“I’ll get the medic,” our savior said, and took off at a jog. All fell silent and then I heard the low roar of the engine. I hadn’t expected it to echo all around us, from all directions at once. And I could tell when it left the ground.
“We’re flying!” I whispered to Taema. But she couldn’t respond.
I slumped on the floor, my arms around her, tears running down my face. “Please,” I kept gasping. “Please.” I actually prayed. Prayed to a God. Not Mana-ma’s. My own idea of a God, one who wasn’t a total asshole.
A group of people came running down the metal hallway. About five or six, their footsteps and voices echoing all around me. I was barely conscious. For a moment, when the unfamiliar faces peered down at us, I wondered if they were going to toss us out like so much junk. But my first experience with those from the outside world after we’d actually left the Hearth was kindness.
They’d never seen conjoined twins, and they looked at us with a mixture of awe and fear. They touched us gently, as if afraid they’d break us. I was almost all gone by then, but I still remember those soft fingers laying us down in the sick bay. I could see a gray fog with vague shapes and hear distorted sounds, but that’s it.
A mask was put over my face and I could breathe better. My vision cleared, but I still felt so very weak. I wrapped my arms around Taema and closed my eyes, pressing my face against her neck.
The last thought I had before I fell unconscious was that I really, really didn’t want us to die. Not when we were so close to that big, wide world out there.
TWENTY-EIGHT
TAEMA
Something is wrong.
Or, at least, it’s not what Ensi had planned. I see the tall, towering redwoods of the Hearth. The sky is full of rainclouds, and the luminescent green fog of the bay floats through the air. I smell sea salt and old smoke. It is more vivid than anything I’ve ever experienced.
It’s almost exactly like that shared dream forest my sister and I visited along with everyone else in the Hearth after we took the little pill from Mana-ma’s hand.
I’m not bound. Neither is Nazarin. I don’t see Ensi. This isn’t where we were meant to end up. This definitely isn’t where Ensi would send us to torture us. This is too … peaceful.
“Were you able to dose him with what Kim gave you?” Nazarin asks.
I nod.
He looks around, and then glances at his hand. He frowns. I blink, and a gun appears in his hand.
“It worked. That tooth was full of nanites that worked their way deep into his implants and biochemistry.”
I take a shuddering breath. “How did Kim learn to do this?”
“Sudice’s labs and a brilliant brain.”
We start walking through the woods, cautiously. We don’t see Ensi, but he’ll be here, somewhere.
“How’d you meet Kim?” I ask, keeping my voice low. “Through Juliane?” We both scout our surroundings, but I want to focus on something other than the fact I could die at any moment.
“I met Kim the first time the SFPD hooked me up with her to put in my memory mods. She met Juliane the same day. Juliane and she hit it off right away, started dating. Then they married, and they were one of those married couples that just worked. You saw them both together and you could only hope to have something like that someday. We both helped each other heal when we lost Juliane. I think if we hadn’t had the other person to lean on, we might have both been broken by it.”
We reach a break in the trees and a small clearing. The forest has shifted into an alien landscape. The sky is somehow night and day at the same time; shafts of sunlight-moonlight make the now silver bark of the dream redwoods shine, and the needles are turquoise and vermilion. Even the soil is tinged blue and purple. I listen for birds, but all is silent and still.
“I told the SFPD that they should use Kim to help me in my undercover op,” Nazarin continues. “She’s the reason I haven’t been caught and killed before now. She wants Ensi taken down just as much as I do. Maybe more. I loved Juliane, but my love can’t compare to Kim’s. Not even close.”
We’ve passed through the other side of the clearing, and the forest towers over us once again. I feel so small, so insignificant. It’s as if Nazarin and I are the only people in this Technicolor twilight world.
“Kim knew even if we got proof that it’d never be enough. She’s been developing that false tooth for a long time. Used us, in a way, I guess, though I can’t blame her. I would have done the same in a heartbeat.”
Like you used me. The unspoken words hover between us, almost a presence. I can’t really blame him, either. It was my choice, too.
My nerves are on edge. I keep waiting for the world to turn dark and ugly. For the mandrake demons to grow from the ground and reach for me, for the sky to burn, for Ensi to appear with a scalpel, pin me down and cut me open.