Annex

by Rich Larson

  Bo wished he hadn’t used the word dive. He shot a glance back at the pods, still coming, still unhurried, then went to the edge. He felt slow-rising bubbles of fear making their way up from his gut. His legs were suddenly shaky, like all the bone had gone out of them, and his heart was pounding. He remembered what he’d said to Violet, about trusting Gloom all the way, or actually about not trusting him.

  He had to trust Gloom all the way now. Bo flexed his knees, swung his arms. He tried to imagine a swimming pool down below, with Lia doing her casual backstroke and shouting for him to hurry up, jump, just jump already. He remembered how she’d jeered at first and then softened. I’ll give you a countdown, she’d said. We’ll count together from three.

  The pods were still coming slowly. Maybe they didn’t think he was going to do it. Maybe they were right.

  Do I go on the one or the zero? he’d shouted down to her, trying to delay it a little longer.

  The zero, she’d said. But we don’t say the zero. Ready?

  The pods didn’t know that people were so crazy they jumped from high-up places for fun, and they jumped from even higher ones if their lives depended on it.

  “Ready?” Bo muttered.

  “Yes,” Gloom said. “Are you?”

  Bo didn’t trust himself to say anything else without throwing up. The count was already going in his head. He turned back to the pods one last time to flip them the bird, hoping they remembered the gesture. Then he ate the space in three quick strides and dove off the edge of the ship.

  Down.

  The ruined city rushed up at him impossibly fast, air collapsing away beneath him. He felt the speed bending his spine, yanking back his eyelids, ballooning his cheeks. He knew he was screaming but he couldn’t hear it over the roar in his ears. He could only feel it in his vibrating chest.

  Gloom’s wings snapped out, jarring him as they caught wind. Bo’s bones shook with it. He knew he was still falling but it felt like they’d jerked to a halt, suspended in the air. He turned his scream into a triumphant whoop as they started to bank in a wide looping circle. Gloom’s huge moth wings beat once. Twice. Bo swallowed his spit and tried to unclench his fists. He’d nearly punctured his palms with his nails.

  Looking down still dizzied him, but he could make out the city below. He recognized the downtown from the skyscrapers that hadn’t toppled. He tried to find the ave, the brick-and-metal roof of the theater, wondering if anyone was up there to see him flying.

  A sudden lurch snapped his head back; his teeth slammed shut and he nearly bit the tip of his tongue off. He craned his aching neck to the side. What he saw made his fists clench up again. Gloom’s outstretched wing was trembling, pocked with tiny holes. More and more of them started to open and the air shrieked through; Bo could see individual motes in the wing tremble and come apart from the others.

  “I lost so many motes.” Gloom’s voice was a panicked groan in Bo’s ear. “And there is not enough sunlight. It is possible this was careless. Sometimes I am careless.”

  Bo’s breath stuck to his ribs. “Don’t drop me,” he said. “Please don’t drop me.”

  “I am your friend, Bo,” Gloom said, sounding hurt. “I will not drop you.” A ripple went through his wings. “You might still die, though,” he added. “When we hit the ground. We are falling too fast.”

  “Aim for water,” Bo said, his mind racing. “If you can, aim us for the docks. Set us down in the water.”

  “The wind is carrying us,” Gloom said. His voice was strained. “I cannot aim. I am concentrating very hard on not falling apart.”

  Bo looked down and wished he hadn’t. The city was hurling up at them and they were heading down into the center of it, nowhere near the sea. “Can you make a parachute?” he demanded. “Do you know what parachutes are?”

  Gloom said nothing, but slowly, slowly, his wings curled upward and melded over Bo’s head in a loop, re-forming into a single piece. It buffered them; Bo felt another teeth-rattling jerk as they shed some speed. But they were still dropping. Quickly.

  Bo remembered his mom reading some story about a window-washer who fell from the top floor of a hotel and lived. The man had realized he was going to die, and accepted it, and had been so relaxed that when he hit the asphalt he bounced like rubber. Bo tried to relax his muscles, but every part of him was tight with terror.

