PART TWO
THE OUTSIDERS
CHAPTER 37
MEADOW
We run for hours, following the tracks like Sparrow said.
We stop for breath, and I am staring out at a world I have never known. It finally hits me. Freedom.
I am free.
Free.
Zephyr takes my hand, squeezes it tight. “We made it,” he breathes.
“Holy balls,” Sketch says from my left. She turns around, stares at the Perimeter in the distance, holds up both middle fingers. “Flux you! Flux all of you!” She laughs, and Zephyr and I join in, and we all laugh until we can’t anymore.
“What now?” I ask, when everyone calms down. And reality hits us.
No one answers.
So we simply stand for a while, watching the world. Most of the landscape looks like the Reserve. Marshlands, with the beach to the far left. The train tracks cut across the marsh, jagged as stitches. The wind blows across the tops of palm trees, bending them at their middles, making them bow like they’re welcoming us to the outside. There is a small brick building, crumbled and forgotten, half of it blown to bits by the Fall.
I turn around, stare at the Perimeter in the distance.
From here, I could cover it up with my thumb.
But it still separates me from the only world I have ever known. Inside are my people.
My memories.
My mother. Her secret.
And here . . . there is only open space.
Suddenly I feel alone. I feel the tug of doubt, whispering to my soul. Not in my father’s voice, but my mother’s. You’ll die out here. You’ll never save your family.
I feel a flash of a memory. Pain from the Interrogator. The ghost of Peri’s screams. The pressure of the knife in my hand, tearing through the Commander’s eye.
I need the sand on my toes, the waves tugging at my ankles. I can see the ocean in the distance, beyond the palms, calling me home.
I drop Zephyr’s hand and run.
“Meadow!” he screams.
I don’t stop. I just sprint, arms pumping, breathing in and out, until my feet hit the sand. The waves crash onshore, and there’s trash just like there was in the Shallows, floating with the waves as they explode against the beach. I run a few steps into the water, then dive headfirst into silence.
Here, I can breathe.
Here, I can pretend I am myself again, the Meadow before the Initiative. The Meadow before the Murder Complex.
I can feel the touch of my father’s hand on my shoulder, the softness of Peri’s cheek as she leans against me in sleep. I can hear my mother’s old lullaby, and the scratching of Koi’s knife on driftwood. I could stay here forever, in peace.
But hands grab me from behind and haul me to the surface. I gasp, water dripping from my eyes.
“Meadow!” It’s Zephyr. He whirls me around and pulls me to his chest and holds me tight. “What are you doing?”
“I felt lost,” I say.
“You’ll never be lost,” he says. “I’m here now. I’m here.”
“But my family isn’t,” I say.
“Meadow,” he whispers. “We’ll find them. I promise.”
There is beauty in every part of him, and sunlight in his smile, and the softness of a summer rainstorm in his voice. So why can’t I feel the way for him that I once felt?
A lifetime has passed since we last saw each other. I have secrets from him, and from Sketch, and I wonder if he holds secrets from me, too. I look away.
He touches my chin, lifts my head up so that our eyes meet again.
He smiles, and the wind blows the hair away from his face. All of the fear, the doubt that I would never see him again, fades. He touches my Regulator gently, moves a curl from my face.
“You’re . . .”
“Mutilated,” I whisper. I move so that he can’t see the machine on my skull, but he steps closer.
“I was going to say more beautiful than I remember,” he says. “But mutilated works, too.”
A laugh escapes me.
He rushes forward.
And kisses me.
At first, I want to pull away. But he presses harder, kisses stronger, and suddenly I am in his arms, being lifted from the sea.
“Meadow,” he gasps, and my name on his lips is so sweet. I kiss him like he is air and I need so desperately to breathe. The world fades away.
His breath, my breath.
His arms around my waist, my fingers in his hair.
I never thought I’d feel his lips again, never thought I’d be here with him.
Outside. Free.
“Hey, ChumHeads!” Sketch screams from the shore. “That’s enough! Stop it before I puke!”
Zephyr laughs against my lips. I can feel him smile, and it radiates into me. But he pulls away, and the darkness settles back in, wraps itself around my heart.
“We should get moving,” he says.
I nod.
He kisses my forehead before he sets me down.
Then he takes my hand, and together we head for the shore.
CHAPTER 38
ZEPHYR
We spend the rest of the day hunting for food.
There’s nothing.
No fish, no crabs. Not even coconuts in the palm trees.
The sun melts into the sea. The three of us stand onshore, watching. It’s the same sun we’ve always seen in the Shallows. But now it sort of looks . . . different.
“It goes on forever,” Meadow says. She’s right. In the Shallows, the ocean ended with the Perimeter. But now, it just stretches on and on.
I nod. “It’s like it never ends.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Meadow asks.
Sketch tosses a shell into the waves. “Everything ends, Woodson,” she says.
They share a meaningful look that reminds me of two old friends. Not two killers.
But I guess they’ve been through hell and back together.
“We should find shelter,” I say.
Even though we’re free, and there are no Patients after us, and no Leeches hunting us down, I feel like we’re being watched. I feel like these train tracks are leading us somewhere dark. Somewhere dangerous.
It’s like a chill in my spine. A weird, tingling feeling that raises the hair on my arms. I wonder if the Murder Complex can still reach me here.
We haven’t talked about it yet, and I’m afraid what might happen, if Sketch and I both turn on Meadow in the night.
“Let’s try that building up ahead,” Sketch says.
We make our way inside, crawling over piles of broken glass and brick. It looks like it might’ve had stuff a long time ago. But now it’s been picked clean.
All that’s left is an old chair, the stuffing ripped out of it.
Meadow uses a brick to bash it to pieces, and we make a fire from the wood.
“Who’s going to take watch?” Meadow asks. In the firelight, she’s got dark circles under her eyes. I wonder if she’s slept, really slept, since the Leeches took her.
“There’s no one out here,” I say.
Sketch laughs. “That’s where you’re wrong, Zero.” She spits into the fire. “The whole reason for the Murder Complex is because there’s too many people out here. Right?”
“That’s what my father always told me.” Meadow nods. She holds the dagger in her hands, twirling it the way she used to. But now, her hands shake a little. She drops it, and her eyes widen. She scoops it up, then tucks it into her waistband. “Do you think . . . Does the system reach you here?”