The Disappearance of Ember Crow (24 page)

I was so happy to see Nicky, to see any friend at all, that I didn’t care he wasn’t real. I crouched down as he came close, hugging his neck and pressing my face to his soft fur. He let me hold him for a moment before wriggling free. I straightened, watching as he dug for something in the grass.

He returned to drop a bone at my feet.

This was … familiar. I’d seen something very like this scene before when I’d been hooked up to the black box in Detention Centre 3. The machine had made me think I was on the grasslands when I’d really been inside my own mind. There’d been a dog there too, a half-metallic hound that was actually the machine itself, trying to get at my secrets. And bones … bones had represented memories.

So why was I seeing all this again now?

Nicky nosed the bone towards me. I stared down at it, noticing that there was something wrapped around one end. A lock of hair.

A lock of red hair.

I sat on the grass and thought furiously. Before I went into the centre, Ember had buried one of her memories in my head. A moment that defined her, although I’d never known which one. It hadn’t mattered then. What had been important was that having the memory meant I’d carried a fragment of Ember with me into that terrible place.

Was that fragment somehow reaching out to me, trying to show itself? And if it was, did I want to experience it? Nicky obviously thought it was a good idea, but I didn’t know what he represented, here in my head.
It doesn’t matter
. Because if there was any chance this was the memory that defined Ember, I
had
to see it.

To know, for once and all, who my best friend was.

I picked up the bone. There was a familiar shifting sensation as the memory took hold of me, and I became someone else.

I became Ember as she had been, hundreds of years ago.

Rain sprinkled down, pattering over the lake and misting the air above the wildflowers, carpeting the surrounding hills in pink and white.
Everlastings
. That’s what those flowers were called. An appropriate memorial for Dominic. He had loved flowers, along with every other tiny thing about this world and all of the people in it.

I stepped towards the man standing at the water’s edge. “Dad?”

“Ember.”

I winced at the coldness in his tone, and did not speak again. Instead I stared out over Lake Remembrance, thinking, as I knew he must be, of the bodies submerged in the depths. Twenty-six people, drowned fifty-four years ago.

“Are you sorry, Ember?”

The asking of that question had become a ritual between us. For as long as I had been meeting my father in this place on this day, I had always given the same answer.
They deserved to die
.

I didn’t know what my answer would be today, so I didn’t give him one, not yet. “Terence isn’t very happy about the virus you introduced into our systems. The one that stops us from doing violence.”

“Yes, I imagine it will rather cramp his style. What do you think of it?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I’m not sure I know about anything any more.”

He studied my face with fiercely intelligent hazel eyes that had always seen too much, and too little. “Ah.”

I delivered my defence. “We didn’t hurt the animals or children. Only the adults, the ones who participated in Dominic’s death. They deserved to die.”

But my voice lacked conviction, and he heard it. “Tell me why, Ember.”

I recited all the reasons I’d told him, and myself, a thousand times before. Reasons founded in the awful, wrenching details that Terence had extracted from Dominic’s killers. “It wasn’t just that they murdered him when he’d done nothing but care for them. It was the way they did it. They
voted
, Dad. The heads of all the families in Vale City held a meeting and voted.”

“It was a conspiracy.”

“Yes! And it makes me crazy that Dominic saw them after that meeting, and they smiled at him. As if nothing was wrong. When they knew that in a few hours, they were going to take him apart with the tools
he’d
made! Tools that were supposed to build, not destroy.”

“It was an evil thing, Ember. Done simply because he was different, and they were afraid of that difference. I am not denying it.”

“And he suffered, Dad. What the Nullifier did, the way she suspended the connections in his brain, it would have made him helpless, not numb. He would have felt every cut they made in his body.” I stared grimly at the water. “Drowning was a far kinder death for them than what they did to Dominic.”

“And what of the girl? The girl your brother loved so much that he told her what he was?”

“She
hated
what he was. She couldn’t stand to be loved by a machine. She used her ability to paralyse him. And besides,” I snapped, “we didn’t kill her.”

