Summer Ruins (12 page)

Maybe. It’s also possible the Prime cares as little for his own minions as he does for the humans. Out of sight, out of mind. But we can’t chance it.

“Follow me.”

We do as he asks, and when it’s clear he’s leading us toward the terraform’s entrance I push heat through my pores and let it hover over me like a second skin. I’m prepared for the intense, whipping cold outside the terraform and step as lightly as possible on the slippery ice. We keep walking, covering a good distance before a rider whirs up beside us.

Another Warden is behind the wheel. He acknowledges Carrej but not us. “Get in.”

“It took you long enough. It would take me more than a day to walk them all the way to the next one.”

“Sorry. Had to deliver a load for Chief to take with him when they left.”

So Deshi and Zakej are gone. My body can’t decide whether this is good news or bad, with my heart sinking but weight lifting off my lungs. As a general rule, having Zakej as far away as possible is the best idea. But it means Deshi’s gone, too, without our knowing whose side he’s on or if we might be able to count on him someday soon.

Or if he’ll lead Zakej to the cabin and take away our last hope, betraying us once and for all.

The rider’s interior appears exactly the same as the one I rode in the night Mrs. Morgan Broke, when the Wardens drove us to the Observatory Pod in the Wilds outside Danbury and tried to refresh my brain. I wonder what might have happened if Zakej had caught me then, if they’d realized that the girl they’d been searching for lay on a cot right under their noses. Nothing good. Then again, I haven’t managed to do a whole lot with my second lease on life.

Everyone I know, every person who has trusted me, has been disposed of, Broken, or trapped in their own head to rot away. The Others have captured us and hold us hostage at this Harvest Site—we don’t even know its location or how to leave. We don’t know what their life source is, aside from it being pink, or if Deshi hates us.

Lucas, Pax, and I sit on the rider’s bench facing forward, and Carrej gets in the front, helping the nameless Warden navigate. There’s no way to keep track of time, and the relentless shades of twilight outside the windows do little to help. It’s not a short distance but eventually another terraformed bubble appears on the horizon.

The rider pulls to a stop outside the hatch that leads inside and Carrej twists in his seat. “You, Air. Pax. Come with me.”

He gets out of the rider without another word, though for some reason his use of Pax’s real name makes me feel a little better. I do not like the idea of them splitting us up, but Zakej did tell us we were here to work. We should be thankful they’re letting us stay together at night, even if it is some kind of trick to lull us into complacency.

Pax looks as reluctant as I feel, but Carrej’s impatience vibrates through the cracks around the rider doors and I can tell we don’t have much time before he forces the issue.

I squeeze Pax’s hand and give him a nudge toward the door. “It’ll be okay. We’ll see you back at the tent before dinner.”

“I guess it’s time to earn our keep.” He gives me a weak version of his outrageous smile, then nods. “Remember what we talked about.”

He doesn’t elaborate, but I know he’s referring to the conversation about not doing anything we don’t want to do. We have the power, even if it’s just the power to end our lives so that the Others can’t use us to hurt anyone else.

Lucas nods beside me, the chill brushing my cheeks the only evidence that he understands. “Last resort, Pax. And only if it helps everyone, not just us. See you tonight.”

Pax hesitates another moment, almost jumping into my lap when Carrej bangs on the door from the outside. We share a shaky laugh as he crawls out into the brutal wind and slams the door shut behind him.

Carrej walks him inside, and they’re gone for about ten minutes before the Warden returns alone.

The rider takes off for a second time, and Lucas and I sit quietly in the back holding hands. There’s nothing to talk about that we’d want them to hear. My stomach churns at the thought of spending the day by myself. Whatever goes on here, I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt to watch it happen—not physically, but somewhere deeper, in a place that can’t be healed by a good night’s sleep or a mysterious salve.

The next bubble appears, and I’d guess the three are about equidistant from one another. Carrej beckons me this time, and I don’t dawdle, figuring getting it over with quickly is the best way to go. I brush a light kiss on Lucas’s cheek, and he squeezes my hand.

“You can handle it.” His eyes are serious, and even though he’s usually overly protective of me, I can see that he believes his words.

I can also see that he doesn’t want to let me go.

“I know. See you tonight,” I respond, sliding out into the freezing cold.

Chapter 13.

Carrej doesn’t speak until the entrance is air locked behind us. I drop the barrier of warmth, making it easier for me to concentrate when he starts explaining.

“You’ll be supervising the mine while you’re here. It’s not hard work, except for being on your feet for sixteen hours a day, but I think you can handle it.” His eyes roam from my hair to my toes, but it doesn’t feel icky the way some of the Wardens manage. More like he’s genuinely assessing my ability to keep up. Whatever he sees makes him give me an approving nod, and he hands me a whip. “Here. In case anyone gives you trouble.”

“I’m not taking that.”

He stares at me, exasperated. “Give me a break, little girl. You’re not fooling me with the I’m-too-sweet-and-innocent-to-step-on-a-few-bugs-if-they-muck-up-my-day face.”

I cross my arms, trying to contain the anger licking at my belly. “Well, if you’ve heard so much about me, then surely you realize I don’t need some stupid weapon to keep people in line.” He flinches away from me when I jerk my hands up, palms out, and I laugh. It comes as a surprise that I can laugh at someone who’s genuinely scared of me, and for a moment it takes me aback. I shake it off. Pax is right. We have precious little leverage here and it’s not going to benefit anyone to not use it.

I poke him in the chest for good measure. “I’m going down there because I don’t have a choice. But people are not bugs, Carrej. Don’t ever talk about them like that in front of me again.”

“The Prime said to punish you for any behavior or speech that disparages your Deasupran roots in favor of your human ones.”

