Salt & Stone

  As Madox takes RX-13’s shape and Monster inches ever closer, I wail with grief. Maybe because I won’t kill them. Maybe because I will. I try to picture my brother, to use Cody as support, but I can’t. All I can think of are my Pandoras.

  I remember the first time Madox changed shape in the jungle clearing to protect me. I remember the way Monster stood between me and his own Contender on hind legs, all eight feet of him, and warned Titus to back down. I remember when Oz, the alligator that couldn’t swim, laid his head in my lap as a polished moon hung over our raft.

  I remember Madox circling before falling asleep, warm beside me. I remember him prancing next to me in the desert, small footprints in the sand. I remember how brave he was to fight in that arena, to risk his life, to give me a day’s advantage in the mountains. Looking at him, I remember that underneath his coat of feathers, he is my fox. My companion. My Pandora.

  They all are.

  Madox takes to the air, his eagle wings flapping, his talons directed toward my face. He’ll use them to tear my eyes out the same way he did Titus’s. Monster is below him, moving toward me with determination, realizing I’m hesitating and he’s not the hesitating type. Not when he has killing to do.

  I drop the gun.

  I grab a blade.

  It’s a nice blade. A solid, clean blade. I know I must make a decision — me, or them. My brother, or my Pandoras. But I can’t make this decision. I can’t. Hot tears trickle down my face and drip onto my chest. I tilt my head, begging my Pandoras to back down.

  In the end, it’s Monster who forces me into action.

  He rushes at me, jaws open, eyes wide. I scream and fall back onto the table. Weapons clatter to the floor. Heat spreads through my body, and my head throbs, and Monster closes the distance between us. He lifts up at the last minute as if to take me into his arms. I’ll die like this, the blade shaking in my uncertain hand, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe this means that after all I’ve been through, my reluctance to kill something I care about means I’m still human.

  Monster is a handbreadth away. I can feel the warmth of his breath on my exposed skin and fury rolling off his massive body.

  Good-bye, Cody, I think.

  My mind has given up, but when I look down, I notice the knife is still in my outstretched hand. And so when Oz barrels across the ground, surprising Monster and me both, the binding long gone from his eyes — I am able to defend myself.

  The reptilian beast knocks me to the floor and snaps his jaws once, twice. A third of his body weight is laid over my legs, and his deadly teeth are dangerously close to my bare stomach. But that’s not what causes me to cry out. I’m not afraid of being hurt by Oz, because it was I who hurt him.

  My knife protrudes from the underside of his head. I drove it in so quickly, before I could even think about what I was doing. But now … now Oz moans, and his eyes close, and I scream for someone to help him.

  Monster has stopped.

  Madox has touched back down.

  And my sweet Pandora, Oz, collapses onto his side.

  I manage to pull my legs out from beneath him and then lay my body next to his. I stroke his thick skin and whisper in his ear and try to control the flood of emotion in my head. Because Oz is dying, his blood oozing onto the clean, white floor, and I’m the one who struck him down. It may have been a reflex reaction, but it’s my fault all the same.

  “You are the very best Pandora,” I tell Oz, no longer caring if Monster or Madox will attack me while I’m vulnerable. “You are my Pandora, and I love you.”

  More and more blood flows from the wound beneath Oz’s head, creating a circle of red around our bodies. He groans once more from deep in his chest and fills his lungs. And then he closes his eyes, and his body goes limp. When I realize he’s gone and that I won’t ever get him back, I release a cry that tears me apart from the inside. I curl myself over his lifeless form and let my tears fall onto his back, and I squeeze him hard.

  Finally, I stand up, my chin quivering, my hands curled into fists. “I’m a good horse,” I yell to the ceiling, knowing they’re watching. What a great show I’m putting on, huh? Worth every penny! “But I don’t want to race anymore. I’m done.”

