Chapter 17
17
Dusk begins to fall over camp. Darcie’s gone off alone. I feel choked with fear for her, unable to focus, unable to calm myself. Why would she wander off like that, after she saw what happened to Julian? Ben insists she’ll come back, she just needs space. For some reason, the video hasn’t shaken him like it has me. Maybe he’s seen worse in war, or maybe he’s too stubborn to let it truly sink in — that Julian was encased in writhing vines, that they were lifted up, nearly consumed .
I know one of us — probably Ben — should go after Darcie, bring her back. But the last thing I want is to lose him.
“Darcie’s okay,” Julian says dreamily from their bunk. Their arms are wrapped around their legs, knees tucked under their chin.
Ben and I have been taking turns checking in on Julian throughout the day. They’re not getting any better. If anything, their eyes seem even more faraway than this morning, their words less and less cogent.
“Why do you say that?” I ask, not expecting a meaningful answer. I’ve made myself comfortable in a chair I dragged in from the main tent and brought in a mug of cold coffee to sip.
“Because we all are,” Julian answers.
I glance up from my coffee. “What do you mean?” It’s been this, over and over. We’re all okay, everything is fine, perfect. Darcie stole Julian away from some eternal ecstasy, and so on. Pure madness. I don’t know what Julian experienced in the plain, but it wasn’t beauty. All I saw in that video was abomination.
A line forms between Julian’s brows. “I mean the Planet loves us.”
I roll my shoulders to dispel an impending shudder. “Planets don’t have feelings.”
“This one does.”
A chill runs up my spine. I think of the legend of Gaia, the goddess of Earth, birthing strange beings into a quiet world. But we are far from Earth. Gaia doesn’t exist here. She doesn’t exist anywhere. There’s nothing but rock and flora, and far below us, a boiling white-hot core at the center of this celestial body. Just like every other goddamn planet in the universe.
I try to swallow the knot of dread that’s caught in my throat. Even logic and science do nothing to soothe me just now.
“You should get some sleep,” I say, standing. I suddenly don’t want to be in here with Julian. Their eyes are too hazy, their bizarre words too earnest. I need familiarity, comfort, before I get pulled in and start to drown alongside Julian.
“I’m not tired,” Julian protests. “I close my eyes and see Her.”
“Great,” I say, distracted and wound up. I turn to go.
“Wait.”
I pause and look over my shoulder. Julian’s watching me intently. “I thought you understood,” they murmur.
I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I ask: “Understood what?”
“Your mother. I thought you knew.”
I take a step back. The mug falls from my fingers, and cold brown liquid splashes my boots. “Knew what?”
But they only smile, a painfully slow expansion of the lips. “Never mind. I thought you knew. You’ll find out soon.”
I back out of the tent, spin on my heel, and run. I can’t catch my breath. Can’t get away fast enough. I sprint across the camp, ready to collapse the second I get to my tent.
I’m just a meter away when a shape darts out of the shadowy dusk, slamming into my side. I stumble, nearly losing my balance. Before I can regain composure, an arm clamps around me, pulling back against my throat. My attacker is breathless behind me, their exhalations hot on my ear.
“Bitch,” Darcie hisses.
I try to speak, but her arm is pinned against my windpipe, and I can’t force out the words. I can’t breathe. I kick at her, pulling at her arm, already panicking. But she’s taller than me, far stronger, and extremely pissed off.
“That sucks, doesn’t it?” she murmurs in my ear. There’s an oiliness to her tone that I’ve never heard before. “Not being able to breathe. No way to fight back.”
Fuck. I’m going to die here. Pathetically, helplessly, in Darcie’s arms. I wonder distantly if I deserve it. Somewhere, deep inside, I think I do. My struggles weaken.
“Imagine how Julian must have felt,” Darcie continues, her crushing grip on my neck tightening further. My vision spots. “The grass, the flowers, the very ground they walk on, all using them as glorified fertilizer.”
Her voice seems to come from far away. Through water, a thick fog. There’s no use fighting anymore.
