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“Let me stop you right there. I’m not going to steal for you. Not anymore, anyway. Not after last time.”
“You just kidnapped a judge. When are you gonna quit pretending you’re so much better than me?”
“Better than you? Mr. King of the Remnant?”
“I found something I believe in. I’m not going to apologize for that, either. You’re just mad ’cause I’m right.”
“Oh, you’re really onto something there, Ise.” I shrugged at him and forced my voice down a notch. I had no idea why I found his words so irritating. “How’s this? I believe in not stealing anymore. Especially not for you.”
“We were friends for a long time.”
“Until we weren’t.”
“I didn’t have to be your enemy, little bird. I—” There was a long pause. “But you don’t hear the things I tell you. You think you know better. But this is the end. It’s me or the airlock. So maybe you’ll listen now.
“I said you have skills. I wasn’t talking about stealing. There’s more to you than that. You care about your family. I may not understand it, but I’ve always respected it. You want to belong somewhere. No, don’t deny it. You always have. ’S’why you got in with those clowns down below,” he said, referring to the group of thieves I’d run with back on Earth. “And you can be very convincing when you want to be. You keep a level head.” He looked thoughtful. “I can work with that.”
“Work… how? What did you have in mind?”
“My life… your life. I find I believe in more than just the people in the Remnant. I believe in the fact that we’re all still here. They did their best to keep us off the Arks, but here we are. We’re alive. We’re fighting.”
He rubbed his hands together, and it occurred to me that he was nervous. He was trying to convince me of something, and he actually cared how this turned out. Regardless of how he was acting.
“And I think that, in spite of everything that’s happened, deep down, you do too. You may not see it yet, but on some level, you and I are on the same side. And none of this would matter except for one last thing: we both believe in second chances. A clean slate.” He looked up from his hands. “You and me.”
I couldn’t even imagine what that might look like. He was right the first time: I was trapped. I couldn’t exactly waltz back into the Remnant on his arm. I was their enemy. “So, that would mean…”
“I thought about this a lot. It’s like, we betrayed each other. I’m not sorry that I used you. I had my reasons, but I could have gone about it differently. No one should have died.” He took a breath. “You have to forgive me, Charlotte.” He swallowed. “I’ve forgiven you.”
I frowned at him. “For what?”
He took a moment before answering. “For always choosing everything else instead of me.”
There was a slow silence between us.
My mouth hung open until I spoke, uneasily. “I’ll come with you, but I’m not your friend, Isaiah.” As much as I had once liked him, six weeks in his prison had given me plenty reasons to remain cautious. I shook my head. “I think you know that.” I paused, so that my last words hung in the air like poison. “And I don’t forgive you. For anything.”
He laughed, and the bin was full of the sound. It wasn’t a real laugh, and it didn’t sound like Isaiah. It lacked confidence. It was too loud. “So.” He clapped once and stood up. “You’re in.”
“It’s like you said, Ise. I don’t exactly have a choice.”
“Good enough for me. Let’s get out of here.”
I crossed my arms, still standing. “Where are we going?”
He shook his head. “Still not listening, are you? Don’t even pay attention at your own sentencing. The airlock, little bird. The airlock.”
Six (#ulink_27d833b1-7995-5fb6-9b01-8c87d83af2fc)
He was gone before I stood up, and I was left alone to wonder just what he was up to this time, and why he thought I could help. Possibilities piled themselves around me with no clear answer. Breaking into Central Command, which governed the vast majority of the North American Ark, to steal another program, maybe? Luring Eren back to the Remnant’s prison? My certain death in the void of space? He’d mentioned my family, but he was in for a big surprise if he thought I’d ever betray them.
I took a moment to scan the bin for anything I might be able to use. Sure, Isaiah and I were pretending to be friends again, as far as I knew. But I still had plenty of other enemies out there. Best to be prepared.
I already had a gun. Why Isaiah hadn’t asked for it was beyond me, but I sure wasn’t about to give it up without a fight. I ran a finger back and forth over the tape on a small plastic bin until it warmed slightly, liquidating its bond to the bin, then eased it off and used it to secure the gun to my upper thigh, making sure the safety was engaged. It wouldn’t hold for long, especially if I started running, but at least I could get to it easily. I found several crates full of identical rolls of electric wire, complete with wire cutters. I unspooled it greedily and wrapped several feet around my waist, high above the band of my prison pants. I looped one of the smaller wire cutters into the center of my bra and tucked its handle into my wire-belt, then pulled my shirt down over it.
