The Death Code

by Lindsay Cummings

  But this is my fault. This wouldn’t have happened to Zephyr if he had just stayed away from me.

  We crawl from the tunnel, and once we’re out, I get a good look at Zephyr’s neck for the first time.

  The bite is large, a red welt, already leaking white pus. Black streaks spread out from the center of the bite, as if something has seeped into his veins. Poison.

  “I can’t see,” he keeps saying, over and over. His cuff moves to a 53.

  “Stop freaking out!” Sketch says.

  “I can’t SEE!” Zephyr screams. He is tearing at his eyes with his fingers, drawing streaks of blood on his face. “What the hell is happening to me?”

  “Zero, calm down!” Sketch yells, but he is beyond consoling, and we are losing him.

  So I slap him, as hard as I can, across the face.

  He freezes. His cheek is red, with an imprint of the back of my hand.

  “Did you just backhand me, Meadow?” he gasps.

  “Someone had to!” I nod, but then I remember he can’t see it. “If I didn’t do it, Sketch would have. Now take a deep breath and get ahold of yourself. We need to find shelter, in case those things come back.”

  I take his hand. Sketch takes his other, and we walk in a chain, telling him when to step over fallen logs and tree roots that could make him stumble.

  The switch is coming fast. I can feel it as sure as I can see the poison in Zephyr’s veins.

  “Where do we go?” Sketch asks. For some reason, she is whispering.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I look at Zephyr, see the fear in his blind eyes. “I don’t know anything.”

  We walk until we reach the stream again.

  “We should follow this,” I say. “Someone will have made camp near the water.”

  Zephyr keeps his mouth shut and does not say a word, but I can practically feel the panic seeping off of him in waves. He is drowning in fear.

  He clutches my hand like a vise. We move slow, steady. Then I hear a snap.

  We freeze.

  “It came from above,” Zephyr whispers.

  “Keep moving,” I say. We walk slowly, carrying on, and as we go, I use my free hand to reach for the knife at my waistband. Another snap.

  I look up, slowly, as if I am simply searching the world.

  And that is when I see the flash of yellow overhead, almost concealed in camouflage. Almost, but not all the way. It is on the wrist of a person who holds a wooden bow.

  The arrow is aimed right at Sketch.

  “Duck!” I scream. Sketch and Zephyr drop, and I launch the knife without thinking.

  It hits true, rocketing through the branches overhead, and hits the person in the arm. The body falls, crashes to the forest floor in a heap.

  The person screams, rips out the knife, and throws it to the side. Their face is covered in a mask of green, so I can’t tell if it is a boy or a girl. All I know is that they are the enemy.

  I dive.

  We both go down together. I land a punch to the face, then another to the neck, before I’m flipped over, and the enemy is on top. We spar, and Sketch is screaming, and Zephyr is shouting, asking what is going on, but I don’t care about any of it.

  Because I realize the motions of this fight feel as natural as breathing. It is neck and neck, as if we have been competing for the win our entire lives.

  I gasp. I freeze, when I see the strong, scarred forearms of the person that is holding me. The silvery hair, hanging to his shoulders, tangled and knotted, but so, so familiar. The strong hands, both for fighting and carving and bringing images to life.

  “Koi,” I gasp again. “Koi, it’s me. It’s me.”

  “M-Meadow?” He reaches up, moves his camouflaged mask away, and I finally see his face.

  The sob that comes from my lips is instantaneous.

  It is my brother.

  He is just as I remember him. Strength and softness, all tangled into one. The only difference is that he now has oozing scabs mixed in with his sparring scars, gentle drips of blood that coat his skin. But I don’t care. He is here.

  We stand up to face each other.

  I launch myself into his arms.

  “Meadow,” he whispers, and we are both crying, holding each other so tight that I dare the world to try and rip us apart. I tell him about our mother, and he holds me tighter. Whispers that it’s okay, that it wasn’t my fault, that she was already dead to us both.

  “I found you,” I breathe. “I found you.”

