City 1 (4 page)

CASS STAYED WITH FARRYN ALL DAY AFTER THE AMPUTATION—SARAH HAD
other duties to attend to, and could only check in on him occasionally. She taught Cass how to take his vitals, keeping track of his heart rate and fever, and how to inject saline if he wouldn't drink, to keep him hydrated. But ultimately, Sarah warned Cass, there was little they could do at this point. “The fight,” she said, “is his to fight. You should go and get some rest.” But how could Cass leave him? He had lost his leg for her. He might die for her. The least she could do was watch over him while he struggled.

Farryn thrashed and groaned, flushed and sweaty with fever and pain. Cass held his hand, which was slick with sweat, and tried to remember all of the times they had spent together. What had still slipped through the cracks of her mind?

Sarah came back into the tent and checked on them both. She bent down, resting on her knees, and quietly watched Farryn for a few moments. Cass found it unnerving, the way she just looked at Farryn, as if she were deciding something.

“What is it?” Cass said, trying to keep the anxiety out of her voice. “Is he okay?”

“Any spike in the fever while I was gone?” Sarah asked.

Cass shook her head. “No.”

Sarah stood up slowly, grimacing and rubbing her left leg. “Damned knee,” she muttered. “No change,” she said. “Fever's creeping up a bit, but not spiking too badly. The cauterization is holding clean, no suppuration, although it would be too early for that, really.”

“So why . . . it looks like you think something's wrong.”

Sarah shook her head. “I'm going to give him another dose of synth-morphine, and an antipyretic to keep the fever in check, but that's going to be it for the painkillers. I can't spare any more.” She sighed. “When this dose wears off in about four hours, I know how much he's going to be hurting.”

Sarah prepared an injector, and pressed it against Farryn's neck. Farryn tensed, then relaxed with a sigh. He opened his eyes and looked up at Cass, his bloodshot gaze focused for the first time in hours. He reached out his hand to her and she squeezed it gently. He actually managed a weak smile, which seemed to Cass like the bravest thing she had ever seen. “It'll be okay,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said, a tightness in her throat. “You're going to be fine.”
How could
he
be trying to comfort
her
?

He closed his eyes, his breathing slow and steady, and she held his hand as he drifted into sleep. She thought, unexpectedly, of the self-portrait she had sketched for him, and how he had kept it, folded carefully away, all this time.

“Go,” said Sarah. “He's going to sleep for a while. Get some rest yourself. Go for a walk. Get some food. No need to stay here.”

“I'll stay,” she said. What if he woke, and he found himself alone? She had to be there when he needed her. When he could look at her and somehow smile.

Cass curled up on the floor next to Farryn and closed her eyes. She thought about how different her life could be right now. She could be with her birth sister, Penny. What was she doing right now? Was she on top of a tower in Hightown, looking out past the rooftops of the bot City, out at the patch of green forest where Cass was? Was she thinking about Cass?

She tried to reach out with her mind, like she used to do as a little girl, back in her Freepost shelter. As she fell asleep, she would reach out with her thoughts to the forest, trying to find the minds of the rabbits and the squirrels and the deer. Of course it didn't work then, and it didn't work now. Cass drifted into a fitful nap.

She woke, disoriented, to Farryn's moaning. She jumped to her feet. How long had she been out? How could she have
fallen asleep? Sarah was in the tent, bending over two injectors. She pressed one against each side of Farryn's neck. Cass was expecting to see Farryn relax, but the medicine didn't seem to have any effect—he continued to groan and shift back and forth in the cot, his eyes shut, hair matted with sweat, cheeks flushed.

“Why didn't it help?” Cass said.

Sarah didn't look up from watching Farryn. “It was just antipyretic for the fever, and saline. Can't do a proper drip out here in the damned forest. I warned you I can't do much for the pain now. I just have to hope I can keep him hydrated and keep the fever down enough until it breaks on its own.”

“What if the fever doesn't break?” said Cass.

Sarah shrugged casually, but her voice was sad, and angry. “Then it means he's dealing with a systemic infection, and losing the fight.” She held her hands out, palms up. “I've got no antibiotics to give him. It's like the damned nineteenth century out here. He's lucky I'm not bleeding him with leeches.”

“But he won't die,” said Cass, a statement more than a question.

“He's young.” Sarah shrugged. “He has that in his favor.”

