by Hayley Stone
Camus comes back and takes my hand—a bold action that would have been unthinkable a year ago. He’s unafraid to look at me, unlike when I first arrived at McKinley. Six months after I bled to death in his arms.
“Are you all right?” His green eyes are gentle, his tone careful. We’re still learning each other, learning what it means to be us again.
I try to smile. “Just tired.”
“No wonder. You’ve been going nonstop.”
“You can say that again. It feels like I’m in a juggling act—except I don’t know how to juggle, and the balls are actually grenades, and all the grenades are already missing their pins. And they’re on fire.” I sag against Camus dramatically. “Save me from this horrible extreme juggling fate, Commander Forsyth.”
He laughs a little, getting that small crease at the top of his nose I love so much. I desperately want to kiss him then, and forget—just for a little while—all the things that can go wrong tomorrow. But I restrain myself for now. There are quite a few cars here with roomy backseats. Call me an optimist.
Camus clears his throat and recovers his posture. “I’ll do what I can. Beginning now.”
He returns to the projector and removes its cap. A cone of colored light shoots toward the tarpaulin screen, illuminating a million dust motes in between. The picture isn’t the greatest, crinkled in places by the plastic tarp, but I immediately recognize the film. Moulin Rouge.
“Camus Forsyth.” A smile spreads slowly across my lips. “Is this a date?”
“I wanted to do something special for you,” he tells me quietly, almost as if he’s embarrassed about it. Camus offers me his arm and leads me toward an old, beat-up Chevrolet Impala parked in the best spot, right in front of the screen. “I remembered how you used to love drive-in theaters. And this god-awful movie, for whatever reason.”
“Aww. Don’t be jealous of Ewan. You know you’re the only Brit for me.”
The Impala’s front window is gone, and the passenger-side door is riddled with bullet holes, but the interior looks to be in good shape. Other than a few questionable stains. Best not to think about it.
As we settle inside, Camus reaches forward to sweep away some pieces of glass from the dashboard.
“When did you have time to do all this?” I squint at him, then feel foolish. “And when did you get a haircut?” I finger his dark, shortened locks. Even slicked back, they still have a tendency to curl.
“A couple days ago,” he answers, the corners of his lips twitching. “You only just noticed?”
“Guess I’m more burnt-out than I thought.”
“But to answer your first question, I had some help.”
“Let me guess…
“Hanna,” we both say at the same time. Of course Hanna helped orchestrate this whole thing. She loves grand romantic gestures.
“Moore and Lefevre helped me move the cars.” Rankin Moore, Hanna’s husband, and Orpheus Lefevre, one of my most trusted soldiers. Reliable sorts. They were both with Camus and me at Juneau.
“And Ulrich was in on this whole thing, too, I take it?” Camus nods. No wonder Ulrich was in such a good mood. He was helping to pull the wool over my eyes. “Hey! He made me walk all the way to Command and ride the express elevator down.”
“Shh. It’s starting.”
Camus wraps his arm around my shoulders, unexpectedly, then glances at me with a guarded look, as if wondering if the contact’s okay.
I smile back. It’s more than okay. It’s perfect.
As I rest against him, the tension loosens from my body all at once, like a snapped wire. My throat tightens; a sharp thorn grows in my sinuses. It’s not just stress over the coalition that’s gotten me all emotional, but the fact that we’re here at all. Alive. Together.
We should both be dead. I should be dead.
I’m worried it could still happen. I’m worried I won’t be able to save either of us, when it comes down to it. Camus lived for six months without me, and it nearly killed his soul. I can’t imagine what I’d do in his place. Samuel’s made it clear: there are no more clones, not of me, and certainly not of Camus. With so much of his research destroyed when Brooks went up in flames, including the local servers where copies of the previous Rhona’s memories were stored, Samuel’s convinced he won’t be able to re-create the same results as before. No one’s getting another shot at this.
