The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

  Tarn pushes his hood back and stares at me.

  “Is this true?” he demands.

  “It is,” I say.

  His eyes go to Nor.

  “I was ready to surrender today. I thought my intended challenger was right. I thought I had been a fool.”

  “But Nor wouldn’t let you give up?” I guess.

  He raises his hands, palms out again. Yes.

  “But . . .” How do I ask this question without offending him? “Tarn, you’re here. Can’t your challenger just . . . take over?”

  Tarn flips his hands palms in.

  “No,” he says, a sonic charge I’ve never felt before snapping through the harmony of his voice. It feels like docking without autopilot. “A Followed can only be replaced by a challenge.”

  “So if you’re not there . . .”

  “He cannot challenge me.”

  Suddenly a lot of things make sense. Tarn might be helping us, but we’re also helping him.

  “Why did you hesitate, then?” I ask. “Why did you make me give you a whole speech to convince you to do something that was going to save your life?”

  “I am Followed,” Tarn says. “I cannot make decisions based solely on my own needs.”

  “So you would have stayed and faced the challenge, if you’d thought helping us was the wrong thing for the Sorrow?”

  “Of course,” he says. “And if your grandfather is still Followed when I return, I will face my challenger anyway. I’m certain of it. And I will deserve it. Because I will have failed.”

  The stark, minor harmony of his voice makes me feel heavy with an exhaustion that isn’t mine. It’s his.

  “I wish we’d never come here,” I say.

  Tarn raises his hands in front of his face, palms out, then flips them in.

  We sit quietly, watching the water and the sky roll past below and above us.

  “The spaceship was Nor’s idea,” Tarn says after a while.

  “Oh?” I say, following his gaze to the Sorrow pilot. “I hope . . . The people on the Prairie . . . none of this is their fault. I know this isn’t the Sorrow’s fault, either, but please don’t—”

  “The True Dark wasn’t built to reach your colony ship,” Tarn says, cutting me off.

  “It wasn’t?” I say, startled. “But . . . the raid. They were stealing raw. I thought . . . What else would you need that much raw for?”

  Tarn draws his mouth up in an O, and a tingling pop of silent Sorrow laughter dances over my skin. “Did you really imagine I’d ask my Takers to risk their lives for such a daydream?”

  “Lieutenant Shelby thought you were using it to print guns,” I say.

  “My brother was very impressed with your firearms,” Tarn says. “I am not. But raw is useful to us, and vital to your way of life. Taking it seemed like the best way to contain your people.”

  The simple arrogance of that rings true. Tarn has never sought out human techonology. Not like his brother did.

  “Nor and I started building True Dark long before the Prairie arrived,” he says, returning to the original subject. “Shortly after I became Followed.”

  “Oh,” I say. Then, because I think he wants to tell me, I ask, “Why?”

  I feel Tarn laugh again, like silent sonic bubbles popping all around us.

  “I asked the same question,” he says. “But Nor is . . . ambitious. She does not fear what she does not know,” Tarn hums. The words are warm and sweet.

  Love. He loves her.

  “Some of my other advisers called the endeavor foolish and wasteful,” he continues. “Even before the Prairie came.”

  “No,” I say, thinking of the look on Chris’s face as he stared up at the beautiful black ship, perched in the darkness. “It’s not a waste. What happened yesterday . . . what my grandfather is doing. That’s wasteful. Your ship is—”

  My flex buzzes with a text, cutting me off.

  I check it with shaking hands. Is it Grandpa? Mom?

  It’s neither. The text is from Lieutenant Shelby. It’s just one word.

  Gotcha.

  “Pull up!” I shout, but it’s too late.

  BOOM!

  A sonic boom slaps the flyer hard to starboard.

  Pain implodes through my healing ribs as I slam against my harness. Chris moans in pain too, feeling gingerly at his injured shoulder as Leela, still disoriented from sleep, fumbles for her flex and the nav app.

  I can see Nor struggling to pull the flyer up away from the choppy water below us.