Cass pushed back the panic.
He will pull through.
She walked up to the cot and stared down at Farryn. She could feel the heat rising off him. She asked herself, yet again, why she cared so much about this boy. Her memories of her time in the City with Farryn were still not entirely back—there were
a few blank spots—but she knew that he had risked his life for her, and her brothers, more than once. And that he had a way of grinning at her that was somehow simultaneously teasing and earnest. And that he had kept her artwork. That he had done the most to push her back to being herself.

A shaft of light flashed inside the tent, illuminating Farryn's pale face. Cass turned and saw the big man—Grennel, the general's bodyguard, or assistant, or whatever he was. He stood in the entrance to the tent, holding the flap open, leaning forward awkwardly to fit his huge bulk into the small enclosure. He nodded at Cass. “Come with me,” he said. “General Clay wants to see you.”

“He might die,” Cass said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Farryn could die, and I won't be here.”

“He's in good hands,” said Grennel gently. “We have no choice here. You must come.”

KEVIN WORKED THROUGH THE NIGHT, BREAKING FOR ONLY A FEW HOURS
to sleep and eat before returning to work. But it was one step forward and two steps back with the camouflage project.

He thought he had found a way to tamp down the power with an improvised ground, a fairly simple soak that ran about two-thirds of the Wall unit's power to a broken circuit and diffused the extra energy. It worked—at least the body armor was rendered invisible, and hopefully the field would be strong enough to cloak the wearer's entire body from head to toe.

But there were a few flaws. First, the leeching power emitted a buzz that was loud enough to hurt Kevin's ears from twenty feet away, and it wouldn't do much good to be invisible if you were buzzing like a giant hive of bees. Second, the
broken circuit, a conduction wire trailing down the back of the suit, sparked and sizzled and even set a patch of grass on fire. Again, not ideal to start a fire and burn your calves when trying to sneak into a City.

Still, on the bright side, the temperature inside the suit rose only marginally in the fifteen seconds that Kevin had let the system run before having to shut it down to save his hearing and prevent a forest fire. Which meant that the suit could—theoretically—cloak a person and not kill him.

Kevin couldn't help thinking about Stebbins as he worked. The man should still be alive. Kevin could have opened his mouth; he had known the wiring was dangerous. But he had said nothing, and Stebbins had died a horrible death. Nobody blamed Kevin; in fact nobody in camp seemed to care much about the death of Stebbins at all. But Kevin knew.

In the short time that Kevin had known Stebbins, he hadn't seemed like a bad man—he had just been stuck working for Clay. He probably was unaware of the Island, and the blood on Clay's hands.

Kevin, on the other hand, knew all about Clay, about what she had done to get the control unit. And yet, here he was, tinkering away at his murdered grandfather's tech, working for the murderer. He had thought about refusing, and letting Clay or Grennel do whatever they would do, but it wasn't that simple. It was so complicated, in fact, that it almost made Kevin dizzy thinking about it.

Clay was smart; he knew that she had already figured out that he had a connection to Nick and Cass. If Kevin refused to work, he didn't doubt that Clay would be willing to hurt his brother and sister. And, as much as he hated Clay, he had to admit that the idea of attacking the Cities with the cloaking tech, of bringing the fight to the bots instead of just running and hiding, was appealing. How else would they have any chance of rescuing his parents?

Kevin struggled for another hour. He tried coiling the loop, which he thought might disperse the heat, but actually did nothing. Then in a burst of misguided inspiration, he built a makeshift flared tail out of cabling, hoping that spreading the grounding wires might do the trick. It fanned out like a claw. Anyone wearing the unit would look like a peacock—not the best way to be stealthy, but Kevin just wanted to see if would help. He tested it, and within a few seconds there was a painful glare, then a pop, and the claw-tail began to smoke and crackle. He quickly turned off the power and threw down his tools. He closed his eyes, resting his head on his palms. He was so tired and stressed—all he wanted to do was sleep and then wake up and find himself back in his Freepost, with his parents and his brother and sister and Tech Tom, working on a grid repair, tending the flock, even taking a forestry hike. . . .

“I'm guessing that's not what you were intending,” said Nick. “The smoke and fire, I mean.”

Kevin started, jumping to his feet. He hadn't heard Nick coming. “Actually it is,” he said. “Firestarter. For campfires. Just working out a few details.”

