Someone’s touching my thigh. And it’s not the someone I expect. Dirty, scratched-up hands, chipped nails, pencil-thin arms, pinched face, a headful of tangled hair despite Sullivan’s valiant attempts to keep it combed. I touch that hair, drawing it back to tuck behind her ear, and Megan glances shyly at me but doesn’t pull away. The last time she rode in a chopper, the people she trusted had just placed a bomb inside her throat. The same people she was going back to now. How do you deal with something like that? How do you make it make sense? I almost say it; the words push against my lips and almost escape. Not going to let it happen, Megs. This time you’re safe.
The sergeant is shouting something over the headset. I catch only about 10 percent. Go four? Go four, you sure? And We got the juice for that? And a bunch of expletives you really can’t include in the percentage. At hearing the words Go four, the other recruits in the hold tighten up. I don’t know what the hell Go four means, but it doesn’t sound good.
Not good at all.
88
RINGER
FROM THE ROOF of the command center, I hear the window shatter two hundred yards away. A body tumbles out and writhes in the dirt beneath the broken window, its uniform speckled with shards of glass, groaning in pain. I can’t see her face—but even from this distance, I recognize the tangle of strawberry curls.
I sprint across the rooftop, leap forty feet to the roof of the adjacent building, then jump three stories to the ground. Sullivan sees my boots hit the grass a foot from her head and screams. She fumbles with her sidearm. I kick it out of her hand and haul her to her feet. Her uniform is soaked. Her eyes are swollen and red, her face pockmarked with angry crimson boils. She’s shaking uncontrollably, going into shock. I’ll have to act fast.
I throw her over my shoulder and sprint toward a small storage shed located on the back side of the building. The door’s padlocked. I bust it apart with one kick and carry her inside. The hub processes the data transmitted by the olfactory drones: something in the water, something toxic.
I strip off her jacket. Rip off her shirt and undershirt. Slipping in and out of consciousness, she barely resists. Boots, socks, pants, underwear. Her skin’s inflamed and clammy to the touch. I press my hand against her chest; her heart slams against my palm. I look into her weeping, unseeing eyes and shove my way into her. The toxin won’t kill her—I hope—but her terror might.
I tamp down the panic to slow her heart. The primitive part of her brain pushes back: The fight-or-flight response is older and more powerful than the technology I contain. The struggle continues for several minutes.
Our hearts, the war.
Her body, the battlefield.
89
I THROW MY JACKET over her bare shoulders. She pulls it tight across her chest, a good sign that I haven’t lost her yet.
“Where. The hell. Were you?”
“Watching this entire camp bunker-dive,” I tell her. “They’ve cut the power . . .”
She laughs harshly, then turns her head and spits. Her spittle is flecked with blood, and I think of the plague. “Did they? I hadn’t noticed.”
“It’s pretty smart,” I say. “Flush us outside, where our options are limited, then dispatch enhanced personnel to finish—”
She’s shaking her head. “We have no options, Ringer. Wonderland. We have to get to Wonderland . . .” She tries to stand. Her knees buckle and she goes down. “Where the fuck are my clothes?”
“Here, take mine. I’ll wear yours.”
For some reason she laughs. “Commando. That’s funny.”
I don’t get it.
I can feel the toxin worm its way into my legs after I pull on her fatigues, and thousands of microscopic bots swarm to neutralize its effects. I hand her my dry shirt, shrug into her wet one.
“The poison doesn’t do anything to you?” she asks.
“I don’t feel anything.”
She rolls her eyes. “I already knew that.”
“I’ll take it from here,” I tell her. “You stay.”
“Like hell.”
“Sullivan, the risk is—”
“I don’t give a shit about your risk.”
“I’m not talking about the risk to the mission. Your risk.”
“That doesn’t matter.” She stands up. This time she stays up. “Where’s my rifle?”
I shake my head. “Didn’t see it.”
“Okay then. What about my gun?”
I take a deep breath. This isn’t going to work. She’s more a liability now than an asset, and she’s never been much of an asset. She’ll slow me down. She might get me killed. I should leave her here. Knock her out if I have to. Screw our deal. Walker’s dead; he must be; there’s no reason Vosch would keep him alive once he’s been downloaded into Wonderland. Which means Sullivan is risking everything for nothing.
I am, too. For something I can’t even put into words. The same something I saw in her eyes that I cannot name. Something that has nothing to do with Vosch or avenging what he’s done to me. It’s more important than that. More solid. But that’s about as close as I can come to describing it.
Something inviolable.
But I don’t say any of that. My mouth comes open and these words come out instead: “You won’t need a weapon, Sullivan. You’ll have me.”
90