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  Nethanel, Aneley, and the rest of their group crouch near the second shuttle, their eyes wide with shock. Aneley raises a hand to cover her mouth. There are bodies on the floor next to the wreckage of the first shuttle.

  Behind them, the door to the remaining shuttle opens. Rött and seven of his men step out into the clearing smoke, smiling at the destruction.

  Chapter 29

  Someone seizes my arm. I wrench free and turn to fight, but it’s only Cassia. Her mouth forms words I can’t hear.

  I shake my head. “Rubio!” I try to say, but she pulls me up the steps to the control room.

  Something whiffs by my shoulder. I look up. Rött and four of his guards stand on the dock, pointing slug rifles at Nethanel, Aneley, and the other survivors. Another kneels beside them, his weapon trained on Cassia and me.

  Cassia says something. I can hear the urgency in her voice, but her words come to me muffled, as if I’m underwater. She bends close to the keypad lock.

  A bullet embeds itself in the wall behind us. Cassia flinches, but the door slides open at last. We tumble inside as shots ricochet off the control room’s protective glass. Cassia throws herself into one of the Mendicant’s chairs and starts tapping at the control panels.

  I lie on the floor, dazed. Rubio’s body floats before my eyes. Is he alive? If I could have checked his vitals . . . But he was too close to the blast. If he did survive, there’s no way he has long to live. My chest tightens, and tears well in my eyes. If we were aboard the Ranganathan, maybe they could fix him. If we were anywhere else, we could at least try.

  I pull myself to my feet and stare out at the dock through the glass walls. One of the bullets has left a cloudy spiderweb pattern where it struck. Rött and his remaining men have what’s left of our group kneeling on the floor beside the remaining shuttle, hands folded behind their heads. He points his gun at the closest woman’s head—Belen—and shouts something. I scan the controls and flip the intercom on.

  Rött’s voice fills the small room. I can barely make out the words through the buzzing in my ears. “I’m giving you thirty seconds to come out.”

  I wet my lips. They taste like blood. “You’ll kill us.”

  “Not if you come out now,” he says. “But if you decide to stay in there, I’m going to have to take it out on your friends here.”

  I glance at Cassia. She shakes her head and looks deliberately at the controls. What is she trying to tell me? I move closer to look over her shoulder.

  “Time’s up.” Rött looks down at Belen kneeling beside him, smiles at her, and pulls the trigger.

  My hands fly up over my eyes and I scream. When I pull my fingers away, Belen lies slumped on the floor at his feet.

  Rött holds my eyes and walks to the next person in line. Aneley.

  “Wait . . .”

  Aneley turns to me and shakes her head slowly. Don’t come out.

  But what else are we going to do? We can stay in here until we starve to death and all our friends are dead, or we can go out now and take our one chance to save them.

  “Miyole,” Cassia whispers. She points to the spindle’s telemetry readout. Someone is landing far above us on the ice, their signal strong and clear. A DSRI signature.

  “We . . . we’re coming.” I tell Rött. “Please, don’t shoot her. We’re coming, okay?”

  I look at Cassia and nod ever so slightly. She taps a command into the system, freeing access to the spindle’s lift.

  “Now,” Rött says, raising his rifle to Aneley’s head.

  “Yes.” I raise my hands and walk to the door, one foot in front of another.

  “The other girl, too.”

  Cassia rises slowly from the controls and raises her hands as well. She casts one look back at the telemetry readout and moves to my side. Time. We need time. Only a few minutes for whoever the Ranganathan has sent to reach the lift and make it down to us.

  I open the door. One foot in front of the other. Time. Rött’s guards grab us at the bottom of the stairs and march us across the hangar. I glance at Rubio, but I can’t tell if his chest is rising and falling ever so slightly or if it’s only my brain trying to deny his utter stillness.

  The guards shove us down beside the others kneeling on the floor.

  Rött paces in front of us. “I thought we had an understanding.” He stops and holds a hand out to the bodies lying next to the ruined shuttle. “You see what happens when you try to go against me?”

  I look away.

