The Dark Water (22 page)

I don't even get a chance to scream, because a gun butt smashes into the back of my head and I go down to my knees, the pain making me gag for an intense moment. And then it fades. By the time Sutton and his four men have stepped into view on the mound of rubble, I'm feeling better. I scramble toward Jo's body, but a pair of hands grab my feet. I scream in desperation, my voice scratching against my throat. Jo's heart flutters and weakens. I'm turned over and find myself staring into the barrel of a machine gun, and when I make to get up the soldier presses the barrel into my forehead.

Soldiers move past me, covered in black gear, their guns raised. They glide like slow shadows among the ruins around us. Rob and even Lisa have their hands raised, but not Brayden.

“You didn't,” I say to him, unable to even articulate the potential. I reach out for his mind but only see flashes of light, nothing coherent. I want to scream again. I just don't understand how to use the powers the source gave me. I can cast out a part of me, but I don't know what to do with what I find.

Sutton's boots
crunch
beside me.

“Brayden did,” Sutton says, “sort of. Unknowingly, I'm sure.”

Brayden charges at Sutton, but the Westbrook alum backhands him and sends Brayden to the ground. We're pathetic and weak and broken. Jo's not moving at all. Lisa's inching closer to her, and I feel a flair of hope. She has the water in her pouch. She can help! I reach out to make sure Jo's still got a pulse, and she does, but she doesn't have much time.

“He's lying, Mia.”

I can barely hear him, I'm so focused on Jo. Brayden either betrayed us again or not, my best friend is dying.

“Brayden didn't tell us,” Sutton says, assuring me. “The chip we planted in him did.” He prods Brayden's arm. “What, that shot we gave you at Furbish? You think that was for the flu?”

“I have a chip in me?”

“Stopped working, you know, when you came down here. But as soon as we arrived here, the signal came through real clear.”

Sutton approaches Lisa, taking her chin in his hand. So much for her sneaking over to Jo. She spits in his face. I want to adopt her.

“Interesting point this brings up,” he says, wiping his face with his hand. “We're all made of water, but she's made of
healing
water. So why can't her spit heal me?”

“Why are you here?” Lisa asks, her voice hard. “Why are you doing this?”

Sutton manages to look semi-thoughtful. “A combination of Greg and my own dumb luck. Researching the water, creating the virus, it all leads here.” Sutton's watching me now. Lisa doesn't know what he's talking about, but I do.

“Let me help her,” I say, pointing to Jo.

“I'll let you help her when you give me the source. That stuff Greg always talked about's true, yeah?”

“I don't have it, it's on the far side of the city,” I say, gritting my teeth at the mention of my dad. “Please, Sutton. Let me give her some water.”

He shakes his head, his narrow face somehow believably regretful. “Don't believe you, little Kish. I know you came for it.”

“We can't help you. You have to believe us,” Rob says, his voice breaking. “If you studied the map, you'd know where the source is. Go get it yourself.”

“I studied the map,” Sutton confirms. My mental finger's on Jo's pulse, but she's almost gone and I'm becoming desperate. “I took copies of the high-def imaging. I broke it down like I broke down the water to create the virus. A map within a map, a world within the well. But even still, I wasn't sure. Not until you guys vanished into thin air.

“Oh, it took some guts to try it out. Had to really convince one of my men.” He smiles, like he's recalling a happy time. “But once they made it here and back, we tied a line through to guide us, sent weapons down in the nifty plastic barrels your dad left for us and voila, I'm Christopher Columbus.” His lips twitch, as if remembering something annoying. “The natives down here were still a bit of trouble.”

“Leave us alone, Blake,” Brayden says, getting to his feet. His face is covered with grime.

“Sure,” Sutton says. “Where's my source water? Where is Greg anyway?”

He's asking me, so he sees me flinch. He has the decency to look taken aback.

“Well, that wasn't what I was hoping for. You know that, right? He brought it upon himself. Upon you for that matter. He never should have come here.”

I'm so upset I can't speak. I get to my feet, the soldier's gun following my rise and settling on my chest. I look into his eyes, this soldier, this no one, and see that he's not happy. He's scared. He keeps glancing at Lisa, like she's an alien. His finger shivers on the trigger.

