The Ward (34 page)

I pull back on the steering wheel, angling her up, up, and over. Soon enough, I’m dangling from my seat. The belt digs into the tops of my thighs—I feel myself slipping, but my butt will hold me well enough. At the beeping noise, I look around the pit, then realize it’s coming from my cuffcomm. It’s gotta be Callum—I can’t look now, though. I jam on the accelerator. Propelled forward, my Omni grazes over the other’s domed glass roof.

I won’t slow down
—I’m not that stupid—
and really, I don’t need to see her face. I only need one guess. The girl looks up through the glass and even if all I saw was her long, straight, black hair, I’d recognize her. But I see the eyes too. Coal dark, set beneath high, arched eyebrows. It’s Kitaneh.

Shocking
. Anger snakes through my chest.
The girl tried to kill Callum. . . .

She watches me hurtle past.

Maybe I am that stupid.

I blow her a kiss, then shove my middle finger up against the glass of the roof.

My Omni takes off for Mad Ave. If I can get her to follow me underneath the boardwalk—the super-crowded-with-innocents boardwalk—I’m hoping that she won’t want to risk an accident.

I’m just hoping that there’s a heart in there. Somewhere. Even though she kills people by protecting a spring that could save people. I know what she said, about it not being medicine. But she gave me no reason.
Why not. Why can’t it be?

Either way, alls I know is that she wants back what I’ve got in my rubber sack.

I race to the end of the building, aiming to cut an L around it and lift the Omni closer to the walkway. Blood rushes to my head and I feel like gravity is going to drop me out of my seat, but the belt holds tight. This move is a gamble, but Kitaneh is way closer than she should be. Clearly, I’ve angered the beast.

Then I feel the waves rocking behind me, even with my lead. A quick glance in the periscope shows me that she’s pulled the same upside-down whirligig.

I wheel to the right, or left, since I’m upside down. In the semi-open water beneath the boardwalk, I straighten out the Omni. The veins in my head—practically mountains growing out from my forehead by now—return to normal size, and the relief of all the blood flooding back to its proper places nearly blacks me out.

I’m only a few feet below the walk when I see the shadow of her Omni behind me.

On the dash, my VoiceNav screen lights up, shows me TV snow.
But
I didn’t turn it on . . . ?

“Omni-to-Omni comm request. Do you accept the transmission?” the nav system’s synth voice asks me.

I look at the gray screen, unsure. This is not a feature my Rimbo has, nor is it one I want Benny to install, ever.

Do I accept?
All she’s going to do is try to convince me to give the water back. That, or she’ll tell me that she’s going to kill me. Neither of which I care to hear.

But . . . I’m curious.

“Yes,” I say, and it still feels strange speaking into the air.

The snow flickers in and out, is replaced by Kitaneh’s face, cool and unfazed, on my dash. “You accepted,” she says, arching her brows. Then, with a nod, “Thank you.”

Not quite the reaction I’d expected
, I think, realizing how little I know about this girl—this
ancient
girl. And all of a sudden, I feel bad for her. I feel bad that she married Derek, and that he would go behind her back kissing girls like me. Who are, like, 3 percent her age.

“You’re welcome . . . ,” I answer, quietly.

The screen goes gray for a moment, then all I hear is her voice: “Please . . .” she pleads, and I’m sure I look as shocked as I’m feeling. She’s saying
please
? Then her voice grows harder. “You think you’re doing the right thing, and perhaps . . .” She cuts out, but it’s not because of the connection. She’s stopped speaking. When her face returns to my dash, she looks desperate. Tired.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she says. “But the risk is too great. Governor Voss is no fool. Until the airdrop happens, he’ll be waiting for us. He’ll be on the lookout to see what we do.”

Though Kitaneh is probably right—he will be—I’m too close to give up. The sack is full; my sister’s life is in there and so are all the other sick. “I’m sorry,” I say, reaching for the button to drop the call.

Just before I press it, I hear: “Forgive me—”

The line goes silent.

I check the periscope again.

