The Fear Trials (2 page)

Chapter 5

B
ack on the boat, we wait.

My mother and father leave for the day, and it is just Peri and me.

We scrub the deck and have a soap fight. We play with her teddy bear, making it talk and walk. We string seashells on fishing line, and before long we have a wind chime.

“For mommy,” Peri says. We tie it outside the cabin and listen to it clink. This is how it will be from now on, just the two of us, while everyone is away in the city. I watch the horizon, scanning for trouble, waiting for my family to return.

The day is halfway over when I see a flash in the distance. Koi. He is swimming back, having left the dinghy for my parents.

I rush to the railing, throw the ladder down into the waves. I chew my bottom lip to a bloody mess by the time he arrives.

Koi takes his time climbing aboard.

His face is smooth and calm, the way it always is. It makes sense, I guess. Koi has never been one to gloat.

“What job did you get?” I ask. I'm bobbing up and down on my toes, the way Peri does when she gets excited. “Will you be a fisherman, like dad?”

“No,” he says. “I won't be fishing.” He sits down on the deck and digs his hands into the bucket of soapy water. He starts to scrub his fingers.

“Maybe working on the Initiative yachts, like mom?”

Koi sighs and runs a hand through his wet hair. “Stop, Meadow. I'll tell you.”

“Okay,” I say. I sit down across from him and pull Peri into my lap. “So just tell me, then. You got something great, didn't you? Please don't say I have to wait until mom and dad come home. I can't take it!”

He finally looks up, meets my eyes. And I see, for the first time, that they are puffy and red, that there isn't a badge around his neck.

“They wanted me to . . . they asked me to . . . There was one badge, one job. One person to walk out of there and . . . ”

I don't understand. I can't breathe. What he is saying is ridiculous.

He starts to cry. Soft tears, rolling down his cheeks. My stomach constricts. I have
never
seen Koi cry.

“He was just a
boy,
Meadow. He was so small.”

“What do you mean? What are you saying?”

The world is spinning out of focus. The wind has picked up, and the chimes are clattering. Koi rushes to them, and rips them from the hook. They crash to the deck, and Peri gasps, her face frozen in horror.

“I couldn't do it!” Koi screams. He punches the cabin. His knuckles drip red. “It's not me. I'm not dad, I'm not. . . I'm not a killer.” He slumps to the deck, puts his head in his hands. “I failed, Meadow. I didn't get a job.”

Chapter 6

I
remember when my mother almost lost Peri.

A complication, they said. Stillborn, most likely. She cried for hours. But my father did not.

He spent the day training Koi. Teaching him how to slit a man's throat, how to snap a neck.

He is the same way now, when he hears the news about my brother's failure. But it is not Koi who must train with him this time.

It is me. Because now the weight of our world is on my shoulders. The key to our survival is in my hands.

I swim around the houseboat, and he teaches me how to deal with real pain. There are nanites in our bodies, connected to a Pulse at the Perimeter that keeps them working. The nanites heal us, keep us alive and healthy.

“You'll need to learn how to stay alert when you're injured,” my father says. He's sitting in the dinghy above me.

“How?” I ask.

He pulls out his dagger and sinks the blade into my shoulder.

I scream. The world blurs. I fight to stay afloat, because the pain is fierce and threatens to suck me under. When he pulls the dagger out, I almost lose it. I can feel blood pouring from my shoulder, pooling around me in the water.

“Imagine if I'd put that blade through your heart,” my father says. “The nanites wouldn't be able to heal you, then.”

In minutes, the wound will close up, just like they always do.

My father pulls me into the dinghy. He lets me catch my breath. The flow of blood slows to a trickle. There will always be a mark.

“Let that scar be a reminder that death will always chase you,” my father whispers. He clutches the oar so tightly in his hands I'm afraid it is going to snap. “To escape it, you must respect it.”

“I will never respect death,” I say.

He sighs. “This world is eating away at your mother's sanity. I know you see it, too. Someday soon she could be gone. I'll die eventually, and it will be on your shoulders to feed your brother and sister. You are their last hope.”

I nod. There is nothing to say. Because he is right.