Nick nodded, smiling, but his smile dropped away quickly. “Seriously, Kevin, what's going on?”

Kevin didn't say anything. He looked around, to see if anyone was nearby. They were alone.

“Kevin, come on,” Nick said quietly, leaning in. “You've got to talk to me. You found Miles Winston? General Clay killed him? What the hell happened to you? And Stebbins—word is he died in an accident. What happened?”

Kevin shook his head, blinking back tears. “Not safe,” he said, not trusting himself to say anything more without losing control and crying.

If Nick had gotten mad at him then, which is what Kevin was expecting, then Kevin would have stayed resolute and kept quiet. Instead, Nick nodded and sighed. “All right, Kevin,” he said. “Whatever you've gotta do.” He turned and began to walk out of the workshop.

“Wait,” said Kevin. And slowly at first, then his words picking up speed and almost tumbling over one another, Kevin told Nick everything that had happened to him. Being captured in the woods by Winston's bots. Having his nose broken. Being taken to the Island. Working on the Wall. His friends Otter and Cort and Pil. The bot 23. Miles Winston, and how Kevin had discovered that he was their grandfather. And then
the treachery of Clay—how in order to steal the Wall technology she had brought about the uprising by having that girl that Otter liked, Wex, killed. How Grennel had shot their grandfather in the back and Clay had left him for dead. That the only reason she hadn't killed him, too, was because she thought it was interesting and possibly useful that he was Winston's grandson.

Last, he told Nick about Stebbins, how he had forgotten to ground the circuit and ended up killing himself. Kevin left out the part about knowing it might happen—he couldn't get himself to admit that out loud.

“And that's why I don't want her knowing about you or Cass,” Kevin finished. “You're safer if you just stay away from her. Don't make her interested in you.”

Nick sat down heavily, staring over Kevin's shoulder. “It's probably too late for that,” Nick said. “She knows we're brothers. I'm not sure what she knows about Cass, but she'll probably figure that out, too.”

Kevin nodded. He wasn't surprised—it was silly to think that he could keep Clay away from his brother and sister.

“How do you even know that Miles Winston is our grandfather?” Nick said.

“He had pictures of Dad when he was young,” said Kevin. “He knew I had an older brother. He even looked like us. And . . . he even kinda sounded like Dad, the way he said some words.”

Nick shook his head in disbelief. “Dad never would talk about his family. Now we know why, I guess. It's because his father basically built the bots.”

“Dr. Winston didn't mean for all this to happen,” Kevin said, surprising himself with how forcefully he said it. “He felt terrible about it. It was all he could think about.”

“But he wasn't doing anything about it,” said Nick.

“No,” said Kevin. “No, he just wanted to hide in his Island. But I think maybe he was ready to change his mind and fight the bots. Then he was shot.”

Nick said quietly, “I should just get us out of here. We're not safe with Clay.”

“She'll get us into the City,” said Kevin. He couldn't just leave his grandfather's work in Clay's hands. Something good had to come out of all of this. “And with the tech I'm working on, we'll be able to get Mom and Dad out.”

Nick shook his head and frowned. “I don't like any of this. I don't want you ending up like Stebbins. Don't do anything stupid.”

Kevin didn't want to think anymore about Stebbins, so he forced himself to smile. “You mean stupid like giving myself up to sneak into re-education?”

“Yeah,” said Nick, cracking a small smile. “Or attacking a sphere bot with a homemade overload box and your jacket.”

“I'll try to avoid that,” said Kevin.

“Good,” said Nick.

“So,” said Kevin. “Farryn . . . what exactly happened to him?”

“A fight with the bots,” Nick said. “Farryn protected Cass from an explosion, and the medic had to amputate his leg. You should visit him when you can. He'll want to see you.”

Kevin tried to absorb that information, subconsciously touching his own calf. He couldn't picture Farryn with only one leg. How in the world was he going to survive in the woods? Was he going to hobble through the forest on crutches? There was no way Clay was going to wait for him, if he couldn't keep up. If only Farryn could spend a day in a rejuve tank—or just nanosolder on a new one, like a bot. He stared at Nick, suddenly conscious of his bot eye, and then the idea hit him, in that lightning-flash way that solutions often did. He could help Farryn, and figure out the problems with the cloaking tech. . . .

He needed to get back to the Island.