I listen quietly, lost in the memories of that day. The tube in my arm, going to his, giving him another chance at life.
“I thought I was alone,” he says. “I thought I could die, and no one would try to stop me. But you did.” He leans his head back against the metal again. “And when I lost control, after that, you were always there to help me. And that’s what you’re missing.”
His eyes flick toward mine.
I want to look away, but I force myself not to.
His voice is like music, softening the hardness of my soul.
“You are Meadow Woodson,” Zephyr says. “And your entire life, you’ve been taught that surviving means keeping your distance. It means finding a way to solve things yourself, because you don’t trust others. But that’s where you’re wrong. You’re not alone anymore, and you don’t have to be. You have me.”
“And me,” Sketch says.
Zephyr nods. “When you’re weak, we’ll be there, Meadow. You’re not alone in this world, and you never will be again, as long as we’re here. And we will be, because you can’t get rid of us. We’re going to prove to you that love makes us stronger, whether you like it or not.”
“Amen, Zero,” Sketch says. “A-fluxing-men.”
I know I should hate him for killing my mother.
I know I should never want to look into his eyes again. But Zephyr made a choice. He did what my father would have done, what I wasn’t strong enough to do. I’ve killed countless people, sliced a dagger across their throats without stopping to wonder who they were, or what they’d done. But when it came to my own, murderous mother, one of the few people in this world who truly deserved a horrible death . . . I wasn’t strong enough.
“I still hate you,” I whisper to Zephyr. He goes rigid, but softens when I smile at him. “But you did the right thing. You freed us, Zephyr.” I don’t thank him, because I’m not ready yet.
But because I don’t know what’s happening tomorrow, or if we’ll survive the Ridge, I set aside my feelings for now. The three of us spend the rest of the night sharing stories, whispering words about the world.
Their voices guide me into sleep, and this time, the nightmares stay far away.
CHAPTER 62
ZEPHYR
In the morning, we see the mountains.
Great pieces of land, stretching high into the sky, so far that their tops disappear into the clouds. The mountains are bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s like nothing can break them.
Not even the Plague, or the Eternity Cure, or the Murder Complex, or anything else from here to hell and back again.
They’re amazing. But it’s the sunrise over them that really gets me.
It’s like liquid fire, spilling into the valleys beneath the peaks, lighting them up with pinks and reds and yellows that come alive.
I know it’s the same sun that rises over the Perimeter, back in the Shallows.
But somehow it looks different.
Here it’s electric, like the sun is jealous of the intensity of the mountains, so it shines a little brighter to rise above.
Meadow and Sketch sit beside me.
Somewhere up front, Sasha guides the train along. We’re nearing the end of the tracks.
Soon we’ll be at the Ridge, and we’ll have to find a way in. Soon it’s going to be hell all over again, and I don’t know if Meadow will be alive to go through it with me.
What I do know is this moment is a little piece of heaven. And I’m going to hold on to it until the tracks end, until the train stops.
Until we enter the Ridge.
CHAPTER 63
MEADOW
The closer we get to the Ridge, the fewer people we see. It is as if they can sense the horrors that go on inside there, so they stay far away.
The tracks bend into the woods.
And suddenly the world is full of green. More green than the everglades. That color pales in comparison to these trees.
They tower into the sky, stretching with their needlelike arms, taller than any I have ever seen. They sway as the wind blows, and the deep, natural scent of the woods envelops me, and beyond it, something wet and cold. Red birds flit back and forth from the canopies.
Squirrels leap, rush into hiding as we pass.
For one moment, I feel as if I am inside of a dream. A beautiful fairy tale, from the stories my mother used to tell me, when I was only a girl. I imagine Peri with her hair in braids, her laughter like music as Koi and I chase her through the trees. I imagine my father waiting for us somewhere on the other side, strong and safe and alive.
Then in a flash, the trees fade away. The fairy tale disappears like smoke on the wind. The train lurches, then slows down.
We see the Ridge for the very first time.
CHAPTER 64
ZEPHYR
It’s a dome.
Bigger than the Catalogue Dome, back in the Shallows.
It’s ten times the size, like it holds an entire world inside. It’s just there, right in the middle of the trees, a big circle of shining metallic gray. So out of place.
“Holy flux,” Sketch gasps. “The General didn’t think about telling us this?”
I shrug, look at Meadow. I know she and the General have a secret. I know she will never tell me what it is. “He probably didn’t tell us a lot of things.”
“But we’re the idiots going in there!” Sketch hisses.
Meadow is sitting on the floor in between us, with our shoulders pressed to her sides to prop her up. She’s switched back and forth twice. I thought killing the Regulator’s computer would stop hurting her, but that can’t be the solution. Otherwise she’d be fine by now.
“It’s just like going into the Headquarters Building,” Meadow says. “We’re starting to make a pattern of this, aren’t we?”
We watch as the Ridge comes closer, and closer. It looks like it’s made of titanium, the same stuff as the Perimeter around the Shallows.
If we even get in . . .
I don’t know how we’ll ever get out.
CHAPTER 65
MEADOW
The tracks come to an end at a building just off to the left of the Ridge.
It’s several stories high, perfectly intact.
I run through the plan in my head, forcing myself to remember.
Be your mother. Get inside. Get a look at your surroundings.
They are the General’s words, but they come to me in my father’s voice, strong and solid, and hearing them makes me feel like a little girl again, wild and windblown from the sea, wanting nothing more than to impress her father by staying alive.. How badly I want to show him that I am the daughter he raised me to be, despite everything I’ve been through since losing him.
But how can I do this right, when my strength has left me?
I beg it to come back. I beg my body not to betray me, not when I am so, so close.