Skylight (Arcadium, #2) (23 page)

“Roger that,” a
deep voice crackles back. “Movement commencing, over.”

I can’t help
but feel like they’re talking about prisoners. Maybe it’s because
they never refer to the soldiers as actual people, or maybe it’s
because everything is so tightly controlled.

Franklin holds
his hands behind his back and bobs on the balls of his feet. Jessie
watches the door with no obvious expectations.

Eight soldiers
file in and sit in perfect silence. They’re different to the other
soldiers or guards I’ve seen around Skylight. Firstly they’re all
wearing white fatigues, looking like something between an army snow
team and a European pop group. And secondly they’re well
built—strong and tall and well fed. They look sharp, not bored.
Four of the figures are men, four are women, but all have short
boy-style haircuts. And their eyes—they look like siblings, all
with the same pale blue eyes and piercing stares. I glance at
Jessie but she doesn’t seem bothered. She gets to work and I keep
staring. The longer I look at the soldiers the more I feel like I
want to back away. I don’t, of course, because that would be weird.
But I linger in the middle of the room, unsure of what to do.

Jessie opens a
file and quickly reads a few details. “Mayer, Sam?”

A soldier comes
forth and takes the empty seat in front of Jessie.

“How are you?”
Jessie says, sliding on a pair of plastic gloves.

The soldier
nods once, kind of like he finds the question irrelevant and
unworthy of words.

“Lovely.
Florence, would you mind helping me with the tourniquets?”

I head over,
and grab one of the multicoloured bands, tightening it around the
soldier’s arm. He’s rolled up his sleeve, baring his bulging
muscles, which I can’t help but stare at. I am, after all, still
sixteen.

Jessie clears
her throat gently, her eyes full of laughter, and I jump back so
she can draw his blood. That’s when I realise Sam is so strangely
still, like he’s made of concrete, and I have to check his face for
signs of life. His eyes shift to me and I look away.

In trying to
look anywhere but this man’s amazing arm, I find myself watching
the others. They stare straight ahead, with rod like postures. It
almost seems like someone tried to cut and preen them to fit into a
certain box, but failed. Even with the same eyes and haircut and
uniform, no two of them are the same. Skin colours, heights and
widths, even the way they sit are all so vividly obvious against
the white backdrop.

Jessie works
quickly, expertly, and we go along like this — me doing the
tourniquets and her drawing the blood. No one speaks during the
whole process; none of the soldiers say a thing. Occasionally I
make eye contact with the one in the chair, just because I have to
get close to them to do my job, but that’s about it. I can’t tell
if they seem grumpy, or arrogant, or maybe slightly stressed.
Whatever it is, it’s not happiness.

And it’s really
hard not to stare at them because of their eyes. I wonder what the
other Skylight soldiers think of them, since these ones really do
seem superior in every way.

Franklin kind
of hovers in the background, fidgeting and pacing about.

When Jessie
finishes taking the last blood sample and giving the last booster
shot, she packs up all the stuff and stows it in a silver trolley.
“I’ll take this to the lab. Won’t be a minute. I just want to make
sure they don’t get mixed up again.”

Franklin nods.
Once Jessie is gone he grabs a small walkie-talkie from his belt.
“Medi Seven to Central, over.” Franklin smiles at me. The soldiers
all sit motionless, as though they can’t move until given an
order.

Franklin’s
radio crackles back. “Central Command, over.”

“Final samples
complete. Final boosters complete. Mission parameters complete.” He
pauses before remembering to say, “Over.”

“Roger that,
Medi Seven. Send them home. Over and out.”

Franklin hooks
the radio back on his belt.

“Sounds very
final.” I say. “Are they going outside?”

Franklin flicks
his glasses, once, twice. His mouth opens, then closes. He blinks.
“It’s highly probable, but I’m not given that sort of information,
Florence.”

“Oh.” I need to
get some kind of information for Jacob while I’m here. I turn to
the group. “Are you guys doing a rescue mission or something?”

Franklin gasps
strangely.

The first
soldier, Sam Mayer, stands. He looks right at me with those pale
blue eyes. “We follow orders.”

A female and
male soldier share a quick glance. It’s the first sign of real life
I’ve seen from them.

“ Our test is
coming,” Sam says. “So is yours.”

