Unity (12 page)

“Do you know what this is?” I ask.

Hutch shakes his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I’m dressed in a large, shaggy dog skin, its skull resting atop my head, the canines embedded in the skin above my eyes. Rivulets of blood mask my face. Mandi lies beneath me, shouting, “I’m sorry,” while I slowly lower a knife toward her chest. Her flight suit provides a moment of resistance, but then the blade slips forward, plunging into—

I wake with a scream.

The cave wall warbles in front of me, the light strange and alive.

Then Hutch is there, worried and attendant. “You’re okay,” he says. “It was just another dream.”

I cough, and grunt and try to sit up. My butt and back are killing me. “Another?”

“You’ve been talking all night.”

My empty stomach sours. “I was?”

What did I say?

I nearly ask, but I’m too afraid.

Hutch, on the other hand, sits down in front of me and dives right in. “Distraction can be dangerous.”

“Okay...”

“If one of three fragments is discordant,” he says, and I’m pretty sure he’s quoting now, “Unity cannot be achieved. Base, Support and Point. Mind, Soul and Body. Three in one. A body without a mind, will die. A mind without a soul, will rot. And a soul without a body, lose its way.”

As he speaks, my skepticism fades. On one hand, it feels cultish. On the other, true and poetic, which I suppose is the nature of the best lies. Or the truth. “What does it mean?”

“For you and me...” He leans forward and takes my hand. When his warm fingers wrap around my palm, I realize how cold I am. Goosebumps run up my arms, radiating from his touch. “...it means there cannot be anything between us. No filter. No lies. No words left unsaid. I cannot support you if I don’t know where you need it. And if you do not...accept me...”

“You’ll find a Point who will.”

A slight nod. “It’s the only way that Unity works.”

“What does that even mean? Why is ‘unity’ so important? And who decided it required three people?”

He lets go of my hands and leans back, smiling. “I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve seen it work. When a Base, Support and Point work together as a unit, there isn’t much they can’t do. But if we’re talking about the end goal of all this training, I really don’t know. But I believe it is good.”

“Even when you’re stuck with someone like me? Someone told me that they paired you, the best, with me, the worst, to buoy me. Like no one else could handle me, but you.”

His chuckle fades quickly. His smile inverts. “That sounds like her.”

Like
her
.
Like Mandi.

We stare at each other. Too long. He knows. But what does he know? The ramblings of a nightmare-filled sleep, most of which include
me
killing Mandi.
Oh God, is that what he thinks?

And now I understand the lecture.
No filter. No lies. No words left unsaid.
He was prepping me for this moment. It would be easier if he asked me straight out. And by ‘it,’ I mean lying, because the framework of his question would reveal what he already knows, or figured out, or hoped. But this... I can only assume that he believes the worst. That I sleep-confessed to the nightmare of killing Mandi.

“Mandi is dead.” The words blurt out of me. I cup a hand over my mouth, ashamed by the merciless way in which I delivered the news.

His eyes are glassy, but he doesn’t show any big reaction. He already knew it, or at least guessed. I notice the red rings around his eyes for the first time. He looks exhausted. While I was dreaming about Mandi’s passing, he was mourning it.

“How?”

“She survived the crash,” I say, and he nods. “Gwen, Daniel and Gizmo, too. The five of us found the camp.”

“And?”

“She came with me yesterday. We were looking for Transport 37. And your campfire.” He doesn’t need to say ‘and’ again. I can see the urgency in his eyes. “We found the transport. It was...most of them didn’t survive the crash. That’s when the man—Mack—found us.”

“One of those two from yesterday?”

I shake my head. “Mack was...worse. He took Mandi hostage. Sent his dog to kill me, and when I...I...” Uncommon tears sting my eyes. My chest heaves, but it’s reined in by the pain of stretching stitches. “I killed his dog, and he killed Mandi. He shot her.”

After a painful silence, he asks. “How did you survive?”

I draw the knife from the sheath on my belt. The dry blood tells the story. “He’s dead.”

When I look back up, Hutch is crying, eyes locked on mine.

“She...she said she was sorry,” I say. “But she’s dead because of me.”

