by Trisha Leigh
“Good idea,” Lucas agrees, his eyes sweeping the interior of the tent.
“I’m going to the cleansing room, and then I’m going to get some sleep. Either of you want to join me?”
Pax turns a wicked grin my direction. “I’ve already seen that show once, if you’ll recall, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.”
My cheeks flame and my eyes cut toward Lucas. Last season we had a few problems figuring out how the three of us could work as a team, and even though they’ve been mostly resolved, worry that he’ll overreact still tugs at me.
Lucas only shakes his head. “I do not want to know. We all need a shower.” He gets up off the bed and gives Pax an overdramatic look. “Separate showers. I don’t want you staring at me, either.”
Pax laughs, and so do I. Lucas grins. Warmth fills me, even in this place, at the bond that we’ve managed to forge despite the best efforts of the Others and forces outside our control.
“Meal time! Meal time! You are allotted twenty minutes to consume nourishment before leaving for the work sites!” The screeched announcement makes me ache, too loud and cold after the moment of friendship and easy laughter that just infected the tent.
Lucas slings an arm around my shoulder, pressing a kiss to my filthy temple, and the three of us step out into our new world.
Chapter 11.
There are too many people in the makeshift streets and alleys to count. They bump into one another in silence, pushing and shoving until they form loose lines and get where they need to go in a more or less orderly fashion. Most of them appear too thin, their cheeks sunken, hair dull and limp, malnourished. All of their clothing is identical and ragged: baggy brown tunics that fall to their knees, pants of the same color. Matching boots cover their feet, and coats with hoods obscure their arms and hair. It’s disconcerting, how closely I have to look to determine their ages, or even if they’re male or female.
I don’t recognize anyone, but the three of us earn more than a few second glances. Maybe because we’re not wearing the all-brown uniform, or because we’re moving against the crowds. Or it could be the crusted blood on our faces. Either way, we proved weeks ago that the enchantment the Spritans used to conceal us has long since sloughed away—we’re not invisible. Everyone else is headed to the outer edges, where Deshi said the meal tents are, while we’re moving steadily to the center, following Lucas to the cleansing area.
We’re certainly dirty enough to fit right in, and I hurry through brushing my teeth, thankful for the cups of toothbrushes on the counter, then grab a towel from a folded stack. Stepping into one of the showers feels better than just about anything. It’s not private like in a home; there are several showers in a line, each separated by flimsy curtains, but at least there are specific areas for boys and girls. There’s shampoo that doesn’t smell like jasmine, and it makes me ache for my families even though I ran out of jasmine shampoo months ago and, until our capture, had been using whatever was around. Sometimes just soap. Everything familiar suddenly seems so far away.
I shake off the melancholy and lather and rinse three times, trying to dislodge the filth and stink of the Underground Core. When it finally smells as though I’ve succeeded, I step out and wrap a towel around me. It hits me then that I should have brought clean clothes from the dresser. If my choices are to walk back to our tent in a towel or put those disgusting garments back on, I choose the towel.
I stuff my feet back into my used-to-be-white canvas tennis shoes and tug the giant black towel tighter around my chest, crossing my arms over it for good measure. Back in the main cleansing area, where sinks and toilets line the opposite walls, Pax and Lucas have had the same idea.
They’ve both wrapped black towels around their waists, bare legs starting where the fabric stops, feet tucked into their own ratty tennis shoes. My eyes studiously avoid their bare chests, getting nothing but a quick impression of stray droplets of water tangled in thin patches of chest hair—Lucas’s blond, Pax’s black—and broad shoulders.
They’re staring at me, and in spite of the towel that covers more than some nightclothes I’ve worn the past couple of weeks, I feel naked. My wet hair drips onto my shoulders and I use a little bit of power to force warmth through the surface of my skin, then grab the confidence to look them in the face.
