Kitabı oxu: «Meridian»

First published in the USA 2014 by Greenwillow Books,

a division of HarperCollins Publishers

First published in Great Britain 2014 by Electric Monkey,

an imprint of Egmont UK Limited, The Yellow Building,

1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2014 Josin L. McQuein

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First e-book edition 2014

ISBN 978 1 4052 6395 5

eISBN 978 1 7803 1183 8

www.egmont.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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EGMONT

Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street. He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment.

The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Egmont Press: Ethical Publishing

CHAPTER ONE
TOBIN

We’re at Day 49 AF—days since the Arc fell.

Almost two months ago, a group of kids with rocks took down the security lights that had guarded this compound for generations, and the Fade walked through. No one died. No one was stolen away to the Dark. In fact, it was the opposite. They brought back the people we’d written off as lost.

Everything changed, but you’d never know it the way things have settled.

Walk the perimeter. See nothing. Report nothing.

Test the lights.

Walk the perimeter. See nothing. Report nothing.

Lock step and follow orders.

Training for a security position should involve more action, but that’s all been past tense since the night my friends and I brought the Arc down.

“Twenty-seven?”

Mr. Pace’s voice crackles through my radio, at the same exact second he calls every night.

“Present, Teacher,” I say, using a voice I know he can’t stand.

“That wasn’t even funny the first time.”

“Present, Elias ?”

“Tobin . . .”

“Sorry.”

“And I’m pretty sure I’ve warned you about lying to a superior, too.”

“So write me up for apologizing. I dare you.”

He’s got no one to report me to. With our former leader, Honoria, hiding in the lower parts of the compound, he’s as high up the chain of command as you can go.

“Keep it up, and I’ll do you one better,” he says sourly. “I’ll tell your father.”

Okay, that would be worse than the write-up.

Things have been weird with my dad since he came back from the Dark. I don’t mean to avoid him, but the Fade are in his eyes, all silver and shiny—everyone sees it, and everyone whispers when they think he can’t hear them. It’s worse being in the same house and wondering if the hive sees what he sees. Thinking about it makes my skin crawl, and that reminds me of them, too.

We’re supposedly in a state of neutrality with the shadow crawlers, but I can’t shake the idea that neutral is a code word for something we haven’t anticipated.

“You have to take this seriously,” Mr. Pace says. “It’s not a drill anymore.”

“Assign me something more interesting than watching the sun set and I’ll take it as seriously as you want.”

“Interesting is overrated. And stop staring at the sun; you’ll go blind.”

“Would that get me another assignment?”

“The system’s about to cycle.” Mr. Pace sighs. “Keep your eyes on the perimeter and off the flaming ball of solar gas.”

“Yes, sir.”

I wish the cameras were online. I’d salute, just to piss him off.

The radio goes quiet, matching the rest of my assigned perimeter stretch, only quiet never makes it all the way to silence anymore. I can’t say for sure that my hearing’s sharper since he did his little magic trick and healed the gunshot wound that should have killed me, but I’m definitely more aware of my surroundings. I listen harder and look deeper. I never take for granted that what I see is all that’s out there. And I never forget that the white nightmare drew blood long before Honoria did. If he hadn’t recognized Marina when we went hand-to-hand outside my door, he wouldn’t have stopped with slashing me across the shoulder. He probably would have taken my head off.

Marina never thinks of him as anything other than “Rue”—short for rueful—“sorry .”

More like sorry-ass.

He’s a walking pile of genetically altered apologies with a broken heart. She swears he never intended to hurt anyone that day he took on five of us, but it’s not that simple. Thanks to the emergency share of his nanites, I know that the Fade don’t hate humans, but I also know that there is one Fade who does hate me . I know exactly how close he came to saying no when she begged him to save my life.

He still wouldn’t have gotten what he wants. Me dead wouldn’t make Marina more Fade or less human.

I stop at the center of my assigned route, something I’ve done often enough to leave footprints.

“Ready,” I say into my radio, and start a mental countdown. The lights in my section go through a prearranged pattern of tests before blazing full bright. In my head, it’s set to music. A billion notes blended into the current.

“How’s it look?” Mr. Pace asks.

“Same as yesterday.”

Things repeat so often around here, I’m surprised I haven’t been hypnotized.

“Good, then the reroutes haven’t done any new damage.”

Most of the damage Annie and the others did to the lamps was superficial, only requiring new bulbs and covers, which would be perfect except that while it was happening, the techs panicked. They thought the problem was more complex than broken bulbs, and they tried to force more power into the lights, causing massive shorts in the system by routing too much voltage. Now all that damage has to be unraveled like a giant, layered knot.

“There’s a pulse headed your way.”

“I’ll be here.”

I step back from the perimeter, and wait for the heat.

A pulse is exactly what it sounds like. Mr. Pace takes each section of the boundary in turn and sends high power bursts through the lamps, so we can highlight any points weak enough to buckle. The bulbs come on so strong and hot that they cook the fog right out of the Grey for several feet around the Arc. There’s something about the uncovered desolation that gives me chills, even though I’m sweating from the burn.

It’s depressing. Lonely .

On the short side of the Grey, where Annie and I had crossed to go after Marina, the Dark’s so close that you can see it, even through the fog. When the lights go bright on that side, the trees shudder from the shock, but here, there’s nothing. The Dark sits below the horizon, dipping out of sight in the extreme distance. It’s easy to pretend there’s nothing out there beyond rocks and tree stumps and trash that’s blown into the Grey as a reminder of the world before.

“What’s the damage?” Mr. Pace asks.

“They’re holding.”

“Good. I’ll give you a heads-up before the full-perimeter burn.”

“I’ll be here,” I say again. The lamps cut off, leaving me with a predusk sky for light.

Time for target practice.

They don’t give trainees guns, but I can improvise. I bend down for a couple of stones that are just big enough to fit my hand. There’s a felled tree with its roots sticking up that I’ve been using the last few days. From my angle, the roots form an almost perfect circle.

