The Sowing (45 page)

“Soren Skaarsgard. Well,” Miah looks Soren up and down, “I see you haven’t taken a bath since I last saw you.”

Soren’s smile is so wide it looks like it might take over his whole face, and he throws his arms around Jeremiah in an embrace that might knock another man down. But Jeremiah matches Soren kilo for kilo, and they clap each other on the back and pound for so long I’m about ready to warn them these tunnels could collapse on us at any minute when they finally pull apart.

“I knew you’d come around eventually,” Soren says to Jeremiah.

“Well, when Vale told me you’d been back to the capital and hadn’t bothered to come say hello, I had to track you down to exact my revenge.”

Soren’s expression dims for a moment, but the smile flares back to his face and he claps Miah on the shoulder one last time.

“Let’s get you out of here,” he says and steps aside, letting Miah out of his tiny holding room.

“Yeah, it took you two assholes long enough.” Jeremiah suddenly glares at me in mock anger and I roll my eyes.

“There was a lot going on,” I respond. “Let’s go, we need to move. Soren, you know these tunnels—lead the way.” I’m trying to be deferential, but maybe anything from my mouth sounds like a command. Soren’s eyes narrow and I think he’s about to spit at me. He thinks better of it, though, and turns, heading back the way we came and in the direction of the mess hall.

“Seriously, though, Vale,” Miah mutters to me as we jog, “what’s going on up there?”

I fill him in quickly on the events of the last hour, and Jeremiah’s face falls when he hears about Brinn.

“I never knew her, but Moriana said she was one of the Sector’s best scientists. And now Remy.…”

The halls are tomb-like and skeletal without light or people. When we turn into the mess hall, Remy’s eyes are dead and cold, and she doesn’t even acknowledge me. Soren quickly sits down next to her and throws an arm around her, and Jeremiah shoots me a questioning look.
What’s going on?
his eyes seem to say. When Remy doesn’t seem to notice Soren either, a grim, bitter smile briefly flutters onto my face. A distant explosion rocks the foundations, though, wiping away all traces of jealousy and bringing me back to the danger of the moment.

“Everything’s deserted. We’re just waiting for Eli and Kenzie,” Firestone says in his lazy drawl. He’s the only one who seems unperturbed by the fact that the Resistance base is being decimated. 

A dim flash of blue light down the hall alerts us all to danger, and pounding feet and shouting echo through the halls. Remy is suddenly on her feet, flame in her eyes. I can see her chest heaving, even in the shadowy torchlight. Jahnu, Firestone, and I pull our Bolts up and at the ready, and Soren’s knife glints in the light.

“Eli!” I recognize Kenzie’s voice, breathless, and there’s another flash of blue down the corridor. My heart thuds to a stop, but around me, everyone is moving. Jahnu and the boy are physically restraining Remy, pulling her back, away from the fight. Soren’s got his arm thrown out against Jeremiah’s chest, telling him not to move. I realize only three of us are armed, and I leap into action, running to the hallway where Kenzie and Eli are coming from. Firestone is somehow at my side. We kneel together and sight down the halls, where I can see Kenzie running frantically, pulling Eli by the hand, who’s stumbling and looks dazed. I blink twice and my contacts outline the distant soldiers in red, and I know they’ll have similar sights on Kenzie and Eli. I aim and prepare to fire, but before I can even get a shot off, Firestone has casually loosed three low-energy warning shots down the hall. The men duck behind a corner or into a door and disappear. I glance over at him, surprised.

“Well, we don’t want to kill ’em if we don’t have to,” he says easily in response to my inquisitive look. Kenzie and Eli dash past us into the mess hall, and we quickly turn and follow them. Firestone shuts and bolts the door behind us.

“Go!” Kenzie shouts at Jahnu, who has been waiting tensely for orders. Without a word he turns, dragging Remy by the elbow, and leads the team out through a separate passage. Firestone and I take up the rear, but there’s not much time to check behind us. We’re all sprinting through the base, the last remnants of the fleeing, defeated Resistance.