“No. You dealt her a crueller fate. Forcing her to watch as you drowned the city. Telling the world that she was the Skychanger who’d caused the flood. And changing her memories so she thought it herself.”

“I didn’t know I couldn’t permanently hide a memory someone wanted to hold onto. I didn’t realise it would drive her mad.”

“But it did. It was no surprise that she took her own life.”

“She
still
died more quickly than Dominic!”

My father rounded on me. “Do you truly think that I did not love my son as much as any of you?”

“No.” I answered in a subdued voice. “I know you did. You loved him best. We all loved him best.”

“Then
why
am I standing here telling you that you should not have done what you did?”

I sighed. “You’d say it was vengeance, not justice. You’d tell me that you can’t defeat evil by doing evil. That … that all life matters, or none does. Even if that life belongs to those who have harmed us.”

“Yes.”

“You could have told us all those things at the time.” I pointed out rebelliously. “If you’d been here.”

“I may have miscalculated in leaving you all alone,” he conceded. “I didn’t expect that one of these ‘abilities’ could be used to destroy you.”

“You always think you know everything, Dad, but you don’t. We had to do the best we could to protect ourselves.”

“And what, precisely, do the Citizenship Accords protect you from, Ember?”

I hunched my shoulders, saying nothing, and he added, “The Nullifer ability appears to be the only one that could ever be used to permanently harm you. And it’s apparently an extremely rare talent.”

“It isn’t only about abilities. They said Dominic was an offence against nature. So I gave them something else unnatural to persecute instead.” I swallowed. “We were terrified that they’d come for all of us, and we don’t know what happens when we die. We don’t know if we go to the Balance, because we’re not … not …”

He shook his head. “Ah, Ember. You are as human as any organic being, though you are made from different materials. Think of your brother. Do you really doubt Dominic had all the best qualities of humanity?”

I thought of my little brother, and smiled a painful smile. “No.”

“And those that killed him embodied the worst. Don’t you see? Whether we are organic or synthetic, whether we walk on two legs or four, whether we are creatures of claw or hoof or wing or feet – it matters not. Composition does not determine character. Or greatness of soul.” He was quiet for a moment, then added, “The governments of the world are building more detention centres. Increasing the scope of the Accords. Locking up children now.”

“I know.”

“Are you sorry, Ember?”

No. I’m not sorry. I don’t want to be sorry
. “Yes.”

“Tell me why.”

“For all the reasons you would tell me to be,” I answered quietly. “But most of all because, if Dominic was still here, or if he’s out there somewhere in the Balance, he’d be so … disappointed in me.”

“Yes. He would.”

I bowed my head. “Dad? I’m sad.”

My father put his arm around me for the first time in over fifty years, and said in a satisfied tone of voice, “Good. That is a beginning.”

The memory dissolved into mist, and the world returned. I was lying on the floor with Ember crouched at my side. Delta was standing behind her. I couldn’t see Terence.
Probably still sitting in his chair, hoping I’ll quietly die
.

“Ash?” Ember asked. “Are you all right?”

I croaked, “My head hurts.” And closed my eyes.

The truth was, my head wasn’t hurting any more. But I needed some time to absorb what I’d seen and to control my heaving stomach. I felt sick over Dominic’s death, and over what Ember had done afterwards. Except I understood the reason she’d done it; a reason that my foolish, wounded best friend obviously hadn’t been going to share with me.
I know what it is to feel what you felt, Em
. I’d wanted to do something terrible to everyone I blamed for my little sister’s death. Only I’d had someone to stand in my way. The one person who could have stood in Ember’s way hadn’t been there when she needed him. Alexander Hoffman really wasn’t the guy I’d thought he was.

Lucky she had me.

I opened my eyes again. I needed to get Em to break Terence and Delta apart, and I didn’t want to give either of them a chance to stop her. We had to take them by surprise. Which meant I needed to let Ember know I wouldn’t abandon her,
without
letting Delta and Terence know it as well.

Reaching up, I clutched at her arm, and hissed, “You’re a machine.”