  “You came for us,” he says. He pulls back to look at me, holds my face in his hands. His fingertips tug at the short, light strands of my chin-length curls. “You cut your hair?”

  It is such a normal, stupid question, that I laugh, and then I can’t stop laughing, because he is here. My brother is with me, after so, so long. “The Initiative did it,” I whisper. I turn, so that he can see the Regulator.

  He gasps.

  “They . . . they did lots of things,” I say, but I can’t finish the sentence, because suddenly an image of two other faces appears in my mind. “Dad?” I whisper. Terrified of the answer he might give me. “Peri?”

  Koi sniffs, shakes his head. “Dad’s with me, back at camp. But Peri . . .”

  “She’s not dead,” I say. “She can’t be.”

  “No,” he says. “God, no, but . . . we haven’t found her yet, Meadow. The Ridge is a massive place. But we will. I promise, we’re looking every day. I’m so sorry.”

  Pain streaks through me.

  And then the switch hits. In one instant I lose all my strength. My knees buckle, but Koi holds me up, wraps me tighter in his arms before I can fall.

  “What’s happening?” he asks. “What’s wrong with her? Was it the fog? The Biters? The needles?” He checks my cuff.

  There is an 89 on the screen.

  “That’s one of the highest number’s I’ve ever seen,” he gasps. “I’m going to ask you again. What. Happened. To. Her?”

  “Nothing!” Sketch says as she steps forward. Zephyr clutches onto her like a child. “I swear it, nothing happened. We ran from Biters, and Zero got bit. Not Meadow. And we haven’t run into anything else.”

  “Did you drink the water?” Koi asks.

  “No,” Sketch says. She’s frowning at me like I am on my deathbed, and I hate it. I want her to stop. I want to be strong again. “It’s a long story,” she says. “She just needs to rest.”

  “We’ll go back to camp,” Koi says. He holds me tighter, and he smells different, but he feels the same. “For now, let’s be happy,” he says. “My sister is here, alive and well. And that’s reason enough for me.”

  My tears mix with his. Our cuffs clink together, red and yellow. He smiles again, but I can see through it.

  I see the fear in his eyes, clear as glass, as he carries me across the Ridge.

  It would be worse if he knew the truth.

  CHAPTER 82

  ZEPHYR

  My vision comes back after we’ve walked for an hour.

  “I can see,” I gasp. Patches of light trickle in. Then shadows and light together, and then it all comes bursting back in one sudden sweep. “I can see!” I scream.

  I reach back and touch the welt on my neck.

  But it’s not there anymore. My cuff changes, from the new number 53, to a 27.

  Then, gradually, it drops in numbers until it’s back at the letter C.

  Meadow’s brother looks back over his shoulder. “Biters got you, right?”

  I nod, more confused than I’ve ever been.

  “You won’t heal so fast after a while,” Koi says. “They carry something in their blood. A disease, or poison, whatever it is. Causes blindness. There’s a guy back at camp, Abram. He’s lost his sight for good. But he’s still alive.” He looks at the sky. “No one has died yet, no matter what they’ve thrown at us. Death is impossible. Our mother made sure of that.”

  I don’t tell him that I’m the one who killed Lark.

  That when my
arrow nailed her in the chest, I smiled and felt a million times lighter inside.

  Meadow nestles against her brother. She groans, and Koi looks down at her and moves her hair back from her face, wipes a drop of blood from under her nose.

  She smiles, and damn, it lights up the world.

  I haven’t seen Meadow smile like this . . .

  Ever.

  Not even the night I found her. After so long, we were together again. Our kisses, our hearts. Then I told her about killing Lark and . . . I feel worse than a Leech for thinking it. But I’m actually jealous right now.

  I’m happy for her. I am. But the happiness doesn’t feel good.

  I flinch when Sketch puts her arm around my shoulders. “Don’t look so grim, Zero,” she whispers. “She’s not gonna kick you out now that she’s found her brother. There’s still room for you in that black heart of hers. Deep, deep down.”