  “Careful!” I call. “Don’t—” It’s too late. She pushes the engines too hard, overcompensating. The flyer spins out, nearly flipping end over end.

  The rotors sputter and the engines scream, drowning out my friends’ startled swearing and shouting.

  “Nor!” I scream. “Let me—”

  But before I can finish my offer, the flyer levels out.

  Nor snaps out a few Sorrow phrases that feel like panic. Tarn rumbles something back that is both sharp and soothing. I can almost hear Mom’s voice in the harmony of his.

  Take a deep breath, Joanna.

  He’s telling Nor to stay calm.

  “What’s going on?” Chris demands over Tarn’s reply.

  “It’s Shelby,” I say as Leela presses her hands to the wall screen in front of her and zooms in on something moving over the water up ahead. “They’ve figured out where Dr. Brown is.”

  The blur of motion comes into focus abruptly. It’s 3212. The sharp tactical shuttle is making a wide loop to shoot back toward us.

  “She’s going to ram us,” Leela yells at the same time I shout, “Dive!”

  Nor shoves her hands down on the nav app. The flyer drops hard, its rotors nearly skimming the waves.

  3212 hurtles overhead, its wake slapping us backward and down. A screaming whine explodes through the flyer as the port rotors stall.

  Tarn bellows something in Sorrow and Nor spins, hurling her flex into my lap.

  “Fly!” Tarn thrums.

  My hands start moving before my brain has the chance to catch up, slapping down on the app controls and twisting to drag our nose up, out of the waves.

  “Chris!” I yell.

  “On it,” he calls back. He already has the rotor calibration app up on the wall screen in front of him. Leela has the nav app up on the wall screen too; her hands dart over it. Helping me.

  I snap my eyes back to Nor’s flex, fighting to keep our remaining rotor clear of the water.

  “Come on, come on,” Chris mutters as the flyer begins to tilt, leaning toward the waves.

  Beth calls out, “Evacuation procedures—”

  “No,” Chris shouts, cutting her off by slamming his hand against the wall screen. As if on command, the dead rotor roars to life and the flyer rights itself.

  I shove my hands out and up, throwing the flyer back to top speed without bothering to climb up out of the waves.

  “Jo, shouldn’t we—”

  “Another haircut like that from 3212 and this thing is going to come apart,” I say, weaving the flyer through the chop. “Whoever’s flying that thing isn’t that great a pilot. Otherwise they’d have come in at a lower speed so they could loop back around and hit us again while we were down. I don’t think they’ll come this close to the water.”

  Leela swears again as a massive wave licks the belly of the flyer.

  “You sure we should risk it?” Chris says.

  “Yeah,” I say, without hesitating. “I’m sure.”

  My brain has been crowded with doubts for so long, I didn’t remember what sure felt like until just now. But this is just flying. And I know how to fly.

  I take a deep breath and edit out the nervous chatter of my friends and the pounding spatter of the waves. The only thing I want to hear is the high, rhythmic song of the rotors and the rumbling hum of the engines. The groan and shriek of the hull and the gutter of the wings. I let my fingers move with the flyer’s melody, surfing the ship through the spinni
ng air currents and lashing waves.

  “There’s land ahead,” Tarn says, his layered voice ringing with urgency.

  I see it. Green-tinged brown slipping up over the horizon.

  Snick. BOOM!

  3212 shoots overhead again, snapping through the sound barrier for no reason at all.

  “You’re right about that pilot, Joey,” Leela says, watching the shuttle hurtle over the landmass ahead. “Whoever it is, they’re showing off, but they don’t have much control.”

  “They’re going to overshoot Lucille’s camp at that speed,” Nor says. “By a great distance.”

  “But they’ll still beat us there,” Chris points out.

  The thought pulls my focus for less than five seconds. It’s enough.

  The ocean rears up ahead of us, a huge wave crashing through the rotors and sending the flyer into a spinning dive.

  “No!” I scream, twisting my hands to compensate and pulling upward as . . .

