by L. J. Hatton
My only chance was to take advantage of the shock on both men’s faces when they glanced back and forth from me to the recording behind them, as though they weren’t quite sure which of us was real.
I scrambled in reverse on my hands and knees, through the muslin cover and out the back.
“Go, go, go,” I whispered to the coat. “Get me out of here.”
It cinched in and kept shrinking, worse than every binding Evie had ever used on me. My ribs finally gave.
I screamed from the sudden sharpness, expelling most of my air while another pair of ribs tottered on the decision to snap or not.
Overhead lights exploded. The recording of my time in the prison yard turned into a chaotic spin of motion, going backward and forward at ridiculous speeds. The audio returned at top volume in one long, aggravating whine.
And then a pair of shoes stood in front of me.
“Can’t breathe.” Two syllables were all I had left in me. The warden’s face—and his empty, colorless eyes—would be the last thing I ever saw . . .
The coat shuddered, ticking closed with the turn of an unseen winch, but this time, I was the only one who heard my screams. Somewhere, a printer erupted, spitting paper into the air. A dozen clocks chimed a dozen different hours, and a tea tray exploded into a fountain of water and burst glass. My hologram was replaced by pictures of other people appearing and disappearing at slide-show intervals. Each came with a name and random bits of information in a pattern of female, then male.
One of them was Winnie.
Her face became a globe with hundreds of glowing strings that tied together points on opposite sides: Sister Mary Alban’s antipodes. More faces appeared at each location, tagged by names that tumbled into gibberish. The globe started spinning and wouldn’t stop.
“Greyor!” The warden’s face pinched, as though he were thinking too hard. “It’s crushing her! Get a knife!”
The unnoticeable ran to do as he was told.
Furrows appeared on the warden’s forehead. He lurched forward, with the ill-timed grace of someone caught by surprise, and his hands at his sides jerked up in a way that didn’t look natural at all.
“Close your eyes, pet. This foul machination will likely throw sparks.”
I knew his hand was on my arm, but couldn’t feel it. I was rising, so lightheaded from lack of air that I was floating. And then—impossibly—the sound of ripping. The warden tore my coat at the kick split; he didn’t manage to pull it completely apart, but I was no longer its prisoner.
I winced when he pressed his fingers into my side.
“Definitely broken. One, two . . . I can’t tell about the third.”
“I’ll call for a medic from—” the unnoticeable said as he returned.
“No, just cut the fasteners so we can see the damage.” The warden cut him off. “I don’t want anyone knowing she’s here. Not while Arcineaux’s still tasting blood from the wounds she inflicted. Summon Iva.”
Even half-dead, my mother’s name was enough to bring me back.
“Don’t worry. I’m not conjuring ghosts,” he said when he caught me staring. “Iva’s someone you can trust. I do.”
He changed position, so that his weight rested on the balls of his feet, while his arms crossed on his knees and we were at eye level with each other. I flinched when he touched my face, a move we both regretted. He stopped his hand, but I still felt the churn of broken bones.
He flipped the hem of my coat up for a look at the torn underside. “I can’t believe Magnus gave this to you. Transport routines are alien tech; so’s the neural relay for the targeting system. He usually won’t touch them. Was he really this desperate? Or were you?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” I spat. I didn’t mean to spit blood with it.
“Good girl,” he said, and wiped my mouth with the cuff of his sleeve. “We’ll get you patched up, and then—”
Then I stopped listening.
I wasn’t planning to stay in his presence long enough for the patching, much less what came after.
“Get me out of here,” I begged the coat.
There wasn’t much that could be called worse than my present state. Even if the coat deposited me into a wall, or dropped me from a mountain peak, it would be a better ending than whatever drawn-out torture this man hid behind his phony smile.
“Please,” I pleaded. The pain from my ribs had already caused my eyes to tear; despair did nothing to dry them. “Take me as far as you can. Take me somewhere safe.”
I couldn’t focus on a location, but the coat crackled. Sparks jumped from one side of the tear the warden had made to the other.
My nerves responded with a small seizure that froze my eyes in the open position and locked my muscles.
“You have to listen, pet. Stop the coat. Tell it to stop,” the warden demanded.
As if I could—or would.
I felt the coat preparing for a move, but it was sluggish, a broken door unable to close. In my head I chanted “safe, sanctuary, refuge,” to ensure that the coat didn’t change its mind about where to send me.
“Penelope, please. You don’t understand, I—” The warden stood up, leaving me on the floor. “Greyor! Sever the circuits! She’s—”
Gone.
CHAPTER 21
I’d never had a broken bone, but I’d seen a few. In my imagination, it was the equivalent of a sour stomach—an uncomfortable flutter that would pass with dry crackers and hot tea.
I was an idiot.
This pain was a fire baton blazing along my side, and my insides ached with the need to purge themselves of things I’d only ever dreamed of eating. All I could do was lie on my side and wonder if the pressure was going to collapse my entire rib cage.