There wasn’t much else worth taking. I couldn’t tell most software from scrap metal, so I sure as heck couldn’t make use of most of what was there, but I did find a few tiny computer chips sharp enough to pass for razors. I grabbed a few of those before leaving. I took one last look around the bin and nodded. I had weapons. Isaiah had been right: I wasn’t dead or back in jail. Yet.
Things were looking up.
Isaiah, it turned out, was waiting patiently at the end of a long, double row of Remnant guards.
I had never seen a Remnant guard in livery before, but these were dressed in black, Central Command-issued uniforms. The kind that blocked bullets. I spared a moment of appreciation for Isaiah’s people, who had probably gone to some trouble to procure them, while simultaneously suppressing a shudder at the memories the uniforms evoked. The result was something like an ungainly shrug.
If anything, it should have been encouraging. It meant the Remnant had conducted raids on Command supplies. It meant they hadn’t given up.
“Nice outfit,” I said to the first. She closed the bin door behind me without responding.
“You all right?” Isaiah asked me.
“Yep,” I said slowly, eyeing his army of personal guards. “Just fine.”
“Get the team out here,” he said to the guard nearest him. “Have it locked. Let’s go.”
The guard behind me took my arm, and I jerked away. “Hands off.”
She sighed and turned to Isaiah expectantly, giving me a clear view of the shock of bright red hair sticking out from under her cap.
“She’ll be fine, Mars.”
The guard lifted her hands in resignation. “After you,” she said tersely.
“Wait,” I said, studying her face. “I remember you.” She’d been at Isaiah’s side when he came to retrieve me from Central Command during the battle, to beg me to return to the Remnant with him. I hadn’t exactly come quietly, so to speak.
She raised an eyebrow. “Congratulations.”
Our little tussle had ended with her on the ground, unconscious, thanks in no small part to Isaiah, who’d turned on her at the last minute to keep her from hurting me further. I gave her a fake smile to go with her sarcasm. She did not return it.
As we wove through the bins, the guards flanked Isaiah and spread out ahead of him. They’d clearly had some practice with their formation. I tried to fall in with the ones right behind him, but they kept slowing down at the end of each bin, checking the aisles before allowing Isaiah to proceed through the intersection, so I kept nearly tripping. To make things worse, “Mars” seemed not to want me to walk directly behind Isaiah, so she kept placing a hand on my arm whenever he stopped. I kept right on knocking it away. She’d give a little snort, and we’d start walking again. It was all a little awkward, to be honest.
After about the fourth snort, Isaiah turned around.
“Why don’t you walk up here, Charlotte? Give me someone to talk to.”
“Sir, I really can’t advise—” Mars began.
“It’s fine,” he said shortly.
She sighed again, and I avoided shooting her a smug look as I sped up to take Isaiah’s outstretched arm.
“Hey, you think you’ve got enough guards?” I asked, not quietly.
Isaiah chuckled. “My jail must not be so bad, since you’re still telling jokes. They’re doing their job. This area is not under control, at the moment,” he said grimly. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Don’t you have a ceasefire?”
“It’s more than just that. There are lockies, some of which are ours, and another group we’ve tried to monitor,” he said.
“What other group?”
“We don’t know. Some kind of soldier-types. They come out at night. Probably just part of Central Command, but we can never prove it.”
We fell into step, and I remembered the way it felt to hold his hand back on Earth, when everything was dying all around us. I gave his arm a little squeeze, and he leaned in to me and spoke quietly. “You shouldn’t give Marcela a hard time.”
“I know, I know. She’s just doing her job.”
“Well,” said Isaiah, “Sure. But she’s not so bad, if you get to know her.”
“Pass.”
“All right, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I was still trying to figure out exactly what he had warned me about when we came to the end of the cargo hold. But instead of the dark space that led to the Remnant, we were someplace I’d never been.
The Ark was shaped like a huge, flat wheel, with the cargo stored in the large outer rim. The wheel was divided into sectors, like slices of a pie, and it spun as it traveled through space, which gave the effect of gravity. Unfortunately, the passengers who were farthest out experienced far more gravity than those toward the center of the Ark, the “sweet spot.” Every last member of the Remnant was an illegal passenger—a stowaway—and they inhabited the outer rim of Sector Seven. During the battle, Isaiah and Adam had cut the air to the rest of the Ark using a life-support program I’d helped steal: the Noah Board. If they hadn’t done that, the Remnant wouldn’t have stood a chance against Central Command.
