Summer Ruins

by Trisha Leigh

  Lucas slides his arms from around my back and drags his hands lazily up my arms until they land on my cheeks, moving my face to allow him to kiss me until I can’t breathe, until I forget where I am or what we’re up against. There’s nothing but the chill under my palms as I clench handfuls of his T-shirt. Hot trembles make it almost impossible to stand.

  The door vibrates behind him, as though someone is trying to shove it open but can’t get it to budge under our combined weight, and he pulls back from my lips. They feel bruised and tingly, swollen in the best possible way.

  “Just a second,” he rasps to whoever interrupted. Lucas pulls my face back to his, kissing me gentler this time. “I think it’s a good thing we aren’t alone right now.”

  I cock an eyebrow, somehow managing to bluff my way through my jelly knees and the heat still licking through my middle. “Oh, yeah?”

  He leans his forehead against mine, cold beads of icy sweat melting against my face. “Oh, yeah.”

  My heart squeezes. “Me, too.”

  A mischievous grin steals across his face. He picks me up and tosses me over his shoulder, slapping my butt when I squeal, then opens the door. Pax and Deshi stand there with bemused looks, obviously at a loss for words at the sight of my upside-down face. I grin and they shake their heads, then Lucas moves aside to let them in.

  He tosses me on our bed, giving me one last lingering look before morphing back into the boy who’s all business and gentle affection. “Sorry. Door was stuck.”

  They both snort, kicking off their shoes and socks and stretching out on top of their beds, but no one says anything. Lucas and I have busted Leah and Pax a few times, too, and privacy doesn’t last long for any of us, so it’s no big deal.

  “We all get to eat deer meat for a few days, huh?” I ask, searching for a way to steer the conversation away from Lucas and me.

  “It’s a pretty big deer. There’s plenty of meat to go around for a couple of meals. More if we stretch.” Pax stares up at the ceiling, a satisfied smile on his face. He’s always loved preparing Wolf’s catches.

  As though my thought summoned him, Wolf appears in our doorway and leaps into bed with Deshi. It makes me sad when he doesn’t sleep with Lucas and me, but maybe he senses that Deshi is the one who might need the company more than the rest of us.

  Or maybe he just wants more room to stretch out.

  “Lucas told us his idea for the four of us to test the synthetic dymium attempts.” Deshi rolls his head toward me, his fingers absently scratching Wolf behind the ears.

  “Yeah?” I hold my breath, waiting for his input.

  “It’s not without risk, but they’ll need to be able to test what they come up with, and we don’t have a ton of options.”

  “So you’re saying…” I coax.

  “I think we should do it.”

  Chapter 29.

  “You don’t think it’s stupid to maybe take ourselves out of the equation, even if it’s only for a day or two?” I want to know Deshi’s opinion. He’s had more experience with the pink stuff—the dymium—than the rest of us. “Have you ever seen what happens to the Others when they don’t get it? How often do they need it? How much do they take?”

  Now that we’re getting closer, these are questions that need to be answered if we can hope to use the element to our advantage.

  “Before we go into that, are you guys worried at all that the cost will be too high?” Pax considers. “What if it affects us negatively and we can’t figure out why in time to reverse it? What if the effects last a month instead of hours or days? We’d be missing our best shot, and I have my doubts about whether we’ll survive to the next Summer Celebration.” Pax rolls onto his side now, his eyes finding mine across the room. They’re full of questions and uncertainty but also genuine worry. “Or if the planet will still be here in a year.”

  He’s right. We could make things worse if we somehow disable ourselves. But I don’t see how we’ll figure it out otherwise.

  “I’m with Althea,” Deshi says quietly. “It’s not essential to us or the human side of our biology, so there’s a good chance we’ll have a tamer reaction to whatever changes are made.”

  His eyes find Lucas’s, and I turn in time to see Lucas nod his agreement.