The first rock hits the tip of a root about an inch from the center, sending a rain of dry dirt shaking off; the second clips one off the outside ridge. I reach for a third and pitch the rock high, but it must have been cracked. It splits into pieces that drop to the ground, except for one that bounces off something midair. Suspicion creeps up my neck, ticking the back of my ears.

It hit a tiny root, I tell myself. Or a knot on the trunk that’s just out of sight .

I crouch for another stone, then fling it sideways, two feet off the ground. This one hits something, too, but not my stump. The rock bounces off something beside it. Something invisible.

“Bring up the lights,” I whisper into my radio, standing slowly, my eyes skimming the Grey for any hint of shimmer that would tell me a Fade’s using the fallen trees for cover.

“We’re still checking other sectors, Tobin.”

Anyone from Marina’s hive can walk safely up to the boundary now. The curious ones come every night. So why would it hide?

“Is this a drill?” I ask

“These are the same tests we’ve run for the last week. I’m not sure—”

“Not the lights—out in the Grey,” I say.

“Did you see something?”

“I didn’t see anything—that’s the problem.”

Maybe it’s shy, I think, or scared . It could be a kid, like Marina’s little sister, but staying camouflaged is asking for trouble. It’s not even full dark. Why would it be here so early?

What if it’s more than one? We could be surrounded.

I’m going to kill Silver for skipping out on patrol and leaving me alone. Then I’ll have my new invisible friend heal her, and I’ll kill her all over again.

I take another shot at the stump, aiming for the opposite side—nothing but air, so I turn back to where I’d hit before. The rock goes sailing, but at the point I expect an impact, it changes direction. Something’s batted it away.

A stick snaps in two, displacing the dust around it, though I can’t see the foot that must have stepped there.

“If this is you getting back at me for joking around, tell me now,” I say into the radio.

“I’m not doing anything,” Mr. Pace says.

Maybe it’s him, come to keep an eye on me.

“Hey!” I shout. I move forward but don’t cross the Arc. Staying on my side of the line makes me feel better, lights or not. “I know you’re there!”

I pick up another stone.

“We’re the same height, Nanobot. The next one’s coming straight at your head!”

The invisible something moves again, shuffling away so fast that it bumps my target, snapping several of the roots. This isn’t Rueful. If he wanted to screw with my head, he’d have dropped the invisible act right beside me, just to prove he could get close enough to do it.

“Tobin!” Mr. Pace is shouting. I must have tuned him out.

“I’m here.”

“I heard. Can you confirm it’s Marina’s buddy with you?”

The lights come up.

“It’s not him, but there is something,” I tell him.

“Sykes is headed your way. Scope it. Tell me what you see.”

When Rueful came for Marina in the hospital, Mr. Pace was able to track him with the infrared from his rifle, so each trainee was assigned a light to use in situations like this. I forgot, the stupid thing’s been hanging off my wrist the whole time.

I aim the beam at the stump.

“There’s . . . nothing . There’s nothing there.”

I sweep the light side to side, up and down, but I never see more than the targeting dot against rocks and brush. Another dot appears next to mine, and I turn to find Lt. Sykes has joined me.

For a second I think he’s on my side. He’s got his rifle tucked in tight to his shoulder, with serious concentration on his face. He gives the Grey a much more thorough check than I do, turning the search into a grid and covering each section in a square pattern, but ultimately, Sykes drops the rifle to his side and picks up his radio.

“It’s clear,” he says. “If there was anything out there—”

“There was! I swear.” I sound like a kid throwing a fit.

“It’s gone now,” Sykes says, staring at me, but he’s not listening to me anymore. “No trace.”

“The stump has plenty of traces,” I say, pointing to it.

Sykes turns around and walks a few feet off, but my hearing’s a lot better these days.

“He’s exhausted, Elias,” Sykes says. “The kid’s got circles under his eyes dark enough to pass for Fade-marks, and his posture’s shot. Anything he saw, if he saw anything, could have been in his head. I don’t want him on the perimeter. Not like this.”

“Agreed. Send him home.”

When Sykes turns to deliver the message, I’m right behind him.

“You shouldn’t eavesdrop, kid.”

“You’re not old enough to call me kid, and I’m not hallucinating!”

“No one said you are.”

“That’s exactly what you said!”

“I said you’re exhausted, and that’s the truth. You’ve been covering your duty and Silver’s for days—we’ve noticed. It’s burning you out.”

“I can—”

“You can find your friend and tell her to pull her share of the weight, and then you can take a nap. But first show me which stump, so I can scrape for samples. Being exhausted doesn’t make you wrong.”

Maybe not, but the possibility of being right makes me never want to sleep again.

CHAPTER TWO
MARINA

I chose to work in the Arbor, I remind myself. It makes me happy .

But right now, it makes me annoyed. Someone took my stepladder—again . Every time I have to track it down, I end up off schedule, so I thought using an upturned bucket made sense. But it was stupid. Really, really stupid and wobbly.

I still have to stand on my toes and stretch to reach the branch I need to sample, but if I can tip myself just a little bit more, my shears should be long enough to—

“Ow!”

The bucket topples out from under me, and the falls sends the points of my shears into my hand. But I got my trimming. Ha! Take that, ladder thief !

I can’t stop myself from checking the blood.

It’s red. Nearly two months from my last breath off my old inhaler, I still bleed human red.

I hold my hand down, watching the drops run and collect on my finger, ready to drip onto the potting soil below. A million billion bits of genetic code that could tell me what the color my eyes and hair would be had I been born human rather than turned into one.

Blood remembers everything. It could tell me the name of the father I still don’t know, but it just hangs there, turning tacky in the Arbor’s humid air.

You should be more careful, a snide inner voice taunts. Humans are imprecise .

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the day while the rest of the Arclight’s still sleeping. My dream-fogged brain tries to convince me that my skin’s the color of ash and that what thrums in my veins is thick and black, teeming with the tiny machines that used to fill and form my cells.