“All because you couldn’t keep it in your pants. All because Ben was so desperate to get his dick wet.”
Ben .
His name wakes me and pushes me back toward consciousness, even though I know my weakening kicks against her shins, my scrabbling fingers at her arm, aren’t going to save me. Darcie’s going to come for him next. When I’m gone, she’ll hunt him down. She’ll use his gun to shoot him, or she’ll bait him into shooting her first. Either way, I won’t be the last to die.
“Shh,” Darcie purrs. “Only a moment now.” Her mouth brushes my ear, and I’m disgusted. I want to rip her head off with my bare hands and crush it under my heel. I want the Planet to devour her, grow inside her, replace her intestines with vines, her veins with root systems. I want her opened-up body dripping with blood and sap, consumed, decimated.
My panic dissipates.
All around me, darkness. I’m relaxing into it. My body is going limp. Falling asleep.
Darcie , comes a voice — my own thoughts, from deep, deep inside. Let me go. It doesn’t have to be like this. Let me go, and She’ll spare you.
A hiss of indrawn breath. A curse spat in my ear.
And then I’m on my knees in the dirt, choking and coughing, tears streaming down my face. I vomit, still half-blind. I can see enough now to know that Darcie’s gone. I’m alone in the night. She couldn’t have been here longer than a minute, maybe two. Cricket-things chirp all around the camp. The stars watch impassively from above.
Darcie tried to kill me.
The thought runs through my head like a marquee. Darcie tried to kill me. Or she wanted to scare me so badly that I’d never… never what? Turn off my walkie again? Piss her off? Make out with Ben?
Fuck. She’s out there now, wandering in the darkness. I stand, hobble to my tent, and crawl onto the cot. My lungs and throat scream in pain every time I take a breath. Darcie saw something unthinkable out on the plain today. We all saw it, but not in the way she did. Not with the pure terror she did, with the fear of losing Julian.
I pulled that flower out of Julian’s mouth. An entire root system came with it.
I retch over the side of my cot, but nothing comes up this time.
We’re all acting insane. Is it the Planet? The fucking Napa wine?
“There’s a biological explanation,” I mutter to myself, twisting my fingers together. “There always is.” But what about Julian’s behavior? What about my own, the way I threw myself at Ben? Darcie choking me half to death? Toxic air. Microspores that alter the mind. It could be anything. Something they missed in the first expedition.
I remember my conversation with Julian in the lab tent. We’re all broken in some way. Damaged, maybe unfixable. No one would care if we disappeared out here, one by one. Maybe that’s exactly what they expect to happen, as long as we find the results they want.
I don’t know how long I sit on my cot in silence, gently massaging my throat, wishing I’d been stronger, that I had tried harder to stop Darcie. And I know I should call for Ben on the radio, tell him that no one is safe on their own. But I don’t want to have to explain what Darcie did. It’s my fault, I’m sure of it. My fault.
Julian’s words pop into my head, unbidden: I thought you knew… You’ll find out soon.
I don’t fucking know, do I? I don’t know anything . This place is a cruel joke. Maybe Julian is trying to hurt me. Why would they know anything about my mother that I don’t?
“Knock, knock.” Ben’s voice outside the tent is soft, hesitant.
I start at the sound, my hackles rising. I’m wound so tight I’m about to snap.
“Come in.” My voice is faint and weak.
He pushes aside the flap, ducks inside, and sits beside me. His hair is still slightly disheveled from our tryst in the forest, his collar drawn up, his jawline shadowed in the lantern light. He shouldn’t be allowed to look like that when I feel like this.
I open my mouth to say something, to tell him what happened. I have to tell him Darcie attacked me. But I know what he’ll do next. He’ll tell me to stay put, and he’ll go looking for her. Anything could happen, after that.
“I just went to check on Fleming,” Ben says. “They said you high-tailed it out of there a bit ago. You all right?”
Darcie tried to kill me, actually.
