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Unwanted.
There was nothing surprising about any of that. I read her life in her eyes, and it was a familiar story. Children were abandoned back on Earth every day. In juvy, I had lived among them. By far, the majority of us had mothers at home who traded sleep for endless worry, then worry for resignation, and, at last, for some, resignation for rejection. But there were those the world had failed so completely that they did not cry at night, even on their first night. Why would they? No one cried for them. What home could they mourn, they who belonged to no one? I knew them, to the extent that anybody could know them, and I knew what it did to their souls. To their eyes.
No, it wasn’t shocking.
And yet, my breath caught in my throat.
The guard nearest me reached for my arm, but he was distracted by the spectacle. It was all too much: the Remnant’s mortal enemy, sentenced to die before those she’d betrayed. He was as entranced as the rest of the crowd. I couldn’t blame him.
I disarmed him easily, flipping the small weight of his gun directly from his holster and into my fist.
I reached the podium in the next instant, before the shock extinguished from his face. The judge’s shoulders were frail underneath her black robe, in spite of the thickness of her lower body, and they bent backwards with my weight. The gun—my gun, now—was cold against her neck, and she tried to shrug it away with her shoulder even as her hands splayed before her. Instinct told me to shelter myself behind the wooden platform, but I ignored it and forced her body to cover me instead.
I was not a healer, like my mother.
“Everyone stay back.” I locked eyes with the now-unarmed guard and nodded toward the door behind us. “You, open this door. No one else move.” I wrenched the judge from the platform, and she made a little sound when we hit the floor behind it, like she was afraid.
She didn’t speak at all. I did not think of Amiel, whose eyes followed my every move, or even of West. I closed my mind to the coldness that stabbed through my heart. I’d never wanted to hurt anyone. I was trapped. I needed out, and this was the only plan I could think of. The judge stumbled, and I pulled her up, helping her to balance before pressing her through the door and into the hallway. I knew exactly what kind of girl I was.
I was a criminal.
Four (#uedf41452-0d56-538b-8bd8-88a075fda840)
There was only one place I could go: the dark, unplanned space that separated the sectors of the Ark at the outermost level, which people had started calling the Rift. Its construction had been unexpected and was thought to be the result of a misplaced wall, so the Rift wasn’t on the official maps.
The Rift was technically controlled by the Remnant, but I was fresh out of other options, what with the kidnapping and hostage-taking and all. When we reached the entrance, I shoved the judge into the darkness as gently as possible, then threw myself in after, never losing my grip on her arm.
“Just go straight,” I muttered after her. “Fast as you can.”
She complied, haltingly at first, then with increasing steadiness. I had to be impressed. Not everyone could move that fast in pitch-black, although the gun may have had something to do with it. We’d gone maybe a hundred paces before she started talking. “Look, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
A door opened somewhere behind us, and I gave her a frank look in the brief splash of pale light from the hallway. “Do I?”
She pursed her lips. We kept moving.
The sound of footsteps along the path urged me forward. It felt like ages before we got to the end of the Rift, where the entrance to the cargo hold was located, but the twisted knot in my stomach made me pause before forcing open the door.
“You decide people’s fates. Have you ever had to accept one?”
She gave me an appraising glance and tightened her mouth even further. “You could leave me here. I’m only going to slow you down.”
It was tempting. I would never shoot her, after all, and sooner or later, someone was bound to call my bluff.
But the sounds of the guards shuffling through the Rift made me tighten my grip on the gun. “I’m afraid not. Let’s go.”
She looked from my face to the pistol, and I realized that I’d been careful not to point the barrel at her ever since we’d gotten out of sight of the guards. Not even when I waved her through the doorway. Judging by her expression, Judge Hawthorne had already figured me out. She knew I wasn’t going to hurt her if I could possibly help it.
On the other hand, I wasn’t too fired up about being executed, either. It was like we were caught in an impromptu game of charades. I made a mental note not to take another hostage again, ever.
But I did have a gun, and a hostage, and a death sentence, courtesy of my hostage, so my options were limited. Charades it was. I made my face stern and forced her through the door. “Chop chop, Your Honor.”
She maintained an admirable inscrutability even as the door latched, locking us out of the darkness of the Rift.
After six weeks in my cell, the vastness of the cargo hold was overwhelming, and I gaped up at the bins that held North America’s final exports: the physical remains of the civilizations we had created, then left behind to be swept away by the meteor.
High ceilings, endless rows of brightly colored bins, and an excess of gravity added to the effect. At the other end of the hold, maybe a thousand yards away, was the stairwell that led up to the main decks of Central Command.
When I cleared my mind, the first thing I noticed was that the locks on the bins had changed. The new ones looked a lot more techy and far less blastable than they used to. My plan—the only one that made any sense at all—was to try to break into a bin. Hopefully, one that had some food. From there, I could regroup and try to think through my priorities, maybe figure out a plan that didn’t involve going back to prison and my certain death at the hands of either government.
