Alone

  A few months ago, it was all I could do to keep him from running off to see Zubiri every chance he got. I wonder if something happened between them.

  Love. It’s a mystery to me.

  I start to think of Bishop, but it’s O’Malley’s face that comes to mind. I must visit his grave soon, tell him all about the battle.

  But first, I need to have someone fix up my cut.

  The hospital is busy. It’s in the Observatory’s second layer. Everything here is white: the pedestals, the cabinets, the walls, the floor and the coffins—sixty-six of them, to be exact, laid out side by side in two rows of thirty-three each.

  Smith, Lucky Pokano and Francine Yilmaz—our three circle-crosses—are hard at work fixing the cuts and scrapes suffered during the battle. Ten circle-stars are being treated. So are seven Springers; our docs have gotten good at fixing them up as well.

  Smith stands at a pedestal next to a closed coffin that holds Bawden. Lucky is working on Farrar, who had a long cut on his arm. Farrar hid the wound from everyone, like he always seems to do.

  Francine leans in close to my face, dabbing at my cut with something that stings.

  “Three hours in a med-chamber will fix you right up,” she says. “No scar at all.”

  The circle-crosses call them med-chambers. The rest of us still call them coffins. Finding new words for things doesn’t change what they actually are.

  “Just stitch it up,” I say. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Francine sighs. She’s tiny. She’s barely grown at all since we landed. She’s filled out some, though, and has a woman’s curves. She has the cutest little nose. Long black lashes frame her big, dark eyes. The Grownups dressed us like dolls—Francine actually looks like one.

  “Em, all your scars…we can get rid of those. You’d be so much prettier without them.”

  I smile at her. She means well, but she doesn’t understand me. My scars are mine. Each one makes me look a little bit different from Matilda’s ideal vision. In the faraway crawl spaces of my thoughts, I hope that if Matilda ever does overwrite me, she will hate her own face because of all the damage I have done to it.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate your concern. Now stitch me up.”

  Francine does as she’s told. Fourteen quick, efficient stitches on my cheek and she’s finished.

  I thank her again, then walk over to Smith. Icons and lines float above the pedestal in front of her, information I now know represents heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, oxygen saturation and a few other things.

  “How is Bawden?” I ask.

  “She needs two days in there,” Smith says. “Three, tops, and she’ll be as good as new. Then you can take her out into the jungle again and see if you can get her properly killed instead of just horribly wounded.”

  Smith annoys me, but I understand her. Her job is to repair people, to save lives. My job is to protect people, but sometimes the only way to do that is to kill those that would harm us. When evil comes, you can’t always talk to it—sometimes it must be destroyed. That’s why there are people like Bawden, Victor, Bishop, me, D’souza…when real danger comes, people like Smith stay behind us.

  “I wish we didn’t have to fight,” I say, trying to reason with Smith for the hundredth time. “I wish no one attacked us, I wish the jungle was nicer, I wish air tasted like candy and we all got to sleep on a bed of pretty flowers.”

  I try to reason with her, sure, but I don’t try hard.

  Smith snorts. “One of these days you’re going to bring me someone I can’t fix. Then we’ll see how funny it is.”

  “You think I like this? I hate fighting.”

  She glances at me. Her mouth twists into a rueful grin.

  “No, you don’t like it—you revel in it.” She points to my cheek. “You revere it so much you want to show it off. I was made to heal. You? You were made to kill. You are death.”

  The voice of the boy I love comes from behind me.

  “Someone has to be death,” Bishop says. “That’s how civilization works. What you can’t defend will eventually be taken away from you.”

  Smith rolls her eyes. “If the two of you don’t mind, I’ve got lives to save.”

  She turns her attention back to her pedestal display. Maybe I’m the leader of my people, but I’ve just been dismissed.

  I leave the hospital. I hear Bishop walking behind me, but I don’t turn to look at him. I walk down the stone hall and descend a flight of stairs before I stop.

  We’re alone.

