Lark Ascending (24 page)

I was only a few blocks from the street I grew up on. It was inside the rebel barricades now, which meant the buildings stood empty. Empty but whole—and defensible. And visible beyond the square in front of us was the apartment building I used to call home.

“Come on,” I shouted to Kris, who was still staring in the direction from which we'd heard the crack; some machine tearing through a building, no doubt. “Get these people moving. We're going to that brick building in the next block. Move!”

I started hauling people to their feet and shoving them in the direction of the building. It took Kris a few tries, but eventually he began leading them that way. He seemed to know where he was going, and I realized he probably knew exactly where I lived. He'd known everything about me before I ever set foot inside the Institute.

I turned, expecting to find Oren ushering people along as well. Instead he was huddled against the wall, face in his hands. My heart stuttered, sudden terror seizing my limbs.
He's hurt,
was the only thought running through my head.

I threw myself down at his side, reaching for his shoulder, but he jerked it away. “Stop it!” I cried as the crowd surged past us like a stream sliding around a boulder. “Oren, this isn't the time for your standoffish, arrogant—”

“Just go!” snarled Oren, shoving me roughly back.

I fell hard against the curb, bruising my tailbone badly enough to bring tears to my eyes. Fury swept over me. “Of all the times to throw a tantrum!” I shouted at him. “Grow up! There are more important things going on than you and me and whatever Eve did to you. Get up!
I need you.
”

I reached for him one more time, grabbing a handful of his sleeve and pulling him around to face me. This time he spun, with another snarl; and I saw his eyes. They were shifting as I watched, visible even in the low light. The pale blue that I'd come to know so well was fading, flickering as though it were a drowning flame. Drowning in white.

The sudden movement had loosened the strip of shirt hiding the lower half of his face, and as he panted for breath, the force of his breathing made it fall. As I watched, the faintest tracery of gray flushed his face. The darkness flickered through his skin like a drop of ink in water. “Go,” Oren repeated, gasping through gritted teeth. “Need. Time.”

What I was seeing was impossible. He'd never been
half
changed before. It was always either Oren
or
the shadow. The two were irrevocably split, and the change was like the flick of a magical switch. But the barrier between his two halves was gone—and the shadow was winning.

I reached out to touch his face, willing all the magic in my reserves to flow out into him. But nothing happened. No tingle of transfer, no steadying of his shaking body. My magic did nothing. I could no longer keep him human.

I felt a hand wrap around my arm, but I couldn't look away from Oren's face, watching him struggle against the shadow consuming him. No wonder he'd been hiding from me. Something
was
wrong. So wrong he didn't think he could come to me. He backed away, trying to put more distance between us.

I tried to follow, but the hands dragged me away, a voice screaming in my ear that we had to move, now. Kris's voice. Kris's hands. I struggled, clawed at his skin, kicked out with my feet in an attempt to make him let me go. I forgot the war, forgot Eve, forgot the dozens of rebels fleeing for my old home. I had to reach Oren before he ran from me again.

Kris lifted me off my feet, dragging me away, still shouting in my ear.

My voice, hoarse from screaming at him, gave out. For a moment everything stilled, my eyes meeting Oren's. “Fight it,” I whispered. And then he was gone.

Kris stopped just inside the door of my apartment building, long enough to press me back against the wall. “Snap out of it, Lark.” His face was close to mine, and I saw that somewhere in the panic he'd cut his face, and a line of blood traced his cheekbone. “We need you.”

“Did you see Oren?” I gasped, staring at that line of crimson, my vision blurring. “Something's wrong. I have to find out—”

“No, you have to calm these people down. Stay with me. This is why I brought you here.”

I swallowed, blinking and trying to focus on Kris's face. “I know. I know—I'm sorry.” I lifted a hand, shoving my hair back from my forehead and straightening. As soon as he saw I was standing on my own power, Kris leaned back, letting go of me.