  Monster and Madox slump to the floor, and I hear the click of a door opening, louder than a gunshot in the sudden silence. The first thing I do is creep toward Madox. He’s back in fox form and fast asleep. Blood runs down my leg and side, but the Pandoras aren’t eager to taste it anymore. Hurting Oz did it — it stopped the test — and I feel sick to my stomach for doing what they wanted. There were guns on the table, for crying out loud. Guns. They didn’t want us dead. They just wanted a last bit of torture. One last hoorah before they decided we were dedicated enough.

  I touch each of my Pandoras in turn, sobbing at the sight of Oz, and stride toward the exit. In the doorway, I glance back at Madox.

  I’ll be back for you. For all of you.

  Outside the glass wall, there’s a white hallway that leads to my right. I trudge down it but perk when I see another glass wall. Inside, I see something that causes my steps to falter. If I had any heart left, this scene would steal the very last piece. But I’m all used up, and so when I see Guy Chambers holding M-4’s head in his lap, crying as a child would, I am numb.

  I am numb as Guy rocks over the lion’s lifeless body. I am numb when I see the bloodied blade near Guy’s leg. I am numb as I realize this person I worship hurts in a way I can’t touch.

  His door is open. I go in and attempt to pull him up despite my injuries, despite the pain ripping through my body. He won’t come. I yank on his arm harder, amazed at the sobs that explode from my throat, because I can’t feel, can I? I thought I couldn’t feel.

  “We have to go,” I tell him. “It’s all for nothing if we don’t go.”

  Guy looks up at me, his eyes red, his face streaked with tears. Pain slams into me like a wrecking ball. I thought I was numb, but really all my anger and hurt was being pressed down, compacted, so that when I saw Guy Unbreakable Chambers crying, all that tension could explode in a mushroom cloud of anguish.

  His body shudders and he buries his face into his lion’s side. “He was going to die anyway. Willow’s rat … it injected him with something in the arena.” He raises his face. “I had to do it, Tella. Right? I had to.”

  If he keeps crying like this, I won’t be able to stand. As it is, I can barely control this tornado of fury. I drop down beside him, and when I see M-4 unmoving, when I see that he’s actually gone, I lose what little composure I had left. My hands run through the lion’s thick mane, and I clench my eyes shut.

  “He loved you,” I tell Guy, my voice breaking. “M-4 truly loved you.”

  Guy gasps for air and pulls me to him. He cries into my hair and holds me to his chest for several long seconds. When I lean back, I see that he’s a bit calmer. So I say, “Your Pandora’s job was to ensure you win. The best way you can honor him now is to stick by your plan.”

  “To win,” he mumbles.

  I nod, even though that’s not the plan at all. “To win … in the end.”

  His eyes fall to my side, and when he sees that I’m wounded, he’s on his feet. “You’re hurt,” he says. “We have to get you help.”

  When I take his hands and stand up, I realize he’s right. I feel funny, as if I’m in the dentist chair and they asked if I wanted laughing gas and I said, “What do you think?”

  Guy looks back at M-4, and his brow furrows as if he might break down again. Then he grabs my hand, and we turn down the hallway and run. As we jog, we pass several more glass walls on our right. All are empty. We turn left at the end of the hallway and keep going. My heart pounds inside my chest when I understand this is it. I’m done with the tasks. I’m done with the race. I left a part of myself back there with my Pandoras, but I also can’t wait to finish this. The wounds on my side feel as if they’re opening farther with every step, and I have to stop. I have … to stop.

  There?
??s a door at the end of this hallway. It’s blue and solid and has a brass handle. Guy and I race toward it, and I wonder what will happen if we go through it at the exact same time. Will they split the Cure between the two of us? Could they do that?

  Guy reaches the door first, and my excitement wanes, but something in my head says, This is good. He needs this.

  Guy swings the door open and grabs my arms. He shoves me through the open doorway. As soon as I stumble into the room, an alarm sounds. It’s a buzzer like the one in the pool area. I glance around the room. It looks like every doctor’s waiting room I’ve ever seen. There are navy blue chairs and a check-in window. The carpet is brown, and the fluorescent lighting overhead is infuriating. It smells like formaldehyde. It smells like death.

  Seated in one of the chairs is Harper.

  Her hands are folded in her lap, smeared with blood. When she hears the buzzer go off, she rises.