  “It’s the only way,” I tell Pax, staring until his eyes rise to mine and he gives his silent agreement as well. “We can’t use it unless we know for sure that it works.”

  “Okay, maybe. But we have to be careful. Not doing anything without checking in with the rest of us first.” Pax waits until we all nod.

  It’s funny to me that Pax has become the cautious one. I think it’s because he realizes now how inextricably our lives are bound to one another’s. That, combined with his hesitant happiness with Leah and the idea that he might be able to save Tommy after all, has turned him into the guy who always wants the four of us together. He reminds us every morning before we leave the university that if one dies, we all die.

  Which is what the three of us agreed on at the Harvest Site, anyway. I’m still hoping it won’t come to that, but I’m ready to implement a self-destruct plan if the Others win and try to take us with them into space.

  Now that we’ve settled that question, I repeat what I asked Deshi earlier about the specifics of neodymium.

  “I don’t know a ton about their schedule, since once they realized I don’t require it the way they do they stopped giving it to me. I know they take it through an injection, though. And judging by Zakej’s arms they receive it at least once a day.” His cheeks flood red at the comment.

  I quickly ask the next question before Deshi can get flustered or the boys can ask what’s going on. “But they gave it to us dissolved in liquid—orally.”

  Deshi frowns. “It works that way, too, but the concentration is harder to manage, I think. To get it exact.”

  “Wait, what do you mean, judging by Zakej’s arms? The marks stay fresh?” Pax asks.

  “Yeah. The bodies we see, the ones that look human… that’s not what the Others look like, really. I don’t know how they would look if they let us see them, but they can slip into their host’s skins and adjust the body for their purposes. Like a suit. It doesn’t heal as quickly as their internal organs.”

  The concept brings back the memory of Zakej pretending to be Deshi, making me sick to my stomach. Not to mention it’s pretty gross to think of them zipping up skin and hair the way I zip up my jeans and hoodie. I’m more than a little curious to know what their alien bodies look like, but not enough to find out.

  “I heard them say once that hearing is something they can’t enhance inside human bodies. Is there anything else that you know of that would leave them vulnerable?” I need to know everything. We all do.

  “Their sight isn’t any better than mine or yours. But they’re faster and stronger by a long shot.” Deshi bites his bottom lip. “What do you think they did to my mom? To Na?”

  “What did they tell you about her?” I ask, angry with myself for not asking Fire about his mother, too, when I asked about Lucas’s and Pax’s. We weren’t friends then, I guess. It didn’t cross my mind.

  “My dad never talked about her. Refused. The Prime told me she was a…” He swallows hard, his thin sheet wrinkling in his fists. “A whore.”

  Deshi doesn’t look up for a long time, but as the silence stretches, he finally does. Our faces are completely blank—Lucas’s, Pax’s, and mine. I’ve never heard that word before, but the way he spit the word out, it sounds nasty.

  “I don’t know what it means, but the way they said it… it’s bad,” he explains quietly.

  My already queasy stomach churns harder. “You don’t know that’s true, Desh.”

  “It’s not. Zakej told me the truth when he saw I was upset. She was a Healer.”

  “See? My dad worked for a judge, and Lucas’s mom was a singer. Pax’s mom painted pictures, like the kind that hang on walls. And no matter what the Prime told you, Deshi, your mo
m and Pamant loved each other and they loved you.” Anger joins the boiling nausea running through me, popping in my ears. “They loved us. And whatever they endured at the hands of the Prime, we’re going to return the pain. Right?”

  Their eyes meet mine, one at a time. Pax’s, filled with quiet determination, Deshi’s, brimming with sorrow and the barest glint of hope, Lucas’s, shining with love.

  “We are going to make them proud.”

  Lucas pulls me to his side, pressing his lips to my temple for a long moment. “You’re amazing, Althea. Your mom and dad are already proud of you, I promise. I’m proud that a girl like you even wants to be my friend, never mind loves me.”

