Fae (10 page)

Resolve and curiosity
settled through me. I clenched my hands into fists at my sides.
We
had
to get
past all this. I'd told him about the voice and now I
would
know everything
about my memory. No amount of running would keep me away from the
truth.

I jumped out of bed and
headed straight for Cailen's room, ignoring the curious stares from
the very people I cared least about right then. At his door, I took
a deep breath before waving my hand below the screen. No more
waiting to fix problems or pretending they weren't there. We needed
to get this resolved. I
had
to know about Anna.

Cailen's room was empty,
as I expected. His packed bag sat on the middle of his bed, a
reminder that I shouldn't even still be in The Block. Both of us
were supposed to have left by now.

I leaned my shoulder
against the doorway. My heart painfully thudded against my
chest.

My eyes went to his chair
and it was just as empty as his room. The back of the chair rested
against his side wall, just as Cailen had left it.

Tears burned at the
corners of my eyes and I swallowed over and over to get the lump
down. He wouldn't just leave without me. Would he?

Right then, I couldn't be
sure.

"Yes you can,
Ella."
Malik's voice oozed through my
skull.

I closed my eyes and tried
to push him away. The attempt was halfhearted and didn't do a
thing. His laughter echoed in my mind, and I forgot why I’d even
come here. No answers could be gotten from an empty room and one
packed bag.

A hand rested lightly on
my shoulder. "Are you okay?"

I turned and saw First
staring at me with worried, sharp eyes. I wiped the tear I felt
running down my cheek and said, "Do you ever feel lost? Like you
don't know who you are or what you're doing anymore?"

He smiled. "Not when there
are good friends around."

I looked away. "Yeah, well
all my friends have been leaving me."

"Maybe that's because you
chose the wrong ones."

I slumped against the
wall. Maybe he was right. Part of me just couldn’t believe it,
though. Not about Cailen.

"Think about it, Ella," he
said. "If they were good friends, they wouldn't have
left."

That lump in my throat
came back again and I backed away.

"It's true,"
Malik said.
"I'm the
only one who stayed."

I shook my head and looked
back at Cailen's chair; a chair that should have my bonded partner
in it. If we were bonded.

I hate you,
I said to the voice in my mind.

"Good."

Right then I knew what I
needed to do. No more waiting, or pretending, or whatever it was I
was doing. I couldn't be scared anymore.

I grabbed First by his arm
and waited until he met my gaze. "Take me to Meir."

Chapter Four

Meir

We stood just outside one
of the dozens of Information Viewing Rooms—IVRs—in The Block. I'd
heard about them over and over again from the recordings on the
walls, but I'd never stepped inside one, even though that's where
everyone said Meir was.

I still didn't know if I believed
them.

But it was time to find
out.

First stepped to the side
and I got the hint immediately. This was something I needed to do
on my own.

I took a tentative step
inside, hit a wall of hot, sticky air, and took an involuntary step
back, bending forward, gasping for air. At least two hundred people
had crammed themselves into a far too small space, all of them
staring unblinking at the wall to the front. Soltakian weather,
food production, population count, and other
mundane
—yet apparently popular—facts
streamed from one corner to another. Sweat saturated the air and
clung to my throat. My head turned fuzzy and darkness crept at the
edges of my vision. Not Malik-type darkness. Queasy darkness that
is usually a precursor to passing out. I took another step back
into the hallway and inhaled the cool, fresh air like sucking up
water. My head cleared and the tunnel-vision seeped
away.

Too many people in close spaces always
made me sick. I should have prepared myself better.

First stared at me,
unfazed.

"What are they doing in
there?" I gasped, not quite yet recovered.

"They're Tat Wacks," he
said all nonchalant, like a room full of brain dead people wasn't
creepy as hell. "Soltakians who are going through withdrawal from
the lack of near-constant information that used to run into their
brains from the ComTats."

Just then I remembered
what Cailen had said. Water and information. That was the only
thing anyone wanted anymore.

"The Mosandarians have
been sending out a constant energy pulse to disrupt the Mamood
attack until they're ready for the ground battle," he continued.
"And they aren't going to be ready until the first thunderstorm
hits. It's their ritual. They need to perform their sound
ceremonies before a great battle. Unfortunately, the
Ladeshians
—in their pompous indifference
to the actual state of the universe—didn't think about hardening
the satellites that send out the data streams to the ComTats. The
Block is safe, but the satellites are outside, not
inside."

So that was why I never
saw any civilians walking around in The Block. They were all in the
Viewing Rooms. But how did Meir get sucked into it? He'd never had
a ComTat to eat away at his brain and make him dependent on the
information it gave.

Doubt chipped away at my
resolve. The truth had to be that he wasn’t in there at all. Which
meant I had to be right. Meir was dead.

Just looking at the horde
of drones as they stared at the screen of information made the
creepy, crawly feeling like bugs under my skin pour over my body. I
shuddered

Just as I was about to
walk away for good, a salt and pepper head at the very front of the
room caught my eye. The coarse hair was impossible to mistake. That
was Meir's head. I'd know it anywhere. He was alive! Actually,
impossibly alive. And looking at the frozen civilians around him,
with their eyes glued to the words ahead of them, I decided right
then I needed to get Meir out. So I took a deep breath and plunged
into the hot, sweat-saturated room, ignoring all my previous
apprehensions.