  SNAP!

  Smoke starts pouring from the starboard wing.

  “What was that?”

  “Lost a strut,” Leela hisses between clenched teeth as she struggles to help me compensate.

  “It’s still there,” Chris shouts. He’s got the engineering app open on the wall beside his seat. “But it’s cracked.”

  I swear. That strut could take out the rest of the rotor if it snaps at the wrong angle. Worse, it could cut straight through the hull and destroy the whole flyer. We need to shut that rotor down as quickly as possible. That means we need to land.

  “We’re still twenty klicks out,” Jay says.

  “She’ll get us there,” I say, punching the engines. “Please, get us there,” I beg the flyer as we shoot over the churning waves.

  “That strut is pulling away,” Chris cries.

  “We’re seconds away!” I shout.

  “We’re losing it!” he shouts back.

  My fingers move on the nav app. I let them, not trying to let my brain get in the way as I cut thrust completely.

  “Jo—”

  “Trust me,” I breathe, using both hands to hold the nose of the flyer high. I need to maintain our lift for as long as I can. The flyer arches into a long, shallow dive toward the sliver of brown and green on the horizon. It’s growing. Spreading.

  We’re almost there. Gravity and momentum hurling us toward a wide, dark beach studded with spindly trees.

  When I can see their twisting branches, I smack the thrusters back to life. In reverse. The engines scream and a huge sound rips through the flyer as the busted strut tears free.

  The whole flyer tilts violently to port, its broken wing trailing down into the water and . . .

  WHAM!

  The impact of the flyer skidding into a stand of trees snaps me hard against my seat, and pain explodes from my abused rib cage, blowing stars through my vision.

  “Not your smoothest landing, Hotshot.” Jay groans as the flyer shrieks to a stop.

  “You wanna go back and swim in, be my guest,” Leela fires back. She heaves out a breath. “I can’t believe that worked.”

  “I’m not sure it did,” Beth says.

  That’s when I realize the flyer is sinking.

  Twenty-Four

  I knew we’d need the damn boat. That’s all I can think as we pile into the inflatable Zodiac I nearly didn’t pack.

  What I thought was solid ground when I was trying to land the flyer turned out to be a huge swath of wetlands that stretches inland for kilometers. The water is only a meter or so deep, but that was more than enough to flood the flyer’s engines. It’s not going anywhere soon.

  Silty green water sloshes against the hull of the raft as I weave it between the clusters of whip-thin trees that stretch out of the dark water.

  The trees don’t react to us as we pass, so I don’t think they’re carnivores. I see the occasional flash of movement in the water, but not much else. No animals calling to each other or movement through the trees. That’s for the best. Judging from the Rangers’ report, there’s nothing here we want to meet.

  Nor programmed the coordinates for Dr. Brown’s camp into my nav app. It’s just at the edge of the swamp. Tarn says that Dr. Brown has a flyer there. I hope he’s right, because otherwise we’re going to become permanent residents.

  3212 made one more sweep overhead, about ten minutes ago. We were already in the trees, so they may not have seen us. Either that, or they don’t think we can make it to Dr. Brown in time to stop them from killing her.

  They may be right.

  The trees are a little farther apart here, so I push the Zodiac faster, taking advantage of the open water. Even if we get to Dr. Brown in time, I’m not sure we can stop Shelby and her team. They’ll be armed to the teeth. Leela and Jay both took stun guns with them when we left the Landing, but that’s it. And Nor and Tarn only have staffs and knives. And their voices, I realize. Sorrow screams are just as deadly as gunfire.

  The engine dies.

  “Seriously?” Leela breathes. She starts to reach her hand into the water to check the outboard motor, but Beth snaps, “Leela! Unscouted swamp, remember?”

  Leela swears and switches her flex to flashlight. She shines it down into the murky water. Then she swears again.

  “What is it?” I say, leaning out to see. Where the light from her flex penetrates the cloudy water, I can see pale green globes that look like fleshy bubbles suctioned all over the engine.