Pax winks at me, then turns to leave, pushing aside the tent flap and stepping into the carefully controlled environment. The sight of his bare olive skin reminds me of the first time he made my heart race in the cabin, and it brings a faint smile to my face.
I step over to Lucas, allowing myself a moment to drink in the solid muscle of his chest and shoulders before raising my eyes to his handsome face. His blue eyes are serious, and the quiet desire in them curls my toes inside my sneakers. It feels weird, to have this intimate moment in full view of anyone who might stumble past, even if we are in here alone.
Lucas stares at me another moment before a smile crinkles his eyes. “I like your dress.”
“Oh yes, and your… skirt really shows off your legs.”
We laugh, and he slides an arm across my bare shoulders as I wind one around his damp waist. As much as we might pretend this is normal, it’s clearly not, and we walk quickly back to the tent. Part of me wants to see more of him, all of him, and offer the same in return. The rest of me fears something I don’t understand. When we do explore the feelings between us further, though, we’ll be alone. There will be plenty of time, and no chance of being spied on or interrupted.
Right now, the idea of that day is enough to make my stomach burn with need, and my fingers press into the skin at his waist. He raises his hand, tangling his fingers in my wet hair and then sliding them down the back of my neck and over my spine.
My skin goosebumps in response and my knees almost buckle, so I lean into him harder. The walk to the tent is too short, too long, and also a little bit in between.
Pax is dressed—his outfit looks exactly like everyone’s we passed outside—and is already sprawled on the bed to the right. Lucas and I pull clothes out of the dresser and he turns his back, holding Pax’s discarded towel up so I can get dressed with some sort of privacy.
I return the favor, staring the whole time at the setup of the room.
Two beds, three of us. Pax has chosen one, but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask the boys to share. Except I don’t want to be alone, and I’m tired of always putting off for an unknown tomorrow what’s perfectly within my grasp today. Earlier this spring, things were so awkward at the cabin and I went to sleep every night wishing I could curl up in Lucas’s arms and let him make me feel safe, true or not.
We may never be safe again, but that doesn’t change what I want.
So when Lucas is dressed, I flop on the opposite bed. When he looks undecided, glancing between Pax and me, I smile and pat the mattress next to me. I move over next to the wall, and Lucas sits down, his weight sinking the thin mattress until I roll back toward the middle against my will.
Despite the commotion of the past several hours—our summons by the Prime and last-minute reprieve from Kendaja’s kiss of death—my eyelids feel puffy and heavy. The sky outside is still dark even though Deshi said it was breakfast time, and my internal clock hasn’t the slightest idea of the time. We were kept in darkness at the Underground Core, and this place seems to be more of the same. I wonder if I’ll ever see the sun again before I die.
“So for now, we get some rest. We should have a few hours after we wake up for Winter to give us the lay of the land.” Pax’s voice drags, as though he’s already drifted somewhere else.
“Sounds good,” Lucas responds.
He lies down against my back, our heads sharing the single pillow, and stretches out until the length of him presses against the length of me. His heavy arm drapes over me, hand landing against my stomach, and pulls me tight against him. The kiss Lucas presses to the nape of my neck sends shivers through me that must transfer to him, but he doesn’t move.
I
go to sleep to the sound of his heartbeat, the feel of his cool breath on the back of my neck, wrapped in the scent of pine needles and an incomparable feeling of belonging.
***
It’s hours later when we wake up. There’s not any change in light or dark that signals a passage of time—although a slightly gray haze makes it easier to see—but my eyes feel gritty. I’m groggy enough to guess it’s been at least five or six hours. Long enough to fall into a deep sleep but not long enough to feel rested.
Over the past months sleep has been erratic when allowed at all, and I’ve become a better judge of these things than I’d like. If we live, it’s a skill I hope will eventually wear off.
Lucas and Pax are both awake, but neither is talking. I sit up, rubbing my eyes and yawning as I scoot to the edge of the bed next to Lucas, until we’re both facing Pax.
