Twelve Melinoë
Twelve
Melino?
I should have slit her throat.
That’s my first thought upon waking. Blood in my mouth and mud caked to my face, I push myself up on trembling limbs. Rainwater is beading along my lash line; I wipe it away. Then I scrub at the mud. But I don’t make much progress before a searing, fiery pain splits through my head.
I double over, gripping my temples and squeezing my eyes shut, as if I can will the pain away. Instead, I vomit.
Bile splatters the mud and burns my throat. I sit back on my heels and draw in a shaky breath.
I’m not dead. At least there’s that. But every nerve ending in my body is burning like a live wire and a quick glance around the clearing tells me that my rifle is gone.
A heaviness settles in my stomach. It’s more grief than fear. The rifle is my signature weapon. It feels as much a part of me as my own limbs. Without it—
I stand, with another tremor of nausea. I manage to cross the clearing to the tree where my knife had pinned down the Lamb’s brother. There’s nothing except a nick in the bark. They must’ve taken my knife with them, too.
My body feels unbearably heavy. The adrenaline from the stimulants has obviously long faded, and although I was unconscious through most of the withdrawal, the wash of the drugs through my system leaves me exhausted, barely able to walk. I put my hand against the tree and lean over, bile rising again in my throat.
I try to stay rational. I try to consider my options. But I just end up berating myself.
I was too reckless. I thought this would be easy. The Lamb looked so defenseless in her file. I underestimated the brother—not just his strength, but his tenacity. I didn’t really believe he would fight so hard for his sister. Azrael tells us to think of the other Angels as our sisters, but I can’t imagine putting myself in the line of fire for any of them. Except Keres. And if anything, Keres was just a lesson in the futility of fighting for anyone who isn’t yourself.
Maybe I wasn’t reckless. I was just desperate. Keres’s face flashes through my mind—her blank stare, her eyes wide and dull, nothing behind them. No memory of me, of anything. I feel sick again and clap a hand over my mouth. I don’t want to keep vomiting on camera.
The cameras. I listen for them—if I’m very still, I can usually hear them buzzing faintly around my head, like tiny winged insects. But as I stand and wait in the silence, I hear nothing. Just the breeze through the wiry branches and the wet leaves. And of course the pulse of the tracker, dimmer now, as the Lamb moves hopelessly far away.
My veins turn to ice. I try to remind myself that this isn’t the first time I’ve failed to hear the cameras; sometimes they just take a little while to catch up with me. Sometimes there are glitches in the system. Gaps. Even with Caerus technology, there’s always a margin for error.
I’m really just trying to put off the inevitable: calling Azrael. I don’t want to hear the disappointment or the barely cloaked anger in his voice. I don’t want him to tell me how the chat is flooded with comments celebrating my failure. Maybe they’re even disappointed to see me getting up now. After all, there’s no bigger plot twist than an Angel dying.
I examine my face in the small piece of reflective metal affixed to my wrist. It’s supposed to help my peripheral vision when I’m fighting, but I always end up using it more for vanity purposes. My eyes are bloodshot and my face is a waxy yellowish color. My hair has come loose from its neat ponytail and falls in damp tendrils over my shoulders, down to the middle of my back.
Every cruel comment comes ringing to life: the people who called me too skinny, too fat, too ugly to be an Angel, too pretty to be kept under lock and key in Caerus’s clutches, too sexy for seventeen, not sexy enough.
My fingers tremble as I brush the rest of the mud from my face.
I can’t put it off any longer. I’m shivering even inside my insulated hunting suit. I tap my temple and wait for the fizzle of static that tells me I’m connected to the Caerus mainframe.
Silence.
I blink my prosthetic eye, expecting the map to layer across my vision.
Nothing.
Panic rises in me, with astonishing coldness. I tap again, blink and blink and blink, but everything is still quiet.
My heart hammers in my throat. There must be a delay in the transmission, that’s all, some wires getting crossed. I wait and wait. The chill seeps further, into my bones, and the wind blows my damp hair around my face. My teeth chatter.
Silence is the most terrifying sound. The utter absence of life. I remember pressing two fingers to the girl’s throat and feeling no pulse under her cold skin. I remember leaning over with my ear to her chest, waiting to hear the hum of her heart. The silence yawned below me, like a dark, bottomless pit. I tumbled into it. The next thing I remember is waking up in the helicopter, trembling beneath a Mylar blanket.