  “I won,” she says. “I’m the first to arrive.”

  I throw my arms around my friend as best I can, thankful she’s unharmed.

  Harper whispers in my ear. “You climbed that desert formation for me, Tella. You saved my Pandora so I could win, and you put your life on the line to do it. I didn’t know Titus would be up there.” She pauses. “It doesn’t matter. You did that for me. And I did this for you.”

  She leans back and takes my face in her hands. When she drops them, I can feel the stickiness she leaves behind. Harper gazes down at her own hands.

  “I didn’t kill her,” she says. “I only cut her a little, and the door opened.”

  Guy attempts to open the door on the other side of the room, but it doesn’t budge. Then he taps on the glass where a receptionist would typically sit. No one comes. Guy sighs and sits down on one of the chairs. I can’t handle seeing the sorrow on his face. I want to pull the numbness back over me like a warm blanket, but I can’t remember how to do it.

  We sit for a few minutes, unsure of what to do, until the door we came in through flies open, and the buzzer sounds.

  “Olivia!” Harper yells, and the girl staggers toward her like her left knee might be blown.

  I hug the two of them as Olivia cries. She doesn’t have any blood on her, and Harper asks about this.

  “I was going to,” she sobs. “I was going to, but the door opened before I could. Oh God. I was going to hurt my Pandora.”

  Harper sits down and pulls the girl into her lap. “Don’t cry. You’re here now. I’ll take care of everything.”

  I’m about to ask what she means when Braun appears through the door. He’s sobbing, and when he sees that the four of us are already in the room, he drops to his knees. “No.”

  Unlike Harper, Braun is coated in blood. Soaked in it. His face is running with the stuff, and he’s sleeved in scarlet like a surgeon who operated up to his elbows. All this time, I never thought about FDR-1, about the iguana that lit our way to the final base camp. But now …

  “What happened to Rose?” I ask.

  “I did what I had to do!” he yells. “For nothing. All of it was for nothing.”

  “You killed her?” Olivia asks.

  “I killed M-4, too,” Guy interjects, his face in his hands.

  It’s different, though, and we both know it. When Braun slumps to the ground and weeps, I slide down beside him, gripping my side. I allow myself to absorb this new heartbreak. It’s my fault, in a way. If I had kept Rose instead of handing her off, maybe she’d still be alive. “It’s okay,” I say, trying to soothe his misery. “You didn’t have a choice.” Part of me doesn’t understand why his door didn’t open until the iguana was dead, but then again, I suppose I know exactly why. Rose had a red stripe down her back. So did Oz.

  Marked Pandoras are disposable.

  Guy sits up as if he’s going to do something, and then his head falls again when he remembers his lion. He does this in sequence. Resolve — guilt — resolve — guilt. I crawl toward him and lay my head on his thigh, my body seeping blood like an overfilled sponge.

  “Harper won?” Olivia asks the room.

  “Tella won,” Harper corrects.

  When I hear that, Tella won, I raise my head. The suddenness with which I understand the meaning of this is staggering.

  Cody will live.

  I didn’t win the race. Not me anyway. But I made friends, I helped Contenders and Pandoras alike, I thought about others. I finished the race second.

  I finished the race first.

  My brother is going to receive the Cure.

  I break down, and Guy holds on to my head as if he can only breathe through the feel of my skin in his hands. Harper cries, too. Olivia and Braun sit next to each other. They are happy for me, I know. But they are devastated for their own loved ones.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to them through my joy, through my pain.

  Neither responds. I don’t blame them.

  “We made it,” Guy says suddenly. “All five of us. We’re the first.” The weight of his words settles over us, and Olivia and Braun seem comforted by this fact. Somehow, against incredible odds, we survived together. We proved that there is strength in numbers. That’s there’s strength in helping one another. “You know what this means,” he adds.

  We know what it means.

  The five of us will receive invitations. In the end, though only Cody will be saved, we’ll all have our chance to destroy this race.