When I sob, he leans forward, wraps an arm around my back and places his head against mine. Aside from Sig, I have never experienced this kind of affection during my life. It unhinges me. I weep openly, letting this boy, who I worked so hard to ignore, see the pain I keep hidden from the world. “It wasn’t your fault. And if she apologized to you, it means she cared about you. That’s a rare gift.”

“She hated me,” I say.

He leans back to look me in the eyes again. “She admired you. Your strength. She was upset about being a Base, because she wanted to be like you. Strong. Independent. Immune to the words of others.”

I’m not totally immune to words, because Hutch’s are like a bandage on my soul. I point to my wet face. “I’m not as tough as she thought.”

“Well,
I
knew that,” he says, getting me to smile. He sits back. “See? We’re stronger when there is nothing between us. Nothing hidden. Nothing dulled.”

While I do feel better—even some pain has faded—I’m not about to admit it. My emotional walls are ancient and thick, and though he found a tunnel through, the little people that live in my head are already working hard to patch it.

He pushes himself up with a grunt. “Well, then, we should go.”

Go?
The concept of moving feels foreign, like climbing Mount Everest, far away and impossible without more time. To heal. To get stronger.

Seeing my reluctance, he says, “How long will the others wait before assuming the worst? How long will it be before Quinlan and his people find them? And how long will the people captured from Transport 37 survive?”

How does he seem to know me so well already?

I grunt and try to stand, and there is his hand, waiting to lift me up again. He doesn’t say the words this time. Doesn’t need to.

He has me.

Once I’m on my feet again, he says, “I have something for you,” and he picks up one of the three go-packs. Then he opens it and pulls out a handgun identical to mine. “This one is loaded. You carry this, I’ll handle the rest.”

I want to argue the point, but when I slip the loaded pistol into the holster on my hip, its weight is almost too much. He shows me the metal Point badge I’d been wearing, embedded in foam next to another, probably meant for Sven, whose go-pack washed up on the beach. The last thing we do is cut off the top of my flight suit, converting it into pants. Here in the cave, the T-shirt I’m wearing feels chilly, but outside, the short sleeves and thinner material will be a relief.

Thirty minutes after climbing down from the cave with the giant robotic hand hidden in its depths, I regret leaving the flight suit top behind. Thick clouds form as though conjured by a wizard. Then they unleash a torrent. The flight suits are waterproof. The T-shirt, not so much. But the rain does quench my thirst.

Before falling asleep, I consumed most of the water and rations Hutch had. At his insistence. I fell asleep with a full belly, but I’m already feeling hungry, and with every step forward and upward, weary. But he prods me. With words. With his touch. Eventually, with his very presence, striding with determination and three go-packs, despite his own obvious pains. He reminds me of Gwen, and that memory helps me keep up.

I try to distract myself from the pain, but most everything that enters my mind is stressful. The crash. Transport 37. Mandi. My mother. So I focus on the giant hand, but that mystery is so complete, I can’t think of anything beyond a litany of questions. Why is it here? Where did it come from? What was it a part of? The list goes on endlessly, once again leading me back to the angry frustration and confusion that is putting knots in my back, so the pain there matches everywhere else.

The rain stops like a fountain that’s suddenly lost pressure. Twenty minutes later, the water soaking my shirt has evaporated to be replaced by my more fragrant sweat. The sun is directly overhead now, filtered by the canopy, but blazing hot where it shines through. I pause in one of the light beams, turning my face skyward, catching my breath.

“How much further?” Hutch asks.

The sun turns my closed eyelids pink. “Won’t know until we find a clearing, so I can see the cliff.” I can still hear the river off to my right, so I know we’re heading the right way. But injured, burdened and walking uphill, we’re making slow time compared to my journey with Mandi on the way down. “Few more hours, I’d guess.”

He sighs, showing signs of true exhaustion for the first time.

A squeak of a voice tickles my ears.

“What?”

Hutch and I speak the word at the same time, looking at each other.

“That wasn’t you?” he asks.

I search the forest around us. “No.” I consider drawing my handgun, but decide not to expel that energy until I know I have to.

“Are there monkeys on this island?”

I don’t think so, but I say nothing. I just listen.

And then I hear it again.

Someone is crying.

