Parched (46 page)

“Tess?” Ling hisses. “Are you even listening?”

I snap myself back and try to focus on what Bo's saying. “Sorry. Can you say that again?”

“Twist the handle clockwise so it's horizontal,” he says patiently. “Then it'll attach to the wall. I won't do it now, or it'll try to attach to the grass. You must make sure the Devil is perfectly flat against the surface of the dam before you twist the handle. If there are any gaps, it might fall. Once it's attached, the bomb is set.”

I nod. Twist the handle. Attach it to the dam. The bomb is set. Got it.

Bo fishes in his pocket and pulls out a slim black box with a counter set to 120 and a small yellow switch. “When all nine bombs are in place, Achilles will activate them with this.”

“How long do we have once they're activated?” I ask.

Bo points to the 120 setting. “One hundred and twenty seconds. Two minutes. Once the bombs have been activated, they cannot be switched off.” He stresses this last part, then addresses Achilles. “So you must only activate them once we are all off the dam.”

Achilles nods, taking the sleek control even more gingerly than I took the bomb. “No trigger finger. Got it.”

“Any questions?” Bo asks. “No? Then let's gear up.”

I start strapping on the guards I wore at Simutech: knee, shin, and elbow. The climbing gloves feel hot and itchy on my sweaty hands. I hesitate with the mask: our identity is no longer secret, and I don't like losing so much peripheral vision, but the protective helmet still appeals. In the end, I slice away a large hole for my face, leaving the skull intact. Bo helps me loop three Red Devils across my body, secured by a thin chain. When I feel the weight of them, so close to my heart and powerful enough to crack concrete, the adrenaline kicks in for real. My heart rate picks up even more as Bo hands me the rope. I consciously try to slow it down. I can do this. Benji and Lana showed me how.

We rise to stand in the clearing. Ling, Bo, and I are decorated with Red Devils and ropes. Achilles has the control and a stopwatch.

Hunter stands a little away from us.

“Tess?” Ling appears my side, making me jump. “You sure you're up for this?”

I swallow hard and lie. “Of course I am.”

Her eyes slide suspiciously between Hunter and me. “Right. Achilles, Bo, and I are going to run a perimeter sweep, make sure there's nothing we haven't planned for. We'll be five minutes.” When she turns back to me, her almond-shaped eyes flash deliberately.

I nod in anxious understanding. Their three figures melt into the scrub, leaving Hunter and me alone.

I close my eyes for a long moment to steel myself. The sky is turning a dirty gray, no longer true night, not yet morning. A light breeze carries the soft
splish splish splish
of the lake hitting the top of the dam. Then I say his name. He rotates toward me. “What's going on?”

“Nothing,” he replies, voice strained. “Nothing we should talk about now.”

“Considering it's my memories that are freaking you out,” I snap back, “I'll decide when we talk about them. And I'm saying it's now.”

His mouth works with anxiety, but no words come out, his gaze directed far above my head.

“Hunter,” I plead, moving toward him. “Talk to me. I can't handle you being like this. Not here, not now.”

His eyes drop from the treetops down to mine. “All right,” he says at last. “It's just that I don't know if . . .” He drifts off, looking like he's lost in some terrible thought.

“Hunter.” I grasp his shoulders firmly. They are solid and strong beneath my fingers. “Just talk.”

When he finally begins speaking, his voice is low and confessional and makes me want to shudder. “You had an aunt. An aunt who died when you were very young.”

“Pascuala,” I say, dropping my hands. Abel's only partner.

“She died in childbirth. You went to her funeral. One of your first memories of sadness.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” I say, bewildered.

“Did you know the boy survived?”

“No.” I gape.
Abel has a son?

“For ten days,” Hunter clarifies. “Just ten days. You remember some of the conversations the adults were having at the time, but they didn't make any sense to you back then. Seeing them now, it was clear—”

“So what?” I shake my head. “Abel had a son who died. So what?”

Hunter's face as is bleak as death itself. He answers my question as if it physically pains him to do so. “Abel never told me who I was cloned
from.” His mouth tightens. “Tess, you've seen photograms of Abel when he was my age.”

