by G. P. Ching
Sweat breaks out across my forehead and I grip my uninjured stomach. This is not my memory; it’s David’s. But the experience feels real. Another flash of silver passes over my shoulder and impales a tree beside me. My borrowed memory urges me into motion.
I take flight, weaving between the trees in a zigzag pattern. A crossbow requires a straight shot. My attacker will have four arrows before having to reload. Most soldiers can’t fire while running, so my best bet is to pour on the speed and make aim difficult.
Another arrow follows, but I dodge it with skill I never knew I had. It skims the bark of a tree next to my shoulder, grazing the fabric of my bag. That’s three. One more and he’ll have to reload. I run fast, stealing glances over my shoulder at my attacker. I see nothing but dark clothing and the glint of the cross-shaped weapon.
UGG! Half my body slams into a tree and the intense pain makes me double over. My stomach clenches as if I’ll vomit. There’s a pause and a click, the swish of feet in pine needles. Another arrow is loosed.
This one veers around the trees and nicks my shoulder before landing in the bark next to me, covered in my blood. Without a doubt, I’m in grave danger. I’ve never seen an arrow travel like that. My borrowed memory is true. The sun is rising. I have mere moments before my attacker has full capabilities.
A series of scrapes and clicks in the distance signals that my attacker is reloading. I force myself forward, my injured shoulder soaking the arm of my hoodie in warm blood. The tickle at the back of my brain urges me to spark. I could protect myself with my power. I could fry my enemy with the flick of one hand. But I hold back. If the person hunting me is from the Green Republic, the worst thing I can do is reveal who I am. Even being shot is better than being detected as a living, breathing Lydia Lane. They’d take me to CGEF immediately, and I’d end up Dr. Konrad’s plaything.
The first rays of sunlight beam between the trunks of the trees. The low twang of another arrow being released cuts through the woods around me. I’m out of time. I cut sideways, behind a tree, and the arrow takes out a chunk of bark near my ear. With a yelp, I bolt forward, sprinting for the next tree. Cold steel barely misses my cheekbone and this time the next twang comes faster. I dive for the shelter of a thicket.
I’m not fast enough.
The arrow bites into my calf and drives deep, burrowing to the bone. I trip, crumpling, instinctively guarding my internal organs. My cheek plows into the forest floor and I squeeze my eyes shut against the onslaught of pine needles and grit. My exposed skin shreds. I groan in pain. Mercifully, I come to a stop in a mass of ferns, soft enough and with some coverage of my injured body. From this angle, I can see the arrow protruding from my calf. I reach for it and it buzzes in response, vibrating in the wound it’s caused. It burrows deeper. I can’t help it. Despite my desire to hide, I scream.
Black boots step toward me, the business end of a crossbow just within my field of vision. “Don’t move or it’ll break your bone,” a man’s voice orders.
The voice sounds familiar and I turn my bloodied face to see my attacker. “David?” I rasp.
“Oh crap. Lydia?” David reaches for me and I make the mistake of reaching back. The sound of my leg bone cracking seems to echo. He curses under his breath and grabs the end of the arrow, pushing a button near the feathers. “This is going to hurt,” he says, and then he rips it from my flesh.
My eyes flutter open inside a bright white room. I’m lying on my back on a narrow bed with my injured leg elevated on a large pillow. I try to lift it and notice it’s wrapped in a soft, rubbery material filled with liquid. There’s a cord running from my ankle to a place I can’t see. My lower leg throbs in protest with my movement, and I drop it back onto the white padding.
“Don’t move it. The bone is shattered.” David approaches the bed. He’s replaced his black outfit with light-wash jeans and a loose-fitting white shirt. His hair is longer than I remember, almost to his shoulders. “Dr. Stone did surgery to set your tibia, but it’s going to take a few days to heal, even with your superhuman qualities and the healing boot. If we had a full-body tub like the Stuarts, it might go faster, but that was one of a kind.”