Someone small.

The sound is coming from my left, away from the river, away from the others. But a cry so gentle, so fragile, can only come from one kind of human being: a kid. Gizmo, Daniel, Sig, or someone else. There’s no way to know who it is.

But I know what needs to be done.

Drawing my weapon, I head for the sound. Without a word, Hutch puts one go-pack over his shoulders, cinches it tight and places the others on the ground. Then he follows me, clutching Mack’s empty handgun like it’s loaded. We stalk through the woods, adrenaline working hard against my wounds, letting me focus. We reach the edge of a clearing, crouched low behind a stand of ferns.

That’s when I see them. Four men—four
savages
—and three kids tied to a tree.

One of them, the girl crying, is Sig.

I recognize two of them. Duff sits atop a fallen tree, elbows on knees, eyes to the ground. Looks sad. Luiz is on his feet, animated, telling the story of my death—the girl with the bright orange-tipped hair. And that’s what must have got Sig crying. She’s tied up against a tree, arms and legs bound like she’s about to be sacrificed to a dragon.

When I think about what little I know of Quinlan, I wonder if the analogy is very far from the truth. She looks bruised a bit. Dirty. But mostly unharmed. The way she stares at Luiz, eyes glistening, reveals she’s very aware.

Seeing her like this, helpless and bound, at the mercy of brutes, fills me with a new kind of anger. I’m used to raging at the world in response to wrongs done to me, real or imagined, but this... I can watch the news and feel revolt at things happening around the world. Unjust wars. Terrorism. Genocide. These things make me angry, like they do any non-sociopath with a beating heart. But I’m also distant from those things. I don’t take action. Don’t even think about it.

This is different. Someone is going to hurt for this. Probably me, but I won’t be alone.

The two Unity students tied up to trees beside Sig look familiar, but I don’t know their names. The first is a freckled boy, red hair, maybe fourteen, hand branded with a Support symbol. The other is older, a very pretty girl with American Indian features and a Base brand. She’s the oldest Base I’ve seen yet. She also looks out of it. Traumatized.

The two new men are opposites. One is short and a little chubby. Like Duff, he’s a Base. The second is all muscles. Head shaved unevenly, probably by a knife, maybe by the machete sheathed on his shirtless back. His hand is branded with a Point.

Great.

“Man,” Luiz says. “Mother load. Sucks that I had to pop that hot chica, but—”

“What is chica?” the chubby man asks, his accent Russian.

“A chick. A babe.”

I have never, not once, ever thought of myself in these terms, nor has anyone back in the civilized world. These guys have definitely been on this island too long.

“Still have
her
.” The Russian hitches his thumb to the American Indian Base. She shows no reaction to their attention. “Even if she is vegetable.”

“Exactly,” Luiz says. “Quinlan is going to be—”

The Point turns his back to the others, arms crossed. For a moment, he’s looking right toward us, but then he rolls his eyes. “Quinlan. He’s not everything you think he is.”

“Shut up, Berg,” Luiz snaps. “Talking like that could get you dead.”

“If he didn’t have the ExoFrame, he’d...” The man named Berg lifts his head. Sniffs the air like a dog. “Someone stinks.”

“We
all
stink,” Duff mumbles.

“Someone else.” Berg turns toward us again, looking past us, to the jungle. “Up there.”

It’s not until that very moment I realize there’s a cool breeze on my back, rolling down the hillside, catching my stink and carrying it into the camp. That Berg can smell it isn’t just impressive, it seems damn near impossible.

But then I smell it, too…and it’s not me.

“Pack it up,” Berg says, and I’m surprised when the four men, instead of heading off into the woods and hunting us out, start to gather their gear. They look nervous.

And it’s not because of me.

I’m a ghost.

So who, or what, are they afraid of?

Doesn’t matter,
I decide, when they cut Sig and the others free from the trees. The kids’ hands are still bound in front of them, but their legs are free.

“Hurry up,” Luiz says, shoving Sig hard. She stumbles forward, trips on a root and falls over. The savage man puts a knee on her back, grabs a fist full of her straight, black hair and lifts her head. “You can do this awake and on your feet, or over my shoulder and knocked out cold.”

And that’s all I can take.

