The Fall

by Laura Liddell Nolen

  “He’s still a Guardian to me. His pledge is worth nothing.”

  “Well, only one of us has worked up close with Adam for the last half a decade and can remember a solid minute of it, and it wasn’t you or me,” I said. “So here’s my pledge: sit down so we can work through this together, and I will protect your children with my life.” She gave me a long look, and I saw that she knew I meant it. “West, too.”

  She gave a terse nod and sheathed the gun. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said, looking like she might run at any moment.

  Eren cleared his throat. “First, we should just say it: Adam took the broom.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Mars. He gave her a sympathetic look.

  “We have to assume that it’s a signal to us,” I cut in. “To me.”

  “I agree,” he said. “He wants us back at the cabin.”

  I shivered, and his arms tightened around me. “Even if we wanted to walk right into his trap, we can’t hope to get there alive,” I said. “The fields are full of soldiers. We’re still in the middle of a battle.”

  “Speaking of soldiers, that’s not really Adam’s style, is it?” said Mars. “He always hated that part. He’s more cloak and dagger.”

  The chill deepened its grip on my chest. “Yeah,” I agreed, pulling Eren even closer. “I think we can agree that he’s just getting started.”

  “So, what’ll it be this time? Lightning?” she asked. “Drugs?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m thinking he’s graduated from that.”

  “We can’t plan for something we can’t predict,” Mars snapped.

  “Microgravity?” I said. “Did you feel a thump earlier? Or, you know. Whatever the opposite of a thump is.”

  “Yeah, I feel them,” she said.

  “They’re three minutes apart,” said Eren.

  “What? More than once?” I looked from one face to the other.

  Mars raised her eyebrows. “Yeah. Way more than once. Put your hand on the ground. We’re due another.”

  Cautiously, I placed a hand in the dirt, dreading what I already knew I’d feel. Sure enough, the thump landed a few moments later, jarring the earth around my knuckles. My heart rate picked up. I think I’d been feeling it all along, but my mind hadn’t wanted to deal with it. But the thump was there. And it was getting stronger.

  “Any bright ideas about how to—” Mars began, but a quiet snap interrupted her.

  A moment brushed past in strained silence, and I looked at Mars, at a loss.

  But instead of Adam’s voice, or another soldier, I heard a burbling hoot and the rustling of feathers.

  A flock of swans bustled their way into the clearing, waddling hard, like they were late to a meeting. One brushed into my leg, and I shifted to move out of its path. It was tall enough to make me nervous, had I not been occupied by more pressing matters. I’d never seen a swan up close.

  In spite of its size, its neck was so long that I couldn’t help but think it delicate. Breakable. As I moved out of its way, it twisted up to fix me with a curious expression, then hurried after its family. A second later, another crack broke through the trees, and the first swan took flight.

  Suddenly, they flew. All around us, the giant birds winged their way up through the trees. It was a flurry of urgent honks and scuffling, bristled feathers.

  The moment and the swans passed us by.

  And then the wind began to blow, whipping my hair into my face. The trees bent, gently at first, but then hard, like toughened rubber, until they were unable to withstand the strength of the growing gale. When the one before me broke in half at the base, it made an enormous CRACK that echoed through the forest.

  And then the dirt was flying. Mars and Eren looked worried.

  My heart sank as I took in their faces. I’d have saved them all, if I’d had the strength to stop him. Given the chance, I’d have traded my life for the ship. But I was swept up in Adam’s game along with everybody else.

  “Run!” Eren shouted. “Run for the door!”

  I shook my head, picturing the scene from Adam’s point of view. No one was getting out of here. What would be the fun in that?

  Now the wind was preternaturally strong. Together, we scrambled for purchase against the onslaught. If we weren’t completely helpless yet, we soon would be.