Injured first.
I bullied the people nearest me into helping to set up a makeshift infirmary in the first-floor apartments, then directed a handful of others to spread out and start searching the other rooms for supplies that the rebel raiders might have overlooked at first glance. Slowly, with each new set of orders, the group of refugees began transforming into something a little more organized. And I calmed too, working to put Oren's face, and the disfiguring flashes of shadow, out of my head.

It was late into the night before anyone was able to sleep. But gradually the need for action slowed, and more and more people began to drift off into uneasy sleep. I sat with Kris until he, too, fell asleep. We'd barricaded the entrances as best we could, posted sentries at every window on the third floor, laid out every weapon and tool we could find within easy reach in case of an attack in the night. There was nothing left to do, and yet I couldn't sleep. Oren was gone, and so was Nix, and the world felt too empty without them.

Something made me get to my feet, careful not to wake Kris at my side, and head for the staircase. My family's apartment was on the eighth floor, only a few stories below the roof. I hesitated just outside the door, not certain if I wanted to go inside. The last time I'd been here, my brother betrayed me to the people who wanted to enslave me.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open. The lock had been broken by rebels raiding the place for supplies. Inside it was dark, the only light coming from the faint violet glow of the Wall outside the windows. The place had been ransacked; that much I had expected. The couch was torn to shreds, salvaged for its upholstery and padding. The kitchen cupboards were bare, the sink dismantled for its piping. The floor was littered with scraps of fabric and metal, whatever was too small to be useful in the nest the rebels were building under the city. Somewhere down there was the faded floral fabric that used to cover the couch where I used to sleep. Useless now, gone forever in the gas-filled maze that was, no doubt, being crawled over by hundreds of pixies, searching for and counting the bodies.

I tried to imagine my mother here, her horror at the state of our home; I tried to imagine my father coming home after a ten-hour shift at the plant, dropping heavily into the now-broken chair in the kitchen. But their faces were blurry in my memory, slipping away from me like the remnants of a dream.
It's better they go on thinking you're dead.
Caesar's words, however, were as clear as fire, burning the backs of my eyes.

I knelt next to the couch, by the chest that had once held my meager possessions. The latch was broken, and it was empty, but the rest of it was intact. I lifted the lid, adjusting it in the dim glow from the windows until I could see the inscription carved there.

Don't panic.
The words had been left there by my brother Basil, long before he left in search of the Iron Wood. When I was young I'd had the tendency to shut down in the tight spaces we explored underneath the city, feeling like the world was crushing in on me. He would keep telling me that it was panic itself that made me clumsy and weak; that if I just ignored the fear, I'd be strong like him.

Now, I traced my fingers over the etching, vision blurring until I could no longer read the words. I couldn't even wish my brother were here the way I used to. Not now that I knew he was only human, only fallible like the rest of us.

I drew in a shaky breath, tracing over the words—
Don't panic—
and closed my burning eyes. Oren was gone.
Gone.
I had no way to find him now, no connection with the shadow inside him. The thing I'd once hated, the feel of that black void inside him, was gone. And I felt its loss,
his
loss, like a missing limb. I should feel him at my side, always, and now there was nothing there but the ache.

I grabbed at the edge of the trunk, slumping until I could rest my forehead against the wood, a sob tearing its way free of my body. There was no one here to see me cry, only the memories of my family, the remnants of our home. For just a moment, I could let myself drown.

And then I felt it.

A surge of magic fluttered fitfully against my mind, familiar in its burning intensity. I refocused my attention—it was coming from above me. The surge came again, and this time I reached up with my own awareness, trying to touch that surge. It responded to my touch—then latched on with the strength of a drowning woman.

Eve cried,
Help me.

I lurched to my feet, sprinting from my apartment and making for the staircase leading upward to the ninth floor; then the tenth; and then the roof. I burst out, expecting to see Eve being held by the architects' machines, convinced they'd found us and her. But instead I ran headlong into Caesar, colliding with his broad back and falling back with a gasp.