  There was a rending noise and he looked up to see a wide gash tear through the parachute. Wind snagged the rip and suddenly they were somersaulting, spinning wild. Everything was a blur. In the corner of his eye Bo saw Gloom’s parachute dissolve to waving black tendrils, felt them slithering over him. It was a free fall now. He saw a snatch of the ship far above them, then the ground rushing up at them. He knew he was going to die, but all he could think about was Lia in the tank, and how maybe now Violet was in the one beside her.

  A flash of twisted rebar, blackened cement, his shattered reflection in a broken glass window as they plunged past a half-torched skyscraper. Bo knew he was going to die, and then Gloom was wrapping all around him, cocooning him, sealing over his eyes so all he saw was black. All he could hear was his hammering heart.

  22

  Violet woke up to sunshine streaming through her bedroom window. For a moment she was adrift, disembodied, but then she felt her sunk-in-the-middle mattress under her and sheets twined around her legs. She rolled over and sank her face into her pillow, breathing the familiar smell in deep. She ran her hands down her body and her breath caught. It was right, again. It put an ache in her throat.

  “Not real,” she mumbled into the pillow. “Not real.”

  She’d been caught. She remembered that. Remembered the long agonizing ride back down the elevator shaft and the whirlybird who’d been waiting for her with its syringe glinting, dripping sedative. Now she could be anywhere. Inside a pod, inside a tank. Inside her head, that much she knew for sure.

  “Violet!” called her mom’s voice. “Are you up?”

  For a moment she wondered what would happen if she just stayed in the bed. But wherever she was, they hadn’t killed her. It would have been easy to impale her how they’d done to Quentin and dump her body off the ship. She was still alive. They had her plugged into their illusion again. That meant they wanted to talk, and she figured she didn’t want to piss them off any more than she already had helping Bo escape.

  She got up, intentionally ignoring the mirror. Instead she slipped out the door, toward the kitchen. In the hallway she saw photos of herself as a little girl, photos that had never existed. There was one of her and her mom and her dad at some beach, all smiling and sunburned. Had those been there the first time? Had she missed them?

  In the kitchen, the younger, prettier, happier version of her mom was sitting at the table. She had no sketchbook this time. Her hands were folded on top of each other on the wood.

  “Hello, Violet,” she said.

  “Hi,” Violet said. She nearly called her Mom, but it stuck in her mouth. This wasn’t her mom. It was just as much a photo as the ones in the hallway frames.

  “Why did you renege?” her not-mom asked. “We thought you wanted this.” She waved a hand to encompass her house, her body, her life. “We were willing to make heaven for you. In exchange we wanted what grows in Bo.”

  Violet gave a start hearing her say Bo instead of Boniface, how the othermothers did, but of course this was all happening inside her head. Maybe she was clamped already. Maybe she was down on the ground, wandering, smiling.

  “I went back on it because this is all bullshit,” Violet said quietly. “How I think of bullshit.”

  “We do not need what grows in Bo any longer,” her not-mom said, lacing her fingers together, smiling kindly. “Another key is nearly ready. Perhaps two. But you freed our ancient enemy, and that cannot be excused.”

  “He doesn’t seem that scary,” Violet said.

  “We would have made heaven for you, Violet,” her not-mom said, no longer smiling. “We can make hell too.�
�

  Violet felt a hot, sick fear run through her at the words. Before she could say anything else, before she could argue or plead, the bright clean kitchen flickered and fell away.

  “Bo. Bo. Bo. Bo. Bo.”

  Bo wrenched his eyes open, ready for impact, ready to slam and splatter against the paving. The scream caught in his throat as he realized he wasn’t falling. He was lying on his stomach on solid ground. He found himself in pieces, his cheek resting against his forearm, his hip pressed into what felt like loose dirt. Dry grass tickled his belly. His shirt was off. He was on the ground. He was alive.

  “Are you going to stay awake this time, Bo?” came Gloom’s voice in his ear.

  “What happened?” Bo asked, or tried to ask. His tongue was thick and dry. He could sideways-see Gloom’s immaculate black shoes and pant legs.

  “Your body is not so fragile as it looks,” Gloom said, crouching beside him. “Congratulations. You survived the fall. You are intact. Barely damaged.”