On those early mornings, it all comes back. I smell flowers and know my little sister’s close. The sting of pine needles tells me my mother’s there. All the layers stemming from the Fade’s connection to one another wrap me up in a whirlwind of comfort.

I remember my real name. I’m the warmth of a new day filtering past the Dark’s canopy, and the promise of adventure on an errant wind. Cherish, and cherished. I belong.

Then the hive’s voices dull, falling away until only Rue’s remains.

Never alone, he said, but his final words to me were a promise he couldn’t keep. I’ll always be alone. No one else has ever been Fade, then human.

In the end the moment passes, and I’ve lost everything.

I always lose.

“Stop it,” I say out loud, bracing myself against the workstation. The s comes out as a hard hiss. “Go away!”

I plunge my hands into a bucket of irrigation water, watching the blood sink to the bottom among the falling silt.

You go is the answer I get.

Weeks ago, when I was released from the hospital, I told Dr. Wolff and Tobin and everyone else that I had control of myself after the suppressant was out of my system. I didn’t know it was a lie. My memories were trickling back, but they brought something else with them—Cherish .

I thought she was an echo. I’d say or do something routine but feel a twinge or hesitate because it didn’t actually seem normal. Something as insignificant as sitting down with a tray at meals or opening my mouth to speak to Anne-Marie felt alien and uncomfortable.

That’s not how we eat, I’d think. That’s not how we speak .

As my memories returned, they were the memories of a Fade. I thought my brain was just having trouble filtering, but it escalated. I’d reach for a fork at my next meal, and my fingers wouldn’t move. I could see the fork, and I’d want to pick it up, only something interrupted the brain signal required to do it.

That’s not how we eat, my inner voice insisted, until I finally realized it wasn’t a memory. Something inside me was trying to control my movements. Something that still thought of me as part of a hive—the voice never said I, it always said we .

The Fade are dual creatures. They can exist as an individual or as part of a hive mind, and the residue of the life I left in the Dark was still trying to make me act like a Fade. Cherish was trying to send me back to the shadows.

Things would be so much simpler if I could talk myself into taking the suppressant again. One puff off my old inhaler, and Cherish would drift back into stark-white nothing; I’d forget she ever existed. But if I let go of her, I lose my family and Rue.

I don’t know what to do.

I can deal with Cherish for another day. Just one. Just today. If I keep telling myself that, I may string enough days together to last me the rest of my life.

I dry my hands, reaching for the bulky gloves I’m supposed to wear.

Cherish doesn’t comment, but I know she hates them. Fade prefer to feel the soil, and it’s usually easier to humor her, but today she’s being difficult. She doesn’t get her way.

“Good children of the Arclight don’t search for ways around the rules,” I tell her. “We do our jobs and move forward.”

We are not the Arclight’s good child .

“I will be,” I say. I can’t be a Fade, but I can be the best human girl I can be. I have human responsibilities to the Arbor; she won’t distract me from them anymore.

The creatures are here again, she says smugly.

Sometimes Cherish is more sixth sense than annoyance. She notices things I don’t, by virtue of the enhanced hearing I never lost. I’m busy snipping and cataloging leaf samples in jars, but she’s hearing the swish of a cat’s tail through air.

Something whisper-soft brushes against my legs, weaving around my ankles in a figure eight. I bend down to pet it.

“I wonder if those came from Mom’s monsters.”

A real voice startles me as Tobin’s boots shuffle into sight on the other side of the work-station. Even if Cherish heard him come in, she wouldn’t tell me. She doesn’t like him.

“Hey,” I say, as though it’s not odd to see him down here.

“Hey.”

He smiles, reaching out to stroke the cat’s ruff. It springs free with a hiss at the first touch of his fingers, and he laughs.

“Definitely Mom’s. They always hated me.”

He told me a story once, about how the cats in the Arclight came from his mother’s efforts to save a litter of abandoned kittens she’d found outside the boundary as a girl. He takes the Arbor cat’s disdain as proof that his mother left a mark on this place beyond the research Honoria used for my so-called cure.

“Is the shift over already?” I ask. I could check my alarm band, but I’ve spent weeks breaking myself of the habit of answering to that stupid screen on my wrist. I’d rather get my information elsewhere. Somewhere not controlled by the people who nearly killed me.

“I’ve been sent in search of Silver. She didn’t show up for rounds, so she’s become their latest excuse to get me away from anything interesting or important.”

“That bad?”

He shrugs.

“If you need someone skilled at watching lights flick on and off, I’m your guy.”

I toss my cut branch into an envelope, stick a label on the front, and set it aside with my other samples. Someone else will come to test them again, but they’ll do it after I’m gone. That way, they think I won’t realize they’re watching me.

“Have you seen her?” he asks.

“Silver doesn’t come down here.” Since hiding in the tunnels with Rue, she breaks into hives at even the mention of the Arclight-below. She claims she caught claustrophobia from Anne-Marie.

“Didn’t think so.” Tobin hops up onto the workstation

“Isn’t sitting down the opposite of finding someone?”

“I asked Annie first, and now she’s got me looking for Dante, too.”

“Which means they’re together,” I say.

“And not wanting to be found, so I consider myself on break. I thought I’d see if you wanted to be on break, too.”

Cherish suggests the Arclight’s good children don’t take breaks.

“You look terrible,” I say, ignoring her.

He’s shaking, scanning the room over and over. Something’s rattled him—bad.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just insomnia.” Tobin picks at the clods of dirt around him, crumbling them into powder. He shakes my collection jars. He never looks at me when he’s lying. “I’ve slept about two hours in the last four days.”

He grimaces, grinding at his eyes with his palms.

“Tobin! You didn’t tell me it was that bad!” I sling my gloves off to take his hand and pull him to his feet. “I’m taking you to Doctor Wolff.”

This is a switch; usually, he’s the one threatening me with the hospital.

“I don’t need a doctor,” he insists.

“He’ll give you something.”

“Like he did you?”

