Extraction (40 page)

He sounds desperate. We’ve stumped him.

He has nothing left to use but his lies.

I reach for the comm and press the
TALK
button. His voice cuts out. “You’re a liar, Charlie,” I say. “You’re the one trying to attack Marden. I know about everything. Fred told me.”

“Then he told you I was having him build the bomb to destroy the acid generator, yes?” Charlie’s voice is fast but shaky. “That was the original plan. The acid is still a threat, Clementine.”

“The shield’s protecting us. It’s not going to stop anytime soon.”

“You believe that, don’t you.” His hollow laugh sounds worse through the crackling speaker. “You think you’re so clever. You think you’ve
won
.”

“We have, Charlie,” Beechy says. “We’re not turning around.”

There’s silence through the ship-com. I bet Charlie turned it off on his end so we can’t hear him crying.

“Crazy old man,” Beechy says, shaking his head and smiling. “Now hold tight. We’re gonna speed up.”

The tunnel opens ahead of us, showing me a sky half full of moon. Pink acid drips and swirls onto the shield. It almost looks beautiful.

I grip the arms of my seat as we burst from the Pipeline. Rocky mountains rise around us. Over their snowy peaks, I glimpse the horizon where some of the dark is starting to wash away.

I close my eyes and let the air flowing in and out of my nose relieve the ache in my back, and the dull throbbing in my jaw, and the fear in my heart.

Just a bit longer, and all of this will be over. The bomb won’t be a danger anymore. I’ll be back with Logan.

All of us rebels will expose Charlie for what he is, and we will end him.

There’s a dull crackle. The ship-com.

“Not again,” Beechy mutters.

“You made me do this,” Charlie says in a clipped voice.

That’s all he says.

“Do what?” I ask, but the comm isn’t crackling anymore. He can’t hear me.

“Don’t listen to him,” Beechy says. “He’s trying to scare you.”

I dig my nails into the armrests. Maybe he is, maybe he’s kidding. Or maybe he’s going to do something bad. He’s always doing something bad. He’s always killing someone.

But who could it be this time? Someone I care about, maybe.

It hits me like a blade to the chest:
He still has access to Logan.

No, no, no. It can’t be that. I shake my head. He’s not doing anything. Beechy’s right; Charlie’s trying to scare us into turning back.

But we won’t turn back. We can see straight through his lies.

I close my eyes again and take deep breaths, until my heartbeat returns to a more normal rate. I count seventy-two beats per minute.

I open my eyes and focus on the world outside the window, on the acid shield that’s almost beautiful. It shimmers in places, looking like a giant dome enclosing our planet. It traps the pink fog where it can’t harm us; it keeps us safe.

But suddenly the shield flickers and goes out. It vanishes, exposing the clouds and the land and the people to an acid sky.

I stop breathing.

40

The acid doesn’t rush toward us in waves like it did in the simulations. It slowly sifts through the air, mingling with the highest clouds. It paints them pink, the color of death.

I can’t believe this is happening. Charlie cut the shield.

“No. He can’t have done this. He
didn’t
.” I stumble over my words. My voice rises in pitch. “We’re just dreaming, right? We’ll wake up and everything will be better, right?”

Beechy is too quiet beside me, his wide eyes staring at the acid floating free in the sky.

I open my mouth again, but this time I choke on the words. I can’t swallow.

The acid will make its way down into the air people breathe, into the water they drink, into the wind they walk through. It will constrict their throats, burn their eyes, and eat away their skin.

Those inside steel buildings and underground will last longer than those out in the open air, but not forever. The acid can corrode glass, and it will slowly leak through cracks in the steel until it reaches every single person still alive.

Everyone is going to die.

“What do we do?” I ask, clenching my hands as if that’ll keep my voice from trembling.

Beechy doesn’t answer for a moment. He just stares out the window. When he speaks, his words are soft and slow. “This ship will hold up. It was built for that. We can try to make it to the generator, to destroy it with the bomb, so this doesn’t get any worse. Charlie will put the shield back up.”

“How do you know that?”

“He doesn’t want to die. He wants to make us turn around so he can go through with his plan and get the Core warship in space.

