Chapter 11
11
Marcelis
“They’re heading for the water catchment,” I said as one of the drovers galloped past us, trying to get ahead and turn the herd. The breeze blew from the direction of the settlement, and the herd must have smelled the water.
Tobs stopped in the middle of the road.
Everyone knows about fight or flight. But there is also freeze. And Tobs froze solid, unable to move as the herd of camels bore down on him.
Bodie shouted, “Run!” He probably yelled it as much for Tobs as he did for his kidney.
He moved toward Tobs but only made it a few steps before Toorin yanked him back to safety.
No one had a chance to catch Darwin.
He sprinted toward Tobs, placing his large body in front of Tobs to protect him—and one of Bodie’s kidneys—as the herd galloped by. We lost sight of them to the river of camels streaming by and the clouds of dust billowing into the air.
We all coughed and sputtered, trying to catch our breaths. More of the drovers streamed by, more carried along by the herd than controlling anything.
Finally, the deafening thud of galloping camel hooves slowed until only the individual footfalls of the stragglers sounded as they ran by.
“Darwin!” Toorin shouted.
Before the air cleared, Bodie and Toorin ran toward the last place Darwin had been before he’d disappeared.
The dust prevented me from seeing clearly. One last camel jumped to the side, and Bodie—or was that Toorin?—grunted as if the camel had bounced off them.
The air cleared enough, and we ran over to find Darwin standing, dazed but unharmed. Unfortunately, Tobs lay sprawled in the dirt, trampled and unmoving.
Juniper and Lyric knelt beside Tobs, checking his pulse, while a disbelieving Toorin ran his hands all over Darwin’s body, confirming that Darwin had come out of the stampede unscathed.
“He’s dead,” Juniper said, standing and wiping blood off her hand.
Bodie stared down at the body. “That’s not good.” He didn’t say anything else. What could he say?
Toorin pivoted in front of Bodie, his hand gripping the back of Bodie’s neck. “There’s one more person out there with your kidney. One is all you need. We’ll find them.”
“Sure,” Bodie said as a commotion near the settlement gate sprang up. I couldn’t tell if Bodie believed Toorin or not.
Another cloud of dust swirled in the air, and a gust of wind tried turning it into a mini tornado. More people ran toward the commotion. I couldn’t tell if they were with the drovers or running to take advantage of the confusion to get inside the gates unchecked by the guards.
But I did know one thing. We needed to go if we wanted to make it into the settlement while we could.
Now .
I took Toorin by the arm. “This is our chance. We have to leave.”
He glanced at the pandemonium behind me and knew I was right. He backed up as I pulled him away, his focus returning to Darwin, his finger tapping the air as if Toorin were close enough to tap Darwin on the chest. “I love you for what you did, but don’t ever do that again.”
A slight grin pulled at one side of Darwin’s mouth. “Aye, Captain.”
As soon as Toorin turned around, we took off running as far and as fast as we could, using the confusion of the camels, drovers, guards, and the melee of frantic fringers. Instead of turning off the main road, we followed the enormous crowd to the catchment, dodging desperate people and dehydrated camels.
The aerosolized dust had sunk to the bottom of my lungs and turned into mud, my already compromised stamina suffering. My legs burned, and every step felt monumental. I couldn’t go on much longer without a rest, and by Toorin’s coughing and labored breathing, I didn’t think he could either.
I saw the culvert up ahead. It drained water from the upper part of the settlement down to the catchment. “This way.”
Toorin nearly ran past it, but I caught his shirt and yanked him to me. We ducked behind a large boulder and beneath a low overhang of packed earth above the enclosed drainage pipe, removing us from the immediate fray.
Out of sight, we leaned against the large boulder and caught our breath. I’d found the culvert as a kid, but other people sneaked in and out of the area all the time. It wasn’t like no one knew about it.
The vertical bars in front of the drainpipe weren’t much of a deterrent since someone had pried a bar away from the others so people could slip through.
It took longer than it should have for our breathing to return to normal, even for a couple of guys whose chests were cracked open not too long ago.
“How much farther?” Toorin asked as he doubled over with his hands on his knees. His breaths came in rasping gulps, but with all the confusion going on not too far away, I wasn’t concerned anyone would overhear him. Besides, the settlement had more problems right now than trying to keep Toorin and me from sneaking into the hospital to see Solomon.
