Miraculously, Mr. Pace listens; his arm relaxes, but he keeps watching.
“We’re sorry,” Bolt says again. “
I’m
sorry. Will you return your voice?”
He reaches for the memory of a sister who no longer exists as he knew her, and it’s one step too close for Honoria. She doesn’t have to pretend to tolerate Bolt the way she does me; he’s a Fade and nothing more.
The sound of a gunshot in such a confined space is worse than the memory of it from the Grey. Somehow it’s even worse than that first Red-Wall when I lost count of how many times someone fired into the night.
Her bullet cuts the air in slow motion, creating a bent channel that collapses as it passes. It strikes Bolt’s shoulder, spearing straight through. He doesn’t cry out or wince the way a human would, but the shock of being hit, and the momentum of the bullet, topple him.
A pair of chalk-white arms wraps around me from behind, pulling tight, as a body shields me from danger. I’m wrenched sideways, and when we stop, I realize the hands locked across my shoulders and chest are too delicate to belong to Tobin or Rue. It’s Evergreen.
I glance back, looking her in the face from a breath away while Cherish reaches out across the threadbare link between us, seeking comfort and protection. A rush of warmth responds with another wave of pine.
“M-Mom?” I stammer, desperate to have a confirmation from Cherish or Evergreen or both. “Are you my mother?”
Mine
. A soft voice says.
Yours
.
She was standing two meters away and I didn’t recognize my own mother’s face.
Rue lets go of the ceiling. He drops down, turning in the air as he becomes visible to all, and lands on Honoria hard enough to knock the air out of her. Her rifle clatters to the floor, and Rue stands up with the gun in his hands, then snaps it in half.
“No more burning,” he says to Honoria as he tosses the pieces away.
That’s the gesture that finally breaks the others. Everything they’ve ever been told about the Fade says that what’s happening isn’t possible. It’s an accepted fact that if the Fade breach the Arc, they come to kill, and yet, the only ones who’ve threatened harm since their arrival tonight have been humans.
Mr. Pace falls back on his training and tries to help Bolt. He forgets his rifle altogether.
“He’s bleeding out,” Mr. Pace says. There’s no hesitation when he presses his hands down over the wound in Bolt’s shoulder. Black blood bubbles up through his fingers. “What’s wrong with him? I thought the Fade could heal themselves.”
“He gave his nanites to Trey, for his arm,” I say.
Bolt’s confused more than in pain, but I know from experience the shock won’t last long. When it’s gone, the pain will come.
“Tobin, get the radio off my belt, tell Doc to get back here ASAP. We’re on frequency four. ’Nique, I need something to stop the bleeding on this kid.”
Anne-Marie’s mother grabs a sheet off the nearest bed while Jove’s mother and Col. Lutrell ransack the cabinets. And in the middle of all our unfocused, human panic, Rue simply walks over and brushes Mr. Pace’s hands aside. He lays his palm flat against Bolt’s shoulder.
Rue’s marks spill across Bolt’s skin, toward the wound, packing and sealing until the bleeding stops. Slowly the blackened blood pulls back; the edges of the gunshot shrink in. It takes less than a minute to go from critical to cat scratch. When it’s over, Rue’s marks return to their rightful place and Bolt retakes his seat beside Trey’s bed, his posture beaten down and defeated. Anne-Marie’s mother slides down to sit beside him.
“Thank you,” she says, timidly stretching her arm across his shoulders. “For my son.” She holds Bolt’s head when he lays it against her shoulder mournfully.
“What are you doing?” Honoria rages as she regains her feet. “Have you all lost your minds?”
“I think we may have just found them,” Mr. Pace says.
“Do you
want
to go back to the way it was in the first days? The hysteria? The grief?”
“We’re jumping at the shadows we’ve created ourselves, Honoria. Maybe the balance didn’t settle the way we hoped, but there’s no reason to keep fighting when we don’t have an enemy anymore. We can move on.”
“Our enemy is in this room!”
I see the idea before the action, as sure as if I pulled it out of her head. Honoria’s hand snaps to her back, retrieving the silver pistol she’s never without. She points it at me, dead center on my chest. Evergreen slips in front of me, and even though I want to cling to her, and bask in the knowledge that I have a family who loves me enough to defend me, the gesture’s not needed. Honoria hates me, but I’m not her target. Even if my blood was black below my skin, all it would prove was that I’d gone back to what I was before. She needs to give Mr. Pace evidence that the Fade have taken one of the humans he thinks is safe. It can’t be Col. Lutrell, because his eyes haven’t convinced anyone of anything, so she picks a better target, determined to draw blood she’s sure isn’t red anymore.
