SWAB (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel) (28 page)

“Whoa, now. Sit down, Cat,” Derrick said. His steady arm was around my waist, and he helped me sit with my back against the glass tank with the floating head. Though scarb were fighting all around us, I felt safe with his big body shielding me. No one seemed to notice us there in the corner, anyway. He clicked his teeth as he took a look at me. “We’ll have to do something about that arm.”

There was a hissing sound. The cement underneath me was hot and smoking from contact with my blood. The blood was on Derrick’s hands too, but it didn’t seem to affect him. “Why doesn’t it burn you?” I asked him.

He looked at the blood and shrugged. “That was some trick you did to that flier,” he said, but it was risky. We need to stop this blood.”

He took the bottom hem of his shirt and ripped off a long strip. He tied it around the gash on my shoulder. The blood slowed but didn’t stop entirely.

A body flew through the air and slammed into the glass tank behind us. The glass splintered and orange liquid started spraying from it, wetting our clothes and skin. Derrick hoisted me up with his arm under my good shoulder and moved us further down the corridor. Iva was at the end of it, her hair wet with sweat and blood, but I was glad to see her alive. She and her fliers had killed many of the guards in the room, but more were coming in from the adjacent hallways.
Too many. We’d lost a lot of scarb already. Their bodies were piling up on the floor. The guards Emerald employed to protect her private chambers weren’t just any scarb. They were skilled and hardened warriors and I couldn’t sway them. A large group of them rushed down the passageway behind the mural at the end of the hall.

Seeing the passageway reminded me just how close Nate was. “We’ve got to get up there,” I told Derrick, and he started helping me down the corridor. I wasn’t sure how I was going to face Emerald, wounded like I was, but I knew that staying in the corridor wasn’t going to help any. I had to get to my brother.

“Watch out,” Iva cried, just as an orange-spotted scalvion hit the left side of my body with the horns on his skull. The breath was instantly knocked out of me as I slammed into Derrick. One of his scalvion’s three horns drove into the week tissue between my rib cage and hips, piercing me to the core. My mouth hung open in shock.

Derrick tried to yank me back to free me from the horn, but it was pinched in tight under my ribs. The scalvion didn’t pull back, either. Instead, he thrashed his head violently, slashing the horn through my internal organs. He jabbed in deeper with a final thrust still before finally pulling back.

“No!” I heard Iva scream as she dove down and tackled the scalvion to the ground. But the damage had already been done.

The first thing I noticed was air. Air touching places inside of me that air was never meant to touch. And there was liquid, too. Far too much liquid gushing out of me, like a bursting geyser. As it left my body, so did my strength. I looked down. The left side of my abdomen was completely open. I stood another second, but then my legs gave out and I fell to the ground. Derrick clutched me under my shoulder, and he softened my fall, lowering me gently.

I was going to die
. The rational part of my brain knew that. I’d seen too many wounds in combat to know when one is impossible to
recover from.
I have only a few minutes.
But the emotional part of me couldn’t accept it.
But I have to save Nathan! All of this was for nothing if I can’t save him!
I wished I could talk with him. He was so close, but Emerald still kept him from me with her block. I couldn’t even say goodbye.
I can’t die now. Dying is giving up, letting her win. I have to live!
But no matter how much I willed myself to survive, the life was leaving my body. I was helpless to stop it. I felt the change of death coming over me, the way the blood moved too quickly out of my veins only to disappear from them, how my breath came in shallow gasps. I wanted to take in more air, like if I kept breathing I could somehow escape the end. The pain didn’t come at first, obscured beneath the shock, but then it hit me, pain so sharp and wordless that unconsciousness would have been welcome.

Scarb moved around me, but all I saw, all I clung to, was Derrick’s face. His blue eyes looked down at me, dark with fear, bright with agony. He had one hand behind my head, the other still under my shoulder.

I heard Iva pounding her fists over and over into the scallion. Surely he was dead by now, but she continued to beat him.

Then there came a voice and a presence into the room that made every single scarb still.