As soon as my foot touched
the room's floor, my bones hummed. A voice tickled at the back of
my mind like insect wings…pleasant...peaceful...lovely. It was
bliss, promising delight with each syllable. All tension seeped out
of my body like a sickness you didn’t know was there. I felt
lighter, freer. Perfect. Safe. Loved.

I glided toward the front,
closer to the wall and the words that held so much promise. The
rains had not come, but that was okay. We were okay. Because the
voice said we were. People moved like swaying grass in a storm and
I was the wind. They carved a path for me, welcoming me into their
fold.

I smiled.

The voice was my friend.
It wanted to take care of me, to love me. It showed me things I'd
never known before. It wept with me when the population count went
down and it rejoiced when it told me that the Emperor had a
plan.

A plan for me. A plan for
all of us.

I stopped at Meir's side
and placed my hand on his shoulder. Warm and alive. That's what he
was. That's what we all were in this place. This room that offered
us so much.

A tube snaked down from
the ceiling and clasped onto my arm. I winced as it pinched me and
broke skin, but the voice told me the pain would go away. And it
did. Just like the voice said.

The voice did not
lie.

And it would never leave
me.

It welcomed me
home.

***

…

…

…

Something was
wrong.

Words streamed in front of
me, a voice as sweet as syrup oozed through my mind, but something
felt off, dirty.

Relax, the voice told me.
Warmth oozed from deep within me, making me
heavy…sleepy…

And I forgot.

…

…

…

I shook my head and
blinked as I forced my mind to the surface of this ocean of
tranquility. I stood up, looking around, frantic, wondering how
much time had passed. It felt like I’d spent hundreds of years in
that one spot.

People were standing or
seated all around me, their gazes dead. Hundreds of tubes hung from
the ceiling, all of them sending goopy, clear liquid down to the
civilians' arms. I looked with horror at the one attached to
me.

I ripped the tube out of
my arm, rejoicing at the momentary sensation of pain, and turned to
Meir to rip his out as well. He gave a little cry, but nothing
more. His dead gaze stayed transfixed on the wall and the words in
front of him.

I shook him, hard,
practically pulling him out of the chair. Nothing happened.
Whatever they'd done to him, my stomach started to twist as I
realized it might be permanent. I avoided looking where his left
leg should have been even as guilt gnawed at my insides. Everyone
had hurt Meir. Especially me.

I felt the voice telling
me to relax, that all was well in this room.

Without a word, I wrapped
my arms around his waist and hauled him up. He'd grown lighter over
the weeks even as I'd grown stronger. My eyes burned with tears as
I realized we'd switched roles.

I dragged him through the
room of swaying bodies. Meir said nothing. He didn't even blink. I
wondered if he knew where he was anymore. When we got out to the
hallway I leaned him against the wall by First—who was still
shockingly, miraculously waiting for me—and knelt down, taking in
deep, sweet breaths. The cool air felt like ice on my skin compared
to that hot, sticky room of death. There was no way I could let him
in there again.

"How long," I said through
gasps, "did I take?"

"About half a
day."

"And you
waited?"

"Of course." A smile
ticked at the corners of his mouth.

"But didn't you have royal
duties to attend to?"

His smile faded for a
moment before he said, "The Emperor ordered me to look
after

you."

I wondered what that look
meant. Did he mean the Emperor forced him and now he was stuck
babysitting some rogue Auri who couldn't even stay where she was
supposed to be when she was sleeping? Or did he mean I was in so
much danger the Emperor himself had to get involved?

Based on the all around
mood I’d recently detected from those living in The Block, that
last one seemed like a very real possibility. I decided right then
that if Cailen didn't come back by the next morning, I was
transporting out of there all by myself, and taking Meir with
me.

My stomach cringed at the
thought and my back ached as phantom pain remembered that night I'd
almost died. But I needed to do it. If Cailen had a ship here, I
needed to be on it.

"What time is it?" Meir
murmured. His body had slouched down to the floor beside me. His
eyes were the only things moving as they skittered around his
sockets, searching. I pressed my palm against his clammy forehead.
He was sweating, but his skin felt ice cold.

I fumbled for my yellow
card, pulled it out from beneath my cloak, and read the numbers on
the little screen. "It's time for dinner." I stood up again and
placed my hand in the crook of his arm to lift him up. First took
the other side. "Let's go eat. I'll figure out what to do after
that."

Meir cocked his head to
the side, his eyes pleading. "What's the weather like
outside?"

"Um..." We took a few
steps before I could think of the right words. "It's sunny," I
finally said. "And dry, very dry.

He nodded and closed his
eyes, smiling.

My heart twisted to see
him so changed. I yearned to have the Meir of before back. The man
who had been my savior, always solid, a rock I could count on. It
was my turn to be the savior now. And I would be. The first step
was taking him to dinner; his first meal out of that
room.

There were several dozen
cafeterias in the Displaced Wing of The Block alone. I decided to
take Meir and First—since he seemed to want to stay with me—to the
one Cailen and I had eaten at two days before. I'd tried out each
of the dining areas in my wing already and this one was my
favorite. It was the closest
and
it had the best noodles with cheese.

Mmm...cheese. Sometimes
when I thought about the years I'd been denied the glorious flavor
that was cheese...

Well, let's just say it
was better if I didn't think about it.

The wonders of food were
one of the only few things capable of breaking me out of an
otherwise gloomy mood. And at that moment, I needed a
break.