Sutton claps his hands together, scattering dust from his palms. “Okay, fine. None of this went the way we planned. But now I'm here, in this crazy place, and I'm going to get what I came for. Where's the source?” Around us, the fires still burn, the smoke making a thick fog. I can hear fighting. I can feel the heartbeats of everyone here, pumping fast and desperate.

We all look at one another. He catches that look.

“I
knew
you had it.” he says to me, triumphant. “You are your father's daughter, huh? You actually went and got it yourself.” He doesn't realize that the source isn't a physical thing, at least not like he's imagining it. I made the same mistake when I first arrived. But you don't just go and drink it. Sutton almost twitching he wants it so badly. I notice, for the first time, that he's got stubble, the makings of a beard. It looks like dirt all over his face and it reminds me that, like us, he's been going nonstop these past days. He'll never stop. All these years, all this obsession. He's like my dad. I can't deal with him anymore. I need to help Jo. “Fine,” I say, “I have it. And if you want it, you have to let me help her.”

“Doesn't work—”

“Fuck you, Sutton. I'm helping her.”

He doesn't stop me, and I hurry to her side and roll her over. Her head lolls, and her chest is red and sticky. Her eyes are open, glazed. Her lips as full as ever. I touch her neck and can't feel a thing, I
reach
and can't feel a thing.

I motion to Lisa, who throws me her water pouch, and I drip the remains on Jo's wound and between her lips.

“So pale face here's got the source,” Sutton's says, sure of himself. “And you're using it to bring back your friend.”

“That's right, Sutton,” I say over my shoulder, something I vaguely realize I shouldn't do. Of course he believes me. Why wouldn't he? “This is your precious stupid source.”

“Wonderful. I knew you'd find it.” He pulls a walkie-talkie off his belt and says into it, “Take it down. Fall back to the gate.”

Yes sir,
crackles the reply.

And almost immediately we see flashes around us, hear loud bursts of rocket fire. I tear my eyes from Jo to watch the bright swirls of light lob toward the wall above the tunnel entrance and then I lose them in the smoke.

“What just happened?” I ask, frantic.

Sutton holds up a finger, tips his ear to the sky, and then we hear it, explosion after explosion as his rockets smash into the wall, into the mountain. Into the source.

“You were right,” he says. “I do know where the source is.” He turns to his men. “Take them.”

They come at us, but we're kids and they're soldiers.

Jo's not moving. She's broken and empty.

My body burns in anger and helplessness and I duck from the nearest soldier's black-gloved hand and leap, surprising him, knocking him to the ground. Around me I sense movement as my friends try to do the same. Lisa, especially, is a blur, her white skin and blue hair so easy to identify in my periphery.

The soldier outweighs me by a hundred pounds. He's trained and armed and wears protective padding on his chest and legs. But I realize something, something I learned from Randt's relentless beating back at the source: pain is temporary.

I scratch his face and feel his skin under my nails. He shouts. I go for every exposed surface. I'm a fury of untrained violence, and even still I realize that in a half second he's going to take control of the situation.
Pain is temporary,
I keep repeating in my mind.
Use it.
So I give him my left arm, just hand it over to him, which he takes and twists in some sort of jujitsu move so painful my eyes might pop out. I feel my tendons straining, but he has a knife in his belt and I need it so I accept the pain, swallow it, and reach for the blade. He twists harder, wrenching my shoulder from its socket.
Pain is temporary.
I scream, my throat scraping, pain now just a means to an end, and I manage to snag the knife. It's black-handled and serrated, and when I plunge it into his inner thigh, where I've been told an artery runs, it gives like a tomato: a little resistance then nothing.

His grip goes loose and I pull the knife. My arm pops into place on its own and begins to heal. The pain fades, temporary.

Lisa's done something devastating to her soldier and is helping Rob, who has no skills at all for this kind of thing and lies curled in a ball; she kicks out the back of his soldier's knee and I don't bother looking anymore. But Brayden needs me. I jump over a black-geared body and slide the knife into the soldier's back, trying to ignore how easily the blade slips through the padding and into his skin. He slumps onto Brayden, covering him like a fat sleeping child.