  “Now the question is, why would you do such a thing?” Rött slings his rifle back over his shoulder. “Some of you have never given me any problems before. You don’t want to cause trouble. You know what kind of lesson I’d have to teach you then. Someone’s been putting ideas in your head.”

  Rött’s gaze pauses on me for a second before landing on Cassia. He steps closer to her. “Someone new. Someone who hasn’t been properly broken in.”

  I glance at the lift doors. Please, hurry.

  Rött stands in front of her. “Now the question is, do I try to break her in right, or is it more trouble than it’s worth?”

  Cassia glares at him silently.

  Rött flexes his fingers around the rifle barrel. “My uncle always said you don’t keep a rabid animal in the pack. It’ll infect the others.” He swings the rifle down so it points at Cassia’s head and fingers the trigger. “I’m thinking maybe that’s good advice here.”

  Nethanel tries to lunge for Cassia, but Aneley wraps her arms around him and holds him back.

  “Stop!” I jump up. I don’t know what I mean to do. All I know is we need a few more minutes. Only a little more time.

  A hand lands on my shoulder, and one of the guards behind me shoves me back down.

  Rött smirks. “Do we have an objection, kurai tös?”

  “It . . . it wasn’t her,” I say.

  “Oh?” Rött raises an eyebrow and sweeps a hand at Belen’s body. “What, are you going to tell me it was her idea, then?”

  “No.” My mind scrambles for anything that will buy us more time. “It was me,” I say. I’m valuable. I’m a medic. I have to hope that means enough to keep everyone alive a few more minutes. “I’m the one who put them up to it.”

  “No!” Cassia shoots a fierce glare at me. “Shut up, Mi.”

  “Enough!” Rött shouts. “You both want to die? Is that it?”

  I stare at Cassia, willing her to back down. Let me take the blame. They won’t kill me. Let me buy us the time we need. I glance at the lift door again, doubt swimming in my stomach. Where are they? They should be here by now.

  “Fine,” Rött says. “Let’s see who’ll go first.”

  He points a finger at Cassia, then me, and alternates between us with each syllable, taking his time. “Chu, chu, ta, ka . . .” He lands on her and smiles, cold as the ice above us. “Nochu. You first, lillflicka.”

  “Wait!” I scream, but one of the guards is dragging me forward by the hair.

  Rött pulls Cassia out of the line and shoves her down beside me. We kneel, facing the others. Cassia and Nethanel stare at each other. His neck is taut and his eyes glimmer with tears. Aneley holds him tighter, her eyes squeezed shut, mouth moving silently.

  “I want all of you to see this,” Rött tells them. “And be grateful it isn’t you.”

  I look at the lift doors again. Doubt gives way to dread. They need to come now.

  Cassia looks at me. I’m sorry, she signs.

  “Don’t—” I start to say, but my voice gives out. Instead, I make a sign she taught me all those weeks ago under our cocoon of blankets: I love you.

  Rött cocks his rifle and levels it at Cassia’s head.

  I reach for her hand.

  Metal scrapes behind me, and something thunks and rolls across the dock. Rött’s eyes go wide.

  A metal canister rolls to a stop between us and the bombed-out shuttle. For a moment, it lies silent, and then it clicks and spews white smoke into the air.
/>   “Kör!” Rött shouts. “We’re breached! Get down!”

  He and the other guards bolt for the control room, but the smoke spreads too fast. It engulfs them in white mist. Rött staggers in the center of it, and the guards begin to drop, first one, then another, barely visible through the fog. A chemical taste spreads on my tongue. Bitter. My head swims.

  Someone pushes me flat on the floor. I twist around, trying to summon the will to keep fighting, but then I recognize Nethanel. He pushes Cassia to the floor, too, and lies down next to us. The smoke is thinner here. I make out Rött’s boots through the fog as he stumbles and then falls. The soles of his shoes are black like a fish eye and the smoke rolls like waves—cold, bitter water lapping over me.

  “Stay awake, Mi.” Cassia shakes me. “Breathe through your clothes.” She stretches the neck of her shirt up over her nose.

  But my suit doesn’t give that way. The smoke thickens around us. The last things I see before the darkness closes in on me are a bright blue pinpoint of light floating in the fog and a shadow bending over me.