“Tomorrow we'll start your Fear Trials. You'll learn to defend yourself. You'll learn that this world demands strength. And you'll become strong so that you can provide for your brother and sister.”

He wipes my blood from his dagger and sheathes it against his thigh.

Chapter 7

T
he Fear Trials begin at dawn.

Peri is locked safely away in the bottom of the boat. My father and Koi are already on the bow. Koi won't look at me. He just stares at his toes. He is a shadow of himself.

“What do you know about The Fear Trials?” my father asks.

I lean against the railing. “I know it's an excuse for you to train me even more. As if we don't do that enough already.”

“
Meadow
,” Koi warns, shaking his head. My father glares at him, and he looks back down at his toes.

“It's a chance for you to prove yourself,” says my father. “And—” he unsheathes his dagger and drops it to the deck between us— “an opportunity for a prize.”

“Your dagger?” I ask.

It is my father's favorite possession. The weapon that he swears has kept him alive for so long. He smiles. “If you win the Fear Trials, you will win the dagger. I want you to have it.”

I have never even been able to touch it. I have never even had a weapon of my own.

Koi and I follow him down the rope ladder and settle into the dinghy. My father hands Koi the oars.

As Koi rows, he stares out at the waves. “If I'd trained harder, I might have been able to . . . I'd be working today. I wouldn't be here.”

“Don't,” I say. I grab his hands and squeeze them tight. “It's over and done.”

I should be angry at him. I should be furious, the way my father is, and a part of me wants that anger. But Koi is my brother. He is soft and gentle and he smiles the way Peri does, with the innocence of a child. He is a light in the darkness, and I love him. Nothing could ever take that away.

 

There is a jetty on the far side of the beach, an expanse of rock that juts out into the ocean like a finger. We hide the boat there, beneath layers of seaweed and palm fronds.

The beach is littered with people. There are too many to count. A man digs for sand fleas. A pregnant woman holds her swollen belly. A little boy splashes about in the water, laughing as he plays with a flat tire.

The sound is strange. It does not belong here. How nice it would be to still see the world through the eyes of a child. Instead it is all darkness and blood, danger and death.

“This will go in rounds,” my father says. “Each day, a different obstacle. We'll stay ashore until you complete them. Even when the Dark Time comes.”

We go right, heading deep into the trees, toward what remains of the Everglades. I breathe a sigh of relief.

“I don't want you to be afraid,” Koi whispers. He places his hand on my shoulder. “I want you to be strong, and do this right. So that you won't end up a disappointment like me.”

“I'm not afraid,” I say, shrugging him off as I duck under a thorny branch.

The truth is that I am terrified. Everything has changed.

We stop walking when we reach the river. It is at least half a mile wide, and murky, swirling with mud and vegetation. Sweat trickles down my back. I spot a piece of orange fabric, flapping in the wind, tied to the uppermost branches of a tree at the other side.

“Cross the swamp and get the flag,” my father says. He turns to Koi. “Do everything you can to stop her. Be the man I trained you to be. Not the boy you have become.”

Koi sucks in a breath. He looks like he is going to say something. But instead, he simply nods.

My father pulls a heavy chain from his backpack and wraps it around my ankles. Tight, tighter, until I couldn't walk if I wanted to. He threads a lock through the chain and tosses the key into the river.

He does the same to Koi.

Then he stands back, nods, and utters one word. “Begin.”

“I'm sorry for whatever happens next,” says Koi. Then he dives into the river.

I follow. It's warm, almost too warm, like something is pressing in around my lungs. And it gets deep fast. With my legs tied, I move slowly. I'm carrying dead weight. I try to use my arms at first, paddling like my father taught me.
Long strokes. Deep, even breaths, as if you are running.

The ocean has waves that help move me along, but the river is flat and still, and mostly fresh water, so it is not as easy to float. I have not trained for this. I go under. When I come up for air, my feet catch on something. My chin hardly breaks the surface.

“Dad!”

“You're afraid, Meadow. Don't be.” He watches me with cold eyes. “Stay calm, and free yourself.”