31 - REMY

Winter 3, Sector Annum 106, 07h12
Gregorian Calendar: December 23

The sun is risen now, pinkish yellow in the sky as rays feather out through the treetops. I clutch my knees to my body, pulling them in tight for warmth like I did when I was a child. The forest around the boulder I’ve chosen for my perch is brown and wintergreen, and the chill air nips me playfully, smiling at me, beckoning me to its games. I do not smile back. I see my mother’s face in the treetops and the clouds, everywhere. I wish we’d burned her, but maybe the Sector’s grenades will have done that for me. Maybe the explosives started an inferno that consumed her body and will distribute the carbon remnants of her soul through the world to start something new. I hope that’s what happened. The thought of her body rotting, desolate, in the bleak and empty streets of our twice-abandoned city is enough to steal the blood from my heart.

This is our rendezvous point, an old factory about a hundred and fifty kilometers away from the main base. It’s long since crumbled and been retaken by the surrounding forest, beaten back for so many years and now returned with a vengeance. My dad’s team was supposed to rendezvous here, too, but they still haven’t shown up. I wonder if they couldn’t get to their vehicle, or if they had to walk, or if.…

My team made it here last night at around one in the morning, a long blurry trek that is already fading from memory. The tunnels were funereal and empty. The second home I’ve had to put behind me was easier than the first. We were dogged for a while by the black ops, but we lost them in the maze of underground tunnels. Jahnu and Kenzie led us up above ground, to our emergency escape vehicle hidden in some old garage. It was a small thing, a modified hovercar that was nearly impossible to cram eight people in. Bear had to ride stuffed on the floor, clutching nervously to the seat as Firestone zipped us out of the city, swearing at every shadow and cloud.

I didn’t look at Vale, and though I felt his eyes on me a few times, he never tried to speak to me, to my great relief. Just kept quiet. I know he didn’t bring the airships down on us. It wasn’t his fault. Soren and I should have guessed we would be tracked back to base—but we didn’t have much choice. I still don’t trust Vale, but Eli told me not to worry about him now.

I keep thinking of Dad, whether he’s okay, whether they’ll make it to the rendezvous point. Soren told me not to think about those things. “They’ll be here,” he said last night, when I was trying to sleep. “They’ll come.” He showed me how to practice breathing, calming exercises that he said would help me sleep. “Count your breaths and watch as you breathe in and out. Count them one to ten. And then do it again. If you start to think about your parents, or Tai, or anything else that’s bothering you, that’s okay. Just let the thought happen, and then let it go and return to your breathing.” And then he held my hand while I closed my eyes and tried for a few minutes. It helped, but not much.

At the rendezvous point, everyone except Eli was surprised to find a well-stocked little house, ready for visitors. Ten sleeping bags with extra blankets. Dried fruit, meat, and purified water. A little communications station and even a two-dimensional computing display. Eli either knew all this was waiting for us at the rendezvous or was too dazed to know what was going on. We couldn’t quite figure it out. Kenzie thinks he got a concussion when the soldiers in the tunnel first started firing at them. “He dived to dodge a Bolt, and I think he hit his head on the tunnel wall,” she said. Once he heard that, Vale stepped in and took over. Apparently part of his training in military command was basic first aid and medical knowledge, so he volunteered to keep watch over Eli and make sure he didn’t fall asleep and drank plenty of water. I didn’t like the idea of placing Eli’s life in Vale’s hands, but when Soren and I protested, Kenzie said Eli wanted us to work with him. “For now,” she said, her voice at a whisper.

Jeremiah, I barely remember from the Academy. He was Vale and Soren’s year, so I didn’t interact with him much. I don’t like the fact that he came here with Vale. He and Soren spent a lot of time talking—or maybe it would be better said that they spent a lot of time eating. The two of them wolfed down more food than the rest of us combined. It was only at Soren’s encouragement that Jeremiah would touch it, but once he started, he couldn’t stop.

“Man, this cheese is great,” Jeremiah kept saying. He speared something on the plate and his eyes went wide. “What is this?”

Soren grinned at him. “It’s a tomato. A real one.”

“Where do you get this stuff?”

“We make it or grow it,” he said, to which Jeremiah nearly spat out his food.

“You
make
it? Why? That’s what the Farms are for!” Bear, nearby, took offense at that.

“Maybe if more people grew their own food, I coulda lived in the capital, too. Maybe I coulda gone to the Academy.”

“You’re from one of the Farms?” Jermiah asked, eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Yeah,” Bear said, puffing his chest out. “I found Remy and Soren out … in the Wilds,” he says. His next words are quieter. “Maybe if more people grew their own food, Sam would still be here.” Soren’s smile slipped off his face at the memory and I turned away, the numbness seeping back through my limbs. So many dead these last few days.