  I heard a sound like a train and searched the sky, finally able to guess what Adam had in store for us. In the distance, the air split in half and roiled into a deadly, twisting rope. Mars stood and scrambled for a tree. I brushed against her back with my good arm, taking her gun and shoving her toward the nearest, strongest one I could find while throwing a final glance at Eren. His eyes were on the sky, and as I watched, the confusion melted into understanding. I shoved Mars’ gun down the front of my pants and adjusted it until I was sure it was secure. No way was Adam going to let her near him.

  I was the one he was after.

  “It’s a—” Eren shouted, pulling me toward a tree by my bad arm. I wrapped myself around it, and he wrapped himself around me. It was small, too small for both of us. The pines were five years old, barely stronger than saplings. We’d survive longer if we clung to different trees.

  Besides, I had to get away from him. I couldn’t think while he was near me. I couldn’t afford to have something left to lose, and Eren made everything precious.

  “NO! STAY HERE!” I shouted, pressing his hand into the bark. “We have to split up!”

  The force grew stronger, and I wanted to scream. It didn’t matter, though. No one would hear me if I did. I found a tree of my own and wrapped myself around its base with my legs. The cyclone loomed closer. It took Eren a moment to decide that he’d rather ride out whatever was coming with me, but by then, it was too late. The force of the wind was against him.

  Another thump of micrograv, and my brother’s beloved biosphere churned into rubble. Nearby, Mars wrapped herself around a tree. Too late, I realized that that didn’t matter, either.

  At last, I understood. He’s not going to stop. That was the game. “He’s going to kill us!”

  Gravity gave way in pieces. My feet left the dirt, and I heard a sound like a wild gurgle escape from deep inside my belly. I was screaming now. I wrapped my legs around the tree, and to my horror, I felt its roots loosen beneath my thighs.

  Debris stung my arms, my face. Larger and larger chunks of flora streamed past. I couldn’t dodge them all. I was losing visibility by the second.

  I struggled to regain composure, but what was the point? He’s never going to stop until we’re dead.

  My hips left the ground. One more thump of zero-grav and the tree to which I clung would become part of the twister, and me with it. It was pointless to hang on. I knew, deep in my soul, that the tornado would not stop while there was life in the biosphere. It twisted, dancing, killing everything it touched.

  And it was getting closer.

  I looked back at Eren. Maybe there was time to say goodbye.

  A flash of silver rocketed into the ether, and I realized that Eren had ripped the foil from his wrist. He was screaming into the k-band.

  The tornado twisted closer. My chest left the ground. This was no natural thing. But then, I thought, neither was anything in the biosphere. It was nearly over now. This Ark would fall to Adam.

  I suppressed a wild giggle. As soon as that happened, An would blow it up.

  She wouldn’t even hesitate.

  One final look at Eren. The twister jerked nearer, moving like a child with a hula hoop. I prepared to kick myself into his arms. One final embrace.

  I gritted my teeth and let go of the tree. My body flew through the air toward Eren, and he caught me. I wrapped myself around him with everything I had. Adam must have loosened the gravity again, because the air was full of dirt. It was getting harder to breathe.

  Was there anything he couldn’t control? Anything out of his reach?

  Eren was shouting again, but all I heard was the
twister, and death. When it picked up speed again, we wouldn’t last a moment.

  And then it hit me. There was one thing Adam couldn’t control.

  The reason he was here.

  Me.

  I brought Eren’s wrist to my mouth and screamed for all I was worth. I didn’t think he could hear me, but the game was ending, and I had one final card to play.

  “I surrender! I SURRENDER!” I took a breath through my sleeve, gasping, but it was a poor filter. The earth was all around. A tree flew past, and as its branches slammed into the other trees, they fell.

  I thought of the swans. The curious one. He’d surely died by now.

  And then my tree broke free of the ground. Dirt filled the air, and I could no longer see. A weight slammed into my shoulder, but Eren bore the brunt of its impact. He was still clinging to me, protecting me. I prepared to scream again, but a second blow took my breath away. A sharp, massive object crashed into my thigh, sending bright, white flashes of unbearable pain directly through my skull.

  “I surrender. I give up! Adam, PLEASE!”

