The Death Code

by Lindsay Cummings

  I’m in the ocean.

  I’m suspended underwater, and I don’t need to breathe.

  There’s movement, somewhere in the black. And I see my mother.

  She swims toward me, her hair splayed out to the sides in the water, and she looks so beautiful. She smiles, just for a moment.

  “My Meadow,” she whispers.

  I reach out to her. I want to take her hand, but there is something solid between us. A wall of glass.

  “I need to hear you say it,” I whisper to her. “Your apology.”

  She tilts her head. Opens her mouth, and finally, I’m about to get what I have needed, so desperately, for years.

  But blood seeps from her nose. She wipes it away, then gasps, as more pours from it; a stream. It spreads far and wide, until the ocean is crimson. I bang against the glass. I try to get to her, but I can’t. She disappears behind a wall of red.

  “Mom!” I scream. The glass turns to a mirror.

  I stare at myself.

  “You’ll never make it to the Ridge,” my reflection whispers.

  “No,” I say.

  “You won’t make it,” the reflection says. “Because you left the Shallows. And that means you’re already dead.”

  The glass shatters and pierces my heart.

  I wake up screaming.

  Hands hold me down, force me to lie still.

  “Meadow, calm down!” a voice hisses. The person is wearing Initiative black, and for a moment I forget who he is. I scream, try to rip away from him, because I don’t know where I am, and my only rational thought is to get free.

  “Woodson, get ahold of yourself!” Sketch’s voice. Safe.

  I gasp as memories come rushing back. The rumbling beneath my body, the voices of Sketch and Zephyr, as Sasha drives the stolen train toward the Ridge.

  I relax, calm myself.

  The weakness has become energy again. The switch, I’ll call it. I sit up, look around.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasp, holding my head. Sketch hands me water. I take soft, slow sips of it, and I’m able to keep it down. No one touches me, and for a time, I sit alone in the train car, watching the world pass me by. I try to hear my father’s voice, but I can’t reach it. I feel helplessly, horribly alone.

  It goes from green to brown, from patches of flat, vast, empty space, grasses swaying in the wind, to suddenly, hills. The hoards of people are ever constant. We shut the doors and lock them, as we pass through the thickest parts of civilization. The train rumbles on, but with it, I hear the cries for help. The voices of the non-dying, wishing that they could.

  The world gets colder and colder as we go. Rain pounds the metal, seeps inside through cracks.

  The switch happens again, around the time darkness hits. Strength back to weakness, and my head is in Sketch’s lap.

  She braids my hair, whistles an old Ward song from the Shallows. It is the song Peri used to sing, onboard our houseboat. Hearing the tune brings the memories flooding forth. I sing the words softly:

  “Someone save me, I’m falling to darkness.

  I met a man in the night who gave me a new start.

  Someone save me, I’m losing my sanity.

  The man’s name was Death and he blackened my heart.”

  I understand the lyrics now, more than I ever have. Death calls to me from my mother’s grave, whispering for me to come close. Threatening me that soon, he will take Peri and Koi and my father, Zephyr and Sketch, too, and I will be the only one left to suffer through this life alone.

  My voice trails away, and soon it is just Zephyr and Sketch humming the tune. I close my eyes and let it mix with the sound of thunder in the background. A rumble that sounds like the beating of Death’s drums as he comes for me.

  “How do you control it?” I ask suddenly.

  Sketch stops whistling. She looks down at me. “Control what?”

  “The changes,” Zephyr says, across from us. He is leaning up against the metal wall of the train, watching me. “She means the changes, from whatever is happening to her.”

  I nod. “All my life, I’ve been in control. My father trained me that way.” I shiver, and Sketch pulls the blanket tighter up to my chin. “How do you stay sane, when you feel like you can’t?”

  Sketch shifts her legs beneath me. I can feel her sigh. “You don’t control it, Woodson. You just cope.”