Solomon would help end all this.
Surely.
If he could.
“A ways. We can take this through the settlement. It won’t get us all the way to the hospital, but it will get us most of the way there.”
Toorin pushed himself off the boulder and took a cautious step as if he didn’t trust his legs to hold him.
I stuck out a hand to steady him. “You okay?”
He gestured toward his chest and, presumably, his heart. “It doesn’t do a good job keeping up.”
I broke eye contact. It wasn’t lost on me that the reason that I’d recovered faster than I’d ever had before was because of his heart.
“We can rest longer.”
Toorin waved me off. In his eyes, I saw his determination but also the undercurrent of fear. The fear of a man who knew he was living on borrowed time. “No.”
I didn’t question him. Instead, I turned and slipped through the bars, and he followed closely behind. Our feet slapped and echoed in the thin stream of water flowing down. There were bits and bobs of trash in the culvert, signs that we weren’t the only ones who’d used this method of traversing the settlement.
But thankfully, we were alone. With my hair shorn and the ash rubbed into it to disguise the color I wouldn’t immediately catch someone’s eye, but people in the settlement knew me. All they would have to do was look twice, and I’d be recognized.
I didn’t know if my sire had alerted anyone besides his guard that I’d left the settlement, but I couldn’t take the chance that he’d issued a reward for my return. If that were the case, everyone would want to turn me over to the guard.
Would Solomon?
Friendship and loyalty were a fickle thing, especially in the settlement. And while Solomon was better off than many people here, chips and credits talked.
Those thoughts brought me to a halt.
Toorin ran into the back of me. “ Ooof .”
He put his hands on my shoulders to keep from knocking me to the side. He glanced up and down the culvert as if expecting trouble. “What’s wrong?”
We were near a junction, so I pretended I was unsure of the way instead of unsure of my friend. “Nothing. I’m getting my bearings.”
His eyes narrowed. If he questioned the truthfulness of my words, he didn’t say anything. He was already risking so much, leaving his friends behind and following me back to the settlement. If he had doubts, he was already too far committed to turn back now.
I pointed to the culvert on the right. “This way.”
We kept a steady pace, hoping that the camels occupied everyone’s attention.
Finally, we made it to the other end. People walked by like it were any other day. We must have been far enough away from the gate and the catchment that nobody cared what was happening below. We waited in the shadows until we didn’t hear the creak of cart wheels or the slap of feet on the narrow streets before squeezing through the bars and stepping out onto the street.
We’d stepped out onto the west end of the market street, where peddlers sold their wares. Toorin grabbed my arm, but not before someone bumped into my shoulder and spun me around. The man shoved me aside. “Watch where you’re going, you bloody knob-headed boob.”
I caught myself on the edge of a vegetable stand, and the merchant came after me with his broom.
“Oi, hands off unless you got the credits for it.”
He looked me up and down. A week before, he would have been handing me a bag of ball potatoes and calling me Your Grace , though I was the last person in the settlement who needed a handout.
I waited for him to recognize me, but he shooed me away. “Go on, get.”
Toorin
I took hold of Marc’s arm and dragged him across the street where he wouldn’t be drawing undue attention.
“What the fuck?” I glanced back at him and would have let go of his arm, but he seemed slightly shaken by the run-in.
“Sorry.” He could have shaken my hand free, but he didn’t. I only released him when he matched my aggressive pace.
He didn’t say much else, which was good because it was taking everything I had to breathe fast enough to keep up with the oxygen my body burned. But I refused to slow.
Not far ahead, I recognized the faded big red cross painted on the side of a stone building. It stood multiple stories and had to be the tallest intact building I’d ever seen.
But I didn’t have time to sightsee. The sooner we got off the streets, the less likely Marc would be recognized.
He pointed off to my left. “We can go up the alley. There’s a side door.”
We both turned. One good thing about being within the walls of the settlement, the alleys didn’t stink of piss and vomit and despair.
I huffed and puffed up the steep climb to the side door. With all of the day’s exertion, a part of me didn’t expect to have survived it. I thought I’d either run out of oxygen or my heart would freeze again. Though, I was starting to believe that Marc would do his best to get it restarted.
