“Why don’t I read something?” I turned away abruptly and reached for the small rectangular box of tech chips from his pack. A couple of days ago after fiddling around with all the different chips, several of which I couldn’t figure out the function of, I’d discovered that one was loaded with texts of all kinds: history, scientific treatises, even fiction. There were so many archived on it, I’d had a hard time knowing where to start. If Ginni had been with me, she would have pointed me toward some melodramatic romance, but on my own, I had no clue. Thinking about Ginni had brought on another wave of worry. I could only hope she hadn’t been able to make it in the pods and was safe somewhere in the Chancellor’s holding cells. In the end, I’d settled on rereading a book we’d read in Humanities last year.
“Sure, if it’ll help keep you awake,” Adrien said.
We didn’t say much for the next few hours. He moved to the blanket across from mine, separated by the small pod light in between us. Every so often, I’d glance up and find him staring at me. His eyes were almost iridescent as they reflected the light, and his expression was so … intense. Each time I dropped my eyes quickly again. He was probably just interested in what I was reading. I’d chosen a philosophy text because I thought he might like it, but it was pretty incomprehensible to me.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the pod light flickered and beeped. “Cracking hell,” I swore. It was about to lose its charge. The light from my arm panel would be tiresome to read from without it. “I forgot to put it in the sun to charge today.”
I didn’t tell him why. That I was so sick with worry about something happening to him, the rest of the world had seemed to drop away.
He frowned. “It’ll be harder for you to stay awake in the dark. Are you sure you don’t want to get in the biosuit? Then at least you could get a thirty-minute nap, and I’ll wake you up when it runs out.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. I was exhausted, there was no denying it. Still, the precious oxygen left in that tank felt like a symbol of hope. As long as I didn’t use it, there was still a chance …
The pod light went out and the cave was enveloped in darkness so thick, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. If I touched my arm panel, it would light up for a minute, but what was the point?
The light going out suddenly sapped my optimism. I tried to fight back against the heavy cloud of dread that threatened to douse me. Tomorrow we’d go find more oxygen, I tried to reassure myself. We’d find a way.
Or … was this how the second vision happened? What if Adrien saw us leave the cave because we had no other choice? Because if I didn’t find more oxy tanks, I’d die. The security in the city Adrien had just raided would be doubly tight. I’d need to fly us somewhere far away, but what if … I blinked hard several times as a thought I’d been trying to avoid finally settled in.
Adrien’s visions used to always come true.
Were we just lying to ourselves by trying to pretend they were different now? The storm had driven us here, and now my need for another oxy tank would somehow drive us into a city, bringing about exactly what he’d seen.
I couldn’t help the tears that leaked down my cheeks. All year, I’d been so good at keeping it together, I’d cried maybe twice. But sleep deprivation turned me into a perpetually dripping faucet. All my emotions were so close to the surface.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Adrien’s voice seemed doubly loud in the dark. “Anything that will help you stay awake?”
I shivered, drying my eyes on my tunic sleeve. “Well, at least the cold helps.” The pod light had doubled as a heat lamp, and the cold night air quickly invaded the small space. “But you should get under the blanket so you can keep warm.”
“I’m fine.” It was so strange hearing his voice coming out of the darkness without being able to see him. “Maybe if we keep talking, that will help?”
I didn’t say anything for several long moments. My heavy eyelids were already drooping. If we couldn’t read, I didn’t know how I was going to stay awake. Unless …
The darkness made me feel a strange recklessness. As if, when I couldn’t see him, barriers between us were suddenly broken down.
“Well, there is one thing,” I started, then stopped, feeling foolish.
“What?”
“Whenever you touch me…” I stopped again.
His voice responded without any hesitation, a silken whisper in the dark. “What happens when I touch you?”
“It makes me feel, um…” My face went hot, and I was glad he couldn’t see my blush. “The opposite of sleepy.”
I didn’t hear a response, and I clenched my hands into fists. Stupid. I knew talking like that would just drive him away.
There was absolute silence for a few terribly long moments, and then I heard a slight crinkling as he shifted off his thermo blanket. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he was moving toward me.
His hand brushed my arm, groping in the dark. Finally he found my hand. I froze, and let him make contact. He flipped my hand over and then used the tip of his finger to outline the lines on my palm. His touch sent an electric ping throughout my body.
One thing was sure. I was no longer sleepy.
“Yeah,” I said, my throat suddenly dry, “like that.”
He shifted until he was sitting so close, I could feel the warmth of his body beside me.
“Like this?” His fingers left my hand and touched my hair, then moved up to my forehead and cheek.
My breath caught in my throat, and I turned my face into his hand. Even though my muscles all relaxed against him, a zinging awareness ricocheted through my body.
His touch was so gentle. After ten minutes hovering along my hairline, he took my shoulders firmly and arranged me so that I was lying down, facing away from him. Then he lay behind me, his body separated from mine by mere inches. The lightest whisper of fingers traced down my arm, down the sloping dip of my waist and then over the curve of my hip. Even though my cloth tunic was between us, his touch still seared straight through to my sinew.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to scare him away. I wanted him to keep touching me like this forever. I knew he was only doing it to help keep me awake. That it meant nothing to him. He was probably moving his hands across my body according to some mechanical pattern in his head. Cold and scientific.
