CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“WHY WOULD YOU say that?” I ask Drake.
No one interjects to set things straight, so I grab Drake by the shoulders. “He’s been feeding you lies.” Lies more toxic than too much dust. I shake my brother and his shell-like armor appears in an instant.
I drop my hands from his arms and stagger back. He almost falls, but Burn’s there to prop him up. My father backs away and stands watching.
“It’s true,” Drake says. “Dad wasn’t even home when it happened. You were angry. Yelling at mom. She collapsed and I went to help her, but when I looked back at you, pain stabbed inside me.”
“No, that’s not what happened.”
“You blacked out and forgot.” Drake holds up his armored arm. “When I felt the pain, my Deviance appeared for the first time. The pain in my chest stopped, but as I turned back to mom, a searing pain hit me low in my back. I never felt my legs again. Not until I got Outside. Not until Dad taught me to inhale dust to cure my paralysis.”
I collapse like I’ve been struck down by a girder. Hitting the ground, I turn away from everyone and curl into a ball.
Could I have possibly? The idea tears through me like a jagged knife.
I did it. Me. I paralyzed my little brother. I killed my own mother. I’m the worst kind of monster. I suck in ragged breaths but I’m crushed, buried under tons of rocks and the weight of this accusation.
Images of that day drift back and don’t help. I was angry. Very angry. In fact, I flew into a rage because—I am so ashamed—because my mother wouldn’t give me permission to go to the Hub without her. I wanted to go with the older kids. With Cal. Even if she’d given me permission, I would have felt out of place with a bunch of kids about to graduate from GT.
Cal asked me to go with them, but even back then I knew he wasn’t inviting me. Not like that. Not how I wanted him to. He was nearly sixteen; I was thirteen. Juliana Holder, a pretty girl his age who liked him, was going. I wasn’t even that angry with my mother and certainly wasn’t angry with Drake.
I was angry that I was only thirteen. Angry that I wasn’t prettier. Angry that I still had three years to wait before I could date. Terrified Cal would get a bracelet with Juliana, not me.
A hand lands on my shoulder and I jump, springing back and pushing with the heels of my shoes to get away.
“Glory.” It’s my father. “Stop that.” He takes my hand off my head and I realize I’ve been tugging at my hair. No wonder my scalp hurts. I bring my fist down hard on the rock beside me.
He lifts my hand and presses his lips onto the already rising bruise. “I didn’t want you to know,” he says. “Ever.”
I pull away. “You lied.”
He blinks and leans back, and I realize my inappropriate, misdirected burst of anger almost hurt him. I bury my head in my arms again and he runs a hand down my back, his fingers stroking me in the same familiar way they did when I was a child.
“You didn’t mean to,” he says. “You didn’t know you had a gift. None of us did. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine for not watching you more closely for signs you were Chosen.”
“Chosen?” I spit out the word. “Management might not have much right, but Deviant is a much better word than Chosen.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” my father says softly and carefully, like I might not understand the words, or maybe afraid his words will detonate a bomb.
My throat closes. My father’s afraid of me. Of course he is. Who wouldn’t be? I’m a monster.
I’ve hated my father for so long and now…I can’t even begin to deal with now.
I need to escape. I need to go…somewhere. Anywhere but here.
I jump to my feet and run.
Tripping over the edge of a boulder, I land hard but rise quickly and keep running. Pain shoots through my knees and shins and hands. I don’t care. I deserve it. After what I did, I deserve pain. I deserve to die.
At that thought, I change direction and head for a cliff we passed late last night before reaching the cave. If I run as fast as I can and jump out, my body will smash on the rocks. If I don’t die from the impact, I’ll suffer horrible pain until death.
Not that it will begin to make up for killing my mother, my mother with the same dark hair as Drake, my mother who picked up our rations and made sure we stayed clean and fed, who worked at the garment recycling factory until her fingers were so cracked and raw that they bled. My mother who worked tirelessly for our family but never once complained. I had no idea how much she did to take care of us until the job fell to me.
