This Shattered World (17 page)

I tear the dirty strip of T-shirt from my face and suck a lungful of clean air from the mask. It’s a while before I can stand again, dizzy with the rush of oxygen and with my sudden stillness. But I force myself to my feet, taking one last long breath through the mask before I make my way out of the medic’s area.

There are stretchers everywhere. Some with survivors, being moved to intensive care at the hospital, others with casualties being transferred to a temporary morgue, which right now is no more than bodies laid side by side in the mud with sheets draped over them. I step back to let a team pass carrying a badly wounded man. He’s burned so badly that it’s impossible to tell where his clothes stop and scorched flesh begins. He’s silent, though, when I would’ve expected him to be screaming. His eyes are open, staring at the empty night sky. As they pass, his eyes meet mine for a moment. I don’t know him. My sudden relief at that makes me sick to my stomach. Someone, somewhere, knows him. It shouldn’t matter that he’s not one of mine.

I pick my way through the hordes of the wounded, examining faces. A few are mine. So far, none are wounded badly enough to be placed in critical condition. Sweat pours down my temples and my back, and the ash in the air sticks to my face. The flames are dying down, but someone’s put up big floodlights around the site, so even as the flames subside, the night is held at bay. My feet itch to turn back for the building, which is starting to creak with the added weight of the water and the fire suppression chemicals. It won’t be standing much longer, and they need all the help they can get evacuating the wounded before it collapses.

The medic who removed me from duty is nowhere in sight. But before I can head back toward the flames, I’m forced to step aside for another stretcher. I glance down—and the world stops for an infinite second.

“Captain, we need to get—”

“Where’d you find him?” I bark, gazing down at Cormac’s face, what can be seen of it behind the oxygen mask strapped there.

“On the other side of the blast site.”

“Your best guess?”

“Concussion, minor smoke inhalation. He’ll live.”

And then they’re gone, and Cormac with them, headed for the hospital.

He was here. He was at the blast site. Could he have known what was about to happen?

But I don’t have time to take the thought any further, because something else catches my eye. The floodlights are erasing the monochromatic orange glow turning everything to ember-red. I can see colors now.

And at the edge of the field of bodies underneath the sheets, I catch a glimpse of neon pink.

I’m moving before conscious thought has time to prompt me. I ignore the burning in my abused lungs, the shaking of my legs. I’m sprinting, the world narrowing to that tiny flash of color. It’s a mistake. He’s alive. They’ve put him with the bodies by accident in the chaos. It happens all the time, they’re sitting there identifying a field of dead men and some of them just get up and walk away.

I need to get to him so he can get treatment.

I throw myself down, sliding in the mud, and rip the sheet away. Alexi’s eyes stare skyward, one cloudy and pale where it’s set in a sea of ruined, scorched flesh. The other half of his face is untouched, almost serene, as beautiful as it was when we first met during training.

My hands hover, trying to find some way to smooth away the damage to his face, to his neck and shoulder. His hot pink hair is muddy and stained with ash, and I run my fingers through it to try to dislodge some of the grime. His voice comes abruptly, painfully into my mind.
I wouldn’t be caught dead looking like this.

I’m still trying to clean him up when hands close around my shoulders and try to pull me away. I scream at whoever’s got me, fighting to be released. Voices are shouting in my ear, but I can’t hear them. Then a fist catches me across the jaw, sending me sprawling into the mud, head spinning.

I gasp for air, spitting saliva and blood and then descending into a fit of coughing as my abused lungs catch up with me.

This time the hands that reach for me are gentler. I lift my head. It’s Commander Towers, her blond hair straggly and tied roughly at the nape of her neck, her uniform rumpled and sweat-stained. Her hand is raw and bleeding where she hit me.

“Get yourself together, Chase,” she shouts at me, taking me by the shoulders. Her face is only a few inches from mine. “Get out of here.”

“Sir, I have to—”

“That’s an order!” Her voice is nearly as rough and hoarse and raw as mine. “You don’t get out of here
now
, I’ll court-martial your ass, you hear me? You’ve done your work and you’ll probably get another slew of medals out of it, for all the good that does any of us, but right now you have to
go
. You’re done.”

I gape at her, my head swimming. I nod, and we struggle to our feet together, slipping and sliding in the mud. I stagger away, leaving her to return to whatever she was doing before someone came to tell her Captain Chase had gone insane.

Alexi’s ruined face threatens to blind me again, but I push it aside. Because I know where I’m going now.
Concussion, minor smoke inhalation. He’ll live.

He’ll be in the makeshift sick bay, not the hospital, with minor injuries like those. I spit out another mouthful of mud and bile and blood, scrubbing my sleeve across my face. I reek of sweat and soot and death, but it doesn’t matter.

Because if Cormac knew about this, if he sat there and smiled at me and touched my cheek so I wouldn’t notice the rebels infiltrating the base—then I’m going to kill him myself.

This dream is about the ghosts on Verona. The girl remembers them, but only when she’s asleep, because there’s no such things as ghosts when you grow up.

She’s at school. The teacher, a tall willowy woman with blond hair in a bun, fights for the students’ attention against sirens and drone engines and, once, the crackling, powdery echo of a distant explosion. Eventually, the teacher gives up and puts down her reader, shutting off the display on the front wall.

“I think that’s enough for today,” she says, her lips pinched tight, her eyes darting toward the clock and back. “Do you want to talk about what’s happening instead?”

The girl looks out the window. For a moment she thinks she’s seeing the reflection of her face—but then it moves, becoming a tiny ball of light, visible only because the window lies in shade. It darts away, then comes back, then darts away again, waiting for the girl.

The green-eyed boy in the desk behind hers leans forward. “Don’t follow it,” he whispers. “It’ll lead you into the swamp.”

