Fear My Mortality (31 page)

I looked between them, father and son, and felt all their anger as if it was strangling me. There had been enough death today. Reid had died—no, I’d
killed
him. I didn’t know about Cheyne. I guessed he was okay, but I didn’t know for sure. My hand slipped across Michael’s back, absorbing his tense skin and the angry lines of his shoulders. His eyes widened as I stepped out in front of him.

His dad tried to realign his sight, moving his weapon around me, but it was my turn to be the shield.

I walked toward him, sensing every touch of my feet on the cold floor, every movement of air, the way the light reflected off the walls, the absence of cameras. A mere foot away from Mr. Bradley, I stopped, observing the gray in his hair, the tremble in his hands, the beads of sweat on his forehead. “You won’t hurt me. You need me.”

When he didn’t answer, I reached out and took hold of the gun, wrapped my fingers around the barrel, and pushed it down. “I know you didn’t intend to kill that kid. You had nectar ready to bring him back.”

I remembered how he’d spoken to Josh on the footage, how gentle his voice had been. I wondered how much he knew about what Reid did to me and to Michael, how much of it he sanctioned and how much they didn’t tell him. I remembered Cheyne saying that Michael’s dad didn’t like keeping people against their will, that it was a weakness. But even if he didn’t know, he should have. Even if he didn’t protect me, he should have protected Michael and put a stop to it.

He studied me, caution painted across his features. “I needed to see if the mortality weapon would work, but I need to know if nectar will counteract it. Every weapon needs a counter-weapon. We can’t create something that takes life without knowing how to bring it back. I’m sorry, Ava. I’m sorry it has to be you.”

My voice became a whisper. “But I don’t want to be anybody’s weapon.”

He reached for me. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but your mortality can save lives, not take them. Seversand has stopped threatening us for the first time in years. We can finally put a stop to the Bashers. How you react to nectar can help me figure out a cure for my son. You’re the answer to everything. I need you to stay.”

“And what about nectar? Where is that from?”

He shook his head, his expression closing off. “You can’t go out there, Ava. The people don’t understand what you are. They don’t understand that you can help them. We can keep you safe here. And you can help us … like your brother did.”

“No,” I said. “You won’t catch me again.”

There was shouting, commotion behind us, and the soldiers had caught up. Feet pounded, and in the next moment, Michael snatched me up as he ran past, bullets pelting around us, hitting the wall behind Michael’s dad, striking a dotted line around him like some kind of cut-out character. He ducked, crouched, and tried to stand, screaming orders for the men to stop shooting. I couldn’t tell if they were shooting mortality bullets or normal ones.

Michael smashed through the broken wall, pulling me with him, dropping his father at the same time. Debris flew across the floor, but Michael kept going and didn’t look back. I touched ground, jumping over the crumpled man on the floor. Mr. Bradley struggled to his knees, surrounded by carnage with his back to us, hunched over his weapon, one hand raised to stop the soldiers.

The thundering weapons faded behind us.

Around the corner, the corridor opened into an arena filled with trucks and machinery, and on the far right was a massive door.

Michael slowed enough to let me catch up. I knew he didn’t want to talk about what just happened with his dad and I wasn’t going to make him. I pointed at the trucks as we sped past. “Can we take one of these?”

He shook his head. “They’re fitted with tracking systems. We have to go on foot. Wait.” He veered to the right, to a desk with items sprawled over it and somebody’s satchel, tipping out the contents. There was a wallet, and money disappeared into Michael’s pocket.

“Whose is that?”

He shrugged and dropped the empty wallet back on the table. “C’mon.” He sprinted over to the roller door and thumped on the emergency release. Alarms went off everywhere, but no soldiers appeared.

We waited for the door to rise. It was the first time we’d stopped running since the Dojo. The silence hurt my ears, stillness buzzed like mad inside my head. I looked around the hanger, wondering aloud. “Have they given up?”

Michael shook his head, a deep sadness filling his eyes. “Dad let us go.”

He didn’t waste another second. He snatched my arm and propelled me through the door and out into the night where fresh air rushed us and our footsteps battered the pavement. We paused at the top of the hill with the Terminal Precinct sparkling below us and the river snaking around it in the distance.

Michael pointed to the far-off boats bobbing like specks of paper at the shoreline. “The river,” he said. “We can follow it to Starsgard.”

I hardly heard his words as a chasm opened up at my feet. “We’re the same now. You and I.”

A shadow passed over his face—the memory of Josh, the memory of Reid.

He reached across the black pit of my soul and took hold of my hand, pulling me close and brushing a kiss across my forehead, the lightest touch easing the weight of what I’d done.

He tugged me forward and we ran down the slope.

Drones had been following us for days. Michael kept telling me they wouldn’t hurt me, but he sounded less sure each time.

“They could shoot me right now if they wanted to.” I studied the bleak clouds where the drones would be hovering, obscured, as the waves around the ferry slapped the side of the moving boat.

“They won’t kill you.”

“Would they rather lose me? Once I’m over the border, they won’t get me back.”

Michael shook his head, and I continued. “Or tranq me and pick me up. They could do that.”

“On the boat? In the middle of the river?”

“They’re bound to have people on this ferry.” I eyed the other passengers, about fifteen of them, some sitting, some standing at the railing, watching the coastline pass. We’d ferry-hopped our way a hundred miles upriver and, so far, nobody had recognized us. My hair had grown a lot because of the nectar I’d taken—both when I lost my legs and again at the Terminal. It was past my shoulder blades, making me look twice my age, and we’d lifted sunglasses and black hair dye. The temperature cooled the further north we traveled, so Michael procured a coat for me. The buttons were mostly broken, but it held together with an old brass brooch. I felt bad about stealing, but my life depended on it. The drones would follow us anywhere, always high and just out of sight—we wouldn’t escape them until we reached Starsgard—but it was the ordinary people we were really worried about.