  The door on the opposite side of the room opens, and an older man strides into view. He has the look of a doctor, of someone who knows essential things others don’t. His lashes are long and his beard heavy. He stands awkwardly, favoring his right side. In his left hand is a clipboard like the one the woman in orange held.

  He glances down at it, his lashes bowing like a cast of characters at the end of a play. He reads something. “Harper?”

  She stands. “That’s me.”

  “You can come back now.” He glances at the rest of us, and a smile parts his face. “Congratulations to all of you on completing the Brimstone Bleed. We’ll be calling you back one by one.” His eyes run over our bodies, inspecting our wounds. When he sees me, he says, “I’ll be quick.”

  Harper comes to stand beside him. “Do you work for the race?”

  He nods, his chest filling with pride.

  In one swift movement, Harper withdraws a blade from her back waistband and puts it at his throat. She asks him one question, her voice so calm, it’s terrifying.

  “Tell me, are you afraid to die?”

  A half dozen people are in the room within seconds. They’re dressed in blue scrubs and look like nurses. A woman with dark hair and a wide nose speaks softly to Harper, but Harper screams at her to shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!

  “You took my daughter,” she snarls. “All of you. I don’t know what part each of you play in this race, but the day I put my daughter in the ground, I made a vow: two lives for one. One to save” — Harper nods toward me — “and one to take. I knew who I’d save; that was easy. And you know what? In the end, I decided who I killed wasn’t such a big deal, either, as long as somebody died.”

  In the back, behind the locked door that is now held open by a nurse, I hear voices arguing.

  “Harper,” I say. “Don’t do this. Remember what we said.”

  She pushes the knife closer to the man’s throat, and sweat dots his forehead. That’s when it hits me: I’m not concerned for the man’s safety. I only want Harper to work with me inside headquarters. I’m pretty sure if she offs someone on their team, they’ll revoke her invitation. Does this make me a monster? That I don’t care if this man, who I’ve never met, drops dead?

  A voice grows louder, and suddenly, I understand whose it is.

  Cotton steps into view, appearing from the same door the doctor came through.

  “Harper,” he says gently. Behind him, two men are trying to pull him back, but he escapes their grasp.

  Harper freezes, but she doesn’t drop her arm.

  “Harpe
r,” he repeats. “These people … they’ve done terrible things, unspeakable things, but you’ll come to understand it —”

  Harper screams with rage and knees the doctor in the groin. He slumps over, and she shoves the tip of the blade to his back. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare defend them. Why are you on their side?”

  Cotton closes the distance between them as Guy tightens his grip on my hand. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Harper is my best friend. I can’t lose her, but I don’t know how to take away her anger. There’s too much inside me battling for the same release. I can practically feel the knife handle in my own hand, the thought of Oz’s dying steady in my mind.

  “I’m not on their side. I’m a Contender, same as you,” Cotton says. “You and I, we’re not so different. You lost your daughter. I lost my brother. I know how you feel. I know. So I can’t stand by and watch you get hurt.”

  Tears escape Harper’s eyes, and her bottom lip trembles. Her eyes, though … her eyes never lose their fury.

  Cotton leans toward her. His lips touch her ear. He whispers quickly, saying things I can’t hear. The nurses stand perfectly still. We all stand perfectly still.

  A red dot appears on Harper’s neck. It takes me too long to understand what it is.

  Too long.

  A sharp sound slices the air, and Harper drops to the ground.

  “Harper!” I scream.

  Braun and Guy are already charging toward the person who fired the bullet — the woman in orange from the desert base camp. Today, she wears pink, because shooting a gun doesn’t have to be such a masculine thing.

  “Stop, stop!” Cotton hollers at the two Contenders hurtling across the space. “She’s okay. It’s a dart.” He looks at the woman. One arm is stretched toward her and one toward us, as if he can hold back the erupting tension with the flats of his hands. “She’s asleep, right?”

  The woman nods as if she’s sorry for the way this unfolded.

  She’s not sorry.

  I eye the knife on the floor.

  The doctor grabs it and orders the nurses into the back. He follows them out but stops at the door. “I need to see her first.” He nods toward me.