“They’ll also have Fringers,” I reply. “Or have you forgotten that fun little mark on the side of my face a few days ago?”
“We’ll pretend we’re one of them,” she says, climbing up a gentle hill. “We’re certainly filthy enough.”
“Nomads,” I suggest.
She nods.
“And we’re… we’re desperate for water and shelter for the night,” I continue, “and we’ll be gone by morning.”
“ If we run into trouble,” she says. “Most of these towns are deserted.”
“I’ve heard that one before.” I pause. “Avery?”
She turns, looking at me. “What is it?”
“You were serious back in Portland, right? About being on my side?”
She stumbles forward, grabbing me up in her arms and hugging me. This time I hug her back.
“I’ve never been so serious about something in my life,” she whispers. “Look at all we’ve survived so far. I’m not letting you down, Jesse.”
I rest my head on her shoulder, hands pressed against her back. “I think I believe you.”
She lets go, stepping away. “We need to get as far away from the Chute as possible.” She scans the flat expanse around us, pointing. “That way.”
I nod and we take off through the darkness, guided by little more than the moonlight.
32
Cassius regained consciousness just as the flame retardant foam began to blanket the inside of the cabin. It wasn’t going to help anyone around him. They’d been burned to a crisp long before the system switched on. The car itself was reduced to a metal shell, heated up until it stung to touch it.
Unlike everything around him, Cassius wasn’t burned. He lay in the middle of a bed of flames, but they passed through him, ignoring his tender skin. His senses were alert, his mind sharp and refreshed. If his insides weren’t all raw and bruised, he’d think he had suddenly become invincible. It was the most painful form of invincibility he could imagine.
He pulled himself from the bathroom floor, searching for clothing to cover his naked body before heading out into the night. Most everything had already been mutilated by fire. Retardant foam buried what managed to survive.
He paused a moment to stare at the bodies-the blue-haired girl lying still in the corner, the businessman crumpled in a heap below his chair. The force of the explosion had killed most of them before the flames could do anything.
He had done this. Whether he had meant to or not didn’t make any difference. This wasn’t a killing in the name of the Unified Party. This wasn’t part of a mission. This was a massacre.
Glancing around the cabin, he found a body lying in the corner of the room least ravaged by the fire. Like all the others, the man was dead, but the foam had reached him before the fire had a chance to completely destroy his body. Most of his clothing remained intact, despite many scuffs and burn marks.
Cassius began the unpleasant job of stripping off the man’s jeans and pulling them over his own legs. They were much too loose, but he was able to tighten the belt to an acceptable length. With great difficulty, he yanked off the man’s shirt, tearing it at the shoulder as he tried to work it around the guy’s limp arms. It was horrifying work, pulling the clothes off a dead body, but he didn’t have any other choice. The guy was already gone. Cassius needed it more than he did.
Stumbling into the night air, he turned to survey the wreckage he had caused. The train cars curved into the darkness beyond him. As he stared at the fallen Chute, his frustration with Madame began to turn to doubt. Twice now this had happened, and she knew why. Yet she wouldn’t tell him. Not without a price. Not without Fisher.
It was a game. They were pinballs, him and Fisher. Pinballs filled with gun powder. The more they ran into each other, the worse things got. And she didn’t seem to care.
He wiped tears from his eyes and allowed himself to break down for a moment. He wasn’t a killer, not like this. Not when it was a Chute full of innocent people just trying to get from one city to another.
After giving in to his emotions, he regained control of his breathing and realized that he had to go on, not only to prove that he could do it, but also because he had to know.
He had to know what was happening to him, who his parents were, and what Jesse Fisher had to do with it.
But he didn’t need Madame’s help anymore. Now he was going to do it his way. His com-pad was lost in the fire, his link with Madame gone. He was going to find Fisher, and he was going to find answers. With or without her.
And if he had to set the whole world on fire to find out what was wrong with him, then so be it.
33
Dawn.
After walking for hours last night, we took refuge in a chewed-up fortress at a broken-down playground on the edge of the nearest Fringe Town. Sleeping in a park???classy. Avery and I took turns keeping guard, on constant lookout for any movement. There was nothing all night; most Fringers have migrated to the uninfected parts of the coast. Landlocked’s the worst. Landlocked will kill you.
As the sun starts to heat our little play castle to triple-digit level, we wipe the sleep from our eyes and step down the hot metal ladder to the brown grass below. My empty stomach rumbles. My throat’s about as dry as the environment out here. I’d pay a million dollars for a glass of water.
“Keep an eye out,” Avery warns as we exit the tiny park and step along a cracked-up street on our way to the center of town.
My feet drag. If I don’t get some fluids in me soon this march to Seattle is gonna be over before it starts. “How’s your headache?”
“Down to a dull throb,” she replies. “Don’t worry. I can manage it.”
I nod. “Tell me why we’re heading into a Fringe Town again?”
She avoids a wide crack in the pavement, leaping over to the other side. “Water, food. You know, things we kinda need to survive.”
A hot gust of wind shoves my face as I walk into it. Waves of dust swirl around in the air. I swallow mouthfuls of sandy air. It’s impossible not to.
We walk by lines of old-fashioned homesteads, boarded up and beaten to the ground. In another time, this place could have been one of those picket-fence-type neighborhoods people write poems about. The trees are leafless-dark, decaying silhouettes on an ever-flat background. Weeds survive, a darker shade of brown than the grass. I’ve heard that areas like this were hardest hit after the government cut power because they were already borderline-desert before the bombings.
So far, it’s all empty and silent. Score one for us, because in addition to traveling through a dangerous Fringe Town, we’ve still got Cassius to worry about.
Avery kicks at a dirt clod as we continue down the center of the vacant, pothole-ridden road. “Makes you miss the comforts of a Security Center jail cell, huh? It’s like the Old West.”
“The Old, Old West,” I reply, shirt sticking to my body with sweat. “Are we even close to Seattle?”
“Depends on what you mean by close.” She points at the pavement behind my feet. “Ooh, watch it.”
I turn around to see a snake slither across the roadway, inches from my heel. I jump forward, keeping my eye on the brown creature as it hisses past. “Oh god, I thought those things were only in movies!”
Avery watches it disappear into a crack in the pavement. “It’s gone.”
We walk in silence for a few minutes. I keep my eyes on the ground, cautious of any more creatures we might stumble across.
Once the coast is clear, I glance at Avery. “So I’ve been wondering. If you weren’t born on a Skyship, where were you born?”
“Don’t know,” she replies. “Look, I wasn’t lying about being an orphan. I’ve never met my parents. They’re probably dead.”
“Where did you live before the Academy, then?”
“The Lodge.”
“ The Lodge? Like, Pearlhound central?”
She nods. “Madame picked me up from the workhouses when I was little-five years old, I think. She tried to pretend she was my mother, at least for a little while.”