“Where are we?” I ask, glancing at the white cabinetry and the rows of bottles and boxes around the room.
“Infirmary. Inside the reactor. I’m sorry I shot you, but I thought you were the enemy. It’s been months since I visited the preservation. I wasn’t expecting you to change your mind.”
“You must’ve known I’d eventually come for Korwin,” I say. “Where is he? I need to speak with him.” My eyes flick toward the door. All I want to do is tell him how sorry I am for what happened. I’ve let him down in the worst possible way. I should have stood up for him. And he should have fought harder for me.
David’s brows dip over his nose. “Korwin isn’t here.”
I stiffen, searching his face for some sign he might be joking. All the blood drains from my head and the icy chill from its loss seeps lower. “He left Hemlock Hollow three weeks ago.” I push up on my elbows. My temples pound and the room spins. One side of my face feels like it’s on fire. My shoulder gives out under the effort of sitting up and I flop back down, moaning.
“Whoa,” David says, gently pressing my shoulders into the narrow bed. “The anesthesia we have here isn’t like what you get in the hospital. Your nervous system is going to need some time to recover. Not to mention, you’ve suffered some serious injuries.”
“I hurt everywhere.” I close my eyes against the pain.
“The Solarbow arrows are heat seeking. When there’s enough sun to power them, they lock onto the target and are programmed not to stop. Without intervention, the arrow would have either passed right through your leg or burrowed deeper into your body. Makes hunting out here a hell of a lot easier but can do some real damage to a human being.”
“I know,” I murmur, swallowing hard. “I remember. Not just my leg but you being hit in the stomach. Thank you, Nanomem.” I roll my eyes. I mean it sarcastically but David doesn’t seem to take it that way.
He smiles and pulls up the corner of his shirt. Just above his waistband is a jagged scar, raised in sections like the stitches were hastily made or maybe the wound became infected before it healed. “I thought your defensive maneuvers were exceptional.” He smoothes his shirt back down. “Good to know the Nanomem is still working. But why didn’t you spark?”
“I thought you were a Green. I’m not going back to CGEF. Not ever.”
“Understood.” He nods his head. “Smart girl.”
I roll my head back on the pillow and stare at a white wall, trying to block out the pain. “I need your help to find Korwin. What if he’s been captured by the Greens?”
“We would have heard the drumbeats. Even if it wasn’t made public, we’ve got eyes and ears all over Crater City.”
“But then where could he be?” My voice is high and tight.
“I don’t know.”
Images of the day I found Korwin, wired to the drainer, white faced and spotted with sores, make my stomach turn and my heart flutter. Pressure builds within my skull, and I push myself up again, ignoring the pain. I can’t rest. I can’t be here if Korwin is captured again. “You have to do something! You have to find him.”
He shoves me back against the mattress, harder than before. “Easy,” he commands. “I’ll send the word out. The Liberty Party is broken but it’s not dead. We’ll find him.”
Our eyes meet, and his cold blue stare softens slightly. David is a harsh trainer, a selfish teammate, and an accomplished triple agent. He knows how to fight and he knows how to lie. Still, I believe him. He’ll look for Korwin if for no other reason than to try to convince us to join up with his cause.
“Why would Korwin leave Hemlock Hollow if he wasn’t coming here?” David’s eyes narrow and I can see him processing the risk. To the Liberty Party, Korwin is like a missing atomic missile, too dangerous to be unaccounted for.
“He was k
icked out.”
“For using his power? Did he kill someone?”
“No,” I say emphatically. “He was caught painting a picture of me.”
“Painting?”
“Art is considered vain and without purpose to plain folk.”
“Plain folk.” David laughs. “Does anyone there know just how un-plain you are?”
Ashamed, I turn my attention to a row of drawers across from my bed. Each one is labeled with a name scrawled in black marker. One says David, another Charlie. I stop reading when David shifts into my line of sight.
“When they kicked Korwin out, why didn’t you go with him?”