I bury my hand inside Camus’s jacket, flattening it against his chest, where I can feel his heart beating. Racing, a little. He looks down at me, the light from the screen creating movement on his face, color stretching and retracting over his cheekbones. This time, I do kiss him, letting the heat of his mouth cleanse me of all worries.
—
The movie finishes in what feels like a blink of the eye—partly because I sleep for the last third of it. As much as I love Moulin Rouge, I’m not too broken up about missing the end; that’s when everything begins falling apart, anyway. I much prefer the first two acts, where it’s all wacky dance numbers and longing looks across a piano.
The good news is I still have time to visit with the Chinese representatives on the dormitory level. And the bad news is…I still have time to visit with the Chinese on the dormitory level.
Camus offers to accompany me, though he insists we take the elevator instead of the stairs. He won’t admit it, but I think his old injuries are bothering him again, the gunshot wounds that almost killed him in Juneau. I noticed him favoring his left side when I straddled him in the Impala, wincing a little at my urgency, and now he keeps rubbing his chest whenever he thinks I’m not looking.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” I’m only half teasing. Since getting back to McKinley, we’ve tried to be gentle with one another, physically and emotionally, which has largely meant no sex. Of course, that doesn’t exclude other fun activities—we’ve gotten creative learning each other’s bodies again, especially mine. Still, the last thing I want is for one of our make-out sessions to end in stitches. Not only would I feel terrible about it, but it’d be pretty embarrassing trying to explain what happened to Matt down in Medical.
“Hardly,” he replies, but I can’t tell whether he’s telling the truth or not. In public, Camus is sometimes another person entirely. Cool, rational. Untouchable. So much so that some have taken to calling him the Iron Lord behind his back. Somehow, they make it sound less than complimentary.
“You really should let Matt take a look at you,” I suggest. “Make sure everything’s still healing properly.”
“I’m fine. Truly,” he adds at my skeptical look. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
I link arms with him, snuggling close as we hit the back of the queue for the elevators. “Maybe I like worrying about you.”
“I wish you’d spend more time worrying about you.” His gaze is troubled. I feel his hand tighten on mine. He won’t speak openly about his fears, either, but he doesn’t have to. I hear them when he sleeps, tossing and turning, crying softly, “Rhona, Rhona, no,” even when I’m right there beside him. Calming only when I wrap my arms around him and press my face to his shaking back, whispering the words he needs to hear. “I’m here, Camus, I’m still here.”
“How’s this? I’ll make you a deal. I won’t die if you don’t.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I don’t know what else you want me to say. I don’t know what I can do to convince you I’m safe.”
He sighs. “It’s not about convincing me of anything. I just want you to know the resistance doesn’t own you. You don’t owe the world anything more than you’ve already given.”
“I know that,” I say, though there’s a difference between knowing something in your head and knowing it in your heart. I’m afraid, in this case, it’s the former rather than the latter. “I’m not interested in becoming a martyr, Camus.” At least that one’s true.
Camus nods stiffly. “I—”
“LONG!”
Both Camus and I turn at the sound of
someone hollering my name from down the hall.
A powerfully built black woman is headed our way, pushing past people like they’re slalom gates and she doesn’t care about losing time. Her dreads have been wrangled into a bun at the back of her head, making her angular features even more dramatic. She wouldn’t have looked out of place on the wall of an Egyptian temple. Coming right ahead of a plague, maybe.
“You and I need to talk,” Zelda says to me, even before she’s reached conversational distance. Her eyes dart quickly to my companion. “Camus.”
“Zelda,” Camus says.
“Actually, Zelda, I was just heading to—”
She doesn’t let me finish. “Don’t care. Now!”
I look at Camus. “Why don’t you go on ahead? The Chinese seem to like you better anyway.” Zelda snorts. I can’t tell whether it’s a sound of amusement or disapproval. “I’ll meet you in a few.”
