Not Even Bones

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  “These are both full. And big,” Kovit said. “When they go, it will be . . . explosive.”

  Nita considered. “How long from opening them and setting a fire will we have?”

  “I don’t know.” He frowned. “I imagine it depends on how close the fire is to the open tank.”

  She pressed her lips together. “Okay. So on my signal, we set the fire and then run like hell toward the docks.”

  Kovit thought a moment, and then nodded. “All right. First one there tries to get a boat.”

  “Agreed.”

  Well, there were the guards to deal with too. But hopefully the fire would distract them.

  They each took a propane tank. Nita went to one side of the market, and Kovit the other. It wasn’t that large, so that really only meant each of them walked six or seven blocks.

  Nita dragged her propane tank along the darkened roads. She picked it up after a while, sick of the thunk as it went over a bump or dip. Her feet occasionally fell in potholes—was it okay to call them potholes when there was no pavement? There was often water at the bottom, and it soaked into her shoes so they squelched with each step she took.

  She stumbled often. Her balance was off, body subconsciously relying on a baby toe that was no longer present.

  She tried not to think about it.

  Sometimes she could hear music from within buildings, roars and laughs and screams. Occasionally a thud as something hit a wall, or the scrape of a chair across the wooden floor. The sounds of life.

  Nita made sure to avoid any area with noise like that when looking for a place to start her fire. If they were awake, they might notice the smoke and try to stop her.

  She found a good spot and set the propane tank up against the side of a large, two-story wooden building with mosquito nets hanging over the windows instead of mesh. She kept the cap on the tank—she’d open that at the last minute before she ran.

  She took a deep breath and stepped back from the propane tank. She hesitated, then detached her vocal cords. She didn’t want her scream to wake people up or draw attention. That would ruin the whole thing, and she’d end up in that cage again before she could blink.

  Okay. She was ready. Well, not ready, never ready, but she had to do this at some point. So. As ready as she’d ever be.

  Then she turned all her pain circuits back on.

  Her whole body was on fire. She was melting in lava, burning alive, as every single cell in her body checked to make sure its pain function was still working. A thousand needles poked her eyes, digging deep into the membrane and scooping pieces out. Hot chili pepper had been shoved into all her tenderest places, scalding and searing and stinging.

  Her back arched and her mouth opened to scream, but no sound came out. She crumpled to the ground, sobbing from agony, gasping for breath.

  Then it was over.

  Nita trembled. When she’d turned her pain circuits off and on as a child, she remembered it hurting, but she didn’t remember it hurting that much. She revised the memory accordingly.

  After that, the lingering pain from the healing bullet wound, the remaining cuts from the glass, and her shattered nose were nothing.

  She stumbled to her feet. Her legs shook a little, but a few long breaths, and they stopped. She needed to set her fire. Kovit had his signal now; she needed to get a fire going near this tank and make for the docks.

  Nita moved away from the propane tank. She found a likely building nearby to start with—it looked like the type of building to burn. The wood felt dry when she touched it, and slightly brittle.

  She used the lighter, first to get some twigs on the ground burning. Then she tucked the flaming twigs in the woven reed, wood, and leaf thatching and let it smolder. There was some laundry hanging on a line nearby, and Nita lit that on fire too. She made sure it was good and fiery, and tossed it against the side of another structure.

  The buildings began to burn.

  Nita dragged the propane tank a little closer—not too close; she didn’t want it to explode early.

  Her fingers trembled when she unscrewed the cap on the propane tank. Not from memory of pain, just nerves. Her eyes were burning, like dozens of mosquito bites were on her irises. She scrubbed them, annoyed at herself. Then she sat back. There. The cap was off. It was done. There was no going back.

  The buildings were burning at a steady clip now, and the fire had caught and jumped to another building.

  It was time for Nita to go.

  She ran. Down the street, tripping on the uneven road, trying to look in front of herself rather than down to avoid running into buildings. She passed through the main square, which seemed much bigger at night, without all the stands and peddlers that were out during the day. Then finally down the path to the harbor, trying not to slip on the slope and end up rolling down to meet Kovit.

  On the other side of the market, a bright orange glow seemed to be gaining steam. It wasn’t neon lights—there were few of those due to generator demands, most likely, but they gave off a much different type of light. Whiter. Brighter. The glow on the other side of the market was dim and deep, and it was orange, the color of insanity.

  She picked up her pace.

  A hand reached out and snagged her from behind. She opened her mouth, but before she could scream or turn around and fight, Kovit’s voice whispered, “It’s me.”

  She stilled and turned to look at him, but his face was so cast in shadow she couldn’t even see the outline of his features.

  “We have to wait for the fire to start and distract the guards. There’re too many.”

  Nita’s heart thumped in her chest, remembering the last time she’d tried to distract the guards. And how well that had gone for Mirella.

  But she nodded. “How long before the—”

  She never finished her sentence, because one of the propane tanks blew.

  Nita and Kovit both fell to the ground and covered their heads when they heard the sound, and Nita’s ears rang with a horrid echo that didn’t seem to end even when the explosion did. Beside her, blood soaked through Kovit’s shirt as his stitches tore.