  Chapter 30

  I’m cold. I am falling through the sea, down and down. Down to my mother’s bones. I don’t dare breathe, because my lungs will fill with salt water and I’ll sink faster. But it’s too hard. I can’t fight forever. I take a shallow breath, expecting the burn and the panic, expecting to drown. Instead my lungs fill with sweet, soft air.

  My eyes flutter open. Everything around me is a gentle blue, not the wild dark of an icy sea. Something covers my mouth and nose. An oxygen mask. I try to pull it away and realize someone has my hand. I blink through the blurs in my vision. Cassia.

  “You’re awake.” Relief floods her voice.

  I tug down the mask. “What happened?” But even as I say the words, my memory clicks together. The smoke. The light bobbing toward me. We aren’t dead, which can only mean one thing. Someone must have come for us after all.

  Cassia places the oxygen mask gently back over my face. “They said you have to keep that on. Your people pulled us out. We’re back on your ship. In the medical deck.”

  The light keeps changing, and I realize it’s the far wall, playing images of flowers on a loop—frangipani, ginger lily, larkspur, jasmine.

  “Nethanel says thank you. He’s with Milah.” Cassia smiles at me.

  I breathe deep. I’m so tired. Maybe I could close my eyes again, only for a little while.

  I come awake sharply. “Rubio?”

  “He . . .” Her face is unreadable. “They have him down the hall.”

  I stare at her, uncomprehending, and then the words begin to sink in. “He’s okay? He’s not dead?”

  She presses her lips together. “They’re still working on him.”

  “But he’s alive?” I try to sit up, and a sharp pain in my arm lets me know I’m hooked up to an IV. “Can I see him?”

  Cassia eases me back onto the bed. “We’ll know more in a few hours. Just rest for now, okay?”

  I drop my head against the pillows. “You have to tell me, all right? As soon as you hear something?”

  “I promise,” she says. “If you promise to sleep.”

  I close my eyes. Sweet juice by the levee, bare feet on the sand, swinging hands . . .

  The last thing I feel before I lose consciousness is Cassia’s soft hand on my forehead.

  When I wake again, I’m alone in the blue room. And thirsty. So thirsty. I pull off the oxygen mask, withdraw my own IV, and ease my bare feet onto the floor. A carafe of water sits on the small table at the foot of my bed. I drink the whole thing straight from the jar as I watch the wall cycle through its flowers, and then hug myself, suddenly cold. Where is everyone? Where is Cassia?

  I tug on a blue robe hanging next to my bed and pad down the corridor, checking the data sheets on each door for Rubio’s name. I find him twelve rooms down from my own.

  Name: Hayden Rubio

  Age: 19

  Condition: Critical but stable

  I sigh in relief and scan the rest of the sheet, stopping on the procedural codes. They had to replace his kidneys, and he’s scheduled for surgery again next week for . . .

  I scroll down and cover my mouth. Guilt overwhelms me.

  . . . skin grafts and bionic replacement of his left arm and both legs below the knee. I place the data sheet back in its slot and close my eyes. This is my fault. If I had tried harder to keep Cassia from dragging him aboard when we escaped. If I had let him get away on Ceres or convinced him to stay behind with the Tsukinos. If he didn’t care about me at all . . .

  I flee back to my room, climb into bed, and pull the thin blanket over my head. I thought I was doing the right thing. Or maybe not the right thing, but the best thing I could. I thought I was only risking myself, but it was more than that. I was risking Rubio. I was risking what’s left of Haiti and the Gyre, stored away in my memory. I was risking all the people whose history would be lost if I died without passing their stories on. I used to think my life only mattered for what it might become someday, for how I could use it, trade it, not for what it has been all along. I was wrong.

  “Specialist Guiteau?”

  I sit up in bed. Commander Dhar stands in the doorway, shoulders squared and her hands clasped behind her back.

  “Commander.” I hug my robe tight around me, not sure what else to say.

  “I’ve been told you asked to see Mr. Rubio.”

  My throat is dry. “I . . .” I swallow. “If I can. Yes.”

  “Follow me.” She turns on her heel without waiting to see if I’ll move from the bed.