“Are you sure?” He cuts his gaze toward Zelda.
Zelda crosses her arms. Tick tock, her expression seems to say.
“Yeah,” I answer. “It’ll be fine.” Probably.
Camus boards one of the elevators and Zelda drags me out of the line and into a small alcove nearby that looks like it used to house some kind of circuit breaker. The elevator lobby is large enough that we can speak with some privacy, as long as we stay inside the alcove, where we’re partially concealed by the large leaves of a fake philodendron. Hey, when did we get that? The phony plant stands in a wicker basket, and it has Hanna written all over it. No one’s tried to make McKinley feel more homey and normal than Hanna.
“All right. What fire needs putting out now?” I ask Zelda.
“First, you give the Chinese and Russians unfiltered access to the military level—”
“It’s not unfiltered—”
“They’ve been all inside my machines!” Zelda says. “That feels pretty damn unfiltered to me.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. This feels like it’s going to be a long conversation. “For starters, they’re not your machines.” I talk louder over Zelda’s objections. “They’re property of McKinley base, and as such, we can do whatever we feel like with them. More importantly, we need an outside perspective on their programming. Who knows if the evolution of the machines is the same globally, or if the higher echelon operate them differently based on environment? If there is even the slightest chance that the Chinese can spot a flaw in the kind we deal with, don’t you think that’s worth the risk of them screwing something up?”
“You think I wouldn’t have discovered a flaw by now, if one exists? I helped program the damn things in the first place!”
Nearby, a couple of soldiers in outdated Taiwanese uniforms turn, eying us suspiciously.
“Maybe keep your voice down when you decide to claim credit for creating our unfriendly robot overlords, huh?” I smile at the eavesdroppers, and eventually they shuffle forward in line.
“Like I was the only one.” She snorts. “At least I’m willing to own up to it.”
“Is that all?”
On the elevator to the far right, a feminine-looking Korean man is standing too close to the sensor, eyes down on a tablet, totally oblivious to the doors trying and failing to close behind him.
“One more thing,” Zelda says, “Your supreme worship could’ve at least given me a heads-up before letting the Chinese bring their own machines into the base.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah. There’s like a dozen of them in the training rooms. Few in my workshop. They’ve been showing up all week.” Zelda frowns. “You’re saying you know nothing about that?”
Even distracted by the situation over at the elevator—some Chinese nationals are trying to get the man to move, but the latter’s not getting it, partly because of the language barrier—a queasy feeling fills my stomach, like I’ve just swallowed eight ounces of castor oil.
Maybe Zelda’s right. Maybe the Chinese brought their own machines for testing, or the Russians did, or the French-Canadians. Maybe the council approved it without consulting me. Maybe there’s nothing to be concerned about, but I’m not in the business of ignoring my instincts.
“Get on comms. We need to lock down Military,” I tell Zelda, leading her from the alcove, and turning toward the elevators. “Right—”
The whole lobby shakes. Plaster drops from the ceiling in a tsunami of chunks and dust. The wall to my left balloons and bursts open like a pustule, belching smoke.
At the same time, there’s a sound like an oncoming freight train. Metal screaming.
People screaming.
The elevator car sways moments before an enormous fireball bursts forth, blowing the doors to both shafts—including the one finally beginning to close—entirely from the wall. One door flies right past me, slamming a woman into the wall behind her. The other takes off a man’s arm like a commercial paper cutter.
I barely have time to shield myself with my arms before the inferno hits, engulfing me in flames. My ears burst, silencing the roaring wall of heat and debris. I’m unexpectedly airborne, but only for a few seconds before my head bounces off something hard. Then, darkness.
Chapter 3
My eyelids stick when I try opening my eyes, glued by a stream of blood flowing from my forehead. I feel for the wound with shaking fingers; it’s close to my hairline, but I can’t tell how bad it is. When I pull my hand back, it looks like I’ve been picking blackberries. I resist the insane urge to suck the red from my fingers.