I don't have time to help him up. I need to get to Jo.

I whirl around, looking for her body in the dust, when suddenly I feel an ache in my bones, deep and unexplained. It freezes me, like what I might imagine a heart attack would feel like—a dark and helpless pain, and there he is, Sutton, a handgun trained on my chest.

“Where's the source water, Kish?” Sutton asks. His eyes dart around, seeing his men lost. “Give it over.”

I don't reply, that unexpected pain still ramping through me.

“What does it do?” he goes on. “Did these albinos tell you?”

Sutton's ruined my life. It's that simple. He holds the cards now too, the gun steady in his hand. I know I heal quickly but I also know I'm not immortal. I doubt I could withstand a bullet to the head. But I'm not going to let him control anything anymore.
Pain is temporary.
I dodge left and hear/feel him fire, the bullet punching into my arm and spinning me. I dive for his legs and he shoots again, missing me, and we tumble to the ground together. I hear the satisfying
thud
of his gun falling to the rubble.

Lisa and Rob materialize beside me, then Brayden, and they hold Sutton down. He struggles, kicking up dust, shouting for his men, trying to buck me off. All the while, my arm shivers, pushes out the bullet, and stitches itself closed. I put my hand on Sutton's neck, as if to choke him, and I see myself through his eyes, my face fierce and my chin covered with flaking blood. My hair falls down around my head and I look terrifying. Good.

I feel for his pulse, and intuitively realize I can just sort of pinch his artery closed. Like I did to Randt, only this time I can do it on purpose. He's scared, his lips wet and brown eyes desperate.

Behind me, far away, Arcos sends out a pulse of warning and hurt. I can feel it—it's familiar, like his signature. He's incredibly upset. I try to focus, to gather his thoughts. Something's happened to the source.

“Why did you do it?” I ask through gritted teeth. Sutton doesn't understand what I'm asking. He did so many things, he doesn't know where to start. He's stopped moving and his chin's bent to chest, as if to protect his neck from me. He's sweating, panting, broken.

“Let me fix it. I'll fix whatever it is. I swear.”

I shake my head, his voice barely registering. He's nothing now.

“The source,” I whisper, finally understanding. “It's broken.”

Lisa makes a noise. “The source is protected. It is
inside
the mountain for a reason.”

There's no reason to argue with her. She doesn't get it. She doesn't feel Arcos in her mind. She doesn't know.

I let go of Sutton and move to Jo's body. Her eyes are lifeless. Gone. Her body's covered in a fine ash. From far away, she'd just be part of the rubble and dirt. I wipe my hand across her face, smudging the dust from her eyes and mouth. I know it won't work—she's as empty as Dad was—but I still try,
reaching
into her, pressing her heart to flare. But nothing. Her blood is cooling. Her mind is a black hole. For a moment the pain overwhelms me, and then I'm crying, my body shuddering uncontrollably, the tears dripping from my face.
My tears!
I tasted them in the well in the source. A flash of hope and I wipe my cheeks and wet Jo's lips and wait for her to wake up and smile and say let's go home. But nothing. She's still dead. Along with Dad and everyone else. The city around me is burning, its life draining away, and Jo's just one part of that. I wonder if Arcos feels my anguish, if he's looking our way and wondering what could be hurting me this much.

“Let's go,” I say, because I have to. Because we can't stay here. I pick Jo up and drape her arm around my neck. She's heavier than me, but I try anyway and soon Rob's holding her other side, and we begin to shift through the rubble with her between us, like a drunk friend at Westbrook, only not at all.

“What about him?” Lisa yells, her voice pained. She and Brayden are still holding Sutton down. I reach out to his mind and feel confusion, hope and a tint of regret. It's strange, recognizing his emotions. They float like colors through his body. His mind feels like anyone else's I've touched so far, nothing special; he's pathetic and broken and desperate. Brayden's eyes bore into Sutton, and I can almost see the blazing hatred peel off of him into the air. I'm surprised I can't muster the energy. I'm tired of hating like that.