by Trisha Leigh
“Not our problem,” Pax grunts, dragging Griffin to the bedroom by his heels.
“Althea, if Griffin thought the Others would look for them here, then he wouldn’t have come. When he showed Pax and I this place before we came to rescue you, he said it was safe.” He bends down and hooks his hands under Nat’s armpits, following Pax. “Get Greer up, if you can manage.”
I grab her hand and she stands. “Be careful with Nat, Lucas. He’s bad.”
His only response is a grunt from the guest room, and I lead Greer in and push her down on the bed next to the Warden she loves. Heavy grief settles in my blood, dragging like sediment, as Lucas and I slip them below the covers and pile them with blankets. Nat’s Other skin is pale, flickering an almost dusty white, and his body trembles. We roll them against each other for warmth.
I step to Lucas’s side and take his hand. “At least they’re together.”
“Not really. Their bodies are, but they’re trapped alone in their heads.” Sorrow fills his voice like water soaking a rag. “But it’s the best we can do. We won’t forget about them, Althea. We’ll fix it, when we can.”
“If we can.”
“Hey.” He tugs his hand free and winds his arm around me, pulling me close. “A little hope never hurt anyone.”
“Are we getting out of here or what?” Pax hollers from the other room.
Lucas grins. “You know, I think I’m starting to like him.”
I snort. “He does know how to keep things moving.”
In the living room, Pax is nowhere to be found, but crashing sounds draw Lucas and me into the kitchen. Pax is busy sweeping a shelf of canned goods into a duffel bag. “Thought we could use a few more things.”
While the boys gather supplies, I return to the living room where Wolf sits mournfully by the door. I kneel in front of him, taking his furry face between my hands. His blue and brown eyes regard me seriously, as though he knows the conversation isn’t going to be one he likes.
Which is silly. He’s a dog; he can’t understand speech.
Still, I feel as though I owe him an explanation. “You’ve got to stay here, Wolf. It’s too dangerous where we’re going. It’ll be your job to watch over these three, okay?” He licks my hand and I start to cry. I may never see him again. Wolf lived on his own in Iowa before we found one another; there’s no reason to believe he’ll stay here near this cabin so that we can find one another again.
There’s even less reason to believe I’ll live long enough to come back here.
I don’t hear Pax and Lucas come into the room, but the sound of breaking glass pulls me from my grief. Pax kicked out the window on the other side of the door.
“That way he can get out to make waste and hunt, but still have somewhere to come inside if it’s raining or cold.”
I give Wolf one last teary rub behind his ears, then get to my feet and throw my arms around Pax. The strong scent of apples drowns me in his own feelings about leaving behind the dog that really belongs to both of us. He kneels and whispers his own good-bye.
Then the three of us step outside into the storm as it breaks loose, closing the door behind us. Wolf sticks his head out through his makeshift dog door, but I give him a stern look and point my finger. “Stay, Wolf.”
He listens, even though my voice wobbles and breaks.
We’re in unspoken agreement that we’re not hiding, and the fact that we need Deshi means we’re going to have to go on the offensive. So even though the wind whips cold rain into our faces, even though we must be marching straight back into a trap, we walk away from the cabin without a backward glance.
CHAPTER 17.
We don’t stop this time on our way back to Mount Rushmore, and we get there in the middle of the night. It seems like the best time to go searching for the entrance, under the cover of darkness, so we make our way around the back side of the mountain. It takes longer than I thought, with the rain turning to spitting ice and the wind blowing us backward, not to mention the cliff side sits farther away than it looked like from the observation deck. Night is turning from black to a hazy gray on the horizon by the time we spot the waste pile. We haven’t slept in over a day.
From how Griffin described it, I expected a gigantic, stinky pile of waste and rotted food and a bunch of other disgusting things, but it’s mostly old Warden uniforms and what appears to be medical supplies. The patches of snow surrounding the items are tinged with pink, a sight that reminds me of the blood surrounding Wolf after he was attacked last winter. My stomach turns, but upon closer inspection in the lightening morning, it’s too pale a color to be blood. The same pale pink dusts the items in the pile.