That makes sense. But …

“You said the generator’s too far.”

“It might be. We have to find it first.”

I dig my nails into my arm and look back out the window, understanding. Even if we can reach the generator before the detonation timer hits zero—fifty-one minutes from now—there’s hardly any chance we’ll have enough time to deploy the bomb and flee the fire. It will explode while we’re still in range, taking us with it.

We will never see Logan or Sandy again.

“We didn’t get to say good-bye to them,” I whisper. I hope Beechy knows who I mean.

“No, we didn’t. I’m not giving up yet, though.” Beechy reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “Either way, we’ll end this together.”

I squeeze his hand back. “Okay.”

He gives me a tight smile. “Now, hang on.”

With my free hand, I lock in my seat straps and grip the armrest.

Beechy slams a lever forward, and we lean back and back, heading straight toward the moon, speeding through the clouds. I hang on to his hand and my chair for dear life. My seat straps aren’t tight enough, and I’m afraid I’ll slip out and crash into something. Oliver better be safe back there.

Oliver.

I have to wake him up. He has to know what’s going on before we all die.

He has to hear me say I’m sorry we didn’t leave him there on the hangar, where maybe he’d be safer.

But I can’t tear my eyes away from the view just yet. We leave daylight, as well as the Surface, far behind. We rip through the place where the atmospheric shield used to be and head out into space.

The moon grows bigger outside our window. It’s bigger than I ever imagined. Heat waves rise from its surface: clouds of pink acid. Deadly, but they are beautiful.

Beyond the moon, there are stars and stars and endless stars. They’re pink and gold and bluish-green, dotting the galaxy with light and color. I see them, and I don’t feel trapped anymore. I see them, and I’m sure there’s someplace out there better than the world I left behind.

*   *   *

My bare feet make no noise on the ground of the corridor. We’re still moving fast, but out here in the vacuum of space it doesn’t feel like it did in the Pipeline, when the force of gravity kept me pinned to my seat. It’s more like we’re floating.

In the passageway by the cargo lift, Oliver sits wrapped in wires and strapped to his chair, his head flopped onto its side against the wall. There’s blood on some of his hair. It’s still wet when I touch a finger to it. He must’ve banged his head when we were flying fast back there.

I swallow hard to keep my throat from tightening. We shouldn’t have brought him here. We should’ve taken him out of the ship on the hangar, even if officials shot at us, even if Logan and Sandy found out what we were doing.

Turning away, I find an antibiotic vial in one of the medikits, unscrew the cap, and squeeze a dot of gel onto my finger, hoping whatever germs are on my hands won’t screw up Oliver even more than I already have. With unsteady hands, I ease his head forward and gently rub the gel into his hair.

I want to wake him up, but I don’t know how. I gave him a slumber injection, and those are pretty powerful.

I’ve made so many mistakes.

If he doesn’t wake, he won’t know what I did to him and he won’t feel it when we die. Maybe that’s a good thing, except he won’t hear me say I’m sorry. I need him to hear it.

“I
am
sorry,” I whisper. “I swear it.”

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

I wish there were some way I could hack into the KIMO control system and reset the timer. Or put the escape pod that’s carrying the bomb on autopilot so we could detach it from the main ship and it could fly to the generator on its own.

My heartbeat picks up. Its thuds fill the silence in the corridor.

Autopilot might require a passcode I don’t have, but manual piloting might be possible. Someone could detach the escape pod from the main ship and transport the bomb to the generator on its own.

Me.
I could fly it. Then Oliver would live, and so would Beechy.

It’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of it before?

Running through the scenario in my mind, the problem hits me. There’s no way the pod could reach the generator fast enough on its own, especially carrying a missile half its size. It needs the bigger ship to get closer first.

But I could detach it once we’re close. I could wait until we’re almost to the generator, until I’m sure the pod can carry me the rest of the way. I’d buy the ship an extra minute or two, at least, compared to the time it would take if we waited to deploy the missile from the main ship console. Hopefully, I’d buy enough extra time for Oliver and Beechy to clear the detonation range.