“Why is it still not really light outside?” If it was very early morning when we closed our eyes, and it’s only been five or six hours like I guessed, the sun should be bright overhead.
Lucas shakes his head. “It was like this before when I was here. The sun doesn’t rise and set the way it does in the Sanctioned Cities. It’s mostly dark, or twilight like it is now, all day and most of the night. It was light for maybe five or six hours a day, that’s it.”
“Strange,” Pax muses, rising and walking to the tent flap to open it and peer outside. “I guess since we can still come and go it’s not past dinnertime or whatever.”
“Right. There’s an announcement for meals, like you heard, and also for lights out. I doubt we slept through it, no matter how tired we were.” Lucas rubs his hands over his eyes, then through his hair, leaving the curls unruly in their path.
It makes me smile despite the questions tumbling around in my head. I snatch the first one that slides toward my mouth. “How many people are here?”
“I don’t know. A lot. There are three other bubbles like this one. If we’re supervising, kind of like I did before, we’ll rotate between them all. Or they might split us up.”
“I bet there are five or even ten thousand people living inside this one. Are the bubbles all the same size?” Pax asks. He looks a little ill, his normally olive complexion slightly green.
The thought of all these people, shackled and trapped, makes me feel sick, too.
“Yes. They’re filled with about the same amount, anyway. There’s no noticeable difference between any of them,” Lucas responds softly, his eyes switching between Pax and me.
“And how many Wardens?” I want to know, if these people are unveiled like Lucas says, why aren’t they rebelling? The Wardens are much stronger than a regular person, but still. If they’re that outnumbered, it wouldn’t make a difference.
Except people are scared of them. That counts for something.
Lucas’s eyes search my face, full of sympathy and regret. I know in that instant that he knows what I’m thinking, and that the answers aren’t simple. As if they ever are where the Others are concerned.
“There aren’t many Wardens. Ten per bubble—terraforms, is what the Others call them—but people don’t fight them because there’s nowhere to go.” His hand slides over mine, but he turns his gaze back to Pax. “It’s all ice, like I told you. Some mountains, some frozen lakes, tons of snow… but underneath it’s ice. And it’s surrounded by water. I don’t know how far it is to… wherever. Somewhere else. But I know humans can’t get there.”
There’s a note of horror in his voice that makes me believe he knows this without a doubt. I don’t want to hear how he’s so sure, but I have to. “How do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen them die.” He sighs. “When the workers are too old, or get hurt so they can’t go into the mines, or even if they resist at all, the Wardens toss them out of the terraform in nothing but these rags. They freeze to death in less than ten minutes.”
I gasp. “How many people did you see them kill like that?”
“Three. And the Wardens sat out there and laughed while the humans begged and pleaded. They made me watch, too. They said they wanted to show me how ‘weak’ half of me is, even though I can withstand the cold.” Lucas’s jaw clenches, and there’s a sheen in his eyes.
I tighten my fingers around his and shift my weight until we’re touching, to let him know he’s not alone here anymore. That no matter how horrible the coming months or years might be, we’ll all be together. Pax’s eyes burn, glinting hard like jewels from across the room.
We all know debilitating guilt. It’s part of what’s driven each of us this far.
“The last one was a kid,” he whispers. “Only five, maybe six. They say he’d been here almost his whole life. But that day, he threw a fit about working, didn’t want to go ‘downstairs’ because his glove was missing a finger and his pinky was turning black. Instead of getting him new gloves, they threw him out and watched him die. His face was a sheet of frozen tears before it was over.” Lucas stands, pulling his hand from mine, crossing the room, then pacing back toward me. His hands sift through his hair, absently, as though he doesn’t know he’s moving but can’t sit still. “His life meant less than a glove.”
“What was his name?” It doesn’t matter, and yet it does. I want to know. So I can remember why he died. What we’re fighting for.
“Jack.”
It doesn’t surprise me that Lucas recalls his name without a second thought. If I asked him the names of all three he saw die, he would give me the others, too.
