Summer Ruins (29 page)

Weight lifts off my chest. “So even if you were with us in Dallas when the Prime started looking, you would know? And you could leave before he finds you?”

“Yes,” Griffin snaps. “We’re not completely incompetent. He’s been in your head, Althea. Do you seriously think we could miss that kind of intrusion?”

“No.” I bite my lip, then nod my agreement, suddenly anxious to get back to Lucas and everyone else. “Okay, we’ll let everyone know what’s going on and be ready to leave. We’ll probably keep walking, just to put space between us and the Others.” I raise an eyebrow at Griffin. “You’ll be able to find us?”

He snorts. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

For once, his arrogance makes me smile. “Of course. Now, can we go?”

He obliges without another word, shoving us back through a portal to the woods, where morning has broken but our friends still slumber. With a snap of his fingers, the black dust falls toward the ground, disappearing before it comes to rest, and he vanishes back through his portal.

Deshi shakes his head. “Do you ever wonder if that really happened?”

“The Sidhe? Sure. All the time. It takes a while to get used to the way they come and go, that’s for sure.” I try a smile, even though I want to fall into a dead sleep. The emotional toll of helping Greer injects exhaustion into my blood, dragging like heavy sediment.

“They seem helpful, though.”

“For now.”

Before he can ask what I mean or I can figure out the best way to explain, everyone else starts to stir. Lucas’s eyes flutter, then fly open when he realizes I’m not beside him, but they land on me before he can panic.

“It’s fine. Deshi and I have some things to tell you.”

Deshi wakes Pax and Leah, and while the rest of the kids wash up in a stream, change their clothes, and munch on tiny breakfast rations, we fill them in on the night we had in Ireland. Or the day, I suppose.

Even though Pax, Lucas, and I have read stories about brave people who fought, the rest of the kids haven’t. I tell them the story of Michael Collins, about revolutionaries and dissidents, and how we’re not the first of our kind after all. That the humans carry the legacy of people who were willing to sacrifice everything for what they believe is right, and I watch the story have the same effect on them that it did on me.

Buoying, except for wondering how many more sacrifices we’ll be forced to make.

The thought reminds me of what Greer told me about our friends, trapped in the Underground Core until they can be used against us, and I explain that news, too.

Deshi relays the Sidhe’s promise to find a place for us to hide in Dallas so we can figure out the dymium before the Summer Celebration.

“They’re coming back for us today?” Pax asks.

“That’s what they said,” I reply. “I think they will. Greer, at least, seems motivated to help now that Nat’s gone. Griffin’s so worried about her doing something stupid and getting herself killed that I think he’ll stick close by, too.”

“If they’re going to help, we’re going to need a way to contact them.” Lucas’s eyes are tired, as though he didn’t sleep very well.

I wonder if he had bad dreams, and what they were about if he did.

“Griffin had an idea. We all still have access to the hive, right? My wall is made of dirt now, so if we need them and they haven’t checked in for a while, I’m supposed to pop in and leave a small
x
in the earth on the bottom left-hand corner of my sinum wall, on the outside. They’ll check once a day.” Deshi supplies the explanation, easier than I expected but smart enough.

It’s a signal, and even if the Others somehow notice a tiny mark in the dirt, it’s unspecific enough to keep us all shrouded. Nothing about the
x
will lead them to us.

It makes me feel better that the Sidhe are alive and on our side. We’ve got them, we’ve got Deshi, and though they can’t take the place of the ones we’ve lost, they help me face the day with something that’s been slippery at best lately—hope.

***

The Sidhe picked a place in the middle of what used to be the center of Dallas. It surprised me that they chose the city instead of somewhere more secluded, but it does make sense that we will be harder to find here since our pursuers will have to search every surrounding building.

Dallas reminds me of the city Pax and I passed through in Nebraska. Glass from thousands of blown-out windows litters the street like a crunchy carpet. The empty buildings, some half-toppled skeletons, some reduced to rubble, still others hauntingly unchanged, stand guard over the barren, trash-filled streets. As with every road we’ve come across in abandoned cities, the asphalt is torn up in chunks, weeds climbing up to the surface and reaching for the sun.

“Why is the Summer Celebration here? In the middle of all of this destruction?” I ask.

“People never see any of it. When we arrive at the Celebration it’s like a Sanctioned City, mostly. Tents, food, games… it’s not like this.” Lucas pauses, glancing around and looking a bit spooked. “Not destroyed.”

The standing structures funnel wind down the streets, and sometimes it howls like angry voices. The seven-story building the Sidhe lead us to stands intact and protects us from the elements. There aren’t any windows, but since it’s summer we’re warm. I seem to be the only one reveling in the sweat dampening our clothes. To me it feels like the perfect temperature, even though Lucas guesses it’s probably over eighty degrees.

Everyone spread out after we arrived and did a little scouting in an attempt to learn as much about our location as possible. Deshi even took a small group out into the city, searching for somewhere nearby that might serve as a lab or have information on the dymium or how to isolate its chemical makeup. It might be fruitless, but Pax and I learned on our trek west that outward destruction doesn’t mean everything inside the buildings is gone or worthless.

We’ve found books, supplies, and plenty of other things along the way. Rita told us to look for buildings called hospitals and universities first, that they would be the most likely to have the equipment we need. Cities will be the best place to find it, she said.

Then we have to figure out how to turn it on.

The scouts haven’t come back yet, but the rest of us are gathered on the sixth floor in a room that looks as though it once was filled with books and light, but now houses a few broken tables, shattered glass, and pages ripped up like confetti. A few books remain intact, but they contain more remnants of history and nothing that pertains to science or our current issue.