  Fire soared into the air like a volcano spout, a strange, almost bluish fire that lit up the whole market for a brief moment. Sparks rained down, catching on other buildings and on the surrounding woods. Large pieces of burning wood arced through the air above Nita’s head and set the pier on fire.

  Only one more explosion to go, she thought. Then she paused, realizing her mistake. There were probably other propane tanks in the market, with other generators. In fact, almost every building was liable to have one.

  Kovit grabbed her hand and dragged her onto the dock. The guards were ahead of them, already fleeing the market and leaping into boats.

  A burning piece of wood had flown onto the pier and set a small part of it on fire. Kovit kicked the piece of wood into the water, but the embers lingered. It wouldn’t be long before the fire began consuming the pier in earnest.

  Behind Nita, the market had begun to scream. She could hear voices over the roaring of the flames. Shouts, voices raised high in anger, panic, fear. The thunder of footsteps as people began running for the river and the boats. Sometimes she thought she could make out individual words, but mostly it just sounded like noise.

  Then there was another explosion.

  The dock shook, the support beams shuddering with the earth, and the pier rippled. Kovit cried out, more in startlement than fear, as he tripped, overbalancing and tumbling into the water below with a splash.

  Nita screamed, calling his name, but she couldn’t hear her own voice over the roaring in her ears and the echo of the latest explosion. Had she even remembered to turn her voice back on? She must have—she’d talked to Kovit earlier. But no matter how she shouted, she couldn’t seem to hear herself.

  After a moment, Kovit’s head surfaced, followed by his torso as he stood at the shallow riverbank. He gave her a thumbs-up and pointed to one of the rowboats, the kind that were old an
d slow but didn’t require keys, which neither of them had.

  The steps down were farther along the dock. Nita stumbled toward them, trying to beat the hordes of people already running from the market, swarming to the pier and the offer of escape the water promised.

  Another explosion. Nita tripped.

  And fell over the side of the pier.

  The water slammed into her like a brick wall, and she gasped as it shoved itself up her nose. Everything around her was wet, not shower wet, but kind of gooey wet, like something oily might have been added to the water. She hoped a boat wasn’t leaking fuel. Something tangled around her ankle, maybe a plant or vine. She hoped not an anaconda.

  Where was up? Everything was confusing and it was weird to be hurting again and the world swirled.

  Then her head was above the water and she was snorting out bits of river. Gasping, she shoved her wet hair out of her eyes to get a view of what was going on. Above her, the pier was on fire, and people were running through it anyway, trying to get to their boats. There was screaming, but it was hard to hear over the ringing. One man—she thought it was a man, but she couldn’t really tell because of the flames—ignored the pier and ran straight into the river. Bubbles rose where he went in, and steam too.

  Nita turned her attention to the market, and her jaw dropped open. All she could see was fire.

  True, her angle was bad in the water, she couldn’t see the whole thing. Just one corner, but it seemed a wall of light and flames. It glowed, lit up even the sky and blocked out the stars like there was an entire city’s worth of light pollution concentrated in this single fire.

  The trees and surrounding jungle had caught fire too, and the screams and cries of animals punctuated the darkness. A whoop, a howl, a caw. The sky was full of fleeing birds, their forms arcing like shadows in the night, lit from the fire below.

  “Nita, come on!”

  She turned to find Kovit had already untied the boat and was waiting for her. He was doubled over, and she thought it was in pain at first before she saw him shudder, back arching, eyes half lidded. Then she realized he was in pain—just not his own.

  Nita half swam, half walked through the shallow river edge to the boat. She grabbed the side and heaved herself over the top. The boat tipped from her weight, rocking back and forth, and Nita dripped water all over the bottom. There was already a carpet of water, though, so it was fine.

  Or there was a leak. It would be her luck to end up in the one leaky boat.

  She glanced at Kovit, but he lay at the bottom of the boat, completely oblivious to the outside world. His body rocked with pleasure, his eyes half closed, mouth twisted into the most brilliant smile she’d seen on him. His fingers twitched, as though playing a piano only he could see, and he moaned softly, indiscernible words to a song only he could hear.

  Nita tried calling his name, but he didn’t respond. Too high on pain.

  Grunting, Nita grabbed an oar from the boat and stuck it in the water. She pressed against the bottom of the river, trying to lever the boat so it would move away from shore. Her arms were surprisingly tired after a couple of these shoves, and her bullet wound ached, but she ignored that. They weren’t safe this close to the flames.

  A motorboat zoomed past her, nearly capsizing her vessel. Water sloshed over the side, and Nita grabbed the edges, heart slamming in her chest. A panicked woman in pajamas shot away down the river on a water scooter. Another boat followed.

  Once Nita felt she was far enough into the river to be safe, she looked back at the market.

  There was nothing but fire. Even the pier was gone, and based on the boats in the water, she suspected fewer than a dozen people had gotten out before it became impossible.

  There was the occasional boom as something else blasted within the inferno, but other than that, all Nita heard was the roar of a nearby engine, her still-ringing ears, and the panicked caws of birds above her.

  She sat down on the bench.