  As I trail her down the hall, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirrored glass outside one of the exam rooms and realize what a wreck I am. Red eyes underlined with bags. Uncombed hair. Ashen skin.

  Commander Dhar stops in front of Rubio’s room and swipes her thumb across the door’s controls. I follow her in. Rubio lies on the bed, deep asleep, his head slightly elevated. An intubation line sprouts from the side of his mouth. His eyelids look thin and purple. From where I stand, I can’t see his left arm, but the bedcovers lie flat where his legs should be.

  I step closer. A tingling sensation runs over my skin—sanitizing nanobots scrubbing away any bacteria I carry. I want to reach out, take his hand, but he’s so deep under I don’t think he would feel it. It would make only me feel better, and I don’t think I deserve to feel better.

  “Rubio.” I choke. “I didn’t mean for . . .”

  Commander Dhar’s hand closes on my shoulder.

  I look at her. “Is he going to be all right? Can he . . . Will he be able to fly again?”

  “Maybe. We’ll have to wait and see. The doctors say he’ll need six months or so for his body to adapt to his new limbs.”

  I bite my lip. “And after that?”

  Commander Dhar shakes her head. “It depends on how strong his neural connections are. If they don’t atrophy, then maybe, after a while. He might regain enough fine motor control.”

  I turn away. I don’t want to look at Rubio’s broken body. I knew I would have to face the consequences of running off with Cassia eventually. I just didn’t know they were going to be this.

  “He’ll be taken care of, naturally,” Commander Dhar says. “Full DSRI pension. A lifetime of medical care, if he needs it.”

  I shake my head. That’s not what he wanted. He wanted to fly.

  A moment of silence passes. We both stare at Rubio, watching his chest rise and fall as the ventilator pumps air into his lungs in waves.

  “This is my fault,” I say.

  “Why would you say that?” Commander Dhar sounds genuinely curious.

  “I helped Cassia. I went along with it. I should have found a way to get him back—”

  “I’ve seen the feed records,” Commander Dhar interrupts. “It’s the correction board’s view that you weren’t the instigator. Mr. Rubio had multiple opportunities to return to us in the interim.”

  I wince. Correction board. “It d
oesn’t matter,” I say. “If I had been next to that shuttle instead of him—”

  “Don’t say that.”

  I look away.

  “Specialist.” Commander Dhar’s voice sharpens. “You’re not to say that. It was the dakait who did this to him. Not you.”

  I watch Rubio’s chest rise and fall with the compression of the ventilator pump.

  “There are honorable things other than sacrifice,” the commander says quietly. “Surviving. Living. Those are honorable, too. Sometimes that’s the harder path.”

  Climb, Miyole! My manman stands at the bottom of the ladder. Her ship fights through the wind and slanting rain, its lights piercing the gray. To find me.

  “Come with me,” Commander Dhar says suddenly.

  I follow her down the corridor to a small, windowless lift I never knew existed.

  She swipes her thumb across the keypad, and for an instant, her face cracks into a small smile. “Senior officers’ lift.”

  We ride down to the commander’s office, a small, valve-shaped room filled with a broad bronze desk and white chairs. Antique compasses and telescopes line the natural ridge that slopes up the wall. I eye the ridge uneasily. It reminds me too much that this ship was grown and not built. And of where I now know it was grown.

  “Please, sit.” Commander Dhar holds out a hand to one of the chairs.

  I do.

  The commander takes a chair across from me, on the other side of the desk. We stare at each other. Half of me wants to apologize for what I did, to ask about the correctional hearing and beg for clemency. But in the other half, my blood is rising. Commander Dhar is right. It was the dakait who caused all of this, but who let the dakait run free? Who bought ships from them and helped them prosper? Who was willing to turn a blind eye as long as it wasn’t one of their own suffering?

  “We’ve debriefed Ms. Kaldero.” Commander Dhar breaks the silence. “Is there anything you want to say for yourself?”

  I squirm in my chair. There is something I want to say, but not for myself.

  “Did you know?” I ask finally.

  Commander Dhar blinks. “Know?”

  “Where the ships come from,” I say.