I can’t fail again. I tap my temple one more time, hard enough to hurt, to shock my body into action and start the synapses firing in my brain. Nothing.
My comms system is totally down, crumpled like a house on a fault line. I can’t even access my own vitals. The only thing that works is the night vision in my prosthetic, which I test by burying my head in my arms and blocking out the watery sunlight.
The throbbing pain moves from my temple to the center of my forehead. There’s a staticky itch under my skin, and I want to claw into my flesh to dig it out. I curl my fingernails into my palm again.
The brother hit me right where my comms chip is implanted. He must have damaged it. Crushed it into pieces, maybe, and sent them scattering through my brain. The realization floods my veins with ice again. I try to swallow the bile in my throat, but then I think— why? If I’m disconnected from the Caerus mainframe, then the cameras have lost track of me, too.
I vomit again.
All that comes out is sticky, clear saliva. The acid churning in my empty stomach. With nausea still shuddering through me, I look up at the sky, half obscured through the dense canopy, just jagged strips of blue-gray between gnarled branches.
“Please,” I whisper, as if anyone can hear. “Save me, please, get me out of here . ”
There’s no answer, of course. I might as well be in another universe, and Azrael some other, far-flung planet’s god.
I switch my brain into survival mode. No thinking, just acting. I unzip the small compartment in my suit that holds meal-replacement packets. I tear one open and squeeze the nutrient paste into my mouth. It tastes like cereal milk left to sit in the bowl. But it’s better than nothing. I have decon-tabs in my suit, too, which I can use as soon as I find water.
The rote, simple procedure of nourishing my body makes me calmer. Warmer. There’s still that splintering ache in my head and I want nothing more than to swallow a painkiller and crawl into a nearby bush to sleep until the pain passes through me. But I can’t afford to rest now.
My best chance is to get out of the woods. Find somewhere with a signal and contact Azrael. He’ll be looking for me, too. Maybe he’s as panicked as I am. I try to imagine it—fear passing across his cold, stoic face. Strangely enough, this makes me feel better, picturing his terror at the thought of losing me. Maybe enough fear can add up to love.
I have no idea how close I am to even a speck of civilization. Until now, my hunts have been brutally efficient and short. I’ve never spent any more time than necessary in this ugly, half-drowned world. Who would, if they had any other choice?
My gait is more limping than walking, really. My legs still feel so heavy. With enough time I know my muscles will strengthen again, but for now, every step seems more tremulous than the last. It has to be the withdrawal. I’m shaking and drenched in cold sweat.
I go in the direction I think is south, hoping that I’ll stumble upon some semblance of civilization, somewhere Caerus can find me again. But after what feels like hours, I’ve found nothing. And the woods are growing denser, deeper. The bark on the trees is black with rainwater and the leaves are a rich, water-fed green. Scummy white moss is growing on every rock, and bizarre mushrooms unfold from the ground like frilly fish gills. I don’t recognize anything in this alien place. I might as well be walking on the bottom of the ocean.
The thickly interwoven tree branches blot out most of the sun. What does leak through is thin, bleary light, more gray than gold. The air is so heavy with humidity that every breath is like drowning—in slow, painful increments. I wonder again how anyone manages to live out here. I suppose they just adapt to it, just like they adapt to everything else.
Or maybe they don’t. In the several hours I’ve been walking, I haven’t seen a trace of another human being. Not that I would necessarily know what to look for. Azrael never prepared me for this situation, for the possibility that I’d be disconnected from the Caerus mainframe entirely. Because nothing is supposed to exist outside Caerus.
I have to stop for a minute to catch my breath. There’s a stitch in my side and the headache is returning, a dull throb behind my temples. I limp over to the nearest tree and steady myself against the trunk, panting. I want to collapse, to slide down into the dirt and leaf pulp of the forest floor. But if I do, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get up again.
There’s a rustling sound, like a shiver of wind, only nothing shifts in the air. My head snaps up.
She steps out of the trees, nimbly parting the branches. I didn’t think I was at the stage of withdrawal where I’d still be having hallucinations, but my brain refuses to accept that this is real. That the Lamb is walking toward me in slow, deliberate paces, my own rifle held aloft on her shoulder.
Our eyes meet, and neither of us speaks. Her finger hovers over the trigger. The bruises of my failed strangulation are blooming on her throat, garish red marks in the shape of my hands. Drawn up to her full height, with me still doubled over, she seems suddenly tall, strong, though I felt how weak she was beneath me. How weak she was supposed to be.