Get up, I think, almost saying the words aloud to motivate myself. I manage to get my hands and knees beneath me, then push. My skeleton feels loose, as though it’s sliding around inside me, my bones little more than gelatin. It hurts to breathe.
Up, dammit. I finally struggle onto my feet, but lift my head too suddenly. A wave of nausea bends me over. I clutch my knees and vomit bile speckled with blood. Oh, delightful. After it’s over, my throat stings like I’ve gargled salt water. Probably a good thing I didn’t take Camus up on his offer of breakfast this morning.
Camus.
Oh, God. Camus was just in the elevator!
The realization pushes through me like a hot blade, cramping my stomach. My gorge rises again, but I have nothing left inside me to expel.
I circle in place—a spinning compass, trying to think, trying to get my bearings.
Around me, death. Disfigurement. Exposed bones and barbecued flesh. The smell pushes into my nostrils. I catalog the horror almost clinically—I don’t know how else to process it. The explosion chewed through the lobby in a matter of seconds, replacing people with bodies. Estranged limbs. Bloody, lifeless fat.
I keep my eyes from the elevator.
I don’t want to see what happened to the people inside the car. The Korean man preoccupied with his tablet. The visiting Chinese soldiers who just wanted to get where they were going. They died inconvenienced—though maybe, in the end, that was a blessing. Death would have been the furthest thing from their minds.
Think, Rhona. What’s happened?
A bomb. Must be.
Okay, so what are you going to do about it?
Something. Can’t stay here.
Where should I go? Who do I help first? What am I supposed to do?
I don’t have answers to those last questions, and it’s nearly impossible to concentrate with the nest of hornets buzzing in my ears, anyway. The only way out is through.
As I begin shambling forward, my foot connects with something solid. Someone.
Zelda. She’s on her back, eyes closed, not moving. I wipe the blood from my eyes, but I still can’t discern whether or not she’s breathing. If she is, it’s very shallow.
I move to my knees, ignoring the bolt of pain that shoots through my spine; I worry I’ve pinched a nerve in my back, but it’ll have to wait, regardless. I search Zelda’s sooty neck for a pulse. As I do so, her eyes flick frantically beneath her eyelids, and she lets out a moan. Followed shortly by a choice four-letter w
ord.
“Atta girl. Come on, Zelda. Help me out here.” I insert myself beneath one of her arms—the one that doesn’t appear dislocated from her shoulder. She cries out in pain, but doesn’t fight me. Thank God.
“Long?” She slouches against my shoulder. “—the hell happened?”
“Bomb. I think.” I grit my teeth. It’s an effort getting us both upright. “How bad are you hurt?”
She’s silent, her eyes taking in the room.
“Zelda?”
“I’ll survive,” she says quietly. “You?”
“I think I’m okay, for the most part. Hard to tell with all the adrenaline.”
“The machines did this.” Her voice shakes with anger. “They’re inside the base. They did this, those fuckers. Ahh.” I help her snap her arm back into place, just like her brother once did for me. She grimaces as I lean her against the wall, next to one of the philodendron plants whose fake leaves have turned partly to ash. It reeks of burnt plastic. Better than many of the other odors filling the lobby. “What are you doing?”
“I need to check for other survivors.” In truth, I want to get the hell out of here, find Camus—if he’s still alive. But I can’t simply abandon those here.
“Long, the machines are still in the base,” Zelda says, slipping along the wall, trying to follow me as I hunt for signs of life. “We need to get to Command. We need to get armed. Stop wasting time. They’re dead.”
“No,” I say, fumbling with a woman’s sleeve to get at her pulse. The side of her face is raw and pulpy, like meat that went through a grinder. She’s wearing a nice watch, though it’s an hour off. I’m surprised the blast didn’t stop it altogether. “I think this woman’s alive.”
“Leave her. We’re dead if we stay.”