  She had done this.

  She thought of the screams she’d heard during the burning. She almost thought she could hear them now, even though there was no way that was true. Everyone in there was surely dead by now.

  Not all of the people burning in there deserved to be. Some were victims, just like Nita had been. “Products,” as Mirella had put it. And now Nita was responsible for their deaths.

  But . . . whatever life they had there, it couldn’t have been good. Like Nita and Mirella, their days were already numbered. And this way, there wouldn’t be more victims. This was the last batch that would ever see the shores of Mercado de la Muerte.

  While Nita believed that justification, it didn’t stop her from curling herself into a ball at the bottom of the boat. The water soaked through her already drenched clothes and made her shoes squelch and squeak.

  There, cold and wet, her mind replayed the screams while Kovit rolled on the floor, gasping in ecstasy from their pain.

  Thirty-Seven

  NITA ENDED UP floating on the boat in the middle of the Amazon until Kovit regained his senses. Mostly because she didn’t actually know which way to start rowing.

  She was worried about him at first. Even though all the pain was clearly gone, he kept twitching and moaning, and didn’t seem to be quite conscious. She wasn’t sure if that was normal or not, or if there’d been so much pain he’d blown through the mechanism in his body that let him absorb it, like a computer overload. Could that even happen?

  She wondered if he was sick. She wondered if there was anyone in the world who could fix him if he was. She wondered if anyone would care enough to help him.

  No. She was sure some crazy dictatorial psychopath must have funded some sort of medical research at some point. After all, zannies were rare and highly paid in certain circles. Those circles had to care if they died. Right?

  He turned over, and his face shone with . . . not sweat, that wasn’t right. Oil? Something else? His lips were parted slightly, and his breathing rapid.

  Nita squeezed some of the cool river water out of her shirt and onto his face, hoping that would either help or at the least get him to regain his senses long enough to point her in the right direction.

  He made a small sound, almost like a kitten’s mew when the water hit him. His eyes cracked open, and he looked up at her.

  “Kovit. Which way to Brazil?”

  He stared at her, eyes squinting, and she wasn’t sure he understood her until he whispered, “Left. Left from the harbor for Tabatinga.”

  Nita let out a breath. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Nita picked up the oars. Kovit’s eyes drifted closed again, and he shuddered his way into what she thought might be sleep, or maybe some sort of pain coma. Something not conducive to helping her row the damn boat.

  Nita started rowing by the light of the fire, which still raged, pumping smoke into the sky and spreading farther into the forest. By the time she passed the fire, the sun was rising, and that provided more light. Her arms became sore quickly, but Nita removed the stresses, pumped her strength, built her muscles faster than she should have. It wasn’t too much effort—she still had all that muscle built to get out of the cage. But all this modifying her body was beginning to take its toll. It became harder to focus, harder to use her power, harder to do anything except methodically row and be glad the current was helping her.

  As she went, she noticed some of the other boats that had left the market went the same way she did. Some went the other way, west into Peru. Most of the boats going her way were motorboats, and they zoomed past her, heading for Tabatinga.

  Nita wasn’t sure what to make of it when she saw the first capsized motorboat. There was no sign of the people who’d been on it.

  A few minutes later, she encountered another one, a ghost ship on the water, floating there with no one in it.

  Nita began to get nervous.

  She continued rowing, her eyes alert, watching for rocks or other things that might catch on a boat. She couldn’t see
anything.

  Across from her, another set of rowboats slid through the water. Other people from the market who hadn’t been able to get on motorboats and had taken whatever was available.

  There was a splash, and one of them capsized.

  Nita stiffened and stopped rowing. She heard the voice of a man, coughing and gurgling as he cursed the river. He thrashed by the side of the tipped boat, his arms flailing in the water, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the side of the water-slicked hull.

  Nita frowned, trying to find what had tipped him over. Was it something in the water? Rocks?

  Then he screamed.

  Nita stiffened. Was he being attacked by piranhas? Nita had heard that was a myth, and that piranhas were actually fairly harmless when left alone.

  What else could be in the water?

  A pink-gray fin crested the surface, like a shark in a horror movie, and the man was dragged under, still screaming.

  A dolphin. A pink Amazonian dolphin.

  Like the ones in the legend Mirella was based on.

  Nita’s heart rate shot up. Dolphins didn’t attack people, did they? But Mirella, Mirella would. Did Mirella have more connection to the dolphin legends than she’d been willing to admit?

  Nita remembered Mirella tumbling off the dock and into the river in one final act of defiance. But what if it hadn’t been defiance? What if it had been escape?

  But she’d been shot. Nita didn’t think Mirella could survive without medical treatment. That was stretching credibility.

  The rowboat nearest Nita began to speed up, the men in it paddling faster and faster, trying to distance themselves from the previous accident. As they came closer, Nita recognized them.

  Boulder. Jorge. Lorenzo.

  Nita felt a wave of fury. Almost as if the dolphin felt it too, the boat began to tip, as though something underneath the water was knocking on it.

  Somethings, Nita realized, catching the flash of at least three different dorsal fins, pink as the water wrung out of a bloody shirt.