But this is my fault. This wouldn’t have happened to Zephyr if he had just stayed away from me.
We crawl from the tunnel, and once we’re out, I get a good look at Zephyr’s neck for the first time.
The bite is large, a red welt, already leaking white pus. Black streaks spread out from the center of the bite, as if something has seeped into his veins. Poison.
“I can’t see,” he keeps saying, over and over. His cuff moves to a 53.
“Stop freaking out!” Sketch says.
“I can’t SEE!” Zephyr screams. He is tearing at his eyes with his fingers, drawing streaks of blood on his face. “What the hell is happening to me?”
“Zero, calm down!” Sketch yells, but he is beyond consoling, and we are losing him.
So I slap him, as hard as I can, across the face.
He freezes. His cheek is red, with an imprint of the back of my hand.
“Did you just backhand me, Meadow?” he gasps.
“Someone had to!” I nod, but then I remember he can’t see it. “If I didn’t do it, Sketch would have. Now take a deep breath and get ahold of yourself. We need to find shelter, in case those things come back.”
I take his hand. Sketch takes his other, and we walk in a chain, telling him when to step over fallen logs and tree roots that could make him stumble.
The switch is coming fast. I can feel it as sure as I can see the poison in Zephyr’s veins.
“Where do we go?” Sketch asks. For some reason, she is whispering.
“I don’t know,” I say. I look at Zephyr, see the fear in his blind eyes. “I don’t know anything.”
We walk until we reach the stream again.
“We should follow this,” I say. “Someone will have made camp near the water.”
Zephyr keeps his mouth shut and does not say a word, but I can practically feel the panic seeping off of him in waves. He is drowning in fear.
He clutches my hand like a vise. We move slow, steady. Then I hear a snap.
We freeze.
“It came from above,” Zephyr whispers.
“Keep moving,” I say. We walk slowly, carrying on, and as we go, I use my free hand to reach for the knife at my waistband. Another snap.
I look up, slowly, as if I am simply searching the world.
And that is when I see the flash of yellow overhead, almost concealed in camouflage. Almost, but not all the way. It is on the wrist of a person who holds a wooden bow.
The arrow is aimed right at Sketch.
“Duck!” I scream. Sketch and Zephyr drop, and I launch the knife without thinking.
It hits true, rocketing through the branches overhead, and hits the person in the arm. The body falls, crashes to the forest floor in a heap.
The person screams, rips out the knife, and throws it to the side. Their face is covered in a mask of green, so I can’t tell if it is a boy or a girl. All I know is that they are the enemy.
I dive.
We both go down together. I land a punch to the face, then another to the neck, before I’m flipped over, and the enemy is on top. We spar, and Sketch is screaming, and Zephyr is shouting, asking what is going on, but I don’t care about any of it.
Because I realize the motions of this fight feel as natural as breathing. It is neck and neck, as if we have been competing for the win our entire lives.
I gasp. I freeze, when I see the strong, scarred forearms of the person that is holding me. The silvery hair, hanging to his shoulders, tangled and knotted, but so, so familiar. The strong hands, both for fighting and carving and bringing images to life.
“Koi,” I gasp again. “Koi, it’s me. It’s me.”
“M-Meadow?” He reaches up, moves his camouflaged mask away, and I finally see his face.
The sob that comes from my lips is instantaneous.
It is my brother.
He is just as I remember him. Strength and softness, all tangled into one. The only difference is that he now has oozing scabs mixed in with his sparring scars, gentle drips of blood that coat his skin. But I don’t care. He is here.
We stand up to face each other.
I launch myself into his arms.
“Meadow,” he whispers, and we are both crying, holding each other so tight that I dare the world to try and rip us apart. I tell him about our mother, and he holds me tighter. Whispers that it’s okay, that it wasn’t my fault, that she was already dead to us both.
“I found you,” I breathe. “I found you.”
“You came for us,” he says. He pulls back to look at me, holds my face in his hands. His fingertips tug at the short, light strands of my chin-length curls. “You cut your hair?”
It is such a normal, stupid question, that I laugh, and then I can’t stop laughing, because he is here. My brother is with me, after so, so long. “The Initiative did it,” I whisper. I turn, so that he can see the Regulator.
He gasps.
“They . . . they did lots of things,” I say, but I can’t finish the sentence, because suddenly an image of two other faces appears in my mind. “Dad?” I whisper. Terrified of the answer he might give me. “Peri?”
Koi sniffs, shakes his head. “Dad’s with me, back at camp. But Peri . . .”
“She’s not dead,” I say. “She can’t be.”
“No,” he says. “God, no, but . . . we haven’t found her yet, Meadow. The Ridge is a massive place. But we will. I promise, we’re looking every day. I’m so sorry.”
Pain streaks through me.
And then the switch hits. In one instant I lose all my strength. My knees buckle, but Koi holds me up, wraps me tighter in his arms before I can fall.
“What’s happening?” he asks. “What’s wrong with her? Was it the fog? The Biters? The needles?” He checks my cuff.
There is an 89 on the screen.
“That’s one of the highest number’s I’ve ever seen,” he gasps. “I’m going to ask you again. What. Happened. To. Her?”
“Nothing!” Sketch says as she steps forward. Zephyr clutches onto her like a child. “I swear it, nothing happened. We ran from Biters, and Zero got bit. Not Meadow. And we haven’t run into anything else.”
“Did you drink the water?” Koi asks.
“No,” Sketch says. She’s frowning at me like I am on my deathbed, and I hate it. I want her to stop. I want to be strong again. “It’s a long story,” she says. “She just needs to rest.”
“We’ll go back to camp,” Koi says. He holds me tighter, and he smells different, but he feels the same. “For now, let’s be happy,” he says. “My sister is here, alive and well. And that’s reason enough for me.”
My tears mix with his. Our cuffs clink together, red and yellow. He smiles again, but I can see through it.
I see the fear in his eyes, clear as glass, as he carries me across the Ridge.
It would be worse if he knew the truth.
CHAPTER 82
ZEPHYR
My vision comes back after we’ve walked for an hour.
“I can see,” I gasp. Patches of light trickle in. Then shadows and light together, and then it all comes bursting back in one sudden sweep. “I can see!” I scream.
I reach back and touch the welt on my neck.
But it’s not there anymore. My cuff changes, from the new number 53, to a 27.
Then, gradually, it drops in numbers until it’s back at the letter C.
Meadow’s brother looks back over his shoulder. “Biters got you, right?”