She flinched, and I continued, “I can’t believe I tried to save you! You really are just a collection of circuits. No one who truly understands what you are would ever try to save you!”
Jules called you a collection of circuits, and he came here for you. Listen to what I’m saying, Em
.

I hauled myself to my feet, dragging Ember up with me. “I understand what you are, Ember Crow, and there will
never
be a place in the Firstwood for a machine. I will never give a home to a machine.”

Realisation dawned in her odd-coloured eyes. Because I had brought a machine into the Firstwood. I’d brought Ember the black box when I’d fled Detention Centre 3, and asked her to build a body for the dog-spirit I’d seen at its core.

“You really mean that,” she whispered.

“Yes,” I answered steadily. “I do.”

The corners of her mouth crept up. She nodded, and I let her go.

Ember swung around, pushing me behind her. Terence rose to his feet, looking supremely satisfied. “Are you ready to begin altering her memories?”

“No,” Ember replied. “I’d like to ask you something, Terence. About Dominic, and what you did with his remains.”

The triumph in Terence’s face shifted into alarm. Delta directed a curious glance at him. “Terence? What does she mean?”

“The circuits, Del,” Ember said. “The last pieces of Dominic. He gave them to a
human
.”

Terence came striding hastily towards us. “Don’t listen to her! She’s trying to–”

Ember shouted over the top of him. “Ask him, Del. Ask him about how he handed Dominic over to Neville Rose, the former head of Detent–”

Terence lunged. I grabbed hold of Ember’s shoulder, spinning her out of the way just as Delta sprang into the space between them. He stopped still, shooting a hate-filled gaze at Em but obviously unwilling to provoke Del further.
Ha! Gotcha!

“Terence?” Delta sounded very young. “You didn’t do that, did you? You wouldn’t.”

“He did,” Ember snapped. “And Rose used the circuits to build an interrogation device.”

The machine?
I blinked, reeling, as connections cascaded through my brain. A black box. A black dog.

She’d built the body after all.

I’d
met
Ember’s baby brother. I’d gazed into his eyes and seen his bright spirit.
I should have recognised him
. How could I have failed to notice the similarities between the goofy, graceless hound who’d once bounded through my head in Detention Centre 3 and the dog I’d met in real life? The one who’d remembered me, even when I hadn’t remembered him. And, somehow, he could still connect to my mind, just as he’d done when he’d been the machine. Dominic.

Nicky
.

“That device was in the centre when the fire started,” Ember continued. “All that was left of Dominic …” She broke off, shaking her head. Not actually telling a lie, but allowing her sister to jump to the wrong conclusion.

Delta turned an accusing gaze on Terence. He held out a placating hand. “Let us be clear what we are talking about. Those circuits weren’t really Dominic, any more than a few skin cells constitute an organic being. It–”

She leaped, clawing at him, and the two of them went staggering across the room. He fended her off and she grabbed a vase from a table, smashing it onto the top of his head. Terence backhanded her across the face, knocking her to the ground. It didn’t slow Delta down. She flung herself into his legs, sending him sprawling. Then she sank her teeth into his calf.

Terence yelped. I caught Ember’s arm. “Let’s go!”

The two of us ran out into the long hall. We were about halfway down it when Ember stopped abruptly. “We’re going to need something to get past the guards outside. Come on.”

She dragged me through a doorway and into a bedroom. Every available surface was covered with bits of electronic equipment. “Del’s room, huh?”

“Yep.” Ember hurried about, gathering bits of machinery. Then she sat down on the bed and began connecting things together. When she was done she had a small, messy tangle of wires and circuits.

“What does that do?” I asked.

“If it works right, it’ll help us get through the back gate. Let’s just try to avoid getting caught on the way there.”

The two of us raced through the house, moving as fast and as quietly as we could. When we reached the door, I eased it open and peered out into the darkness. No one there, at least not on this side of the back wall. Ember bent over her little device, fiddling with it. Then she dashed outside and lobbed it over the top of the gate.

“Shut your eyes, Ash. Now!”

I did. There were shouts. A popping sound. And the night was lit up with a flash so bright I caught the edge of it even with my eyes closed.