The sixth and seventh floors of this building were something called a museum, which is maybe like a historical site, and seems to be all about one man who died in the street outside. That’s what we’ve pieced together from the pictures on the walls and some plaques that hadn’t been taken down; he was killed when someone shot him from a window on this floor, and he was another president—like the ones whose faces are on the mountain in South Dakota.

The first five floors appear to have been an office, but there’s nothing to tell us what kind, and the furniture and empty cabinets are mostly useless.

While we wait for the five scouts to return, we haul old couches from the first five floors into three rooms on the ground level so we can all stay together at night but have a good escape route. There is a small debate on whether it would be better to be up high or down low if the Others arrive and catch us unprepared, but escape seems like the better option.

There is also a discussion about whether or not we should split up, since together we make a nice big target, and the Others could take us out in one fell swoop. It might not be the smartest conclusion, but no one wants to be alone and the four born Dissidents decide we can protect everyone more easily in one place, too.

We’re still going to set up watches every night. We can’t take anything for granted, even if the city feels deserted and the Summer Celebration doesn’t take place for another month. The Others will arrive before then to prepare. In a few days, Lucas, Pax, Deshi, and I are going to scout the exact location for the Celebration. We need to know how far it is from here, and maybe get an idea of how we can get in and out without being noticed. They’ve been before, of course, and think they can find it.

This building is standing and the walls are important for hiding, but I’d rather the Sidhe had found us someplace with a cleansing room. Lucas could at least fill a tub with water and I could heat it. We’re in the middle of the city, and though there are trees and grass right outside where we can make waste, this location isn’t ideal for hygiene or privacy.

Not to mention I’d prefer to stay somewhere the Sidhe don’t know about, despite their protestations that they’re staying hidden and have it all under control.

Jordan and Sophie have cleared the debris from a couple of spots outside. Across a gutted street, there’s an expanse of grass where they’ve instructed us to make waste since it’s farther away from the building. In the clump of trees that rings the front and one side of the building, they’ve gathered stones and made a place for a campfire.

Deshi and Wolf return with Brittany, Leah, Phil, and Mark after we’ve set up working quarters. Their faces betray excitement and discovery, and we gather outside in spite of the fact that it makes us more visible, because everyone besides me thinks it’s too hot in the building.

Wolf paces over to me and leans against my leg, begging for scratches, which I provide. A stuffy breeze dances sunlight and flutters leaves around us as we settle in the shade, and Deshi motions for Brittany to speak.

In classic Brittany fashion, she doesn’t mince words. “We found a better place to stay than this. A way better place.”

“With chemistry and physics labs and the equipment we need,” Leah adds, her pale cheeks flushed. She looks for me. “It’s a university. Just like Rita said.”

“It has buildings with wasterooms and cleansing rooms and bedrooms. There are beds with sheets and towels and even clothes stuffed in the dressers,” Mark adds.

“It’s a little creepy,” Brittany admits, giving Mark a look as though she doesn’t think he’s properly disturbed by the clothes and towels thing. “I mean, obviously when the Others invaded, people were living in those rooms. Lots of people.”

“But we’re never going to find anything better. We need the labs and the equipment to break down the isotopes in that element so we can figure out how to rework it to our advantage,” Mark insists.

Deshi’s being quiet, a small smile turning up his lips. It might be my imagination, but it looks as though the black lines through the whites of his eyes have faded since the first time I met him, and I make a mental note to ask him when they popped up and if he knows why. They can’t simply be from accessing his power, because Pax, Lucas, and I have all done that repeatedly and our eyes don’t show any signs of changing to the all-black orbs that run in our Other side of the family.

Deshi’s smile, though, says he’s proud of what they’ve found. The kids surrounding him are comfortable in his presence, more so than they are with me, and I wonder again just how much time he spent with them at the cabin before finally making up his mind.

“We still have to figure out how to power the equipment, but it’s there. Almost everything the Monitor said we’d need,” Phil adds.

“How far a walk is this place?” Pax asks.

“A couple of hours. Probably a little longer with the kids who aren’t in great shape. We can mostly follow the streets, but there are a few places where the roads are too ripped apart to be passable,” Deshi responds.

“So we’ll go tomorrow.” Everyone’s eyes turn to me, accepting my judgment without a battle.

We’re all tired, but it’s still weird to have all of these people looking to me for answers. In the coming days that role will be reversed, though, because I’m going to be hoping
they
find the solution to defeating the Others in a lab. I’m not bad at science myself—none of us are—but they have a week or more head start discussing how best to go about this, and I’d only slow them down trying to catch up now.

Chapter 28.

Two weeks pass, and at the end of them everyone’s frustration level is sky high. We’ve broken down into groups—one that works in the labs, another that scouts our location, and then at least two of us plus Phil, who’s proven himself better at navigating and reading maps than anyone else, searching for the site of the Summer Celebration. They’ve been there before, but the Others do the transporting and finding it in this broken city is proving a challenge.

Deshi solved the power issue, finding a machine called a portable generator in the basement of one of the buildings. He says the Others use similar devices to power the electricity at the Harvest Site and the Underground Core. We only use it in the labs, and we’ve covered all the windows with dark fabric so none of the light escapes, even in the day.

We’re clean. We have clothes and places to bathe and brush our teeth. There are rooms and beds for everyone, and even a pit outside for a fire. As places to crash go, it’s not bad. Tonight we’re gathered in a common room in the building where we sleep. The name on the outside proclaims it Perkins Hall. There are plenty of other buildings set up pretty much the same way that we could have chosen, but this is the only one unlocked.