The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (27 page)

“Nomads,” said Victoria over her shoulder. “They were part of a registered pod that we regularly trade with. Three nights ago they were hit by ACF forces in the Tennessee marshes. Seventy-five men, women, and children slaughtered. These few are the only ones who managed to escape.”

“We saw something like that,” I said, “up in Colorado. The Nomads were trying to tell the ACF that they weren’t responsible for something, the um . . .”

“The raid on Cheyenne Depot,” said Victoria.

“Yeah, that was it.”

We reached the docks. The wounded were scattered in clumps around stretchers. Women and children, a couple men, everyone covered with cuts, abrasions, burns. I saw a leg that was mashed, a hand blown off. The children were either stunned silent or crying. Serena and the medics scurried around the wounded.

Victoria bent over an unconscious man on a stretcher. His face was mostly hidden in bandages, and the area around his temple and ear were soaked through with blood. She called to the closest medic. “If he has any family, offer them liberation. Tell them we’ll free him from suffering, but that’s all we can do.”

She turned away and I saw a look of pain on her face. I wondered how the same woman who had watched a girl die the night before and placed her hand on a bloody heart could be so upset by these wounded.

“Bastard,” said Victoria quietly.

“Who?” I asked.

“Your old friend Paul. He’s behind this. These people just want to scrape out a living, but instead they’ve become sacrifices to his ambition.”

I heard screaming. There were two children, around ten years old, who were kneeling beside a woman with massive injuries to her torso.

“Cheyenne Depot is a military base, or something, right?” I asked.

“It’s North America’s largest stockpile of decommissioned nuclear material,” said Victoria.

“You mean bombs?”

“The warheads themselves were dismantled a hundred years ago,” said Victoria. “The Northern Federation nations obviously still have nukes at their main bases, but the uranium at Cheyenne could easily be weaponized again. And last week, the depot was reportedly attacked by a Nomad strike force, which was able to subvert defenses, steal an undisclosed amount of nuclear material, and get out before ACF forces could arrive.”

“Why would Nomads try to steal uranium?” I asked. “Are they trying to build a bomb?”

“That’s just it,” said Victoria. “There’s no way it was actually Nomads. I think it was an EdenCorp force made to
look
like Nomads. And now the ACF has branded the Nomads a terrorist group. They’re hunting down every pod they can find, looking for the stolen goods, and blowing them to hell in the process.”

“Paul talked about mining uranium in that report we saw,” I said. “He didn’t say where, or what they were going to use it for.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” Victoria muttered. She gazed over the sea of wounded bodies. “Listen, we’ll have to postpone our trek to the temple until tomorrow morning. I have to get back to this. Sorry we can’t talk more now.”

She turned away and moved back into the frenzy, talking to Serena as more wounded came off the ship.

I stood for a minute, looking for a way to help, but there was nothing to do. I found Seven kneeling beside the man with the bandaged face. His cheek had been marked with a
V
, for volunteer. A woman stood beside Seven, hugging a sobbing boy.

Seven looked up at me as I arrived. Her eyes were serious, shaken. “Want to help me administer the death rite?” she asked gravely.

My first instinct was no. I wanted to be away from all this death, but then I thought of my mom, who’d run from what upset her. The woman and boy were looking up at me, and I remembered that I was one of their gods. And I wasn’t going to leave them when they needed me. “Sure.” I knelt opposite Seven, the man’s bruised and burned torso between us. Seven put out her hands and I grasped them.

She nodded to me and closed her eyes, then spoke:

Seven let go of my hands. She rummaged into her little shoulder bag and produced a tiny glass bottle. She removed a dropper filled with bright green fluid and squeezed it into the man’s mouth. “Shine,” she said to me, and looked to the woman. “This will ease his suffering in the final moments.”

“Thank you,” the woman whispered.

They knelt beside the man as Seven and I stood and backed away. Seven’s face was stormy. She was biting her lip. And I saw the difference now. Death did bother Victoria and Seven, when it wasn’t planned. When it was out of their control. These people weren’t given a choice. Paul had taken it from them.

Seven and I performed three more death rites, kneeling over grizzly ends, holding hands, and by the last one I knew the rite and spoke it with her, our words feeling powerful in their rhythm and unity, in their ability to bring a moment of peace and silence for the crying families.

They thanked us, they hugged us, and I felt Seven’s first two rules in effect. I was a god, and it was good, helpful; and yet the pain of this world, the weight of death, it crushed me inside. These were more people to add to the list of those who now lived on in our mission, if we could succeed.

“I get it,” I said to Seven, watching the last of the wrecked bodies being carried up from the docks. “This matters. We matter to these people.”

“It’s new to you,” said Seven. “Do a few thousand death rites, and the effect wears off.”

“Fair enough. But it makes me feel like our mission is even more important, like I’d do whatever it takes to stop Paul.”

Seven was silent, gazing at the sea, arms wrapped around herself. “It makes me want to swim.”

“What?”

Seven’s eyes snapped up, goddess mask back on. “Victoria said we’re not going to the skull, which means we have the day free. And I for one would like to spend the rest of it not thinking about anything like this.”

“Okay,” I said, but then added, “we should get the others, though.”

Seven rolled her eyes. “Pout. Sure, let’s round up the gang.”

WE HEADED OVER TO THE INFIRMARY. “I’LL GET Leech,” said Seven. “You can get your Lilly.”

We split up in the hall. I reached Lilly’s door and paused. There were voices coming from inside.