  “That’s . . . gross,” she says, as Tarn comes to peer over the edge beside us.

  “An apt description,” he agrees, sticking the end of his staff down into the water. “Though perhaps an understatement.”

  The water fills with tiny bubbles as the creatures hurl themselves at his staff.

  “Stand back,” Tarn says, carefully pulling the laden staff out of the water. The round bodies shrivel as the air hits them, losing their grip and splatting back into the swamp, where they immediately swell up again like sponges.

  “Do you know what those things are?” Chris says.

  Nor makes a noise that feels slimy. “Our name for them would best be translated as . . .” She has to think for a moment before she settles on “bubble of death.”

  “Excellent,” Jay says grimly. “Killer bubbles. Just what we need.”

  Tarn passes his hand in front of his face. Palm out, then palm in. Yes and no. “These may be something similar, but different. The bubbles of death glow, as we do.” He looks back down into the water, where the gray-green bubble creatures have clustered around the engine again. “These will be harder to avoid.”

  Beth plunges her hand into the water.

  “Beth!” I cry, pulling her back as the fleshy green orbs swarm her fingers.

  “Joanna!” she snaps, pushing me away so that the death bubble she has trapped in the sample bag I didn’t see was wrapped over her hand and arm doesn’t latch onto me instead.

  “Oh,” I say, my heart still hammering as she flips the bag over the shriveling creature to trap it before it tumbles back into the water.

  “Ignorance is a far greater danger than a calculated risk,” she says, watching the death bubble gnash a spiral of spiny teeth at its plastic prison. “I don’t think they can penetrate the hull of the Zodiac.”

  “We don’t have time to worry about it,” Chris says. “3212 has already set down, which means those marines are going to catch up with Dr. Brown any time now. If they haven’t already.”

  “We aren’t going anywhere with those things attached to the engine,” Leela points out.

  “I will deal with the—” Tarn flutes a word in Sorrow that turns my stomach. It must mean death bubble.

  He sticks his staff back into the water, bracing it against the side of the boat and resting the other end at the center of his chest. Then he begins to sing. The sound stings, like antiseptic in a wound.

  Beth leans out next to him, shining her flex light into the water.

  “Amazing,” she whispers.

/>   I peer over the side, too. The death bubbles are withering, sucking into themselves and bursting into slimy streams of oil-slick fluid.

  In seconds, the engine is clear.

  I press the ignition switch, and the Zodiac roars to life.

  I gun the engine and we shoot forward through the skinny trees. They get taller as we go, their clumps wider and woven with sea grass that transforms the clusters of trees into tiny islands. Their tangled branches stretch high to brush leaves with their neighbors, making the waterways feel like arched tunnels of brown and green.

  In the lull, I become aware of fresh aches spreading over my back. I probably did more damage to my ribs getting knocked around like that. I wonder if the nanobots in there will be able to heal it. I wonder if I’ll live long enough for them to try. Next to me, I notice Leela scratching at the dermaglue on her leg. The claw wound beneath it is swollen and bright red.

  “That looks infected,” I say.

  She shrugs. “It doesn’t hurt. Just itches.”

  “We should pull the glue,” I say. “Those are Tau germs. Your immune system—”

  “You really think we’re going to live long enough that I’ll have to worry about dying of some crazy Tau bacteria?” she asks.

  “Gee, I hope so,” I reply.

  She tries to laugh. It doesn’t work.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do, if we do survive,” Leela says, keeping her voice low so the others can’t hear her over the engine. I know she’s not talking about her infection.

  “You could still enlist,” I say. “I’m sure Mom will put Sarge in command of the marines again. She probably already has. He would take you back in a heartbeat.”

  “Yeah,” Leela says. “But . . . I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do that.”

  That surprises me. It must show.

  “I know, I know,” she says. “And it’s not . . . I thought I was willing to do anything it took to protect my family. But if I’m a part of the squadron, I won’t have a say in what that means. I’ll just be following orders. And after the last thirty hours . . .”