The ghost shivers and then zips away. A few minutes later a fire breaks out on the next block, and the girl is herded with the other children to safety.

MY EYELIDS FEEL LIKE SOMEBODY’S
glued them shut, and there’s a sharp pain as I force them open. Light jabs at me like a knife, and I squeeze my eyes shut again, waiting until the pulsing dulls a little.

When I try again, it works a little better. A dirty gray ceiling swims into focus overhead, and I know immediately I’m not at home, where all the ceilings are carved from rock. My ears register a high, mechanical beeping, and I struggle for a few moments before I can place it. It’s a medical monitor.

I turn my head a fraction, but the haze of light starts to blur and sparkle, and I’m forced to close my eyes. There’s something over my nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe. I reach up and feel with my fingertips, encountering soft plastic, and start to tug it away. There’s a sharp catch in my throat, but before I can start coughing the mask is back over my face, someone else’s hand over mine.

When I risk opening my eyes again, I find Jubilee looming over me, holding the thing over my mouth. She’s filthy, hair mussed, black smudges all over her face, eyes flashing. She’s in combat gear, the dull, semi-metallic gleam of her armor-suit marred by grime and soot.

“Did you know?” she hisses. “I swear to God, I’ll kill you right here.”

I stare at her, trying desperately to swim toward understanding, but it feels like wading through waist-high mud. “What happened?” I ask, and she eases the mask away so I can speak. My voice is a wheeze, my throat raw, and it catches and constricts as coughing takes over my body. My vision starts to darken at the edges, and the black creeps in as I struggle for air, my pulse pounding through my temples.

She shoves the mask back in place, holding it there until the panic starts to recede. I blink back the tears, waiting for her answer.

Her voice is flat, furious. “A rebel managed to sneak onto the base. Planted a bomb at Bravo Barracks, killed over thirty soldiers while they slept.” She leans in, eyes locked on mine. “While I was talking to you.”

The shock that goes through me is a physical thing, the adrenaline surge rushing down my arms until my hands tingle. “No.” The plastic of the oxygen mask swallows my voice. “Oh God, no. I didn’t know. You
know
I wouldn’t—”

She’s gazing down at me, Stone-faced Chase, absolutely unforgiving, soot and ashes streaking her face like war paint. For a moment I half expect her to pull out her gun and shoot me on the spot, the anguish in her face is so clear. Then she breathes out slowly, dropping her head, and I realize she does know.

“You have smoke inhalation and a concussion, but they won’t have had time to check beyond that,” she says, softer, duller. “Does anything else hurt?” She reaches out to run her hands down my arms, watching for a wince.

“I don’t think so.” I ache all over, and I just want to close my eyes and let the pain carry me away. It has to have been McBride, or one of his lackeys. Everything’s spinning out of control, and I don’t know how to move, let alone steady Avon’s course.

I manage to turn my head, scanning my surroundings. “I don’t think I should be in a room full of soldiers when these guys wake up,” I rasp. My shirt’s been cut away, and there are electrodes stuck to my chest. I can hear my heartbeat on the monitor beside my bed.

She shakes her head in a sharp movement, running her hand up my leg and patting along my side to check my ribs. Only a few days ago I was doing the same for her. Maybe we’ll never meet without one of us ending up in the hospital.

“Nobody here knows who you are,” she replies. “You were still in
uniform
.” Her jaw squares, and I know this is another tiny cut, another betrayal that’s scored a line across her heart.

“I have to get out of here.” I shove the mask aside so she can hear me better. “I have to try to stop this from getting worse.”

She reaches for a bottle beside my bed, angling the built-in straw so I can take a sip. My throat burns as I swallow. “Keep drinking this, it will heal your throat. As soon as you can move, I’ll help you get out, for whatever you can do out there.” She sets aside the bottle and reaches for an adhesive bandage from a rack above my head. As I watch, she starts wrapping it around my forearm, covering my genetag. My heart skips. What would I have said if someone tried to scan it?

She finishes smoothing the bandage down, expression grim and locked away, then straightens. “I have to go. Anybody wakes up, say you’re from Patron. A new boatload came in yesterday, nobody knows their faces yet.”

She turns to walk away, her purposeful stride reduced to a weary shuffle. Even locked in a cell, beaten and bloody and tied to a post in the ground, she never let the steel go from her spine; now her shoulders are bowed, her hands trembling before she eases them into her pockets. And I know what’s sweeping through her, stripping away her strength, because it’s sweeping through me, too.

We’ve lost. The ceasefire is over.

She’s there again when I wake, after a night spent choking down mouthfuls of the sweet, cloying gel that starts to heal my burned throat, and pretending to be asleep to avoid questions I can’t answer. Trying not to imagine Sean back home, making up some story about why I’m gone, covering for me and pacing, panicking about where I really am. I hope that’s the worst that’s happening. If this bombing was McBride’s opening salvo, then all-out war could be breaking loose out there in the swamps.

In her combat gear it’s impossible to think of her as anything other than a soldier, especially after staring down the barrel of her gun. But she’s pulled a hard plastic chair up to my bedside, and now she’s got her head pillowed on her arms, crossed on the edge of the bed. My eyes don’t sting anymore, and one of the meds they gave me has dimmed the pounding headache enough that she’s surrounded by only a faint aura of light.

From what little I can see, she’s washed her face, but the soot stains are still there around her hairline, and she hasn’t taken off the filthy combat suit yet. Which means the base is still worried that the bombing was the first stage of an assault. I push down the oxygen mask, taking an experimental breath. I can manage, if I don’t inhale too deeply. So close, she smells of sweat and ash and grief, and I want to lift my hand and reach out to her, ignoring the ache in my arm. I don’t, and a few moments later she seems to sense I’m awake, lifting her head.