The corridor was well-lit and industrial in nature, save for the patterned weave on the carpet beneath us. We were still on the thick outer rim of the Ark, where Central Command considered the gravity too heavy for living quarters. I guessed it had belonged to them, but like I said, the Remnant had secured it—and their continued existence—during the battle. Two of his guards rushed ahead with key cards, and a series of doors slid apart before us. Isaiah barely broke his stride before reaching the door of his choice.
We entered a small room with a thin metal platform, which Isaiah led me to.
“We’re gonna need a better grip,” he said, and pulled me toward him. His fingers found the wire around my waist, and he gave me a silent look through his dark glasses.
Four guards joined us on the platform, Marcela among them, and Isaiah reached past her to hold a thick cable at one corner.
“Ready, sir?” called a guard from the doorway.
“Let ’er rip,” said Isaiah.
I realized, too late, that we were standing on a sort of elevator, and it shot down into the black shaft beneath us before I was ready. I lost my footing, but Isaiah’s arm was solid around me.
I shrugged it off in a sudden surge of inexplicable anger. I hardly needed his help to stand up. When we passed the next floor, there was an instant flash of visibility from the light on its door, and I noticed Marcela’s arm hovering around my other side, carefully not touching me. I upgraded my opinion of her by a tenth of a point, then remembered her kick to my arm during our little scuffle several weeks ago and slid it right back down again.
“I really wish I could see the look on your face right now,” said Isaiah.
“I’ve been on an elevator before, you know.” I loosened my grip on his arm with considerable effort. “I just didn’t realize there was a floor beneath ours.”
“Not the elevator,” he said as the reason for the extra bracing became apparent. The platform jerked to an unsteady stop just below the bottom floor, throwing my knees forward and my center off-balance. Isaiah’s grip solidified around me at the same time, and I didn’t fall. “This.”
I inhaled involuntarily. We stood at the edge of an enormous room. It was brightly lit, and pale blue, except for a series of shiny white stripes down each wall. The stripes led to heavy black ports, each equipped with a tangle of code-based locks.
The floor was a series of black catwalks suspended over the outer hull of the ship. The main drag branched off at certain intervals, giving access to each port in the room, and of course the entrance. The platform had landed between levels, so that I was nearly at eye level with the floor. I made to climb up onto the walk, but Isaiah placed a warm hand on my shoulder, stopping me.
“Not that we’re going in that way,” whispered Isaiah. “But I hear it’s quite a view.”
“Oh no?” I asked.
“The platform stopped halfway for a reason,” he answered, pulling me down until we were nearly lying flat. A complicated series of shafts and wires spread before me, in sharp contrast to the bright, open room on the floor above.
They lay against the platform, barely able to squeeze into the space beneath the floor. I followed, my tongue thickening in my mouth, and stumbled again, harder this time.
“Careful,” Isaiah warned. “Tons of gravity down here, and we gotta crawl. Try to keep your neck relaxed, or you’ll tweak it. We need you in fighting shape.”
We went a few steps before I could manage anything resembling a normal crawl. Isaiah continued to talk, leading us toward a particular port on the wall. “Shoulda seen me, my first time down here. It’s terrifying.”
I had to agree, albeit silently. There was something about the crawl space beneath the floor that was even more off-putting than it should have been.
“Just over here,” he called back. “Few more yards. I think you’ll appreciate where we’re going.”
“Is that—” I bit my lip, nearly afraid to ask. “Is that an airlock?”
“Why, yes it is! She can be taught. It’s the side of one, anyway. But that’s not the important part.”
“The airlock isn’t important?”
“We’re in a hangar, little bird.” He slid delicate fingers across the panel before us, then jerked it suddenly. It came off in his hands, and he placed it quietly to the side. It was bigger than me. “Or underneath one, anyway.”
I swallowed, with difficulty. “And?”
“And maybe it’s time you flew.”
Seven (#ulink_ae649efd-af78-53d5-b82e-bbd6c9ba7ec8)
I stared into the space the panel had revealed. It was dark, but I could make out some wires, and beyond that, a control panel of some kind. “You got them to give you an Arkhopper?”
Isaiah gave me a withering glance through the shadows.
I blinked at the airlock, which I figured had to be part of a hatch. “You stole one?”
He looked at me patiently. “Not exactly. But you’re getting warmer.”
“You’re about to steal one?”
“Warmer.”
I looked from Isaiah to the hatch, avoiding Marcela’s openly amused expression. “I’m about to steal one.”
“Bingo.”
I sighed.