  “There has to be a way,” I whisper. “I can’t live like this, not knowing when I’m going to switch. Not knowing when I won’t even be able to stand on my own two feet.”

  “I remember when I first met you,” Zephyr says suddenly, across from me. I lift my head enough to see the small smile on his face. “You were such a ChumHead, Meadow, you know that? Lying right to my face, saying you didn’t know me. But you saved my life. You gave me your blood, and that’s the only reason why I’m here.”

  I listen quietly, lost in the memories of that day. The tube in my arm, going to his, giving him another chance at life.

  “I thought I was alone,” he says. “I thought I could die, and no one would try to stop me. But you did.” He leans his head back against the metal again. “And when I lost control, after that, you were always there to help me. And that’s what you’re missing.”

  His eyes flick toward mine.

  I want to look away, but I force myself not to.

  His voice is like music, softening the hardness of my soul.

  “You are Meadow Woodson,” Zephyr says. “And your entire life, you’ve been taught that surviving means keeping your distance. It means finding a way to solve things yourself, because you don’t trust others. But that’s where you’re wrong. You’re not alone anymore, and you don’t have to be. You have me.”

  “And me,” Sketch says.

  Zephyr nods. “When you’re weak, we’ll be there, Meadow. You’re not alone in this world, and you never will be again, as long as we’re here. And we will be, because you can’t get rid of us. We’re going to prove to you that love makes us stronger, whether you like it or not.”

  “Amen, Zero,” Sketch says. “A-fluxing-men.”

  I know I should hate him for killing my mother.

  I know I should never want to look into his eyes again. But Zephyr made a choice. He did what my father would have done, what I wasn’t strong enough to do. I’ve killed countless people, sliced a dagger across their throats without stopping to wonder who they were, or what they’d done. But when it came to my own, murderous mother, one of the few people in this world who truly deserved a horrible death . . . I wasn’t strong enough.

  “I still hate you,” I whisper to Zephyr. He goes rigid, but softens when I smile at him. “But you did the right thing. You freed us, Zephyr.” I don’t thank him, because I’m not ready yet.

  But because I don’t know what’s happening tomorrow, or if we’ll survive the Ridge, I set aside my feelings for now. The three of us spend the rest of the night sharing stories, whispering words about the world.

  Their voices guide me into sleep, and this time, the nightmares stay far away.

  CHAPTER 62

  ZEPHYR

  In the morning, we see the mountains.

  Great pieces of land, stretching high into the sky, so far that their tops disappear into the clouds. The mountains are bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s like nothing can break them.

  Not even the Plague, or the Eternity Cure, or the Murder Complex, or anything else from here to hell and back again.

  They’re amazing. But it’s the sunrise over them that really gets me.

  It’s like liquid fire, spilling into the valleys beneath the peaks, lighting them up with pinks and reds and yellows that come alive.

  I know it’s the same sun that rises over the Perimeter, back in the Shallows.

  But somehow it looks different.

  Here it’s electric, like the sun is jealous of the intensity of the mountains, so it shines a little brighter to rise above.

  Meadow and Sketch sit beside me
.

  Somewhere up front, Sasha guides the train along. We’re nearing the end of the tracks.

  Soon we’ll be at the Ridge, and we’ll have to find a way in. Soon it’s going to be hell all over again, and I don’t know if Meadow will be alive to go through it with me.

  What I do know is this moment is a little piece of heaven. And I’m going to hold on to it until the tracks end, until the train stops.

  Until we enter the Ridge.

  CHAPTER 63

  MEADOW

  The closer we get to the Ridge, the fewer people we see. It is as if they can sense the horrors that go on inside there, so they stay far away.

  The tracks bend into the woods.

  And suddenly the world is full of green. More green than the everglades. That color pales in comparison to these trees.

  They tower into the sky, stretching with their needlelike arms, taller than any I have ever seen. They sway as the wind blows, and the deep, natural scent of the woods envelops me, and beyond it, something wet and cold. Red birds flit back and forth from the canopies.