“Low blow, Tobin.” Dr. Wolff giving him a sedative is nothing compared to my being perma-drugged to kill my memories. But if Tobin’s using that against me, this is serious. “It’s Doctor Wolff or your father. Pick one.”

“Marina, stop . . . please,” he begs. He’s got his feet planted, leaning back as hard as he can. If I were still Fade, I could move him, but plain old human Marina? Not a chance—and Cherish doesn’t miss the opportunity to point that out.

“You’re scaring me,” I say, letting go. “What’s so bad you’d rather dance around it than tell me?”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

The hairs on the back of my neck shoot up, tingling from an electric current straight off my nerves.

“You said the nightmares stopped,” I say.

After Rue healed Tobin, and we were released from the hospital, Tobin started having dreams where he was consumed by the Dark, drowning under a wave of black water. He claimed it was post-traumatic stress, but their voices remained in his head for way too long.

“They did stop for a while,” he says, mumbling the last part. “But they’re back—sort of. They’re different. It’s weird.”

Weird and Fade are two things that do not need to occupy the same space as nightmares. Bad things happen when they do.

“Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m awake or asleep. I hear—”

“You hear the Fade?”

A long absent dread uncurls inside my throat, spiraling toward my stomach, where it turns cold and sharp. Only this time, I’m not scared for me. Tobin shouldn’t be able to hear the hive.

“Not like that,” he says quickly. “And not always. It just drifts in sometimes, like a nightmare. I just don’t want to explain that to anyone else. You understand; they won’t.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I haven’t heard or seen your boyfriend since it happened.”

Calling Rue my boyfriend is like using “it” to encompass everything that happened to us. Tobin’s still dodging.

“They’re just your average, creepy-feeling, shadow-filled, something-awful’s-going-to-happen-if-I-fall-asleep nightmares,” he says again, with a half-choked laugh. “Though if you want to double-check and ask your ex, I won’t object.”

“I can’t hear Rue anymore,” I say. He hasn’t so much as come into view since the night we brought Tobin’s father and the others back.

My mother was here once—close enough to touch—but she didn’t bring my sister, and she was only interested in getting me to follow her into the Grey. I wanted to—I really did—but I was afraid of what would happen if I returned to the Dark. Cherish would have the advantage there. What if she’s stronger than me?

We are stronger than you, she says, making me certain that I had made the right decision.

I can still see the mix of anger and sadness in my mother’s expression, and taste the way the air turned, like it was suddenly infused with bitter lemon. Even now, the memory makes my eyes sting.

Tobin leans forward and grabs my hands as I do. “You’re bleeding.”

Once, those words were enough to make my heart falter, but now they’re just a reminder that I pulled my gloves off fast enough to break open the cut from my clippers.

“I got careless taking samples,” I say. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing doesn’t leave bloodstains.” He wipes my palms with a towel dipped in irrigation water and then bends down to pick up the gloves I dropped. “Here,” he says with a lopsided grin. Usually, that’s enough to foil my attempts to stay annoyed, but this time it’s not his lips that have my attention, it’s his eyes and the metallic, silver shine in them.

“Tobin?”

The effect lasts a blink and a skipped heartbeat, and then his eyes are back to brown, and I’m back to remembering how to breathe.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Did you really come here looking for Silver?” The question’s a toss-away to help me collect my thoughts.

“Mostly, but Annie also wants me to remind you that you promised to help with her rotation. I think I was even threatened with food poisoning if you don’t comply . . .No, wait. That wasn’t a threat. That was Annie reminding me about dinner. She really does want your help, though.”

“I guess I’d better get going, then.”

“And I’ll get back to not finding Silver or Dante,” he says. “Why can’t they just use her room? I know Dante’s folks don’t want him home much, but Silver can come and go. They’d be a lot easier to avoid if I knew where not to look.”

I nod, washing my hands mechanically at the spout on the wall without sparing another look at Tobin’s face. When I pass the incinerator meant for burning rotten plants and refuse, I throw in my gloves and the towel he touched.

Just in case .

CHAPTER THREE
MARINA

Events that change the world seem like they should come with a herald or harbinger, but that’s not how it happens. The moments that mean the most happen in the pauses between breaths—easy to miss if no one knows they should be looking.

What did I miss with Tobin?

I should have noticed something before now. Tobin’s eye shine is more than a whisper of warning. It’s a plunge into an icy stream so cold, the surface grows solid over my head. It’s the pull of water away from shore before the waves crash down to drown us all in his nightmare.

“Tell me this is you,” I hiss to Cherish while in an empty hallway. Hardly anyone comes near the Arbor at this time of night, and I’m grateful for their avoidance. No one can see me talking to myself. “Tell me you’re playing with my head, or thinking about Rue, and somehow that made Tobin look different to me.”

But Cherish stays stubbornly silent.

If I call it stubbornness, then I can believe she’s really the cause—not Tobin.

The halls of the Arclight-below pass in a blur; routine by now, so I don’t think about where I’m going until I reach a door and need my wristband for access. Down here, you don’t need permission just to enter; you need it to leave, too. Every time I have to wait for the red light to turn green and let me through, my breath hitches and I wonder if this will be the day they change their minds. The point they turn on me and lock me away again.

Those fears have grown weaker the last few weeks, but if Tobin’s eyes are really silver . . .

The door snaps open, and I shoulder through as soon as I’m able, holding my breath when I pass the alcove that houses both Honoria’s office and the White Room, where Cherish died and I was born. This is nothing but a routine shift change, I tell myself.

I pass the familiar scrawl of USAF that someone stenciled on the wall between embossed stars; streaks into a line at the corner of my eye. One of these days, I’ll ask someone what it means. By the time I reach the final panel that allows me into the Arclight-above, I’ve denounced and defended Tobin a dozen times.

I should tell Dr . Wolff, insists the part of me indoctrinated by the Arclight’s rules. Nightmares, plus voices, plus eye shine, equals Fade.

Rue swore to me that the Fade don’t take unwilling hosts anymore. Tobin loathes the Fade; he’s terrified of them. No way would he agree to let them stay inside him by choice.