  I hadn’t planned for this, hadn’t realized we’d actually find them. Most of the time I’ve known Meadow, it’s been the two of us. I’ve been her family. I’ve been her friend.

  And now that we’ve found Koi . . .

  “I just need a second,” I say.

  “Right, okay. Now shut up and let me hold you.”

  Normally I’d shove Sketch away.

  But she looks the same way I do. A little hurt, a little broken, watching Meadow with her brother. “You’re thinking about your sister,” I whisper.

  “We already talked about this. Do we have to bring it up again?”

  Sketch and Meadow held on to each other in that jail cell in the Leech building. They kept each other alive. And now Sketch is just as connected to Meadow as I am, in her own way.

  “No,” I say. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re annoying me,” Sketch says.

  But then she laughs and punches me in the arm.

  “You hit like a man,” I say.

  “And you cry like a girl, but I’m not judging,” she says back.

  We follow Koi and Meadow deeper into the woods.

  CHAPTER 83

  MEADOW

  Koi carries me until he can’t anymore. The number on my cuff rises to a 90.

  He walks faster, breathes harder.

  I keep my eyes on him the entire time. Afraid that if I blink, he’ll fade away. Afraid that this is all a dream, something my consciousness has made up to fool me. A parting gift from my mother’s ghost. Maybe she is snickering from the grave.

  Maybe I will wake up in my cell, with the Interrogator standing over me, ready to draw blood all over again.

  Maybe none of this is real. Laughter escapes my lips.

  The wind blows, and I shiver, teeth chattering, fingers trembling, and it reminds me that this is real. That I’ve found my brother, and now, Koi is leading me back to my father. I swallow the craziness back, hold it deep down inside of me.

  We’re halfway to whatever camp Koi has, when a dark-skinned boy appears from the trees. He moves like the wind, swift and steady and silent as death. I shout a warning, but Koi greets him.

  “Saxon,” Koi says, turning to look at the boy. “He’s with me. It’s okay.”

  “Well, son of a Scumbag.” Saxon whistles. “Your sister?” He rubs his hands over his face. I see his fingernails are missing. “’Course she’s your sister. She looks just like you. How’d you find her?”

  Saxon is taller than most, his body lean and muscular. He walks by our side, with a hand-carved bow slung over his shoulder. His feet are bare, and they are missing the nails, too.

  “I guess she came for me,” Koi says. “Just like I knew she would.” He hoists me up higher, shows Saxon the 90 on my cuff.

  Saxon’s eyebrows rise to his hairline. He whistles and shakes his head. “What got her so bad? On day one? There’s no good luck here, is there?”

  “Nothing did,” Koi says. “Nothing that they know, at least.”

  He changes the subject and explains what happened to him when he arrived in the Ridge. “I don’t remember much at all. I was in a train, cuffed, blindfolded. When I started to wake, they stuck me with something, and I went out cold again. I remember waking up, freezing. Feeling like I was in another world. Then I woke up here, with this damn cuff on my wrist,” Koi says, stepping over a fallen log. “Spent a few days stumbling around. I nearly had my heart cut out by some Oranges in the West End.”

  A rat skitters past, and Saxon moves, lightning quick, knocking an arrow onto his bow.

  He shoots the animal in the eye. A perfect shot.

  My father would be proud.

  “Dad found me,” Koi says, “and then Saxon found us.”

  “Crazy bastards, those two,” Saxon says, scooping up the rat. “Good additions to our group. And if you’re anything like them,” he says to me, smiling with several missing teeth, “then I imagine the rest of the Yellows’ll let you stay. Normally we don’t take in other colors. It’s not the way of the Ridge. But your family’s changing things. Lots of things.”

  I focus back on Koi. It’s hard to talk. My strength is waning, and all I want to do is sleep.

  “What’s with the Cuffs?” Zephyr asks. “The colors?”