“My warriors have proven yet again an indispensable resource,” Emerald said as she moved, tall and proud, down the corridor, stepping over bodies like they were no more than children’s scattered toys. Iva jumped to her feet, her fists clenched and her wings beating furiously. “Take her,” Emerald said with a sweep of her hand. Three fliers immediately jumped out from behind her long gown and grabbed Iva. She writhed against their hold, but couldn’t free herself. Her green eyes cast a look at me that spoke only of sorrow.

I knew in that moment it was truly over. Defeat washed over me. We’d lost. We were all going to die. My limbs started shuddering uncontrollably as the nerves started to give out.

“Oh, isn’t this a precious sight,” Emerald scoffed and towered over Derrick and me on the ground. “The lovebird croons over his rare little dove.”Emerald bent down so her face was close enough to me I could smell her lavender perfume. She stroked my cheek with one of her unnaturally long nails. Derrick growled, but Emerald ignored him. “You are so rare. You had so much potential. It’s such a shame to see it all end like this. You could’ve been great for me and my colony.”Her upper lip flinched in disgust, and she straightened. “Now you will die, Scarb Who Is Called Cat, so that all will see what happens to those who go against my will.”

She turned her back and took several steps away from us. “Too bad you won’t get to witness for yourself just how much I will make your brother, your friend,” she spat at Iva, “and your lover suffer.”

My eyes stayed on the back of her green gown another moment. She was so proud. Victory was hers. She’d stomped out the insignificant threat I’d proven to be. Disgusted, I turned away from her. I refused to let her consume my last moments. I looked back into Derrick’s eyes. I wished there was something I could do to comfort him. Instead, he stroked the back of my head with his fingers.

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. My body was shaking violently now. Then the shuddering suddenly stopped. My limbs stilled. My heart stuttered. One beat. Pause. Cool liquid chilling my skin. Another beat. Heavy. Too slow. Darkness closing in around Derrick’s face. Another beat. All I could see were his eyes now, tears falling from them like stars.

Then nothing.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Long Enough

Derrick’s tears dripped onto my cheek. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel their coolness like drops of rain. I was going to death through the cleanness of water. Maybe I could emerge on the other side, new and reborn.

My breath gave out. Derrick lifted me to him, pressing my chest against his, his face in my hair. His sobbing shook my body, and his tears ran from my face, down my neck and chest, and off the sides of my stomach. But they didn’t fall to the ground or run off in small streams. They collected inside me, pooling like magnetic drops in the opening in my ribs. It must have been some final hallucination, the last imaginings of my brain before it shut off forever. But I could feel the drops like cool silver inside me. They spread out, weaving and threading through me. They stitched and wrapped, pulled and webbed, bringing the fibers of my body back together. The organs went back to where they were meant to be. The muscles pulled them taut. Finally, the skin wrapped over and sealed my body back into place.

A sharp inhale filled my lungs. My eyes shot open, lids fluttering like fleeing butterflies. Derrick lowered me in my arms so my face was no longer against his shoulder. His eyes with their four irises of darkening blue were wide as he gazed down at me. His lips were slightly apart, and his breath fell upon my cheeks like a cool breeze.

“Cat?” he asked timidly in my mind. “You’re—”

I just smiled. My body was whole. The pain was gone. I was stronger now than ever before. Because of him.

“How?” he started to ask. But we both understood. Something had happened with us. Something that couldn’t be defined with words or reason. Like at the dance when my skin lit us up from the inside out. Somehow, he had healed me. His tears had saved me from death.

He pulled me close again, more tears streaming from his eyes.

I could have stayed like that forever, whole and warm in his arms, but the moment couldn’t last, not with my mortal enemy in that room. I inhaled the smell of Derrick’s hair and skin, breathing in the scent of warm summer days. The air invigorated my body, sending little shock waves down my spine, my arms, my legs. Derrick released me and brought both of us to standing.