  The frank confession hangs for a moment, bare and vulnerable in a room with so many people, but it’s so Lucas not to care who hears. He says what he feels when he feels it, and that’s one of the things I love most about him. So even though I’m aware of Deshi’s and Pax’s eyes on us, I turn and look him in the eye, hoping he can see that every fiber of me is alive and thrumming because of his words, his presence, his faith. “Your dad and mom are proud of you, too. And I do love you like crazy.”

  We trade a private smile before I twist forward again to look at the boys, my feelings trying to explode through my skin. “I love you guys, too.”

  The moment feels good, the room a little too warm, but I think maybe we’ve finally reached a place where the four of us are comfortable with our growing affection for one another, with our burgeoning need to keep one another safe and close by, and with the idea that we will live together… or die together.

  ***

  Night drapes the room, light from the full moon prodding the corners with spindly fingers, when a bang and a groan wake me from sleep. Pax hops up and down on one foot, and his whispered mumbling makes me bite back a giggle.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper, sitting up.

  “Yeah. I whacked my foot on the edge of Deshi’s bed.” He offers me a sheepish grin. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “Where are you going?” I stretch and yawn, forcing my eyelids to unstick.

  “Leah never came to bed. I’m going to walk over and check on them.”

  “I’ll go with you. They all need to get some sleep. Brittany looks terrible, too.” I stand up and yank my old tennis shoes onto my bare feet.

  Summer will never get old. I can cross the grounds in nothing but the shorts and tank top I wore to bed and not even think about being cold.

  Outside, darkness breathes around us. A ceiling of stars smears the sky, crowned by a huge glowing moon that lights a bright path from Perkins Hall to the science building.

  Pax interrupts our companionable silence. “I think we should keep working on a backup plan.”

  “You mean if we can’t figure out how to use the neodymium against them?” My brain squeaks into action, still muddy from at least a couple hours of sleep. “I agree, but what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that we need to prepare them for the worst, especially if we’re going to experiment on ourselves. They can’t be caught off guard the way they were at the cabin. At the very least, they should be able to defend themselves.”

  “Defend themselves. You mean fight? Physically?” I ask, and he nods, a determined set to his jaw. “But Pax, we don’t know anything about that. And the Others have weapons, like those guns that shoot acid slugs and we don’t even know what else.”

  “I know, but it’s something. I bet Griffin would teach them about fighting.”

  “I’m not sure Griffin has any more experience throwing punches than we do. He seems more like the turn-into-a-bird-and-disappear type. But we could ask.” I don’t know what good it will do to teach them how to kick and punch, but he’s right about making our friends feel more in control. We should at least try to give them the sense that they can defend themselves if we’re ambushed again the way they were at the cabin.

  The science building, constructed from strong bricks that have stood while so many structures crumbled, looms in front of us. Pax and I go inside, where the musty scents of mildew, old paper, and dust permeate the air. The smell gives the place a reverent quality, but perhaps it’s more the sense of knowledge tucked away in these labs and Cell rooms that makes me feel that way.

  We find Leah, Brittany, Mark, and Sophie in the lab where they’ve been working for days. Half-empty cans of tuna and beans litter the countertops, tossed aside in favor of an isolation centrifuge, smoking chemical mixtures, a vacuum furnace, and microscopes, among other paraphernalia. The university is stocked with more fancy equipment than I’ve seen in my life, things we’ve learned and studied about but never had access to before we came here.

  I know Leah spent the first several days lecturing on how to use everything, based on what Rita told her all those weeks in the mine. We definitely still had a learning curve, though.

  The lab is also equipped with the protective gear that’s allowing us to get near radioactive isotopes. Leah, Sophie, Mark, and Brittany are all draped in lead-lined aprons, their hands protected by thick gloves, faces covered with masks. Pax and I grab our own gear from a closet in the hall before pushing open the heavy door separating this lab from the rest of the building.

