It’s not even a lie. The crash after my adrenaline spike has turned my blood to ice water.
Here the darkness consumes the light, when the laws of nature say that’s impossible. Every breath comes heavy and damp, weighted with layers of dew the sun never bakes away. Even if the Fade don’t kill me, I’ll sink below the surface and disappear.
Somewhere in the distant parts of my mind, Anne-Marie’s voice prattles away about her fears of being locked in with no escape. She becomes my anchor, shielding my mind behind her shrill worries as I wrest memories from my brain by force. I survived the Dark once before; I found my way out. The secret’s in there, waiting to be discovered again.
“They’re going to come after me,” I say. “Tobin will come if no one else does.”
Just like his father did.
Disgust
.
A pointed jolt stings my skin.
“Ow!” Pinpricks run along my arms, but I can’t rub the feeling away no matter how hard or fast I try. “If you disagree, just say so. Words hurt a lot less than the whole mind zapping thing!”
“Sor-ry.” He draws out the apology into two long syllables that end our conversation for another thirty meters. I keep rubbing my arms. My hands make heat and keep my skin from feeling clammy beneath my jacket.
“I recognize this place,” I say, bracing for the inevitable pain that comes with recollection. This is what Rue showed me outside Tobin’s apartment. These are the trees with a fringe of black moss. “But I didn’t leave the Dark on this side.”
I crossed on the short side, so how could Rue have seen me running this way?
“You remember trees. You can remember Cherish,” he says, which isn’t helpful in the least.
“Why’d you really bring me out here? I don’t believe it’s just because of her. If you needed help to kill me—”
No. Negative
.
The strength of his response spins my thoughts in twelve directions.
“Nice try, nice lie. I don’t believe you.”
Belief. Trust. Entreat. Help
.
“Just because you’re willing to work with the enemy doesn’t mean the others are.”
“You are not my enemy,” he says. “You listen.”
We pass some sort of structure, a building ruined and broken, overtaken by the Dark. Vines and growth burst from what had once been windows and doors.
It’s a house. Bits of the roof are still in one piece but on the ground, as though something pried them off, and the walls have kept their light rose color without the sun to bleach it away. But where the Dark has touched it, the whole thing runs with black lines like the ones on Rue’s skin. If I strain my eyes, I can make out the muted shapes of other houses on either side, arranged around a flat, curved lane.
Something cracks under my foot, and I look down to see a yellow sign shaped like a pentagon, with the silhouette of two children crossing a road. It’s metal, like the fallen pole it’s still bolted to, and of no interest to the nanites that have consumed the houses. I don’t know the symbol, but its meaning is clear:
Humans used to live here
.
“My people would listen if you’d talk like this.” I turn away from the one-time homes, now skeletons of forgotten lives the Dark has torn to shreds. “It’s confusing your way. They think you can’t understand us.”
“Talk is difficult.” He fits his mouth around each word like it’s a solid thing he’s not used to having on his tongue. “Imprecise.”
That last word makes me shudder; he dug it straight out of my own vocabulary.
“But if you explain . . . Go back with me, and—”
Negative
.
“Mouth closed, politely.”
Rue strays off the curved path into a rougher area. The place we leave, which seemed so morose, now glows bright compared to what lies ahead.
A black canopy stretches over our heads, the antithesis of the Arclight’s safety net, drawing tighter where the Dark has held its grip longest. There are no more leaves, only blankets of foliage with their edges blurred by an unnatural shine. Ebony strands of moss hang from the branches—a perfect match to the impersonation of hair that frames Rue’s face, and I’m careful not to let it touch my skin.
I memorize exposed roots and rocks, letting my foot drag here and there, enough to make a shallow trench behind me, but careful not to make it look like anything more than exhaustion of my wounded leg.
“You won’t be lost,” Rue says out of nowhere, stopping so I crash into him again. I’m starting to think he enjoys it.
“What?” I ask.
“You don’t need pathways. I’ll show you where to go.” He lets me see a line, snaking away ahead of us. “One alone is not safe.”
“I thought you said there was no danger here.”
