Twenty-Nine Inesa
Twenty-Nine
Inesa
I’m numb as Melino? digs through the rubble. I’m numb as the snow soaks through to my skin. I’m numb as the whole clearing seems to ripple and shudder, as if, at any moment, I’m going to lurch awake from a hazy and obscure dream.
Melino? unearths another shiny black box and sets it down before me. I feel my way around the edge until I find the tiny clasp.
Inside there are even more supplies: syringes of pain medication, bandages and gauze, decon-tabs, meal replacement packets, even matches and a tightly rolled Mylar blanket. It’s all fitted in so neatly that if the circumstances were different, I might believe it was a care package, put together with consideration and sympathy. I remove each item methodically, even though my fingers are shaking.
Underneath the last package of gauze is a tablet. The screen is black, reflecting my face, my eyes gleaming with a hot flash of unshed tears. Melino?’s face hovers over my shoulder. Her skin is pale and mottled gray, like ashes on the snow.
Carefully, I lift the tablet up. As soon as I do, the screen flickers on.
It doesn’t show the usual checkerboard of icons—the weather app and the web browser, photo library and system settings. There’s only the bar at the top of the screen that indicates the time, and the battery life. No internet connection, of course. There’s a single icon in the upper left corner, a blue folder. I double-tap to open it.
Inside is a video file. One unlabeled mp4.
I swallow hard and tap it with my thumb.
The video starts to play immediately, so it must have been predownloaded. It opens in full screen, showing me a large, neon-lit room. There’s a wall covered nearly inch-to-inch in framed posters, crammed with shelves holding plushies and plastic collectible figurines, still in their plastic boxes. Strands of twinkling lights are draped everywhere, in a rainbow of colors.
Sitting in the center of the room, in an enormous high-backed leather desk chair, is a face I instantly recognize. Well—not really a face. A figure in a skull-shaped mask, with large and incongruous pink rabbit ears. He’s wearing a bright green hoodie advertising some sports drink, and fingerless gloves that show off his black nail polish.
It’s Zetamon, the most-watched creator on Caerus’s streaming platform. No one knows his real name, and he’s never shown his real face, but every day tens of thousands of people tune in to watch him play video games, or, more often, react to various videos. The reaction streams have always seemed ridiculous to me, because you can’t even see his expressions. And he says everything in his famously deadpan voice.
Melino? recognizes him, too—her eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
“Hey guys, welcome to the stream,” Zetamon says, with his trademark dourness. “Today I have a special guest joining me. If you haven’t heard of him, you’ve been living under a rock, or you’ve just gotten out of a fucking coma. Anyway, everyone say hi to New Amsterdam’s latest internet boyfriend, and try to keep your thirst comments under control.”
The door to the room opens, and Luka steps inside.
My heart stops. Just for a moment, and then it stutters to life again, beating painfully against my sternum. Luka sits down in a second oversize chair, next to Zetamon, his gaze on the ground.
He’s alive. The relief that shudders through me is enough to make my vision blur and my bones turn to jelly. He doesn’t even look any worse for wear. In fact, his face is smooth, radiating with a subtle glow. There’s a healthy flush to his cheeks. When I look closer, I notice other subtle changes: his cheekbones are higher and more prominent, dusted with some faint gold powder. His lips are redder. Even his eyebrows have been plucked, though the scar through his left one remains.
Caerus has done some work on him. The rough-edged gauntness of a life in the outlying Counties is gone. Well, almost gone. He still has Dad’s strong, square jaw. And Dad’s hazel eyes. My eyes.
“So, Luka,” Zetamon says, “aka the most famous guy in New Amsterdam right now. Tell us how it feels to be here today.”
Luka’s gaze shifts. He won’t look at the camera straight on. “Uh, relieved, I guess,” he says. “Lucky that Caerus found me when they did.”
“Yeah, it was pretty, like, cinematic, them pulling you into the helicopter to save you from those zombie cannibal things.” Zetamon regards his nail polish. “Are those, like, common where you live?”
“The Wends? Yeah.” Luka’s fingers curl into a fist.
“Creepy,” Zetamon intones. “Anyway, take us back to the beginning. How did it go down, finding out your sister was put up as a Lamb? How did you feel?”
“Afraid.” This answer comes more quickly, though Luka still doesn’t look up from his lap. “The last Gauntlet, it was another girl from our town. Sanne Dekker. She didn’t survive.”
It’s obvious that Luka has been coached on his answers. And I’m sure Zetamon has been told explicitly which questions to ask. Caerus has arranged every aspect of this interview.
“But you had a plan,” Zetamon prompts.