Which was… interesting.
He stepped ahead of me as we neared the door and cracked it open to check for people approaching before opening it wider. I slipped inside, and he followed, closing the door softly behind us.
I leaned against the wall. We were in a small area with nothing but a steady stream of stairs going up.
My head fell back against the wall, and I squeezed my eyes shut, but the stars at the periphery of my vision multiplied.
Marc’s hand landed in the center of my chest. I opened my eyes and couldn’t quite read his expression. Could he feel the way my heart whirred instead of beat?
“We’re almost there. But it’s up those flights of stairs. Can you make it? I could go up myself if—”
“No. I don’t think we should split up.”
His eyes and his hand dropped. Immediately, I missed his touch and didn’t know what to do with that.
“Yeah. Understood.”
But he didn’t. Not really.
I caught his hand before he could completely turn away. “I—” I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but the words fell before I could give them too much thought. “Not because I don’t trust you.”
He glanced up, his expression softening and the line between his brows disappearing. “Yeah?”
There were many practical reasons why I shouldn’t trust him—he could be lying to get away. He could be separating me from my crew to get rid of me for good. He could be leading me to the chancellor guard to let them deal with me — But I did. I did trust him. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“I’m in this a hundred percent.” The sincerity in his voice underscored his words.
I nodded because my throat closed for some inexplicable reason, and I couldn’t trust my voice. I’d never seen someone look more genuine, more invested—including that time when Bodie had told me he’d be my partner on the Lark.
Swallowing hard, I managed two short words. “Thank you.”
A sting came to the back of my eyes, and I quickly blinked them away. You don’t cry on the fringe. If you did, you’d likely never stop.
He clapped me on the shoulder, and we started the long climb. We rested after each short flight of stairs before continuing. At the top, I stuck my head out the door to make sure no one was coming. I heard footsteps approaching, and I ducked back inside until we heard their footfalls and conversation disappear.
I wondered if this building had been here before the war. The last time I’d seen a building this… nice had been when my sire had sent Bodie and me into an inland settlement to scavenge scrap. But this one had lights that weren’t torches, solid doors that didn’t hang from their hinges, and stairs that didn’t end in the middle of a run with open sky and broken walls above.
I rechecked the hall. It was clear. I motioned Marc to follow, and he moved ahead of me, leading me down a long hall and through a solid door with the word Reparion painted on it.
Marc walked as if he belonged there, even though with the clothes he wore, he looked like most people on the fringe. And like me. Someone looked up from whatever they were working on but didn’t shout out a warning or try to stop us.
The hall ended in a big room with rows of capsules with lights and buttons and many things that I hadn’t seen before.
I glanced into one of the capsules, and what I saw I’d only seen inside an animal I’d hunted for food. Was this where they grew the organs? Right here?
There was a younger, dark-skinned man in front of one of the capsules that Marc walked up to. He had black hair and a white lab coat. Marc gripped the man’s bicep and whispered in his ear. The man’s eyes widened, but Marc put a finger to his lips and ushered him through a door off to the side. I quickly followed.
The door closed behind us, and Marc put his back to it because it didn’t have a lock.
The man’s hands went to the side of his head as he took us in. “Your Grace, what—”
“Shhh.” Marc put his finger to his lips again. “No one can know we were here.”
The man shook his head. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Marc visibly relaxed, but he didn’t move away from the door. He gestured to me. “This is Toorin. I have his heart.”
“Um…” The man didn’t look like he knew how to respond.
I reached a hand out to shake his. “Toorin.”
He took it. “Solomon.” Then he looked at Marc. “I don’t understand.”
“I want to give him his heart back,” Marc said. “Mine should be done growing unless it’s been given to—”
“No. It’s been given to no one. I moved your growth chamber into the research room when the chancellor put out the notice that you were wanted. Nobody has come looking for it.”
Wanted . Like Marc was a common thief.
But discovering that Solomon still had Marc’s new heart… I blew out a breath and dropped my head for a second, the relief feeling like a nice warm bath after spending the entire winter scrubbing my body in the freezing water from the IP. Marc had said that he wanted to give me my heart back, but I don’t think I’d truly let myself believe it until he’d said it out loud to someone who might be able to do something about it.
