Nineteen Inesa
Nineteen
Inesa
I never thought any food that came in a vacuum-sealed plastic package could look so appetizing. But the Angel is right, of course. My stomach is so empty that it’s gnawing on itself, like a dog chewing on the same old bone.
Still, I hesitate. I would be stupid not to consider that she’s offering me poison. But that would make for an anticlimactic ending to what has surely been one of the most exciting Gauntlets in years. I remember what she said about her handler—Azrael—making sure the Gauntlets are gripping, dramatic. If she were planning to kill me, she would try harder to make a spectacle of it.
Besides, I haven’t heard the cameras in hours. A sense of wrongness pricks at me. I don’t think any of this is going according to Caerus’s plan.
Slowly, I reach forward and take the packet. It crinkles in my fingers. Melino? looks relieved. She almost smiles, but catches herself and thins her lips into a line.
I tear open the packet with my teeth while keeping one hand braced on the knife. It’s nutrient paste, the same kind Luka and I sometimes eat when things are really dire. It has a queasy, jellylike consistency that normally makes my stomach turn. Not this time, though. I suck it all down in a matter of seconds, not caring how feral I look to her.
I crumple the empty packet and squeeze it in my fist. Glancing back at Melino?, I say, “Thank you.”
She nods.
A moment passes. Then she says, “I only have three left.”
My stomach drops. Even if we ration ourselves as strictly as possible, it’s not enough to last us more than a few days. But maybe that’s all I need to find my way back to Luka.
And maybe that’s all she needs to kill me.
“What about Azrael?” I ask. “He’ll pull you out, if he thinks you’re in real danger. Won’t he?”
Instantly, her gaze shutters. This whole time, she’s barely taken her eyes off me—because she doesn’t want to give me a chance with the knife, I’m sure—but now she glances away, to the darkened half of the cave, and says, “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean? You said he fixes things when they go wrong.”
“When things go wrong that are out of my control.” Her voice is cold. “This kind of failure is my fault. I’m supposed to fix it.”
I stiffen, drawing my shoulders around my ears. Rising up farther onto my knees, knife still gripped in my fist, I consider whether I should make a lunge for the rifle lying between us. Then I decide it’s better just to run.
But before I can move, Melino? says, “Besides, the connection is dead.”
This throws me off. “What connection?”
“Between me and the Caerus grid. Ever since your brother hit me here.” She delicately touches a finger to her bruised temple. “My comms chip shattered. Even if Azrael wanted to find me—”
She cuts herself off abruptly, glancing over to the dark half of the cave again. With only her black prosthetic eye turned toward me, I can’t read the expression on her face.
Is she lying? Trying to lull me into a false sense of security? It would be a pretty elaborate game. And this explains a lot: why she was wandering aimlessly in the woods when I found her. Why she accepted my help instead of killing me. Out here, severed from the Caerus grid, she’s as alone as I am.
My voice trembles as I ask, “Do you know how much time is left?”
I wish Dad had left us a watch instead of a broken compass. If, somehow, I manage to survive for the rest of the thirteen days—however long is left—this will all be over, Mom’s debt erased. Everything since the beginning of the Gauntlet has felt hazy and unreal; I can’t account for the hours. I think at least two cycles of day and night have passed, but really, there’s no way to be sure. I should have taken my tablet from the car before running away.
I should have done a lot of things differently.
Melino? looks down at her arm. She tugs back the sleeve of her hunting suit to reveal a small black-and-white screen affixed to her wrist. It shows four sets of numbers: hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds. A countdown. Ticking away the time of my Gauntlet.
She angles her wrist toward me, so I can see: 264 hours.
Too many. My heart plummets with despair.
“What about my tracker?” I ask. I can still hear the hum of it when I stay quiet and listen, but I’ve grown so accustomed to the sound that it fades into the background if I’m not paying attention. There’s something blood-chilling about that realization. That the tracker has become such an innate part of me, as quietly essential as my own heart. “That must still be connected to the grid, right?”
Melino? shakes her head. “Something must have gone wrong with that, too. You haven’t heard the cameras in hours, have you?”
I fall silent, straining my ears. But I still can’t pick up their low, whirring hum anywhere. Ever since Luka and I ran from the car, it’s been oddly and eerily quiet.
“No,” I say. “I haven’t heard them in hours, either.”
We fall silent again, just for good measure. But there’s nothing except the gentle rustling of damp leaves.
“The only thing I can hear now is your tracker.” Melino?’s voice is low, as if her words are a confession. For some reason, heat rises to my face.
“I can hear it, too,” I say. “When I listen for it.”
Her gaze darts away briefly, then lifts to meet mine. “So at least I’ll always be able to find you.”
The longer this quiet, awkward stalemate lasts, the better it is for me. Melino? has tugged her sleeve back down to conceal the timer, but as we stare at each other from opposite sides of the cave, I know the seconds of my Gauntlet are ticking away. At any moment she could breach the space between us and close her hands around my throat.
Now I understand what’s really stopping her, other than the shaky vestiges of withdrawal. Is a Gauntlet even a Gauntlet if it’s not live streamed? Killing me off camera probably violates the terms and conditions.
If no one watched me die, the audience would feel outraged, and Caerus would be humiliated. They’re probably scrambling behind the scenes right now, because here’s proof that their system isn’t perfect. There are gaps in their control, large enough for someone like me to slip through.
“They have to be able to fix the connection soon,” I murmur.
“I don’t know.” Melino? rubs her temple, as if she’s feeling for the pieces of her shattered comms chip. “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“Is there a protocol? Did Azrael ever tell you what to do?”