  There’s more than one way to isolate radioactive isotopes, but none of them are fast. The four scientists are concentrating so hard they don’t hear us come in, but when Pax clears his throat they all turn.

  Their eyes are cloudy behind their goggles, confused at the interruption. Then they break into excited smiles and usher us over, babbling in muted voices over one another. They all collapse into exhausted laughter for a few seconds, then Brittany motions for Mark to go.

  “We think we’ve got a synthetic. It matches, as far as we can tell.” His voice trips an octave higher than normal, like a wire pulled too tight.

  “What do you mean, as far as you can tell?” Pax asks.

  “We don’t have any way to test it. Like we said, we can’t tell which variation they’re using, or if they’re combining them somehow,” Leah responds. She rubs her eyes, which are ringed with dark circles and webbed with red veins. “Without a good synthetic, we can’t be sure we isolated everything right—the only way to be sure is if we can rebuild it from scratch.”

  “Plus, if we can rebuild it, we can change it,” Mark adds. “This synthetic will be the building block for whatever weaponized version we hopefully come up with afterward.”

  Leah blinks heavily, as though she might fall asleep on her feet. Pax moves behind her and she leans back into him with a sigh. “If only Nat hadn’t been taken.”

  “He’s dead. They killed him,” I say. They know that, but it feels wrong not to acknowledge his death, to pretend he’s simply gone for now and not for good.

  “We know that, Althea,” Brittany snaps at me, pinching the bridge of her nose. “She’s just saying that we need a way to test our synthetic neodymium.”

  Pax and I meet each other’s gaze. He shrugs, giving me permission to open my mouth even though we agreed with Lucas and Deshi mere hours ago not to do anything rash. “You can test it on me. The four of us react to their elemental solution; you should be able to gauge the effectiveness on us.”

  Leah’s eyes widen. “No. What if we did something wrong and it hurts you?”

  “We’ve all discussed the risks, but you just said it yourself. We can’t move forward without knowing we’ve got the right building blocks in place. There’s no one else to test it on; it’s not like a Warden is going to wander in and volunteer.” The words come out brave and unwavering, but jitters infect my stomach. No one answers for several moments, which nearly breaks my nerves in half. I sigh. “The four of us react to it, but we’re not dependent on it. There’s no reason to think it will have an effect on our lives.”

  No reason to think it, perhaps, but still reason to fear.

  The pink mixture the Wardens gave the Terminals last autumn had a stronger effect on me than I like to recall. Still, the stuff Deshi gave m
e in the Underground Core was weaker, and neither experience threatened my life. I’m pretty sure that as we’ve grown stronger and more accustomed to controlling our power, the neodymium affects us less.

  I hope.

  “We don’t have to do this, Althea,” Pax murmurs, his perceptive gaze on my face.

  “We’re not going to. I’m going to.” I hold up my hand before he can protest. “There’s no sense in both of us risking it, and you’re much better at scouting than I am. We still need to find the site of the Summer Celebration.”

  “Lucas and Deshi aren’t going to be happy that we went ahead without them.”

  I shrug, even though he’s right. “Can we take off the protective gear now?”

  “Just a sec,” Brittany responds. She placed a few beakers and contaminates in a locked container. “Okay.”

  We all remove the extra layers, except for Leah, who keeps her gloves on as she pours clear pink liquid from a vat into a beaker. It looks exactly like what the Others gave us to drink last autumn. Nerves jitter through me.

  She approaches me, her gray eyes wary. “Since you reacted to drinking it before, let’s try it this way first.”

  Her hands shake as they inch toward me, and I grab the beaker from her, sloshing some liquid on my wrist. “It’s going to be okay, Leah.”

  She nods and I take a big swallow, the taste familiar. I swear I can feel it swishing through my blood, eating all of the good things away as it travels straight toward my heart. We hold our breath, but nothing happens.

  Until fifteen minutes later, when we’re all on the way back to Perkins Hall. Heat explodes in my center without any warning at all, and the grass turns into a flaming carpet.