Egmont Press: Ethical Publishing
TOBIN
We’re at Day 49 AF—days since the Arc fell.
Almost two months ago, a group of kids with rocks took down the security lights that had guarded this compound for generations, and the Fade walked through. No one died. No one was stolen away to the Dark. In fact, it was the opposite. They brought back the people we’d written off as lost.
Everything changed, but you’d never know it the way things have settled.
Walk the perimeter. See nothing. Report nothing.
Test the lights.
Walk the perimeter. See nothing. Report nothing.
Lock step and follow orders.
Training for a security position should involve more action, but that’s all been past tense since the night my friends and I brought the Arc down.
“Twenty-seven?”
Mr. Pace’s voice crackles through my radio, at the same exact second he calls every night.
“Present, Teacher,” I say, using a voice I know he can’t stand.
“That wasn’t even funny the first time.”
“Present, Elias ?”
“Tobin . . .”
“Sorry.”
“And I’m pretty sure I’ve warned you about lying to a superior, too.”
“So write me up for apologizing. I dare you.”
He’s got no one to report me to. With our former leader, Honoria, hiding in the lower parts of the compound, he’s as high up the chain of command as you can go.
“Keep it up, and I’ll do you one better,” he says sourly. “I’ll tell your father.”
Okay, that would be worse than the write-up.
Things have been weird with my dad since he came back from the Dark. I don’t mean to avoid him, but the Fade are in his eyes, all silver and shiny—everyone sees it, and everyone whispers when they think he can’t hear them. It’s worse being in the same house and wondering if the hive sees what he sees. Thinking about it makes my skin crawl, and that reminds me of them, too.
We’re supposedly in a state of neutrality with the shadow crawlers, but I can’t shake the idea that neutral is a code word for something we haven’t anticipated.
“You have to take this seriously,” Mr. Pace says. “It’s not a drill anymore.”
“Assign me something more interesting than watching the sun set and I’ll take it as seriously as you want.”
“Interesting is overrated. And stop staring at the sun; you’ll go blind.”
“Would that get me another assignment?”
“The system’s about to cycle.” Mr. Pace sighs. “Keep your eyes on the perimeter and off the flaming ball of solar gas.”
“Yes, sir.”
I wish the cameras were online. I’d salute, just to piss him off.
The radio goes quiet, matching the rest of my assigned perimeter stretch, only quiet never makes it all the way to silence anymore. I can’t say for sure that my hearing’s sharper since he did his little magic trick and healed the gunshot wound that should have killed me, but I’m definitely more aware of my surroundings. I listen harder and look deeper. I never take for granted that what I see is all that’s out there. And I never forget that the white nightmare drew blood long before Honoria did. If he hadn’t recognized Marina when we went hand-to-hand outside my door, he wouldn’t have stopped with slashing me across the shoulder. He probably would have taken my head off.
Marina never thinks of him as anything other than “Rue”—short for rueful—“sorry .”
More like sorry-ass.
He’s a walking pile of genetically altered apologies with a broken heart. She swears he never intended to hurt anyone that day he took on five of us, but it’s not that simple. Thanks to the emergency share of his nanites, I know that the Fade don’t hate humans, but I also know that there is one Fade who does hate me . I know exactly how close he came to saying no when she begged him to save my life.
He still wouldn’t have gotten what he wants. Me dead wouldn’t make Marina more Fade or less human.
I stop at the center of my assigned route, something I’ve done often enough to leave footprints.
“Ready,” I say into my radio, and start a mental countdown. The lights in my section go through a prearranged pattern of tests before blazing full bright. In my head, it’s set to music. A billion notes blended into the current.
“How’s it look?” Mr. Pace asks.
“Same as yesterday.”
Things repeat so often around here, I’m surprised I haven’t been hypnotized.
“Good, then the reroutes haven’t done any new damage.”
Most of the damage Annie and the others did to the lamps was superficial, only requiring new bulbs and covers, which would be perfect except that while it was happening, the techs panicked. They thought the problem was more complex than broken bulbs, and they tried to force more power into the lights, causing massive shorts in the system by routing too much voltage. Now all that damage has to be unraveled like a giant, layered knot.
“There’s a pulse headed your way.”
“I’ll be here.”
I step back from the perimeter, and wait for the heat.
A pulse is exactly what it sounds like. Mr. Pace takes each section of the boundary in turn and sends high power bursts through the lamps, so we can highlight any points weak enough to buckle. The bulbs come on so strong and hot that they cook the fog right out of the Grey for several feet around the Arc. There’s something about the uncovered desolation that gives me chills, even though I’m sweating from the burn.
It’s depressing. Lonely .
On the short side of the Grey, where Annie and I had crossed to go after Marina, the Dark’s so close that you can see it, even through the fog. When the lights go bright on that side, the trees shudder from the shock, but here, there’s nothing. The Dark sits below the horizon, dipping out of sight in the extreme distance. It’s easy to pretend there’s nothing out there beyond rocks and tree stumps and trash that’s blown into the Grey as a reminder of the world before.
“What’s