Summer Ruins

by Trisha Leigh

  “Like Nat,” I whisper. We tried so hard to save him; he proved that being an Other doesn’t equal being an unfeeling murderer.

  “Right. But we’re not saying they’re all bad, you guys. We’re saying we don’t agree with how they’re choosing to survive, and we’re not going to help.” Pax meets Lucas’s gaze, then mine. “I won’t do this to anyone else. I’m not flying off to another planet, enslaving whatever unsuspecting beings live there, and watching little kids die when they are no longer useful.”

  His eyes beg me to agree, to understand, and I do. His shoulders relax at my tight smile. “We aren’t condemning them, Lucas. We didn’t destroy Deasupra all those years ago. Maybe they weren’t meant to survive.”

  “Meant to? What does that even mean? Who decides what’s supposed to happen?” Lucas asks us both, but I don’t think he expects an answer.

  There isn’t a good one anyway.

  In the end, we decide to keep it in mind and look for potential ways to wield some power during our days here but we don’t come up with any solid solutions. It’s never sat right with me, the fact that we might have to exterminate an entire race of beings in order to save Earth. Mostly because it blurs the line. Between us and them, between good and evil, to a point that it’s no longer clear.

  I don’t want the responsibility of the choice between humans and Deasuprans. Like Lucas said, who decides what’s meant to be, what’s supposed to happen?

  But there isn’t anyone else besides the three of us to make this decision. Maybe we give up knowing we’re good on the inside, but the humans get to live. It’s not such a big sacrifice, the happiness of three teenagers for countless people.

  These thoughts tremble through me and I try to believe them as Lucas tells us again about the workings at the Harvest Site. The clock we found in the dresser says it’s late evening, and real darkness fell hours go. It’s going to take more than a little while to get used to the days and nights here, or to stop thinking in terms of the sun meaning one and the moon the opposite.

  “Meal time! Meal time! You are allotted twenty minutes to consume nourishment before returning to quarters for the night!”

  It repeats two more times before falling silent, and we all stand up. I may want to rebel, but we’re all hungry and my stomach sucks up against my spine at the mention of food. At least I’ll get more than a turkey sandwich every three or four days. Maybe my pants will even stay up.

  If I ever get to put on my own pants again.

  It’s strange the way I never thought of the clothes at any of my houses in the Sanctioned Cities as mine. And not only the clothes. It was the Morgans’ bed, the Hammonds’ rain boots, the Clarks’ warm woolen mittens—none of those things felt like mine, even though they belonged to me for weeks or months at a time.

  Now that I have nothing to call my own except a dog I abandoned and a couple pairs of jeans and hooded sweatshirts I took from two of those houses, they suddenly all feel more welcoming in my memory than they ever did in the present.

  Our fellow prisoners, or workers, or however the Others see them, slog toward the edges of the bubble—the terraform—looking haggard, not speaking. I suppose after what Cadi told us about the Others feeding off coldness, that they don’t need to live inside this structure and that’s why the Prime family’s quarters are set apart. It’s so strange how they can be part of me yet different in so many fundamental ways.

  Most of the people have shrugged off their coats, which they must wear down into the ice during the day, and their arms bear evidence of abuse, old and new. Fresh, seeping cuts and scratches overlay healed ones, and scars anywhere from an inch long to nearly a foot widen my eyes.

  Lucas catches me when I almost trip after seeing a gaping slash that starts on the back of a man’s neck and ends when it crawls out his shirt sleeve at the wrist. “Some of it’s from beatings, but the mines also aren’t as stable as they could be. And from what I overheard, they’re getting worse the more the extraction process disrupts the planet’s natural makeup.”

  The line for dinner snakes out of the meal tent, and the three of us join it without any discussion. It takes less than five minutes to reach the table filled with food; it’s obvious these people learned a long time ago that if you don’t move fast, the twenty minutes will expire before everyone gets to eat.

