me. And the violence is just part of how we are. I should have probably fought back, crushed her fingers as she slept, or thrown hot coals at her. But I couldn’t hurt her, and that made her think I was weak, and stupid. Which made her angry, and more inclined to violence, or plain meanness. Calling me names, letting me eat things that made me sick. Laughing at me when the humans with their guns startled me. She would have laughed if she’d seen me lingering by her lifeless body, pacing, my throat convulsing around the tube. She would have laughed if she’d seen how I trembled when I disconnected, high in the mountain after she didn’t get up. How I lay down beside the fire and cried about her until my head ached like it was split open again. She would have been disgusted with me.
And now, how appalled would she be, that I have captured a little human pet, nursed her back to health, and now can’t let her go like I should. She mocked the humans with their cats and dogs, that they would waste time going back for them as they tried to flee. She tore a dog apart once, in front of the screaming family, before darting them all into silence. She would tear this one apart too, to spite me, then laugh as I grieved. Blood-winged angel Sixth, she was quite something, now that I think of it. If she were still alive I think I would be able to snap her neck to protect the little dandelion in the next room.
I suppose that means I don’t love Sixth anymore.
When I dare to poke my head into the other room, she has fallen asleep on the bench, piled with blankets. The bowl is empty. As quietly as I can, I gather it and carry it out onto the west-facing terrace. I drop it over the rail and wait for the dull thump it makes as it hits the deep snow forty stories below us. I could have washed it, but that’s something a human would do. There are a lot of bowls and plates in the kitchen. I’m not washing them. When I run out of bowls, maybe I’ll leave her. Maybe I’ll tear the tube from my throat and wait for the heaviness of the air to press the life from my lungs. We don’t get up from that, I hear. If she still hates me when the bowls run out, I’ll do it.
The sky turns pink and orange. The colors in this world are heartbreaking. Heartbreak is something I should not understand. Why should I feel the pain of losing a planet that was never mine? I should be happy, proud of what we’ve achieved. I’m supposed to hate these vulgar humans. I have been told how they are. Wasteful. Cruel. Disorganized and petty. Weak and stupid. They don’t deserve such an enchanting world. I’m supposed to look on them as vermin.
But I love the human girl so much it makes my chest hurt.
RAVEN
The next morning greets me with a headache—a ball-shrinking headache, Xander would have called it—in addition to the pains in my body. There’s a bowl of dry cereal on the table next to me, and a glass of water. Lined up neatly next to that are several bottles of prescription pills. Reading the labels, I have some insight into why the only memories I have of my illness feel like hallucinogenic dreams.
Oxycodone. Percocet. A couple of different antibiotics. The Nahx must have been force-feeding this to me the whole time. No wonder I have a headache. I’m coming down from opiates. Perfect. I sweep the collection into a small garbage can I find under the side table. I don’t need a drug problem now on top of everything else.
The penthouse is quiet. “Hello?” I call out. There’s no answer.
My head throbs as I stand and test my weight on my leg. If anything, it feels worse than yesterday, but that’s probably because the sledgehammer drug cocktail has worn off. What I need is some aspirin or ibuprofen, but the search will make the pain worse. In seconds my mind is hurling silent curses at the Nahx again. It’s hard to think of anything else with my head pounding like this, but the significance of being alone is not lost on me. I could leave now, run away. Well, hobble away, limp away. I almost laugh at the thought as I take two tentative steps, pain shooting from my foot to my hip.
An agonizing eternity later, I’m in the hall bathroom, but the medicine cabinet is empty, and my swollen and bruised face scowls back at me from the beveled mirror. Under the bruises, my color looks dreadful—a dull khaki rather than my normal golden brown, my freckles like sad bugs crawling on my cheeks. And my Afro looks pretty much like you’d expect for someone who has been in bed for more than a week—frizzy, squashed, and lopsided—but I don’t have the energy or the tools to fix it.
Focusing on my reflection only worsens my headache. Rather than endure the long journey down to the other bedroom to search for painkillers, I cross into the kitchen. It’s a fascinating mess. All the dishes have been pulled out and strewn across the counter. Another pile of pill bottles litters the draining board. None of them are painkillers. Towels and sheets are piled up, some of them torn into strips. And there are boxes and cans of food everywhere, not just in cupboards but on the breakfast bar, the top of the stove. I’m not game to open the fridge though. Not sure I want to know what pestilence lurks in there after . . . What has it been since a human lived here? Six months?
A human apart from me, I mean.
The Nahx has been cre
ating a little hoard, it seems. Is he planning to keep me here forever? My eyes fall on the knife block. The paring knife looks pretty sharp. If I had some kind of a holster, I could keep it on me. As it is, weapons are hard to conceal in men’s pajamas. Socks, maybe. I could keep one in my sock.
There’s a faint noise behind me, and I spin without thinking, knife raised in my good hand, in as close to a defensive posture as I can get.
It’s only him, the Nahx, August. I recognize him by the scrappy state of his armor plates, the dirt, the scuffs, the star-shaped scar on his shoulder. He doesn’t seem to react to my knife apart from tilting his head slowly to the side. He slips his rifle from his shoulder and sets it on the breakfast bar.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” I say. “Unless you’d like to be filleted.”
Before I can blink, he has plucked the knife out of my grip, as easily as if I handed it to him as a gift. I step back as he lays his palm on the butcher block. Raising the knife above his head, he slams it down into the back of his hand.
“No!” I slap my hand over my mouth.
There’s a loud ping as the blade snaps in two. He shows it to me before tossing it away.
Edging back, I watch him reach out. He points to the joint in his armor over his wrist, bending his hand up and down to show me the plates opening and closing. He points to his elbow and the scar on his shoulder. Weak spots.
Now I’m cornered against the counter as he steps forward. I reach for the knife block again, but he gets there before me, shoving it hard onto the floor, where it crashes and slides away. One long, sharp knife remains in his hand. He flips it over, holding the handle end out to me. I don’t move, but he nods encouragingly, extending the knife, inviting me to take it.
I snatch it from his hand and hold it out, aimed at his throat. He flicks his head back a couple of times and steps forward.
“Don’t come any closer,” I say.
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