“The Resistance bastards came. They tore apart my lab, and set my own doctors against me at gunpoint. Now unless you’re deaf, I suggest you put me on that train and take me to the Ridge, and straight to the team there, so I can finally speak to someone who is not completely incompetent.” She looks over her shoulder, at us. “The people we call our employees, I swear.”
She sways again.
The soldier lifts his wrist mic. He opens his mouth, is about to speak.
Meadow drops.
Everyone gasps, and because they’re soldiers, they instinctively go to help the one in charge. Whether they really believe it’s her or not.
It’s the chance we need.
We open fire, one round right after the next, until our rifles are smoking.
The Leeches lay dead in a pile.
CHAPTER 61
MEADOW
I drift in and out of consciousness. I hear Zephyr’s soft, gentle voice. Sketch’s harsh laugh. The train rumbles beneath me, and I know we’ve made it on.
Sasha’s voice comes over a loudspeaker, from the driver’s seat. “Settle in, Soldiers,” she says. “It’s going to be a long ride.”
The light of day fades, and the next time I wake, it is dark with night.
I shiver.
Where is the heat of summer? I think of Peri, alone and shivering in the Ridge, on the video that the Commander showed me.
I tell myself she is safe and warm, back on the houseboat in the Shallows. I tell myself none of this ever happened.
Zephyr approaches beside me. A blanket is draped over my legs.
“Try to drink,” he says. Water is forced into my mouth. I throw it back up.
I smell blood.
A hand finds mine beneath the blanket. It’s strong and warm, and even though I know it’s Zephyr’s, and I should be mad at him, I hang on. I’m afraid that if I let go, death will come and steal me away.
I hope the General was right to believe in me.
I hope my plan works.
The rumbling of the train beneath my body lulls me back to sleep.
I’m in the ocean.
I’m suspended underwater, and I don’t need to breathe.
There’s movement, somewhere in the black. And I see my mother.
She swims toward me, her hair splayed out to the sides in the water, and she looks so beautiful. She smiles, just for a moment.
“My Meadow,” she whispers.
I reach out to her. I want to take her hand, but there is something solid between us. A wall of glass.
“I need to hear you say it,” I whisper to her. “Your apology.”
She tilts her head. Opens her mouth, and finally, I’m about to get what I have needed, so desperately, for years.
But blood seeps from her nose. She wipes it away, then gasps, as more pours from it; a stream. It spreads far and wide, until the ocean is crimson. I bang against the glass. I try to get to her, but I can’t. She disappears behind a wall of red.
“Mom!” I scream. The glass turns to a mirror.
I stare at myself.
“You’ll never make it to the Ridge,” my reflection whispers.
“No,” I say.
“You won’t make it,” the reflection says. “Because you left the Shallows. And that means you’re already dead.”
The glass shatters and pierces my heart.
I wake up screaming.
Hands hold me down, force me to lie still.
“Meadow, calm down!” a voice hisses. The person is wearing Initiative black, and for a moment I forget who he is. I scream, try to rip away from him, because I don’t know where I am, and my only rational thought is to get free.
“Woodson, get ahold of yourself!” Sketch’s voice. Safe.
I gasp as memories come rushing back. The rumbling beneath my body, the voices of Sketch and Zephyr, as Sasha drives the stolen train toward the Ridge.
I relax, calm myself.
The weakness has become energy again. The switch, I’ll call it. I sit up, look around.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, holding my head. Sketch hands me water. I take soft, slow sips of it, and I’m able to keep it down. No one touches me, and for a time, I sit alone in the train car, watching the world pass me by. I try to hear my father’s voice, but I can’t reach it. I feel helplessly, horribly alone.
It goes from green to brown, from patches of flat, vast, empty space, grasses swaying in the wind, to suddenly, hills. The hoards of people are ever constant. We shut the doors and lock them, as we pass through the thickest parts of civilization. The train rumbles on, but with it, I hear the cries for help. The voices of the non-dying, wishing that they could.
The world gets colder and colder as we go. Rain pounds the metal, seeps inside through cracks.
The switch happens again, around the time darkness hits. Strength back to weakness, and my head is in Sketch’s lap.
She braids my hair, whistles an old Ward song from the Shallows. It is the song Peri used to sing, onboard our houseboat. Hearing the tune brings the memories flooding forth. I sing the words softly:
“Someone save me, I’m falling to darkness.
I met a man in the night who gave me a new start.
Someone save me, I’m losing my sanity.
The man’s name was Death and he blackened my heart.”
I understand the lyrics now, more than I ever have. Death calls to me from my mother’s grave, whispering for me to come close. Threatening me that soon, he will take Peri and Koi and my father, Zephyr and Sketch, too, and I will be the only one left to suffer through this life alone.
My voice trails away, and soon it is just Zephyr and Sketch humming the tune. I close my eyes and let it mix with the sound of thunder in the background. A rumble that sounds like the beating of Death’s drums as he comes for me.
“How do you control it?” I ask suddenly.
Sketch stops whistling. She looks down at me. “Control what?”
“The changes,” Zephyr says, across from us. He is leaning up against the metal wall of the train, watching me. “She means the changes, from whatever is happening to her.”
I nod. “All my life, I’ve been in control. My father trained me that way.” I shiver, and Sketch pulls the blanket tighter up to my chin. “How do you stay sane, when you feel like you can’t?”
Sketch shifts her legs beneath me. I can feel her sigh. “You don’t control it, Woodson. You just cope.”
“There has to be a way,” I whisper. “I can’t live like this, not knowing when I’m going to switch. Not knowing when I won’t even be able to stand on my own two feet.”
“I remember when I first met you,” Zephyr says suddenly, across from me. I lift my head enough to see the small smile on his face. “You were such a ChumHead, Meadow, you know that? Lying right to my face, saying you didn’t know me. But you saved my life. You gave me your blood, and that’s the only reason why I’m here.”