“I’m baptized. I committed to the Ordnung. I couldn’t leave without risking excommunication. I hoped Korwin would return and repent, be accepted back into the fold.”
“What changed?”
“I might have been shunned if I stayed.”
“Why?”
I hesitate at first, not wanting to admit what I’ve done, even to David. He’s a killer and the last with any right to judge, but my instinct is to hide my sin. I chew my lip but eventually crumble under his expectant stare.
“There was a flasher.”
David’s expression is carefully blank. “A drone flasher?”
“The only kind I know of. Korwin and I found one and destroyed it. I found another. I fried it before it could transmit. That’s why I had to leave.”
“Because plain folk don’t shoot lightning from their hands.”
I nod. My eyes swim in unshed tears.
He turns away. “I’m going to get the doctor. He’ll want to check on your recovery from the anesthesia. Once we get you up, we’ll introduce you to the rest of the team. Hemlock Hollow might not need you, Lydia, but we do.”
“No need,” a man’s voice says. “I’m here.” The doctor extends his hand toward me as he strides confidently to my bedside. Under the white lab coat, I can tell he is a soldier, straight backed like David but broader through the chest. His hair is dark but graying and he has a wide scar on one side of his forehead above compassionate brown eyes. He looks familiar, although I can’t place him right away. “I’m Dr. Charles Stone, Charlie. Welcome to the new headquarters of the rebellion. We’re glad to have you here.”
Dr. Stone. Charlie Stone. A memory flashes through my brain and the white walls melt away. A younger Charlie holds the end of the arrow protruding from my—I mean, David’s—abdomen. He presses a handful of snow against the wound. “This is going to hurt,” he says. Snow blows across my cheek. I squeeze his hand and take a deep breath.
The echo of my scream as he pulls the arrow from my side bounces off the white walls. My body is shaking hard enough for David and Charlie to have to hold me down.
“What’s happening?” Charlie asks David.
“The arrow,” I rasp to Charlie. “You pulled it from my stomach.”
Charlie looks at David in horror. They help me turn on my side as my body seizes and vomit rises in my throat.
11
When I can think again, David is gone and only Charlie remains in the room. He’s working at the counter, peering through a microscope with his back to me.
“You’re one of the Alpha Eight,” I whisper. My throat burns. How long did I throw up?
Charlie glances over his shoulder at me. “You’re awake. Are you in much pain?”
I think about the question for a second. I’m stiff and foggy but as long as I don’t move, there is no pain, only numbness. “Just a little stiff,” I say. “And it’s hard to think.”
“Good. I gave you some morphine. It’s got some side effects compared to the newer drugs, but it works in a pinch. Unfortunately, it’s all we’ve got out here.”
“How are we able to be here at all? I thought the reactor melted down?”
“Rebels have used the reactor since the meltdown,” Charlie says. “One of the original Liberty Party founders, an activist named Louis Kowalski, developed the technology to absorb the radiation from the environment. Even the Green Republic can’t do what he did all those years ago. And thankfully, they don’t know it’s possible. Those of us who survived did so by coming here. Unfortunately, Louis died from radiation poisoning implementing his life’s work. Little did he know, he saved the rest of us and your entire community.”
“Wait, so there was a meltdown?” I ask from my bed. “I thought it was faked.”
“Oh, the meltdown was very real. Louis was working here as a pre-revolution scientist when it happened. When everyone else evacuated, he saw the writing on the wall and stayed, sacrificing himself to lay the groundwork for the rebellion. He’d used his background in proteomics and biogenetics to engineer bacteria that could feed on radiation. The project was something he hoped he’d never have to use but his foresight mitigated the effects of the meltdown. We use a synthetic radiation alternative to keep the Green Republic scientists believing this area is uninhabitable.”
Most of what he’s saying doesn’t make sense to me. Proteomics? I grab my throbbing head.
“Are you all right?”
“Headache,” I say.
“You seem to be having a reaction to the anesthesia. Nanomem causes rogue memories but usually not seizures. I think your unique physiology wreaked havoc on my dosing calculations.”
