The Earth Dwellers

I yawn, feeling exhaustion hit me like the Enforcer’s club hit that boy today—hard and out of nowhere. Tomorrow I get one step closer to taking down Lecter.

“You’ll take her over?” Avery asks Lin.

“Sure. Get to sleep, I’ll be back soon.”

“Thanks,” I say to Avery as we exit. “For everything.”

“You remind me a little of my brother-in-law,” he says, shrugging. “And I could never say no to him either.”

Lin leads me down the hall, and I scan the number plates until she reaches 1819, one of the doors on the other side of the hall, which are closer together. Even smaller places. Meant for one person rather than two.

“Scan your wrist,” she says.

I do and the door clicks open. I raise my eyebrows appreciatively. “So is this, like, officially my place now?”

She smiles wickedly. “More like your base of operations. But yeah, until you claim another empty place, or are cracked over the head and hauled away by the Enforcers, or are captured and tortured by President Lec—”

“Lin, I get the picture.”

“Right. So, do you need anything else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We’re just down the hall if you do. I’ll meet you out here at six-thirty tomorrow morning. The bed will make sure you get up on time.” And before I have the chance to ask what the hell she means by the bed getting me up, she’s heading back down the hall at a half-jog.

Feeling suddenly alone and almost naked in the dimly lit, empty hallway, I enter the flat, closing the door behind me. I lean my back against the shut door, take a deep breath. Sure, things are bad in the New City, but things below were bad too, and we did what we had to do—I did what I had to do. And I will again.

The room is small, basic, similar to Avery and Lin’s place. I try sca

My room has no window, just a wall at the end that I assume doubles as a vid screen. There’s a glass plate on the empty wall to my right, and I scan my wrist. A bed appears, barely long enough, barely wide enough. Good thing I’m not as tall as the real Tawni, I think.

Not even bothering to undress, I slip under the covers and close my eyes, the lights turning off automatically behind my eyelids, perhaps triggered by my weight on the bed. What a strange, strange world.

Where is Tristan sleeping tonight? On an animal-skin blanket in a cave or a tent or just under the million-star sky? Wherever he is, I wish I was with him, feeling the warm touch of a real breeze, in a world so bright and so real that it can’t possibly be a dream. Is this the last fight? Or will another, more powerful, cleverer enemy rise up after Lecter is gone? Is there always another evil to do battle with? Will I be fighting my whole life?

I once spoke of the inherency of good and evil, but now I realize it’s so much more complex than that. And yet so much simpler at the same time. Although there are hundreds of shades of gray between right and wrong and good and evil, in the end it comes down to a single choice: to care or not. To care about humanity, about the pains and fears and sorrows of others, or to ignore them, to look the other way, to say “it doesn’t concern me.” I know I haven’t always made the right choices, but I hope I haven’t chosen completely wrong either, and in the end, we all die. But we don’t die equal.

Not even close.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Siena

Tristan and his friends—the fu

The day is hot as scorch, go figure. The ground’s so dry that the trod of their feet is already kicking up a trail of dust in their wake.

“See you soon, ya wooloo baggard,” Roc shouts back with a wave.

“You know, if I wasn’t so coolheaded, I might shoot a pointer through your heart for a comment like that,” I say, smiling.

“But then you’d lose your star student,” Roc says.

“Don’t ferget yer side of the agreement,” Skye hollers.

“We won’t,” Tristan says. “Before the end of the third day, I’ll finally prove myself to you.”

“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” Skye mutters, “but I’ll kill me some Glassies either way.”

“C’mon, Sis,” I say, “we’ve gotta say goodbye to Jade.” I grab her elbow and steer her back into New Wildetown. She’s cursing under her breath, something ’bout how only someone with rocks for brains would trust people who live in holes in the ground.

“Jade’s waiting,” I say, urging her forward faster. We’ve barely spent a lick of time with our sister since we arrived home. Scorch, we’ve barely seen her since we rescued her from a life of slavery on the Soaker ships. In a normal world we’d be spending every moment of every day with her. But this ain’t a normal world. Least not now, if it ever was ’fore.

As we approach the line of tents, I see her, sleek black hair braided in a single spine down her back, sitting cross-legged in the durt, playing with a baby, who’s crawling ’round in front of her.

Skye stops me with an arm in front of my chest. “Promise me,” she says, looking at me.

“Promise you what?”

Skye’s eyes are like glittering brown stones. “That you won’t die. That you’ll be more careful than me. That you’ll stay alive to take care of Jade.”

I chew on my sunburnt bottom lip, feeling it sting a little. What’s she saying? “Skye, you ain’t go

“Sie—”

“I ain’t finished.” I put my hand on her shoulder, squeeze a little. Skye doesn’t even flinch back from my touch, like she usually does. “Yer my idol, Skye. Always have been. When I lost you…”—I pause, fight back the emotion that’s rolling through me—“…I thought I’d lost me too. But then I realized that I was who I was ’cause of watching you. And I was stronger’n I ever knew ’fore. You’re a part of me, always will be. So I’ll promise you I’ll do my best to stay alive for Jade’s sake, but I won’t promise you I won’t do anything wooloo out there, ’cause if you’re in trouble, I’m go

And then she’s pulling me into her chest, harder and fiercer’n she’s ever done ’fore, and I can hardly breathe but I don’t need to, don’t want to, ’cause I got exactly what I need.

We only release each other when a voice says, “Skye? Siena?”

Jade’s looking at us with those big, brown eyes of hers and she looks so grownup, well, ’cause she is. I mean, scorch, she’s got a foreign boyfriend back in water country. I didn’t even start thinking ’bout Circ in that way ’til I was near on sixteen. She’s had to grow up faster’n any of us.

She’s got that baby in her arms and I recognize it, ’cause it’s got a nose so flat it’s like someone smashed it, which I think is kinda cute, but which his mother thinks is uglier’n the back end of a tug. Polk. Veeva’s kid.

“You babysittin’?” I ask.

“Yep,” she says.

“You wa

“Yep,” she says, smiling broadly, setting Polk in the durt and opening her arms wide enough to reach ’round the both of us. And we hold each other for as long as Skye’ll suffer us, ’cause we’re family, and we’re all we got.

~~~

“How’d you end up with that Soaker boy?” Skye asks, picking Polk up and turning him ’round so he’ll crawl in t’other direction. She’s had to do it a dozen times already, but Polk always seems to head back toward her, like he knows she don’t like babies much.