But for the moment, I couldn’t be bothered to care. Long minutes stretched out as he continued the tortuous path up and down my body. Always along the outermost edge, never venturing inland.
Finally I couldn’t help but let out the slightest whimper, but again, he didn’t pull away. Instead, his touch became heavier until he was caressing the side of my body with his entire hand. He pulled up the side of my tunic with agonizing slowness, just far enough to expose my waist, and then he brushed the tips of his fingers against my skin. I shuddered under his touch. My breathing was loud and erratic in the quiet cave.
Did he know what he was doing to me? Did he not care, as long as it accomplished the goal of keeping me awake?
My fingers itched to touch him back, to caress the jaw line of the face that I loved and then to stroke down his broad shoulders. But I kept my hands in place, balling them into fists at my side to keep them still.
After another half hour, though, my skin was on fire and the reckless impulse took over again. What was holding me back from reaching toward him in the dark? These might be my last few days on earth. Was I really going to allow my fear of rejection to keep me from living them to the fullest?
No. No, I wouldn’t. I suddenly flipped over so that I was facing Adrien, though I still couldn’t see anything. If he was surprised, he gave no indication. He didn’t speak or shift his position at all. I stretched a trembling hand out in front of me and bumped into his chest. I flattened my hand and then followed the line of his sternum up to his neck and then to his face. I closed my eyes and sank into the sensation of finally being able to touch him again after all thes
e months. I knew he was different now. I knew this wasn’t exactly the same boy as when he’d last allowed such intimate contact. But here, in the darkness at what might be the end of my life, I realized it didn’t make a difference.
I would love him forever. No matter how he changed. No matter if he didn’t love me back. It might be tragic, but it was true.
I cupped his face in my hand, brushing my thumb back and forth across the bristling hair growing along his jaw. Then I moved my forefinger to trace the outline of his full lips. They parted suddenly as he let in a quick intake of breath.
I smiled. So I was affecting him after all. The knowledge made me bolder. I shifted so that I was closer to him, still not touching my chest to his, but close enough that the infinitesimal space between us was afire with heat.
We didn’t speak. It was as if speaking would break the spell. As if, in the darkness, here in the middle of nowhere, all the normal rules of the world were bent. Anything and everything was permitted in the dark.
His hands had been slack at his sides, but he finally lifted them again. He pulled back the wide neck of my tunic and ran his strong hands across my shoulder, massaging up my neck and then behind my head, tangling in my hair. For a brief heady moment, I thought he was going to tug me closer and kiss me, but he didn’t. Instead, he kneaded my scalp at the base of my neck and then worked his way slowly upward, all across my skull. I bent my head down against his chest as he continued and breathed in the cool clean scent of him.
Eventually, he finally dropped his hand back down to my shoulder and then continued the well-worn path up and down the side of my body. I lost all sense of time. Every moment he touched me seemed to both stretch out forever and pass all too quickly. But finally, the question that had been haunting me for days popped out, a whisper that sounded inordinately loud after the heavy silence. “Why did you come back for me?”
His hand paused and I cringed. I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew speaking would shatter the moment.
But to my surprise, he responded. “To be honest,” his voice was hesitant, “I came back because it never occurred to me not to. Not once. All I knew was that you were in danger and I had to do something right away. The whole time I was gone, all I could think about was getting back to you. I couldn’t imagine living in a world without you in it.”
My heart stuttered, and impulsively I decided to take one last reckless chance. I lifted my hand to his face again and stretched my head forward until my lips gently brushed his. A shudder rocked through his body and I moved my lips against his more firmly.
After just a moment of hesitation, he responded. His hands on my bare waist tightened until he was gripping me hard, pulling me closer still against him. His mouth opened ever so slightly and he kissed me deeper. Every other thought flew from my head except the earth-shattering joy at finally being able to kiss the boy I loved.
I dug my hands into his hair, and he suddenly flipped me so that I was on my back. He hovered over me, bracing himself with one hand on either side of my body. He dipped down and kissed me deeply again. Then he moved from my lips and kissed his way down my neck. I arched up into him.
And then the worst possible thing happened.
A shaft of morning sunlight broke over the mountains behind us, straight into the cave. Adrien pulled back as if he’d been stung. For a brief moment, our eyes locked together, both of us breathing raggedly. But when I reached out a hand toward his face, he suddenly jumped back before I could make contact. He leapt to his feet and turned his back to me. I could tell he was still breathing hard because his back heaved violently up and down.
“Adrien, I—”
“I need to refill the water bottle,” he interrupted before I could say anything more. He grabbed the bottle from his pack and then all but ran out of the cave.
I tried to talk to him all day, but he always cut me off with short, curt answers. He kept his eyes on the ground and refused to look at me. He took a long nap in the afternoon and the rest of the time kept busy unpacking and then repacking the supply bag. Anything to keep his twitching hands moving.
