UNBREATHABLE (2 page)

I run my tongue along my suddenly dry lips, but he continues to watch me intently. He doesn’t seem to have noticed my mask. Or maybe he did. I can’t think.

“I came for this.” The words slip out in a whisper. It sounds harsh in the quiet of the room. I sweep my hand out toward the mounds. It’s obvious, isn’t it? There is nothing else but metal and glass.

He narrows his eyes. “You've ruined everything.”

I blink in surprise. Those are
my
words, spilling from his lips.
He
ruined everything, not me.
He
signaled the alarm.
He
was reckless, careless. Our eyes lock.

I open my mouth to say something, anything, when footsteps shatter the silence. The boy looks past me, deathly still. Alarm strikes his face and hardens his jaw. And I can’t help it. I memorize him. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again once I leave this place.
If
I leave this place.

His eyes flash when they dart to the empty sack in my hand, reminding me of someone. But before my mind snatches the hazy memory, he murmurs one word.

“Run.”

But I can’t. There are soldiers spilling in from the doors on either side, their long shadows filling the room. Whispering voices roar in my ears. In heartbeats, I’ll be frozen in panic and I won’t know what to do.

The boy grabs my wrist. I flinch, but his grip tightens before I can pull away.

A blast of blue, the size of my closed fist, flies past my right cheek.
Shock blasts
, I think. I grab my mask off the floor and find the courage to meet the boy’s unreadable eyes for barely a heartbeat before we’re running—and I have no choice but to trust him.

I’m half-dragged between the piles of metal and glass, stumbling over razor-sharp scraps of steel and crystal. Another ball of current whizzes past my arm, skinning my sleeve with a blazing hiss.

One blast is a shock, two is darkness, three is death.

“Faster,” I cry. I stumble over my own feet and twist my ankle. Pain zips up my leg. But I grit my teeth against the throbbing pain and push forward.

When he drops my hand, I falter. But the door is only a short distance away, and it’s all I need to keep me going. I run beside him. The dark night will save me. Us.

A blast slams onto the door and I flinch back. Sizzling currents die soon after, leaving no mark. Another lands a foot ahead of me and I leap over it, feeling the heat rising from the floor.

“Almost there.” I nearly stumble at the unnerving calm of the boy’s voice. But it gives me courage.

“Stop!” The soldiers’ shouts echo again from behind us. I reach the door and fling it open. Then I notice—

The boy isn't behind me.

The cool, dry wind and smothering darkness beckon me from outside. But I turn back. My breath chokes my lungs.
No
.

The boy has been shot.

He writhes on the colorless floor.

His features are contorted in pain. His body jerks against the currents of the shock blast pinning him down. I hear the snaps of electricity when his mouth opens in a soundless cry, and my blood burns.

The soldiers run closer. I scan their faces, one by one, relieved they’re focused on the boy—until one of them looks up. I step back, fear closing my throat when I lock gazes with the soldier who shattered Father’s scope. Those pale eyes flicker in recognition. He doesn’t expect to see me, not so soon after Father’s death. Not ever.

The panic comes crashing. Now, when freedom is one step away, it takes over. It’s because of him, the pale-eyed soldier.

He killed the only family I had.

I look back at the boy as his body stills, and find him looking at me, his eyes a roaring rush of deep blue. Beautiful, I realize with a jolt. Determination sets into his face and hardens his features. But he won’t move with the soldiers surrounding him.

I trace his lips as he mouths a single word.

Run.

I stare at him. The memories come rushing back, and even as I suddenly remember him, I’m certain he doesn’t remember me. His face blurs in my vision. A sob racks my body.

I run.

Footsteps echo my own. I don’t have to look back to know it’s the soldier who broke Father’s scope.

He doesn’t want to catch me because I was in the Chamber. No, he wants to rectify the mistake he made in letting me live longer than my father.

I’ll end up where that boy will be tomorrow at noon. Crime is punished on Jutaire in one way only: with a noose. And if there’s one credit we can offer Chancellor Kole, it’s uniformity. Hangings only ever happen at noon, in the Gathering for all of Jutaire to see and know.

Fear edges into my vision, making the dark night even darker. I run faster, until the world is no more than a blur around me, giving me the illusion of safety, because what you can’t see can’t hurt you. My empty pouch flutters against my thigh, reminding me of my failed mission with every step. A searing pain slices through my lungs, and I can’t think straight. My muscles clench, and when I stumble once, twice, down the hill, I’m certain I won’t make it.

The soldier shouts again and I hear a few words out of the slew—
wait, come back
—words that confuse me. I don’t bother to slow my pace as I take off down the hill and I tumble down half way before picking myself up. Rocks scratch my face and hands. I want to freeze in the middle of our empty planet and disappear into the endless darkness above me, into the stars forever staring at me. Because what reason is there? I’ve lived a life of nothing for so long.

But when I close my eyes, I see Earth, and beside it, that boy.

Run
. The single word echoes in my mind. Every time I stumble on the rocky ground underfoot, I see the soldiers bending over him, roughly pulling him to his feet. I see his eyes boring into me as if I’m not some hopeless girl whose death would never be mourned. He could have easily slipped through the door and left. But he pulled me along, even when I slowed him down.