I look back at Hutch, and he gives a nod.

There’s something in the way he backs up my resolve with his own, no questions asked, no doubts raised, that bolsters me.

Gun raised at the nameless Point, I step into the clearing, “No one move!”

And no one does. Not really. Not after turning around and seeing me and Hutch, weapons raised.

Sig’s eyes go wide, and I’m afraid she’ll say my name, revealing our relationship and her value to me. But she doesn’t. She just watches me, eyebrows turning up in worry, but not for herself. She’s afraid for me now.

The Point lets his head sag back, his mouth lolling open. He groans and looks at Luiz. “She doesn’t look dead.”

“Told you,” Duff grumbles. “She’s a Point.”

“Is she now?” the Point asks, and he glares at me. “Last I heard, Points were military men, and you don’t look like either.” He glances from me to Hutch. “You’re both kids.” He motions to Sig. “Like them. Unity must be desperate. Digging through the dregs. Recruiting babies to do their killing.”

Killing?

“But you don’t have it in you, do you?”

Luiz raises a finger and says, “Uhh.” No doubt he’s about to clarify the story of Mack’s fate and my part in it. But I decide to beat him to the punchline and squeeze the trigger.

The gun kicks hard in my hand, but not nearly as hard as the bullet that catches the Russian—who is standing clear of the captured Unity group—in the chest. He folds in on himself and crumples to the ground.

Holy...what did I just do?
Something inside me breaks a little bit, but I file the emotions away for later.

The other three men flinch back.

Duff drops to his knees, shaking hands over his head. It happens so fast that it almost seems rehearsed. “Don’t shoot! God, don’t shoot!”

I now have their undivided attention.

“Let them go,” I say, and I’m pleased when all three captured kids are released. Sig gives me a worried look, but walks behind me. The boy Support takes the mind-numbed Base and leads her toward me.

“You going to kill us all?” Berg asks.

That’s a good question, because the Russian’s body is starting to make me feel like puking. Killing Mack was self-defense. Killing the Russian...what was it? Revenge? Anger? Do I have the heart of a murderer, like these men? Is that what makes me a Point? A willingness to pull the trigger?

“Effie.” It’s Hutch, whispering, trying to not be heard by the men, if that’s what they are. Duff barely looks older than me.
Man enough to shoot,
I think, and then I wince.
Who am I becoming?

“He’s a Point,” Hutch says, eyes leveled over the top of his unloaded gun, words directed at me. “We can’t just tie him up to a tree.” I don’t have to ask him to clarify. That question goes without saying. He’ll be free inside an hour.

And the rest of Hutch’s logic doesn’t need to be explained. If we let Berg go, or even subdue him, we’ll never make it back to camp. He’ll track us, and the next confrontation will be on his terms. All of this boils down to a simple concept: if Berg lives, we die.

But it’s not that easy. Killing the first man was instinct. I did it without thought. To save Sig. But I’ve had time to digest that horror, and I understand the effect it will have on the rest of my life.

But is letting Berg live any different than pointing a gun at Sig’s head and pulling the trigger? Just because he’s not pointing a gun at me, doesn’t mean killing Berg isn’t self-defense.

It’s pre-emptive self-defense.

And gentle Hutch supports it. But that’s easy for him. He’s not the one who has to pull the trigger.

But then he does, and the gun coughs a bullet. The loud report makes me duck, and that simple reaction saves my life. A black throwing knife sails over my head, its blade driving into a tree trunk at the same height as my heart.

Berg dives and rolls to the side as Hutch fires two more rounds, each missing the mark. Berg’s aim is much better. He flings another knife, this one striking Hutch’s hand, knocking the gun away.

I raise my weapon again. There will be no hesitation now. But I never get the chance to fire it. I’m kicked in the stomach by Luiz. The gun falls from my hand when I hit the ground. Hutch tries to punch him, but the man is too fast, ducking back, catching Hutch’s overextended arm and using his momentum to throw him. The fight lasts just seconds, and it ends with Hutch and me on our backs, defeated.

Luiz, looking frenzied and angry, stalks over to the fallen Russian and takes an ax from his belt. He struts back to me. “This time, you’re going to stay dead, bi—”

The insult is cut short by an arrow in his throat. He clutches the wound and falls to his knees, gagging.