Did Rue lie to me?

Negative! The suggestion makes Cherish angry. Deceit is not a possibility .

“Okay, maybe it was an accident or an oversight.”

Nanites are tiny. Rue could have missed some when he took his back. Cherish has lasted this long, there’s no reason Rue’s contact with Tobin couldn’t do the same.

But where are the marks ? Tobin’s skin is clean.

Where’s the sensitivity to light? The arbor’s full of sunlamps. Tobin works on the perimeter with the high beams every day—no Fade could stand that.

And his father would have noticed. Wouldn’t he?

Turning Tobin in would bring suspicion to our whole class, and at least half the upper-years. Anne-Marie and her brother Trey, Silver and Dante—they all put themselves at risk. I can’t tell them they might have been wrong. And I can’t lose another life. The Arclight’s all I have left.

If something happens to Tobin, it’s my fault. I brought the Fade. I begged Rue to heal him.

“Were his eyes really shining?” I ask, but Cherish only answers with a reminder that Tobin left the Arclight for me. She nudges me to do the same for him. Rue’s in the Dark, and he’ll answer my questions.

She’s baiting me, not helping. Her strength is in the Dark.

What I need is a cooperative Fade who’s willing to come here. One who might understand what’s going on, but who also knows why I can’t mention it to anyone else.

I need Honoria’s baby brother.

Schuyler Whit turned Fade in the first days, more than a century ago, and has lived as one ever since. I named him Bolt, for his appearance, with its sharp, slashing lines, and a presence that invokes the violent nature of a thunderstorm. I’ve watched people approach other Fade with curiosity when they venture out of the Grey toward the darkened sections of the Arc, but few bother with him. He looks menacing, but he isn’t, and his connection to Honoria makes him taboo. It’s a shame, considering he has a knack for defusing people’s tempers.

My panicked heart begins to calm. Bolt comes at least three times a week. Once I make it through my promise to Anne-Marie, I’ll find him at the Arc, and everything will be okay.

“Yay!” Anne-Marie cheers when I enter the midyear classroom she’s been assigned for the night. “One of you showed up, at least.”

It was no surprise when she declared her intention to follow a teacher’s path the moment we were allowed to choose. Anne-Marie and her brother are a perfect split of their father’s personality. Trey got Mr. Pace’s desire for a security position, and she got the teaching bug.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Dante?” she asks.

I’m still getting used to how different she looks with her hair cut so short that it barely rises above her scalp. It seems an odd choice of celebration, but she said the change was for her birthday.

I should figure out if I have one of those.

“Silver’s gone missing, and you know if they’re together—”

“No details in the kiddie classroom.” She holds up a hand to cut me off. She’d probably cover her ears if her other hand wasn’t balancing an oversize tub on her hip. “Actually, no details on those two, period. Neither of them understands the concept of oversharing. Or locks.”

Poor Anne-Marie swears she didn’t sleep for days after walking in on the two of them in a closet; something about Dante having a really big, really weird birthmark.

There’s a bluish aura around her, glowing brighter and bolder with her increased agitation. It’s the way Cherish sees people who have touched the Fade but who aren’t part of the hive. I’ve seen Anne-Marie’s since I got my memories back, but it’s especially vibrant today.

“Besides,” she says. “I doubt Silver’s with him, unless he’s finally convinced her to go out on the short side with him. Every day, he skips out on rotation early and makes himself go a little farther into the Grey. You’d think he was hunting for buried treasure out there.”

That’s a conversation I have no intention of continuing. One person having Dark dreams is enough; I don’t want to think about it spreading. Thankfully, it’s only a passing comment, and Anne-Marie moves on.

“Could you get the chairs out of the way while I set out the cups and stuff ?” she asks. “That was Dante’s job, but he’s useless.”

Easy enough, and if I’m both lucky and quick, I’ll make it out of here in time to beat Bolt to the Arc, so there’s no chance of missing him.

“Why are you setting out snacks like for a baby class?” I ask offhandedly, as I stack chairs against the wall.

“Mid-years get snacks.” She stumbles but catches the cup she drops before it hits the floor.

“They do?”

The air between us hardens, developing the sharper edge of a knife drawn to keep me back. It’s been a few days since I’ve experienced an emotion so strong I can taste it, and it takes a steadying breath to reacquaint myself with the phenomenon.

“Sure. On special occasions,” she says.

“Today’s special?”

Did I miss another holiday? There are so many days on the calendar, I can’t keep them straight.

“Birthdays are special,” she says stiffly.

Anne-Marie won’t look at me. The scent of oranges, which usually hovers around her, turns as acidic as the toner used to strip down tables in the clean rooms of the Arclight-below. It burns my throat when I breathe.

She’s hiding something, Cherish warns. Danger . Flee .

But I’m not the one who looks like she’s about to dart out of here.

“Anne-Marie?”

“Do the last row, would you? I have to pick up the kids from orientation.”

She swings the box off her hip, toward me, so I can either catch it or let it fall as she rushes for the exit.

“Anne-Marie!”

She stops, shoulders rising with a sigh, without turning.

“You have to face her sooner or later, and the longer it goes, the harder it will be,” she says. “You’re my friend, Marina. I hate what she did to you, but we need her. So long as she’s avoiding you, she’s no good to us. This place will fall apart.”

“What are you—”

I don’t have to finish the question, and Anne-Marie doesn’t have to answer it. The room changes in a way she can’t sense, with explosive rings spreading through the air from the door. Into the void behind them, steps a person who sets my every nerve alight with panic. Cherish becomes a wild animal running amok inside my skull.

Honoria hasn’t made many appearances since she shot Tobin while trying to prove he was no longer human. She’s avoided me altogether, which suits me fine, but to my continued annoyance, most everyone has fallen onto the same side of the argument as Anne-Marie. They think Honoria’s countless years here are an asset—no matter the mistakes she’s made or crimes committed. Even Tobin’s father has tried to get me to talk to her.

They don’t understand that when I look at Honoria, I lose myself.

