When he looks at me again, the smile is gone.
“I told you I loved you,” he says. “You didn’t say how you feel about me.”
I look down, watch my booted feet splashing along the trail. Why didn’t I tell him how I feel? Because I didn’t know for sure. I still don’t. And besides, we have a war to stop.
“This isn’t the right time to discuss it,” I tell him.
A little bit of the light drains from his eyes. He’s still smiling, but it’s not quite as divine as before.
“I guess it’s never the right time,” he says. “After we stop this battle, what then? We have to gather food, learn to use the purple root, fix what machines we can, deal with Bello…there’s always something, Em.”
“A war isn’t just a something. Can we focus on that for now?”
O’Malley’s hands fidget with the hatchet Barkah gave him.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I get it. You want to be with Bishop.”
Oh my gods—boys are exasperating.
“That’s not what I want.”
He raises an eyebrow. “It’s not? You could have fooled me.”
He speeds up, pulling ahead of me to walk side by side with Rekis.
“Hey there,” O’Malley says with forced joviality. “And how is my favorite nonhuman today?”
Rekis laughs a broken-glass laugh, clearly delighted to be spoken to by an “alien.”
O’Malley told me he loves me. Bishop didn’t. Is that because Bishop can’t…or because he doesn’t?
“Hem?”
Barkah leans closer, blinking. I know, instantly, that the alien is asking if I’m okay. Our two races are drastically different, yet we can read each other somewhat, understand each other’s intent. If we can do that, we can overcome any language barrier.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Thank you.”
Barkah points down the path. “Kevin?”
Is Barkah asking if O’Malley is all right, or if I’m upset because of him? Either way, the only answer I have is to shrug. I doubt Barkah knows what that gesture means, but if he’s going to spend time with teenage humans, he’ll figure it out soon enough.
When Matilda created me, why couldn’t she have just programmed away these stupid emotions? Life is hard enough without having to worry about who likes who.
Maybe I should go talk to O’Malley. When I said, That’s not what I want, maybe what I meant was, I don’t know what I want. O’Malley has his faults, sure, but he’s been behind me every step of the way, almost from the moment he woke up. He supports me. He believes in me. And, unlike Bishop, O’Malley comes right out and says how he feels about me.
Things have been so desperate, so crazy, maybe I don’t know what I want because I haven’t had a moment to actually think about what I want. Now that I do…maybe I want the same thing O’Malley does.
And that scares me.
I see him up ahead, walking with Rekis and Tohdohbak. The hanging fog is a haze around them, blocking my view of anything farther down the path.
Rekis’s long tail rises straight up, goes stiff. Barkah grabs me, stops me even as Rekis does the same thing with O’Malley. It’s just like when Visca or Bishop put a fist in the air—a noiseless symbol for everyone to freeze.
Far up ahead in the mist, I see two figures approaching. Humans. I can’t make them out.
O’Malley is farther ahead than I am. He must be able to see them better, because he calls out: “Coyotl, is that you?”
“Hey, O’Malley.”
Coyotl’s voice—he’s alive!
O’Malley lets out a whoop of joy. I start to make the same noise, but Barkah squeezes my arm tighter, telling me to stay quiet.
“Hey,” O’Malley says, his excitement audible, “is that Beckett with you?”
From the fog, another voice answers. “It is.”
Beckett? They’re both alive? Maybe Muller is as well. If I can take them to the battlefield with me, and with Barkah, and with the secret of the purple root—Aramovsky’s power will evaporate like so much jungle mist.
I want to run to them, but Barkah won’t let me go.
“We didn’t expect you, O’Malley,” Beckett calls. “You’re not supposed to be here. Where’s Em?”
Why would Beckett say You’re not supposed to be here? Have they already been back to the shuttle? But if they have, why would Aramovsky send Beckett back out looking for me? Beckett is a gear…he’s not suited for stumbling through a hostile jungle in the middle of the night.
“I have to be honest with you, O’Malley,” Coyotl says. “I think your new friend is really, really ugly.”
For an instant, the surrounding fog flashes like we’re inside a cloud filled with lightning. Tohdohbak screams—his body is ripped apart, pieces of him scattering through the jungle.
Tohdohbak’s death cry echoes through the trees. The blazing light blinks out as fast as it flared up, leaving me seeing spots.
I think of El-Saffani.