I hear a crash of vegetation to my left. It’s all that’s left of Berg. He’s bugged out, leaving just Duff, still on his knees, to face whoever fired that arrow.

Please let it be Gwen, channeling her outdoorsy past.

The man who steps out of the clearing’s far side is definitely not Gwen. Like the other savages, he’s dressed only in torn pants. His hair is shaved on the sides and long on top, pulled back in a tight ponytail. He’s got an arrow nocked in a homemade bow, aimed at the trees where Berg fled. He glances at me, at Hutch, Sig and the others, but never points the weapon at us. He doesn’t even aim it at Duff, who hasn’t left his submissive position on the ground. He carries a variety of blades, but no guns. He’s also ripped. Not weightlifter buff, but a healthy kind of strong. Balanced. Probably the way men looked before gluttony became normal and robots took over manual labor. But it’s his face and skin that hold my attention. He looks a little like my father.

The man stops over Duff, never lowering his guard. “Duff.”

The frail Base looks up, relief flooding his face. “Vegas. Thank, God.”

“You going to leave him now?” the newcomer named Vegas asks, his Spanish accent thickening as he gets upset.

“He’ll find me,” Duff says. “He’ll
kill
me.”

“Probably will anyway,” Vegas says. “The question is, how do you want to die? As Los Diablos? Or Los Perseverantes?”

As one of ‘The Devils.’ Or ‘The Persevering.’

“I just want to live, man,” Duff says.

“Then go,” Vegas says. “And when you’re ready to come home...you’ll be welcome.”

Duff nods, climbs to his shaky legs and runs away. Vegas lets him leave.

I turn around to Sig and envelope her in a hug. She’s stiff for a moment, but then leans into me. I feel a sob building in my chest. Tears threaten to reveal my weakness. This small person is the most important force for good that has ever been a part of my life. I kiss the top of her head and lean back.

“I knew you’d come,” she says, and when she sees my quizzical expression, she adds, “Because you were alive.”

“How did you know that?”

“I would have felt it,” she says, “if you had died.”

I’m not sure what to say. I’ve heard stories about people feeling that a loved one has died before actually being told, but I always wrote them off as superstition. But at the same time, I have believed, against all odds, that Sig still lived. And here she is. Maybe she’s right? Maybe we’re connected on some kind of spiritual level? I’d like to think so. It would be a hint of something more, of some life beyond the physical.

Of hope.

I bend to pick up my gun, but I’m stopped by a command. “Wait.”

My fingers are on the handle. It would take just a second to pick it up, turn it toward him and pull the trigger, but I’m pretty sure he’d put an arrow in me before I got my fingers around it.

“Who are you?” he asks.

Our group responds with silence.

“Why are you here?”

If there were crickets on this island, this is the point when you’d hear them, comically filling the void.

“Why did you shoot Bear?”

Bear? Ahh, the Russian.
Kind of a stereotypical nickname, but none of the natives strike me as creative types. There are no paintings happening on this island. No limericks. No Kumbaya, after all. Just killing and surviving. And now we’re part of that cycle.

My response is simple. I turn my hand, the one reaching for the gun, so he can see the brand.

I’m a Point,
I think,
same as you.
I have no doubt that in the same situation, he would have done the same. Only he didn’t. He let Duff live. They’re on opposing sides, but still friends. Maybe Bear was his friend, too?

Before my concern can register on my face, there’s a pop and a fizzle of sound that retreats skyward. It’s Luiz, not quite dead yet, hand lifted to the sky, holding an orange gun. The flare’s red glow, arching up over the jungle, is easy to see.

An arrow pierces Luiz’s chest, ending his life.

When I look back up to Vegas, he’s sliding the bow over his shoulder. “Get your gear. We need to leave. Now.”

“We’re not—”

He backs away, holding out his hands in a way that says, ‘my hands are clean if you stay.’ “If he finds you, there’s nothing you or I can do to stop him.”

I’m about to argue that we have two guns—two loaded guns, thanks for telling me Hutch—but then I remember they didn’t help against Berg, and I doubt they’d help against Vegas.