  Bo licked his lips. “You wrapped me up,” he said hoarsely. Memories were swimming back up through his aching head. “Before we hit.”

  “Yes,” Gloom said. “I tried to cushion your delicate animal spine and skull.”

  “My spine’s not delicate,” Bo muttered. He got up to his hands and knees and retched, his head spinning again. Gloom’s words came back. “Barely damaged,” he echoed. “What’s that mean, barely damaged?” He felt numb through his whole body and had a sudden fear that there was a rib sticking out of his chest, or his shin was snapped in two. Gloom came apart all the time. He might not even understand injuries.

  “Contusions,” Gloom said.

  Bo grimaced. “What?”

  “That is a word that means bruising.”

  “What about my head?” Bo asked. “I got knocked out when we hit?”

  “Your brain collided with the inside of your delicate animal skull,” Gloom said.

  “Concussion,” Bo said. The nausea welled up again. His Parasite was awake and whipping around. He tried to calm it, putting a hand to his stomach. “My shirt?” he asked thickly. “Oh. My back?”

  “The freezing gas is more dangerous to me than it is to you,” Gloom said. “There was no permanent damage and there were no burst blood vessels. I looked.”

  Bo’s head was starting to clear. He could still feel where the jet of gas had raked across his back, but it was muted now, more pins-and-needles tingling than an actual burn. The rest of him was sore and aching, and he was ravenously hungry. The gray sky made it hard to tell, but he guessed it was afternoon already.

  His stomach gave a loud gurgle.

  “I found food for you,” Gloom said. “It is sealed. You requested that, the last time you were speaking.” His long pale hand reached down into view and set a tin on the ground. Bo grabbed it and yanked it open so quick he nearly cut his thumb on the edge. It was tinned peaches. He scooped the contents into his mouth with two fingers, then drizzled the syrup onto his tongue. His stomach gurgled even louder.

  “I assume you need to eat in order to repair the damage to your body,” Gloom said, setting down a second tin.

  “I told you to get this?” Bo asked. He rocked back into sitting position to wolf down the second tin. He licked his thumb and fingers, getting every last bit of the juice.

  “You seemed lucid at the time,” Gloom said. He was still standing, staring down at him. “A host saw me when I was looking for the food. A child. I think I frightened him.”

  Bo wasn’t listening. He leaned over as his stomach heaved and at least half the peaches came back up in a yellow-orange mush. He spat.

  “Is that how you typically eat?” Gloom asked. “You refine and regurgitate it first?”

  Bo shook his head, clutching his stomach. His Parasite twitched. When the nausea had passed, he shakily stood up, walked a few feet away from the vomit, and sat again. He realized they were on a lawn. The house behind them was open, the front door creaking back and forth on its hinges, and he figured it was where Gloom had gotten the food from. He wondered if there were wasters inside.

  “Water,” he said. “Was there water in there?”

  Gloom held out a capped bottle. “You asked that before too.”

  It was lukewarm and tasted like plastic, but it was better than nothing. Bo drank it slowly until his thirst was quenched and his stomach soothed. Gloom watched him intently, expectantly. As Bo’s thoughts sharpened, he felt a creeping dread. They had escaped from the ship, but Lia was still up there and they’d lost Violet too. And if Gloom couldn’t fly, how were they ever going to get back aboard? He kept sipping the water, to make it last, to give him time to think.

  But he didn’t have a plan. He’d never had a plan, not really. Just stupid little fantasies that skipped to him already halfway through rescuing everyone.

  “You said this ship is the only ship,” he muttered, grasping for threads to tie together. “So if the rest of the world is okay, why hasn’t anyone come to help us? Is it the mist?”

  “Your city is being contained,” Gloom said. “That is why the sky does not change. That is why there is not enough sunlight.”

  “And you can’t get past the end of the world either?” Bo asked. “I mean, through the container?”

  Gloom gave a rueful shrug that reminded him of Violet. Maybe he’d copied it off her. “Perhaps I could,” he said. “But only if there was more sunlight. Do you know paradoxes, Bo?”

  “No,” Bo said. “I don’t know plans either.” He ballooned his cheeks around a long sigh. “You got ideas?” he asked. “For getting the other keys?”