Priorities. West. Six final weeks in the Remnant, and I was no closer to keeping my promise to my father that we would be a family again. The thought made my feet heavy, but I kept our pace as near a sprint as I could manage, hoping we’d eventually pass a lock I had a shot at cracking.
The second thing I noticed was the lack of guards. That made no sense. Here were the physical remains of North America. Untold treasure lay behind the thin walls of the bins, not to mention supplies. More importantly, Central Command knew the location of the entrance to the Remnant’s dark space, so it only made sense that they’d want to guard it. But I was alone among the aisles. Blue faded into red, then yellow, and back again, with no sign of Command personnel. At some point, the locks changed abruptly. I stopped, skidded back a couple of bins, and took another look. Judge Hawthorne made a face, as though my change of pace inconvenienced her.
“Well?” she said impatiently.
How was she not out of breath? I was fairly gasping. “Hang on. I’m trying to plan.”
“It doesn’t strike me as your strong suit.”
It was official: I didn’t care much for Judge Hawthorne. “Oh, I don’t know, Your Honor. I’d say I’m doing better now than I was twenty minutes ago. Now move.”
From where we stood, maybe a fifth of the way into the area, it appeared that the hold was divided into two kinds of locks. It’s the kind of thing you might not notice if you weren’t trying to break into something, but everything near the Remnant was one kind of tech, and this part of the hold had a wave of older-looking locks.
“What’s going on here?” I waved an arm back toward the new locks.
“Lockies,” she said. “Command sends out a team every day. So do we. The cargo hold is demilitarized as part of the ceasefire agreement between Central Command and the Remnant, but they still try to keep us out of as many bins as possible. We do the same.”
“By… what, changing the locks?”
She nodded. “They’re children, mostly. The governments make the locks, of course.”
That meant that I had a significantly reduced set of options. I couldn’t possibly get past the newer mechanisms from either government. Older locks it was.
By some miracle, we’d stayed a few aisles ahead of the advancing guards, who made no attempt at staying quiet. Why would they? The hold was huge, but the aisles were straight. It wouldn’t take long to clear them. Our lead was draining gradually away, like sand.
We waited in silence for the row of soldiers to pass the aisle with the door, then slipped around the corner and doubled back. Judge Hawthorne made a fair companion. She kept quiet and moved fast in spite of her age.
I fumbled the return to the door, hitting the aisle slightly too soon. But the pair of guards I’d been avoiding didn’t look back once they’d cleared the space, and I was granted a few short seconds with the lock.
There was no possible way to break it.
I had a gun, but its bullets only penetrated flesh, not the components of the bins, as I’d learned too well during a previous excursion to the area.
Good thing I had a Guardian Level access card. Being a criminal had its benefits on occasion, not least of which was that I had yet to miss an opportunity to pick the pockets of whichever guardian was escorting me at the time, assuming they were slow enough to let me. Normally, Jorin Malkin, the Commander’s lieutenant, would be out of my talent range, but someone had knocked him unconscious during the prisoner exchange, and I’m not the kind of girl who lets an advantage like that go to waste. Besides, I liked to think it caused him at least a little inconvenience when he noticed it was missing.
If the Commander were smart, the card would be monitored instead of deactivated. I yanked the front of my shirt out and slid the card from the band of my undergarments. The judge gave me a dirty look, which I ignored. The lock popped open on the first swipe, and I threw open the door, marked “North America/Sector 7/Cargo Level/Bin 23/Generators.” We were greeted by metal boxes stacked floor-to-ceiling, with only a few inches between stacks. We didn’t fit.
I grunted in frustration, pressing Hawthorne down the aisle to the next bin. The heavy footsteps halted, then resumed at a fast pace, looming closer. They’d heard me.
The judge chewed the side of her face, looking nearly as nervous as I felt. It hit me that the sound of boots was as clear as glass, and I turned around.
They’d found me.
Four men at my six, with ten yards to spare. My heart thumped almost hard enough to make my hands shake with the mere force of its pressure, but I had years of practice with adrenaline like this. Experience won out, and my first swipe was good. The flimsy door sucked open. I swung Judge Hawthorne through by the arm and slammed my fist into the doorpad, then the keypad, in a single, frantic motion. There was a heavy wham as the lead guard hit the door an instant too late.
I touched the lightpad and tried to take stock of the bin, but my nerves were getting to me. I couldn’t afford to keep breathing so hard. It showed weakness, and I had to stay in control.
Breathe, Char, Breathe. Just not so hard.
This bin was a sight better than the last and might even prove useful. Smaller crates lined a series of built-ins, and irregular wooden boxes were strewn around the floor. I wasn’t beaten yet.
I turned to the judge, who was cradling her arm pointedly, an accusatory look on her face. From what I knew of her, she had nerves like boiled leather, and a brain to boot. If she were twenty years younger, I’d have had a problem on my hands. “Hide in the back,” I told her.
“Oh, hiding? In the back?” she said. “What an impressive plan.”