She shakes her head, just once. She’s not much for words, this Angel. It’s probably for the best, though. Unaccountably, Mom’s voice echoes through my mind: Inesa, you talk enough for two. You’d go on for hours if no one stopped you.
Mom must be at least a little right, because I feel a strong compulsion to fill the silence now. “You said you only had three meal packets left. He must expect you to be finished soon.”
“Gauntlets aren’t supposed to last longer than a few days. The audience would lose interest.”
“Well, it’s very generous of you and Azrael to think about the interests of the audience.”
The coldness of my voice surprises me, as does the angry knot that forms in my belly. With her saving my life, limping around so pitifully, talking to me like a human being—it’s been easy to forget that we’re not the same. She grew up in glass skyscrapers and climate-controlled domes, eating as much or as little as she pleased, never worrying about what will happen when the water table rises too high or the last deer is finally dead.
Melino?’s shoulders rise and her gaze grows hard. “Caerus makes the rules. Not me.”
“Well, you and your kind benefit from those rules a hell of a lot more than we do.”
I don’t know how Dad’s words, in his exact tone, have snuck into my mouth.
Melino? doesn’t reply. The utter blackness of her stare reminds me of that first night, when she landed on the hood of the car. There was nothing behind her eyes then, not even hate, just the icy, inhuman determination to complete her mission.
But because I never seem to know when to just shut up, I rush on: “You’re lucky you were born inside the City instead of out. That’s it. Luck. Or else you’d be the one staring down the barrel of a gun.”
She blinks. I realize for the first time how rarely she does. Maybe it’s a quirk of the prosthetic, or one of her other technologically augmented features. Flat-voiced, she says, “You’re the one holding the knife.”
I’d almost forgotten. Instinctively, I tighten my grip on the handle.
For the first time, I consider another reason to kill her. One driven by the righteous anger that always burned so brightly and fiercely within Dad, the anger I could never quite bring myself to feel. I think I’m finally starting to.
If I did kill her, I’d be a hero among the Outliers, that’s for certain. Dad, wherever he is—if he managed to see it—would be proud. But no matter how easy it is to imagine— the slash of the blade, the bright red spout of blood —I can’t make myself lunge for her.
Weak . This is why Mom will always choose Luka over me. I’ll never have the guts to just drive the knife home. I’ve had plenty of experience with dead things, but only to mend them. To make them look and feel alive again.
Once I’ve had the thought, the words just leap out of my mouth.
“How old were you? The first time?”
She doesn’t ask me to clarify. Her gaze doesn’t even shift as she replies, “Fifteen.”
The same age Luka was when he started hunting on his own. I remember the first kill he ever brought to me. A fawn, spindly legged, too green to recognize the scent of a predator and too slow to get away. I looked up taxidermy instructions on the internet. Bought the supplies I’d need. But when it came to the point where the deer was lying across the table and I was standing over it with my carving knife in hand, my gorge rose and I vomited.
“Who was it?” I ask.
“A boy,” Melino? replies.
I just blink at her, feeling that knot of righteous fury tighten in my belly again. “That’s it? That’s all you can say?”
“We’re not supposed to remember.”
“What does that mean?”
Finally, a flicker of something in her gaze. Not anger. Not grief. Not even a bit of reproach. It’s a strange look of longing, and it seems so out of place, I’m certain I imagined it. And then, as quickly as it appeared, it’s gone again.
“It makes it easier,” she says. “If people had a choice, everyone would choose not to feel.”
Revulsion. That’s the most powerful emotion that rises in me. I think I can see Luka’s side now, understand what he feels when he looks at the mutated animals, the disgust that makes his lip curl. Ugly things that outcompete their weaker counterparts. Even the deer are growing sharp teeth.
“Well,” I say at last, “you’re lucky that I don’t get to choose not to feel. Or else you’d be dead already.”
A beat of silence. I think I see her mouth quiver.
“I suppose so.”
So here we are, hating each other, repulsed by each other, both standing to gain from the other’s demise. And yet—I owe her my life. And she owes me hers.
Debt. Every Outlier knows how dangerous it is. But in Esopus Creek, it’s also our only hope. The thing that’s keeping us alive but also killing us slowly.
And that’s how I find myself saying, “Let’s make a deal.”
She arches a brow. “A deal?”
“Yes.” I draw a breath. “We find our way out of here... together. You keep us from getting torn to pieces by the Wends, and I make sure you don’t turn into one by eating the wrong meat. And then, once the cameras are back on...”
“The Gauntlet begins again?”
Melino? watches me like a cat, wary. Cats are peculiar animals. Predators to mice, but prey to hawks. And they don’t do especially well with water.
“Yes.” My voice is scratchy and low. I clear my throat. Then, without wavering, I repeat, “Yes.”
And then, so she knows that I mean it, I lower the knife. I place it on the ground between us, equidistant from her reach and mine. I flex my fingers. It hurts to unclench them after being kept in a white-knuckled grip for so long.
Her eyes dart from the knife to me, then back again. I tense. She could grab it in an instant and have me pinned to the ground even faster, blade to my throat—
But she doesn’t. Instead, she raises her empty hand, fingers outstretched.
Slowly, I reach back. Our hands are almost the exact same size, and our fingers lace together easily.
“Deal,” she says quietly.
“Deal.” I squeeze her hand, and she squeezes back.
Strangely, it makes me think of Jacob’s kiss. I was acutely aware of how long it lasted, my stomach clenching as I waited for it to be over. Melino?’s hand is warm and her grip is soft, but certain. Maybe it’s just hunger and exhaustion doing odd things to my brain, but I’m surprised by how much I don’t want her to let go.