“Oh, Sam, stop
it,” Franklin says lightly. “Stop trying to scare her. Just because
she’s new to the team.”

Sam’s eyes
shift to Franklin. “Why is she here, Sir?”

“Uh… Because…”
Franklin’s gaze falls on me like I might have the answer. “That’s
classified,” he snaps. “No one likes the person that gives away the
surprise, Sam. Gosh, you know just how to kill a mood, don’t you?”
Franklin sighs. “You can return to home base now. That’s all.”

The soldiers
stand and walk out in single file.

“I’m
classified?” I say.

“It was the
first thing that popped into my head.” Franklin gives an edgy
laugh. “I don’t exactly want to get on their bad sides. Did you see
those muscles? Did you see the ice-cold expressions? Imagine if
they thought I didn’t know what was going on.”

I laugh, just
as Jessie returns. “Done?” I say.

“All done.”

When our single
carriage train pulls up at Skylight’s platform, we’re the only
people exiting.

“What’s with
their eyes all being the same?” I say.

“It’s a
developmental contact lens that might be able to offer protection
from infected blood entering a soldier’s eye. Kind of creepy, but
kind of cool at the same time.”

“We haven’t got
a cure,” I say, “but we’ve got super safety contact lenses.
Fantastic.”

Jessie hums.
“True.”

“You want to
grab a coffee?” Jessie asks.

“Sure, but I
don’t actually like coffee.”

“Should we get
milk and cookies then? I’m sure I could find you a sippy cup so you
don’t spill it everywhere.”

“Oh, haha. Very
funny.”

We step off the
escalator and back into Skylight. The smile falls off Jessie’s face
when she spots Jacob sitting on a bench by the main escalator
bank.

For a moment I
think Jacob hasn’t noticed us, but his gaze flicks up and finds us
like a guided missile.

“One sec,” I
say to Jessie, and break away. I take a seat on the bench. “What
are you doing?”

“Waiting for
something to happen.” Jacob glances over my shoulder in Jessie’s
direction. “Has something happened?”

“You’ll never
believe where I just was.”

Jacob stares at
me, waiting.

“Uh, you’re no
fun. I just returned from the science centre with Jessie, helping
her do blood samples and boosters of the fittest soldiers I have
ever seen in my life… no offence.”

“None
taken.”

“It was kind of
weird. They all had these special contacts that make their eyes
crystal blue, and they’re supposed to stop the infection entering
through their eyes in combat, I guess.”

Jacob casts a
long gaze at Jessie. His amusement extinguishes like embers in the
rain, replaced with his steely default. He’s quiet for so long I’m
not sure he’s been paying attention.

“Jacob?”

He lowers his
eyes to me. “And what did you make of it all?”

I shrug. “I
don’t know. I tried to remember the layout. I thought it might be
handy, but it’s like a maze. We were in a room labeled Medi Seven,
took a walk away from the platform, all left turns and ended up at
this door with a double code box door. I didn’t see what was inside
but that’s where we got the booster shots from. Jessie said it was
some kind of storage.”

“You didn’t by
any chance get the code, did you?” Jacob stares at the floor, deep
in thought.

“Hey, I got the
last one. This one’s all you.” I sit back against the cool metal
side of the escalator. “You think it’s important? You think
they’re…”

“I don’t know
if they’re doing what Arcadium did, but I will find out.”

I nod. Jessie
is sitting on one of the tables in the canteen, her feet up on the
seat and a sad look on her face, trying not to watch us, but
failing pretty spectacularly.

“Can I ask you
something?” Jacob says, his tone suddenly gentle.

“Since when do
you ask first?” I smile.

“You’d jump in
front of an infected for any one of your group.” He nods as he
speaks.

“Uh… that’s not
a question.”

“What about for
me?” he says, turning to face me.

My whole body
tenses. This is the last thing I’d expect from Jacob. “Um…”

I’ve never
thought about it. I know Jacob is getting closer to everyone but I
don’t know if we’ll ever trust each other like the rest of my
family do. The sincerity in his expression that tells me to tread
lightly.

“Uh… I don’t
know. It’s not something I really think about. I just do whatever
has to be done.”

“That’s a
no?”

“It’s an I
don’t know. It depends on the situation. It’s complicated.”