The bravado on his face doesn’t fool me, and even though it pains me to stare, I do it anyway. “So punish me, Carrej. I dare you.”

He doesn’t move. We square off for a full minute until his shoulders sag and he turns away. I almost feel bad for making him feel like less of a tough-guy Warden, but not enough to apologize. Instead we’re quiet as we trek from the front of the terraform to the back.

“What are these things called? The bubbles.” I just want him to talk again.

He doesn’t turn or look at me, as though he’s considering giving me the silent treatment instead of an answer. “We didn’t make them.”

“So they don’t have names? Were they here before you came?” The questions kind of tumble out unintentionally, but a Warden has never been in my presence without trying to kill me before—except for Nat—so this is a rare opportunity.

“The Haidans built them and call them igloos. It’s an English word, though. Their language doesn’t translate very well.”

“Let me guess, more half-breeds left over from twisted experimentation?”

This time he does ignore me, but at least I have a better word than bubble or terraform, which I don’t like. My own question makes me wonder. These half-Haidans choose to travel with the Others and follow orders, preferring their task to the alternative of not existing. Maybe we’re making the wrong call.

Nothing has ever scared me as much as the thought of winking out of existence.

Carrej yanks open a flimsy wooden door on the front of an even flimsier-looking shack. It’s shabbier than the one I lived in during my time in the Iowa Wilds, and that’s saying something. There’s nothing inside except a giant square hole in the ground and a bunch of cables and pulleys leading down into the darkness.

There’s a black button in the floor that reminds me of the ones that open the boundary fences outside the Sanctioned Cities, and Carrej steps on it, a sour look on his face as though he tastes something horrible. Like the chickpeas the Clarks forced down my throat at least three days a week.

“You know I wouldn’t have hurt you back there,” I confess.

“Oh, yeah? Why not?” Carrej shoots me a look out of the corner of his eye, the black emptiness of his gaze sliding over me. It leaves behind a feeling as uncomfortable as the acid residue from their creepy slugs.

His response seems to acknowledge that I have every reason to hurt him, and he’s surely heard the stories of the things we’ve done to other Wardens. The things I’ve done. Melted their skin, lit them on fire. But they never die.

Which I can see is going to become more and more of a problem.

“Because you’ve never done anything to me. And here we are, alone, and you’re not trying to kill me. So why would I try to kill you?”

Any emotion that might have been threatening washes out of him with an incredulous snort and he leans forward, invading my space and sending fear tingling down my spine. “That attitude is exactly why you and your little friends can’t win.”

A box creaks upward from the depths of the hole before I can formulate a response. My mouth remains dry no matter how many times I swallow. It was a mistake to let him see I was bluffing earlier, I can see that now. It’s not my instinct to hurt or scare people. No matter how badly I wish I could change that fact, there’s no way to alter the way I’m put together.

I need to find a way to accept the inevitability of what’s ahead. The fact that winning means killing a few Others—or even that some people I care about might die in the process—is common sense.

My brain goes blank when the box grinds to a halt, its roof even with the hole in the floor. Carrej kneels and slides a door open in the top, leaving an opening just big enough for a person to drop through one at a time. He motions for me to go first, and my claustrophobia starts to whimper.

A ball of fire flickers to life in my palm, backing Carrej up a few steps. Maybe he’s not totally convinced of my goodness, after all. Not enough to trust me.

I drop to my knees on the slippery ground, feeling a slight chill from the ice underneath the igloo. The hand that drops into the container shakes a little, but the light reveals that it’s exactly what it looks like from above. A simple wooden box, big enough for about five human beings, if they squish. At least there are only two of us.

“Well, get in.” Carrej barks the command, but he sounds tired.

Maybe he’s claustrophobic, too.

Because there’s nothing to be gained from arguing, I let the fireball extinguish and fall to my butt, dangling my feet into the darkness, then slide down until my hands grasp the edges of the hatch in the ceiling before dropping the rest of the way. It jars my knees and teeth a little, nothing too painful, but it makes me wonder why they couldn’t design a more sophisticated system for getting underground.

The Others have sleek riders, weapons that shoot acidic slugs, and machines that wipe human minds and replace their memories with clean, fresh ones. They drain bad emotions every summer at the Summer Celebration and no one suspects a thing.

But to extract whatever element they need to survive, they build a wooden box that creaks and shudders into the darkness as though it’s going to splinter into pieces any second.

At the bottom, we step out into a murky gloom. Single light bulbs swing from the roof on cords, the same way they do in the tenements in the igloos. They cast eerie shadows on the walls, which are carved from dirt and dark rock threaded with varying shades of silver and yellow. The tunnel reaches only a few feet above my head and nearly scrapes the top of Carrej’s hair.

The rock smells wet and glistens as though water or snow runs down its surface, but when I reach out to touch it, it’s only cold. Each step is a battle with my claustrophobia. It never afflicted me before the first time I hopped in a rider, but ever since that night it’s been an occasional annoyance.

At the end of a short passage, we turn right.

“This is the main arm of this mine.” Carrej doesn’t turn to look at me, and his voice is muffled; the rocks absorb it as though it’s essential to their survival.

“What’s a mine?”

“This. A place where you take metals, precious stones, or whatever out of the ground.” This time he does shoot a look at me over his shoulder. “Are you always this annoying with the questions?”

“Probably.” I try a smile. “So are you and I in charge of this mine or what?”

“There are approximately ten thousand dusters—I’m sorry,
humans
—in this mine alone, so no. You and I are not in charge of all of them. There’s one supervisor for every thousand people. You patrol all day. No breaks. Up and down, make sure everyone’s working and no one’s talking. Count them three times a day—morning, midday, night—to make sure everyone’s here and no one drops out of sight.” He stops talking when we round a corner.