I can’t live with what I’ve done. I don’t deserve to.
Through the trees I see the cliff.
My legs and lungs burn, my mouth tastes like metal but I’m almost there. Just another few seconds and—
Something slams into me from the side, hard, and my feet lift off the ground. It’s Burn, real Burn, normal-sized Burn, and he’s holding me tight in his arms as if I’ve been bound in steel.
“Let me go.” I struggle against him with all the energy I can muster.
“So you can kill yourself?” he growls in my ear, and I realize there’s no point in struggling. I’m just making it harder for him. He doesn’t deserve that. And goodness knows I don’t want to send him into a rage. Not that I care if he kills me, but what if he hurts my father or Drake? Besides—I let my body go slack—maybe if I calm down, he’ll let go and I can continue my race toward death.
He scoops me up. I don’t even fight back as he carries me, then sits down against the trunk of a large pine tree. My back leans against one of his bent knees and he swivels my legs under his other leg and straightens it to trap mine beneath his.
Burn is smart. I’ll give him that.
And he’s quiet right now. Good. But what’s he supposed to say? Bummer that you killed your mom. Bummer you ruined your brother’s life. Bummer that your dad almost gave his life for your crimes.
As we sit in silence, my palms sting and I realize they’re raw from scrambling over sharp rocks. Blood stains the knees of my pants, too. Relishing the pain, I let it wash through me, and I look up. A light breeze blows through the boughs of the trees, changing the shadows, filtering the glare of the bright sky and releasing the occasional dried needle to flutter toward the ground.
I want to be one of those needles. I want to float away into nothingness. I want to be trampled into the ground. I want to be finished.
The world around me blurs. I blink and tears stream down my face. I can’t remember the last time that happened. It feels strange, foreign, something that happens to other people’s faces—not mine.
My thumb finds my ring, but instead of offering comfort, it burns. Who am I to seek comfort, especially from my mother? The ring sticks on the way off and I relish the pinch. As soon as it’s free, I fling the ring as far as I can, not watching it land.
“You done feeling sorry for yourself?” The bass of Burn’s voice vibrates my ribs and I don’t answer—too numb to think, never mind speak. “Now you know. Time to move on.”
I pull away from him as best I can with my legs trapped. “You knew?”
“Hector told us when we found him.”
“You found him?”
“Not just me. But, yes.”
“And since then, you’ve been watching me, watching Drake?”
“Again, not just me. The Freedom Army looks for people in danger. Gets them out if needed. Protects them when we can. As soon as we found Hector and heard what happened, we got Drake’s records taken out of the HR database.”
I suck in a sharp breath. That makes so much more sense than all the theories I had. Of course it wasn’t just luck or an accident that Drake dropped off Management’s radar screen. Suddenly, I need to know everything about the day my dad was expunged.
“What happened to my dad? How did you save him?” He took the blame for my horrible crime, and guilt engulfs my every pore, my every cell. At this moment, all that matters is my
knowing what happened. I need to know every detail of how my father suffered for me. I need to feel the full weight of my crimes.
I draw a ragged breath through my nose.
“You should ask your dad,” Burn says.
“I want you to tell me.” I turn to him and look directly into his eyes. “I can’t bear the thought of asking him.” I raise my hands up to cover my face. “What I did…”
“I can tell you some of it.” His hand runs softly down my back. “But I don’t know everything.”
I look up to him expectantly. “Please.” I can’t believe I’m begging Burn, begging anyone for anything. But I’ve never felt quite so desperate, so vulnerable, so pathetic.
Burn bends his arms, puts his hands behind his head, and stares up. “I was only thirteen or fourteen, but because of my size and strength, I was already on an Extraction Team.”
“Extraction Team?”
“For the Freedom Army. They’re based in the Settlement we’re headed for. We’re who saved you and Drake.”
