Twenty-Five Inesa
Twenty-Five
Inesa
It’s my turn to keep watch. I add more kerosene to the lamps and carry one over to the side of the bed. Melino? is lying down, but her body is stiff beneath the covers, and her eyes are open. I sink down on the floor next to her. Close enough that I can hear her breathing, even over the vicious howling of the wind.
A voice in the recesses of my brain keeps telling me I should hate her. It sounds like Luka, like Dad, even like Mom. It sounds like Jacob and everyone I’ve ever known in Esopus Creek. It sounds like the robotic drone of the commenters in my stream.
But it’s not my voice.
She killed Sanne. I knew that already, of course, but it was too easy to forget, when her hands were wrapping my wounds so gently and her gaze was full of very urgent, very human grief. She’s killed dozens of people whose names and faces I’ll never learn, and she tried to kill me, too.
Yet the pressure of her grip around my throat is a memory so distant that even if I try to summon it, it just lingers at my mind’s periphery, like a ghost. The more immediate memory is her mouth grazing my finger.
I ball my hands into fists. The storm has come, cold and sudden and furious, beating at the walls of the cabin. I’m very aware of how thin the wood is, how it creaks and moans around us, how the chill slips in through the cracks. Even with the woodstove blazing, my skin rises with gooseflesh and my teeth are chattering. The worst is the chill at the tip of my nose.
Melino?’s eyes remain open. Watching me. Even at the best of times she’s pale, and her skin has that slightly purple cast, but now it looks almost gray. Whatever modifications Caerus has made to her, she’s obviously not immune to the cold.
Surgeries upon surgeries, syringes in her neck, like the one that injected my tracker. Digging into her brain, as if with a scalpel, prying loose all the unsavory memories, optimizing her into a machine: sleek, immaculate, ruthless. Incapable of mercy, incapable of regret. And despite all of it, I’ve seen the memories cresting through, surfacing from the deep, dark water. Those illicit, stolen moments that should be impossible, the smiles and laughs and even the grief that Caerus couldn’t manage to steal.
It’s too cold for me to relax into the silence. I have to speak, to distract myself from the chill that seems to be settling in my very marrow.
“I remember the last time it stormed like this,” I say. “We lost power for a week. We kept having to borrow a generator from the Wesselses and haul it over on our rafts. Luka and I both fell overboard at least twice.”
Melino? bites a blue lip. “The Wesselses?”
“They’re another family in Esopus. Upper Esopus.” I give a small smile. “Where it doesn’t flood quite so badly. The father is Dr. Wessels. He treats all our broken bones and cures our fevers. And his son is Jacob...”
Jacob. I can’t think of him without thinking of the kiss. It feels slippery in my mind, like scum on stale water. Something I don’t want to touch.
Melino? watches me expectantly.
“He’s a friend,” I say at last. “The Wesselses are the ones who loaned us the car.”
“He sounds like a good friend,” Melino? says, and I can’t read the tone in her voice.
The memory sloshes around in my head unpleasantly. “I guess so. But not—not like Keres.”
Suddenly Melino? is tense. She props herself up on her elbows, eyes shifting.
“I just mean,” I go on in a rush, “we would never sleep with each other. Sleep next to each other, I mean.”
My mouth tastes a little sour as I say the words. I can’t pretend I haven’t pictured it: Melino? in bed with this other girl. Maybe they curled around each other, like twin mollusks. Maybe they just joined hands, linked pinkies. Either way, it makes my stomach simmer with a strange emotion. Jealousy? I have no reason to be jealous of a girl I’ve never met, and one who is lost to Melino? anyway.
“I see.” Melino?’s tone is curt.
Silence falls across the cabin. Well, not really silence. The wind is keening like a wounded animal. With each blast of air, a new wave of cold washes over me, and my teeth chatter even more furiously. I’m starting to regret washing up earlier. My hair is still slightly damp around the nape of my neck, and it’s making me even chillier.
“It wasn’t like that,” Melino? says suddenly.
I blink. “What?”
