Options:
Finish Teacup and take my chances against three Black Hawks equipped with Hellfire missiles.
Leave Teacup to be finished by them—or worse, saved.
One last option: Finish both of us. A bullet for her. A bullet for me.
I don’t know if Zombie is okay. I don’t know what—if anything—drove Teacup from the hotel. What I do know is our deaths may be his only chance to live.
I will myself to squeeze the trigger. If I can fire the first round, the second will be much easier. I tell myself it’s too late—too late for her and too late for me. There’s no avoiding death, anyway. Isn’t that the lesson they’ve been hammering into our heads for months? No hiding from it, no running from it. Put it off for a day, and death will surely find you tomorrow.
She looks so beautiful, not even real, nestled in a bower of snow, her dark hair shimmering like onyx, her expression in sleep the indescribable serenity of an ancient statue.
I know that killing both of us is the only option with the least risk to the most people. And I think of rats again and how sometimes, to pass the interminable hours, Teacup and I would plot our campaign against the vermin, stratagems and tactics, waves of attack, each more ridiculous than the last, until she dissolved into hysterical laughter, and I gave her the same speech I gave Zombie on the firing range, the same lesson that now comes home to me, the fear that binds killer to prey and the bullet connecting both as if by a silver cord. Now I am the killer and the prey, a circle of a completely different kind, and my mouth has gone dry as the sterile air, my heart as cold: The temperature of true rage is absolute zero, and mine is deeper than the ocean, wider than the universe.
So it isn’t hope that makes me slip the sidearm back into its holster. It isn’t faith and it sure isn’t love.
It’s rage.
Rage, and the fact that I have a dead recruit’s implant still lodged between my cheek and gums.
I LIFT HER UP. Her head falls against my shoulder. We take off through the trees. A Black Hawk thunders overhead. The other two choppers have split off, one to the east, one to the west, cutting off any escape. The high, thin branches bend. Snow whips sideways into my face. Teacup weighs nothing; I could be carrying a wad of discarded clothes.
We come out of the trees as a Black Hawk roars in from the north. The blast of air whips my hair with cyclonic fury. The chopper hovers above us and now we are motionless, standing in the middle of the road. No more running. No more.
I lower Teacup to the blacktop. The helicopter is so close, I can see the black visor of the pilot and the open door to the hold and the cluster of bodies inside, and I know I’m in the middle of a half dozen sights, me and the little girl at my feet. And every second that passes means I’ve survived that second and, with each second, the increased probability I’ll survive the next. It might not be too late, not for me, not for her, not yet.
I do not glow in their eyepieces. I am one of them. I must be, right?
I sling the rifle from my shoulder and slip my finger through the trigger guard.
FROM THE TIME I could barely walk, my father would ask me, Cassie, do you want to fly? And my arms would shoot over my head. Are you kidding me, old man? Damn straight I want to fly!
And he would grab my waist and toss me into the air. My head would snap back and I would hurtle like a rocket toward the sky. For an instant that lasted a thousand years, it felt as if I’d keep flying until I reached the stars. I would scream with joy, that fierce roller-coaster-ride fear, my fingers clutching at clouds.
Fly, Cassie, fly!
My brother knew that feeling, too. Better than me, because the memory was fresher. Even after the Arrival, Dad was launching him into orbit. I saw him do it at Camp Ashpit a few days before Vosch showed up and murdered him in the dirt.
Sam, m’boy, do you want to fly? Lowering his voice from baritone to bass like an old-time carny hustler, though the ride he was selling was free—and priceless. Dad the launching pad. Dad the landing zone. Dad the tether that kept Sams—and me—from hurtling into the nullity of deep space, a nullity himself now.
I waited for Sam to ask. That’s the easiest way to break horrible news. Also the lowest. He didn’t ask, though. He told me.
“Daddy’s dead.”
A tiny lump beneath a mound of covers, brown eyes big and round and blank like the teddy bear’s pressed against his cheek. Teddy bears are for babies, he told me the first night at Hotel Hell. I’m a soldier now.
Burrowed in the bed next to his, another solemn, pint-sized soldier staring at me, the seven-year-old they call Teacup. The one with the adorable baby-doll face and haunted eyes who doesn’t share a bed with a stuffed animal; she sleeps with a rifle.
Welcome to the post-human age.
“Oh, Sam.” I left my post by the window and sat beside the cocoon of covers swaddling him. “Sammy, I didn’t know how—”
He slugged me in the cheek with a balled-up, apple-sized fist. I never saw it coming, in both meanings of the phrase. Bright stars exploded in my vision. For a second I was afraid he’d detached my retina.
Okay. Rubbing my cheek. I deserved that.
“Why did you let him die?” he demanded. He didn’t cry or scream. His voice was low and fierce, simmering with rage. “You were supposed to take care of him.”
“I didn’t let him die, Sams.”
My father bleeding, crawling in the dirt—Where are you going, Dad?—and Vosch standing over him, watching my father crawl the way a sadistic kid might a fly that he’s dewinged, grimly satisfied.
Teacup from her bed: “Hit her again.”
Sam snarled at her, “You shut up.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” I whispered, my arm wrapped around the bear.
“He was soft,” Teacup said. “That’s what happens when you go—”
Sam was on her in two seconds. Then it was all fists and knees and feet and dust flying from the blankets and Dear God, there’s a rifle in that bed! and I shoved Teacup away, scooped Sam into my arms, and held him tightly against my chest while he swung his arms and kicked his legs, spitting and gnashing his teeth, and Teacup was shouting obscenities at him and promising she’d put him down like a dog if he ever touched her again. The door flew open and Ben burst into the room wearing that ridiculous yellow hoodie.
“It’s cool!” I shouted over the screaming. “I’ve got this!”
“Cup! Nugget! Stand down!”
Like a switch being flipped, the minute Ben barked the order, both kids fell silent. Sam went limp. Teacup flopped against the headboard and folded her arms over her chest.
“She started it.” Sam pouted.
“I was just thinking of painting a big red X on the roof,” Ben said. He holstered his pistol. “Thanks, guys, for saving me the trouble.” He grinned at me. “Maybe Teacup should bunk in my room until Ringer gets back.”
“Good!” Teacup said. She jumped out of bed, marched to the door, turned on her heel, went back to the bed, grabbed the rifle, and yanked on Ben’s wrist. “Let’s go, Zombie.”