  There are four piles of food, and the fact that we’re toward the back of the line means dirty fingerprints are smudged across all of it. My stomach refuses to care, though, so I pick up a plate made of thick paper and snatch a piece of bread, a small hunk of cheese, an apple, and six or seven uncooked green beans.

  The lighting in the tent is sporadic and low, provided by naked bulbs hanging from wires every ten or fifteen feet. They swing back and forth in a slight breeze I can’t feel, casting constantly shifting shadows on the khaki canvas that surrounds us. Long wooden tables with benches on each side span the length of the space, which is so large it’s impossible to make out faces at one end or the other. It looks like the first people to arrive are already finished eating and headed to bed, which is I guess how there’s enough room for everyone.

  Voices murmur quietly, hardly rising above a whisper, but talking must be tolerated. Wardens are posted at each end of the food table, at the entrance to the tent, and at the exit. They’re watching, but not closely, giving the distinct impression that they’re here in case anyone steps out of line but not to enforce any specific rules.

  The three of us find spots at a table near the exit and settle onto the bench. I’m at the end, Lucas is next to me, and Pax is across from us. The rest of the table is half empty, but it fills quickly in the next five minutes. I’m guessing only five more remain before we’re supposed to be back in our own quarters, so I scarf down bread and cheese in less than a minute, then crunch the beans.

  I thought they’d be kind of gross, raw this way, but they’re sweeter than I expect. Vegetables have never been my favorite things, but the Others have stressed proper nutrition my entire life and it’s not an easy habit to break.

  Plus, they can’t lie to us about everything. Green beans really could be good for us.

  At least, the human half of us.

  I study my new companions out of the corner of my eye. Their genders and ages are easier to determine up close. There are three or four older women, perhaps my mothers’ ages, huddled near Pax. Next to them sit a couple of children, Intermediate Cell age, and on the far end of the table, two middle-aged men.

  Four teenagers flop beside Lucas, around our age or a little older, three girls and a boy. None of them look familiar, and disappointment makes it hard to swallow the last bean. Lucas said he’d seen some of the kids here from Cell in Danbury, like Emmy and Reese. If Leah’s still alive, she’s probably here, too.

  For some reason I think seeing even one of them would make me feel better.

  One single air-horn blast makes me jump out of my skin, and my elbow knocks my apple onto the floor. The people that remain at the tables rise in unison and push toward the exit. Their haste makes me wonder what the punishment is for being caught outside your tent after lockdown.

  I glance at the Wardens, at their painfully beautiful faces and the cruelty in their obsidian eyes. The story Lucas told us just hours ago, about how they treat children and the elderly or the people who disobey them, rises in my mind. I don’t doubt that they’re positively gleeful at the thought of catching anyone stepping out of line.

  Lucas and Pax stand up, but I drop to my hands and knees to retrieve my piece of fruit before heading to the exit. They’re waiting for me by the waste receptacle. We toss our plates and step onto the winding path toward our tiny refuge.

  The living tents are crammed together, the sides and backs pressed against more sides and backs, roofs pressed against floors, and they glow slightly from the same swinging bulbs that light the meal area. If they weren’t full of people being beaten and forced to mine for an alien race that thinks they’re as disposable
as those plates, the way the lights fill this bubble until the whole thing pulses slightly like its own sun would be pretty.

  We’re almost back to our tent, my heart beating faster with every step toward captivity, when a figure streaks out of the tenement to our right, clamps on my arm, and drags me inside.

  Chapter 12.

  “Shut up, don’t talk. You have less than two minutes before they lock the furnicars for the night,” the girl rasps, unfamiliar, in my ear.

  Lucas and Pax crash through the flap behind us, eyes wild and scared, but they stop in their tracks when they see me unharmed. The voice turns me loose and I spin, indignant at being hauled off the street like a bag of waste, but her face stops me.

  Her thick chestnut curls used to hang to her waist, but now they’re cropped close to her head, shorter than Lucas’s, even. Chocolate-brown eyes, filled with dazed confusion the last time I saw her, fix on mine. They’re clear and sure, not scared.