I turn and stare at the passageway to the ladder. As for me, I’d be all alone in that pod. I’d be all alone when the bomb ripped me to pieces. There’s no way I’d escape the missile’s range in a ship that small. We have to make sure we hit the generator straight on, and that requires a close shot.

“Clementine?”

I jump, startled.

Beechy stands in the cockpit passage doorway with his hands in his pockets.

“Don’t you have a ship to pilot?” I ask.

“I set us on a course. We should be okay for a couple minutes.” He gives me a crooked smile and comes over, looking at Oliver. “Are you trying to wake him?”

I nod, pressing my lips together. “I don’t know how to, though. I gave him an injection to put him to sleep. Anyway, he’s probably still subdued. He’d still try to kill us if he woke.”

“Hmm.” Beechy walks past me and opens one of the wall compartments. He rummages through the kits inside.

My eyes stay on him. I wonder if he’s had the same ideas as me, about piloting the escape pod. I wonder if he was planning to sacrifice himself for me and Oliver, but wasn’t going to tell me.

I’m not going to tell him. I know he’d try to stop me.

“Here we are,” he says. He holds up a syringe in a plastic wrapper. It looks like the slumber injection I gave Oliver before.

“What is it?” I ask.

He holds it out so I can read the label as he moves to Oliver.
ENERGY INJECTION.

“I’m surprised you never asked me how I manage to fight the monthly injections,” he says, ripping off the wrapper.

I frown. “I guess I forgot.” Other things seemed more important.

“Well, I use one of these.” He pops off the needle cover. “See, the monthly injection calms the mind—it makes it easy to manipulate. To combat it, you do the opposite and make the mind frenzied with a high energy boost. But that causes confusion, which is why it takes a strong mind to fight submission off completely.” He rips off the plastic. “Oliver, here … Well, I don’t think there’s any harm in trying.”

I chew on my bottom lip, thinking of Oliver after our first Promise Elevation. How subdued he seemed, even then. “Are you sure?”

Beechy nods. “It’s been some time since he had the injection, anyway. It should be starting to wear off. Here, hold this.”

He hands me the syringe. I hold it by the tips of my fingers, as if it’s poisonous. Beechy works the wires off Oliver, freeing him.

The ship rumbles. Beechy glances toward the cockpit. “You’ve got it, yeah, Clem? I don’t want us to crash. Just stick the needle right into his shoulder.”

“But—”

“It’ll work.” He throws me a smile and disappears down the passageway.

I grip the syringe, staring at Oliver. What if it doesn’t work? What if he wakes up and he’s even worse?

But I guess I owe it to him to try. He deserves to know what’s happening and why before he dies.

I hurry forward before I can change my mind, and peel his shirt back a little to expose his shoulder. I count to three.

I jab the needle into his shoulder, and press the plunger.

He moans, and his eyelids flutter.

I pull the syringe out. Take two steps back.

He blinks once. Twice.

Looks at me.

I tense instinctively. I wait for him to start screaming again or lunge at me now that he’s free.

He blinks again. Faster.

His eyes widen. “What’s going on?” he asks, sounding a bit panicky.

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. He sounds like Oliver again. He’s okay. He’s better.

He has no idea what’s going on.

I hesitate. “Charlie subdued you,” I say slowly, still afraid I’m going to set him off. “But we snapped you out of it. Do you remember anything?”

He nods, pressing a palm to his sweaty forehead. “He made me help fly the hovercraft to the site. He told me I was special, that I got to stay behind to protect the bomb and make sure no one messed it up. I don’t know why I agreed to that.”

“It was the injection. It wasn’t you.”

“But I knew I was gonna die.”

“Well, you’re not dead.” I want to add: And you won’t be because I’m going to save you.

“I’m not.” He blinks, processing the information. “Where am I? What happened after I tried to stop you and Beechy?”

So he remembers that. I bet he remembers me knocking him out with the slumber injection, then.

“Uh.” I shift my eyes away from him. “How about I show you? That would be easier.”

“Okay.” He pushes off his seat, trying to stand. He wobbles on his feet and reaches for the wall.

“Here, I’ll help you.” I let him lean on my shoulder.

“Thanks.”

We join Beechy in the cockpit.