She’s still way too close
—I have to lose her
. So I zigzag, the best thing to do when someone’s coming after you like this. You can’t
just
zigzag, though, ’cause then that becomes a pattern, and they’ll just catch on. I weave between the boardwalk’s pylons, mixing it around—one, one, one, then skipping two or three and crossing over to the other side’s row.

I can’t keep this up.

The tank holds only enough gas to keep the steamer boiling water. It’ll be empty soon. Is that her plan? Skunk me out till I got no place to go but hell in a handbag? Her Omni don’t have laser guns or anything, so it’s not like she could blow me outta the water.

Then it dawns on me.

That’s exactly what she’ll try and do. I know full well she’d like to end me—all she’s gotta do is keep tailing me until
I
blow me outta the water. Collide with something. A wall. A pylon. Anything hard enough to make smithereens of me.

Okay
, I think. I can work with that.

Once more I reach for the periscope. I bring my eye to it, but I’m too late—all I see is the bullet-shaped nose of her Omni clipping my tail.

My own Omni careens forward—I twist the wheel away from pylons, but one of them swipes my side anyway. If this were above water, I’d be setting off in a tailspin to the moon right now. But we’re not, so the mobile just reels out, then slows.

I regain control, but something feels off kilter.

At first, I hear a hiss. Like there’s a water snake trapped in the mobile. Then, from the battered side that took the blow, a spray of water shoots through. I’m struck in the jugular by so much pressure, I don’t know how it doesn’t pierce skin.

I need to end this. I need to end this
now
. And I can think of a perfectly good, possibly suicidal way.

If Kitaneh wants me to smash myself into a brick wall . . . well, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

39

5:15 P.M., SUNDAY

I
swallow so loud, I can hear it in my ears. This better work—and by “work” I mean, in one hour I get to hear Callum ream me out for pancaking his Omni. That right there?

Best-case scenario.

‘Cause if I’m listening to him yell at me, it means I’m alive. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Of all my plans . . . this one is by far the craziest.

I veer left, into the open channel.

Turning off the belly props, I bring the mobile down a few feet, though we’re both still too close to the surface for my comfort. Closer to the canal’s floor means farther from Mad Ave and all those people. At worst, the explosion will send a few people in for a dip. Better than burning them to death.

There’s a building back behind me that should do the trick.

Of course, ain’t no need to be picky when it comes to blowing myself up. I jiggle at the wheel, veering the sub left and right, making it look like I’ve lost control.

Chief, Governor Voss, and Kitaneh all need to think what happens next is an accident. If she’s right and the governor is keeping an eye out, my being dead can only help what Callum and I are trying to pull off. Governor Voss will never expect anything from a dead girl.

I gun the engine.

Kitaneh follows me out a hundred feet or so. Then I shift 180 degrees, turning back the way I came, aiming to cross beneath Mad Ave at a perpendicular.

“Autopilot. In fifteen seconds, shift speed to a hundred and thirty miles per hour,” I say to the VoiceNav. “Then shift angle to forty-five degrees downward.” I’d just autogun her right away, but I’ll need those ten seconds to get into the airlock without the Omni sliding me around. And a forty-five-degree angle should be wide enough so that Callum’s Omni will hit the building. I’m no Benny, though—I never liked playing pool.

I’ll need to jump ship before she hits.
I could do it now. . . .

Checking the periscope again, I see Kitaneh.
Not now, too soon
. She’ll spot me for sure.

I look around the Omni, sit back down. All of a sudden it’s no longer an Omni—the phrase
buried alive
comes to mind, though these days we just weight the bodies into the canal or burn them when we can. Or, if they were important enough, we’ll send them down the Strait on a boat. We don’t put our dead in coffins. But that’s exactly what this Omni’s starting to look like. A coffin.

It closes itself around me, and my insides start to shake. The soles of my Hessians drum against the floor, and to kill the nerves in my hands, I squash them both under my butt. I’ve been nervous before, but this is different.

The sack. All that water . . . it’s sitting right there.

Too much. Too much responsibility
. Looking at it, again I wonder if every life is equal. If every life carries the same weight, has the same value.

Take that sack. What’s in there can save a few hundred lives. Then take me: one person. If every life is equal, then that sack is more important than me, if only ’cause it holds more lives.