“It’s getting too light. We need to get out of here,” Pax whispers.
I agree. As much as we need to get inside and find Deshi, getting caught in broad daylight before we make it past the door seems counterproductive. We turn around to leave and spot Lucas tugging a tan-and-black uniform from the pile, then going back in to extract a pair of shoes and a belt.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
“Can’t hurt.” He shrugs and struggles down the pile, balling the items under his arm.
“Should I get one, too?” Pax asks.
“Nah. I’m the only one who can put it on and blend in.”
Before I can ask why he needs to blend in, he walks off and it takes all of my concentration to keep up with the two of them and not fall down. We don’t talk as we skirt around to the front of the hill, then hike back to the historical information place we stayed in last night.
Once we’re inside, the boys scout around for signs that the Wardens infiltrated the place after Griffin brought Nat to us. I leave them to it, wandering into the shop full of gift items instead. The whole place isn’t very big, and they return to my side within five minutes, deciding we’re safe enough for now. Sleet gusts in through the missing front windows but doesn’t reach into the gift shop or to the back wall where we slept last night.
“Let’s stay in here. We can use the clothes to make a softer bed.” Without Wolf, it’s going to be uncomfortably cold. The aching hole left by his absence opens wider inside me, and I clutch the front of my sweatshirt as though the fabric can hold the empty edges together. “I’m tired.”
It’s been a terribly long, stressful day, and even though it’s time to discuss our next move, nothing makes sense right now except lying down on the softest pile of clothes I can manage to find and going to sleep.
The sun blinds me on its climb above the horizon, reflecting off the dusting of snow and jamming its way into the corners of the building. Shadows bathe the farthest corner of the gift shop, though, and I yank six or seven shirts and a couple pairs of sweatpants off their hangers, ignoring the dust and mold clinging to them, and toss them on the darkest part of the floor. With a blanket to cover them, I can use their padding without having to press my face into years of neglect, and I flop down, rolling up in a second blanket like a hot dog inside a bun.
I close my eyes, fully aware the boys are watching me a little fearfully, but unable to speak without crying. Greer, Griffin, and Nat are brain-dead because of us, unable to fully function while trapped inside their minds. We left them at the cabin, but who knows if they’ll be able to survive without one of us there to help.
And I made Wolf stay behind, too. Even though it’s the best thing for him, because he can take care of himself and this way he’s out of danger, it still feels as though I abandoned him—something I know instinctively he would never, ever do to me.
The memory of Greer squeezing waste out between her toes, of the dainty flowers springing up around her feet, offers me a bit of comfort. I don’t know anything about how the Sidhe or the Others eat or sleep or what they need to survive. Probably it’s Nat who’s in the most danger, since he needs whatever substance it is that the rest of the Others require, and we separated him from his ability to get it.
Not to mention the fact that vomiting up buckets of blood cannot be
a good sign, no matter what planet you’re from.
Fatigue aches in my limbs, grief and worry thud in time with my heart, and eventually it’s too much to bear. I don’t want to think about what we’re going to do tomorrow, or why Lucas grabbed that uniform, or how we’re going to get Deshi. Instead, I let the solace of sleep steal me away.
***
The murmuring of quiet voices pulls me back toward reality. When I crack my eyes, careful to keep my breathing deep so I can go back to sleep if want to, the sight of Pax and Lucas sitting against the opposite wall makes me smile. As my eyes adjust to the deepening dark, their bent-together heads melts into view. Pax gestures with his hands and Lucas nods along, his lips pinched together in what appears to be concentration.
It gives me a jolt of pleasure to see them talking. Lucas says he loves me, and every inch of me aches to say it back. At the same time, I love Pax, too. I care for them both in a way that warms me from my toes to my eyeballs, and a way that cultivates a garden of fear at the thought of losing either of them in the coming days.