I go under again, kicking and fighting. I manage to kick off my shoes.

I'm going to drown. I'm going to die here.

I surface, take a gulp of air, and go back under, forcing myself to stay calm. I bend and unhook the chains from whatever nasty thing it was caught on and push to the surface like a dolphin.

Koi reaches the other side of the river just before I do. He drags himself onto the shore and starts fumbling with his chains.

As soon as I can stand, I dive under and squirm out of the chains, my ankles slick with blood and mud. Then I turn and run.

I don't get far before Koi tackles me from behind.

We go down, hard, and my mouth is full of leaves and dirt. Koi grabs at me, but I kick back and feel a rush of blood as my foot meets his nose. I'm only a few steps ahead when he dives, his fingers locking around my ankle. “Sorry, little sister,” he says. He twists my foot, hard, and something snaps.

Fire, white-hot and angry.

I have never felt pain like this.

“Get up, Meadow!” my father roars. “Pain can control you only if you let it! What if it was Peri you were racing for? Would you stop then?”

The answer is obvious. I would never stop if it were Peri.

I stand and stumble forward. Already, the nanites are stitching up my broken bones, piecing them back together, but the pain is still bad and my vision blurs.

When I reach the tree, Koi is already halfway up, clinging to the trunk like a bug.

“You're going to pay for that!” I scream.

I grab a rock. I take a second to catch my breath, steady my aim. Then I throw the rock as hard as I can. It stays true to its course and hits Koi's right hand.

He yells in surprise and falls from the tree. I have seconds to break ahead. I rush forward, still hobbling, and leap over Koi just before he gets back to his feet. I am lighter. Faster. I used to climb the mast when I was Peri's age. Climbing is something I am good at, as easy as breathing.

I scramble up, branch to branch, the pattern steady and even. Push with my feet, pull with my arms. My ankle has nearly healed. I stretch, ready to haul myself up one last time and grab the orange fabric. I want to end this and go home. I want to prove that I can win.

My fingertips touch the branch overhead just as I feel Koi's hand on my foot.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

My strength is no match for his. I fall from the tree and hit the ground.

I hear a crack, a ringing in my ears.

Then the world is doused in black.

Chapter 8

I
wake up on the houseboat to the sound of knocking.

When I sit up, my head wobbles all wrong. Peri is asleep on the mattress beside me, curls scattered across her face. I sweep them away and see dried tears on her cheeks.

She must have thought I was dead, when my father and Koi brought me home.

The memory rushes back. I lost. My father is sound asleep beside Koi, his dagger clutched in one hand, a rifle in the other. I hate them both.

Someone knocks. Three times, the signal. I tiptoe to the door, move the slab of wood out of the way, and swing it open.

My mother is backlit by the moon, her silver hair illuminated so she looks like a ghost. She stumbles forward as a wave crashes against the boat. I catch her, feel her weight as she leans against me. “Where were you?” I ask.

She takes a deep breath, then pushes past me and sits down at the table. “Working. Always working.”

“Koi failed his test,” I say. “He failed, and now everything is up to me, and I can't handle it.”

“You can,” she says. “Because you're different than your brother.”

I don't know what she means. I sit down across from her and place my hand over hers. She stiffens for a second, then relaxes. I lean my head against her shoulder. “Peri is upset.”

“That's why she has you and your brother,” she says. “The beautiful thing about family is that we always step in for one another. Wouldn't you agree?” She runs her fingers through my hair, the same way she used to when I was just a little girl.

“Koi isn't himself right now.” I want to stay here, relax into her. Instead I scoot away and look her in the eyes. “And Peri was upset today because she wanted
you.
”

“Meadow, I can't always . . .” She stops talking, looks at her hands for a moment. Her eyes widen, as if she is afraid of what she sees. “I'm busy.”

“You're losing yourself,” I whisper. “We need you to stop disappearing. We need you to be our
mother
.”

She shakes her head. The silver seashell charm on her wrist clinks as she stands up and pushes away from the table. “Sleep. What we all need to do right now is sleep.”

I watch her stumble across the cabin and curl up against my father's side.

In seconds, she is away from the world.