But strange metamorphoses are happening all the time. Who says prey can’t become predator?
Her gaze is unflinching. I look up into the barrel of my own rifle, and my stomach lurches. My skin is prickling with heat. I wonder if this is how my Lambs die—in a knot of terror and righteous fury, fearing me and hating me in equal measure.
Except. The Lamb hasn’t blinked in so long that her eyes turn glazed and wet. And her finger is still dancing over the trigger, trembling like a leaf in the wind.
All of a sudden, my vision flashes white. I’m dead , I think—but then the light dissipates just as quickly as it came. My connection to the Caerus grid, maybe, flaring up and then fading again. Her tracker is a pulse in my ear, a second heartbeat. Her life, just as fragile as mine.
My voice is hoarse when I finally manage to speak.
“If you’re going to kill me,” I say, “you should probably cock the rifle first.”
Immediately her face flushes. Her left hand fumbles around the barrel, trying to pull it back like it’s a manual, like her brother’s gun. I knew she wouldn’t understand the difference. I just need a second of hesitation, the briefest slipping, and I can have her on the ground again, my rifle jammed against her throat.
Only when I try to launch myself forward, my tired body won’t move. Not even the fear shooting up my spine can give me enough adrenaline to tackle her the way I want to. Exhaustion lies over me like a sodden blanket.
Her fingers are still scrabbling at the gun, panic in her rich green-brown eyes. “We have to get out of here.”
I just blink, puzzled by her use of the plural.
“The Wends,” she says. “They’re coming.”
I’m so baffled all I can do is echo, “The Wends?”
“ Yes .” Her pitch rises. “They’ll kill us. Kill us and eat us.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. But the fear in her voice is obvious, and my heart skips its beats.
“Go, then,” I say. I almost ask: Why are you bothering with me?
The sound of her tracker flutters in my ear. For a brief moment I entertain the hope that the tracker is still online, that the cameras will find me now. But when I listen, I still hear nothing. Just the link between whatever’s left of my comms system and the pulsing chip in her throat. The Lamb swallows.
“I can’t do it,” she whispers.
“Just pull the trigger. I was lying before. You don’t have to cock it.”
I don’t know what a Wend is, but I’d rather die cleanly with a bullet to the brain than be torn to pieces and eaten.
“No, I mean...” She draws in a shaking breath. “I can’t run anymore. They’re too fast. There are too many of them.”
My sluggish brain finally catches on to the fact that she’s by herself. I stay silent for a moment, waiting for her brother to burst through the trees, but he doesn’t. The Lamb is just as alone as I am. And judging from the tears in her eyes, her ripped jacket and blood-streaked face, I can guess that their parting wasn’t peaceful.
“They’re coming,” she goes on hoarsely. “Can you—can you smell them?”
My sense of smell is tainted by the iron tinge of blood on my tongue and the leftover bile in my throat. With one hand still braced on the tree trunk, I push myself up to a standing position. I reach out my other arm, even as it shakes.
“Give me the rifle,” I say.
At once, her eyes harden. She clutches the gun to her chest.
“Listen.” I can’t exactly blame her for not trusting me, so I soften my voice. “You don’t know how to use it. But I do. I’ll kill the... the Wends. If you help me get somewhere safe.”
Every atom in my body resists using the word help . The Lamb doesn’t move. Her gaze is reproachful.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I say.
And I’m not. The realization comes to me at the same time I say it aloud. I can’t kill her, not now, not yet. I do need her help. I can barely walk on my own. But more important, the cameras are gone. If I kill her off-screen, it won’t count. Azrael will mark it as a failure. After all, what’s the point of a Gauntlet without the spectacle?
I have to keep her alive until I can make sure the cameras are on and the world is watching. Then I’ll slit her throat or bury a bullet in her brain. I’ll give her the most lurid death I can imagine. It’ll play over and over again, on every holoscreen in New Amsterdam. They’ll forget her name, maybe even mine, too, but they’ll remember the arc of my blade and the spray of her blood.
The Lamb’s eyes waver. Her body is tensed, shoulders raised, but I can sense the exhaustion beneath her stiff posture.
“I won’t kill you,” I say again. I stretch out my hand even farther, fingers reaching. “I promise.”
Moments pass, like drops of rain from damp leaves. The wind picks up, making her dark hair ripple around her face.
Then, without a word, she reaches toward me. She joins our hands and laces our fingers. And then she slides the rifle into my arms.