Her arm swings wide and she fires.
F
OR
a moment, we’re lucky; it’s a miss. Then I notice Tobin’s face. His nerves and muscles can’t agree on an expression and he ends up with a tic that makes one side twitch.
“Tobin?”
The whole front of his uniform turns red, fanning out from a spot on his chest.
“It’s red. . . .” The pistol drops from Honoria’s hands.
“Of course it’s red,” Col. Lutrell shouts.
A tiny, out-of-place smile quirks the corner of Tobin’s mouth as he falls. He tries to break his descent, but there’s nothing to grab onto besides me. He’s too heavy to hold, and I end up crashing onto the floor next to him.
“Last time we ended up like this, you kissed me.”
“You could have just asked for another one.”
When he laughs, red spray comes with the sound.
The air’s buzzing with the energy off his father’s emotions; the scent’s so thick, I’m breathing sand. His larger hands press down on Tobin’s chest, trying to control the bleeding, while Anne-Marie’s mother and Mr. Pace make use of the supplies they hadn’t needed for Bolt.
I see Honoria on the fringes of my vision, but she doesn’t make a grab for her pistol again. She reaches for the radio on her hip, moving like she’s in shock.
“Wolff, where are you?” she demands. “Get down here! We’ve got a man down.”
“Who?” crackles through the handset.
“Just get here!” Her temper flares as she pitches the radio across the room. It bounces off the shatterproof glass.
A blood-choked gurgle covers the
ga-gunk
of Tobin’s heart and drowns the rasp of air in and out of his lungs. His eyes open sluggishly, with the appearance of murky amber glass. If he sees through them or not, I don’t know.
But I know what needs to be done.
“Rue!”
The risk of becoming Fade is worse to Tobin than death, but there’s no other way.
“I will not stand here and watch you die,” I tell him. “You have no right to expect me to. Tell me it’s all right.”
A smile ghosts across his lips again.
“Do it.” Col. Lutrell nods, whether Tobin wants this or not.
“Forgive me,” I whisper. “If not, at least you’ll be around to hate me again.”
I fold over and kiss him. It’s just a quick touch of my lips against his, and he’s in no shape to return it, but it more than makes up for the one in the Grey.
“Rue!”
Rue stands in the open, as far removed from us as he can manage, the only Fade in the room who still has enough nanites to do any good. In the quick burst of information he sends my way, he says he’s never seen a person die before.
Interesting
.
“No, it’s not,” I say out loud, startling those around us who don’t have any idea who I’m answering. “It’s terrifying.”
Conflicted images of Tobin present and absent shift in and out of focus as Rue tries to understand how death works. For all his talk of things that are finite, he doesn’t understand humanity any more than I understood the Fade.
Reclaimed
is what he settles on. His head tilts to the side, expecting to see Tobin blend away into the floor the way the Fade return to the hive.
“That’s not it at all!”
Silence. Removed. Zero
. I try and convey the full weight of something I hardly understand myself, but it’s a mourning-choked jumble.
“You have to help him.”
Negative. Against
.
Honoria should have shot me instead; if it were me on the ground, Rue would have already saved me.
“If he dies, it’s like what happens when Fade touch fire. But you can save him.”
I feel his heart break, and for once the bond between us doesn’t catch me off guard for its intensity. It’s just a reflection of what I felt the moment Tobin fell.
Transient
.
“Exactly. Humans don’t stay forever. I can’t stand to lose anything else, Rue. Please.”
Infinite
. He points to himself.
Finite
. Tobin.
A smug tone colors his declarations. Rue takes it as a fact that at some point Tobin is going to die, and that without Tobin, things will go back to the way they were.
I’m on my feet before I even know I’m moving, flying straight at him.
“So am I!” The force behind the words shocks him as I jab his chest with my finger.
Cherish. Infinite
.
“No, I’m human.” My rage stalls out. “I have an end, just like Tobin, and I don’t want
his
end to be now.”