“Do not disturb them. They like the quiet,” Rue says, and takes up his invisible trail again.
“Who?”
“They.”
He keeps walking, but points to the rocks at our feet. Like everything else, they’re covered in a dusting of fine black specks. They move of their own volition in a slow roiling churn, sliding into pools and over the ground. Behind us, my trench is gone, pushed together and filled as though we’d never passed that way at all.
This place can consume me whole and leave no trace behind.
I can’t suppress the shudder that comes with spying a glistening shimmer here and there among the trees, even high on the trunks, where near-invisible Fade hang suspended and watching us. They’re everywhere.
“What are those things?” I ask, hoping that if I don’t act like I’ve seen the other Fade, they won’t react. “Are they nanites, like on your skin?”
“They’re voices who don’t like to be disturbed. You’re too loud.”
Our path ends at a large chunk of stone with ruined trees on each side, and deep scars where something cut the rock a long time ago. A straight pair of yellow lines runs down its center.
Nothing’s familiar except the repetition of the trees. I’d hoped that something out here would trigger my memories. A sound, a scent . . . anything, but I don’t remember this at all. I lean toward the stone, placing my palm against it, but it doesn’t feel like rock. It’s not exactly soft, but it’s not hard enough either.
It’s not natural.
I expect Rue to go around, or turn back, but he starts to climb, reaching back for my hand to help me up. Lichen mottled black and green covers the surface so it slides under my hands, tickling my nerves. The lump in my throat becomes harder, threatening to choke me completely before the Fade can do their worst.
When we reach the top, I slap the stains away, scrubbing my hands on every coarse surface I can find that’s not coated itself. I pick at the splotches on my uniform, but they won’t come off. They spread through the fabric, claiming it as their own, so I tear the jacket off and throw it to them. It disappears where it lands, engulfed.
“They won’t hurt you,” Rue says, waiting for me to stomp my shoes clean. His posture settles into something catlike for his limbs, with that same avian tilt to his head. It’s a weird combination of predator and prey in one body.
“They can,” I argue, shaking my fingers through my wind-wrecked hair to make sure none are hiding there. “Honoria says they’re parasites. Parasites hurt people. They can kill.”
“What is Honoria?”
“The woman from the White Room. Our leader.”
I summon every detail I can remember of Honoria’s face and clothes, and show him the lines on her face, her sharp eyes, and tight-lipped mouth, then linger over the V-shaped scar at her temple.
“She went silent,” he says.
“She doesn’t say much, but she’s not mute.”
I give him an image of Honoria barking orders. I wish I had something to give her a softer edge.
“Her voice fell silent.”
Lost
.
Rue stands as though he’s just heard some cue beyond my range. “Follow me.”
The ground turns smooth and flat, forming what I think used to be a road. The same yellow partitions that were painted on the broken stone extend in both directions until they reach the mouth of a wider space. Here, the yellow is replaced by white and blue, bracketing the area into sections. Rusted-out trucks and cars fill spaces that stop at a metal fence with swings on the other side and a tall metal plane that I think was a slide before it went to pieces. There aren’t any homes standing here, but it still carries the echo of a human existence.
“What do you mean you lost her voice?” I ask as I scramble after him.
“We heard her voice, now she is silent like you.”
“But you hear me fine.”
Rue stops; his shoulders heave in a heavy sigh.
“
I
hear you.” Rue touches his fingers to my lips, then puts them to his ear. “
We
cannot hear
you
.” This time, he rests his fingers in the space where the top of my nose reaches my eyes, then touches the same spot on his own face.
“You mean my thoughts?”
“We pity the silent ones.” Rue pauses on
pity
, weighing its meaning to make sure it’s the right word. “The silent hide always. The silent live scared.”
“The only thing we’re scared of is you,” I say.
“You said you weren’t afraid of me.” Rue steps closer and straightens to his full height, so his chin is even with my brow line.
“I used to be,” I say, fighting the urge to back up and put more space between us.
He nods again, accepting the answer, then turns around and starts walking.
“Can you hear Cherish?” I ask.