Every second languidly paced itself into hours while the coat continued to tighten so that my head felt ready to burst off my neck. But at the point I was ready to go searching for my mother on the other side of death, something changed. The combination of the strain and the compromised condition of the coat finally split it along the seams.
I slapped the ground with the one hand I could move while gasping, unable to stop. I never knew air had so many flavors, but I could taste every molecule down to the base notes of more flowers than I knew existed. So many, I would have sworn I was in a garden, if not for the lack of birdsongs and breeze. The rush of oxygen was so intoxicating that the euphoria nearly numbed me.
White light replaced the darkness, but there was no mistaking it for natural sun. This was brighter and as false as a creeper light. The ground was cold metal, grooved with holes. A polished pole stood bolted to the side—one of many that formed a guardrail around the walkway I’d been deposited on. I recognized the seal scored into the metal; this was a Commission facility.
Not quite the safe haven I’d been hoping for.
With a click, the clasps of my father’s coat unfastened themselves, leaving the front open. I struggled to pull it off; wherever I was, I was staying. It had to be better than another directionless skip.
I used the pole as leverage to turn over so I could see my new resting place. It was a massive enclosure with several levels above and below mine. Floor after floor was nothing but trees and bushes and flowers; it really did look like a magnificent garden.
Was I in a greenhouse?
“Are you all right?”
The walkway was empty, so who was speaking?
Maybe I’d dreamed that the coat released me, and I was still hallucinating. Maybe this was what it was like to die slowly from lack of air.
“I’m over here,” the voice said, but “over” was on the other side of the guardrail.
“Talking trees?” I asked.
I sat up, squinting across the room. The circular track continued on the other side.
“Too far.”
The
voice triggered movement in the leaves, where a boy perched in the topmost branches swept them out of the way with his arm. Our eyes met, and somehow the confusion and shock I felt transferred to his face. He leaned forward, mouth agape.
“Penelope?” he asked.
The trees shifted at the trunk, in a way that no person could shake them and no tree should turn. They bent, and when they were close enough, the boy slid off the branches and onto the metal floor beside me. He was my age, with brown hair and green eyes open wide.
“Are you Penelope Roma?”
He offered me a hand up, but I wasn’t ready to accept help from unknown boys who somehow knew me—especially those who could be found inside Commission greenhouses. The last two men who called me by name were an unnoticeable and a warden, and given this boy’s clothes, he was likely in training to become one of those things himself.
I launched backward, out of his reach, crying out when my ribs reminded me why I was sitting still in the first place.
“You’re real, aren’t you?” he asked, stepping forward as though I hadn’t just wounded myself to get away from him. “You really are here?”
He flicked his wrist.
Something soft pushed at my back, nudging me onto my feet. I twisted to see who or what had snuck up on me, but there was nothing there besides a wall of green made from a single overlarge leaf.
My next breath was stolen by another shock from my ribs—this time, so severe, the pain threw me into the momentum of my turn; I landed on the leaf face-first. It held my weight.
“Penelope?”
The boy moved silently and too quickly. He placed his hand on my arm. I shook it off, and winced again.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said.
“It’s not you,” I growled. Keeping my voice low and controlled meant I needed less air, so my chest didn’t have to expand as far. “My ribs are busted.”
Stars were shattering into needles against my skin. I could feel the fire in my blood, and see the shine in my fingers. Hopscotching over the countryside had agitated the Celestine. She was awake and demanding freedom in retribution for my misery. I was losing control.
“Move back,” I begged the boy.
I eased myself to the ground, lying with my knees bent so I could breathe easier. The boy crouched beside me. Who was he? Why did the coat send me to him?
“Are you sure they’re broken?” he asked.
“I felt them snap.”
Best not to mention the warden’s diagnosis, just yet.
The boy sat down with one leg dangling over the side of the walkway.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Someone would have mentioned your capture, if they knew. Did you hide aboard a transport? No, that would mean passing security. But then how did you get past the rings? And how did you get from the rings inside without being seen?”
He fired questions with barely a breath between them, glancing around frantically every time his head moved. And it moved a lot, trying to see all parts of the room at once. He was more afraid than I was.
“Why would you come here?” he asked.
“It wasn’t exactly a choice.”
“No, I guess it wouldn’t be. That might be a good thing. They’ll never think to look for you here, but you’ve still got to be careful. The system tracks everyone.” He held out his hand, glancing down, horrified, at a ring with a small red stone in it, then hid it behind his back. “Not being seen can be as dangerous as being in plain sight.”
He couldn’t possibly have understood the irony of his words, and it was precisely something he’d tried to hide that caught my attention. I sat up, leaning against the leaves like chair cushions, and reached for his closest hand. Metal bands circled his wrists.
“These are hounds’ dampers,” I said.