Pax, with his quick decisions and the confidence he loans me when I need it. Lucas, with his endless support and the net of safety he wants to drop over my body. The way they’re both willing to jump into a fight we’ll likely lose and are going to go after a boy we don’t know simply because he’s like us. A Dissident.
I wonder for the first time if Dissidents are born, or if they can be made. We can’t create more like us, in the sense that we’re not fully human, but does that mean we can’t make more people willing to fight? Maybe convince more kids like Leah and Brittany that their own species, their own planet, deserves a better shot than four kids who can pretty much blow up everything they touch.
Something about that thought is important, but it slips through my fingers before I can catch it. My brain will chase it down and make it reveal itself in due time, and for now, my sleeping ruse is up. Lucas’s eyes meet mine; he halts his conversation with Pax with a small smile.
They turn twin pairs of blue eyes on me, twisting my stomach. As much as I care for them, as badly as I need them both—and Deshi, too—to get through another day, at this moment it’s killing me to not tell Lucas how I feel.
The voicing of a desire for the future still scares me, but the events of the past couple of days have reinforced the reality that we might not have tomorrow or the next day. If I’m too afraid to ask for what I want now, it may be that I’ll never know what it’s like to have it, even if it’s only for a little while.
Greer and Nat’s situation drives home the point. After all of these years of waiting to be together, if they had known their time drew toward a close, would they have done anything different?
Lucas’s eyebrows knit together at the sight of my face, leaving me to wonder what my expression looks like before I wipe it away with a tired smile and a yawn. I stretch, crawling toward them and dragging a blanket with me until I settle cross-legged facing them both. “What are we talking about?”
Pax shoots Lucas a smirk, and for his part, Lucas averts his eyes. The combination sets my teeth on edge; whatever they were discussing, I’m not going to like it.
“Well, tell her the big plan, Winter. She’s just going to love it.” Pax grins at Lucas, but not in a mean-spirited way. More in a normal Pax-loves-trouble way.
“We’re going to find a place to hide and observe so we can see for sure where they come and go, whether or not Wardens are patrolling, things like that.” Lucas pauses and I call up some patience, sensing that’s not the offensive part of the plan. He tugs on an ear, glancing up at me quickly and then away. “And then I’ll put on the Warden uniform and go inside to see if I can find Deshi.”
Cold, sticky fear infiltrates through my pores until it soaks me from the inside out. I knew we were going to have to go inside to get Deshi, but sending Lucas in there alone is a different matter.
I force my mouth to stay closed, my expression to remain neutral. Partly because they’re both expecting me to freak out, and partly because, if I ignore how dangerous an idea it is, it might be the best thing we can come up with.
It would be better if we didn’t have to send Lucas in there alone, but as he pointed out yesterday when he snagged the dirty uniform, neither Pax nor I can pass for a Warden, or a regular Other, the way he can. With his blond curls, strong build, and above-average height, he looks enough like our alien side to pass. His eyes are bright blue and not a smothering black, but if he keeps his head down and stays a safe distance away from anyone he sees, it might work.
I nod slowly, watching an almost matching look of comical surprise twist both of their faces. “It’s not a bad idea. What happens if you find him?”
“If I can get him out, then I will. I’ll sneak him back here and we’ll figure out what to do next. If I need help, then I’ll find a way to sneak the two of you in as well,” Lucas explains, still looking as though he’s waiting for me to object.
“Okay.” A glance outside reveals night has fallen. I slumbered away the day. “Any idea what time it is now?”
“Not late. The sun went down maybe three hours ago?”
Since it’s April, still the middle part of spring, the sun goes down pretty early, around eight or a little before that. Which means it’s not even midnight. “Well, I think we should wait a couple more hours before going out to spy.”
It probably doesn’t make a difference one way or another. We don’t know how the Others function, I remind myself for the second time in less than a day. They might not sleep at all, or maybe they sleep during the day when they have a choice. Letting the night provide natural cover seems like the right thing to do, regardless.