I don't really remember these, but I'll take his word for it. “And?”

“We look exactly the same,” Hunter says. “Tess. I think—no, I am sure—I am cloned from Abel's son.”

My mind whirs. “Which means . . . Which means we're cousins?”

“I'm a clone of your cousin,” Hunter clarifies quickly. “I am not a human being, so we are not cousins.”

“You're a clone of my cousin,” I repeat, the words thick and slow in my mouth. The ground seems to undulate beneath my feet, I can't stop myself from saying the word a third time.
“Cousin.”

Hunter studies my face, positively stricken. “I knew it,” he says, more to himself than me. “I knew you'd feel this way.”

I shake my head, trying to put this in perspective. A clone of my cousin. That's not the same thing as cousin. But it's not nothing.

I look up at Hunter and suddenly I see Abel in his face. The same sharp nose, same piercing eyes. Add some lines and pounds and gray hair and—“Abel,” I breathe, horrified, “you look like Abel.”

A low, distressed noise sounds from deep in his throat. “I didn't want to tell you,” he says anxiously, “until after.”

“So you just push me away till then?” I cry.

“I didn't know what to do!” he shouts, then drops his voice tersely. “It's not exactly something they put in the ‘Welcome to Being an Artilect' stream.”

“There's a welcome stream?” I blink, then realize that Hunter is finally learning sarcasm. “Well, you shouldn't have turned to a block of ice like that. You really scared me.”

“I'm sorry,” he says intently, taking a step toward me. His eyes are burning, almost emerald. “I just . . . I just don't know if this changes anything for you. Does it?”

I rake my hands over my sweaty scalp. My face feels like it's on fire. “I don't know,” I moan. “I don't know. How can I know?” My hands are trembling. “I'm about to blow up a dam. Hunter, how could you tell me this now?”

“Because you told me to!” he exclaims, flinging both hands toward me in accusation. His cheeks are almost purple and in a flash I realize that's because his blood is blue, not red like mine. He drops his face in his hands and groans with irritation. “How can you handle all these
feelings?” His head snaps back up, hands balling into fists. “I'm experiencing a lot of very strange physical urges right now.”

“To do what?” I ask, alarmed.

He thinks for a second, lips pressed tight. “Hit something. Not you,” he adds quickly. His eyes light up with a realization. “Maybe another boy.”

“Hunter, stop turning into a teenage guy,” I order him. “That's really not helping right now.” I exhale, short and fast. “We have to do this,” I continue, gesturing to the three Red Devils that are still strapped to my chest. “We have to make this work.”

“Right,” he says. “You're right.”

“Let's just talk about it afterward, okay?”

“Okay.” He nods.

I wrench my thinking back to the bombs, to the dam, to Hunter serfing the Quicks.

“How much mirror matter do you have left?” I ask.

“Enough to serf the Quicks for six minutes,” he replies.

“Really?” I'm surprised. “It was half empty at Milkwood. Are you sure?”

He nods. “I am.”

Glancing behind me, I see the others returning. “Okay,” I say, but I'm worried. I can't get in perspective how much energy Hunter needs to perform certain tasks. Is he lying to protect us?

“Bo had an idea,” Ling announces to Hunter as the three of them rejoin us. “Why don't you get the Quicks to set the bombs, instead of us?”

Hunter shakes his head. “They're not dexterous enough to climb the rope.”

“What are you going to do with them?” asks Achilles curiously.

“Putting them all to sleep is the only way I can do it with the power I have left,” Hunter replies. “But I'll move them to the far side of the dam, to the scrub on the other side of the lake.”

“Okay.” Ling nods. Her eyes flick between us searchingly. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” I reply, meeting her gaze evenly. “Hunter can serf the Quicks for six minutes.”

Achilles whistles. “Not much time. We need to be in the air by then, meaning you guys only have four minutes to set the bombs.”

“We can do it.” Bo and Ling speak at the same time, and trade a
confident grin. Ling says, “Four minutes to set the bombs, then Achilles activates them, giving us two more minutes to leave before they explode.” She turns to Achilles. “Ready?”

Achilles holds up the black-and-yellow controller and the stopwatch. “As I'll ever be.”

