I nod, more confused than I’ve ever been.
“You won’t heal so fast after a while,” Koi says. “They carry something in their blood. A disease, or poison, whatever it is. Causes blindness. There’s a guy back at camp, Abram. He’s lost his sight for good. But he’s still alive.” He looks at the sky. “No one has died yet, no matter what they’ve thrown at us. Death is impossible. Our mother made sure of that.”
I don’t tell him that I’m the one who killed Lark.
That when my arrow nailed her in the chest, I smiled and felt a million times lighter inside.
Meadow nestles against her brother. She groans, and Koi looks down at her and moves her hair back from her face, wipes a drop of blood from under her nose.
She smiles, and damn, it lights up the world.
I haven’t seen Meadow smile like this . . .
Ever.
Not even the night I found her. After so long, we were together again. Our kisses, our hearts. Then I told her about killing Lark and . . . I feel worse than a Leech for thinking it. But I’m actually jealous right now.
I’m happy for her. I am. But the happiness doesn’t feel good.
I flinch when Sketch puts her arm around my shoulders. “Don’t look so grim, Zero,” she whispers. “She’s not gonna kick you out now that she’s found her brother. There’s still room for you in that black heart of hers. Deep, deep down.”
I hadn’t planned for this, hadn’t realized we’d actually find them. Most of the time I’ve known Meadow, it’s been the two of us. I’ve been her family. I’ve been her friend.
And now that we’ve found Koi . . .
“I just need a second,” I say.
“Right, okay. Now shut up and let me hold you.”
Normally I’d shove Sketch away.
But she looks the same way I do. A little hurt, a little broken, watching Meadow with her brother. “You’re thinking about your sister,” I whisper.
“We already talked about this. Do we have to bring it up again?”
Sketch and Meadow held on to each other in that jail cell in the Leech building. They kept each other alive. And now Sketch is just as connected to Meadow as I am, in her own way.
“No,” I say. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You’re annoying me,” Sketch says.
But then she laughs and punches me in the arm.
“You hit like a man,” I say.
“And you cry like a girl, but I’m not judging,” she says back.
We follow Koi and Meadow deeper into the woods.
CHAPTER 83
MEADOW
Koi carries me until he can’t anymore. The number on my cuff rises to a 90.
He walks faster, breathes harder.
I keep my eyes on him the entire time. Afraid that if I blink, he’ll fade away. Afraid that this is all a dream, something my consciousness has made up to fool me. A parting gift from my mother’s ghost. Maybe she is snickering from the grave.
Maybe I will wake up in my cell, with the Interrogator standing over me, ready to draw blood all over again.
Maybe none of this is real. Laughter escapes my lips.
The wind blows, and I shiver, teeth chattering, fingers trembling, and it reminds me that this is real. That I’ve found my brother, and now, Koi is leading me back to my father. I swallow the craziness back, hold it deep down inside of me.
We’re halfway to whatever camp Koi has, when a dark-skinned boy appears from the trees. He moves like the wind, swift and steady and silent as death. I shout a warning, but Koi greets him.
“Saxon,” Koi says, turning to look at the boy. “He’s with me. It’s okay.”
“Well, son of a Scumbag.” Saxon whistles. “Your sister?” He rubs his hands over his face. I see his fingernails are missing. “’Course she’s your sister. She looks just like you. How’d you find her?”
Saxon is taller than most, his body lean and muscular. He walks by our side, with a hand-carved bow slung over his shoulder. His feet are bare, and they are missing the nails, too.
“I guess she came for me,” Koi says. “Just like I knew she would.” He hoists me up higher, shows Saxon the 90 on my cuff.
Saxon’s eyebrows rise to his hairline. He whistles and shakes his head. “What got her so bad? On day one? There’s no good luck here, is there?”
“Nothing did,” Koi says. “Nothing that they know, at least.”
He changes the subject and explains what happened to him when he arrived in the Ridge. “I don’t remember much at all. I was in a train, cuffed, blindfolded. When I started to wake, they stuck me with something, and I went out cold again. I remember waking up, freezing. Feeling like I was in another world. Then I woke up here, with this damn cuff on my wrist,” Koi says, stepping over a fallen log. “Spent a few days stumbling around. I nearly had my heart cut out by some Oranges in the West End.”
A rat skitters past, and Saxon moves, lightning quick, knocking an arrow onto his bow.
He shoots the animal in the eye. A perfect shot.
My father would be proud.
“Dad found me,” Koi says, “and then Saxon found us.”
“Crazy bastards, those two,” Saxon says, scooping up the rat. “Good additions to our group. And if you’re anything like them,” he says to me, smiling with several missing teeth, “then I imagine the rest of the Yellows’ll let you stay. Normally we don’t take in other colors. It’s not the way of the Ridge. But your family’s changing things. Lots of things.”
I focus back on Koi. It’s hard to talk. My strength is waning, and all I want to do is sleep.
“What’s with the Cuffs?” Zephyr asks. “The colors?”
“Tribes,” Koi explains. “You get a color, and that’s your tribe. The number on your cuff, there, that’s your . . . health level, is all we can describe it as. Dad thinks the whole operation is another sort of experiment, like the Shallows. Every day, there’s different trials. Sometimes it’s poison gas. Sometimes, the Biters come, and they’re full of nasty poison and diseases, all sorts of stuff.” He nods at Zephyr. “Blindness is a common side effect of being bitten. Then there are the needles. Those come from the sky. And the water’s laced with something. The animals, too. You can taste it.”
“The cuffs,” Saxon says. “They’ve got some kind of blood reader in them. When someone gets sick, their numbers go up. They heal, the number goes back down.” He lifts his cuff. There is a 29 on the screen. “No one’s ever made it to 100. That’s the final number.”
I look down at the 91 on my cuff. The bleeding scabs on my brother, the missing nails and teeth on Saxon. I think of all the Greens, how afraid they looked. How sick.
“We have to find Peri,” I say.
“We will,” Koi says.
I’m so disgusted, thinking of her all alone in this world, that I hardly notice it when the switch comes again.
My cuff goes back to a letter C.
CHAPTER 84
ZEPHYR
We reach the waterfall by the time the sun starts to set.
It’s a monstrous being, a huge force of water that pounds down on a deep pool beneath it. The sound is like a roaring giant.
“I’ve never seen one of these,” Meadow says beside me, staring up at the top. She’s standing again, back to her normal, stronger self. “Peri would have wanted to see this.”