Caesar staggered back with a grunt, but I had no time for him. My eyes were on Eve, who was crouched in the center of the roof. In the darkness she shone, and she lifted her glowing head to fix her eyes on me.

“You did this!”
I screamed at her, voice breaking. The sounds of machines marching through the city streets drifted across the night. They were no longer punctuated by screams; the pocket of escaping rebels they'd found had been neutralized. Captured, dead, or lying wounded in the street. “They're attacking us openly now because of what you did. You and your plan, you're the one who's—”

Eve gave a stuttering laugh, and my vision clouded with white-hot rage. I started toward her but felt a strong hand grab my arm and jerk me back. “Lark, stop—something's wrong.”

Panting for breath through my fury, I pulled blindly, trying to free my grip. But Caesar held fast, and just as I considered blasting him back with magic, I realized that something
was
wrong. The magic I felt all around leaped and sparked like a wildfire, unstable and hot and fueling my rage. I blinked back tears and tried to focus on Eve, who was glowing like a tiny sun.

Flares of visible magic arced around her, flashing like lightning strikes. The violet Wall overhead roiled and surged like a storm cloud, responding to her power. My fury vanished, dread taking its place instantly.

“What's going on?” I whispered.

Caesar let go of my arm, sensing the shift in my mood. “I don't know. She was fine, and then the gas happened—it's like she went crazy. Lost control. It's like when she blew the supply depot at the Institute, only—”

“Only you didn't plan it this time,” I finished for him.

He lifted his chin, his one good eye meeting mine. His lips pressed together, refusing to speak, but I saw it in his face. Regret. Apology. Anger. “I took her home because I thought it'd be safe,” he said. “But then I heard people coming in from the street. I brought her up here, I thought it'd be safer if—” He swallowed hard.

“If she exploded.”

“Stop her,” he gasped, weariness evident in the way his shoulders drooped. He must have had to bodily drag her up here. “I know you can, why do you think we sent you away before the explosion? But this—this isn't what I wanted.”

I wanted to scream at him that this is what happened when you tried to use these forces, to bend them to your liking. But Eve moaned in my mind, and my attention snapped back to her. Her head was thrown back now, eyes skyward, lips parted in that same silent scream I'd seen in the underground chamber at the Institute. Though no glass wires connected her to anything now, I saw the power flaring up around her, seeking the machinery that had once kept her captive.

“Eve!” I shouted, trying to move toward her. The power pushed back, and my shoes slipped against the pavement. “You're just panicking.” My voice was barely audible over the crackle and hum of magic.

She couldn't hear me. An arc of power snapped upward, connecting with the roiling storm of the Wall overhead with a deafening crack.

EVE.
I shouted it with my mind, putting all my power behind it.

She didn't reply, but I saw her body twitch in response. She'd heard me that time.

You have to stop!
I shouted.
You're remembering what they did to you. You're safe now. Caesar's here. I'm here. You have to calm down.

Fractured images slid down the bond connecting us. Needles. Wires. The color red. A saccharine smile. Screaming. I nearly dropped to my knees and fought to stay upright, knowing that if I fell, I wouldn't be able to get back up.

“Lark!” A voice behind me penetrated the haze of magic. Kris.

I couldn't turn to look, but threw up a hand to keep him back. I couldn't have him near me. And he would only make it harder for Eve to get control of herself.

Eve's back arched, her hair lifting from her shoulders as though tossed by an impossible wind, wind that couldn't exist inside the Wall. I felt the hairs lifting on my arms and took another step, fighting against the push of her power. I couldn't touch her, Kris's presence was enough of a reminder of that. But if I could get near, perhaps I could shield her and soften the blow.

Fight it,
I thought at her.
Don't become what they made you. Power doesn't make you a weapon. It gives you a choice.

Eve's eyes snapped open and met mine. For an instant I could sense more than feelings and images; I was a part of her, thinking what she thought and feeling what she felt. The panic ebbed, easing back and parting to show what lay inside. Rage and hatred and the utter, utter certainty that she was right. That
this
was right.