But what if everyone in that sack is evil? Murderers. And I, not knowing, give my life to save them. What then? Are we all still equal?

It’s the most confusing word problem in the world, where every number changes depending on what you do or don’t do. My head spins. “Get it together—” I moan to the dashboard, because I have to stop the panic before it disables every ounce of courage I ever thought I had.

“Brack,”
I curse to myself. “You
can’t
die. It’s just Aven. Forget the others.”

It’s just Aven
. I have to make it—if not for the other numbers, for her.

And like someone’s opened a window, that does it. I can put the math problem aside, I can breathe again.

Never liked numbers anyway.

“Countdown to autopilot, please?” I ask, steeling myself for the next . . .

“Ten seconds.”

Ten seconds
. She says it so kindly. Ladylike. Classy. Makes me think I’m headed for a ball, not a brick wall.

Turning off the headlight and the belly lamp sends the mobile pitch dark.
Gotta get a move on
.

I walk back into the airlock hatch, still dripping, and wait. Crouched in a ball, I’m the same size as the red rubber sack swung over my side.
I’m the same damn size
—except I’m just one life. Numbers pop back into my head again—that thing has to count for hundreds. Thousands, maybe.

Just one
.

“Seven seconds.”

Just one.

“Six seconds.”

Can’t jump now—have to wait until the sub shifts to the new speed. That’ll take three seconds, at least.

“Five seconds.”

Then, when I feel the sub shift down, I’ll know I’m out of Kitaneh’s line of sight. She’ll be above me. That’s when I’ll hit the red button and land myself back in the brack.

The seconds drag on, each longer than the next.

I clutch the sack by my side. Hugging my knees in this curled-up position, I imagine the one life in there that matters: Aven. I picture her next to me. She’s telling me I’m doing the right thing. That she doesn’t blame me for choosing Callum.

That thought though, it kills me. My eyes sting and I blink away a tear that starts on a path over the bridge of my nose. There’s hardly enough room to wipe it away. I inhale and exhale. I realize my nails are digging into the sack.

Fear freezes me up. I loosen my grip and breathe out all the air in my lungs, prepping for the dive and the air hunger.

“Three seconds.”

I’ll push the button. Swim out, then down. Under Kitaneh’s sub. Behind her. Up. Get myself dockside, onto Mad Ave.

“Two seconds.”

Then, back to Callum.

Kitaneh will think I’m dead. Then she’ll tell Derek, who’ll tell Terrence, and the chain of gossip in the Ward will spread faster than the Blight. Everyone will know.

“Zero. Shifting to speed one hundred and thirty miles per hour, shifting to angle forty-five degrees.”

The Omni bucks and sways; the damage has made scrap of it.
Not just yet
, I think.
Let’s go out with a bang
. I know it’s only metal. It can’t think. But this is all I can do.

We jerk from side to side and I feel the nose dip, angling itself toward the building. It’s pulling the speed, all its belts and cogs on the inside straining against the added weight—a low layer of water already slicking the floor. Faster. It’s getting faster. One more jolt and it’ll really be moving. Propulsion pushes me back. I claw the floor with my fingertips. Now is no time to screw up.

I push the red button.

Water rushes in, a shock of cold everywhere. Have to wait until the airlock is mostly full before I swim out, otherwise the water will just push me back in.

Soon, I’m submerged. One last chug of air, mouth pressed against the roof. I realize the last thing on Earth my mouth might ever touch is the roof of Callum’s Omni.

I push myself out of the doomed mobile, sack hauled over my shoulders. Seconds later, orange headlights shine directly overhead, as Kitaneh’s Omni sends a rush of water my way. I’m thrown into a somersault. The weight of the sack slows me some, and disorients me more. I try to keep my lips tight together, imagining that they’ve been sewn shut, but they open, and my own air bubbles drift away from me.

At first I hate myself for being weak, for letting them go. But then I realize . . .

They are my compasses. When the somersaults stop, down is up is up is down. . . . These bubbles are the only thing that remind me which way ain’t lying.

I follow them, not sure where I am under Mad Ave.

Don’t care.