  Now I turn. I haven’t seen his face in ten days. That tightly curled blond hair. Those dark-yellow eyes, lovely but bleary from lack of sleep. As tired as he looks, his smile still steals the air from my lungs.

  “I missed you, Bishop.”

  His hands slide around my waist. He lifts me as if I weigh nothing at all. I throw my arms around his thick neck. His lips on mine: warm, eager, wanting. Maybe the kiss lasts for a second, maybe it lasts for an hour.

  He sets me down.

  “And I missed you.”

  His hand on my face, his thumb gently tracing my latest badge of bravery. His eyes swim with a mixture of worry and pride.

  “Looks like I almost lost you.”

  I touch the hand that is touching my face. “Never. You’ll never lose me.”

  Not like I lost O’Malley…

  “I still think it’s bad strategy for you to go out and fight,” he says. “You’re our leader. If the blade that made that cut had struck true, you’d be dead.”

  He’s proud of me, yes, but this particular argument he will never let go.

  “I can’t ask others to do what I won’t do myself. And it went well. If it wasn’t for Bawden rushing into the fight, no one in my platoon would have been hurt at all.”

  Bishop’s face wrinkles with surprise.

  “Bawden? But she’s so reliable.”

  I shake my head. “She lost it. She jumped out of the spider, screaming that she wanted to kill. She ran into a burning cornfield without any support. Victor and I had to go in after her.”

  Bishop rubs his chin. I hear his callused hands scraping against his blond stubble.

  “That’s happening more and more,” he says. “Our discipline seems to be fading. I’m worried about it.”

  I nod. I am, too.

  “Still, she can’t act like that,” Bishop says. “It’s unacceptable. I’ll speak with her.”

  I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes when that happens. Among the circle-stars, disobeying orders is a heavy sin.

  “And what about Victor? How did he do?”

  The way Bishop said Victor’s name…with a touch of anger? There seems to be a growing rivalry between the pair. Bishop prides himself on being our best fighter, so I guess it’s no surprise, considering how skilled Victor is becoming at all things involving war.

  “He was amazing,” I say. “He saved Bawden’s life. Probably mine as well. He captured two Belligerents, killed another.”

  Bishop’s jaw muscles twitch. He nods.

  “Where are the prisoners now?”

  I describe what I saw in the Springer city, how Barkah acted. Bishop’s face clouds over with anger.

  “It’s dishonorable to kill captives,” he says.

  “I know. I tried to bring the prisoners with us, but Barkah wouldn’t listen. The way he’s been acting lately…I couldn’t risk a confrontation when we were so heavily outnumbered.”

  Bishop nods slowly. “The Springers are acting more violent, we’re acting more violent, the Belligerents gather out of nowhere to attack us…I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  I take his hand. “We’ll figure it out. You look exhausted—anything big happen while I was gone?”

  Just as it was important for people to see me lead the attack on the Belligerents, it was important for people to know Bishop can run things if anything happens to me. That’s why I left him in charge.

  “Only the biggest thing there is,”
he says. “Spingate said the first alien ship is approaching orbit, or something like that.”

  We have no idea where it came from. We have no idea what’s inside of it.

  “I’ll go see her right now,” I say. “Anything else?”

  He looks away.

  “Bello tried suicide again. She somehow managed to chip off a piece of her cell wall, used it to cut her wrists.”

  That damn woman. Why does she have to be so much trouble?

  The Springers kill their prisoners—our prisoner tries to kill herself.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” I say.

  Bishop gives me that look, the one that says I told you this would happen.

  “If she succeeds on the next try, any information she has dies with her.”

  I feel my anger flare. “For the last time, we are not going to torture her.”

  His eyes narrow. “She’s the only one who knows why those ships are coming. Now the first one is here. This is necessary.”

  I rub at my temples. This is giving me a headache.

  “No torture, Bishop.”

  “You always listen to Spingate,” he says. “She agrees with me that it’s the right thing to do.”