  “Tribes,” Koi explains. “You get a color, and that’s your tribe. The number on your cuff, there, that’s your . . . health level, is all we can describe it as. Dad thinks the whole operation is another sort of experiment, like the Shallows. Every day, there’s different trials. Sometimes it’s poison gas. Sometimes, the Biters come, and they’re full of nasty poison and diseases, all sorts of stuff.” He nods at Zephyr. “Blindness is a common side effect of being bitten. Then there are the needles. Those come from the sky. And the water’s laced with something. The animals, too. You can taste it.”

  “The cuffs,” Saxon says. “They’ve got some kind of blood reader in them. When someone gets sick, their numbers go up. They heal, the number goes back down.” He lifts his cuff. There is a 29 on the screen. “No one’s ever made it to 100. That’s the final number.”

  I look down at the 91 on my cuff. The bleeding scabs on my brother, the missing nails and teeth on Saxon. I think of all the Greens, how afraid they looked. How sick.

  “We have to find Peri,” I say.

  “We will,” Koi says.

  I’m so disgusted, thinking of her all alone in this world, that I hardly notice it when the switch comes again.

  My cuff goes back to a letter C.

  CHAPTER 84

  ZEPHYR

  We reach the waterfall by the time the sun starts to set.

  It’s a monstrous being, a huge force of water that pounds down on a deep pool beneath it. The sound is like a roaring giant.

  “I’ve never seen one of these,” Meadow says beside me, staring up at the top. She’s standing again, back to her normal, stronger self. “Peri would have wanted to see this.”

  “She will,” I say. I want to take her hand and squeeze it. Instead, I just stare and hope she can sense the sadness in me.

  She gives me a smile that doesn’t seem real. “I know.”

  “All right, let’s move,” Saxon calls out from the front of the group. He leads us to the waterfall, down a slope of massive slippery rocks. We climb down, one at a time, and when we hit the bottom, we’re so close to the falls that I can feel the freezing water spraying on my face.

  It’s hell.

  “I miss the beach,” I hear Sketch groan over the roar of the water.

  I never thought I’d say it. But I do, too.

  “Dad won’t believe his eyes when he sees you, Meadow,” Koi says, looking at the sky. It’s light pink, the color of raw fish. “No telling what he’ll say when he sees Patient Zero with you.”

  He gives me that same ridiculous glare he always has. He hates me, still thinks of me as the guy who tried to kill his sister. His mother’s creation. But I don’t give a damn. I’m learning it’s easier not to care what people think of me.

  The waterfall is built into the side of a cliff. “Swi
m down, under the falls, up the other side. There’s a cave back there. Hidden. Good place for the Yellows to hide.”

  “You mean we’re going in that godforsaken pool?” Sketch squawks like a gull.

  Saxon laughs. “Unless you’d rather stay out here and face whatever Colors come this way alone . . . not to mention the Needles. They’ll be dropping soon.”

  Sketch glares.

  “I’ll go first,” Meadow says.

  I want to tell her to be careful. That if something happens to her, if she switches while she’s under the water and isn’t strong enough to fight to the surface, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.

  But it’s like having Koi again has replaced a tiny fragment of her old self. She’s fearless as she stomps forward, takes a deep breath, and dives into the water.

  CHAPTER 85

  MEADOW

  My father taught me how to swim almost as soon as I could walk.

  The water is like home to me.

  A peaceful, safe place, away from the world, away from the threat of murder.

  But this water is not the same. I dive, and it feels like knives are stabbing me. Every inch of my skin, seeping into my pores. Strangling me. With my eyes open, I can see my skin reacting. Reddening, to whatever the Initiative has laced this water with.

  But I think of my father.

  He is on the other side of the falls.

  And I would go through hell and back to get to him.

  I swim down, my head feeling like it might explode from the pressure.

  My father tied weights to my legs. He made me swim with my arms.

  My father blindfolded me. He made me find my way to shore, and had faith that I wouldn’t drown.

  My body is ice. It is almost impossible to haul myself up and out, and the pain is enough to make me gasp when my cheek hits dry land.

  Sketch comes up behind me, pulls her body into the cave.

  “Son of a Leech-loving ChumHead!” she screams, and I laugh through the pain, as the others emerge behind her.