We’re too close to the Underground Core to make using a flashlight a good idea, even indoors, but the idea of filling the hours with idle chatter twinges familiar impatience in my restless limbs. Getting Deshi is the next step, and as Pax pointed out before, there’s no reason to look further ahead than that. Until we get him, we don’t know how it will change our powers. Until we know that, we can’t make a workable plan.
I leave the boys plotting in the gift shop and slip into the back hallway, running my fingers over the pictures and words adorning the walls. Tall partitions separate different areas—perhaps telling different parts of the story of the faces in the rock—dividing the space into multiple parallel hallways. Out front, where the glass windows used to be, more floor-to-ceiling displays run the length of the building like a dotted line down the middle of the hallway.
It means that I’m fairly hidden way at the back, with more than one partition blocking me from sight. It’s safe enough, then, for me to try a new trick that springs to mind, born of the specific situation we’ve found ourselves in.
I cup my right palm in front of my chest and close my eyes. The easiest and closest memory of intense emotion is the kiss Lucas and I shared two nights ago now, and letting it bubble to the front of my mind brings a faint smile to my lips. Heat pushes up from my belly, into my bloodstream, and finally into my palm. If it were touching fabric, it would be smoldering by now, but there’s no visible evidence of the intense warmth.
The problem turns over in my brain. I can shoot fire at people, and lighting material is no trouble, so it stands to reason there must be a way to make it visible but hang on to it. I lower my face closer to my palm, until the heat waves shimmering off my skin is visible. It should feel too hot, but it doesn’t. It feels like a perfect sense of being exactly where I’m meant to be.
Operating on instinct, I close my eyes and blow gently into the heat. It seems like the most normal thing in the world when a little sphere of fire appears, a flickering reddish-orange ball in my palm. It’s big enough to cast enough light onto the walls, and I spent the next couple of hours perusing the history of this place.
I learn that each of the men on the mountain was once the president—which I’m guessing is sort of like the Prime Other—of the United States of America. The question of what these f
our would have done had they been presented the same problem that faced the Prime Other all those years ago crosses my mind. If Earth had been destroyed, used up, or no longer livable, would they have found a way to propel humanity into space, searching for a new home even if it meant stealing it?
There’s no way to know. The plaques and historical documents tell me only the kind of men people believed they were and how the four presidents are remembered. Not how they would react if faced with making a choice to allow the extinction of their race or another. Not the kind of men they were behind closed doors, when they were scared and staring their own mortality in the eye.
Their faces remain in rock to symbolize the greatness of the contributions they brought to America and their people. I’m starting to form a little bit of an opinion on what a country or nation is, after seeing the map and reading about the war in A Separate Peace.
Like with most things I’ve learned about Earth before the Others, Mount Rushmore presents kind of a mixed bag. The symbolism of the men—the presidents—fills me with the hope that we haven’t seen the best of humanity. There’s President Washington, whose face represents independence. From whom, I’m not certain, but I’m starting to believe nothing good was ever won without men fighting a war. The next face belongs to a President Jefferson, who gets a spot to represent that a government should be run by the people, not a few elite.
Apparently the Others disagree with that sentiment. I’m surprised Mr. Jefferson isn’t defaced.
Then President Roosevelt, whose legacy eludes me because I don’t understand how the United States relates to the rest of Earth, and last, President Lincoln, whose face stands for the equality of all people. I know it means only in the United States, but in my mind he meant it for everyone, everywhere.
Maybe even for people who aren’t technically people at all.
My mind drifts over the half-breeds I’ve met these past months. Griffin, Greer, the Goblert. Cadi and Ko, Lucas and Pax in the next room. Me. There’s nothing that makes any of us inherently better than the next, though Griffin would certainly disagree. The thought brings a faint smile to my face as I skim the rest of the wall hangings and quotes, then return to the gift shop to ready myself for our covert foray into the hills.