  “No! All right? No torture, and that’s final. Don’t ask again.”

  He grunts, then nods.

  It isn’t just Spingate and Bishop—many people think we should get the information out of Bello by…wait, what’s the phrase people use to justify this disgusting concept? Oh, yes: by any means necessary.

  While I’m in charge, that will never happen.

  “I’ll talk to Bello first, then Spin,” I say. “Then I need some sleep. Will I see you at our house later tonight?”

  Our house. His and mine. The thought of a night in our place, where I don’t have to think about any of this, where I can just be with him…it lifts my mood.

  Bishop smiles, shakes his head.

  “You can’t go home yet. Borjigin called that meeting.”

  “Borjigin said you called the meeting.”

  He blinks a few times.

  “Oh, that’s right. I called it.”

  “What’s it about? I just got back from a battle. I’m exhausted—I don’t want to sit in some damn meeting right now.”

  “You’re going,” Bishop says. “You’ll understand when you get there. Go to the Grand Hall after you see Spingate. Just do it, Em, it’s important.”

  He kisses me again. When he finally walks away, I feel like part of me goes with him.

  Tonight I will allow myself time to relax. Now, though, there is much work still to do.

  Spingate’s lab is below me. Our prison cells are above.

  I head up the steps.

  I stand with a metal tray in my hands. Warmth billows out from between the iron bars of Korrynn Bello’s cell.

  She’s naked, lying on a straw mat on the floor. Two months ago, she tried to hang herself with her blankets, tying them together and looping them over the thick wooden support beam that runs across the ceiling. One month ago, she tried to strangle herself with her coveralls. We don’t have enough people to watch her all the time, so we had to take away anything she could use to hurt herself. That includes clothes, which is why we keep it so warm in her cell.

  She knows I’m here. She won’t look up at me. Her frizzy blond hair hides her face. Her skin is so pale.

  “Bishop told me what you did,” I say.

  My tone is harsh. As my people struggle and sacrifice, fight to build a new culture, to survive, this selfish woman tries to take her own life instead of helping us. I do have some sympathy for her—just not very much.

  “Kill me,” she says. Her voice is a low moan, a whisper of the pain that crawls up from deep in her soul. “That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it, Em? Killing?”

  She’s trying to make me angry. I won’t let her.

  “I brought you tea.”

  “Stop calling it that. Sholtag isn’t tea. Real tea is amazing. You’ll never know what it tastes like.”

  Of all the things she complains about—and there are too many things to count—she mentions a lack of tea more than any other.

  “It’s better than nothing,” I say.

  Finally, she looks up at me. This thousand-year-old thing wears the face and body of my dead friend. Her nose is slightly crooked. Her left eyelid droops, always a little lower than her right. The imperfections of her face are mementos of my rage, when I flew out of control on the shuttle and beat her nearly to death.

  Just looking at her is an endless reminder of why I work so hard to stay calm. I can hurt people. I am capable of evil.

  She glances at the tray. “Two cups? You must want to talk.”

  I nod.

  Korrynn sighs. She stands and walks to the bars. She reaches through and takes one of the paper cups.

  She stares at it. “I don’t deserve at least a ceramic mug?”

  “We both know what you’d use that for.”

  “But it gets cold so fast.”

  “Then drink quickly.”

  I take the other cup and set the metal tray on the stone floor, making sure it’s well out of her reach.

  We found the paper cups in one of the Observatory’s countless storerooms. I take a sip of sholtag. It tastes like wood. Not in a bad way, though. Wood and mint. The Springers drink this all the time. At first I hated it, but I’ve come to like it.

  “Disgusting,” she says after taking a sip. She shrugs. “At least it’s warm. Thank you.” She glances at the palm-plate just outside her cell, on my side of the bars. “Now that we’ve had a nice drink, how about you let me go for a walk?”

  All I have to do is press my hand to the plate. Spingate programmed the prison cell doors to open only for me, Bishop or Borjigin. But now is not the time for a casual stroll.