“Her voice was stolen.”
Fret. Loss. Desolation. Incomplete. Stripped. Vacant
.
Ripping, tearing—it’s a feeling so intense my knees buckle under the force, and at the point I know my bones are about to shatter in their sockets, it stops.
I feel like I’m shrinking or drowning, and totally alone.
Please . . . somebody has to be somewhere . . .
But they aren’t. No one’s anywhere, not even me.
I’m seeing Rue’s perspective. His memory. We’re back in the Arclight, zooming through the tunnels, and on into the White Room. The lamps glow bright and hot. Fear and pain are all I can feel. There are screams, like the sounds Rue made when the lights burned him, but higher, in a female’s voice. Below them, a faint pulse. An entreaty and a promise of rescue, but more . . .
Love
.
When the image finally breaks, I’m crying.
He loves Cherish, and somehow she was taken into the Arclight—into the White Room. She screamed for him and he called to her, but they couldn’t find each other. And then her voice just stopped. He felt it all, but couldn’t help her.
“They destroy us,” Rue says finally, and the connection between us shuts off. “Your Honoria destroys us.”
“She protects us,” I correct, but it’s a hard point to make while I’m still shaking. “The ruins we walked through—you did that, not us. This was
our
territory before the Fade killed the people who lived here.”
“We are a beginning, not an ending,” he argues.
How can I feel pity for Rue losing one person when I’m standing in the devastation that proves the Fade destroyed thousands in this place alone? I lost my family here, why should I care if he gets his back or not?
“Look at this place.” I spread my arms out and pivot on my good leg. “This was a playground.” I hurry to one of the few swings still standing and test its strength before sitting. “These were children’s toys, but the Dark took everything. We have nothing left.”
I
have nothing left.
He shakes his head, making the crystals around his face clink together, then sits on the other swing.
“We unify. We include.”
“But humans like being individuals.”
“We know now,” Rue says. He pushes off the ground with his foot, starting the swing into a slow sway. “We didn’t understand—individuals like being lonely.”
“It’s not lonely.” Hopefully he can’t tell I’m lying. I’m the last person who should be trying to convince anyone that it’s not lonely living in the Arclight.
“The silent are isolated,” he argues with difficulty. “Disconnected.”
“What do you know about how humans live? You’re a Fade.”
“We are not faded—
dimming
.”
There’s no way to describe what happens next but to say my eyes open wide. My vantage point expands to take in the whole of the Dark in less than a blink. I’m seeing through a thousand eyes at once. Voices in number and variation I thought impossible stream from everything and everywhere. Whispers and shouts flow side by side and neither overpowers the other.
“What is that?”
“Us,” Rue says, then the sounds stop. “And that’s human.”
Pieces start to align. What Honoria calls a parasite is what Rue calls a part of him. The Fade aren’t a contagion—they’re a hive, and they don’t understand why we’re not.
“We are everything. One together.” Rue fumbles through descriptions that can’t capture a tenth of what he shows me.
Inclusion
.
The Fade are exactly what Honoria said—sentient machines responding to their programming, but they aren’t parasites; they’re symbionts. The human’s a host, just like the trees and the birds and the vines, all working together to support the whole. The entire Dark is one massive colony connected at its core. It can’t help but expand.
“We listen. They don’t hear.”
“The people in the Arclight can’t hear the voices in the Dark.” I nod my agreement, hoping it’s my choice to agree and not the delayed result of the Fade burrowing in.
“This isn’t dark,” Rue says. “You’re dark.” He pokes me in the chest. “You’re silent. You’re empty.”
Alone
.
“You’re faded. Not me.”
T
HE
Dark stretches on for hours, until I fear it’s growing wider even as we cross it, and every step makes me aware of more Fade following us, blended against the darkened terrain. The never-ending movement of the nanite pools along the ground creates a constant sound of tinkling glass.
How can I escape when there are so many watching?
Our journey takes on a tempo set by my leg. It’s gone from a dull ache to a throb, and now the first hint of sharper pain shoots down the bone, through the muscle, gathering where the bullet first entered.