He was male. Dampers were useless on mundanes.
There had been men and boys in the prison yard I’d destroyed—was this another prison? Did the coat bring me here to destroy it, too?
I just wanted to go home.
“Who are you?” I asked, still holding the boy’s wrist. “Why are you wearing these?”
He opened his mouth, ready to either answer or lie, but lost the chance when a set of double doors opened several yards down the walkway.
“Get out of sight,” he ordered.
I glanced over his shoulder.
“Is it a guard?” I asked.
“Keep back and keep quiet. I’ll try to get rid of him.”
Before I could ask where he expected me to go or how he expected me to get there, the leaf that had been my lean-to lashed out, sweeping me into the foliage. I watched, awestruck, while thorny vines sprouted and grew, braiding themselves into a matted wall. It connected to another wall on each side until I was caged and left crouching at an awkward angle. The boy kicked my discarded coat in after me.
The guard was close enough now that I could hear his radio as well as the sound of his boots on the metal walk. I didn’t want to scream, but the pain in my side was unbearable. Without some kind of relief, something bad was going to happen. I pressed my hand to the throbbing ribs and started to ask the boy for help, but one of those oversize leaves repositioned itself over my mouth so I couldn’t.
It says something for living inside The Show that it took me so long to put the odd behavior of the local greenery together with the dampers and realize why this boy was in custody. I was used to the unusual, and I was used to tricks. When it came to something genuinely out of the ordinary, I accepted it without question, until it hit me that this boy was impossible. He wasn’t mundane. Was he an aberration like me, or had the Commission done something to him to give him an artificial touch?
Why would anyone want that?
He looked at me again, mouthed trust me, and turned away, pretending to be engrossed in something near the ground.
“Hey!” the guard shouted to get the boy’s attention. “Hey! Don’t you move!”
The boy straightened up, feigning surprise. He ducked his head, moving in reverse until his back was against the railing. The guard stopped between us.
“He’s here,” the guard snarled into his radio. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m looking right at him.” A pause, then, “You try finding a garden gnome in the woods.”
He snapped the switch off, with an overdramatic flourish.
“Where’ve you been, Petunia?”
There was a slight hitch in the boy’s posture at the name; it must have been a familiar taunt he’d taught himself not to respond to.
“Right here,” he answered.
The guard scanned the area. I held my breath when his attention passed over my hiding spot.
“What’ve you been doing right here?” he asked. The boy finally looked up.
“Working with pineapples.”
“Pineapples?”
The boy retrieved a potted plant from the greenhouse floor, holding it out, toward the guard.
“An experiment in crossbreeding. I’ve got an odd little flower with no scent, and seeing as the warden is obliging Commissioner Winnet’s wife for the dedication ceremony, he asked for something unique to impress her, so I thought I’d make the flower smell like pineapples. But—”
The boy had to pause for a breath. From the expression on the guard’s face, I’d have to say the ramble was uncharacteristic. It was the sort of thing that came from crafting a story on the fly. He was lying as fast as he could find words.
“Where’s your tracker?” the guard demanded, cutting the boy off.
“Here. Why?”
He held out his hand, and the guard seized it.
“It’s turned off. How—”
The radio strapped to the guard’s shoulder came on. “What’s your status? You said you found the brat, so what’s the problem?”
“No problem,” th
e guard said. “Just . . . pineapples.”
“Say again?”
“No problem at all!” The boy directed his answer to the guard’s radio. “I probably got water in the tracker’s casing from the sprinklers. It must have ruined the circuitry, or something.”
“Or something, I’m sure,” the guard said.
“Get back to the dock doors. We’re due company.” The radio shut off.
“I’m taking this for repairs,” the guard told the boy, pulling the red ring from his hand. “You stay in plain sight until you have a replacement.”
The boy nodded. That was the only move he made until the guard left us, but once we were alone, he went to work removing the door from my hutch. I fell forward and landed hard on my knees, gasping once the greenery covering my mouth moved.
“I’m sorry,” the boy said. His voice rang with a sincerity it would have been impossible to fabricate. “If he’d seen you—”
“I get it.” Speaking was becoming a game of strategy, weighing length and syllables against each other to find the shortest combinations. I fit a few sentences together in my head, but barely managed to utter an “ugh.”
“Let me help you.”
The boy took my outstretched arm from the rail post I was using as a brace, and wound his own arm around it. Instead of pulling me up, which was my intended direction, he sat me down with my back against the post.
He disappeared into the cover of leaves and blooms, so that I could only track him by watching his feet, and when he came back, he was carrying a small metal pot. He set it down, then squatted in front of it, reaching inside to turn the soil with his hands.
The scene felt like one of the staged environments that The Show built to display automated figures.
“You need to put something on your skin before those burns get worse. I’m surprised they haven’t thrown you into shock,” he said.
“Burns?”