A newspaper rested in my lap and the headline asked in big lettering:
Are we safe?
There was a picture beneath it showing a crowd of people holding placards. One of them read:
Mortals will kill us all
.

The sooner we made it across the border, the better.

Michael nudged me. “What about that old lady?”

I smiled at the woman approaching with the bottle of water. “Maybe not.”

Our disguises weren’t bad, but it was the rolled-up blanket under my shirt that really kept us safe.

The older lady’s long gray plait beat the back of her thighs as she handed me the water and I swallowed it with a grateful look. “Thank you,” I said. “I feel much better.”

She glided into the seat next to me, disapproval etched in every line on her face. Her glare was for Michael, who shifted in his seat next to me. “You should take better care of her.” It was my bare ring finger that she glared at now. “Not everyone is as lucky as you. I never had children.”

Michael turned bright red and I wanted to kick him. It was his idea to begin with.
They’ll see the tummy and not you
, he’d said. I smiled at him, but my smile slipped as I remembered him being shot, his palm on the wall of the Terminal the only thing keeping him standing, shielding me until the last. “He already does,” I said, twining my fingers in his.

The boat turned the final bend in the river and in the distance the mountains of Starsgard shot into the air, looming less than twenty miles away, casting a shadow over the forest beneath them. Cloud cover obscured the tops of the towers built on each mountain peak, extending into the sky higher than the eye could see. I counted at least seven towers, but I was sure there were more.

The river grew visibly narrower to the north and the boats wouldn’t travel past the final port. As it approached, the older woman squeezed my shoulder and rose to her feet. “Take care of yourself, dear.”

I nodded a good-bye, and we waited for the other passengers to leave. We wandered off last as though we had nothing much to do, all the time assessing our new surroundings and the people making their way up the pier, the bus ready to take them to the nearest town, none of them even glancing toward Starsgard. They were not welcome there.

“How long do you think it will take us to get through the trees to the base of the mountain?”

“Too long.” Michael held my hand tighter because he’d seen them too: motley-brown uniforms like dead vines winding through the tree line, waiting for us to reach land. Bashers. I wondered if Jeremiah was among them. Or Hannah, although she’d probably never made it out of the Terminal.

I paused at the end of the pier as the quiet waves lapped the wooden landing. “When will they leave me alone?”

Michael pulled me close, his arms wrapping around my waist. “Guess you’re just too irresistible, star girl.” His hand brushed the curve between my torso and my hip. “Do you remember your butterfly quilt?”

I frowned at him, wondering how he could think about something so obscure right then. “My quilt?”

“We ended up wrapped up in it.”

I remembered bullets kissing the air and launching myself at the medical kit in my bedroom. Michael had leaped from the end of my bed and pulled me down to safety. “I don’t think I want to remember it.”

He smiled, dropping a tingly kiss on my lips that made me draw a quick breath. His eyes crinkled up with laughter. “I didn’t mind so much.”

I couldn’t help smiling back at him. There were about a million Bashers waiting for us and we had no weapons, nothing but the trees and the water and a moment to take a breath and breathe, but for some reason, the world could have been as beautiful as Michael’s smile right then.

I inhaled and leaned into him. If this was the last time I got to hug him, I wanted to remember it, but I stopped as the hum of drones became more than a distant thrum in the air.

We looked at each other in surprise. I glanced past Michael, to the other side of the river, catching breath as machines flew down on us, racing out of the clouds, maybe a hundred of them, gold and black wasps cutting the air. For a moment, there was only silence and Michael’s determined smile as we stood between Bashers and drones, old wooden palings at our feet, gray sky over our heads, and the peaks of Starsgard too far away.

Michael smoothed my hair out of my eyes. “We almost made it.”

Except that the drones weren’t heading down to the pier. Instead of tracking a descent toward us, they split in two, flying over our heads and heading straight to the trees, firing tranquilizer darts.

A Basher dropped and there was sudden movement everywhere. Men appeared in the trees, driving the Bashers out from their hiding places. The last passengers were still getting on the bus and somebody shouted and then the bus roared into life, speeding away with baggage left on the pavement.

Bullets kicked up dust and rocks. Leaves rained, flicking around the clearing as the Bashers fought back. One of them dodged a drone, zigzagging down the pathway, running toward us with his weapon ready and that was when Michael’s hand moved at my waist and I realized what he’d been thinking.

When the Basher was only ten feet away, Michael whipped the rolled-up blanket out from under my shirt, flicking it open and out at the man. The guy turned to beat it off, tripping, and in that moment, Michael whisked me up with him. I ripped off my coat and flung it aside as we ran for the edge of the pier.

Water engulfed our bodies as we dived in. Darts pierced the space around us, but we swam deeper and deeper, pulling each other down until we reached the bottom and then we swam along it as far as we could before my lungs burned and screamed for air. Still, Michael tugged me along, further than I thought I could possibly go, his wrist clamped on mine as sparkles and light filled my head, and still he pushed me, until the last moment when I was about to pass out. Water rushed over my skin and my clothes dragged in the force of movement as Michael propelled us upward. I gasped, not caring about Bashers or drones, filling my empty chest with sweet oxygen.

“Ava,” Michael whispered into my ear and pointed down again. Behind us, the sound of battle was muted, but still too close. The Basher, who’d come after us, was nowhere to be seen, probably taken down by a drone. I nodded and we dived, again and again, over and over, until finally the water was shallow and we surfaced to silence. The river was running out.