“We have some power, here, you know,” Pax offers, peering through the tent flap and out into the terraform. “Deshi at least made the Prime think about whether or not they might need us. We’re an anomaly, an unknown, and we all know they don’t like that. If only four Elements are born every generation, how can they be sure we’re not them?”
The question sounds flat and hard, like it got stomped on coming from Pax’s mouth. From across the room, it’s easy to see rage in his clenched fist and rigid posture. I know Lucas’s story made Pax think about Tommy, the kid he thought of as a brother in Portland. The kid he feels responsible for orphaning and getting sent here.
“I couldn’t have saved them. They said if I interfered in any way they’d kill them slower. Put them out, take them back in. Again and again until their bodies couldn’t take it.” Lucas takes a step toward Pax, challenging him to say he could have done something different.
Pax drops his hands to his sides, surprise and hurt slackening the tension in his face. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. Every one of us has been part of at least one situation we wished we could stop, but we didn’t. I’m just saying that going forward we should remember that. We should use the Prime’s doubt, no matter how tenuous it is.”
“Could you two sit?” Their heads both swivel toward me. “You’re making me nervous with the prowling around the tent like Wolf cooped up during a blizzard.”
The mention of my dog brings a smile to my face even as the pain of missing him shoots sadness through me. Lucas sits in the lone chair, a rickety wooden thing in front of the dresser, and Pax sinks back onto the edge of his bed. I get the feeling it’s going to get really cramped in here really fast.
“There’s power in them needing us. Like if they think we’ll refuse to go with them, or to help, if they murder anyone else,” Pax explains again.
“They’ll force us to help, the way they forced our parents.” Lucas cracks his knuckles, tapping his fingers on the back of the chair.
“Unless they think we’ll do something drastic…” I trail off, waiting for the suggestion to sink in, for the automatic refusal.
Their silence scares me more than any shouted disagreement ever could.
After a moment, Pax looks at Lucas. They seem to hold some kind of silent question and answer, after which Lucas nods. Then Pax looks at me. “You’re saying if we make them think we’d kill ourselves to remove their option of using us to survive, they might be more careful about how they treat us? Or the humans?”
“Exactly. They already know Apa, at least, is willing to go that far. Who’s to say we aren’t?”
“I don’t think it will work. They’ll take their chances. And if we die now then they’ve got a good shot at more Elements being born and marked before our parents are gone.” Lucas is ferreting out issues in our logic, as usual.
“No. Four a generation means four a generation. If we’re them, they won’t get more until it’s too late,” I argue.
“I think the three of us should consider it as a last option. A pact. That we won’t go with them. Won’t let them use us to destroy other planets the way they did this one.” Pax’s statement, his request, emerges quietly enough but it bounces through my head as though he yelled.
He’s suggesting we die instead of go with the Others, if it comes to that. My brain wants to reject the idea because, like everyone, my body has an instinct to keep itself alive. My heart, though, has never doubted we belong here on Earth. “So we fight for the humans. If it fails, we die with them, too.”
Neither Pax nor Lucas answers, but when I meet their eyes I see a determination there that’s similar to my own. We’ve made our decision. I think I decided that night last autumn, when Cadi showed us what happened when the Prime learned of our existence, that I would see this thing through to the end. Learning my father died and my mother was a prisoner, glimpsing what Ko endured to keep us alive…
It all made giving anything less than everything unacceptable.
It took Pax the winter to make up his mind, and Lucas may have wavered after his father showed him what it felt like to have real family, but now they’re in, too. And we’re family. We belong together, not with the Others, not being used as tools and puppets. If there are no more Elements born in our generation, then the Others will go extinct. If we have to die to make that happen, then maybe that’s the best thing.
“We’re condemning them all if they leave without us.” Lucas tugs on his ear, his eyes sad. “I’m not saying that’s wrong, but… they’re not all bad.”
