12. SHELTER
Aidan—
Lawson fights. That makes it worse—watching him go from strong and swift to a retching, bleeding ball on the ground. At least when you start that way, nothing is lost. He won’t stay down. He lies there, longer each time, then struggles up again. This time he makes it only as far as one knee. His fist moves out, wobbly, too slow, off target. His clenched fingers waver in the air. Then an A guy lands a kick to Lawson’s stomach, and he falls forward onto his knuckles.
“How long?” My hoarse voice makes me realize I’ve been shouting for a while, the words I thought I’d held trapped in my mind. “Fighting only makes it worse!”
For me, this is an old lesson, what my godmother used to say when her husband got hold of me.
“Twenty-five minutes,” Kylie says.
“To go?”
“So far.”
It’s only a difference of ten minutes. I don’t know why it pushes me over the edge, but the next second I’m shoving free of my tribe. I don’t punch or kick or smack anyone with my crutch, but I make too much use of that and my elbows to be strictly non-violent.
“What are you going to do?” Kylie pleads. “You can’t fight them off.”
I can lay my body over his, act as a buffer. I keep wriggling.
“If he saved your life, this is poor repayment,” she says. “They’ll kill you, Aidan. If not now, when they ask for retribution for this. You can’t break consensus.”
I waver.
For too long, because then Lin is there, her slender form filling the space in front of me. Bees scurry out of her way, and in a second she has my arm behind my back. My shoulder joint threatens to dislocate as she muscles me back through the crowd, away from my tribe.
“Stop it,” I sob. “Don’t you care?”
“Don’t I care?” She shakes me. “He’s enduring this for you.”
“That’s why I need to help him!”
“If you want to help, let him do this. We’re not like you. He can handle this because he knows you’re safe. He needs to be able to protect you. Don’t take that from him, not right now.”
“Why is the world like this?” I whisper, ceasing my struggle.
“I don’t know.”
She loosens her grip, and I maneuver for a view of the street. I can’t stand watching, but I have to be Lawson’s witness. I owe him that.
He’s down again, his prone form visible in the gaps between the feet of the As. These are not the same ten that started, but a fresh wave. His fingers flutter, the only evidence that he’s alive as they kick him. Blood fills my vision, coating Lawson’s chin, running out of his nose, dripping across his chest, smearing on the As, spattering the street. Not all of it Lawson’s, but most.
“How long?” I ask.
“About halfway.”
“He’s not going to make it. We have to do something.”
“They respect Lawson. They won’t kill him.”
“Respected him before, you mean, before he protected me. The As hate Bees.”
She frowns. I stare into her eyes and, after a long minute during which I wince at the smacking sounds coming from the center of the street, she nods and grabs my hand.
The crutch slows me down. Lin moves ahead, stretching my right arm between us, her fingers digging into mine as she pushes through the crowd. Any second now her shoving will draw attention. Lawson is out of sight, hidden by the mob. As Lin pulls me along, I get face-fulls of hair—multicolored spikes, dreadlocks threaded with concrete beads, windblown tresses. Tattooed scalps loom before me.
But we pass unnoticed to the left of the Bee huddle. Their collective attention rests on the commotion in the street. Right now their hearts will be filled with compassion, no more so for Lawson than for the As who beat him. I should feel the same, but I don’t. My gaze pauses on Kylie and Sam. I shouldn’t care more for my friends than I do about the rest of my tribe, either, but today I’m a poor excuse for a Bee.
I’m about to put us all in harms way for a militant atheist.
No, for a living being.
I hobble by, course set for Lawson. My body belongs sheltering his body. It seems I have always been under the fists and feet of the A, but today, for the first time, I will endure for a purpose. To protect the one I love.
The one. And to Naraka with loving everyone the same.
The crowd packs more closely nearer to the street, slowing Lin’s advance, and I catch up. Real Dealers in red and black stand here and there. Some wait at ease, while others, Lawson’s friends, I presume, visibly chafe at having to stay out of the fight. The beanpole guy who followed Lawson’s sibling to the Barracks has returned and stands just ahead, shifting from foot to foot. We come even with him, and Lin extends her free hand to touch the back of his wrist. A moment later, I sense that he’s fallen in behind us.
Lin reaches the front line of spectators. The beanpole guy’s breath is hot on the top of my skull. Lin drops my hand, grabs the shoulders of the last two people in her way and shoves. The High Priestess and Priest of the Witches stumble aside, and Lin half falls through the sudden gap into the street with me at her back.
Together we step forward to start a gang war.