I nod. This army must be the people Management calls terrorists. “Go on.”
“Your dad was lucky. We didn’t know there was an expunging that day. My team was headed toward Haven on a routine mission to identify and make contact with the Chosen. It was supposed to be my first time inside the dome, but we never got there.”
“You didn’t?”
He shakes his head and drops his arms down. “Our team leader was monitoring the Haven TV broadcast, and we saw the expunging begin. Usually the Comps just let the Shredders get down to business, but with your dad, it was clear they weren’t leaving anything up to chance. They made sure the Shredders would get him.”
A pinching pain rises inside me, closing in on my throat and pressing hard on my temples. I want to cover my ears but I don’t. “How?”
“They tossed him outside without shoes or a shirt. He’d been whipped and was bleeding badly. I think they knew his blood would draw the Shredders. They were right. Bastards were on him in seconds, inflicting more wounds and messing with the ones already there.”
Blood rushing in my ears, my breaths coming too quickly, I struggle to hear him.
“Your dad’s strong. The Shredders would’ve recruited him if we hadn’t arrived when we did.”
“Recruited? I don’t understand.”
“The torture isn’t just sadism.”
I shudder. “It’s not?”
“The Deviants they capture, the strongest ones, the ones who survive the torture—”
“Become Shredders.” I finish his sentence. Every cell inside me hurts. My body feels weighed down by a thousand stones. I’m not sure I can take any more, but I need to know everything that happened. “How did you save him? Tell me more. Tell me everything.”
He draws a long breath. “There were only five of us that day. I was ordered to stay back, to stick to the entrance of the tunnel, but when I saw what those monsters were doing…” His voice trails off and he looks away. He forms fists.
“Don’t feel bad,” I say softly. “You were too young to help.”
He looks straight at me and there’s pain in his eyes. “Oh, I helped. Believe me, I helped. But I killed one of our men in the process and I dislocated your dad’s shoulder.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what to say.
“It was the first time I changed. The day I discovered what I am—a monster.”
“You’re not a monster.” Although that’s exactly how I’ve been thinking of him since I first saw him change, maybe even before. I vow to stop thinking of him that way. It’s not fair.
“Neither are you.”
I take a deep breath. I need to absorb all I’ve heard, to sort out my feelings. It’s not easy when I want to crush them, too. But I keep returning to the bottom line: I killed my mother and I paralyzed my brother, which led to my father’s torture and near death.
As bad as Burn might feel about hurting people that day, or cracking my ribs, he saved my father’s life and rescued me. It’s not the same thing.
I’ve tried to be a good person, to do the right thing, to protect my brother, but I am not a good person. I never do the right thing and I constantly put everyone I love in danger.
Hanging my head I force out my emotions, let numbness permeate, dull everything. Burn can’t trap me under his leg forever. When he finally lets go, I’ll disappear. Being around me is toxic, dangerous, fatal.
“Hey,” Burn says.
I don’t respond or even open my eyes. I’m done talking.
“We need to go. Now.” My father’s voice snaps my eyes open.
Burn rises, pulling me with him, and I’m a limp rag in his arms. “What’s up?” he asks my dad.
“Shredders,” Dad says. “We spotted them in the distance.”
“Where’s Drake?” My rapidly beating heart pushes through the numbness. Did he leave my brother alone to be tortured by Shredders?
“I’m going back to him now,” my father says, then disappears.
“Where did he go?” I search all around us. Does he run even faster than Gage? He can’t have just vanished. Did I imagine him being here?
“I’ll explain later.” Burn swings me up onto his back. “Hold on.”
We run. Or rather, he runs and I keep my head down, my face buried in his thick neck to avoid scratches from the pine boughs. I should let go, let myself drop to the ground, let the Shredders find me and do what they will, but that plan won’t work.
If I drop down, Burn will stop.