  Squirrels leap, rush into hiding as we pass.

  For one moment, I feel as if I am inside of a dream. A beautiful fairy tale, from the stories my mother used to tell me, when I was only a girl. I imagine Peri with her hair in braids, her laughter like music as Koi and I chase her through the trees. I imagine my father waiting for us somewhere on the other side, strong and safe and alive.

  Then in a flash, the trees fade away. The fairy tale disappears like smoke on the wind. The train lurches, then slows down.

  We see the Ridge for the very first time.

  CHAPTER 64

  ZEPHYR

  It’s a dome.

  Bigger than the Catalogue Dome, back in the Shallows.

  It’s ten times the size, like it holds an entire world inside. It’s just there, right in the middle of the trees, a big circle of shining metallic gray. So out of place.

  “Holy flux,” Sketch gasps. “The General didn’t think about telling us this?”

  I shrug, look at Meadow. I know she and the General have a secret. I know she will never tell me what it is. “He probably didn’t tell us a lot of things.”

  “But we’re the idiots going in there!” Sketch hisses.

  Meadow is sitting on the floor in between us, with our shoulders pressed to her sides to prop her up. She’s switched back and forth twice. I thought killing the Regulator’s computer would stop hurting her, but that can’t be the solution. Otherwise she’d be fine by now.

  “It’s just like going into the Headquarters Building,” Meadow says. “We’re starting to make a pattern of this, aren’t we?”

  We watch as the Ridge comes closer, and closer. It looks like it’s made of titanium, the same stuff as the Perimeter around the Shallows.

  If we even get in . . .

  I don’t know how we’ll ever get out.

  CHAPTER 65

  MEADOW

  The tracks come to an end at a building just off to the left of the Ridge.

  It’s several stories high, perfectly intact.

  I run through the plan in my head, forcing myself to remember.

  Be your mother. Get inside. Get a look at your surroundings.

  They are the General’s words, but they come to me in my father’s voice, strong and solid, and hearing them makes me feel like a little girl again, wild and windblown from the sea, wanting nothing more than to impress her father by staying alive.. How badly I want to show him that I am the daughter he raised me to be, despite everything I’ve been through since losing him.

  But how can I do this right, when my strength has left me?

  I beg it to come back. I beg my body not to betray me, not when I am so, so close.

  “You ready for this, Woodson?” Sketch asks me.

  We watch the world go from flashes of solid images, to a straight blur.

  “I don’t know,” I hear myself say.

  “You have to be,” she says. She grabs my hand and squeezes it, so hard that there’s a pinch of pain. I gasp, and then smile. She knows what I need, what makes me come back to life when I’m feeling so dead.

  We are one hundred yards away.

  I can see the door of the Initiative building now.

  Sketch and Zephyr help drag me to the piles of blankets and rations. We sit close together, wedge ourselves inside, cover our bodies with as much as we can.

  By now, we must be fifty yards away.

  Sasha’s voice comes over the speaker. “It’s been a fun ride, boys and girls,” she says. Her voice cracks. “They’re filing out of the building. I wish you could see it.” She laughs, like she’s talking to an old friend. “This is gonna taste so sweet.”

  Zephyr grabs my hand. I let him hold it. This could be the last moment we ever touch.

  Ten yards.

  “I imagine I won’t be seeing you on the other side,” Sasha says. I can hear her breathing quicken, hear the smile that lingers on the edge of her voice.

  The train speeds up—a final lurch—as the tracks come to an end.

  Sasha doesn’t stop. She guns the engine. “Do me a favor?” she asks. “Give ’em hell.”

  We fly off the end of the tracks, a giant silver bullet aimed at the Initiative building.

  CHAPTER 66

  ZEPHYR

  The world explodes around us.

  The train is a roaring beast that’s come to life. It screeches and screams, and I can literally feel the building tearing apart around us as we crash inside.