“Can you talk to Dr. Phan? Do you think she’ll agree to the transplant?” Marc asked.
Solomon shook his head, and I don’t know what happened, but my lungs refused to work.
“You don’t think she would help?” Marc straightened. “Or—”
“For you, I think she’d risk the operation and defying the chancellor’s orders by not turning you in.”
So Marc had been telling the truth. I mean, I knew the chancellor was a supreme dick. I just thought— fuck .
But Solomon wasn’t done.
“Why do I hear a but?” Marc asked.
“ But what you’re asking… it’s not the same as a transplant.”
I glanced up, taking a breath as my lungs decided to kick back in again. I didn’t want to miss a word that came out of Solomon’s mouth.
“Why not?” Marc asked the question before I could.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, and it felt like it wouldn’t stop falling until it hit the deepest depths of the IP. I shouldn’t have permitted myself to hope.
Solomon glanced my way as if he wasn’t sure how honest he wanted to be in front of me, but he spoke anyway. “You’re going to have scar tissue.” He glanced at me. “Both of you. It’s not the same operation. There’s only one doctor I know of who has ever performed a successful second transplant.”
“Fine,” Marc said, “we’ll get them.”
Solomon scrubbed a hand through his black hair. “Marc…” Solomon looked pained, as if whatever he said next would hurt him as much as it would hurt Marc. Marc’s shoulders went back, readying for the hit. “She’s in the Mercy Province.”
“Fuck’s sake,” I grumbled. Of course, she was. Risking our lives sneaking into the settlement wasn’t enough.
Marc looked at me. “We can get there, right? Like there is a way to get there.”
“Not without going through the badlands. It could take you months,” Solomon said.
“We don’t have months.” Marc thumped the back of his head on the door as if the pain would mitigate his frustration. “At least, I don’t think we do.”
Then the frustration on Marc’s face melted away, exposing his vulnerability beneath when he looked at me because when he’d said we , he meant me . I didn’t have that long.
“Unless we sail part of the way,” I said. Mercy didn’t abut the IP, but we could cut off many miles if we took the Lark east. Except it was nearing squall and gale season… but I kept that part to myself. Besides, if we left soon, we’d likely get to port before one came along. “We’d have to cross into the badlands, but the distance would be shorter. And if we have enough chips for a few camels, we could make it there faster.”
Marc’s lip curled with disgust, and I almost laughed at how cute he looked.
Cute? Moon and mars and the stars, what is wrong with you?
He shuddered. “Camels, huh?”
“Camels.”
He cursed under his breath.
Solomon waited for our decision.
One thing I was coming to appreciate about Marc was that he wasn’t afraid to make a decision. “Okay then. Boats and camels it is. We’ll have to find a way to transport my heart and—”
“You can’t take it with you.” Solomon held up his hands as if to stop Marc from finding his heart and running away with it.
“Put it in whatever the reapers use,” Marc said. “They have to be able to transport the organs they harvest somehow.”
“We have a way to transport them,” Solomon said, “but we’re talking hours. A day, maybe two on the very outside, and even then, you’re pushing the organ’s viability limits.”
I didn’t understand the complexities of what Solomon was saying, but I got the gist. If we took Marc’s new heart, it wouldn’t survive the trip.
It only took Marc a second or two to devise a new plan. “Then we bring the doctor here.”
The likelihood of convincing a doctor to risk their life crossing the badlands for a scrapper and the wanted spawn of the Tranquility Province’s chancellor was a stretch. Besides, I wasn’t a kidnapper.
Marc caught my eye. Okay, well, technically, we’d kidnapped Marc, but he wasn’t trying to run anymore, so I wasn’t sure if that counted.
Someone hit the door, and Marc braced against it.
“Oi, who’s in there?”
“Keep your trousers on,” Solomon said.
Whoever was on the other side hit the door again before walking away. Solomon stepped to the door, his hand on the knob. “I’ll keep your heart safe until you get back. Promise.”
“Thank you,” Marc said. “For us both.”
“Give me a minute to distract him. Then you can sneak out. The reward amount is life-changing. I don’t know if I’d trust anyone in the lab to not turn you in.”