“No,” I answer. “Not really.” I turn to him, and I’m struck by the sweetness in his gaze. How can he be so soft, so kind, after everything? After what we saw happen to Julian? After what I made him do in the forest? Made us do?
“Yeah, I figured.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice breaking. “I didn’t mean— I just, I thought it was safe, and I didn’t— It’s my fault, I’m so sorry—”
“Shh,” he murmurs, hooking an arm around me and pulling me into him. “Nothing’s your fault. You haven’t done anything wrong. No one’s hurt. We’re all okay.”
“Julian’s not okay.” And I’m not okay. I’m extremely far from okay. But I can’t speak the words. It’s as if they’re wrapped in stinging nettles, caught in my throat.
“They’re just sick,” says Ben. “They’re running a temperature. I gave them something to lower the fever, and I’ll check in later tonight.”
His arm is still around me. I’m pressed to his side, and I allow my head to fall sideways until my cheek rests on his shoulder. I’m still taut as a wire, my heart hammering in my chest, skin prickling with fear, but Ben is solid and real and comforting.
“I know it’s hard,” he says, after a minute or two of quiet. “Being here, knowing what your mom went through. But it’s all gonna be fine, I promise.”
I close my eyes. “How can you promise that?”
He turns, pressing an awkward kiss to my head. “I can’t. But I’ve spent a while getting to know you. Maybe not as well as Fleming and Farreira do, but I know you well enough. I know you think you’re defined by everything your mother did. That you have to fit into the shape of what she left behind. But you don’t. You just have to be Jill.”
With each word he speaks, my muscles relax, just a little. I don’t dare open my eyes. If I do, he’ll dissipate into mist, and this kindness, the care in his words, his gentle kiss, will all have been a dream.
“And Jones,” he continues, “you’re more than enough. You’re a force. Smart. Pretty. Kinda quiet. Sarcastic.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Annoying, when you’re in a mood.”
Darcie’s words ring in my ears: You’ve been mooning over her since day one . Have I been too oblivious to notice? Too caught up in hiding my own crush that I completely missed what was staring me in the face? All I needed was a pissed off, murderous Darcie to show it to me.
Fuck. Darcie.
I sit up and turn to Ben. I don’t know how to ask him if he means it. I don’t know how to explain that everything he believes about me is wrong. I don’t think I am any more than my mother’s daughter. No one ever allowed me to be. So instead of saying what I want to say — that I need him, I care about him, I want him to hold my hand and never let go — I clear my throat and say, “Did you see Darcie on the way here?”
He tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “No. But I’m sure she’ll be back. Just has to get something out of her system. If she’s not back by midnight, I’ll go look for her.”
How can he be so unbothered? I don’t know what to say next. I can’t tell him what she tried to do, or he’ll go looking for her. The last thing I want is for him to leave my side, even though part of me is desperate to make sure Darcie is safe. Part of me yearns to look after Julian.
But Ben… I can’t help the way my body reacts to him. And that other part of me, the traitorous one, the louder one, is hungry for comfort. For another taste.
“What do you think that was?” Ben asks, his thoughts clearly miles away.
He doesn’t have to say, In the video . I know what he means. I meet his gaze. There’s fear in his eyes, and a little hope. Like he thinks I might have an answer, like maybe I’m the solution to everything in his life. It’s intoxicating.
I take a breath before answering. I don’t know. An impossible thing. A nightmare .
An evening breeze snakes in through the open tent flap, and with it, the smell of fresh blooms. The smell of grass, of rich soil, of dew-wet ferns. A flood of pleasure drenches me, washing me clean. Somehow, I know the dusk is turning clear and crisp, a purplish velvet paradise, and suddenly, all of this feels so small. So unimportant. I want to be outside, under the stars, amongst the grasses and trees and buds. All I want is to explore.
Everything else can wait.
Slowly I stand, holding out my hand.
Ben takes it, his expression curious. But I see the lust there, simmering behind his eyes. I feel it, too. We’re burning like embers.
I answer his question: “I’ll show you.”