“With Keres.” She looks down at the worn bedspread. I can’t see very well, in the chiaroscuro of the room, but it almost looks like she’s blushing. “It couldn’t have been. We’re not allowed... Azrael would never...”
She’s definitely blushing—that odd violet color, which I’m starting to think is sort of beautiful. Like the underside of a lilac petal when it’s shot through with sunlight.
“I see,” I echo. I have to bite the inside of my cheek, because a smile is threatening to push across my face. Another gust of wind makes the whole cabin shudder. Frigid air slithers in under the beaten door. I shiver violently. I can hear Melino?’s teeth chattering now, too. After a beat, I add, “I’m sure it never gets this cold in the City.”
“No.”
“It might be easier to stay warm,” I say, “if we were closer together.”
As soon as the words are out, a fierce blush rises to my face. I stare down at the floor, because I can’t bear to look at Melino?, to see her scandalized expression. She doesn’t reply, and a long stretch of silence passes between us. The wind keeps up its brutal howling.
When the silence has gone on for so long and my cheeks are so hot that I’m considering just walking out into the cold and freezing to death just to escape the utter humiliation, Melino? says, very quietly, “Okay.”
The next moments unfold without words. Haltingly, I get to my feet. Melino? sits up and shifts backward, nearly to the edge of the bed, to make room for me. I bend down and unlace my boots. The whole time I can feel her gaze on me. It draws my blood up near the surface of my skin—almost like a knife, but without the pain.
Once my boots are off, I lie down on my back, tense. Melino? drapes the covers over us both. She hesitates for a moment, then slides down onto the mattress beside me.
The bed is too small for us not to touch. We’re pressed shoulder to shoulder, both staring up at the ceiling. In the cold, our breath drifts up above our heads, mingling in soft wisps of white.
“I’ll stay up and watch the door,” I say, but the effect of my words is diminished by a very ill-timed yawn.
“It’s okay. I’m a light sleeper.”
Exhaustion is weighing on my eyelids. “Okay.”
It doesn’t take long for the warmth of Melino?’s body to start seeping into mine. Under the covers, the tips of my fingers begin to regain sensation, chasing away my fear of frostbite. I flex them in relief, and when I do, my thumb brushes against Melino?’s palm.
I expect her to flinch away, but she doesn’t. We just lie there in silence. I slow my breathing until it matches hers exactly, our chests rising and falling in an identical rhythm.
I don’t know if I’ve ever lain beside someone like this before. Maybe Luka, once upon a time, but I was too young to remember. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I was this close to someone who didn’t hurt me. Even Jacob, whose kiss I never asked for, tasted so bitter in my mouth. And I can’t remember ever wanting to be touched like this by someone. Held. Maybe more.
Melino? falls asleep before I do, long, pale hair spread across the pillow, shimmery in the low light, and it’s impossible to remind myself to be afraid of her. I’m only afraid of waking her, of spoiling this moment that seems held in timeless suspension—this moment where she looks so much like an angel to me, but not the kind that Caerus makes.
The lamps burn hazily, running the oil down to its last drops. My eyelids slide shut, and sleep claims me.
I wake slowly, in warmth and in silence. Morning light bleeds through the cracks in the walls, falling in bright bands on the floor. One stripes across my face. The woodstove has gone dark, but the chill has been banished from my bones. I no longer feel the cold at all. I can only feel the slight scratchiness of the bedsheets, and the gentle pressure of Melino?’s arm around my waist.
I’m curled on my side, and so is she, her face so close that her slow breath tickles my cheek. I go completely still, listening to her low exhales and inhales, hardly daring to breathe myself.
I wonder if it was a conscious choice, or if her body simply folded into mine, in the muddled throes of sleep. Pressed together like this, the world takes on a bleary, luminous glow, like the vestiges of a dream. I close my eyes again.
If I am dreaming, I want to stay asleep for just a little bit longer.
In the end, it’s the faint simmering of anxiety that jogs me fully awake. It was my turn to keep watch, but obviously that was an utter failure, and who knows what could have been attracted to the cabin overnight. Even though I know it’s unlikely due to the storm, I’m compelled to check, just to make sure.