“I mean, we didn’t have much time to figure it out, but we knew we had to get as far away from Esopus as possible,” Luka says. “We borrowed a car, brought some supplies. We figured our best chance was just to run.”
“That didn’t work out for you, though.”
“No.” Luka’s knuckles are white, bones pressing up against his skin. “She caught up to us.”
“Yeah. So let’s talk about her now, the Angel. Melino?.” Zetamon glances at his computer screen. “Chat really wants to know how you managed to fend her off—not once, but twice.”
“The first time was mostly luck.”
“Nah,” Zetamon cuts in. “You’re too humble, brother. The moment in the car was insane. Everyone thought you killed her. How’d you get to be so good with a gun?”
Luka talks, awkwardly and haltingly, about our taxidermy shop. He doesn’t mention Dad. Obviously Caerus doesn’t want people to know that anyone has managed to escape them, to live off their grid. He doesn’t mention Mom, either. It would hurt the narrative, if he told the truth. Better to let the audience believe that Mom is an innocent victim, and that I was a willing sacrifice. Azrael must have cut the cameras when I told Mel the truth about Mom, the same way he did when Luka and I talked about Dad.
“Okay, so you’ve run into the woods,” Zetamon says. “Those creepy fucks are chasing you. And then the Angel appears out of nowhere. What are you thinking?”
“It was hard to think.” For the first time, Luka sounds sincere. Vulnerable. His voice is low, almost too quiet for the mic to pick up. “It was just instinct. In that situation, all you can do is try to survive.”
“Mm-hmm,” Zetamon says. “Chat is going crazy right now, by the way. They’re spamming that clip of you knocking her out.”
Zetamon switches the camera to screen-capture mode and replays the clip. Melino? throws her knife, pinning Luka to the tree. He snarls at her— bitch —with such venom that it makes my skin prickle. And then she’s wrestling me to the ground, hands around my throat, but the cameras linger on Luka, watching him tear himself free. Grabbing the rifle. Thrusting it against her temple.
The violence of it is sickening, and my stomach turns. This is the moment that made the audience fall in love with him? Melino? was right—they hate her.
But as Zetamon replays the clip, I realize it’s even simpler than that. They just want blood spilled. It doesn’t matter whose. It’s not like they were cheering just as hard for Luka when he helped me to my feet.
There’s something about a man—because Luka looks like a man, even if he’s only sixteen—beating a girl that’s especially exciting to them. Something about watching her degradation. As Zetamon plays the clip for a third time, I have to squeeze my eyes shut.
They talk through the rest of Luka’s time during the Gauntlet, until the moment that Caerus picked him up. I get to watch that clip, too. Blood running from a gash on Luka’s forehead, him too dazed to protest as two Masks descend and shove him into a helicopter.
And then, at last, the conversation turns to me.
“It’s obvious to everyone watching how much you and your sister care about each other,” Zetamon says. “And you’ve been watching the rest of her Gauntlet, too, yeah?”
Luka nods.
“So if there was one thing you could say to your sister, what would it be?”
Finally, Luka lifts his head and stares directly into the camera. He swallows hard. Then, slowly, he reaches into his pocket.
He takes something out, closed tightly in his fist. When it’s in view of the camera, he unfolds his fingers. Resting in the palm of his hand is the compass, Dad’s compass, that fits the broken case I kept. That feels like an eternity ago.
Tears gather in my eyes. But the cameras are on me, too. I tell myself not to cry.
“I would tell her I want her to survive,” Luka says, as he holds the compass out. “For both of us. That I don’t want to lose her. That I don’t...” He stops, and for the first time in years, I see tears gather in the corners of his eyes, too. Looking just like mine. “That I believe in her. That I know she’s strong enough to make it. Please, Nesa.”
“So, wow,” Zetamon deadpans. “Powerful stuff.”
The video cuts off abruptly. The screen goes completely black.
Without speaking, I set down the tablet and examine what remains in the box. There’s only one item left: a rolled-up length of white fabric. I unfurl it.
It’s a dress. Long-sleeved, slightly old-fashioned looking. I turn it over in my hands, examining every inch.
Inside the bodice, along one of the seams, are words stitched in black thread.
Wear this and he lives.
We carry everything into the cabin in silence. Every time a word rises in my throat, I remember that the cameras are on, and I swallow it down again.
Melino? has the replacement hunting suit draped over her arm. When we get inside, closing the door behind us, she lifts up one of the sleeves. Attached to it is a new timer. Ticking down the seconds until the end of my Gauntlet. I cross the room with heavy steps so I can see how long I have left.
Two days. Seven hours. Fifty-two minutes.