When it was finally time to sleep, Vale said he’d take the first watch so he could keep Eli awake at the same time. But all I could think about was how easy it would be for Vale to murder Eli while the rest of us were sleeping, so I said I would do it. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping much anyway.

“Are you sure?” Vale said, as though doubting my ability to stay awake the whole night. “Shouldn’t you—”

“Fuck off,” I told him. He shut up after that.

Soren offered to stay awake with me and Eli, but I told him I’d be fine. I made him go to bed. But he wouldn’t before he gave me his knife and a kiss on the forehead.

“Use it to kill Vale if you need to. Or anyone. Who knows who’s out there?” So I tucked the knife into my belt and sat next to Eli outside in the starry darkness. Jahnu came and sat next to us, putting his arms around me, claiming he couldn’t sleep either.

“Where’s Kenzie?” I whispered, making sure she wouldn’t miss him.

“Sound asleep,” he responded kindly. “But I couldn’t. I thought, if I’m going to be awake all night, I might as well keep watch with you. And I know neither of you should be alone right now.” We didn’t say much after that, none of us. The three of us pulled blankets around our shoulders and sat outside for the rest of the night, watching for Team Blue, my dad’s team, or Corine’s black ops, or airships raining fire from above, Eli’s head in my lap as I played with his curly hair to keep him awake. And when Soren’s breathing exercises didn’t work and I couldn’t stop remembering my mother and sister and I couldn’t stop worrying about my father, Eli held my head against his chest while I cried.

Eventually, towards the creeping dawn, Eli fell asleep, and Jahnu said it was okay. I told him I needed to take a walk, so I left them there and wandered off, which is how I came upon this boulder in a little copse in the woods where I am sitting now. Counting from one to ten over and over and over again. Losing count and losing myself. Finding myself again. Finding my breath again. Counting from one to ten.

“Remy.” The voice startles me and I whirl, Soren’s knife drawn and ready in the span of a hummingbird’s wing beat. It’s Vale. His hands are up, defensively. A quick scan tells me he’s unarmed. Well at least he doesn’t have anything in his hands. I exhale. His presence is comforting, in a way. With him, I can let my grief give way to anger.

“Go away.” I don’t trust him enough to turn my back on him.

“No,” he says, which surprises me. I raise my eyebrows at him, and his face is haggard, his eyes tired with dark circles under them, his sea-green irises dimmed to a hollow grey. He hasn’t slept either.

“What do you want?”

“I know you wish it were me instead of your mother.” He takes a step closer, but I recoil, and he stops. “You wish it had been me.”

 “Yes,” I respond savagely.

“Two lives I owe you now.” I glare at him. “What do you want from me?” he asks.

“Nothing. Go.” 

“No. I owe you a debt and I won’t—”

“What you owe me you can never pay back!” I shout at him, and the outburst surprises me, though Vale’s expression never changes. As though he was expecting my hatred. I close my eyes and calm myself. “You’re right. It should have been you and not my mother. Not Tai.” Vale looks down at the knife in my trembling hand.

“You could settle the debt right now.” I consider this. I try to imagine, to contemplate the physical possibility of putting a knife in Vale’s heart, or across his throat. I feel the weight of the knife in my palm, its balance and length. His eyes going glassy, his body limp, falling to the mossy carpet of the forest floor. Just like Sam, I realize, and the memory of Sam falling to the deck of the boat with a knife hilt sticking from his throat chills me. I don’t want that.

“You owe me two lives. Yours won’t satisfy that debt,” I say and stick the knife back in my belt.

Vale nods and lets his glance slink away to the ground.

“Here,” he says, pulling something out of his pocket. “You gave this to me a long time ago. I think you should have it back.” He holds out his hand, and I recognize my grandfather’s old compass, the K.A.L. engraved in fine, elegant script on the bottom. Granddad used to take it with him when he went out exploring, and he gave it to Tai before he died. A compass, he said, is more than a navigational tool; it’s a symbol of finding true north. A symbol of truth. I stare at it in Vale’s palm, remembering the day I gave it to him, remembering that he and Tai had been friends once, and that he, too, had been devastated by her death. I reach out and take it wordlessly, my fingers lightly brushing his. In my hand, the metal is warm from his skin.