  “The first alien ship is almost here,” I say. “Stop playing games, Korrynn. Tell me why the Xolotl came to Omeyocan.”

  I used to call her Bello, which I hated, because that was the name of my friend. At some point, she asked me to call her by her first name. I should be careful what I wish for—calling her Korrynn makes this monster seem like a real person.

  She’s not. She is one of them.

  “You know my demands,” she says. “Until I get what I want, I won’t tell you anything. I’m sure you fixed the antenna. I’m sure of it.”

  Other than carefully supervised walks—where her hands remained shackled for fear she might try to grab a guard’s knife or gun—Korrynn has spent every moment of the last year in this cell. In all that time, she has refused to give us the information we need so badly.

  “I’ve always told you the truth about the antenna,” I say. “We’re trying to fix it, trying very hard. But that doesn’t matter anymore. Didn’t you hear me? The alien ship is here. Tell me what I need to know, so I can protect us.”

  She shrugs. “Then find another way to reach the Xolotl. Until I can speak with my friends, I won’t tell you a godsdamned thing.”

  Korrynn Bello lifts one hand, palm out toward me so I can see the long, angry cuts on her wrist.

  “You’re running out of time,” she says. “Sooner or later, I’ll find a way to kill myself. Or maybe before I can, the aliens will attack and do it for me. If you want what I know, find a way.”

  I tried to not let her make me mad, but like every time before this one, I failed.

  Korrynn Bello knows why the Xolotl came to this spot. Whatever that reason is, I assume it’s the same thing that drew the Springers, the alien ship almost in orbit, and the two alien ships still on the way.

  There are more mysteries she could solve for us. What happened on the Xolotl that left so many people dead? Was Matilda really responsible for all those dismembered bodies? Who erased Ximbal’s memory, and the memory of Ometeotl, the Control Room’s powerful computer?

  But Korrynn refuses to talk until she can speak with her friends.

  Until she can speak with Matilda.

 
“I promise you, I’m doing everything I can to fix that antenna,” I say. “Please…tell me why the Xolotl came here. What is it about this place that makes people want to kill and destroy?”

  She takes a long sip of sholtag.

  “Until I get what I want, you’ll never know,” she says. “Gods, I am so alone.”

  And there it is, the phrase she always repeats, the one that sends me into a fury.

  “You don’t have to be lonely! I’ve told you that you can be one of us. All you have to do is tell me what you know!”

  “You don’t understand,” she says. “You can’t. You are all children. Babies. I need my people. It was never supposed to be this way.”

  Gods, she makes me so angry.

  “Some of the others want to torture you to get the information.”

  Those words slip out before I realize I’m saying them. I yelled at Bishop for bringing it up, yet here I am, letting my anger take over, using torture as a threat.

  She glances at my legs, at the knife strapped to my right thigh. Damn—I meant to come here unarmed, but the knife is always on me and I forgot about it.

  But Korrynn isn’t threatened, by my words or by the knife. She laughs.

  “You think you can beat it out of me? Little girl, you don’t even know what real pain is. Being transformed is worse than anything. Worse than the rod. Worse than when you assaulted me in the shuttle. Worse than when Spingate elbowed me after you stabbed Yong. Worse than when I cut myself, when I tried to hang myself. You want to torture me? Go ahead—I’m tougher than all of you.”

  My skin prickles with goosebumps. My anger disappears.

  “What did you just say?”

  She casually takes another sip.

  “I said I’m tougher than all of you.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “Before that. About when Yong got stabbed.”

  Korrynn nods. “Yes, when I grabbed Spingate to try and get her off Yong, and she threw her arm back and elbowed me in the face. I don’t think she meant…meant to…”

  The naked girl/woman blinks.

  She touches her mouth, so lightly, in the spot where Spingate’s elbow connected. It connected with that mouth—but not that person.

  “You weren’t there,” I say. “That was our Bello.”