Scarb still filled the room. I had almost forgotten just how many were around us. The moment had seemed so private, like it was just Derrick and me in the crowded sea of violence. I gave Derrick one last look, letting him feel my gratitude, then I turned to face the queen. She had her back to us and was ranting at Iva, who was still bound by guards. Iva’s cheeks had an angry red hand print on the left side, and her hair hung in long red sheets over her drooped head.

The queen raised her hand to strike Iva again.

“Emerald,” I said simply, standing directly behind her. “You’re time is over.” Though my words were quiet they seemed to pierce her. Slowly and with wide eyes, she turned. Fire filled her pupils as she took me in.

“You!” she snarled, and her raised hand turned into a gnarled fist. “I should’ve known you were too stubborn to die.” She clicked her teeth. “Well, I’ll just have to get rid of you myself.” She stepped toward me, so close that I could feel her breath as she hissed in my face. “When I do something, I don’t make mistakes.”

I didn’t balk or even flinch at her closeness. “Your time is over Emerald. Give my brother back, and leave in peace.”

“You will not take my colony from me!” she screamed in my ear, stomping her feet like an angry toddler. “Kill them!” she shouted to her soldiers. “Kill them all!” The room erupted again into chaotic battle at her command. She whipped her head back at me. “And now I’ll kill you.”

Her pride ruled her. In that moment, I didn’t fear her. I pitied her.

“You think you’re so much better than me.” She spat in my face. “You’re a swab!” she laughed wildly as she circled around me. I turned to keep her facing my front. My legs and arms tensed and readied for the moment she would make a move. “You’ll soon see that we can die, too, just like every other pathetic scarb who ever crawled on the dirt. You’re wrong, Cat. My time isn’t over. Yours is.”

With that, she sprang back onto her heels and launched herself at my throat, fingers splayed. Dodging to the left, I threw her arms back with an upper block. She stumbled past but quickly regained composure. She threw her upper body back, catching herself with her arms and kicked at me with the long rows of black spikes on her calves. She swung her legs through the air fiercely, as if each spike was a dagger. I liked to fight like a human, not like some wild beetle on the floor. But one of her knees hit my lower back, and I flew several feet forward onto the ground. I jumped back up. Her right leg zinged past me through the air, the black barbs just inches from the tip of my nose. The barbs hit the ground instead, cracking the concrete floor.

She snarled and flipped herself onto all fours, crouching like a leopard. She gnashed her teeth like she would like to take a bite out of me. She sprang through the air and made contact with my chest. She wrapped her arms around my torso as I held her by the hair to keep away from her chomping mouth. White spit frothed at her mouth. Tiny drops of it splattered my chin.

I brought my knee up sharply to her stomach. Her body curled forward, and she released me.

She panted, but was quickly back to standing. “You think you can defeat me?” she snarled. “I’ve been queen longer than any other in North America. That kind of strength comes from a ruthlessness and hunger you will never have. Your mercy is your weakness. It’ll lead to your destruction. There’s no such softness in me. I’ll make sure my kingdom continues on. I’ll kill you.”

Once again, she lunged for my throat, but this time there was finality in her movements. The talk was over. She was going to kill me. I let her come. Just as her right hand made contact with my neck, I wrapped my left arm around her back. Her hand cinched around my throat, but she was close enough that the barbs on the fingers of my right arm cut deeply into the weak spot on her neck. I twisted my wrist so the last one made contact with her spinal cord, severing it cleanly.

Her head slumped to the right, her hands releasing me as her body crumpled to the ground.

I stood there a moment, Emerald’s blood dripping off my fingertips. She was dead.

Her soldiers went into a rage. Hundreds flooded the corridor, bloodlust in their eyes and revenge in their hands.

Derrick fought two scalvions between a row of observation tanks that lined the left wall. Gray cried out as another flier tore a gash in his thigh. Two black fliers zoomed down at me from the ceiling. “You killed the queen!” they screamed like creatures from Hell.

I killed them without thinking. We found ourselves being quickly outnumbered.

Use the connection,
I told myself while I sliced off the arm of a middle-aged warrior. It was harder to concentrate on talking while I was in the middle of fighting, but there was no other option.