So I don’t slow down again. I owe him that much.

When nothing but the wind howls in my ears, I pause and look back, only to confirm what I already know: the soldier is long gone. But I don’t stop until I pass the rows and rows of homes and slam my door shut and collapse on the floor.

Moonlight filters through the grimy window, illuminating a square foot of space. Words, fears, thoughts pound in my mind like the soldiers’ fists on our door three nights ago. I heave breath after breath of oxygen, now that the addicting air of Jutaire is gone. Every door seals tight as soon as it closes and almost immediately oxygen flows into our noses.

Gradually, my breathing slows to a normal pace. In the dark, images flicker one after the other. Father’s thin neck, secured in frayed rope. The boy and his intense eyes. The lies hidden in the Chamber. The pale-eyed soldier, calling me back—not
ordering
, I realize, but
calling
.

I left the safety of my home to steal something that could get me killed and possibly prove Earth exists.

Where did that courage come from?

A muffled cry shatters the silence. I start and look around, but only my pulse races in this room. The sound was my own.

I release a shuddering breath, and feel the loneliness like a weight pressing over me. Even when Father was alive I was lonely, with him stuck in his books, teaching himself to write and read. But
this
, this inexplicable emptiness in my heart and in my life, is different.

The sand coating the ground scratches against the soles of my feet when I shuffle to my bed. I don’t bother to light a candle before I pull the sheets over my head and disappear. Not even the tiny yellow flames like those on Earth can give me comfort now.

I pull my mask from my pocket and place it beside me, rubbing absently over the grimy, dusty surface of the Louen. It’s ironic that we owe our existence to the Jute, who we see as cruel and hurtful. Without them, we wouldn’t have Louen for our masks.

My breath catches. The boy, the soldiers—

They saw me without my mask.

They’ll come for me. The soldier with the pale eyes. Chancellor Kole. They’ll mistake me for a Jute and drag me to the border of human territory, to die beneath the acidic rain.

Does it matter?

I squash the thought down with a clench of my jaw. It
does
matter. I have to complete what Father started. I need to go back to the Chamber, steal the metal and glass I couldn’t steal tonight, make a scope and gather people. Together, we have a chance of building a ship. I have to believe that.

I sit up.

The boy. His straight nose, his perfect lips mouthing that one word. He didn't have a mask. He was breathing the toxic air just as I was.

Could he be like me? Deep inside, I know I’m not Jute – I can breathe oxygen, while Jute cannot. Maybe he isn’t Jute either. We haven’t seen one in human territory in years. He might know what we are.

We.

Nervousness trills through my veins as my resolve grows. If I can risk my life once, I can risk it again. If the boy is anything like me, then he could have answers. About what I am, Earth, and Father’s redemption—which will all have to wait.

Three nights ago, Galileo saw the Earth. With a scope of metal and glass, stolen goods that in turn stole his life. I saw it too, when I stood beside him beneath the sky so dark. I saw the colors swirling unto one another, white, blue, green. Colors that don’t exist here.

I was his daughter. Was, because he denounced me when I denied him. Was, because he is dead and I am alive.

That night, Father and I trekked up the hill, where anything and everything seemed possible. There’s a sense of freedom that comes at such a height. It tingled through me as I leaned back against a boulder, fully aware of the dust and sand that would layer my back when I stood. The dust seemed to cling to our every breath, and as much as I hated it, I was used to it being a part of our lives. Besides, nothing could stop me from looking up at the depthless, beautiful night sky.

There’s nothing more beautiful to me than the stars. There’s something magical about them, and strong. They survive in a sea of black, shining and glowing despite the smothering darkness.

I’ve been trying to do the same. To survive, despite the harshness of our world, where food is scarce, rain is deadly, and life is bleak. Sometimes, though, it’s hard. Sometimes, I want to be like the stars that burst free.

Father said from Earth, some stars formed constellations. A picture to show us humans where to go or signs of societies past. On Jutaire, they are a mess of dots. Clusters here, scatterings there. But they are stars, something Jutaire shares with Earth, and that is enough for me.

From where I sat that night, the houses spread to my left and the Chamber stood isolated far to my right. Ahead of me was the market, the gallows in its center, bathed in moonlight. Behind the empty market stalls were the crophouses, a semi-circle of life from Earth.

This was my world.

So small, so uniform, so incomplete.

That night, Father set up the scope I didn’t even know he had made, took me by the hand, and wordlessly showed it to me: the planet Earth. It was real. It hadn’t exploded as the rumors whispered. It hadn’t shattered into a billion bits that the universe swallowed whole. A planet that should have been destroyed, that didn’t exist, now
did
. It made me lightheaded.

And I tripped.

The mask fell from my skin.

Who thinks before breathing?

I inhaled.

Heartbeats are all it takes for a human to find death once the air of Jutaire touches their lungs. But my heart was beating in my chest. I was still breathing. I wasn’t choking to death.

I could have sworn the particles were wreaking havoc inside my quivering body. But even as I sat there, reeling with incomprehension and fear, I knew something was wrong.

And for the first time, I felt exposed on the hill where I had always felt free. The world would know I breathed the air and did not die.

Worse, something in the way Father turned his face before I could meet his eyes told me this wasn’t a surprise to him.