To me, she’s the woman who almost murdered Tobin for the sake of her misconceptions. She’s the one who ordered me kidnapped and altered. She’s the one who tried to exile Tobin’s father and those who went with him into the Grey. She’s the one who tortured Rue.

Honoria’s a monster, and she’s staring at me like I’m the one who doesn’t belong in a room meant for human children.

I don’t, and that’s her fault, too.

“You can’t leave me alone with her.” I make a desperate grab for Anne-Marie’s arm, and the box nearly topples to the floor when she steps out of reach.

“You don’t have to forgive her; you don’t have to like her, but you need to find a way to live with her so things can get back to normal.”

Normal for the Arclight means sleeping all day and hiding under lamps at night, jumping at shadows that never meant us any harm. That’s not normal, nor is it an existence I want to return to.

“I don’t care if you have to draw a line down the middle of the building and pick sides, just do something. Please try,” Anne-Marie says, rushing back to hug me for some, inexplicable reason. She lets go and turns very serious, scolding me with a pointed finger. “If either of you are dead when I get back, I’ll be really irritated.”

Then she walks out of the room, leaving me to face the one real enemy I have in the world.

CHAPTER FOUR
MARINA

Honoria’s expression holds no emotion; there’s no hint of the decades she’s seen hidden in the colorless gray of her eyes. We don’t need to paint lines to divvy up space; this classroom might as well have the White Room’s safety pane running down its center. She stays on her side; I stay on mine.

“Do I need to tell you this wasn’t my idea?” she asks. For once, I’m sure she’s not lying. Her shock’s palpable.

Tobin says Mr. Pace took away the silver pistol she always kept tucked in her waistband, but I’d feel better if I could see her back to know for sure.

“Door’s open,” I say. “Feel free to leave.”

But no one’s going anywhere.

I step sideways and set out a bowl of cookies from the tub Anne-Marie left, but I never take my eyes off her. Honoria slides into the room, just as guarded.

I place another bowl; she moves another step. Bowl, step, bowl, step, until we settle into predatory symmetry, like the films we’ve seen in science class of long-gone animals fighting over territory.

With my focus on Honoria, it’s easy to forget the cushions on the floor that have replaced the chairs I moved. On my next step, I hit padded cotton rather than floor, and I drop the entire tub off my hip. Cookies go flying. Bottles of juice shatter, soaking into the napkins that land on top of them. And I blurt the first curse I’ve ever used in my life as I bend down to clean it up.

“Tobin’s rubbing off on you,” Honoria says, right beside me. Someone her size shouldn’t be able to move that quietly. “I wonder if you’ve had the same effect on him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snap. Hopefully, the look on my face is closer to a glare than “you terrify me.” How does Tobin flip the switch from fear to rage with barely a thought?

My hands are trembling now, so I cover by scrubbing at the spill. It’s grape juice, the purple color close enough to red that I’m having flashbacks of trying to stop the blood from Tobin’s chest.

“You realize those napkins are useless?” she asks rather than answer me. “You’ll go through the stack and only push the mess around. There should be towels in the cabinet.”

I crawl backward as she moves forward, furious that I let myself lose my footing with her, and end up sitting when I run into the cushions behind me.

“I don’t need your help,” I say.

All I need is to make sure that she never finds out what I saw in the arbor. I refuse to have Tobin’s screams haunt me every time I close my eyes because she decides to turn him into an experiment.

For once, Cherish seems in total agreement, echoing my fears with protect and conceal . It’s the way of the Fade—if you don’t want it stolen, keep it hidden from human eyes.

Conceal, Cherish repeats, following the order with a burst of flaring light across a darkened sky. She’s named Tobin after the star shower we shared the night I followed Rue into the Dark. She doesn’t want me to go through the agony she felt when Honoria separated her from Rue; she’d have to feel it again. Honoria won’t touch Tobin—not if we can help it.

Cherish names her “Destroyer,” a raging flame that lays waste to the Dark and everything in it.

My attention drifts back to the lake of juice that looks more like blood the more it dries.

“Being stubborn only leads to a bigger mess,” Honoria says, still tracking me.

“Speaking from experience, are you?” The napkins have turned to a ball of soggy glop in my hands. I stop trying to sop up the juice, and reach for the broken bottles to put them back in the tub. “I said I don’t need your—Ahh!”

I pull my hand back with a hiss. A long shard of glass has imbedded itself into my hand, in nearly the same place I cut it earlier.

Honoria’s on me in an instant, as though the smell of blood draws her close. She tows me up with a gloved hand around my wrist, bringing the wound close enough for inspection. I glance at the blood to prove to myself it’s red, even as Cherish goes feral in my mind.

“Let go!” I order, bracing myself so Honoria no longer has control over where I stand or fall.

“Annie?” a voice calls from the hall. “Has Dante come back this way? Because I really can’t find him.”

Tobin .

A meteor shower goes off inside my head as Cherish calls his name over and over.

Translation: He’s not Rue, but he’ll do .

“Tobin!” I call when he reaches the door.

“Marina?”

He’s stunned for a second, and I can only imagine how we look to him. Me bleeding. Honoria standing over me. Broken glass.

“What happened?” he asks, entering cautiously. “Where’s Annie?”

“She left,” I say.

“Marina’s hurt,” Honoria says at the same time. She jostles my hand to show off the glass. “And she’s acting like a child.”

“I broke a bottle,” I argue. “That’s hardly hurt.”

Getting shot is hurt. Being burned by lights until the lines that used to run my arms and legs melt off—that’s hurt. This is a scratch.

“Let her go.”

“You’re both acting like children,” Honoria says, digging at the piece of glass. Either her gloves are too thick or my blood’s too slippery because she can’t get a decent grip on the shard without driving it deeper.

“Ow!” I do the only thing I can think of—kick her in the shin.

Honoria glowers at me, but she lets go.

Two months ago, I wouldn’t have challenged her outright. I didn’t understand why I feared her until I saw the recordings of my torture in the White Room. I still feel that threat with her this close, but I’m stronger than I was then.