I smiled in spite of myself. Maybe I liked her a little.
“You can’t shoot them all,” she said, clambering past the crates.
“I’m not going to shoot any of them,” I muttered back. “And keep your voice down.”
“It’s over, honey. They’re just gathering the rest of the troops.”
“This card is monitored. Central Command will send a team now, too.”
“So you are one of them.”
I looked at her. The suggestion was absurd, but I couldn’t prove it now. It was probably better to bluff, anyway. So I raised an eyebrow and motioned for her to get down behind a crate. I didn’t know if the Remnant would try to blast their way in or something. She complied, but not before shooting me a look so disapproving it could churn butter.
The lock on the door clicked softly a few times, but the door didn’t open, a process I found unnerving. Why didn’t they try to break the lock? Or the door?
It didn’t even matter. It wasn’t like I could go anywhere.
“Okay, we got her,” the guard in the aisle said finally. “Call it in.” Then he raised his voice to a shout, so that it was unmistakable through the thin tin and plastic walls of the bin. “Hope you’re comfortable in there. Might be a while.”
A while until what?
“I got nothing but time,” I shouted back. I thought I heard a snicker, but the door stayed shut, and Hawthorne stayed mercifully quiet, having made her mind up about me before we’d even left the courtroom. I settled down in the bin to wait.
Five (#ulink_b00c2639-5491-5f74-a197-3c7a08cba03b)
Time flies when you’re spending your last moments of relative freedom locked in a stuffy cargo bin with an equally stuffy elderly judge who’s looking forward to your execution for high treason, but has mercifully decided to stop berating you over your questionable life choices in the meantime.
Before I knew it, there was a rustle in the aisle outside the bin, then another click on the lock.
I considered threatening to shoot the judge, but to be honest, I didn’t have much of an endgame in mind, and I was a little sick of having her as a hostage anyway. Maybe I’d just threaten the next person to enter the bin and call it even.
“Don’t shoot.” I knew the voice before he spoke the second word. It was low and confident and laced with some emotion I couldn’t place. “I’m coming in, Charlotte. I’m unarmed.” Wait. Was he smiling?
I lowered the gun. “I’m not going to shoot you, Isaiah.”
He stepped fully into the bin, taking care to hold the door ajar behind him. As was his habit these days, he didn’t carry his white-tipped cane. In the Remnant, I’d assumed he simply hadn’t needed it, since he’d memorized the layout of the rooms he frequented. But now, I thought there must have been some other reason to avoid it. To avoid letting me see it.
“That’s a start, then.” He turned to the judge, still holding the door open behind him. “You may go,” he said.
She did, sparing me a final, judgy glare on her way out.
I returned it with my brightest smile, in spite of the darkness in Isaiah’s tone. “I think it’s a little late to talk about beginnings,” I said.
He tilted his head slightly, as though considering me. “Once, you let me show you the way out. I told you then you’d only find a bigger cage.”
I glanced at the upper corners of the bin. They were close enough that, if I stood on two crates, I could dust them for cobwebs. “Yeah, well, we’ve said a lot of things to each other, Ise. I’m never sure which ones still count.”
His smile faded in the silence that followed. The last time we spoke, he begged me to return to the Remnant with him, to be protected by him, and he’d called me his enemy when I refused. To be fair, the conversation before that one hadn’t gone much better. We’d been dancing around the idea of each other for a while now, but we could never nail down exactly what we both wanted. He’d once told me that he loved me. I still believed that was true.
But I had absolutely no idea what it meant.
I gestured around the bin. “At least this cage is mine. And it beats the hole you’ve kept me in for the last six weeks.”
He unclenched his jaw and gave me something like a patient sigh. “I had to make you see reason, Charlotte. Had to get my ducks in a row, too. You’re not in there anymore. You’re not dead, yet. I don’t have much to apologize for.”
I had nothing to say to that.
He continued. “So what’s next? You like it out here? You want to stay?”
“I don’t have too many options.”
“You don’t have any options at all. You can’t stay in my jail. Not after that nonsense with the judge. You’ll never make it through the appeal. You don’t belong with my people.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Like you are right now? I found you in less than an hour. How long do you think it will take the Commander? How long until you starve?”
“I’ll manage. Just because I picked the wrong—”
“Let me be more to the point.” He gestured to the bin. “I have you surrounded.”
“Ah. The perils of lock-picking in an enclosed space. I could write a book.”
“Let’s write that book, then, Charlotte. Jail. Not for you, though.” He ticked the words off on long, outstretched fingers. “So you fight. You’re looking at a stab wound, maybe a gunshot. The fight won’t last long. Then you’ll come quietly. You’ll be thrown out an airlock. It’s a pretty short book.”
I looked away. “Where are you going with this?”
“May I sit?”
I looked at him incredulously. “By all means. Big box to your right.”
He settled himself gracefully on a heavy red crate. “I’ve always been a believer in second chances. And it’d be a shame to let your skills go to waste.”