  Beside me, I feel Sketch and Meadow, jostling around.

  I feel a bang against my head, a splash of pain behind my eyes.

  The train keeps rolling. Destroying, taking out everything in its path.

  And then, as fast as it started, it all stops.

  CHAPTER 67

  MEADOW

  The train stops.

  I can’t breathe.

  I can’t think.

  Get ahold of yourself. Invite fear into your heart, and then crush it.

  My father’s voice. I cling to him.

  There is commotion, all around. The sound of rubble, falling onto the top of the train. I don’t know if Sketch and Zephyr are okay.

  I reach out, grab for them.

  A hand finds mine, squeezes it.

  We’re silent.

  Voices outside.

  Shouts and screams.

  I am weak, weaker than I’ve ever been, and I know that soon the Initiative will come, open the door, and find us.

  You’ll die soon, my mother’s voice calls to me. You won’t even make it halfway, Meadow.

  I shut her out. I refuse to believe her.

  The switch happens. My strength comes back to me as a rogue wave.

  A split second of weakness, and then, I feel it in the deepest parts of me. Surging forth, until my muscles explode with power.

  Right as the door is wrenched open, and Initiative soldiers are staring, wide-eyed, inside the train.

  CHAPTER 68

  ZEPHYR

  Meadow is a blur.

  She moves like the wind, a rush of silver and black.

  A rifle barrel, aimed at every Leech soldier in her way. She takes four out before I realize I’m supposed to help.

  Sketch is alive, and safe, and she’s up on her feet, screaming as she shoots.

  I can’t find my gun.

  The supplies are everywhere, spilled like blood. I scramble around, shoving stuff aside, trying to find it. But it’s nowhere, and all I can hear is a ringing in my ears as everything explodes around me.

  “Clear!” Meadow shouts. I whirl around, see her and Sketch leap from the destroyed train car, into the building.

  “Wait!” I follow after them. Everything is a blur, dust and rubble, bodies broken and ripped open on the floor.

  I slip in blood.

  Fall onto a body, lying faceup. I get to my feet, run forward, following Meadow’s shouts.

  There are too many
halls. Too many doors.

  Too many Leeches.

  They take out as many as they can.

  Find the exit, find the exit, is all I can think. But there’s no chance to find it.

  I crash into Meadow’s back.

  She stands frozen, facing forward, and I realize why when I look up.

  Leeches.

  Reinforcements, from other parts of the building, aiming their weapons at us. I turn in circles, looking for a way out.

  But there’s no hope.

  We’re surrounded on all sides.

  CHAPTER 69

  MEADOW

  I am in a cage that looks like it is meant for an animal.

  Zephyr and Sketch are beside me. We are bound, wrists and ankles, with MagnaCuffs. These are impossible to break. Impossible to escape from, without the key. We’re in a small white room. Cameras on the ceiling are pointed at us, watching, like eyes.

  I wonder if by now, they have contacted the Shallows.

  I wonder if they will send us back.

  I wonder why I still care.

  At some point, my strength disappears again, and I am as weak as ever.

  I feel as if I could topple over, with the slightest burst of wind.

  “You think they’re gonna kill us?” Sketch asks. She slams her boots against the cage.

  Again and again, until I want to scream.

  It’s too loud, too much.

  “Would you stop it?” Zephyr snaps at her. “You’re acting like a fluxing idiot! Of course they’re going to kill us. We just took out half their army with a train!”

  “Shut your mouth, Zero, before I shove my boot up your ass!”

  They start fighting like children, and our triangle begins to break. We are losing our calm, losing our sanity.

  Hours pass.

  We’re cramped, not able to stand.

  I switch again, back to strength, and I want to move, to run, to put my hands around someone’s neck and feel it snap like a fresh-fallen twig. I stay quiet and still.

  I wait, and I think of the ways I will kill the people who have captured us. I think of the way their hot blood will feel on my hands. I dream of their tortured screams.