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sendline: an ki lu sal an ki lu sal an ki lu sal an ki lu sal;
return: . . . . . . no response;
//lognote: communication attempts in English, binary, hex, ancient languages find PERSES unresponsive.;
2 OUT OF RANGE (#u882b55ea-af9b-5be6-b001-71061c612a53)
Sleep only brings nightmares. When I wake up, I return to consciousness as suddenly and as restlessly as I left it.
Sitting up, I want to run, gasping for air in the cold. My heart pounds and every beat is a question.
Where am I? Are we safe? Are we still free?
I fall back on my side, staring into the growing shadows of the wild desert brush in front of me.
No Sympas. No ships. No Lords. Nothing I haven’t seen for the last week now.
I study the landscape like a clock as I try to catch my breath. The long shadows mean it’s nearly dark, which means it’s time to get up and move. The terrain has grown increasingly strange, alien almost, as we’ve crawled from rock to rock in the darkness. Anything to avoid the Sympas combing the desert, looking for us.
We sleep in the day and travel in the night now, ever since our Chopper went down.
At least we have established contact with Doc through the comlink cuffs—thanks to the com relay Fortis was able to salvage from the crashed Chopper. Doc keeps us away from patrols and, we hope, moving toward somewhere safe. He’s been tracking Sympa deployments since our Chopper went down; they’re looking for us—everywhere—but they haven’t found us yet.
They. The Embassies. The Lords. It almost doesn’t matter which, not anymore. They’ll find us, whoever they are in the end.
It’s only a matter of time.
The longer we wander in the desert—exposed to the elements and targeted by the Embassy—the stronger the grip despair has on me.
Despair from the bleak truth that, back in the Hole that once was Los Angeles, even without the Icon, the Embassy reportedly still has all the power, and the weapons.
The bleak truth that, according to what we learned during our too-brief stay in Nellis, Catallus has come down with a fury on the people of the city, and the Projects run uninterrupted.
I look up to where Lucas sits across from me, huddling in only his shirtsleeves on the red rocky ledge. It takes me a moment to realize that Lucas has laid his torn Embassy jacket over me, along with his blanket.
He smiles, almost shyly, and I soften, seeing the cold purple-blue of his mouth.
I don’t know why I can’t just say what I think—that I’m grateful, that he’s thoughtful. That when I see his mouth I want to kiss it, kiss him, but since we are never alone, I don’t dare.
My empty stomach growls as I turn to see who else is there, just in case I’m wrong. I’m not; Fortis snores on one side of me, under a pile of brush that can’t camouflage his woolen, red-toed socks pointing to the sky like two knit rabbit ears. Tima is passed out on the other side of him, covered in dust and almost completely hidden in a neat zigzag of folded arms and legs, like some kind of compact military gear. Brutus is nestled in the crook of her knees, himself snoring so loudly you would think he was Fortis’s son more than Tima’s dog. Ro, as usual, is nowhere to be seen, but he doesn’t like to sleep near any of us, not since we left the Mission.
He won’t get that close to Lucas.
To me.
Things will get easier for all of us, Fortis says, when we find a way to get where we’re going.
The Idylls, Fortis called it. “I’ve found it, with Doc’s help. A Grass base. The only camp out here.”
I was confused when he first said it. “Idylls? Why do they call it that?”
“Because it’s paradise, love. Where the Icons can’t hurt us and the Lords can’t fly.”
“You mean somewhere over a rainbow? Like the old stories say?”
“I mean somewhere under a mountain. Like the old combat manuals say.”
But I still don’t understand how we’re supposed to find some Grass Rebellion base even the Embassies can’t. And I have a difficult time believing there even is someplace safe. Someplace where we can plan our battle against the House of Lords.
But none of us has a better plan. Or better rations. Or enough water. Or another way out of here.
So, like the good soldiers we are quickly becoming, under the mountain we go.
“Dol?”
I jump as Lucas touches my shoulder, startling me out of my reverie of mountains and soldiers. He wags his head in the direction of the nearby hill. His hair falls lank in his face, curling against his jawline. “Come on, Dol. I have something for you.”
Looking at his overgrown hair makes me realize how long it has been since any of us has done anything as normal as getting a haircut. Not to mention the bloody gash on his forehead that snakes above his eyes like a second brow, his trophy from our crash—same as my bruised face, Tima’s swollen ankle, or Ro’s busted rib.
And all of our empty, aching bellies.
Still, even this messed up, he’s breathtakingly beautiful, Lucas Amare.
“Something for me?” I’m caught off guard, but Lucas offers me his hand and I take it, pulling myself up after him. The second I touch him, I feel it—the warmth that comes from the way his heart beats in time with mine.
Does everyone feel this from him? He could make them, if he wanted to. That much I know.
But is there something more there, something just for me?
I stand close to him, holding his hand for a fraction of a moment longer than I need to. I can feel myself blushing and I turn away, suddenly grateful for the dimming light.
It’s all so strange. I mean, I am. How I have become. How imagining a kiss can feel like a real one.
That one perfect, sublime, stolen kiss, back at the Mission. The day we came so close to binding ourselves to each other, heart to heart, hand to hand.
I pull my own wrapping tight around my wrist, shaking off the memories. Still, I can feel my cheeks turning pink again as I follow Lucas up the winding trail that leads from the dry riverbed where we’ve made camp—if you can call it that—all the way to the top of the red rock hill, rising above the shadowy desert floor. The red wash of the landscape is dotted with strange, almost alien-looking shapes, where the wind has carved the stone into curving organic formations. “They don’t call this Goblin Valley for nothin’.” I can almost hear Fortis’s voice when I look down at the rocks.