But when I extricate myself from the bed—very, very slowly, so as not to disturb Melino?—and nudge open the door, it’s not the muggy, suffocating aftermath of a rainstorm that awaits me. It’s snow.
A fine, crisp layer of frost lies over the ground. It lines every tree branch and makes a pale crown over each jutting stone. Where sunlight finds its way through the canopy, it makes the snow sparkle like broken glass. The albedo effect is so strong that I have to raise a hand to shade my eyes.
I let out a breath of amazement, which floats from my mouth in a white cloud. I wonder if, somehow, I could still be dreaming.
From behind me, inside the cabin, there’s the sound of Melino? stirring. I shut the door and turn around to see her sitting up, stretching her thin arms. I wonder if she remembers holding me in the night. I feel a faint thud of disappointment at the thought that she doesn’t.
Her hair is mussed from sleep, falling loose around her shoulders. Her eyes look brighter than I’ve ever seen them, the hollows of her cheeks not so pronounced. The bruise on her temple has all but vanished. I can’t seem to find her sharp edges anymore, the cold Angel qualities that once terrified me. Now she looks delicate, almost ethereal. My heart skips a beat.
I must have the most indecipherable look on my face, because Melino? frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head, as if I can banish the traitorous thoughts. “But you should come outside.”
Warily, she rises from the bed. “Why?”
“Just trust me.” I bite my lip on a smile as Melino? crosses the room, heading to the door. “Wait. Hang on.”
The oversize flannel shirt I wore yesterday is hanging on the back of the chair. Melino? watches with no small amount of consternation as I pick it up and drape it over her shoulders, buttoning the top button so it looks like a cloak.
“There,” I say. “That should help.”
“You’re very strange, you know,” she says.
“I know.” I zip my jacket up to my chin. “Come on.”
I push open the door, and light pours into the cabin. Wind blows back Melino?’s hair. Standing there beside me in the threshold, shock—and something gentler, maybe wonder—works its way across her face.
“I’ve never seen it before,” she says, softly.
“Me neither,” I admit. “Except on TV.”
“Everyone says the earth is too warm for it to snow. At least in New Amsterdam. It still snows sometimes in New England, I think. North.”
She looks like a natural part of the environment for the first time: a creature of ice and snow at home in this frost-veiled world. If she were dressed in white instead of black, she would blend in perfectly, like a fox shedding its russet coat for the camouflage of winter.
The snow that spreads out in front of us is unmarred, not yet pocked with fallen branches or the prints of animals. Everything is new.
“Do you ever wonder if they’re wrong?” I ask. “The scientists, I mean. They keep telling us that the planet is getting warmer, less hospitable. That eventually it won’t be able to host any life at all. But do you think they could be wrong? That maybe there’s a chance things could get better?”
She looks at me with her dark, doe-like eyes. “I don’t think I’m qualified to say.”
“Just your best guess, then. A gut feeling.”
Melino? casts her gaze around the clearing, and for a long moment there’s no sound except the snow slowly melting, dripping from the branches and onto the fresh sheet of frost. “I don’t know,” she replies at last. “I don’t think it’s up to nature. It’s up to people. So I suppose it depends on whether you have faith in people.”
“You don’t have very much faith in people.”
“No.” She looks down at her gloved hands. “If humans were collectively capable of compassion, we never would have gotten here in the first place.”
“I don’t know about people as a whole. I haven’t met enough of them. Until now I’d never left Esopus Creek.” A small smile comes over my face. “But I think individuals are capable of compassion. Actually, I know they are. And maybe that’s all it takes—at least at the beginning. Just a few people who care. And that caring matters, even if it can’t cool the earth or lower sea levels or turn back time to before a nuclear blast.”
Melino? doesn’t answer, but she does lift her gaze to mine. At her sides, her fists clench and unclench. We’re standing close enough that I could reach out and take her hand. I remember the warmth of her body last night, her arm around my waist, and I flex my fingers. I could touch her. I could—
There’s a rustling in the distance, faint, like leaves in the wind. At first I think nothing of it. But then it grows louder, closer. A Wend? I can’t smell the familiar odor of rotting flesh. A mutation? Maybe. But it would be uncommon for one to venture so near the cabin, especially in the light of day.