Jacob bows his
head slightly. “That’s answer enough. You best not keep Jessie
waiting.” Jacob stands and disappears up to the next level.

I watch him go,
feeling the strange wake of his presence, feeling like I should add
something, say something more concise. Why would he care about
anyone saving him? He’s Jacob—the man with a gun and a plan and
perfect aim. Fearless and relentless. The guy who prefers his own
company to others. He’s the dark anti-hero who needs nothing and no
one.

I shake my
head, blow out a sigh and join Jessie.

“I ordered you
a tea,” Jessie says as I sit at her table. “Hope that’s okay.”

“There’s table
service?”

“There is for
me.” Jessie grins and slides off the table. She plants herself in a
seat but can’t help but kick one leg up on the neighbouring seat.
“Everything alright? It looked kind of serious.”

I laugh
half-heartedly. “Everything is serious in Jacob’s world.”

“You don’t seem
so serious,” she says planting both her hands on the table.

What, is it
explore your feelings with Florence day? Who knew a bunch of people
in their twenties would need the guidance of a wise
sixteen-year-old?

“Okay…” I say
slowly.

“It’s just you
two don’t really match. You’re so different.”

“And you think
that’s a bad thing? None of my group match. We’re not supposed to
be that way.”

Jessie heaves
out a sigh. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” She thinks about
it for a while and a tall slow moving man interrupts her thoughts
with our drinks.

“Thanks, Pete,”
she says.

“Nothing to
it.” Pete smiles and walks away.

Jessie stares
at her coffee for a long time without drinking.

A quarter of my
tea is gone by the time she finally speaks.

“When I was on
the outside, it was bad.” Jessie’s face sets in a frown. She
doesn’t look up, as if she sees her memories floating on the
surface of her coffee. “I lost a lot of people quickly and then for
the first time in my life I was on my own. Jacob found me sleeping
in a cupboard in a house. I don’t know how. I don’t think much
about the stuff that happened back then. I was weak. I needed
someone to share the burden of the new world with. And I followed
him. We were a team. I trusted him, we kept each other alive. And
one day…” Jessie blinks slowly, almost as though she’s trying to
erase the thought. “I saw him taunting an infected man. He was
using a broom handle to keep the thing at bay, but he wasn’t trying
to kill it. So I followed him. And to my horror, when he should
have been killing the infected, he was saving them. I followed him
many times. He would lock them in bathrooms, bedrooms, cleared out
sheds. He’d hide them under deckings and under floorboards. I don’t
know why, and he never spoke of it, and I never asked him. I
figured it wasn’t malicious, you know? Maybe it’s how he deals or
something. But then, I’d been out scavenging on my own and I was in
this house. I was in the kitchen and I stopped to have a drink and
for some reason I sat on this window seat. I was just minding my
own business and this howling screeching sound erupts from beneath
me and I can hear it scraping its fingers to the bone just trying
to get at me. I bolted, leaving everything behind, all the supplies
that we needed. I just know he put that infected person in there.
Jacob knew which houses I was hitting and he didn’t say a thing.
Not one word about it. And I thought, he’s so preoccupied with
trying to save them that he’ll risk my life to do it. You know?

I couldn’t stay
with him. It wasn’t safe. There were infected everywhere, behind
every closed door, in every space you’d explore for supplies. He’d
turned the area into a minefield. I ran and I ran and I left him
behind and I never thought I’d see him again. And when he showed up
I just… snapped. I was afraid. I shouldn’t have hit him though and
I should not have let you see that, and I’m sorry. I didn’t want to
tell you but how long can I keep that stuff inside when you’re all
asking what’s up with us and when I see you trusting the man that
sacrifices the living to squirrel away a few infected?” Jessie
shakes her head. At last she looks over at me, with an uncertain
expression.

Jessie looks me
over and frowns. “Florence?”

Tears well in
my eyes. My lips tighten into a scowl but I have no control over
myself. Shock takes over.

My mind flashes
back. I saw Jacob leading that infected woman. He put her in the
chest at the end of the bed. He walked past us in that house,
knowing she was there, and he didn’t say a thing. And I know it,
deep in my heart, that Jessie is telling the truth and that I let
my guard down for Jacob. I was blinded. And suddenly I feel like
I’m stepping out of the fog.