We are stronger than you, Cherish intones.

Honoria grabs one of the fingers on her glove with her teeth and tugs until it comes free, then holds her bare hand out to me. Her skin’s nothing but crisscrossing lines of scar tissue from her fingernails up past her wrists, where they disappear beneath her sleeves.

She gives me an annoyed scowl and zero warning before yanking the glass out of my palm.

“Ow!”

“Keep pressure on it,” she says, pressing another towel and Tobin’s hand down over the free-flowing blood when she’s done. “It shouldn’t bleed long.”

“Ow!” I’m too shocked to say more.

“And close your mouth, you look like a fish.”

“You touched her—bare-handed,” Tobin says.

Of all the people inside the Arclight, Honoria is least likely to break the rules of contact with someone Fade-touched, and she’s always seen me as contaminated. What gives?

“I don’t wear these to protect myself; I wear them to protect everyone else. With you, there’s no need.”

She fixes the glove back in place and drags a chair across the room to the front.

“Are those burns?” I ask.

“Collateral damage,” she says in a weary voice. “I made a choice many, many years ago, and that was to not be like those who live outside this compound. I’m not like you. The suppressants help, but I can’t be cured with a dart and an inhaler. If I want to stay free of the Fade, it costs me.”

She can’t honestly think going from Cherish to Marina cost me nothing.

“The nanites have never stopped replicating in my system; when they start to spike, I do the only thing that works: I cut myself, drawing them to the wound, and burn them out again.”

“You kill them for trying to help you!”

“Help is a subjective concept.”

The only things keeping me in my skin and in this room are Tobin and the sound of laughter and feet. Anne-Marie returns with a line of students who go silent when they see Honoria waiting at the front.

“Everyone, stand to the side and mind the glass,” Honoria says. “Once it’s clear, you can take a seat.”

The children all file into a line against the wall, as though this were a Red-Wall drill. Anne-Marie joins me and Tobin as we lean against the teacher’s desk at the back while Honoria quickly clears as much of the mess as she can.

“What happened?” Anne-Marie asks, looking at my hand and at the towel wrapped into my fist.

“You abandoned her,” Tobin says, but she doesn’t take the bait.

“Marina?” she asks instead.

I can’t really explain beyond saying, “It was an accident.”

She scowls at me, as though dropping bottles of juice was a violation of her order not to try and kill Honoria.

“Uh-huh.” She crosses her arms and sets her sights on the front of the room, where the children have started to chatter nervously in line.

“I thought she left,” one boy whispers.

“She didn’t leave, she went nuts,” another beside him answers.

“Why’s she here?” a girl asks nervously.

“No one’s told you?” Honoria asks, silencing them. Her hearing’s as keen as mine—she caught every whisper. “Usually, those with older siblings get clued in early.”

She shoves the bottle bin under her chair and takes a seat. A reverent hush falls over the faces watching her with absolute attention.

“I’m here to tell you what lies beyond our borders, lurking out of the light.”

She raises her head, looking me straight in the eye.

“Today, I tell you the truth about the Fade.”

CHAPTER FIVE
TOBIN

Marina twitches, ready to jump up, but Annie’s hand nails hers to the desk.

“This is how things work,” Annie says.

“How they stay broken, you mean,” Marina mutters, pulling her hand free to tuck it under her arm. Her other hand tightens its grip on the towel, but she doesn’t argue.

She should—and a lot more.

Honoria’s twisted truths nearly forced a war between us and the Fade—one we would have lost.

“This is her first chance to make it right,” Annie says. “I want to know if she takes it.”

“You think she will?” Marina’s hoping for a yes, I can tell, but she should know better.

“This is how we find out.” Annie shrugs. She pushes off the desk to replace the shattered juice bottles with new ones from the room’s snack dispenser.

“You don’t have to stay,” I tell Marina.

“I want to,” she says. “If Honoria’s going to lie, let her do it to my face.”

It wouldn’t be the first time.

I take a seat beside her on the desk, too tired to stand without moving. Every time my eyes relax, they conjure up shapes and shadows in the corners. I shake my head and focus on the front of the room, where the lights are brightest.

The scene’s surreal. Aside from Annie and the juice stains, it looks exactly like it did the day Honoria gave our class this speech—right down to the cookies and the cushions on the floor. The patches on the kids’ sleeves are the ones we wore. Honoria’s holding the same book she read to us. We could be watching a recording of that day, her voice is so similar.

“Sky’s gotten worse since he saw Dad beyond the safety fires. He wanders a lot, talking to himself. He doesn’t eat and doesn’t sleep. I catch him staring out the windows into the darkness, and I know we’re going to lose him, and soon.”

“Are you awake?” Marina asks, and I realize I’m drifting.

I was out of it just enough that the sequence Honoria read played out in my head, as though it was happening in real time.

I blink, and Marina’s hair turns to tarlike sludge dripping down her face. There’s an ocean of it all around, so deep that only the kids’ heads are above it. It’s over my ankles.

I wrench backward to pull my legs free, but they’re clean and dry, and the room is normal again. No one noticed a thing—except Marina.

“Tobin?”

“Sorry,” I say, lowering my feet off the desk. “Dozed off.”

She looks at me weird, but only for a moment before turning back to Honoria. I look for something sharp to hold in my palm. If I can squeeze it, the pain will keep me awake.

I don’t remember Honoria tearing up when she read this to us, but she is now. The light pinging off her eyes turns them shiny. It’s an illusion, but it makes me shiver.

She does the same and has to take a drink of water before she can read more.

“It’s how Tracey acted before she changed,” she says, monotone now. “And how Major Gardener used to stare before he went after his wife. Sky’s not listening to real people anymore. All he hears is Jimmy, and Jimmy’s been gone a week.”

Marina’s enthralled. This all new for her, and she’s probably hoping Honoria will share something worth her attention, but she won’t. Honoria won’t even admit what she is—not here.