  The last part strikes me as strange.

  “Emmy?” Lucas asks, an incredulous tone curling his voice up at the end.

  “Hi, Lucas.” She gives him quick smile. “I saw you at the meal and wanted to talk to you, except I didn’t want to draw attention in front of the Wardens. But we don’t have time now.”

  “What about tomorrow? At breakfast?”

  Emmy stares at me for a minute, biting her lower lip. There’s still no fear in her face, but she’s more nervous than she was thirty seconds ago. “I don’t know. Okay. No. How about during cleansing tomorrow after duty?”

  There’s no time to ask why she doesn’t want to be seen with us at breakfast. She pushes us out of the furnicar. We hustle into our own, and it zips closed the second I step through the flap. The light goes out.

  All of the lights go out, plunging the world into blackness.

  Our eyes adjust to the dark after a moment and we move around in silence, getting ready for bed. I guess we don’t get to brush our teeth after dinner, and these clothes are as clean and as soft as any pajamas I’ve ever owned. So I pull my ponytail out and comb my fingers through my hair, kick off my shoes and socks, and crawl under the covers. I’m not sleepy after our long nap, but there isn’t anything else to do.

  Which I suppose is the point.

  I don’t lie down, though; instead I sit with my back against the cool wall and my knees pulled up to my chest. Lucas lands next to me a minute later, and I make a little ball of fire in my hand for the explicit purpose of getting a look at him in his thin undershirt.

  Our eyes meet and my heart thumps hard before I pull my gaze away, resisting the urge to fan my face and holding the light far enough away to allow me the shadows. I can feel Lucas smile as he shifts a little closer, settling his hand on my knee when I drop my legs onto the bed.

  “So.” I clear my throat, since it came out funny. “So, what do you make of Emmy not wanting to be seen with us?”

  They’re both quiet for a minute. It’s Lucas’s fault Emmy’s here. Her lab partner was injured in chemistry last autumn after he froze some beakers, making her one of the people whose lives rest on his shoulders. I’ve always felt a little responsible for what happened to her and Reese, too, for not taking any kind of action to stop it.

  “Maybe she hates me for what I did,” Lucas suggests softly.

  I shake my head. “No. She doesn’t know that was you. I mean, how could she?”

  “Wait, what happened?”

  Pax waits, his expectation palpable. I pause, unsure whether or not Lucas wants to share but, of course, he does. It shouldn’t surprise me. If there’s one thing the three of us have learned since falling into one another’s company early this spring, it’s that keeping secrets from one another doesn’t work in our favor.

  “So she and this Reese didn’t know about you when they were deemed Broken, right?”

  “No. They were still veiled and they weren’t Broken. But the Wardens were there observing and kids were disappearing left and right for no reason and all.” I shrug. “Emmy and Reese didn’t know why their beaker was frozen that day.”

  “If it’s not that, then what’s her problem?” Impatience pricks Pax’s voice.

  “I don’t know. What if Leah’s here somewhere and they’ve been talking? About… everything.” I’ve been afraid to believe Leah might be alive and saying it aloud feels like I’m tempting chance.

  “If she is here, I’m willing to bet she hasn’t given up trying to help us,” Pax says carefully, reminding me that we didn’t search for recording devices earlier.

  The fondness in his voice when he talks about Leah, about her spitfire tenacity, hurts my heart. I liked—like—her, too, and she and Lucas were good friends during Intermediate Cell. We all care about her, and she’s risked so much already.

  It’s painful to allow myself to hope that she’s not dead. If we find out otherwise, it’s going to be a big blow to all three of us.

  “What happens tomorrow?”

  Lucas’s hand tightens on my knee. It’s impossible to tell in the dark whether he’s nervous about what we’ll face tomorrow or if he’s recalling memories from the last time he was here.

  “They wake up at three-thirty, have breakfast, are in the mines by four. No lunch break; no break at all, actually. They work until eight, back here, shower, dinner, lights out at nine-thirty.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Lucas whispers in answer to Pax’s familiar skepticism.