I was bewildered, and too tired to try to make sense of his behavior. What he’d said last night—that it had never occurred to him not to come back for me, that he didn’t want to live in a world without me. Didn’t that mean he cared for me?
As the sunlight finally began to dim again, announcing the start of another evening, what had happened the night before seemed like more and more of a dream. Maybe I had been hallucinating again. It had been days since I’d really gotten enough sleep. Maybe I’d entered some half-dream state where I was still awake enough to control my mast cells, but so rested that I’d actually had a dream.
But then I glanced up at Adrien’s stiff shoulders. No, it had happened. Otherwise, why had he been acting like this all day? I sighed, slumping over to sit with my back against the damp cave wall. I was so tired I felt it down to the marrow in my bones.
Maybe Adrien had done and said those things just to keep me awake, and for him there’d never been any feeling behind it. Could he be so cold and calculating? I could have sworn I’d felt his desire in response to me when we’d kissed.
I shook my head. My befuddled mind was too tired to make any sense out of it. My heavy eyelids fluttered, wanting so badly to close. I snapped them open, feeling weary and defeated.
This was it then. I had no more fight left. “I want to sleep,” I announced. “Let’s use up the last of the oxygen.” Afterwards, we’d both leave the cave and go looking for more. I didn’t care how much he argued with me. I wasn’t going to just sit around waiting anymore.
He gave a quick nod but didn’t say a word. He stooped to gather up the equipment we’d need.
But right as I stood up, a sudden noise came from outside. It was just a slight buzz, different from the sounds of the leaves blowing in the trees or the trilling of birds. Adrien froze too.
“What is it?” he whispered.
For a second I just looked at him in tired confusion. I had no idea what it was. But then I realized he meant for me to look with my telek sense. I immediately closed my eyes and felt outward past the entrance of the cave.
“It’s a transport.” We both scrambled to the wall of the cave. “It’s landing.”
“Is it an attack transport?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered back, trying frantically to calm my racing heart so I could focus on the two bodies inside the vehicle.
“They don’t feel big enough to be Regs,” I said, “but I can’t be sure.”
Then the side of the transport opened up and a familiar lanky form stepped out. “It’s Henk!” I ran forward to the front of the cave, awash with happiness. Henk was alive! That meant some of the others might be too.
“Well, where are they?” I heard Xona’s voice ask. She must have been the second person I’d felt in the transport.
“I don’t bloody know,” Henk said. “Ginni just said they’re at these coordinates. Gotta be a close pace nearby.”
“Over here,” I called from the mouth of the cave, waving my arms over my head. There was only the barest sliver of moon out, and I could see the outline of the transport thirty feet away, hovering near the lake’s edge.
“Zoe!” Xona said. “Look, over by those rocks.” She pointed my way and they hurried over.
She crushed me into a tight embrace, lifting me up off the ground. “We got here as soon as we could. Everything was so crazy.”
“I thought you were dead!” I said. “I saw the rendezvous site. How’d you get away?”
Henk had come up behind Xona, more subdued. He cuffed Adrien on the back and then made his way into the cave where we’d set up camp. “This place ain’t half bad.”
“How did you escape?” I asked. “And what about the others?”
Xona and Henk exchanged a look, then she took a deep breath. “We loaded as many refugees as we could into the pods, but there was no more room for us. Cole and I took off for
the military level right when the blast doors started closing.
“Henk and most of the rest of our task force were there. A bunch of people had been eating in the Caf and Rand rounded them up and headed down after Henk messaged him. Cole and I just barely slipped under a blast door and met up with them.
“All the pods were gone by then. But Henk said there was another tunnel that was still under construction and was mostly dug out. We raced down it, then drove the digger the last half mile through to the Surface. We thought for sure the Regs would be on our tail, but none even bothered to follow us.”
I thought of the swarm of Regs who’d been chasing behind me in our tunnel. “They were probably too busy coming after me once I was sighted,” I said. At least it had let my friends get away unharmed.
“Well, thank God for that then,” Xona said. “The digger was slow, and the whole time we were sure they’d be on us any second. But we made it to the Surface just fine, and then to a transport Henk had stashed close by.” She looked over at Henk with a nod of admiration. “The guy’s got contingency plans on top of contingency plans.”
“So you got out of there okay?” I asked.
“At first everything was fine.” Xona blinked hard. “But when we got closer to the rendezvous site, suddenly one of the telepathic twins who was with us, Jare, started screaming that they’d found us.”
“Thought we were right cracked for sure,” Henk said quietly. “I took us outta there as quick as I could.”
“But they’d already seen you?” I asked.
Xona shook her head. “No, the twins had gotten separated. The other boy was in one of the other pods that had been launched. Through their telepathy, Jare saw what Jone was seeing. The rendezvous site had been compromised and Jone was trying to warn his brother. Jare said later he’d seen through his brother’s eyes that one of the other pods had opened fire and then was shot down right over the main cabin. It was only because of Jone’s warning while we were far enough out that we were able to escape in time.”