Her eyes don’t glow like a Fade’s, but she’s not completely human. She’s a freak of nature. Frozen, like the memory of the people in that book. Too many of our elders use that as an excuse for pity.

Her snapping was understandable, they’d say. It’s remarkable she fared so well for so long .

What a load of crap.

They’re lazy.

They’re so used to her doing the hard things and making the difficult decisions for them, they’ve put her on a no-fault system. Whatever she did, she had a good reason .

They’ve forgotten how to think for themselves.

Even Dad, with his: She was a kid, too, Tobin . She made mistakes . You don’t know what it took for her to become the woman she is .

Like he knows.

How can he buy into it, knowing she was going to let him rot outside the Arc? She hasn’t done a thing to keep people off his back when she’s the one person around here who could.

So his eyes turned silver—So what? Why can they accept her and not him? She’s had Fade in her blood a lot longer than he has.

Her eyes are silver now . Lines spiral out across her face to match the ones creeping down the walls .

I have to shake myself awake again.

Honoria’s rules won’t last. Not once our group ages up enough to have a real say in things. We brought down the Arc; we can bring her down, too.

These kids are already questioning her.

“But we know the Fade aren’t dangerous anymore,” a boy near the front says. No one in my year would have had the nerve when we were his age.

Honoria’s attention goes straight to him, as though he’s spoken some blasphemy. She turns her book in her hands, so that bits of gold and silver catch the room’s overhead lights where metallic lines are embedded in the shape of a bird and a bell. The gilded pages glint along the edge.

“Is this normal?” Marina asks.

“No.”

Usually, Honoria doesn’t stop talking long enough for anyone to pick out the holes in her story. And in a normal year she doesn’t lose their attention, but as Annie paces the room, doling out refills, the whispers start again.

One kid says her older brother is taking her out to the Arc, maybe even across it—Does anyone want to come? Another says he went far enough into the Grey that he couldn’t see the compound. Each claim gets bigger, counting numbers of steps as proof of bravery until the contest is settled by a boy in the back.

“I touched one,” he says. “I went right up to him and shook his hand.”

“Where?”

“When?”

“Which one?”

“A week ago,” the boy says. “And you know—him . The weird one.”

“They’re all weird.”

Marina cringes and says something under her breath I can’t hear. She’s locking down.

“They don’t mean you,” I tell her, squeezing her fingers so I don’t press her hand by mistake and make it bleed again. “You’re human now.”

“I know,” she says, but I think she means something else. She’s watching the boy at the back, like everyone else, including Honoria. The kid doesn’t even realize he’s the center of attention.

“The one with the slashes on his face and arms,” he says.

Schuyler .

Marina calls him Bolt, but his real name is Schuyler. He told me. I’ve never told anyone that I heard him speak because he didn’t say it out loud; it was a one-time thing. It’s not worth spooking anyone. I know, and that’s more than enough.

Honoria’s hands tighten on her book. She clears her throat, and the whispers stop. The kids all look ashamed, caught in the middle of breaking a rule.

“The Fade are being hospitable at the moment; that doesn’t make them less dangerous,” she says. “Appearances of safety often mask unknown dangers.”

She glances at Marina, and Marina’s still grumbling. If Honoria doesn’t stop baiting her, she’s going to regret it. Anyone who can find the guts to hold a burning knife to my skin and save my life can find a way to do worse and save her own.

“You know what—forget this.” Honoria pitches the book onto the floor beside her. “I don’t need my journal to tell you what happened.”

Her journal? That’s a new one.

When Honoria gave us this speech, she told us it had been found in a scrap heap and that we should be grateful there was an account of what had happened. This group gets one less lie.

Annie rejoins us in the back, but she sits cross-legged on the floor, like she’s one of the kids hearing this for the first time. She holds a bowl of cookies on her head so I can take some.

My hands are corpse white, smudged with charcoal lines. Annie’s hair sprouts long tendrils that wrap around her neck—choking her .

“Toby?” she asks.

How can she talk when she’s being strangled?

“Toby! I said, are you done?”

I shake myself again, and my hands are still in their gloves and still in the bowl. Annie’s looking up at me from the floor, like nothing’s wrong, because it isn’t—not for her, anyway. Sykes was right. I’m losing my mind.

Annie puts her bowl in her lap.

“What’s going on?” Marina asks, nibbling on a cookie.

“Two hours of sleep in four days,” I remind her.

“Then go home.”

“Not a chance.” I jam three cookies into my mouth. Maybe the sugar will keep me awake.

“I didn’t live here when I was your age,” Honoria says. “This was the military base where my father worked. He made wondrous things; good things. In the beginning the Fade were a tool meant to help people.”

“He made the Fade?” a girl asks.

“He created machines called nanites that were so small, they could fit inside a cell and unravel disease. Sounds like a good idea, right?”

They all nod.

But they can’t see what I see. Their shadows are pacing the wall, moving without them.

“I thought so, too,” Honoria says. She keeps swallowing, pausing for half beats in the wrong places. “But someone made a mistake, and they malfunctioned. My father tried to fix them, but the machines moved faster than he could. It wasn’t long before they covered everything.”

I remember us being the ones uncomfortable when I was listening to this as a kid, but now she’s the one who’s jumpy.

“No one called them the Fade, then; that came later. We called them the Darkness. The Shroud.”

The whole story comes out a halt, a skip, and a falter at a time. I wonder if she’s ever told it all before. How she was at school when the alarms went off and everyone thought it was drill, until the trucks rolled by and they knew it wasn’t. Her dad came home shaken but telling her everything was fine—then he disappeared.

My head droops toward my chest, and my cookies fall from my hand to the desktop. I know I’m falling asleep, but it’s getting harder to fight.

“Hey!” Marina punches my arm.

“Thanks,” I say. The sting stops the crawling tingles I feel every time my eyes close. Honoria’s still droning in the background.

“Men from the base came to our school. They pulled me and my brother aside to ask us questions. The kind they’d only ask if something had gone so wrong, they couldn’t make it right again.”