“Yeah?” I rub my temples. “Will it go away?”
“With time.” Charlie stares at me for a moment, a pensive look in his eyes. “As soon as you’re feeling better, there’s much more you need to know. Now that you are part of the team, we need to bring you up to speed.”
I shake my head. “David should have told you, I’m not part of the team. I came to find Korwin. That’s all. I don’t want to be part of your war.”
“Our war. Our war!” He plunges his hands into the pockets of his lab coat and glares at me, obviously angry or offended, although I’m not sure what I’ve said to cause such a reaction. “Are you ignorant enough to think this isn’t about you?”
“I’m sure it affects me, I just want no part of it.”
“And you think you get to choose?”
“Of course I get to choose. You can’t make a person fight if they don’t want to. I’m a pacifist.”
He tilts his head and gives me a long, hard look. “Even pacifists learn to fight when something’s worth fighting for. The Green Republic won’t wait for you to grow up and figure out you don’t have a choice. If you aren’t fighting for us, you’re fighting for them.”
I open my mouth to say that I’m not fighting for anyone, but I don’t get a chance. An alarm sounds from a watch on his wrist, and he taps a button on the dial.
“While I sincerely hope you change your mind about helping us, I’m afraid this conversation needs to wait until another time.”
He turns to the drawers on the wall and opens the one labeled Charlie. Inside is a gadget that looks like a gun with a vial behind the trigger. With practiced agility, he removes a replacement vial of blue liquid from the drawer, flips off the cap, and with a twist of his pinky finger drops the old vial into a red bin. The new vial snaps into place.
“Seven o’clock,” David says to no one in particular as he enters the room and pulls open the drawer with his name on it. He loads his own gun as Charlie shrugs out of his lab coat and lifts the corner of his shirt slightly. He presses the barrel of the gun to his abdomen and pulls the trigger. The blue fluid drains into his body.
David presses the gun into the side of his neck. I flinch when he pulls the trigger, thinking the injection site looks particularly painful. The entire process flows like a dance, choreographed and efficient.
“How often do you have to do that?” I ask.
“We’ve got the formula down to twice a day,” Charlie says. “Every time the clock hits seven.”
“And you make it yourself now?”
“At first, no. We stole some, and I was able to make a weak alternative. But thanks to David and what he stole from Konrad when he escaped, we were able
to analyze the formula and reproduce it, even make it better.”
“No one told me,” a woman’s voice says from the open door.
My eyes shift from Charlie to the newcomer who is ghost white and frozen in the doorframe. I cannot process her appearance. The woman in the doorway could be my twin if not for her age. Honey brown hair, green eyes, my height.
“Why was I not informed she was here?” she demands of David. She stares at me, dumbfounded, then approaches my bed. “What’s happened to you?”
“I…I…” I can’t make my brain produce words. She’s so familiar. Tears gather and spill from her green eyes. “Do I know you?”
She shakes her head. “No. But I know you. I’ve prayed for years that I would get the opportunity to meet you.” Her fingers burrow into my hand at my side. “My name is Laura Fawn.”
The name evokes a memory, and this time it is not David’s but my own. I see the picture of the Alpha Eight and David’s finger tapping near the woman who looks like me.
“You’re my mother,” I mumble, because my voice isn’t working right. My head is spinning and dark spots dance at the corners of my vision.
She nods and smiles. “I am.”
The whole room starts to shake as flashes of a younger Laura and Michael Fawn come back to me. David’s memory of her belly round with child inside a glass prison. Laura holding me in her arms. Laura using her power to blast her way through a crowd of green uniforms. The memories come fast and hard and shake me to the quick.
“She’s seizing!” Charlie yells, and then they turn me on my side again.
12
“You need a break from the healer,” Charlie says when I’m myself again. “It loses its effectiveness if you wear it for too long.” He removes the electric boot from my leg.
“Where’s Laura?” I look around the room.