  We were falling and falling and falling and nowhere was down. Another tree flew past. The next one could kill us. I coughed violently, unable to draw a clean breath, and choked the words at the k-band:

  “You win, Adam. You win.”

  And it stopped.

  The earth hit the ground.

  The ground existed, and we lay upon it, buried in dirt up to our waists.

  Mars was long gone. Eren had a gash across the back of his neck, and blood spilled forward and over his chest as he covered me.

  I realized he’d been screaming, too. His face was white, and I saw that the blood was over my arms and back.

  It was so much blood.

  If he were ever going to have a chance, I could not waver. I could not stop.

  The k-band popped twice, and I thought I heard laughter.

  “Very well, Char,” came the voice. “I accept.”

  Twenty-one

  My right thigh was too badly injured to support my weight, and I made my way to the cabin on my hands and knees. It was a poor penance. If I shot Adam, it would kill every soul on board the North American Ark.

  If I didn’t kill him, he’d never stop. Not ever.

  Perhaps I should shoot myself.

  The biosphere was razed to the ground. All around, there was nothing but flat, brown destruction. Loose soil and clumps that used to be trees. Nothing moved, and everything was the same color as the dirt. There were no fields, no forests.

  The cabin was untouched.

  I entered slowly, still crawling. Even though I knew he was there, the sight of him nearly killed me. He was flanked by soldiers. His face was smug but serious, and not a single strand of his hair was out of place.

  We faced each other in the small room, Adam and I, surrounded by freeze-framed chaos. The shards of my brother’s life were all around. Although the tornado hadn’t affected his home, the lack of gravity had come close to total destruction.

  We did not speak.

  Moving slowly, never letting my eyes off him, I crawled across the floor to an overturned chair, and bracing myself against the floor with my bad arm, righted it. It took awhile. Every limb weighed a thousand pounds.

  Adam waited patiently as I climbed into the chair and slumped into a sitting position. The look on his face made my blood cold.

  I was so tired.

  “Check her.” Adam waved at a soldier, who loomed toward me. I held up my hand.

  “Stay away from me.”

  The soldier did not stop, and I realized that he’d been drugged. Of course, I thought thickly. They all were. How else could he have come up with an army capable of standing off against the EuroArk’s forces?

  “Now, what kind of surrender is that?” Adam asked, a dangerous edge to his voice. “I just want to make sure you’re not dying. Yet.”

  I wet my lips. I really was so tired. Only a little longer, and sleep would envelop me. “Your concern is touching. This isn’t my blood.” I rolled my sleeve and offered up my veins. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Oh, Char. I don’t need to drug you any more. I don’t even care if you have a weapon. We’re beyond that now.” He laughed, throwing his head back, and I saw my chance.

  “Good,” I grunted. “Decouple life support and I’m all yours.”

  Adam laughed again, a loud, hollow sound. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Although his body was grown, he sounded very much like a child. The tight, freezing wad in my throat grew larger, and I swallowed against it. There was no need to be brave anymore, was there? I would die. Others would live. It was a good trade.

  My life was never meant to be so precious.

  I did not want to listen to the fear that seeped into every pore in my body, but couldn’t help wondering how he’d do it. Would it be a bullet? Gas?

  No, he’d have something special for me. I thought of the void surrounding the ship, of the airlocks, and shivered. I would never be warm again, but it didn’t matter now.

  Adam offered no clues, and although I’d resigned myself to my fate, I wasn’t exactly eager to die right away. Especially not like that—gasping for air, turned inside-out by the vacuum.

  Ninety seconds. More for a person.

  “Bring him in!” Adam stepped to the side, and the rear door swung open. One soldier entered, and then another. Then my face went hot, and I felt myself begin to whimper. Eren was stretched between them. He was a bloody, dirty mass with blond hair, and when his shoulder twitched against their grip, I heard myself crying. Adam laughed yet again. “Now that, you probably expected. After all, I can track him anywhere in the universe.” He came closer. “And just so we never get complacent, I went ahead and took out an extra insurance policy.”