As much as Burn likes to think he’s a monster, he’ll try to save me. I’d put him in danger, again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
WITHIN MOMENTS WE catch up with Dad and Drake. Burn sets me down and takes my brother. But we haven’t run another hundred feet before a Shredder steps from behind a tree. His shirt, fabricated from human finger bones, rattles as it moves over his maroon-skinned chest. Fingernails stretch out like talons and his eyes shift rapidly, like he can’t control them.
“You’re all together now.” The Shredder’s voice is so loud and grating it scrapes my ears. “How handy.”
We turn but there are two Shredders behind us.
“I’ll distract them,” my dad tells Burn. “You take the kids to the Settlement.”
Burn nods and grabs my arm. Before we can move, my father disappears. He reappears behind the first Shredder and brings a rock down on the monster’s skull. The Shredder roars in anger and pain, the rock lodged in his skull, a bizarre hat to match his horrific bone-shirt—yet he’s not dead.
The other two rush forward. My dad disappears, then reappears between us and the other Shredders. He swings a huge sword-like chunk of metal, and it slices into the leg of one of the Shredders with a thud.
“This way.” Burn grabs me around the waist. He bounds forward, running as fast as he can, but even with his strength and speed, holding Drake on his back and me on his side, he’s not fast enough. They’ll catch us—after they kill my father.
“Stop.” I push against his body. “Burn. Stop.”
He glares but lets me go, and I drop to the ground.
“I can’t leave him behind. I can’t let my father sacrifice himself to save me. Not again. I need to help.” I back away.
“No!” Drake yells. “Dad can save himself.”
The Shredder with the rock-hat grabs my father’s arm and the other two look back at us, as if deciding whether to go for the victim in hand or the three in the bush.
“Why doesn’t he teleport?” Drake asks, and I realize teleportation must be my father’s Deviance.
“He can’t,” Burn says. “Not when someone’s touching him.”
I don’t wait for Burn or Drake to say more. I race toward my father, but so do the other two Shredders. By the time I get there, all three are busy slicing and jabbing my father with their knives and sharpened fingernails. I’m about ten feet away and trying to figure out a plan, when my father looks up. He shakes his head. I stop.
It’s hard to tell what’s skin and what’s clothing—everything’s stained dark with blood. But he must be wearing a shirt, because he’s got shards of metal sticking out across his shoulders and down his arms like studs. They can’t be part of him. They can’t.
They are.
He stops several feet away and looks me over. “Aren’t you cute.” His voice is like razors. “Can’t wait to see if you’re worthy. We could use you for breeding.”
The Shredder with talon-like fingernails slashes them down my father’s cheek, and he cries out in pain. Anger builds, diluting my fear. These monsters are hurting my father. My father who’s already done so much more for me than I ever imagined.
Look up, I think as I keep my eyes trained on the Shredder, but his eyes remain hungrily on my chest, not my face.
“Hey!” I yell. He finally looks up.
Big mistake.
My eyes latch on to his and I focus, drawing out every ounce of hate and anger I can find, letting it build and flow. I focus on his brain. I twist. I squeeze.
The Shredder’s hands rise to his head and he wails in agony. The sound scrapes through my mind and nearly makes me lose focus, but the Shredder can’t look away. I’ve never targeted a brain before, but it’s like I can sense the monster’s thought patterns, feel the red and black sparks of malice in his mind. It helps build my power. It’s like I’m using the Shredder’s own mind, his own hatred and rage, as fuel for my weapon.
His skull bursts.
I stagger back as pieces of bone and brain fly through the air.
My chest heaves as I drag air into my lungs. The world warps and fades. I’m going to pass out. I can’t let that happen. Two Shredders still have my father, and I don’t know if Burn got my brother to safety. I can’t pass out now…. I can’t.
My eyes snap open. Dad’s shaking my shoulder. His lips smile but there’s concern in his eyes.
Deviants (The Dust Chronicles) Page 19