Then I hear the familiar static of Lucas’s cuff, followed by the crackling sound of Doc’s voice. “Lucas? I appear to be losing your signal.”
I stop. Lucas raises a finger to his lips—and motions for us to keep going.
Doc’s voice echoes across the rock. “That is not optimal, as I am certain you understand. You need to remain together for the purposes of safety. Might I remind you that twelve Icons remain fully functional? Perhaps you have forgotten that there are no known weapons, with the exception of the four of you and your exceptional abilities, that can damage them in the slightest—”
“Parce metu, Doc.” Lucas grins. He starts up another switchback in the trail, pulling me by the hand.
“Cease from fear?” Doc translates. “I cannot be afraid. It is not within my parameters. I am merely noting that you do not seem to recall that accomplishing the task at hand requires you all to protect each other until you reach safety.”
“I’ll keep my eye on her, Doc. Don’t you worry,” Lucas says, squeezing my hand.
“I am still concerned that you appear to be moving out of optimal range for the communications relay Fortis is carrying. As in the colloquial expression, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’”
“Is that so?” Lucas eggs Doc on, and winks at me.
“Quite. Although in my case, slightly erroneous,” Doc continues, so easily distracted by linguistics. “Seeing as I have neither eyes nor mind to speak of, per se. So perhaps the phrase more optimally would be ‘Out of range, out of ran—’”
Lucas answers by switching off his cuff with a flick of a finger. “Out of range,” he says, grinning. He pauses to think, then pulls off the cuff and rests it on a twisted cactus that juts into our path. “Sorry, Doc.”
I shake my head. “Oh, come on. He means well.”
Lucas takes my hand, smiling as we climb.
I can’t help but smile back. “And what if he’s right? If we’re gone when Fortis wakes up, he’ll freak. We’re not supposed to leave camp, remember? It’s too dangerous.” I can feel myself giving in even as I say the words.
“Maybe I’m dangerous.” Lucas winks.
“You?” I roll my eyes and he groans.
“Live a little, Dol. Doc will forgive us. We won’t be gone long, and three’s a crowd. And anyway, we’re almost there.”
He stops short, pulling me roughly in his direction. I stand tall, stepping up on a rock, letting myself stretch along the length of him, letting myself feel the weight of his strong arms as they wrap around my shoulders.
“I’ve wanted to do this since we left the Mission,” he says, burying his face in my neck. I wince as he bumps my tender jaw, and then I smile—because I’ve wanted it too.
I kiss the top of his head. “And yet you let a little thing like falling out of the sky stop you?”
He laughs. “Next time I won’t.”
I won’t, either.
And at this one moment, Lords or not, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
I slide down, leaning my head back against his chest. It feels safe, and I pretend for the moment that we are.
“You know, sometimes four Icon Children are two too many,” Lucas says. “At least, maybe this week they are.”
I look up at him. “Do you ever wonder if there are more of us out there? Than the four of us?” The words sound almost ridiculous the moment I let myself say them.
“No,” Lucas says. “But I do wonder what’s going on inside the head of the one right here in front of me.”
“This,” I say, laying my head back on his chest.
“There.” He says the word softly, and I almost can’t hear him. I look ahead and see that the sun is setting, as glorious as any sunset I have ever seen, even at the Mission.
More glorious. The most glorious.
Not a silver ship in sight.
From up here, the stretch of unforgiving rock and scrub and rubble expands in front of us, in long shadows of quiet purple-blue falling and fading across the red-dirt desert floor. I see the curve of the horizon, and I’m momentarily struck by the brief sensation that I’m standing on a spinning globe, hurtling through space.
Our planet. Our Earth. It’s dizzying.
It will be gone in a minute, I think. The sunset, and the feeling. For now, though, it is enough.
One thing is right, in a universe where everything else is wrong.
I smile, tilting my head back until I can look up at his face. “It’s perfect.”
“You like it? I had it made especially for you.” Lucas smiles. He almost looks shy. “It’s a present.”
“Is it?” I laugh. “Then I’m going to keep it forever.”
He smiles. “Okay. Hold on to it. Keep it where you won’t lose it.”
“I will,” I say.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers.
“Shut up,” I whisper back, teasing. “It’s beautiful.”
It’s true. This sunset—Lucas’s sunset, and now mine—is incandescently, infectiously beautiful. And it means we have made it to another night.
We are alive.
For now, it should be enough.
The sun slowly moves behind the horizon. Lucas nods, whispering into my ear. “See? That’s how it works. The sun goes down now, but it always comes up again.”
“Really.” I smile, arching an eyebrow.
“Really.” He smiles back. “Believe it.” He kisses my cheek, softly, avoiding the bruises. “And even when you can’t see it, it’s out there somewhere on the other side of the world, getting ready to come back again.”
Now he kisses my other cheek, so softly I shiver.
And my neck. “It’s going to get better.”
My ear. “Everything is.”
The warm pull that is Lucas overtakes me, and I don’t fight it. I have my gifts, and he has his. This is what he brings the world, this feeling. Sharing it and spreading it, to everyone he meets.
I give in.
Love.
Offering it to me soothes him as much as it does me, and I let myself feel it, take it.
I push out of my mind the competing thoughts. That we are lost, with no support in sight. Hunted in the desert. No plan in place to take down another Icon.
I wish that for once Doc was right, that it was somehow possible to forget what lies ahead of us.