“We spent last weekend out at Banff.” This was a man’s voice. “There are still silt flats, up where the Columbia icefield used to be. You kind of sink in the muck. Those glacial minerals are good for your mother’s joints.”

A woman: “After a few hours in there, I almost have full movement.”

Now a hissing silence, like of a video playing.

I peered in the door. Brilliant hazy sun streamed through a long window. Lilly was sitting up. She was in her same tank top and shorts we’d arrived in, though it looked like they’d been cleaned. There was a band of clear material around her neck. It held white pads over her gills.

She had the subnet pad. There was a tiny silver drive sticking out of the side.

“It’s expensive though, getting over there,” said the man’s voice. “I’m not sure how many more trips we’ll be able to make.”

There was another quiet stretch.

“Hey,” I said quietly.

Lilly looked up. Her face had been cleaned, her hair washed and brushed, but her eyes were freshly swollen and wet. “Hey,” she said in a whisper.

I walked over to the side of the bed. “What are you doing?”

She pointed to the screen. There were two older adults, gray haired and wrinkly, gazing back out. The woman had almond-colored skin and soft features, so much like Lilly’s. The man had Lilly’s sky-blue eyes but with a lighter complexion and a squarish face.

“Walking’s good, too, though,” Lilly’s mom said. “I can walk around the neighborhood. They’re telling everyone to wear Rad protection all the time now. But I wonder what’s the point in my case. . . .” She trailed off.

Dad’s shoulder moved like he was rubbing her hand off camera.

Lilly held her breath, a fresh wave of sadness washing over her.

These must have been the vid chats that her parents had left her. “This is the first time you’ve watched them,” I said, remembering what she’d told me back on Tiger Lilly Island.

Lilly nodded. “This one’s from 2073, fifteen years after I was cryoed.”

Lilly’s parents were just staring slightly off center, like they didn’t quite know where the camera was.

“They never know what to say,” said Lilly. “They were never good at chats. I remember that from when I was kid.” She laughed a little. “They look so old.” Her hand reached out. Found mine. She pulled me slightly. “Sit.”

I sat on the bed beside her. She shuffled over to make room.

“We, um,” her dad began, “we finally got the box, from the People’s Corporation. Just when we’d thought it would never arrive. . . .” He moved out of view.

“Oh, God . . .” Lilly whispered.

“There wasn’t much,” said her dad. Her mom was crying. “Some clothes, his watch, things like that. Oh, and there was this.”

Her dad held up a photo. It showed a boy who looked to be about our age, tall and muscular, with his arm around a rail-thin girl with short black hair but Lilly’s same giant eyes.

Lilly sobbed.

“Look at you two,” said her mom, “so young and cute. We always wished he’d be with you, now, there in Eden, but . . .”

“He had his own mind,” her father finished. He put away the photo.

They were quiet again, almost like they were waiting for Lilly to speak. The silence hissed from the speakers.

Lilly wiped at her nose.

“We hope when you get this,” said her mom, “that you’re happy and well. That life is good for you.”

Lilly laughed darkly. “Yeah.”

“We love you, Tiger Lilly,” said her mom. “We love you so much.”

“Okay . . .” said her dad. His eyes looked wet, too. “We’ll chat more soon.”

His hand reached out and flicked off the camera.

Lilly turned the computer pad facedown. “She’ll be dead in a year. She’s already halfway to dead, they just don’t want to tell me.”

“Plastics cancer,” I said.

“Yeah. The next chat is just my dad. And it’s so awful I couldn’t even get through it. He’ll be dead, too, in two more years.” She sighed to herself. “It’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry they’re gone. There’s too much death in this world.”

“Thanks,” said Lilly. “Leech told me your mom is here. How is that?”

“It’s weird,” I said. “I mean, it’s good.” I was glad to be able to tell her about this, except I felt bad about it, too. Out of all of us, I was the only one who had parents. “I’m lucky. But it’s weird because she left, and so I don’t know—I was kind of a jerk this morning.”

I told her about the conversation. “It’s weird to not only see her for the first time, after so long,” I said, “but then to have her have this new boyfriend and be all into the Heliad thing. I don’t know why.”

“She’s not like you remember,” said Lilly.

“Actually she kinda is,” I said. “She always liked a good show. And even as a kid I can remember her being kinda . . . flighty. Though I think that was her hiding her sadness or whatever she felt inside. But who knows? It was so long ago. I guess I blame her for leaving us. I think I’ve been mad at her for years. So, it’s just coming out now.”

“You guys can get through it,” said Lilly. “It might just take a while.” She looked back at the computer screen. “I never wanted to watch those. I always felt so guilty, like, why should I get to live when they died? Especially Anton. He was trying to make a difference when he drowned. And I got a free pass, a fantasy life inside Eden.”

“Well, but that wasn’t your fault,” I said. “That’s what they chose for you. And now you’re out in the world making a difference.” As it came out of my mouth, I realized something else, and felt like an idiot. “That’s why you were mad at me back at the dry lake. You didn’t just come along for me—you did it for you, for them.”

Lilly nodded.

“Is that why you lied about the siren?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t really mean to. It was just that when I first met you, getting out was just as important as you. Something different was happening to you than to the rest of us, and I needed to know what.”

“That makes it sound like you were using me.”

Lilly rolled her eyes, but smiled. “No, I really liked you! It’s just that . . . I’ve met guys before and it’s been like ‘wow’ at first, but then gets disappointing the more I get to know them.” I wondered if she meant Evan. “But it was different with you, and I so wish I could take that lie back.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s really not a big deal. And out in the desert, I didn’t mean to sound like it was all about me.”