  “What do we do?” I want to know why he keeps saying they instead of we.

  “I don’t know. I was here in Apa’s place the last time, so they kept me locked up except for the hour after everyone came out of the mines, when they dragged me around to all four terraforms and had me refreeze the ice.”

  “Basically, what you’re saying is that we have no idea what our days are going to look like?”

  “Basically, yeah.”

  ***

  We find out early the next morning when the recorded announcement startles us awake. It’s not even technically morning. Three-thirty is all but the middle of the night.

  At breakfast, my eyes are barely open but I don’t see Emmy, or anyone else I remember.

  As we’re leaving the meal tent the Warden at the exit beckons us aside. I avoid his black eyes, studying the star raised on the skin under his ear instead. It doesn’t eliminate the throbbing ache behind my eyes that comes from looking at one of them, but it’s better than when their face is in full view.

  It strikes me as odd now, how that pain used to be the worst thing I could imagine.

  “I’m to show you your assignments for the foreseeable future.” Even though his face causes pain, all of the Others have a quality in their voice that encourages unquestioning trust.

  This one is no exception, and I give my head a shake to clear it. I think of Nat and have an idea. Or more of a shot in the dark, but we don’t have anything else at this point. Get to know him. “What’s your name?”

  “Excuse me?” He twists toward me, and I summon the courage to look him in the face.

  My eyes water from the pain and a headache grows steadily, but I smile. “Your name. I’m Althea. This is Lucas and Pax.” I motion to them in turn.

  “I know who you are.” He doesn’t sound contemptuous, really. More surprised than anything. When I don’t look away he shrugs. “Carrej.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Lucas interjects.

  Pax adds his greeting to the mix, but our friendliness only narrows Carrej’s eyes farther. “It’s not going to do you any good, being nice to me. I know you killed the last one of us who didn’t eliminate you when he should have.”

  A long blow of the air horn precipitates a mass exodus from the tents, and with people jostling us as they flow past, we lose track of the conversation. He’s probably talking about Nat—no other Warden has not tried to kill us—but we can’t really set the record straight. If they know Nat’s alive they’ll redouble their efforts to find him.

&n
bsp; Maybe. It’s also possible the Prime cares as little for his own minions as he does for the humans. Out of sight, out of mind. But we can’t chance it.

  “Follow me.”

  We do as he asks, and when it’s clear he’s leading us toward the terraform’s entrance I push heat through my pores and let it hover over me like a second skin. I’m prepared for the intense, whipping cold outside the terraform and step as lightly as possible on the slippery ice. We keep walking, covering a good distance before a rider whirs up beside us.

  Another Warden is behind the wheel. He acknowledges Carrej but not us. “Get in.”

  “It took you long enough. It would take me more than a day to walk them all the way to the next one.”

  “Sorry. Had to deliver a load for Chief to take with him when they left.”

  So Deshi and Zakej are gone. My body can’t decide whether this is good news or bad, with my heart sinking but weight lifting off my lungs. As a general rule, having Zakej as far away as possible is the best idea. But it means Deshi’s gone, too, without our knowing whose side he’s on or if we might be able to count on him someday soon.

  Or if he’ll lead Zakej to the cabin and take away our last hope, betraying us once and for all.

  The rider’s interior appears exactly the same as the one I rode in the night Mrs. Morgan Broke, when the Wardens drove us to the Observatory Pod in the Wilds outside Danbury and tried to refresh my brain. I wonder what might have happened if Zakej had caught me then, if they’d realized that the girl they’d been searching for lay on a cot right under their noses. Nothing good. Then again, I haven’t managed to do a whole lot with my second lease on life.

  Everyone I know, every person who has trusted me, has been disposed of, Broken, or trapped in their own head to rot away. The Others have captured us and hold us hostage at this Harvest Site—we don’t even know its location or how to leave. We don’t know what their life source is, aside from it being pink, or if Deshi hates us.