Behind me, Dr. Wolff’s in triage mode; he and Col. Lutrell are arguing over Tobin’s body. Dr. Wolff wants to move Tobin to a bed, but Col. Lutrell doesn’t want to risk lifting him. Honoria’s drifted to the far side of the room.
“Marina!” Tobin’s father yells. “If he’s going to do something, it’s got to be quick.” He trains his eyes on Rue. “Please save my son.”
Anger. Hurt
.
Rue starts to argue, then goes blank. The connection between us cuts off as if he’s pulled a plug, leaving me empty and cold. He’s tuning us out.
I reach out and grab Rue’s hand, using those razor nails of his to cut into my skin. Lines of red run down my arm to drip off the end of my fingers and onto the floor.
“Red blood, not black.” I streak my hand across his chest where I left a smear of Tobin’s blood when I poked him. The color’s identical. “Do I need to spill more to make you understand? I’d give every drop if I thought it would help him.”
Rue catches my hand as it’s poised over my arm, ready to shred as much skin as human fingernails can manage.
There’s only one other argument I can think of. Somewhere deep within my memory lies the moment he showed me before: Rue and Cherish, side-by-side. I take that memory and twist it, forcing Tobin’s face over Rue’s, and changing Cherish from Fade to human.
“I’m not your Cherish anymore. If it takes suppressing my memory of you again to get that point across, then I’ll do it. Save him, or I swear I will.”
Rue dreads the void. That emptiness is what he’s fought against since I was taken. Fury and fear cause his marks to expand, swirling parts of him away into the background.
“Marina!” Col. Lutrell screams again. “Doc! His heart’s stopped!”
“Move!” Dr. Wolff’s on the floor in an instant, pushing against Tobin’s chest to get his heart beating again.
“Please do this for me!”
“For you,” Rue says. The tight coils of the lines on his skin relax as he lets go of his anger. He leaves my side and, bending next to Col. Lutrell, Rue positions his hand over Tobin’s chest.
“Wait,” Dr. Wolff says. “What are you—”
“Let him be, Doc.” Mr. Pace pulls him back.
“But Elias, he’s—”
“Going to save Tobin’s life.”
Rue holds his hands there for what feels like forever, and we all hold our breath, watching what a week ago would have been our collective nightmare. Finally, Tobin gasps, and Rue steps away, leaving him to his father and the healing stupor that will finish the job.
“For you,” Rue tells me again as he steps close. He takes my hand and examines the mess I made of it. “For me,” he says, then joins our hands, threading his fingers through mine. I feel the tickle that comes with the transfer of nanites from his body to mine, and the odd twinge where my skin’s reknitting.
“You held some back,” I say. “You shouldn’t have. It’s not bad.”
“All wounds are bad for my Cherish.”
Behind his voice come the whispers, that harmonic melody of so many voices, joyous at the prospect of hearing me among them again, if only for the moment. Through them, I know exactly how much it took for Rue to take those few steps and save the person he sees as his rival.
Not enemy,
rival
. I see the distinction just before the fatigue of the Fade’s presence overwhelms my conscious mind.
“Thank you.”
I don’t think the words make it to my mouth, but I’m sure he hears them.
I feel my center of gravity start to shift and I tip, fully expecting to hit the ground, but it never happens. Rue’s there before I land so I’m in his arms.
All pain is bad for my Cherish
.
He lays his forehead against mine, as much a kiss as if he’d touched my lips.
Never alone
.
“M
ARINA?”
The last voice I heard before I surrendered my consciousness isn’t the one I hear when I wake into light. This one makes my heart flip—Tobin’s alive.
I turn toward the sound, blinking. When I open my eyes again, it’s to a stretch of burning sand littered with tiny silver stars.
“Tobin?”
I can’t see him. The light’s too bright, and my eyes blur from the intensity. I blink faster, trying to clear my vision, but the desert and its cool, static stars never fade. It can’t be real . . .
“Where is this?”
I reach out to touch what I hardly dare believe. If the desert’s a dream, then what does that make Tobin?
“You’re in the hospital,” Tobin says. “We both are.”
For the first time, I realize I’m lying down.
I hear a click near my head and the lights dim by half. Tobin smiles down at me, where he stands holding the chain from my lamp. He lets it drop and takes a seat on the edge of my bed. The desert’s still there, sitting on my side table, safe inside the snow globe from Tobin’s apartment. He hands it to me without so much as a wince. There’s no sling or bandages.