Azrael has accelerated the timeline. He knows the audience is on the edge of their seats. I sit down in one of the chairs. My legs feel boneless, my knees weak. Melino? stands, gripping the edge of the table so tightly her nails could splinter the wood.
There are a thousand things I want to say, but none I can risk with the cameras on. The knowledge that they’ve been on this whole time makes me sick—a full-body, hot-blooded sickness, an amalgam of anger and fear and hate. I hate Caerus for doing this. I hate them all for watching, for typing out their smug and casually cruel comments.
The force of my loathing surprises me. I never blamed the other Outliers for our circumstances, or even the City dwellers, with their decadent Damish accents, but now I understand: There would be no Gauntlet without an audience.
Maybe I’ve finally become a person Dad would be proud of. A person full of righteous, stomach-churning hate.
Dad .
I reach into the pocket of my coat, and my fingers close around the case of his compass. I’d forgotten about it, until Luka held his half up during the interview. As I touch the cold metal, I feel another sickening jolt of anger, remembering how Dad left us with nothing except this worthless piece of junk. Nothing except—
The tiny scroll of paper. With the cameras on, I’m too wary to remove it from my pocket, but I clamp my fist around it. It seems to somehow warm my skin.
Melino? still hasn’t spoken. Her eyes are trained in the middle distance, a muscle pulsing in her throat. No words can pass between us that won’t be heard by a million people in New Amsterdam, by Azrael and all of Caerus. Hopelessness pools in my stomach.
“Azrael doesn’t make idle threats,” she says at last, in a voice that’s hardly more than a whisper.
With my other hand, I finger the seam of the white dress. Wear this and he lives.
“I didn’t think he was bluffing,” I reply bleakly.
“It’s always been like this.” Finally, she meets my gaze. Her eyes are haunted. “He just takes and takes. I—we can’t stop him.”
A lump rises in my throat, because she’s right. We have nothing to bargain with. What are two girls against Caerus? They could kill us in an instant, in a spray of bullets. They already proved that, with the Dogs. Every second I’m still breathing is a mercy they’re granting us both. Another debt—one that I can repay only with my life.
“If I don’t do what he wants, he’ll turn me into an empty shell,” she whispers. “Like Keres. And marry me off to someone in Caerus upper management. It’s what he does to all of us, in the end.”
And somehow, even though I’ve never set foot in the City, even though all I’ve seen are photos, I can envision it. It’s clearer than a dream; it’s almost as real as a memory. Melino?, strapped down to the table, syringe in her throat. A blank, glassy look in her eyes, unknowing and unknowable. Some nameless, faceless man slipping his hand around her waist, between her legs, pressing her onto the bed.
Before I can even process it, I’m on my feet. I rise so suddenly that my chair topples over and clatters to the floor. And then, with a strength born only of adrenaline and sheer rage, I flip over the table, sending all the supplies, the hunting suit and the white dress, careening into the wall. Decon-tabs scatter everywhere.
“ Fuck! ” I scream. “Fuck him—fuck this—fuck everything—”
Melino? just stands back and stares as I lurch through the cabin, smashing everything I can get my hands on. I kneel down and pick up a package of bandages, just so I can tear them apart. I hurl the rusted, ancient rifle against the wall, and the stock breaks off the barrel. It doesn’t matter; it’s useless against Caerus. All of this is useless. I stomp on the meal replacement packets until they burst. By this time, I’m breathing so hard I can’t even speak, but I can still hear the pulse of the tracker, as ceaseless as my own heartbeat.
I pause, chest heaving, my gaze blurred with unshed tears. I look over at Melino?. Somehow, impossibly, her eyes are damp, too. She told me that Caerus had removed her tear ducts. But maybe that was another one of Azrael’s lies.
Suddenly, she drops to her knees. She fishes through the supplies until she finds the knife, her knife. She holds it up for just a moment, a furrow between her brows, lips quivering. And then she brings it down, slashing through the middle of a Mylar blanket.
Her movements are not swift, not graceful, not Angel-like. They’re blundering and staggered, made clumsy by her anger. I kneel down on the floor and join her, tearing through the remains of the Mylar blanket, throwing whatever other supplies I can get my hands on, both of us breathing hard in tandem, the air growing thick and hot with our shared fury.
At last, the rage runs through and out of us. We’re left kneeling, shaking, and struggling for breath. The tip of my nose prickles with oncoming tears, but the rest of me just feels heavy and numb.
Melino? lets a strip of Mylar drift from her hands. Her hair is around her face and her cheeks are filled with that purple flush. Her lips are still swollen, with the memory of my kiss, and I want to grab her and kiss her again, again and again, as if the only touch she’ll ever know is mine.