The snowy brush around the clearing begins to part. The cans fixed in the trees rattle like tinny wind chimes.
Melino?’s head snaps up, as quick as a mountain cat scenting the air. All that violet color drains from her face.
And then, hoarsely, she whispers, “ Run .”
I’m too shocked and bewildered to obey. The thing that parts the bushes is nothing animal—at least, nothing of the natural world. It has a sleek metal hull, a lithe rectangular body mounted on four mechanical legs. Gears whir as it stalks closer, its steps too measured, too stilted. It’s an aberration, but not like the mutations.
It’s not a creature that has evolved for survival. It’s a machine that was crafted to kill.
Before I can react, Melino? grabs me by the back of my jacket and hauls me inside the cabin. She slams the door shut and forces one of the chairs under the handle, jamming it. I catch myself against the table before I fall, breathing hard.
“What is that?”
Melino? has already shed the flannel shirt and has her rifle in hand. “A Dog. One of Caerus’s mobile robots.”
“But why—how—is it here?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “But it means Caerus found us.”
There’s a heavy scrabbling on the other side of the door. Blood roars in my ears. I kneel down and search under the bed, where I stowed Melino?’s knife, not that I’m convinced it will do me much good.
With enough force to knock the breath out of me, Melino? shoves me to my belly, flat on the floor. “Get down,” she hisses.
I hold my body completely still, though every nerve ending is fizzing with panic. Melino? crouches beside me, peering through the scope of her rifle. There’s a tiny crack in the wooden door, hardly wide enough to fit a finger through, and that’s where she aims her gun.
She shoots.
Abruptly, the scrabbling stops. As the smoky smell of gunpowder fills the air, my muscles relax slightly, but Melino? doesn’t even twitch. She’s staring down the barrel of her gun, the side of her face with the prosthetic eye turned toward me, so I can’t begin to guess what she’s thinking.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The sound makes my heart leap into my throat. It’s on the opposite wall this time, the pounding of forelegs against wood.
Melino? whirls around. She fires another shot, right through the cabin wall, and the scrabbling ceases again. My body is starting to ache from being pressed against the floor, my muscles stretched and taut like copper wire. Melino?’s finger hovers over the trigger. Waiting.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It’s coming from both sides now, from the door and the wall to my right. My blood curdles to ice.
“Two of them?” I whisper.
Melino? gives a small, tight nod.
“How?” I manage, my voice breaking. “How did they find us?”
A swallow ticks in her throat. “I don’t know. Maybe—maybe your tracker. Maybe it came back online.”
I’m all too aware of it now, that second, alien pulse. When I focus on it, all other sounds turn distant and obscure. It becomes a timer again, ticking down the seconds to my death.
Melino? shoots again, and my ears ring. This time there’s no pause in the scrabbling, and after a moment, the wood splinters inward as the Dog’s black foreleg punctures a hole in the door.
It’s stuck there briefly, gears whirring, and Melino? fires. The bullet glides right across its metal hull, leaving a silver scuff mark but nothing more.
My heart drops back into my stomach. This is how I’m going to die , I think, not by my Angel’s hands, but blasted apart by some Caerus machine . Melino? shoots again. Again.
The second Dog plunges through the wall, its body wedged halfway into the cabin and halfway out. I can’t help it—I scream. Melino? whirls around and fires, but the bullets just ping off like pebbles. The next scream gets caught in my throat, strangled before it can come out.
“We have to get out of here.” I manage to push up onto my knees, as the Dogs make more and more progress through the wood. “Come on.”
Melino? shakes her head, without taking her eye from the scope. “They’re faster. We can’t outrun them.”
As her bullets continue to ping off, I almost want to laugh, in the blackest, most humorless way. Of course Caerus would make their Dogs bulletproof. And now, with them closing in, I understand that the Gauntlets really are a mercy, because at least the Outliers stand a sliver of a chance against the Angels. We have no chance against such monstrous machines.