  “Adam,” I sobbed, “please.” He ignored me.

  “Joe! Show her what’s behind door number two!” Adam commanded. “I have no idea what his name is. He just looks like a Joe, you know?”

  Another soldier opened the back door. Horror curled its bony fingers around my heart and began to squeeze. I gasped for air, but nothing helped.

  There, between two men, was West.

  He was pale, listless, and I thought for a moment that he’d been beaten, but a closer look revealed no apparent injuries. He was gasping, deep in the throes of the Lightness.

  “Now, you’ll never believe this,” said Adam, “but this guy came running back in here right before I set off a tornado!” He gave me a big smile, and I felt sick. “You liked that, didn’t you, Char. Anyway, I thought I’d let him see it firsthand, since he was so eager.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said, my voice strangling. “Just let them go.”

  “Oh, Char. You still haven’t worked it all out, have you? I am never letting them go. Just like I’m never drugging you again. It’ll be the real Char all the time. Or I’ll kill them.”

  “An. An knows you’re here. She’ll blow it all up.”

  “Oh, she will, will she? Other Joe!” Adam sang out. “Show her door number three!”

  I looked on, speechless, as the soldier opened the door. Shan entered the room. His face was badly bruised, and there was blood around his nose. “Adam,” I breathed.

  “I know, right? It’s an exciting day. Just like that, I win!”

  “You can’t win, Adam,” Shan said, his voice deep and sure in spite of his situation. “She will stop you.”

  A nod from Adam, and Other Joe delivered a blow to Shan’s gut so hard I held my breath until I heard Shan suck in again. “You are aware that I have an army, yes?” Adam crowed. “And let me see, what else? Right. You. She won’t harm this ship in a million years. I’ve read every transmission you sent her.”

  “You don’t know her at all,” he croaked.

  Adam gave him a cold glance. “It would appear that you are mistaken. But just for giggles, let’s call her up! No, no, Char. Stay right where you are.”

  I looked up,
frozen, and returned to my chair. I wanted to be with West. I wanted to protect Eren. More than anything else, I wanted to kill Adam. But I couldn’t. Not yet.

  Adam dropped a disc-like puck into the center of the room, and I recoiled from it instinctively. “It’s just a comm, Char,” he sneered. “No need to look so scared.”

  The holo flipped up into the room, bright and pale, and An took in the scene. When she saw Shan, she straightened herself fully upright. She did not speak.

  “An! Good to see you!” Adam said. “We were hoping you could settle something for us. See, I told them that you’d never hurt Shan. But Shan here, he thinks you’re just gunning to blow us all up anyway.”

  Adam put a hand on top of Shan’s head and grabbed a fistful of hair. “Tell her, Shan.”

  “Release him,” she said, her voice like a blade.

  “Fugitives need hostages, right?” said Adam, mocking her. “Now I have one of yours.”

  Her gaze cut through the room, burning into each of us in turn. “You are unwise to test me.”

  I gritted my teeth and tried to think of my next move as Adam continued to taunt her. “Looks like your spy has failed,” he said in a surprised voice. “Who’d have thought!”

  At this, Shan lifted his head, shaking Adam’s grip on his hair, and met An’s eye. They stayed that way for a long time. When An replied again, her voice was distant, as though she were speaking to someone else. Even when her voice was soft, the words were laced with danger. “I was chosen to rule this Ark when I was nine years old. Did you know that?”

  Adam shook his head, all nonchalance, but I was frozen. This was not the tone I’d expected. “An—” I whispered.

  “My parents were exalted in our community. My father was so proud, so happy, and so was I. But my mother never smiled when they spoke of it. I could not imagine why. I was only a child, which is to say that I was a fool.” Her last sentence seemed pointed at Adam.

  “We can still figure this out, An,” I said. Adam snorted at that, but An acted like we weren’t even there.

  “Give him back to me,” she said, her expression torn. Hers was not a voice accustomed to begging.