  “I am a saboteur,” Gloom said, his voice flat and accusing. “I react and improvise. I do not have enough motes for complex strategy.”

  He stared at him with his shiny black eyes and said nothing else. For a moment Bo wanted to scream at him how he was only a kid, and everything was getting too big. The keys, the door, the other ships waiting to come through and end the world. Then he remembered what he’d told Gloom up on the ship. About trusting them. About coming back with a plan.

  “I bet you wish you killed all the ones in all the tanks,” he said heavily. “And then mine and Violet’s too. Right?”

  “Perhaps,” Gloom said.

  Bo was twisting the empty plastic bottle in his hands, crumpling it. He stopped. Looked from the bottle to the scattered tins. Something Gloom had said earlier floated back to the surface.

  “What did you say about a kid?” he asked. “When you were looking for food. Someone saw you?”

  “Yes,” Gloom said. “I think I frightened him.”

  One of the Lost Boys. Bo wondered who it had been. Jon never looked frightened. Maybe Elliot out foraging, or maybe Gloom had thought Bree was a boy. Everything that had happened aboard the ship had driven the other Lost Boys out of his head entirely.

  “Are there many free children?” Gloom asked. “Did they escape?”

  “Yeah, some,” Bo said, feeling a new kind of dread now as he realized his best, maybe his only, option. And he wasn’t trying to decide whether or not to do it either. He was only trying to decide how.

  He rubbed his neck where he could still almost feel the ghost of a knife. It would be different, this time. He knew what he was getting into. He had Gloom to back him up.

  “Yeah, there’s some,” Bo repeated. “And there’s one who makes plans. Who’s always got one.”

  Gloom leaned forward, his face switching over to look intrigued. “Is he known as a great tactician?” he asked. “Is he the one who sent you to the ship?”

  “Sort of,” Bo said, with an icy ball growing in his stomach, his Parasite flexing at the memory. “Yeah. Sort of. He was trying to kill me.”

  “You have very untrustworthy friends, Bo,” Gloom said. “You are lucky to have met me.”

  Bo grimaced. “Right.”

  23

  Something prodded the back of Violet’s knee, making her whole leg buckle. She spun around. It was Stephen
Fletcher, grinning his wolfish grin.

  “Why are you walking funny?” he asked.

  Violet ignored him, looking around. Mustard-yellow floors, dull gray lockers scribbled over with Sharpie, humming fluorescents tubed along the ceiling. Junior high school.

  “Really?” she muttered.

  “You walk like you have a cock up your ass,” Stephen Fletcher said. Still small and beady-eyed and vicious, just like she remembered him. But junior high seemed like a lifetime ago. So did high school. So did everything before the ship came down.

  She dropped the binder from her arms. Loose-leaf and a few splintery black pens spilled out on the yellow floor. She turned and headed down the empty hallway, dimly aware of Stephen Fletcher trailing after her, still running his mouth. Hell was a bit of a moving target, she figured. It definitely didn’t involve her school bullies anymore.

  Still, she was hoping there might be a way out of the illusion. She’d never tried it when she was in her perfect house. She hadn’t even opened the front door. Better to be looking for an escape than sitting around while simulated assholes tried to lower her self-esteem.

  On cue, a shove between her shoulder blades sent her stumbling into a bulletin board. “Faggot,” Stephen said. “You faggot.”

  Violet took a deep breath. In, out. She picked one of the thumbtacks out of the cork, sagging one corner of a sign-up sheet. Then she spun around, grabbed Stephen’s wrist, and shoved the point of the tack into his open palm. She ground it deep with the heel of her hand for good measure. He wailed.

  She set off back down the hall, opening doors at random. Some of them had normal-looking classrooms behind them; others had only a white haze, sometimes with a narrow slice of floor, wall, desk. The ones she’d never been inside, maybe. Stephen trailed after her, whining about his hand and telling a teacher, but they seemed to be the only ones in the school. She stomped on his foot a few times to slow him down.

  She knew he wasn’t real, but it was still a little disturbing how easy she found hurting him. Violence came almost naturally to her, now that she’d killed a dozen othermothers. Now that she’d spent so long listening to Wyatt.