Ling exhales slowly, rolling her shoulders. Bo jogs on the spot, cracking his neck.

“Get to the top,” Ling says to Hunter. “Then give us a countdown of five before you start.”

“Got it,” he replies. And that's when he steps toward me. I don't know if he means to kiss me or touch me or just wish me good luck. But I flinch. It's an almost imperceptible freezing, but he sees it. Our eyes lock. Hunter's face is a mask of surprise, of sadness, but also of a terrible sense of inevitability, as if he knows he's lost me. My eyes fly to Ling. “If anything happens—”

“We meet at the safe house,” she says, swinging her arms in a circle. “There's an old cottage in the Farms, between a lemon grove and a strawberry field, a few miles from border control. And if not there, I guess we meet in the Badlands. Any suggestions?”

Hunter is walking slowly up the hill, away from me. “The Salt Flats,” I say softly. “In the west. We can meet there.” But even as I say
we
, I am struck by the feeling that Hunter will not be with me, no matter where we go.

Ling says, “On the dam wall, you take the left. I'll take the middle, Bo will take the right. Let's try to space out as evenly as we can.” I nod. She tips her head to indicate I should stand next to her. “Then get ready.”

Hunter pauses near the top of the hill, just out of sight of the Quicks. Bo and Ling take their marks, eyes ahead of them, bodies low like sprinters ready to run. My heart is galloping in my chest. I close my eyes for second.
Please, don't let anyone die
.

When I raise my head, I see Hunter, as strong and certain as a beacon, standing at the top of the hill. He raises his hand, all five fingers spread wide, and uses them to silently count us down. Five fingers become four.

Three. Adrenaline charges through me like a street fight.

Two. I can hear Ling next to me, already panting.

One.

His arm whips down to his side. Hunter shouts,
“Run!”

We
burst forward. Our feet rip at the grass as we streak up the hill. When we reach the top, I see the Quicks shuffling like sheep away from us, toward the scrub on the far side of the dam, eyes a piercing white. Hunter is serfing them, but I do not have time to look at him as I run past. We slip and skid down the incline and race toward the top of the dam.

I find my place on the left. Ling is already next to me, fifteen feet between us, and tying the end of her rope in a secure knot around the iron railing. I drop the long spool of rope at my feet and start to tie the end in a sailor's knot, my fingers finding the twisting, complex pattern with ingrained muscle memory.

I catch an arc of movement: Bo's rope sailing over the edge. Ling is one step ahead, swinging herself over the iron railing and pulling back on her rope as confidently as if she were climbing over a fence. A loud
vvvvvvvvvvvv
echoes through the cavernous space below us as she shoots down on the rope. A few moments later, I hear another. Bo.

I finish the knot, and pull back on it to test my weight. It tightens, creaking as I pull. It's solid. I toss the spool of rope over the edge. It seems to unfurl in graceful slow motion as it tumbles to the bottom. Ling and Bo are already down there, yanking Red Devils from their chains.

Holding the rope tight, I swing one leg over the railing so I'm sitting on it, one leg dangling over the edge. I don't look down. Still, the vertigo makes my head spin. I am so terrifyingly far from the ground. I grit my teeth and lean back on the rope until it takes my whole weight. Holding tight, I swing my other leg over. Both feet are planted on the bottom of the iron railing. Below me is nothing but empty air for a hundred feet. Behind me is the aqueduct, open and empty.

I drop my feet from the railing and let my arms take my entire weight. I wait for the rope to settle, and then get a loose hold of it between my feet. If I'm dangling too wildly, I'll smash into the dam on the way down. All I focus on is holding the rope exactly as Lana showed me: not too tight but not so loose that it does nothing to break my fall. The rope steadies. I loosen my grip.

Vvvvvvvvvvvv!
The world blurs around me as I shoot down, down, down. My hands burn, even with the roping gloves. My stomach shoots to my mouth. I'm going too fast.

“Slow down!” Ling screams.

I tighten my hands on the rope, pain whipping through me. The ground slams into me, knocking the wind out of me.

“Five minutes!” Achilles' voice rings out. He sounds neutral; totally calm.